Letter to Obama from an Iraqi woman
Dear Mr Obama,
When I watched a recent Al-Sharqiyya TV documentary about severely disabled child called Ali, I could not help but to relate his story to that happening in Iraq in since the invasion. Let me start with a bit on his background. Ali is a multiple-handicapped five year old child, who lost his mother after the 2003 invasion when he was only 4 months old left to be cared for by his Dad who has to work to live and to pay for the huge medical bills that Ali needs. His Dad knocked all doors and there is no medical or financial or social help provided by the so-called Iraqi Government, even though we are a resource-rich oil producing country with enough to provide every citizen to live in a dignified life. Indeed, this is wasn’t a dream some thirty years ago, when myself lived in an Iraq that looks nothing like what it does today.
But the 2003 invasion and what followed was the straw that broke Iraqi society’s back, and with it the infrastructure too. There are few facilities to provide for its deserving citizens but there is plenty to pay into the coffers of those like former Trade Minister Al-Sudani who, like most of the people in my so-called British-backed ‘democratic government’, are helping themselves to state funds on a massively corrupt scale. Nevertheless, the British government refuses to accept his guilt and continue to protest against his forced resignation and subsequent imprisonment pending a corruption investigation.
Not only in the days I remember Iraq some thirty years ago but even before the invasion, we had schools we could be proud of, fully functioning hospitals, running clean water and electricity. What we have now is a puppet regime, which has been elected along sectarian lines, and whose only interest is to plunder as much money from national coffers. But you may ask why I blame the U.S. for their war to allegedly-establish democratic regime in the Iraq. Well, Ali’s dad should not have had to advertise Ali’s plight on TV only for the White Hand Programme charity to fill in the void that the Iraqi government continues to leave. To make matters worse, there are hundreds of thousands of children who lost either one or both parents and have been maimed by the previous U.S. administration’s war. Few, if any, of these cases receive the coverage they deserve and these children’s families struggle to support them. In the mean time, the Bush administration and its Neocons are enjoying comfortable retirement when. Instead, they should be pursued by the International Criminal Court, so that the world can begin to become a better place for everyone and not just a few.
H. al-Khouri
British citizen of Iraqi origin, London, UK.
