Iraqi ‘independence celebrations’
Here, as usual, the Iraqi “radical” is portrayed as the cause of his country’s problems, while the real cause of the problems – the US occupation, as represented by a sober soldier in an armored personnel carrier – is portrayed as the patient, restraining influence. The cartoon, which is from the Manawatu Standard of July 2, 2009, is thus in the same vein as The White Man’s Burden by Rudyard Kipling:
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Take up the White Man’s burden—
Send forth the best ye breed—
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild—
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
word
These notions of European racial and cultural superiority, which allow the “civilized” European to see the “native” as “half devil and half child”, are as prevalent today as they were in the 19th century.
Or maybe, just in this particular case, the “radical native” really is to blame? If we choose to accept the underlying premiss of your hypothesis, which is that the “native” is equal to the “european”, and not inferior (a hypothesis I agree with, btw), then the “native” has to step up and take responsibility for his actions sometimes (and not always blame it on the “other”). OK, let’s stop being obtuse. And let’s be frank. Unfortunately, there are far too many Muslims who take Sura 98:5 (and other similar passages from the Koran) as license to bring forth the wrath of God on those who do not believe. Of course, many others of other religions act unjustly in the name of their God or their prophet (Jews and Christians included), but so long as there are people in this world who think their religion is the only way, and damn to hell those who don’t believe, then we are stuck where we are (or at least until the Klingons/Romulons/Borg come to unite us in common cause).
I recently finished reading “Defeat: Why America and Britain Lost Iraq,” by Jonathan Steele. Although there was little in it that was new to me, I was impressed by the strength of the opposition of the Iraqi people, during the early days of the occupation, to any suggestion there was, or could be, a split in the country along sectarian lines.
Steele’s chapter, Sectarian Conflict: Who’s to Blame?, begins with a quote by Ghazi Ajil al-Yawer: “If you look deep into our history, seven thousand years of history, we never ever had a single incident of unrest built on ethnicity or sect or religion.” Even if that is not strictly true, it is true that most Iraqis “never used to know or care whether our neighbors or friends were Sunni or Shia”, as Steele quotes them as saying. (Riverbend says much the same thing in her celebrated blog, “Baghdad Burning”.)
In April 2004, when Steele questions students in Baquba about sectarianism, he is “almost set upon”, is accused of being a Zionist, and has to be “led to safety”. Yet as we all know, Iraq is a now a country divided along sectarian lines, after campaigns of ethnic cleansing that have seen thousands killed and millions dispossessed. How did this happen, and who is to blame?
I think all analysts agree that, whatever its intentions, the US exacerbated Iraq’s sectarian differences – as all imperialist powers do. (Look at all the countries formerly occupied by the British that are now divided along sectarian lines.)
When considering the disintegration and general ruination of Iraq one also has to take into consideration the long history of Western meddling in the country, which goes back to the British seizure of Iraq after World War I and the imposition of a Hashemite monarchy on the Iraqi people. Later, the US becomes influential and, by all accounts, plays a significant role in the rise of the Baath Party. It later supports Saddam Hussein’s war of aggression against Iran throughout the 1980s, only to slap him down when he invades Kuwait in 1990. It then turns a blind eye to Saddam’s slaughter of the Shia in 1991, after cynically encouraging the Shia to revolt.
Next comes more than a decade in which Iraq is placed under crippling sanctions and subjected to almost constant attack from the air. Many of the attacks during this period, and during the “Shock and Awe” invasion of 2003, are directed at the country’s infrastructure – its roads and bridges, electricity grid, and water and sewerage systems. We can’t even begin to imagine what it must have been like to live through all this.
Then come the horrors of the occupation – the looting of almost all official buildings, the shootings of civilians by US troops and contractors, the punitive attacks on Fallujah and other cities, and the humiliation and sexual abuse of Iraqi detainees. All this not only brutalizes the Iraqi people, it unleashes all kinds of complex, centrifugal forces that have not yet played out. It also allows outsiders, such as al-Qaeda, to intervene, and to pursue their Salafist agenda.
To all this, the average Westerner brings a comic-strip view of history/religion, in which all problems tend to be traced to the influence of either incendiary “clerics” or certain surahs in the Qur’an. I would argue that this is to put the cart before the horse. I see the incendiary cleric as a product, rather than a cause, of the current fraught situation. Likewise, I see an extreme, simplistic form of religion as something that people fall back on when, in their view, nothing else will sustain them.
