بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

Greetings to all my friends,

Today, I am writing to you with a heavy heart. Not to alarm my faithful friends, it has nothing to do with anything personal, although one of these car bombs, resulted in breaking everything made of glass in my own house, and the horror of finding a human brain on our roof. Luckily, and I thank the merciful God, no one was hurt, quite miraculously.

The sadness comes from watching on TV the confessions of the “Jihadists”. By the way, some people have expressed some skepticism about these. Now for all those of my friends who know me well, and have confidence in what I tell them; I put all my credibility on the line and assure them that these confessions are absolutely authentic, and mostly obtained without much compulsion. Strangely, most of these criminals seem to be relieved at getting all these awful doings off their chest. This is a phenomenon well worth investigating by psychologists. Some of the characters seem quite ordinary plebeians, or rather peasants. Seldom did we see somebody from decent middle class background involved with these atrocities, at least not amongst those who appeared on T.V.; and quite a lot have already been exhibited, since almost everyday a new batch is shown in the now regular 9.00 pm show. I hope this will not be understood as some kind of class prejudice, however facts are facts and must be looked at objectively and things called by their real names. Also, 99 % of those men belong to particular clans, tribes and a certain sect, that I am sure you will not have much difficulty at guessing which. This is quite painful, because, we in the cities are very mixed and many of our families are a mélange of Shiaa, Sunnis, and even Christians. However, most of these men actually are seen to be of provincial origin. This reinforces my conviction, which I have expounded long ago in some of my earlier posts, and which can be simply expressed as follows:

The problem in Iraq is not so much a sectarian issue, but rather more to do with the nature of our peasant problem.

The whole thing can be traced back to our history, and particularly the Revolution of 1958 that deposed the Monarchy that essentially consisted of a social system based on the hegemony of the cities allied with feudal Lords or Shiekhs ( as they were called here). I believe that all what has happened ever since is a sequel and natural consequence of that particular event, which is of paramount importance in our recent history. This matter requires much research and analysis, and is difficult to deal with in the scope of a brief blog post.

For those of my friends, who are interested in understanding social phenomena, in a scientific way, through sociological and historical analysis, perhaps I shall find time to expound my theories more elaborately in future posts.

Suffice it to say, now, that Iraq is the land of contradiction and dichotomy. You will find the highest and most sublime and you will find the basest and most horrific. Our hope is that the former will predominate over the latter, now that the lid has been forcibly removed, which covered this seething cauldron of explosive social contradictions. For this to happen, external help and the use of suitable catalysts seem indispensable.

But for the time being, I have to bid you goodnight, my dear fellow pajama bloggists.