Friday, August 29, 2003. Summary and Analysis

The next section of entries begins characteristically with shocking news; that the head of SCIRI (the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) Al-Hakim was assassinated, and Riverbend tries to work out what this means for her community. SCIRI were an organisation that Riverbend feaed would turn Iraq into a 'clone of Iran' with less secularism and more a more traditional religious approach to laws and the civil state, but, Riverbend still opposed the assassination. She wonders at the alleged complicity of his own militia group 'Badr's Brigade' - that the explosion might have actually been representative of an internal conflict within the group rather than the machinations of another militia, resistance, conspiracy or even Al-Qaeda.

Over the next few days, Riverbend manages to leave her house with her mother and her brother and uncle acting as bodyguards...