I'm going to be taking you on a little journey through time and space and when we're done I think that you'll all be able to see through the clouds and have a much better idea of how the land lies.
I should warn you now that this is going to be an enormous post, so kill a sheep or make sandwiches and make a drink or two, or three, and sit back and relax.
You can dip in and out of this thread at your leisure, but I recommend that you pay close attention to it. Along the way you'll learn a lot about the history of this site and get a much better idea of how to use it.
I'm going to be speaking for myself so I'm not claiming to be speaking on behalf of VCI, its owner or its administrators. Before deciding to make this post I've had many, many conversations with Algerians and listened to them all very carefully.
And after careful consideration it is clear that there's no other way of presenting a 'history' like this other than to be brutally honest. So I am going to be honest - and I am going to be brutal. At times in this thread I will be saying very hard and very harsh things about individuals that some of you possibly liked and admired. But however hard they are, they will be facts.
So, you can resent what I'm going to say, you can be angry about it, you can do the 'how dare you say that about an Algerian!' routine - you can do whatever you like with the information - except one thing. The one thing that you won't be able to do with it is to claim that it is untrue.
If you're smart then you'll make good use of what you're going to learn, both in terms of thinking a lot harder about your personal online safety and in terms of understanding better how this site 'works for Algeria and for Algerians'.
So, while the printing press is running, grab your refreshments and then come back tomorrow and I'll take you on a journey through 'history' here. It'll be interesting to learn whether it matches the memory of some of the older members. It could be that some of you never really knew what was going on at all or who was who or who was doing what.
One hot morning in 2004, a car with five Iraqis aboard was making its way through Baghdad. Today people would call its occupants a 'mixed group' as the five men comprised two Shi'ites and three Sunnis, one of whom was a Kurd. But back then the five all automatically considered themselves to be 'Iraqis' with no consideration of their ethnic or religious backgrounds.
Apart from the driver, that is. He lived in a different district to the others, a place where the beginnings of signs of fracturing were occurring. There was a time when none of the five would have believed that Iraq could slide into the kind of sectarian conflict that erupted later, but each day they met the driver would bring new and more worrying indications of a slide towards division.
He lived in a district where a new influx of former Iran-based Shi'ites was making its presence felt. These were people who had spent years in Iran, who were armed, funded, fed and trained by the Iranians, and whose ideas about the future of Iraq were often fed by dreams of 'revenge against the Sunnis' and the imposition of a 'sharia' type regime that is so often the first demand of those who manage to combine religious fanaticism with intellectual deficiency.
So the experiences of the driver were a kind of barometer of what was developing all over Iraq, in different cities, towns and villages. Guys who would be hard pressed to read a newspaper were now emerging as powerful neighborhood controllers, and, as is their custom, debating furiously such 'key issues' as beard lengths, the correct hemline of robes, and the evils of beauty salons, hairdressers, barbers, cinemas, liquor stores, wedding photographers' shops etc. They had also, of course, launched immediate 'patrols' that pounced upon, warned and then punished any women found out of doors without hijab. And when I say 'punished' I mean anything from whips to acid attacks.
As they set about making their 'brave new world', thanks to a return facilitated by American warplanes, tanks, and tens of thousands of armed American troops, their control over the districts they had decided to impose their stamp on began to take shape in the form of their own private armed patrols and checkpoints. These became points of interrogation for any local trying to get out of or into those areas.
The driver was complaining bitterly about all this, as he defended himself for being late. Nobody had been really that concerned about his being late, but he had always prided himself on his efficiency and felt a need to excuse himself. The areas where the other four men were living were still 'mixed' and had yet to experience the kind of 'rule' that was gradually taking shape in his neighborhood, so he launched into a tirade against the warped brand of sectarian 'sharia' that was turning his district into a place of danger.
As the car moved through crawling traffic a kind of gloom settled on its occupants. The four passengers had not yet faced the daily 'accounting' that the driver had to put up with in order to get out of his own district and as the driver related his experiences a depressing vision of the shape of things to come became clearer.
