SalamPax mentions an interesting survey PDF on a post to his blog. ¹
1. Overall, how would you say things are going in your life these days very good, quite good, quite bad, or very bad?
2. Compared to a year ago, I mean before the war in Spring 2003, are things overall in your life much better now, somewhat better, about the same, somewhat worse or much worse?
3. What is your expectation for how things overall in your life will be in a year from now? Will they be much better, somewhat better, about the same, somewhat worse or much worse?
4. What is the single biggest problem you are facing in your life these days?
. . . and so on, 29 questions in total.
Interesting things: People’s lives have generally improved (we hoped it), security is bad (we knew it), they believe that most important tasks should be handled by the Iraqi government (I agree), many think the US should not leave until the new government is in place (I agree), measures to help are “creating job opportunities for the unemployed, training and hiring more Iraqi local police, transferring all political authority to an Iraqi government” (yay!). When it comes to the occupation forces themselves, reactions are often split equally.
In general I’m happy about the rather positive reactions!
On the other hand, Riverbend writes in her blog ² about the new constitution:
The words look good on paper- as words often do. Some parts of it sound hauntingly like our last constitution. The discussions about the Transitional Law all focus on the legitimacy of this document. Basically, an occupying power brought in a group of exiles, declared Iraq ’liberated’, declared the constitution we’ve been using since the monarchy annulled and set up a group of puppets as a Governing Council. Can these laws be considered legitimate?
Furthermore, just how sincere are these puppets about this new Transitional Law? For example, there’s a lovely clause that reads, “No one may be unlawfully arrested or detained, and no one may be detained by reason of political or religious beliefs.” Will the American troops discontinue the raids and arbitrary detentions (which are still quite common) come June 30? Or is the Transitional Law binding only to Iraqis?
Anyway, it feels good to read some Iraqi blogs again.
#Iraq