Chrenkoff-Good News From Iraq

[Annie]

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006478

Intro:

Shopkeepers Say 'Enough'
A roundup of the past two weeks' good news from Iraq.

BY ARTHUR CHRENKOFF
Monday, March 28, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

Something astonishing took place a few days ago in Doura, a working-class suburb of Baghdad. So much so that even the New York Times had to sit up and take notice:


Just before noon today, a carpenter named Dhia saw a troop of masked gunmen with grenades coming towards his shop and decided he had had enough.
As the gunmen emerged from their cars, Dhia and his young relatives shouldered their own AK-47's and opened fire, police and witnesses said. In the fierce gun battle that followed, three of the insurgents were killed, and the rest fled just after the police arrived. Two of Dhia's young nephews and a bystander were injured, the police said.

"We attacked them before they attacked us," Dhia, 35, his face still contorted with rage and excitement, said in a brief exchange at his shop a few hours after the battle. He did not give his last name. "We killed three of those who call themselves the mujahedeen. I am waiting for the rest of them to come and we will show them."

The Times was wrong--this was most certainly not "the first time that private citizens are known to have retaliated successfully against insurgents" (see, for example, this story from January and this one from a few days ago, also quoted below). But then again, as far as Iraq is concerned, this was far from the first time that the Times had caught on to a trend long apparent to many other observers.
As the old saying goes, one swallow does not make a spring, even a very angry one armed with AK-47, but the indications are that in the new, postelection environment, more ordinary Iraqis are standing up to be counted in the fight for the future of their country. There are still violence, hardship and frustration aplenty in Iraq today, but a lot of positive developments have also been taking place for quite some time now. Here's a roundup of some stories you might have missed over the past two weeks.