New day, still questions
So far, according to everything we have seen and heard, Iraqi reaction on the street to the news Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s death, has been overwhelmingly positive.
But, at the same time, people are being fairly realistic about it. On an emotional level – people are going to hope that this is the end of this horror and this nightmare. But, when they step back and analyze this, Zarqawi, as important as he was symbolically, he probably was much less important in terms of the actual insurgency.
There are just so many different groups - many of which are pushed forward, not by a sense of jihad, but by a sense of injustice and a sense of being occupied by U.S. and coalition forces - and that’s likely to continue.
The real question that has to be answered now is: Since Zarqawi tried to polarize both sides, and for months used sectarian violence to try to trigger civil war, if he is no longer doing that, have the effects gone so deeply that militias will continue to kill each other?
Will dozens of dead bodies continue to be found dumped in Baghdad and other cities everyday?
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Uncontainable excitement
It began like this: We got a phone call this morning that we had to come to an important press conference by the Iraqi prime minister here in the Green Zone. We were given no details, but we were told that it was important that we should come.
Once we got there, it was clear that something else was afoot.
They were setting up American flags and Iraqi flags at the podium and it was clear that if this was just an announcement by the prime minister, there would be no American flags in the building.
Quickly the prime minister arrived and he was flanked by General Casey and the U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. At that stage we knew a big announcement was coming, to have all three of them together.
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Adoption obstacles
So many viewers have written wanting to open their homes and offer Iraqi children new lives. Unfortunately, Iraqi lawyers, international child care agencies, officials at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and the U.S. State Department in Washington all tell us adoption is not possible. Here is why:
Iraqi laws/Islamic laws
Adoption is not allowed in Iraq for both religious and Islamic reasons. It is illegal for a foreigner to an adopt an Iraqi child. It is illegal for a non-Muslim to adopt a Muslim child.
Guardianship
What is allowed in Iraq is a system of guardianship, in which a family cares for an orphan without the child actually becoming a son or daughter. Currently, it is not permitted for a foreigner to become a legal guardian of an Iraqi child.
Wartime
Aid agencies, including UNICEF and the U.S. State Department, also discourage adoptions from countries in crisis because it is difficult to establish if children are in fact orphans, or have just been separated from living relatives because of the chaos of war.
What to do
Most aid groups working with children tell us the best way to help orphans in countries in crisis is to try to place them with their extended families and provide those families the financial support and training to care for the children. UNICEF has agreed to earmark all donations it receives as a result of our story for this type of program in Iraq. Click here to visit their Web site.
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How to help Iraq's orphans?
Thank you. Life can look pretty bleak over here. It can too often only seem to revolve around the cynical axis of greed and power and exploitation, all greased by this bloody war.
The daily scenes of murder and torture and abuse are enough to make Thomas Hobbes think less of man, the unkind.
Girls at Baghdad's Alwiya Orphanage clown around with NBC's Richard Engel. NBC News' Steve LoMonaco.
Perhaps that’s why I found myself quietly crying as I read so many offers to help the children featured in our story about Iraqi orphans -- a tragedy told through Marwa, Aliya, and Sora and their murdered parents.
It is not that I had forgotten that people can be kind, I just hadn’t seen it for a while. For a moment, my compassion ached like an atrophied muscle suddenly forced into action. I was reminded of the basic kindness of the American people, and I was proud. 
So thank you for your kindness and sympathy for the children. For me, it was simply beautiful to see.
Girls at Baghdad's Alwiya Orphanage. NBC News' Steve LoMonaco
Editor's note: Due to the incredible response to Richard Engel’s original story on Baghdad’s Alwiya Orphanage, "Needed: Love for a Baghdad orphanage", NBC’s Nightly News with Brian Williams is re-broadcasting the story tonight.
VIDEO: Richard Engel returns to an Iraq orphanage where dozens of children live in daily peril.
The following are links to non-governmental organizations that are working with children in Iraq. If you are interested in contributing to them, please visit their Web sites or contact them directly.
UNICEF's work in Iraq includes health and nutrition programs for young children and mothers along with water and sanitation, psycho-social care, and early learning. UNICEF supports a program for the reintegration of street children and children deprived of caregivers in Baghdad -0 including orphans and runaways. See complete information about how to contribute to UNICEF's work in Iraq at www.unicefusa.org/iraq.
Or you can call them directly at 1-800-4-UNICEF.
Or write them at:
U.S. Fund for UNICEF
333 E. 38th St., 6th Floor
New York, N.Y. 10016
No More Victims is an independent non-profit organization that works with children in Iraq.
Childhood Care and Sponsorship Organization in Iraq also works with children in Iraq.
Nintu For Humanitarian Assistance is also working with Iraqi children.
Many of the emails asked about adopting Iraqi orphans. The adoption of Iraqi children is not permitted under Iraqi law. Click here to read the U.S. State Department's policy regarding "Intercountry adoption with Iraq."