"They ask me 'Who are the Sunnis here?'," he said, explaining the daily pressure to inform on his own neighbors, people who he had shared all his life with. "Are you Sunni or Shi3a?" they would demand, often asking for proof, such as literature, medals or other symbols. Time and time again he would be asked to explain where he had beeen schooled, which mosque he attended or 'who he knew'. They would interrogate him about his military service, his family, his entire life. And all the while the most pressing thing they seemed to want to know was what kind of a Shi'ite he was. To be acceptable he had to think like them, to 'assist them'. So daily he was pressured to provide information about Sunni Iraqis, Palestinians - even Jews (despite the fact that Baghdad's Jewish population was by that time shrunk to low double figures).
"I never had to wake up and think this way in my life before!" he complained.
"What way?" one of his passengers asked.
"I used to know who I was. I used to get on with all my neighbors. I never had a problem with anyone - but now I am made to account for my whole life, just to pass the tests of these thugs who have installed themselves as our neighborhood guards!" he said, angrily. "Guards? They are more like jailers!"
In an attempt of his own to make up for time lost, because of his lateness, he was weaving in and out of Baghdad's streets in search of 'short cuts'. Some routes were permanently blocked now by enormous concrete barriers or heavily fortified checkpoints, and Baghdadis had quickly learned to make new maps in their heads of alternative ways of criss-crossing the city. It so happened on this particular morning that the driver was now motoring along off the main roads and aiming to join a highway some distance off. The streets he was taking were not busy, and quiet streets had their own drawbacks. Usually the appearance of a 'spot checkpoint' thrown up by occupation troops did not go unnoticed for long, and its location would quickly be signalled from one person to another until in a short time there was a ring of civilian 'warners' placed on street corners and along the length of roads and highways, who would each indicate by a motion of the hand or a tilt of the head the presence of a checkpoint. A driver who had no desire to run into such a checkpoint would have ample warning of its presence, and plenty of time to take an alternative route.
That morning the absence of signallers meant that the driver's short cut took him and his passengers out of one side road and slap into an American checkpoint placed across a main road. The Americans had cleared a substantial area when they took up their positions, so there were no friendly 'spotters' to give advance warning. To left and right was an empty expanse of road, with concrete bollards placed to form a 'funnel' that sent traffic directly towards a waiting team of soldiers, their Bradleys and Humvees strung along the road behind 'stop' signs.
It was a sneaky kind of checkpoint as it could not be seen from the approach roads, and the only 'warning sign' - an absence of traffic or people on the main road ahead - went unnoticed as the passengers listened intently to the grumbling of the driver.....
"I don't know who I am in my own country any more! Every day I have to think of a story to tell those thugs that does not include any contact with my Sunni neighbors, that attempts to explain why I do not know any so that I do not have to betray them! And I have to pass all kinds of religious tests to satisfy them that I am a good Muslim! My sons and my daughters are in danger from those people, I don't know how long I can stay there any more!" he said, angrily.
"Be calm, all will be well, insha'allah," said one of the passengers, trying to reassure him. "We are all Iraqis and brothers will not turn against brothers."
"But that's what I'm try to tell you!" shouted the driver, "It is not enough to say that you're an Iraqi any more, these guys are not going to accept an answer like that! If you're the wrong kind of Iraqi in their eyes they will have you out of your house and even have your life! If you don't pass the 'loyalty tests' they set for you it doesn't matter who you are or what you are - you're going to be in trouble."
Everyone could understand the mechanism of what the driver was describing, but it still seemed unreal, it still seemed almost unbelievable that things could disintegrate that way.
"Don't people resist them?" asked another passenger.
"Resist them? They are armed to the teeth, they are everywhere now! They impose 'taxes' on shopkeepers, they are putting people out of their homes and bringing in family and friends from other places - people are too afraid of them to resist them. And they are everywhere in the mosques," he said, grimly.
