Insanity

'Holy shit, they hit the embassy,' I think to myself, 'the blast was so close.' I leave my windows cracked and curtains drawn for just this reason--while my door has been blasted open, splintering the frame where it was locked shut, none of my windows shattered. Aside from small chunks from the ceiling strewn about the floor, I am all right. I look out my window and see that despite shattered glass strewn outside many of the nearby buildings, the Australian embassy is intact. I quickly throw on some clothes, grab my camera and run into the hall--which is filled with so much dust it's difficult to see. In the hall, as well as in all the others I see as I run upstairs, pieces of ceiling and broken glass are everywhere. The suicide car bomb has been detonated near the base of a large building across the street which is home to many Australian soldiers. From there the soldiers guard the checkpoint to their nearby embassy from the multi-storey building with snipers. Two smouldering bits of a vehicle sit near the building, and two bodies lay in pools of blood across the street. A small building near the Australian outpost and right in front of the detonated car received heavy damage in the explosion. Despite being heavily fortified with concrete barriers, razor wire, sand bags, and sand barriers, the outpost has chunks blown out of it and the netting and plywood which covers many of the windows is hanging haphazardly out of the openings. I am on the roof just minutes after the blast and the Iraqi Police (IP) had already arrived en masse. A woman screaming hysterically is pushed inside one of their trucks and taken away; she was trying to reach one of the bodies when several policeman ushered her off. Other IP's inspect the bodies while plumes of black smoke drift languidly down the street in the early morning stillness. Police run about, yelling orders and barking at journalists, but there is nothing much else for them to do. They load the two bodies into a vehicle and drive them to a morgue. It is a seemingly senseless attack, as this building, occupied by the Australian military, is so heavily fortified that no car bomb could possibly penetrate it. This one caused merely superficial damage and killed civilians while only wounding a few soldiers. It was also a smaller car bomb, as it didn't leave a crater like so many of the others. Nevertheless, glass is shattered in buildings hundreds of meters away from the blast, pieces of wall are crumbled: it is like the aftermath of a large earthquake, in which all tremors have concentrated into and climaxed in one enormous spasm. About twenty minutes later several truckloads of Iraqi soldiers show up, many of them wearing their usual black facemasks. Fifteen minutes after this the US military shows up with 10 Humvees, a Bradley and a large tank. They seal the street and begin to string razor wire across the road. Two Apache helicopters arrive and commence rumbling in circles around the area, buzzing overhead. I watch an old woman who lives in a home just across from the bombing. She is walking around aimlessly in her yard, sometimes stopping to slowly pick up rubble from her wall that was damaged in the blast, then just looking around her home. Half an hour after this another large car bomb explodes in eastern Baghdad at an Iraqi police headquarters, killing 18 people as the blast echoes across the capital city. I return to my room to commence writing. Abu Talat calls and can't make it over for our work because so many roads near my hotel are closed. As I write, three more huge explosions rumble across the center of Baghdad. In a span of just ninety minutes, five car bombs have detonated, killing at least 26 people. One of the car bombs explodes outside a bank where IP's are collecting their salaries, killing at least 10 of them. Another car bomb explodes at the airport, killing two guards. A military installation is also attacked, killing two American soldiers and two civilians. Iraqis around my hotel compound are sweeping up glass as I make some calls to let folks know I'm alive. The US-backed Iraqi government has announced draconian measures which state that from January 29th to the 31st the borders of Iraq will be closed, mobile and satellite phone services will be cut, the borders of Iraq's 18 governorates will be closed and no civilian traffic will be allowed near the polling stations. Polling stations will each have several rings of security in an attempt to stave off the violence. Be that as it may, the Ministry of Health is making special preparations to deal with the massive bloodshed expected for the "elections." (c)2004 Dahr Jamail. All images and text are protected by United States and international copyright law. If you would like to reprint Dahr's Dispatches on the web, you need to include this copyright notice and a prominent link to the http://DahrJamailIraq.com website. Any other use of images and text including, but not limited to, reproduction, use on another website, copying and printing requires the permission of Dahr Jamail. Of course, feel free to forward Dahr's dispatches via email [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on January 23, 2005]