Fern Holland's War (NYT)

[struggle4progress]

By ELIZABETH RUBIN
Published: September 19, 2004

<snip> Babil, home of ancient Babylonia, is often called ''the white flower.'' The Euphrates lolls through Babil, watering willows, eucalyptus and acres of date palms. The people in Hilla, Babil's capital, for the most part welcomed coalition troops as liberators. A mostly Shiite community, Hilla had lost thousands of men during the Iran-Iraq war and the disastrous, American-inspired 1991 uprising against Saddam. In the spring of 2003, after the Baathists were overthrown, the people of Hilla dug up mass graves to look for their relatives. I was traveling there at the time and, in some of the bleakest stretches of desert, watched men praying, ''God is the only god,'' as they heaved remains from the heavy earth: shirts crumpled around skeletons, toe bones tucked in sandals, leg bones clanking like gourds. A man in a dishdasha, drenched in sweat, was searching for his wife among neatly lined-up piles in white shrouds. Inside one he found a black abaya crumpled as if the woman had melted. There was no jewelry, no shoes, just a mulch of henna-colored bones, hair and nails. He had no way of knowing who she was, but he broke down anyway. I looked at my interpreter, a Kurd from Halabja, whom I'd been traveling with since before the war began, and I could see as we drifted slowly from pit to pit that he just wanted to sink and die. One of the men shadowing a grave pointed inside. ''This is America,'' he said. ''They lie here because of America. I'm sorry if you are American, but tell your countrymen that's why they are here. The father Bush betrayed us and brought Saddam back, and look what he did.'' <snip>

It was an exciting time. Visions were grand. Cash was flowing by the truckload from Baghdad. Because it was confiscated money from Saddam's coffers that the U.S. was distributing and not official American funds, there were almost no regulations on how it was spent. As Rachel Roe, a reservist and lawyer who was rebuilding the legal system in Najaf, told me: ''Fern showed up in the palace in Baghdad looking for the head of democracy and human rights to see what's the plan and found some 21-year-old political appointee who had no idea what was going on. Someone would just say, 'O.K., take this cash, put it in a backpack and build democracy centers.' It was insane. I was looking for guidance on Iraqi law and was met by a 22-year-old American in charge of the Ministry of Justice who said, 'Don't worry about that, I'm pretty sure we're going to rewrite that constitution anyway.' This is a country of 23 million people, and we're there with no plan for what we're going to do. So we just started figuring it out ourselves.'' <snip>

But inside the center, the women were worried about their men and the lack of jobs. Dr. Amal, a young farm veterinarian whom Holland had chosen to direct the Karbala center, asked Bremer what he planned to do for Iraq. ''Always it was the same promises -- democracy, participation of women in the political future,'' she told me last summer. But no jobs. Companies, Bremer told her, couldn't come into such an insecure environment. Bremer touted the free market, borders flung open, no restrictions on goods. But in truth there was no free market. Bechtel and Halliburton were stepping in to do the work of the government ministries that had employed so many Iraqis. These companies were hiring foreign workers and security guards from around the world, paying enormous salaries, while young Iraqi men sat idle. <snip>

''I think we can take credit for a lot here,'' Berry continued. ''I formed the provincial council and got the governor elected.'' In fact, there had been no election. Berry selected the council after a half-hour interview with each candidate, testing him or her on the fundamentals of democracy. <snip>

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/19/magazine/19WOMENL.html?pagewanted=1&th