Feeling the Loss

Correspondent David Kerley blogs about being back in Baghdad: I was here in Baghdad when it all changed. It was February 22 when some skilled munitions men, believed to be Sunni insurgents, blew up the Golden Mosque in Samarra. I was up in Samarra last week. We didn’t get close to the holy shrine. But from a distance, I saw the Mosque without its golden dome. What I have seen up close, is the human damage that has followed the destruction of the dome as Shiites finally retaliated and Sunnis struck back. Some have called it a "soft" ethnic cleansing. Sunnis are leaving Shiite neighborhoods, and Shiite’s are being forced out of Sunni neighborhoods. One Iraqi friend has left his home to live with his family, while his wife has moved back in with her parents. But it’s not just moving. Many are losing their lives. When I returned to Iraq at the beginning of this month there were warm hellos with my colleagues. But as I shook hands and gave a hug to one of my Iraqi friends, I whispered in his ear that I was sorry for his loss. His brother had been killed; make that murdered, the week before. And then this past week, an Iraqi who works for some fellow journalists arrived with a pained look on his face. Tears were welling in his eyes. He had just taken his neighbor to the hospital where he died. The dead neighbor was a Shiite. He was the last Shiite living in that neighborhood. The pain and loss seem much closer to us now.