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Laughter punctuated by heartbreak
As we were leaving the orphanage one of the girls was on the phone and crying because she just found out her mother had left the country. Just broke my heart.
We had gone back to the Alwiya Orphanage to do a follow up story because of the great response to our first story. Working in Iraq we don't get to see a lot of children, so when we do it's a treat. We have the wall of our dining room filled with pictures taken over the years and a lot of them are of kids. Everyone was happy to be going back.
The girls were just as happy to see us. I guess they don't get a lot of visitors.
Dunya, a cute 10 year old with long dark hair and a great smile, seemed to be the ringleader. She didn’t want to be in any of the pictures, but helped me gather the other girls for pictures. Then she organized a game that looked like "ring around the rosy." After a while she changed her mind and wanted to be in every shot. Then I gave her my camera and she took some nice pictures. She seemed so happy and carefree.
I was a great diversion for everyone; for us, a change from the war and bombings, for them a chance to break up the routine of living in an orphanage - a chance to get a little attention and affection.
Everything went well and we even managed to get some work done. We packed our gear and came back in to say goodbye. Dunya was on a cell phone, borrowed from one of our translators. She was surrounded by her friends. They were all crying. When you see the girls happy and having fun it's easy to forget where you are and the hard life these young girls have. But the realities of life in a war zone have a way of jumping up and hitting you in the face.
Dunya has been left at the orphanage by her mother. Her mother had said she’d be back. While we were there, Dunya called the number her mother had given her. The person who answered said her mother had moved to Syria. Dunya learned she was abandoned.
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Life Outside the Wire
"You’re going over to the dark side!"
That was the most common response I received when, in March, I told friends working for the U.S. government in Baghdad that I was leaving my position as a press officer with the U.S. Embassy to take a job here as a producer with NBC News.
Invariably, the next response was, "Are you going to live in the Red Zone?"
I first came to Baghdad in March of 2005 as a Department of the Army public affairs officer and then transferred over to the State Department last October. Before coming to Baghdad I spent almost eight years working as a cable news producer.
Lights usually on in the IZ
Life in the International Zone (IZ) - no one who lives there calls it the Green Zone anymore - is about as good as it gets in Iraq.
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When home is very far away
Like any other news organization in Baghdad, NBC News colleagues spend a lot of time together in cramped spaces. Between stories there's time to chat and try to forget, for a moment, where we are, or that the temperature just broke 120 degrees. Some of us like to tell jokes; others, old war stories. Some of the more talented go on about the latest recipes they want to experiment with in the NBC kitchen; still others complain about someone's messy habits, and why doesn't he put away his cereal box or wash his plates? Sound like home? It isn't. Home, for most of us, is a very far away place, a long distance bridged by a (if we're lucky) daily, often strained, phone call that has to compete with bad static or breaking news.
Maybe that's why it's taken so long to break an unspoken taboo here: talking about home. That is, our spouses, partners, girl- or boyfriends, waiting back home. And all the mounting tension: putting up with the long separations, coping with the risks and uncertanties (all those unanswered text messages), managing their own lives AND our households, reassuring our children everything will be fine, when-- as the Douglases and Brolans and Doziers sadly learned this past week -- it may not.
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The dumb militant
He had to know it was coming.
Here’s the score. We’re in Sadr City, a rough slum of two million underemployed, undereducated, young, tough victims of the former regime and their many, many underemployed, undereducated, overzealous sons.
Gas prices (still cheap by world standards) have just gone up 100 percent. Electricity is out 10 hours a day. It’s about 110 degrees in the shade, and the only way to cool your house or freeze water is to buy a generator that costs most people here three months wages.
So, here’s the stupid part.
An Islamic radical (and not just any fundamentalist, but a Sunni radical who must have lost his way and ventured into this forbidden Shiite wasteland) has the bright idea to go around and blow up people’s generators. He’d been doing it for two weeks before the fun was taken out of his fundamentalism. A witness told me what happened next.
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Fame kills
Most television reporters, often classified among the most cutthroat animals known to vanity, enjoy being on air as much as breathing, eating and making money. Today, one of Arab TV’s star broadcasters in Iraq told me, he can’t do it anymore. "Fame here kills," he said.
"I want to work in the shadows," said my old friend. "I can’t put my face on TV anymore."
Most of his colleagues from news agencies and TV networks in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul have either quit, fled the city, escaped the country, or at the very least moved out their families.
The man who calls my friend on his cell phone always says the same thing: "We want money, or we will kill you."
"I don’t have any money," he always answers. "If I had any money I would have already left."
"We don’t want money from you, but from Washington."
"They think we all work for the United States government," he said.
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Slide Show
- Life beyond the violence
Suicide attacks and murders due to sectarian conflict continue around Iraq. See how residents live their lives amid the attacks.
Read the Nightly News blog
