Karim Al-Mayali says he will return to Basra, Iraq, "to defend my home against the American invaders." (photo: Jehad Nga)
Posted on 04/02/2003 9:44:49 AM PST by SquirrelKing
Karim Al-Mayali says he will return to Basra, Iraq, "to defend my home against the American invaders." (photo: Jehad Nga)
AMMAN, JORDAN—Karim Al-Mayali still fumes when he talks about his ex-wife, the mother of his six-year-old boy, Ali. "It was a matter of money," says the 34-year-old car detailer, who left his native Basra, Iraq, for Jordan in 1994. She wanted a bigger house and a car, possessions then well beyond his means. So they divorced, and he came to Amman to work, like thousands of other Iraqis, to forget, and hopefully to find a nice Jordanian girl to marry. But this too will take money. "It costs about $15,000 for a wedding here," he laments.
Any day now, though, Al-Mayali will return to the Basra he was happy to leave. He has stopped receiving news of his son, four brothers, and three sisters, since their last phone call, eight days ago. The footage on the evening news is all he knows of Basra at war. "If you're going to die, you may as well die near your family," he says. And Al-Mayali means to shield his home from the Americans, whom he calls "the invaders."
In doing so, he will join over 7,000 of his compatriots, according to Jordan's foreign ministry, who have already made the trip from Jordan back to Iraq, thinning out the quarters of this city they have adopted and called home. In recent days, the Iraqi government threw out a new carrot to the exiles, offering free rides from the Iraqi side of the border. This means that a trip that once cost $100 has been cut to just $10, a significant incentive to many of the low-wage laborers seeking to repatriate.
In conversations with southern Iraqis, a recurring litany of grievances appears to fuel their desire to return to their families. Some seize upon the symbolic evidence of an unwelcome and growing occupation, like the early incident of American flag raising in Umm Qasr. Others say America's "securing" of the southern oil fields confirms their deepest fears about the coalition's intentions. "What did they do first?" asks Hashem Marmala, a 30-year-old waiter. "They went for the oil. People are starving in the cities, and they were concerned about Rumaila," he says, referring to the southern field that pumps up to 60 percent of Iraq's oil.
As the coalition armies await the Iraqi revolt that isn't yet, war strategists will note with interest the apparent about-face by the political dissidents in Jordan who, only weeks ago, couldn't wait for the war that would remove Saddam Hussein's government. While the majority of Iraqis in Jordan are economic migrants, there are a number of political dissidents as well; that these people, many of whom have spent time in Iraqi jails, would return was unthinkable before the war.
(Excerpt) Read more at villagevoice.com ...
Idiot. With the Rumaila oilfields destroyed, a temporary shortage of supplies would have become months of famine.
Has he stopped to think of who was controlling every nickel and dime in Iraq up to now? His beloved Uncle Saddam was then doling it out to France and Russia for more toys.
"Are ye daft, Man? Think!"
Huh?
The thousands of "middle-class-mujahadeen" don't mind getting on camara and spitting out drivel about the US, and how they are going to Iraq to fight the Great Satan, etc.
Of course, they realize that once they get there, a whole new economy will have opened up, and they can feed at the trough of foreign investment once again, denying they ever badmouthed the US.
While this is the dawn of a new era in warfare, that of the "refugeeless conflict", it is not without an increase in carpetbaggers.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.