Iraqi woman asks residents to call for U.S. troop withdrawal
SMC — She isn’t a politician or a diplomat.
Faiza Al-Araji is simply a wife, mother and concerned citizen of Iraq who came to Santa Monica College Tuesday to offer her version of the war raging back home. She hopes and prays that her stories of death and despair will encourage more to oppose the war effort.
Her goal in encouraging this opposition is to force President Bush to withdraw U.S. troops and end what Al-Araji and many of her countrymen call the “occupation and domination” of Iraq, which began three years ago this month and has led to the deaths of at least 2,300 U.S. soldiers and countless more civilians.
“I feel it is my responsibility to come here and speak the truth and defend the innocent Iraqi families who are unknown,” Al-Araji, wearing a white Muslim head scarf, or hejab, told a crowd of roughly 70 at an SMC lecture hall. “Your responsibility is to open your eyes. The media is not telling you the truth … This war was not about liberation or oil. It is about the desire to dominate.”
Al-Araji, an engineer and mother of three who recently fled Baghdad for Amman, Jordan, left her family behind earlier this month and joined five other Iraqi women as part of a delegation to Congress, where they intend to hand over millions of signatures from women who oppose the war.
They’re also speaking to ordinary folks whenever they can about the damaging toll the war has taken on Iraqi families and, in particular, women who often bear the brunt of the violence.
The delegation is sponsored by anti-war groups CodePink and the Women Say No To War campaign as part of Women’s History Month and the third anniversary of the war in Iraq, to be acknowledged this Saturday with a march in Hollywood.
Each woman has visited cities across the United States, with Al-Araji giving speeches and interviews on the West Coast.
During her speech at SMC, Al-Araji was passionate, and at times emotional, as she told of her son’s kidnap-ping at the hands of rogue cops looking for ransom, something that occurs daily in Baghdad.
“For four days he was held. You can’t imagine my life in those days, horrible,” she said. “I’ve lived through bombings, wars … but nothing can compare to this. The streets are no longer safe. The university is no longer safe. There is no security. Imagine not being able to go to school, your job, the market, not even your own back-yard. Everything — life — it’s frozen.”
Al-Araji said her family had to pay “thousands of dollars” for the release of her son.
A critic of the war and the interim Iraqi government, Al-Araji writes a blog on the Internet called “A Family in Baghdad,” which can be accessed at www.afamilyinbagh-dad.blogspot.com. She said when her son was kidnapped from Baghdad University, she pulled all of her blogs immediately because she feared if those responsible found out who she was, they would have killed Al-Araji’s son.
“I was lucky,” she said. “I had the money to pay for my son, but what about the regular Iraqis who don’t have that kind of money?”
A Shia married to a Sunni Arab, Al-Araji said she is appalled by news stories that promote sectarian violence and report that the country is headed toward a civil war among the three main ethnic groups there: Shia, Sunni and Kurd.
“The Iraqi people refuse the idea of a civil war,” she said. “We have lived together for thousands of years. My husband is Sunni. How can he be my enemy?”
Al-Araji believes corrupt officials here and in Iraq, as well as terrorists from outside the country, are responsible for fueling the recent surge in bombings against both the Shia and Sunni, including attacks on mosques and the mass assassinations of young men from both groups. The purpose is to incite a civil war so the United States can continue to build bases in Iraq and launch offensives against neighboring counties in the Middle East, Al-Araji said.
“If you really care about the future of Iraq, you would tell your administration to put a deadline on the removal of troops and stop building bases,” Al-Araji said. “We don’t want your sacrifices. Get your hands out of Iraq and leave it up to the Iraqi people … You say you want to give us freedom. Well, thank you, my dear. I don’t need your freedom.”
Al-Araji also said people should donate money to Iraqi families who are struggling to eat within a war zone. Al- Araji said $50 to a family in Iraq would mean another month of survival.
“There is a saying in my country: Under (former President) Saddam Hussein, we were living under one thief,” she said. “Now there are thousands of thieves. I can’t be a dreamer and say everything is going to be OK (if troops leave). But I know that it has been three years since the invasion, and what do we have to show for it except more violence?”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 15, 2006. Read the original PDF.