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Irak i øjenhøjde - set med irakiske øjne
Aljazeera har en interessant og ret lang artikel om på sin engelske hjemmeside om irakiske bloggere og de ofte fuldstændig anderledes syn på og oplysninger om krigen i Irak, man kan finde på disse, fra mennesker, der ofte er tvunget til at bo, hvor hverken besættelsesstyrkerne eller de vestlige journalister tør komme:
Salam Adil, 38, an Iraqi blogger who lives in the United Kingdom, says: "I compared reporting from the BBC and the British newspapers to the [Iraqi] blogs and there is a world of difference.Man kan finde en oversigt over de fleste irakiske weblog på Iraq Blog Count.
"It is as if the Western media are on a different planet," he told Aljazeera.net.
When news broke of the partial destruction of the al-Askari mosque in Samarra on Wednesday, and the government ordered a curfew on Baghdad and three other areas, news of events was scarce at best.
Journalists who tried to gauge public opinion were assaulted or killed. Atwar Bahjat, a former Aljazeera journalist who was reporting for the Al-Arabiya network, was killed while reporting from Samarra.
Many Iraqi bloggers writing from Baghdad and elsewhere reported clashes in their neighbourhoods.
Zeyad, a 27-year-old Sunni Baghdad resident who has been blogging since 2003, wrote of gunshots outside his front gate.
"Fierce street fighting at my doorstep for the last three hours. Rumour in the neighbourhood is that men in black are trying to enter the area.
"Some armed kids defending the local mosque three blocks away are splattering bullets at everything that moves, and someone in the street was shouting for people to prepare for defending themselves.
"There's supposed to be a curfew, but it doesn't look like it."
Baghdad Treasure, who is a journalist working with foreign media in Baghdad, offered a bleaker version of events.
"Shootings and explosions rocked the neighbourhood ... I can't live like this. War, war, war! Enough, enough.
"I wish I didn't hope for democracy and freedom to come to Iraq. Being oppressed but safe is better than being free and unsafe. Don't tell me all these slogans of freedom and democracy."
(...)
Although the blogs have helped Iraqis to communicate their hopes for Iraq's future, they do not always speak with the same voice, and there is often much debate, with conspiracy theories and humour thrown in.
Blogger Hammorabi wrote that the "barbaric and savage attack on the Shrine of Imam al-Hassan al-Askari in Samarra is a continuation of the barbarism of the Saudi Wahhabi terrorism".
But A Free Iraqi blamed the violence on politicians who "keep inflaming those already existing divisions for their own benefit, as they represent nothing but ethnic and sectarian hatred".
Salam Pax takes all the theories in stride, saying that every voice counts.
"You might not change the world with a blog, but you sure can raise a couple of eyebrows and open paths of communication and understanding," he said.
Som det end antydes i artiklen, er dette lyden af Irak i gadehøjde, og oplysningerne på disse weblogs kan svinge fra højst pålidelige til præget af rygter og konspirationsteorier, ligesom de spænder meget vidt i deres syn på aktuelle begivenheder og besættelsesmagtens fremtid i landet.
Og dog kan de fortælle om aspekter af livet i Irak, som de etablerede medier med deres "vestlige" synspunkt hverken vil eller kan dække - og hermed bliver de, kritisk læst, en temmelig uundværlig kilde til begivenhederne i et land, hvor pålidelige oplysninger om, hvad der sker, kan synes lige så uopnåelige som fred.
Link til artiklen Iraqi blogs tell of violence, hope på Aljazeera.net.
Link til Iraq Blog Count.