Michael Totten Goes to Biara
We rarely just duplicate other people's links, but here's an exception: Michael Totten is in Iraq, and describes his tour of a town called Biara on the Iraq/Iran border. Zarqawi occupied Biara, along with Ansar al-Islam, until he was driven out by our invasion in 2003. This is the kind of first-hand reporting from Iraq that we need a great deal more of:
“Do you want to know about life in Biara?” the one on the left said. He spoke perfect English and I did not need Alan to translate.“Yes,” I said. “Did you live here when the village was occupied by Zarqawi?”
“I did,” he said. “Life wasn’t good. We had no freedom. TV was banned. Women couldn’t walk outside without an abaya. There was violence. Anyone not affiliated with them was treated badly. During prayer time everyone was required to go to the mosque. If we didn’t go we were insulted and fined 50 dollars.”
50 dollars may not be a lot of money in the United States, but was a huge amount in a remote village in Iraqi Kurdistan while all of Iraq was under international sanctions. People needed the Oil for Food program just to stay alive.
“Did anyone here actually like Ansar Al Islam?” I asked.
“There were one or two very young people,” he said. “I am from here. We never had anything like that before. I was joking with my friends in this tea shop. We were arrested, chained, blindfolded, and beaten. Laughing was banned.”
“They were like the Taliban,” his friend said.
“Did Ansar kill anyone here?” I asked.
“One person was tortured to death,” he said.
This photo shows Biara from above. A commenter on Totten's site points out the forest of satellite dishes:
We have to read Totten's site more often. Via InstaPundit.
