Insurgency Through Iraqi Eyes

"We need action and not words from Iran," declared an Azzaman editorial. The paper said that Iran should pledge not to interfere in Iraqi affairs and forget its demands for reparations for the eight-year war that former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein started in 1980. Indeed, one Iraqi lawyer, writing in the Arabic daily Al-Zaman says that Iran should compensate Iraq for the war.

The U.S. role in Iraq is rarely presented in positive terms in the Iraqi press.

Sa'd Sallal Lami, a doctor writing in Al-Sabah, recently called on all Iraqis to "support" the "good-willed powers" that are working to establish democracy and peace in Iraq, according to an FBI report.

Uncle Sam divides a figure labelled 'Arab World'.

But skepticism, if not hostility, is much more common. A columnist for the Al-Zaman daily strongly criticized "US forces for defiling the Al-Quds Mosque in Al-Ramadi and hundreds more throughout Iraq." According to the FBIS translation, the writer also criticized Iraqi officials "who justify the misconduct of US forces and allege that mosques are being used by insurgents."

The al-Furat newspaper carried an article criticizing President Bush for "dealing leniently" with the U.S. officials who are charged with "abusing detainees" in Iraq and other places.

And the recent spate of stories about the possible wounding of insurgent leader Abu Musab Zarqawi was a deliberate distraction, says Fatih Abdulsalam in Azzaman.

"For many Iraqis the name 'Saddam Hussein' has been replaced by 'Zarqawi'. The only difference is that while they could easily verify the footage, the speeches and sound bites of the former, many of them believe the latter is the product of the U.S. propaganda machine," Abdulsalam wrote.

"There is no doubt once the name Zarqawi disappears from the Iraqi scene, the forces that helped create it will waste no time in introducing another appellation and soon turn it into a new scourge," he said.

"Another Zarqawi will need to be made because neither the U.S. nor its allies in the government are ready to rectify their deadly errors," he concluded.

Some Iraqi commentators unfavorably compare Iraq today to the Saddam Hussein era.

"Many Iraqis say the distribution of food rations is not as efficient as it was under the former regime of Saddam Hussein," Azzaman reported recently.

"They say they are getting less food than before and the quality of food items has been deteriorating"

In a front-page editorial for Al-Furat, chief editor Shakir al-Juburi, said the country's southern provinces are suffering from negligence. "No great changes have taken place" since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, he wrote.

Iraqi children are the victims, said Azzaman columnist Jassem Murad

"Iraqi children bore the brunt of the brutal polices the former leader Saddam Hussein pursued in his three-decade rule. Today their sufferings have aggravated and [they] have become the main victims of the new era," Murad wrote.

There has been commendable journalism from Iraq by reporters of all nationalities done at great risk, but there's no disputing Iraq's ordeal looks different when seen through Iraqi eyes.