ANOTHER AMERICAN OCCUPATION FAILURE NOT DISCUSSED BY THE CANDIDATES: 8/8: A Stranger in Your Own City: Travels in the Middle East's Long War by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 30 June 2024
⏱️ 8 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Stranger-Your-Own-City-Travels/dp/0593536886/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
A Stranger in Your Own City is award-winning writer Ghaith Abdul-Ahad’s vivid, shattering response. This is not a book about Iraq’s history or an inventory of the many Middle Eastern wars that have consumed the nation over the past several decades. This is the tale of a people who once lived under the rule of a megalomaniacal leader who shaped the state in his own image; a people who watched a foreign army invade, topple that leader, demolish the state, and then invent a new country; who experienced the horror of having their home fragmented into a hundred different cities.
When the “Shock and Awe” campaign began in March 2003, Abdul-Ahad was an architect. Within months he would become a translator, then a fixer, then a reporter for The Guardian and elsewhere, chronicling the unbuilding of his centuries-old cosmopolitan city. Beginning at that moment and spanning twenty years, Abdul-Ahad’s book centers on the West and in its place focuses on everyday people, soldiers, mercenaries, citizens blown side
1932 BAGHDAD
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a serious eye on the world with Haif Abdullah Had. A stranger in your own city |
| 0:10.5 | travels in the Middle East long War. Basra 2019, Baghdad 2019. But in this |
| 0:18.0 | particular instance it's dealing with the status quo ante which is dominated by unemployment and anger at the ruling class. |
| 0:27.0 | I hope I have that right, right? |
| 0:29.0 | Anger at the ruling class. |
| 0:30.0 | And who is the ruling class in 2019? |
| 0:33.0 | We are talking about a kryptocratic elite of party bosses, |
| 0:38.8 | militia commanders, religious figures, |
| 0:41.9 | who have been siphoning according to different estimates |
| 0:47.6 | around $20 billion a year from the Iraqi budget during the last 20 years. |
| 0:52.4 | These figures, these kind of political bosses, have created such a state of corruption in Iraq that it's unbelievable. |
| 1:04.4 | I mean, you know, Iraq is not a poor state. |
| 1:06.2 | We have 120 billion dollars worth of oil every year. |
| 1:10.8 | But you go to certain parts of Baghdad, that there's no water, no electricity, no employment, let alone the south of the country. |
| 1:17.0 | So it's this young generation, a young generation that grew up after 2003 that was, they were promised democracy, they were promised, you know, |
| 1:24.8 | prosperity and they looked at their lives and they realized that the biggest |
| 1:29.2 | threat to not only themselves to Iraq in general is corruption and the corruption of these political |
| 1:37.3 | elites and this is the I mean the uprising itself failed because all uprisings failed but what this what we call it |
| 1:45.2 | Tishrin uprising the October uprising it created a benchmark it created a point when |
| 1:51.2 | it is a trans sectarian it is where people from different parts of the city, the |
| 1:55.9 | wealthy, the poor, the Sunni, the Shia, the different who all pulled into the Central |
| 2:01.3 | Square in Baghdad and they all chanted against the corruption of |
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