The Iraqi National (Infidel) Guard

After a long absence, Secrets in Baghdad has been updated by Khalid, and as usual, he brings to light more day to day things in Iraq that we might not normally think about. Today he discusses the disastrous unemployment situation which has led a lot of people to join the new National Guard.

[N]ow, after the "liberation" and in the new "free" Iraq, things are a bit deferent. ministries are divided between deferent parties, if the ministry of foreign affairs was given to a Kurdish minister, then don't hope to get a job there if you are Arab, the ministry that was given to a minister from the Dawa Shea party, wouldn't hire you unless you belong to them, if you go the ministry that was given to a minister from the Islamic revolution shea party, you wouldn't get a job unless you have a recommendation from their political office or someone from them, the same for sunna too, the new divided Iraq, still have much that you didn't hear about, wait and read:

still, if you want to get a job, any job, you pay a bribe of $200-400, depending on the job, which usually gets you a salary of like $200 a month or less. the engineers that used to be my friends in uni and graduated in the last two - three years, are all either sleeping in their houses, or working in jobs that doesn't match their qualifications, construction workers, secretaries, etc...

the numbers of unemployed people is huge. one magical solution is to, join the national guard!

Unfortunately, the "man on the street" sometimes doesn't hold these people in the highest regard, having a bit of fun with their names.

the national guard, which -conveniently- has the same name of the American "national guard" (we never used that name before, completely new to us) who are the loyal sons of the American occupation, once you join that, you get a cool weapon, you get unlimited authority, and you get 400 000ID, about $275 a month, isn't that just nice?

now lets talk about the nice "national guard": in Arabic, they are called "haras watani", exact translation, haras is guard and watani is national, people in the streets call them haras la watani, which is: un-national guard, or call them haras wathani, conveniently, by changing one letter, it becomes infidel instead of national (wathani instead of watani).

The reason for this can be seen as Khalid describes some experiences with these civic defenders.

if you were on the traffic light and heard bullets right next to you, don't panic, its just one of the national guards telling people that he is "there" and that they must clear the way to let his majesty move.

if you are sleeping in your house, and somebody started to shoot in front of your house, and almost broke your door knocking, don't panic, its just them searching, and get ready, you are about to lose things form your house, beside dignity and security, mobile phones and any jewelry or anything that is light and expensive, and any gun, even a licensed one, they take it too, and of course give you no papers to prove they took anything from you.

site: my uncle's house time: 5 am event: national guards knocking brutally on the door, they left after minutes of ssearching, leaving a mess behind them, and scared people.

few days before that, 2am another house, they broke in, they stole not only mobile phones, but also $4800 and a CAR!!!!

few days ago, they decided suddenly that a hair dresser shop is "suspected", so they broke in, and "Searched" all women's bodies.

couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine was in the line of a gas station, and one of the national guard didn't like the way he was parking, so he just broke the side mirror with his AK back, and when my friend objected, he also damaged the size of the car and called other national guards to tie my friend's hands and send him to jail, he was so lucky that one of them knew my friend and released him immediately, otherwise he would have spent a longtime, God only knows where and for how long, oh..I forgot to say, they cover their faces, cause they are too afraid to be known so my friend never knew who released him.

Simply arming a bunch of people and sending them out into the community without proper vetting, training and supervision doesn't sound like much of a plan. This sort of thing can only add to the problems we're experiencing with "a few dead enders and Saddam loyalists." He writes a lot more, but I'll leave it to you to go read.