"Congratulations to your mother!"

Congratulations to your mother... And by saying "you", i don't mean you; and in case you have been wondering, it wasn't said to me either!

I am the one who is using this Iraqi proverb "Congratulations to your mother!" or (Niyalha Lummak), to address the good ol' government, for their outstanding security plan that has been going for more than a week now, without any significant results. They speak about this "security plan", but there is no "security", and we're not sure if there is a "plan". This proverb is sarcastically said to someone who thinks that he did something big, but he, as a matter of fact, did nothing, or even did it the wrong way!

Car bombs blow up on a daily basis anywhere they like to blow up, volatile areas are still far away from being calm, and check points are something decorative to create traffic jams. The latter point has a proof that was not told to me, but lived by me, and i saw it with my very eyes!

And here's the cute little story:

I went this past weekend to downtown Baghdad for some business, and because of the odd-numbers / even-numbers no-drive rules, i couldn't go by my car to the place i wanted to go to, so i took taxis. I returned home at around 6 pm, and on the way, the car i was riding went through a check point, like all the cars going through that part of the street. I was in the car, and the driver was a grey haired man in his 50's i guess, who had a light beard. The Iraqi soldier allowing the cars to pass decided to pull us over for some reason, so we went into the pulled over cars' lane. I, of course, supposed that once we are pulled over, then the routine procedure to follow is to search the car or maybe even us, let alone looking at our IDs. Nothing happened! The other soldier, who was responsible for searching the cars, looked at me and the driver in the face, asked the driver to open the back window behind me with the automatic button, the driver said that that back window does not work, the soldier came to the car, opened the door behind me, made sure that the window doesn't work, closed the door and said go!

So, i am still scratching my head here 4 days after it happened; it is either the first soldier didn't have a good reason to pull us over, or the second soldier didn't have the slightest clue of what should he do once a car enters his checking lane!!

Some "security"!

But that is not the big story. The big story is the kidnapping of some 70 workers going out of a Ministry of Industry factories on the northern tip of Baghdad, some 30 people of whom were released later, for being women (and their children), or for being Sunnis. 50 people were kidnapped last week from Central Baghdad, only hundereds of yards outside the Green Zone borders, by armed men wearing police uniforms and posing as police in broad daylight!! 10 survivors were said to be found, but what did they say?! Nobody knows (yet), and probably we'll never will!

Another story is one that filled all the newspapers about the memo that Ambassador Khalilzad sent to Condie Rice regarding the lives of the Iraqi employees of the American Embassy in Baghdad.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20060620/cm_usatoday/iraqasseenthrough9lives An outstanding example of what all Iraqis are going through, excluding what the coalition forces are doing of course, which is now falling in the grey area, sometimes good, sometimes....

One of the important notes in that memo, is mentioning that the gov't is "not relevant", or in other words (knows nothin' about muffin!).

Well, we still hope there will be a gov't in Iraq one day, that could establish the rule of law, until then there is -unfortunately- no rule and there is also no law.

More soon!