Ciao!

Meanwhile, back in Baghdad

There's a great article on the fall of Baghdad in the upcoming issue of The New York Review of Books. Here's an interesting excerpt:

Now some of Ahmed's friends were surrounding us and giving their opinions on what was going on, about the future, and about what they thought of various exiled politicians, including Baqir al-Hakim, who is in Tehran, and Ahmed Chalabi, who has US backing, and was about to arrive with a number of his fellow exiles in Nasiriya. There were, unsurprisingly, many conflicting opinions. Hakim was a good man, some thought; Chalabi was, or was not, a crook, others thought; the Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani was a traitor for making a deal with the Americans, and so on. Ahmed said he hoped the Americans would set up a transitional government without these men, and with technocrats instead. "For example the minister of health should have experience in his field." It struck me that it was a stunning event that this discussion, which already seemed quite normal, was now taking place in Baghdad. "When was the last time we could have talked openly like this?" I asked Ahmed. He took a while to reply. "When I was student in 1967," he said.

Posted by Miguel at 01:46 PM

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