Two years of CotL

Today’s Carnival of the Liberated marks the end of the second year of the Carnival at Dean’s World under my editorship. It remains my joy and my privilege. I am continually grateful to Dean for the opportunity to give the Afghani and Iraqi bloggers a taller platform for their work and thoughts and, indeed, that’s what I strive for the Carnival to be: their platform. To the best of my ability I attempt to represent all points of view and hold my own opinions and ideas in check.

This post will be different.

Preparing the Carnival is quite a bit of work. I monitor roughly 200 English language Iraqi blogs and 3 (3!) English language Afghani blogs, reading between 100 and 1,000 posts in a typical week. The work has become increasingly discouraging.

First, it’s discouraging because there are so few Iraqi and Afghani bloggers. When I started editing the Carnival there were roughly 100 Iraqi bloggers. That grew to about 200 by my first anniversary. It’s still about 200. There are, perhaps, a few more Arabic Iraqi blogs that I don’t monitor because my Arabic isn’t good enough. By comparison there are thousands of Iranian blogs.

The most ardent Ba’athist supporters among the Iraqi bloggers have mostly left the country (along with quit a number of other Iraqi bloggers) and, although I continue to monitor their blogs, I don’t include them in the Carnival.

There used to be quite a number of English language bloggers posting from Iraqi Kurdistan. They’re all inctive now. A possible exception to this is Miriam of Pearls of Iraq (for some reason I suspect that Miriam is a Western woman who has converted to Islam and is living in Iraqi Kurdistan).

Quite a few of the blogs that I do monitor are inactive or post only very occasionally—once every couple of months. I think there are probably a number of reasons for this but I suspect that Aunt Najma of A Star from Mosul speaks for many of the other Iraqi bloggers in her most recent post:

All of a sudden, my blog doesn’t seem to be much of an interest to me. It used to own me entirely, I thought in English all the time, and no matter what happened, my first thought was what to write from it in the blog.
My interest in the blog might have something to do with my interest in the current events. I haven’t watched news for a long time, I wouldn’t even know if the third world war was on!

I don’t think this is simple blog fatigue—I think it goes much farther. If Iraqi bloggers are at all representative of the best-educated and most-engaged people in Iraq, I think they are weary unto death. They’re exhausted.

And that brings me to the other change in the Iraqi blogosphere over the last two years: the profound change in tone. In the period leading up to and immediately following the elections many of the Iraqi bloggers expressed considerable hope and joy, even euphoria. Now only the very most pro-U. S. Iraqi blogs i.e. Iraq the Model are showing any light whatever.

Here’s Hammorabi from two years ago:

In Iraq we are one nation, Christians, Sabians, Muslims as Sunni & Shia, and other religions. The Churches which were hit by the barbaric thugs are not holy places for the Christians alone but they are holy places for all of the Iraqis irrespective of their religions. They are holy for being used by human being and by Iraqis our brothers and sisters. They are now holy places for every Iraqi!

Our brothers and sisters who have been killed in the attacks of the Iraqi Churches are not only Christians but Muslims as well. The Iraqi blood mixed together to tell the thugs that we are one body and the foreign bodies are them. Sooner the Iraqi body will expose and destroy them for ever.

Here’s Hammorabi from this week:

The deterioration in the Iraqi condition is overwhelming and involves every aspect of the life. Iraq just described now as the most dangerous place in the world.

There is no doubt that the USA failed in its Middle East and war against terrorism at least in Iraq. It is the reverse indeed that the terrorism increased and the USA in a big problem now. If they leave Iraq to the terrorists then the consequences are very well know for the region and the world. If the US stayed it is even worse because the terrorists are using the excuse to increase their bases in the region and to recruit for this from everywhere. On the other hand the failure in Lebanon in addition to Iraq will make the new Middle East that Dr Rice called for is far from reaching.

The assertions of Iraqi solidarity are gone and replaced by discouragement and blaming the United States. The only ray of hope (if that’s the right word for it) is that Hammorabi was saying that Iraq had descended into civil war two years ago.

What I do link to is discouraging enough. I don’t bother linking to the really discouraging stuff: mostly incoherent rantings and ravings, linking to hit pieces in the press and propaganda sites. The reason that I don’t link to is because it’s incoherent not because I disagree with it (although I do).

Next year at this time I hope that I have lots more work because there are many more new Iraqi and Afghani bloggers and it’s more fun because they’re posting about joys and hopes as well as sorrows. For that to happen things will have to change. I can only pray that those changes are taking place quiety, slowly, and largely out of sight.

Cross-posted at Dean’s World.