Greetings Friends,

I would like to thank all of you who have expressed such warm sympathy. It helps and consoles when you know that there are so many decent human beings on your side. It is sad to compare the callousness of those who unfortunately are supposed to be of the same race and nationality as oneself with the kindness and decency of others so far away.

Well today, my relative was released and came home. It was a question of money; and unfortunately money had to be paid. But that hardly solves the problem. It is not easy to avoid this. When a gun is pointed at your head by some armed robber in a dark alley how many of you can avoid emptying your pockets?

This is becoming a very common situation and it is particularly the Baghdadi middle class and the better people who are most cruelly hit. For every foreigner kidnapped you must count perhaps a thousand Iraqis, and this is no exaggeration. The good people have become easy pray to merciless gangs with very little protection from the IP or any other form of Law Enforcement agencies, who can hardly protect themselves, let alone providing security for others. These gangs are part and parcel of the so-called “resistance” and “insurgency”; in many cases they are one and the same.

As I have said long time ago; without an effective security grip over the cities and particularly Baghdad, the situation will just continue to deteriorate. The kinds of measures that I have proposed then are yet to be implemented and could have been effective in preventing much of what is happening at the present time. Of course, the government and the MNF are working very hard and suffering many sacrifices, and that is something that must not go unappreciated. However, we must admit that there is still much to be done.

Very hard thinking of the required strategy is required; and with all the powerful, technically advanced people on the side of the majority of the Iraqi people who just long for a peaceful decent outcome of this situation; surely the right solutions can be found. This can’t be harder than reaching the moon or splitting the atom! When I recover a little bit from this latest ordeal perhaps I can contribute a little thinking of my own, too.

Salaam