> Just Another Day: Living In Baghdad
> Lara Logan On How Ordinary Citizen Cope In Iraq's Capital
>
> http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/20/60minutes/main2710021.shtml
>
> (CBS) There is perhaps no place in the world today where it is harder
> for an average person to get through an average day than in the city
> of Baghdad. It has become a living hell, with daily car bombs, mortar
> attacks, hundreds of kidnappings and murders every week.
>
> The problem is, in order for Iraq to have peace and security, the
> capital must first be made secure, which is why President Bush chose
> to send in more troops.
>
> As correspondent Lara Logan reports, many in Baghdad fear it is an
> impossible task, given how chaotic the city has become, with
> terrorists, insurgents, and now a brutal civil war tearing the society
> apart.
> ________________________________________
>
> When Mahmud al Wadi gets ready to take his kids to school, he says,
> "The first thing I prepare them, I prepare my weapon of course."
>
> There couldn't be a better metaphor for what it's like living in
> Baghdad today: without his gun, Mahmud won't even attempt the drive.
>
> He calls ahead to friends and neighbors to make sure the roads are
> clear of danger. And he tells Logan he never goes the same way,
> changing his route every day.
>
> It's just a short drive, but he can never know how long it will take
> to get there. He cracks the window so he can hear if there's gunfire
> or mortars nearby. The day 60 Minutes went with him, they never made
> it to school - they didn't even make it out of their neighborhood,
> because the military had blocked all the roads.
>
> Asked if his children are afraid, Mahmud tells Logan, "Believe me,
> they are afraid. Because when I told them, 'Tomorrow we'll not go to
> the school.' He will be very, very enjoy about this."
>
> The only time his children ever really get to leave the house is to go
> to school. Otherwise they stay home.
>
> "What kind of life is that?" Logan asks.
>
> "No life," Mahmud says.
>
> Mahmud's family lives on the edge of Adamiya, a violent neighborhood
> overtaken by hardcore insurgents and under constant attack by Shiite
> militias. It's off-limits to Western civilians, so the images for
> Logan's report were filmed by an Iraqi cameraman.
>
> For the interview, the family had to come meet 60 Minutes, traveling
> across town for the first time in three years - a risk they said was
> worth taking to tell their story.
>
> Asked about his daily life in Iraq, Mahmud tells Logan, "If I want to
> talk about this, I don't need 60 minutes, I need 60 million minutes to
> told you how do we live."
>
> 60 Minutes went with Mahmud, who lives off his small military pension,
> to see what it takes to do a simple chore like getting gas for his
> car.
>
> What drivers in Baghdad face are massive queues; on the day 60 Minutes
> accompanied Mahmud, the queue at the gas station stretched for four
> miles. Sometimes, Mahmud says, he has had to wait in line for three
> days, sleeping there and waiting.
>
> "And then when I come they say there is no fuel," he tells Logan.
>
> But none of these hardships compare to the fear he has for his family,
> in a country where civilians - even children - are victims of
> kidnappings, or worse.
>
> "When they take my boy, just they will kill him," Mahmud fears. "But
> when they take girl, no. They do other thing maybe."
>
> Mahmud fears they will rape her which, he says, would be worse than
> killing her - because, in Iraq's Muslim culture, rape of a daughter
> brings shame on the victim and the whole family.
> (CBS) When 60 Minutes asked Mahmud's teen-aged daughter Rheem what the
> hardest thing is about her life, she said it is seeing things she
> can't forget.
>
> All of his children, Rafif, 11, and 13-year-old Mustafa, have seen
> things no parent wants their child to see. "One day, we see there's
> two fighter, they killed two boys in front of us," Mahmud explains.
>
> Mahmud says the two fighters just shot the two people in the street
> and left their bodies on the road. "And they see the blood of them,"
> he explains.
>
> His children remember the incident, and his daughter wept when asked
> about it.
>
> It's a story heard over and over in Iraq. And no one has been spared,
> not even the most privileged.
>
> Dr. Quoresh al-Kasir is one of Iraq's most prominent surgeons, and was
> a guest of President Bush at the White House in 2004. He and his
> family lived on Haifa Street, an upscale Sunni area, where fighting
> broke out in January between the mostly-Shiite Iraqi army and Sunni
> gunmen.
>
> "The Iraqi Army tried to kill my family and my kids," Dr. Quoresh
> explains.
>
> That was when CBS News first spoke to Quoresh. He and his family were
> trapped by the fighting, and CBS broadcast his desperate cry for help
> on the Evening News.
>
> "The snipers were on the other building," Quoresh explains. "When the
> shots started to come through the windows my sons and my daughter, you
> know, they were in front of my eyes, expecting at any moment the Iraqi
> army comes and shoots my children."
>
> His wife Nala, sons Zaid and Taif, and his daughter Dina still can't
> believe they survived.
>
> "What was it like for you that time, when you were stuck in the
> apartment, trapped there during the fighting?" Logan asks Dina.