"Every morning now, when I wake up, I have to ask myself who I am today. I have to think about where I am going, I have to make up a story about my life that satisfies them depending on where I am likely to meet them, I have to make up a story about where I am going that they will approve of. I never had to give a moment's thought to such questions in the past! I really don't know where all this is going, but it's not going to be any good," he said gloomily. "I am Iraqi, or maybe I was Iraqi, but now I have to ask myself who I am and where I belong and where I am going in my life."
At that point he cursed as the car nosed out of the side street and he quickly realised that he had driven into the 'dead zone' between two U.S. army checkpoints. Right turn or left turn, there they were, and he could hardly turn the car around without inviting a hot pursuit with accompanying gunfire.
Everyone cursed as he pulled up at the 'stop' sign and waited to be motioned forward one of the soldiers lurking by the armored vehicles. Instead they sent out a fat Iraqi cop, wearing an ill-fitting uniform, to signal them to move into the checking zone. His eyes widened when he saw one of the passengers - he had served in the Iraqi army with him before - but he said nothing to the Americans as some of them trained their weapons on the car and a red-faced, sweating soldier approached it.
Evidently he was no scholar, as he didn't even have the few mangled pieces of Arabic that some of them had learned from their flash cards, but what he lacked in intellect he tried to compensate for in attitude as he adopted a 'mean look' as he peered into the car.
He looked over at the policeman and said, nodding his head towards the driver, "Ask him who he is, where he's coming from and where he's going to."
The driver's jaw dropped.
The passengers all cracked up, laughing.
"He's a philosopher, just like you, akhi!" one of them said.
The red-faced soldier was not amused.
Without waiting for the assistance of his Iraqi translator, he made his displeasure known.
"What are you ****ing ragheads laughing at?" he demanded angrily.
Some of his comrades were watching with added interest, probably hoping for a chance to 'get mean'. Safety catches were clicked on and off just to let the carload of Iraqis know the precariousness of their position.
Emboldened by this back-up, perhaps, the red-faced soldier leaned into the car and sneered "Baghdad is the a$$hole of the world, you know that?"
One of the Iraqis in the rear seats leaned forward and in a passable John Wayne drawl said:
"Well remember kid, you're just passing through it!"
The driver's face went grey and a couple of the other passengers sucked in their breath, nervously.
Shocked at being replied to in John Wayne-ish, perhaps, the red-faced soldier's countenance registered a rapid display of emotions - suspicion, surprise, puzzlement, suspicion again.....
He locked his 'mean look' on the Iraqi who had spoken, but the Iraqi simply returned his gaze, smiling.
Everyone, including the fat cop, was holding their breath.
Then the soldier spoke.
"Hey! Thanks a lot buddy! I guess that's the best way to look at it!" he said, a grin replacing his 'mean look'.
Everyone laughed again - except the driver.
Seeing the soldier's grin and hearing the laughter, the 'safety catch clicking chorus' lost interest in the exchange. Flushed with the apparent success of his 'hearts and minds' exchange the red-faced soldier called to his colleagues on the barrier "These guys are OK!" and waved the driver on.
As he floored the accelerator the driver cursed them all and accused the John Wayne impersonator of trying to get them all arrested, or beaten, or killed.
But everyone was laughing too hard to pay him any attention.
The moral of this little story is threefold.
First, an Iraqi can insult you in a variety of different ways, and if you aren't paying close attention you might miss it.
Secondly, no matter how much pressure you're under, you can still find a place for laughter.
And thirdly, the driver's agonized questions 'Who am I? Where am I coming from?' and 'Where am I going to?' are very important questions, and deserving of deeper attention than the mechanical questions of the soldier, who while using almost identical words wasn't really looking for answers of any depth.
We all have stories, every one of us. And for people, places and even web sites 'Who are we? Where are we coming from?' and 'Where are we going to?' are very useful pegs to hang our stories on.....
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