My First Encounter with an Iraqi

I'm going to tell the story of my first direct encounter with an Iraqi. As some might know Iran and Iraq were involved in a bloody war for 8 years, the longest war of the 20th century. The war started in Sep. 1980 with Iraqi forces crossing in to Iran and Iraqi jets attacking different airports across Iran. The latter was what the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, at the time, thought would be a good start. He thought by repeating what had happened in a previous Arab-Israel War, he could gain advantages but unlike that, their air assault was unsuccessful, mostly.

With that in mind I wanted to also add that 8 years of my youth years was spent during those years. I lost a friend and two classmates. Another classmate came back wounded. They were all volunteers. Now after more than 30 years since the war has ended, most of the people have forgotten those years. The new generation barely know anything about it but there's still hostility toward Iraqis within Iranians despite the fact that now Iran basically controls Iraq.

Anyways I met an Iraqi last week and we shock hands after he introduced himself to me. We had a chat. However that might not always be the case. He is a Shia which is the majority population in both Iran and Iraq. These people were discriminated against where Saddam was in power and they were very restricted, which I didn't know to that extent that he told me. He is originally from a small town in southern Iraq where the Shia population lives but that has always been my question and I will ask him the next time I see him:

With the Iraqi Shia population concentrated in south and being supported and even supplied by Iranians, I always wondered why Iran was never able to capture any major southern city of Iraq, mainly Basra where they had a number of attempts. Iranians later were able to surprise Iraqis and capture the port city of Al-Faw but then after nearly 2 years were thrown out by Iraqis. That's where my friend from the university days, A. Dehghan told me that he was fleeing during that attack by Iraqis. Iran had a number of attempts at Basra (including a major one in 1986) and while this city is only 30 Km away from the border and is a Shia majority center, they were never able even to get close to the city. 

At aside, the fella Iraqi told me that has been living in Canada after the American led forces overthrew Saddam. He seemed happy about his life (although his face always shows he's sad!). He has been to different parts of the world but mostly The Third World countries, because he believes that they need money and they let everyone in. I have been thinking of going to Iraq one day. Now I know this fella perhaps I can get assistance from him. Who knows what will happen in that part of the world by the time that I'm ready to go there?!

(Photo: When Iraq invaded in Iran, their intention was to capture the country within a a few weeks. They were driven out. However in the last year of the war, with the help of Americans and French they rebuilt heir armed forces and recaptured the areas which took Iranians 2 to 3 years to liberate, in just about a month or so! Then after the ceasefire in 1988, which was willingly accepted by Iran and a little break, Iraq invaded Kuwait which eventually led to fall of Saddam's regime in 2003. This map shows what Saddam Hussein intended to do by invading his neighbours)