Shalash al Iraqi -- translated into English

Today's post at Glimpse of Iraq is a must-read.

I don't say that carelessly. No matter what your opinion is about the situation in Iraq, you need to read this post just to call yourself informed.

A blogger using the screen name Shalash al Iraqi is what historians call primary source material for current events. In coming years, what is written here will be read closely as an important part of any future narrative.

He is a resident of Sadr City with a great deal of first-hand knowledge of that part of the city. The name he has chosen certainly has ‘redneck’ overtures. He has a unique, lovable writing style: sarcastic, critical and funny. He writes in classical Arabic but frequently interjects local terms and colloquial expressions. He covered numerous subjects of present-day Iraq, mainly concentrating on social and political aspects. He has no love lost for the previous regime, no time for the ‘new political process’, no tolerance of the farce now called Democracy and certainly no disposition for sectarianism.

Abu Khaleel translates.

The bitter truth brothers, and I say this for the thousandth time, that certain gangs have infiltrated the Sadrist Movement with the knowledge of some of the Movement’s leaders.They do all sorts of criminal acts and blackmail the Police that they have infiltrated. The disaster is that senior officers in the [Ministry of] Interior fear criminal who have criminal records in Iraqi courts prior to the Fall [of Baghdad].

The name of the “Sayyed’s Office” [Branch of Moqtada’s offices] now terrifies the police more than the previous regime’s security forces terrified the people. On top of that, the crimes that started as political and revenge-motivated ‘liquidations’ have turned into a culture. There is a new fearsome ‘addiction’ on killing and taking pleasure in blood! There are murders just for the sake of murder; killings for reasons that the very act of contemplating is a crime against humanity. Now, there are people who cannot go to bed before shattering people’s skulls with his pistol. What a sour life between the days of car bombs and nights of criminal gangs…

Read the whole thing. Read it slowly and try to peer between the lines. Try to penetrate the language barrier and listen to the inner voice from which the message comes. Listen not to the words but the message...