I am also conscious of the fact that, until the 1980s, Islamic movements now perceived as “extremist” or “radical” were actually encouraged by the Western powers, who saw them as a means to counteract the enemies of the day – communism, as promoted by the Soviets, and secular Arab nationalism, as promoted by Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and others. In those days, when Islam was seen as an ally, Israel supported Hamas, and the United States supported Osama bin Laden and other mujahidin groups in Afghanistan.
The article below, which came to me via Common Dreams after I posted the above comment, supports what I have said:
Published on Friday, July 3, 2009 by The Toronto Star
IRAQ A FAILED IMPERIALIST VENTURE
by Haroon Siddiqui
American troops were not welcomed with flowers in Iraq but their departure from cities and towns has been.
Iraqis celebrated National Sovereignty Day Tuesday as U.S. troops were yanked out of populated centres and put into remote bases.
In time, even that hidden presence will begin to grate on the Iraqis, just as a U.S. military base in Saudi Arabia had spurred Osama bin Laden and others.
Yet this limited troop pullout is being hailed as a triumph. One is reminded of Richard Nixon’s 1973 boast of “peace with honour” in Vietnam. The 1973 Paris treaty that led to the U.S. troop withdrawal was a face-saving formula.
In Iraq, too, the U.S. has little choice but to get out.
Not only did the Iraqi invasion and occupation prove the limits of military power, it also exposed how incapable America has become at nation-building. Its postwar incompetence was stunning.
America plunged Iraq into chaos, shattered the infrastructure and destroyed the society, reducing human beings to their basest instincts. They turned on each other and found safety only in family, tribe, clan and sect. Shiites and Sunnis, who had lived together for ages, ethnically cleansed each other’s neighbourhoods, which to this day remain separated by barricades, walls and checkpoints.
Having unleashed the forces that put Iraq’s three main communities at war with each other, the U.S. toyed with the idea of dividing the country into the Kurdish north, a Sunni centre and a Shiite south, much like the British had divided India in two in 1947.
Having created the chaos, violence and jihadism, the U.S. said, in colonial fashion, it had to stay to curb the chaos, violence and jihadism. Having crippled the state, it had no choice but to prolong the occupation until the natives were ready to govern themselves.
Iraq exhausted America more than the 1917-32 British invasion and occupation sapped the British. It also created killing fields on a vast scale.
Yet Iraqis have been brushed out of the American narrative – Iraq is free of Saddam Hussein, it is democratic, it is stabilized, it is this and it is that.
There’s nary a mention of how many Iraqis are dead (between 100,000 and 1.2 million, depending on who’s counting), how many maimed (not known), how many displaced (4 million), and how many tortured with Saddam-like methods in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere (not known).
Besides the damage to U.S. credibility, and not just in the Muslim world, the Iraq adventure empowered Iran far more than the U.S. would ever acknowledge.
Finally, the quest for oil may also turn out to be a mirage.
This week, Iraq’s oil minister, Hussain al-Shahristani, a U of T graduate, put development rights up for international bidding. No more no-bid contracts for U.S. firms, unlike under the Bush-Cheney domain.
Nor did George W. and Dick get what they wanted out of the Status of Forces Agreement. Passed by the Iraqi parliament last fall, it stipulates that all U.S. troops must be out by Dec. 31, 2011. No U.S. military operation can be carried out without Iraqi consent (a provision Hamid Karzai can only dream of). Iraqi soil cannot be used by the U.S. to launch a war on any neighbour (Iran).
Iraq is the imperial adventure that both Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff, one a neo-con hawk and the other a liberal hawk, fully backed. A monumental failure in judgment, their common stance was, and remains, an affront to the collective will of Canadians.
© 2009 The Toronto Star
Haroon Siddiqui (hsiddiq@thestar.ca) writes a regular column for the Toronto Star.
@JackWarner18,
“Unfortunately, there are far too many Muslims who take Sura 98:5 (and other similar passages from the Koran) as license to bring forth the wrath of God on those who do not believe.”
Where did you get that information from? The Koran has been around 14 centuries. How come this terrorism-streaked wrath only became the bane of world peace in the past few decades?
IMHO, we are stuck for as long as there are people in media selling their morality cheap to whoever has the money, greed and motives to propagate the hate that you quote as undisputed fact.