Emad Al-Kasid, right, walks with Aoum Hussein on the way to her home in the modernized center of the village Suq ash Shuyukh on the outskirts of Nasiriyah, Iraq, Sunday, August 3, 2003. Emad was visiting the neighborhood he grew up in for the first time since 1991. ..He took an indefinate amount of time from his satellite and Arab media company in Dearborn, MI, to come home with his family. On his own, and with his own money he's been meeting with Iraqi businessmen, religious leaders and politicians trying to find ways to bring business and democracy to Iraq. .."Can you imagine being away from you home and family for 13 years?" he asks. "I'm torn, do come here to stay and leave all I've built in the U.S.?"..He is hoping to teach members of his tribe, Al Hacham Al-kasid, and village that there is help available; they just have to ask for it. Another goal of this trip is to see for himself whether Iraq is safe enough for exiles to return and for foreign investment to come in...Since the 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein in Shiite dominated Southern Iraq, people of this area have suffered greatly through his methods of disrupting daily life. For example, modernization came to a hault as money was diverted to Baath Party strongholds. Check points on on every other corner made it nearly impossible to go to work, the doctor, or visit family. Teachers made $5 U.S. per month and had to spend almost all of their salary for taxis in order to go to work...He tried to kill the people by cutting off the rivers that village survival depends on. Dams and canals dirverted the fresh water from flowing into the swamps by way of tributaries. In effect, without fresh water flowing in, the people started poisoning the water supply themselves by using it to wash and clean. Their primitive sewers still flow freely into the same waters that animals use and that feed their rice fields.
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