>
> "I feel I will be dying," she recalls.
>
> Her brothers nod in agreement. "'Cause this is the end," Zaid adds.
>
> "You thought it was the end?" Logan asks.
>
> "We are all are crying, me and husband, and my son, and my daughter
> all are crying that time," Quoresh's wife Nala remembers.
>
> As the fighting raged for 10 days, they all hid in the bathroom of
> their dark apartment, without heat, electricity, and running short of
> food.
>
> "We were so hungry at that time," Quoresh remembers. "So my wife said,
> 'Quoresh, we had to had, I don't know, the kids are hungry.'"
>
> "I go to the kitchen and prepare something to eat," Nala explains. But
> out of fear of the snipers, Quoresh's wife couldn't walk upright past
> the windows.
>
> "So she crawled and went to the kitchen. And then we sat in the
> bathroom near the restroom. We ate," he remembers.
>
> The day after the CBS News report about the doctor and his family's
> plight was broadcast, the U.S. decided to launch a rare rescue
> mission, sending in soldiers from the 4/9 Cavalry to save them.
>
> With U.S. helicopters hovering over Haifa Street, a convoy of Bradley
> fighting vehicles drove down the dangerous road to Quoresh's house.
> When soldiers yelled to locate them, the family came out, luggage in
> hand, and was hurried into the Bradley vehicles and taken to safety.
> No shots were fired and the rescue mission was very quick and
> precise.
>
> "We heard the helicopters starting to come to the area," Quoresh
> recalls. "My sons and daughter said, 'Oh, Baba, the American started
> to reach the area.'"
>
> "I remember that. It was a moment really, it was a start of a new
> life," Quoresh says, describing his feelings of the rescue.
>
> Quoresh's daughter Dina says the rescue was "like a dream."
>
> His life was saved, but Quoresh lost his home and almost everything he
> owned. He says he was targeted because he's a doctor.
>
> Nearly 200 physicians, including 15 of Quoresh's closest friends, have
> been murdered by those intent on destroying Iraqi society, which is
> one reason why 18,000 Iraqi doctors - half the physicians in the
> country - have fled for fear of ending up like many of the people who
> pass through their hospital doors.
>
> Asked why he remains in Iraq, Quoresh tells Logan, "This is the big
> question that I have been asked from so many people."
>
> "And what's the answer?" Logan asks.
>
> "And the answer is that I love Iraq," he replies. "Yeah. This is my
> country."
> (CBS) Dr. Quoresh hasn't forgotten the people they left behind on
> Haifa Street. He and his family told 60 Minutes they witnessed Shiite
> fighters executing unarmed Sunni civilians, evidence of the growing
> hatred between the two sects.
>
> Baghdad today is a divided city, something that's not so obvious in
> some neighborhoods that look pretty much like they used to, blending
> easily into one another. But in other areas, it is a different story.
> There are now distinct sectarian borders between some neighborhoods.
> Many have been ethnically cleansed, carving up the capital along
> sectarian lines and separating Sunni from Shia.
>
> Mahmud's neighborhood used to be mixed, but he says fellow Sunnis have
> forced out most of the Shiite residents.
>
> "So, overnight with no warning people were just forced to leave their
> homes, just told to go?" Logan asks Mahmud.
>
> "Sometimes 'Now you have 10 minutes to leave your house,'" he tells
> Logan. If they refuse and don't leave, Mahmud says, they get killed.
>
> For Mahmud this is one of the most distressing things about the new
> Iraq. "We don't need this. We don't need this. Why if I am Shia or
> Sunni. What's the different? I am Muslim. That's enough," he says.
>
> Many Iraqis feel the same way, but the body count from Shiites and
> Sunnis killing each other tells a different story. Families on both
> sides have been devastated.
>
> Mahmud says he has lost 14 family members. Asked what happened to
> them, he says, "Someone who was killed by shooting. Someone he killed
> by a militia."
>
> Asked if it's hard for him to think about them, Mahmud says, "Yes,
> believe me. It's very difficult."
>
> Like most Iraqis, Mahmud is so desperate for security, he would like
> nothing more than for the new U.S. security plan to work. With the
> troop surge, U.S. soldiers are now a constant presence in dangerous
> neighborhoods like Adamiya for the first time. But with al Qaeda
> terrorists determined to see the U.S. fail, and the ongoing cycle of
> revenge killings between Sunnis and Shiites, many Iraqis are
> skeptical.
>
> "Why did they come?" Mahmud wonders.
>
> "The new plan will not change anything?" Logan asks.
>
> "Believe me not," he says.
>
> Asked if he is going to leave Iraq, Mahmud tells Logan, "Now? Yes, I
> will leave Iraq."
> ________________________________________
>
> Days after the 60 Minutes interview, Mahmud and his family stocked up
> on fuel, packed their belongings, and like hundreds of thousands of
> other Iraqis, headed for the Syrian border.
>