Weighing sides

The situation in Baghdad gets more difficult everyday as the election time gets nearer. The attacks never seize to occur on a daily basis allover the hour. I haven't witnessed any, but we can hear the sounds of rockets, mortars, RPGs and machine guns on different times through everyday. The slight improvement in electricity that took place about a week ago didn't last for more than few days and now we're back to two hours of electricity followed by 4 hours of outage. This does not mean that life is impossible in Iraq now, as the difficulties have truly a less impact on our daily life than what is expected. It's not because we are more brave than other people, nor it's because we are dull enough to not be affected by such hardships. It's just people's nature everywhere to find a way to go on with their lives despite how difficult it can be, as there's simply no other option!The prices for gasoline are still high but have dropped from the ones they reached at the peak of the crisis about two weeks ago. One can now buy 20 liters of gasoline for the price of 6000 Iraqi Dinars (approximately 4.1$ which equals20 cents for each liter). The highest prices were about 23 000 Iraqi Dinar for the same amount (approximately 15.75$ which equals 78 cents for each liter). However, the exchange price for the Iraqi Dinar against US$ is still the same (1460 Iraqi Dinar for each US$) for almost 10 months on a row now!I must say that what's happening now was expected, and I was not the only one expecting it. Most people saw that as the election came closer violence would certainly grow more and more. It's truly a critical time in the history of Iraq, the region and the whole world. The terrorists are attacking almost everyone who does not agree with them. Today they threatened to" transfer the battle to America's land".If this should tell us anything new then it should be that the masters of these monsters are terrified as hell. They see all their efforts as not leading to the desired result; the withdrawal of American troops or at least the delaying and then the canceling of the elections.This is an important point that most of us, Iraqis and the coalition, forget most of the time. Just as we despair sometimes we should remember that our enemies are in even a worse situation than ours. I'm not talking about the terrorists, as these idiots have set up their minds to ride the highway to "heaven" through ending their miserable lives as soon as possible taking as many as possible of innocents' lives with them. I'm talking about those who finance them. The daily attacks in Iraq cost a fortune that no one and no single organization can afford. It's not an easy decision for those behind terrorism in Iraq to throw all that money that they worked their asses off when robbing it from their poor citizens to the fire, as no one expects any payback from spending that money other than ruining Iraq, her dreams and America's plans in establishing democracy in the region. They commit to such difficult decision only because they see it as the only possible answer to what will certainly rock their thrones in no big time.These rulers have a less costly-less promising options that they will not resort to until they become sure that the battle in Iraq is lost. One of these might be working on some shallow reforms that do not endanger their unquestioned authority, or actually submitting to the unstoppable change and withdrawing with some dignity while it's still possible. Of course such options will be their last but they seem to be inevitable as democracy in Iraq makes one step after the other.They bet for a long time on a civil war in Iraq or isolating Iraq from the international society, but Iraq came back to the political arena stronger than before the war and there are no real signs for civil war yet (and in my mind there won't be any). They try all the time do destroy Iraq's economy, but the truth remains that despite the current fuel crisis and the security problems, we still lead a MUCH better life than before the war (economically speaking). I want to say that it's no secret that it's America's very generous support that keeps it this way. The government is certainly having serious difficulties but they're not impossible to cope with and with large amount of the huge Iraqi debt forgiven and the sanctions being left, it certainly stands at a much comfortable position than Saddam's regime's.The market is generally stable, most goods maintained their prices for months, fuel and some local goods have seen some real rises in their costs but this time we actually have money in our wallets! While before the war we hardly had any and we were living in a continuous crisis that made the word lose its meaning. And it's not true what some people think, that it's only government employees who have gained from the change, as the private business have seen a much more improvement which is still based to a large extent on the original rise in the salaries of government employees. Teachers, engineers, nurses, Etc.. can now buy clothes, electrical devices, furniture, 'luxuries' such as mobile phones, satellite dishes, computers and as a result several new businesses that did not even exist at Saddam's time, began to expand and started to hire more individuals with higher salaries.Just a simple example is the small shop that I and my brothers owned and used to work in just to support our family. That small shop was almost empty when we joined our uncle to help him make it work in 1997. We worked the four of us so hard because it was our only real source of income. Our sales were growing constantly starting from 50$/day as an average at start to about 175$/day average when we left it to our uncle after the war (yes two families lived on the profit margin of 50 $ sales/day), as our jobs pay us what we see as enough now.Last week I dropped by my old shop and asked my uncle about how his business was going. The shop didn't look growing to me and that didn't surprise me, as my uncle is an old man with a chronic heart disease and has only his son now to help him. Anyway, like all businessmen he gave me a general answer, but I told him that I want numbers and as he's my uncle and he used to work with us in the past he didn't find it very difficult to tell me. He said that there's some kind of depression these days and his average sales are not more than 400 000 Iraqi Dinar/day (273 US$/day) and that a month ago the average was about 600 000 Iraqi Dinar/day (342 US$/day). Moreover my uncle has no terrible inflation to worry about now. Now with an old man and his teenage son this small business is making almost double the profit it used to make when it was run by the same old man, two dentists and a doctor!There's no mystery behind that, it's just that so many people have more money on them now and it's not that difficult to get them to buy anything, as on the contrary most people are trying to make up for all the years of deprivation they suffered in the past. They just buy and buy like there's no tomorrow!Back to our calculations we can say that spending millions of Dollars to ruin Iraq's economy is not a great investment. And as Iraq is not ruined economically and politically, it seems that the only thing that these rulers can hope to achieve their sick dreams is making the lives of Iraqis a daily suffer through maintaining the difficult security. But even this is not a real victory and has failed to attract more supporters to turn it into a wide spread chaos that involve the whole country when tried three times. The question is if we (Iraqis and the coalition) managed to at least hold to the achievements in economy and political field, how long can our neighbors keep spending money that generously, and how would that affect their own treasury as one of their formidable weapons to keep their own citizens in slavery? And moreover how far can they take this dangerous confrontation with the US so openly? My 'guess' is that with both parties determining to see this struggle to the end the scale is on our side.