BAGHDAD -- The car bomb that wrecked Qusay Naji's plan to start a new life exploded a good few hundred yards away from the bus stop where he was standing.
But the blast last week was powerful enough to project a piece of jagged shrapnel through his back and into his lung, ending perhaps for a long time his dream of traveling abroad, finding work and escaping the fear and violence of daily life in Baghdad.
"There is no future in Iraq," said Naji, 22, who had collected his passport less than an hour before the blast and hoped to leave in the coming days.
"This violence will not end," he added, wincing in pain as he spoke from his hospital bed.
Most victims are civilians
Of all the many challenges facing Iraq's new government, none is more daunting than the specter of the daily violence that haunts the lives not only of the U.S. soldiers serving here, but of the ordinary people who constitute the vast majority of its victims.
The booms and bangs that routinely punctuate a typical day in Baghdad have turned the city into a nervy, fearful place, in which death or injury can strike seemingly at random, wrecking lives, destroying plans and postponing into a distant future the sense of liberation Iraqis had hoped for after the regime of Saddam Hussein was toppled.
In the first four days of last week, there were 77 separate attacks just in Baghdad, according to the latest available statistics compiled by the U.S.-led coalition.
Most of the attacks, including bombings, are aimed at Americans or their foreign and Iraqi allies by the shadowy assortment of former Hussein loyalists, Shiite rebels and foreign fighters whom Iraqis refer to collectively as "the resistance."
The car bomb that wrecked Naji's travel plans targeted an office of the U.S.-allied Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, killing three people and injuring 32.
Seven U.S. soldiers killed in Baghdad in the past week including five who died Friday in an attack on their convoy, according to U.S. military officials.
But more often than not the attacks miss, sometimes by such a wide margin that it cannot be established for certain what their intended target was.
A mortar fired Thursday in the direction of the Italian Embassy hit a nearby restaurant, killing one Iraqi and wounding three. A car bomb on one of Baghdad's busiest streets Monday had no discernible goal, but four civilians died, including the 76-year-old wife of one of Iraq's former presidents who was hit by flying glass as she cooked lunch.
Adding to resentment
And with each fresh explosion heralding the arrival of a new group of wounded people or grieving relatives at Baghdad's hospitals, the stain of resentment over of the American presence is spreading.
Hamida Karim, 52, says she has been living in daily fear for her life for most of the past year because her apartment lies just outside the heavily fortified Green Zone, the headquarters of the U.S. administration in Baghdad and a major target for attacks.
"Every evening I pray before I sleep that I will wake up again in the morning, and when I wake up I give thanks to God that I am still alive," she said.
Karim didn't pray when she dozed off for a lunchtime nap last week, at about the same time that Naji was waiting for his bus home. The same bomb shattered the windows of her 9th- floor apartment, embedding dozens of fragments of razor-sharp glass in her head and right eye.
"All we want is to live in safety and peace," she said, as she recovered from surgery in a Baghdad hospital. "If any government can bring us security, I will support them."
Her son, grim-faced and angry beside his mother's bed, is sure there is only one solution. "The Americans must leave now," said Ra'ad Hamid, 30, who works for a state bank. "We didn't see bombs like that under Saddam."
The interim government has made clear that it will not ask American forces to leave.
Iraq's new army still too weak
With only 2,000 soldiers in the Iraqi army, and a poorly trained, ill-equipped police force unaccustomed to dealing with crime and violence on such a scale, Iraqi officials say they won't be able to cope without the help of U.S. troops after the June 30 restoration of limited sovereignty.
Iraq's Prime Minister Iyad Allawi appealed to Iraqis on Friday to accept the need for a continued U.S. troop presence after the government takes over.
But with many Iraqis convinced that the presence of U.S. forces will only prolong the bloodshed, that likely will be a hard sell.
"The government was appointed by the Americans," said Naji, who is being treated for a punctured lung and shattered ribs. "It can't change anything."
By Liz Sly Chicago Tribune
But the blast last week was powerful enough to project a piece of jagged shrapnel through his back and into his lung, ending perhaps for a long time his dream of traveling abroad, finding work and escaping the fear and violence of daily life in Baghdad.
"There is no future in Iraq," said Naji, 22, who had collected his passport less than an hour before the blast and hoped to leave in the coming days.
"This violence will not end," he added, wincing in pain as he spoke from his hospital bed.
Most victims are civilians
Of all the many challenges facing Iraq's new government, none is more daunting than the specter of the daily violence that haunts the lives not only of the U.S. soldiers serving here, but of the ordinary people who constitute the vast majority of its victims.
The booms and bangs that routinely punctuate a typical day in Baghdad have turned the city into a nervy, fearful place, in which death or injury can strike seemingly at random, wrecking lives, destroying plans and postponing into a distant future the sense of liberation Iraqis had hoped for after the regime of Saddam Hussein was toppled.
In the first four days of last week, there were 77 separate attacks just in Baghdad, according to the latest available statistics compiled by the U.S.-led coalition.
Most of the attacks, including bombings, are aimed at Americans or their foreign and Iraqi allies by the shadowy assortment of former Hussein loyalists, Shiite rebels and foreign fighters whom Iraqis refer to collectively as "the resistance."
The car bomb that wrecked Naji's travel plans targeted an office of the U.S.-allied Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, killing three people and injuring 32.
Seven U.S. soldiers killed in Baghdad in the past week including five who died Friday in an attack on their convoy, according to U.S. military officials.
But more often than not the attacks miss, sometimes by such a wide margin that it cannot be established for certain what their intended target was.
A mortar fired Thursday in the direction of the Italian Embassy hit a nearby restaurant, killing one Iraqi and wounding three. A car bomb on one of Baghdad's busiest streets Monday had no discernible goal, but four civilians died, including the 76-year-old wife of one of Iraq's former presidents who was hit by flying glass as she cooked lunch.
Adding to resentment
And with each fresh explosion heralding the arrival of a new group of wounded people or grieving relatives at Baghdad's hospitals, the stain of resentment over of the American presence is spreading.
Hamida Karim, 52, says she has been living in daily fear for her life for most of the past year because her apartment lies just outside the heavily fortified Green Zone, the headquarters of the U.S. administration in Baghdad and a major target for attacks.
"Every evening I pray before I sleep that I will wake up again in the morning, and when I wake up I give thanks to God that I am still alive," she said.
Karim didn't pray when she dozed off for a lunchtime nap last week, at about the same time that Naji was waiting for his bus home. The same bomb shattered the windows of her 9th- floor apartment, embedding dozens of fragments of razor-sharp glass in her head and right eye.
"All we want is to live in safety and peace," she said, as she recovered from surgery in a Baghdad hospital. "If any government can bring us security, I will support them."
Her son, grim-faced and angry beside his mother's bed, is sure there is only one solution. "The Americans must leave now," said Ra'ad Hamid, 30, who works for a state bank. "We didn't see bombs like that under Saddam."
The interim government has made clear that it will not ask American forces to leave.
Iraq's new army still too weak
With only 2,000 soldiers in the Iraqi army, and a poorly trained, ill-equipped police force unaccustomed to dealing with crime and violence on such a scale, Iraqi officials say they won't be able to cope without the help of U.S. troops after the June 30 restoration of limited sovereignty.
Iraq's Prime Minister Iyad Allawi appealed to Iraqis on Friday to accept the need for a continued U.S. troop presence after the government takes over.
But with many Iraqis convinced that the presence of U.S. forces will only prolong the bloodshed, that likely will be a hard sell.
"The government was appointed by the Americans," said Naji, who is being treated for a punctured lung and shattered ribs. "It can't change anything."
By Liz Sly Chicago Tribune
