Come bullets, bombs or blast walls, the mail must get through.

[yllus]

Iraq's posties soldier on through hail of bullets

BAGHDAD -Carved over the entrance to the General Post Office in New York is this inscription: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

The mailmen of Baghdad, however, who brave war-scarred streets in their boxy yellow vans, live by another unofficial motto: Come bullets, bombs or blast walls, the mail must get through.

"I consider the postmen to be mujahedeen," says Safaadine Badr, the head of the Post & Savings Directorate.

"I call them that because they defy the bad security situation, like explosions, to deliver mail throughout Baghdad."

In a city whose streets have been turned into killing fields by violence between Iraq's majority Shiites and minority Sunnis, and where water shortages, power cuts and fuel shortages are common, the postal system, incredibly, still works.

"I cover al-Saadoun, which is a dangerous area. One day shooting erupted. I hid until the firing stopped and then I continued delivering the post," said Sameer Abbas, 44, a 25-year-veteran of the postal service.

"Usually I change my route every day, especially when I am carrying money," added Mr. Abbas, who along with his colleagues is responsible for delivering phone bills and collecting payment.

A security crackdown by U.S. and Iraqi troops, who have set up scores of checkpoints and moved into combat outposts in Baghdad neighbourhoods, has helped to significantly reduce the number of roadside bombings and sectarian killings.

The redrawing of the city map has also led to "job swaps" in the postal directorate, with Shiite and Sunni employees switching places with colleagues in offices where their sect is dominant.

"Twenty-one employees have had to move from our post office. They were Shiites," said Hayawi al-Azawi as he picked up a sack of post at the central sorting office. Mr. Azawi is manager of the post office in Abu Ghraib, a notoriously dangerous Sunni Arab insurgent stronghold and site on the infamous prison.

Abu Ghraib, along with the volatile neighbourhoods of Tarmiya, Doura and Amiriya, is seen as too dangerous for postmen to venture into. Residents there are usually telephoned to collect their mail from the central post office.

Just a semi-lighthearted article to keep people aware that good works and normal people do exist in Iraq. If only their government was as dedicated to getting the job done as its mail deliverers.

 

[ProfJohn]

We get a very filtered view of Iraq via the MSM. Stories like this don?t open the nightly news when there are bombings and killings to talk about.

There are six million people in Baghdad going about the lives on a daily basis. Some of the people around here would have you think that they all live in bomb shelters just waiting to die.

 

[Red Dawn]

Too bad the Iraqi Government and the Iraqi Army isn't manned by Iraqi Postal Carriers, maybe some significant progress towards ending this debacle would be seen.

 

[1EZduzit]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
We get a very filtered view of Iraq via the MSM. Stories like this don?t open the nightly news when there are bombings and killings to talk about.

There are six million people in Baghdad going about the lives on a daily basis. Some of the people around here would have you think that they all live in bomb shelters just waiting to die.

If the Bush whackos contracted some bomb shelters to be built you'd point to that as a sign of progress.

"Usually I change my route every day, especially when I am carrying money," added Mr. Abbas, who along with his colleagues is responsible for delivering phone bills and collecting payment.

 

[magomago]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
We get a very filtered view of Iraq via the MSM. Stories like this don?t open the nightly news when there are bombings and killings to talk about.

There are six million people in Baghdad going about the lives on a daily basis. Some of the people around here would have you think that they all live in bomb shelters just waiting to die.

Don't lie about this - they maybe getting through their lives each day, but their lives are greatly disturbed and altered out of the ordinary. Otherwise so many people people wouldn't be hiding inside, melting in the heat as they hope they get a few hours of electricity, worried about water, spending well up to TWO DAYS to legally get gas, and whatever restrictions on top of trying NOT TO GET KILLED.
The fact that quite a few still try to have some semblance of life only points to the persistent and powerful will that these Iraqis have...not that they have the luxury to take a walk like any old stroll through an outdoor market in Summertime Indiana.
Of course this article itself points out that he has to take a different path each day, and he hides if a firefight breaks out.

Either way good article yllus. I didn't mean to sound negative up there, but I didn't felt that profJohn's statement basically discredited the sh|t those people go over there. the more I see pictures, and read stories, the more I realize its fvcking amazing what the average Iraqi goes through to survive...whereas their parliament takes a recess and vacation. We should invade a second time, eh? The people seem to be working hard to help each other there, but the politicians seem to be working hard to avoid getting anything done. I'm glad that they can try to get on with their lives no matter how disrupted it is by forces that are trying to split communities as much as possible

Oh and one interesting thing to point out - "Job Swapping". This is something ridiculous - but it illustrates a greater point. If they had to swap people to the "proper sect district"...then it implies that before this was NOT the case. Again, its the wonderful corrupt political parties and "divide and conquer" mentality that is forcing this.

My mom was looking back to see what kind of jobs could be obtained in Iraq - she has no intention of going back anytime soon, but being an Structural Engineer she was only curious as to what they had (I wouldn't let her put herself in a position that she might get killed - I'll admit I'm not as courageous as many of those Iraqis).
Well guess what? Now you have to specify the actual SECT you belong to. Before - religion was never asked. Now one must CHOOSE "Sunni Muslim" or "Shia Muslim" and this infuriated her...because growing up in Iraqi society - like the majority of Iraqis - the emphasis was on being "Muslim" and talking about Sunnis was Shias was being an ignoramous.
I also know of a character through my dad who was going to be a translator in Iraq, but quit when he had to pick "sunni" or "shia"...he simply said it was stupid to ask for his religion, and doubly stupid to force a sect.
Of course people will see how even post office jobs are split and then automatically assume that its always been like this forever and then parrot about how it needs to be split...

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: ProfJohn
We get a very filtered view of Iraq via the MSM. Stories like this don?t open the nightly news when there are bombings and killings to talk about.

There are six million people in Baghdad going about the lives on a daily basis. Some of the people around here would have you think that they all live in bomb shelters just waiting to die.

You know, the US civil war has been distorted the same way by the MSM. The vast majority of people were not killed in that war, but all you hear about is 'more killed than all other wars'.

Heck, the day Gettysburg happened, in most states there were no people killed in the war, but you don't hear about that by all the negative people who keep talking about Gettysburg.

Why didn't the newspaper headlines the day of Gettysburg say "little violence in most states"? I'll tell you why - sensationalism and a political anti-war bias for the negative.

Clearly, the American Civil War, with Americans less affected than Iraqis are by this war, was no big deal.