"Leave Now or You Will Die Like a Dog"

by Kathy Kelly

http://counterpunch.com/kelly01032007.html

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An Iraqi friend whom I've known for ten years looked worn and very weary yesterday when he came to visit me in my apartment here in Amman, Jordan. He hadn't slept the night before because he'd been on the phone with his wife who, throughout the night, was terrified by cross fire taking place over the Iraqi village where she stays with their four small children. My friend longs to soothe and protect his wife and kids. But now he lives apart from them, in another country.

His life was completely changed when a piece of paper was tossed into his kitchen in Baghdad. It read: "Leave now or you will die like a dog." Many Iraqis have been receiving notes like this. This piece of paper was sent to him with a bit of extra emphasis. It was wrapped around a bullet.

Weeks later, assailants killed his younger brother who was returning home from University studies. My friend moved his family to a village outside Baghdad and then ran for his life.

Here in Amman, where the U.N. cites a figure of 700,000 Iraqis who've fled their country, he feels trapped. Like other Iraqis, he lives without legal protections: he is not allowed to work, he is unable to obtain proper documentation to settle here, and each Embassy to which he has applied for resettlement has given him the cold shoulder. He may walk the sunburst streets of Amman, ride in taxis, eat in kabob shops, but he lives a shadowy, underground existence. Everyday, Iraqis in Jordan are arrested (for working, for overstaying their visas, etc.) and deported. This, too, is a death threat of sorts. Meanwhile, in Iraq, his family lives in a battlefield, and who knows what tomorrow will bring?...



Kathy Kelly has been nominated three times
for a Nobel Peace Prize for her work in Iraq
photo by Ed Felien

the violence is criminal....blood is on this adminsistrations hands...

what's being done and, more importantly, what's not being done--and how it needs to change, check out:

www.refugeesinternational.org

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war,
there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.


Ernest Hemingway 1938