KANAN MAKIYA'S WAR DIARY
March 24

TNR (The New Republic) Online
Post date: 03.24.03


The bombs have begun to fall on Baghdad. Iraqi soldiers have shot their
officers and are giving themselves up to the Americans and the British in
droves. Others, as in Nasiriyah and Umm Qasr, are fighting back, and
civilians have already come under fire. Yet I find myself dismissing
contemptuously all the e-mails and phone calls I get from antiwar friends
who think they are commiserating with me because "their" country is bombing
"mine." To be sure, I am worried. Like every other Iraqi I know, I have
friends and relatives in Baghdad. I am nauseous with anxiety for their
safety. But still those bombs are music to my ears. They are like bells
tolling for liberation in a country that has been turned into a gigantic
concentration camp. One is not supposed to say such things in the kind of
liberal, pacifist, and deeply anti-American circles of academia, in which I
normally live and work. The truth is jarring even to my own ears.

If you want to understand the perceptual chasm that separates how Iraqis
view this second Gulf war from how the rest of the Arab-Muslim world views
it--or from how these antiwar elites here in Cambridge or, dare I say, in
Turtle Bay or Paris or Berlin view it--then you must begin with the war that
has already been waged on the people of Iraq by their own regime. Then you
will know, horribly, how the explosion of a JDAM can sound beautiful. For
Iraqis, the absence of this new American-led war is not the presence of
peace. Years before the first American cruise missile exploded in a "safe
house" of the Iraqi leadership, the people of Iraq were living through a
war. They have been living through that war since 1980, the year Saddam
Hussein launched his futile war against Iran. Since then, one and a half
million Iraqis have met a violent death. Between 5 and 10 percent of Iraq's
population has been killed, either directly or indirectly, because of
decisions made by its own leadership. The scale of such devastation on a
people is impossible to imagine. Think of Germany or France after World War
I. Think of the Soviet Union after World War II. The peoples that are thrust
into such a meat-grinder are never the same when they emerge. Is it any
wonder that we Iraqis do not look at this war the way so much of the rest of
the world does?

The war rages on around me in the shape of the news broadcasts to which I
have become hopelessly addicted. While I watch, my friends in the opposition
are gathering in Kurdistan with the Iraqi National Congress and in Kuwait
with Jay Garner's office. I should be there with them, but I am told I have
to stay. I am needed here, to keep touch with Washington. I cannot stand it.
All I have to think about is whether or not the U.S. government is going to
once again betray the Iraqi opposition, and renege on commitments made
regarding the democratization of Iraq.

There is enough chatter out of Washington to make me apprehensive. Last
Wednesday, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, Marc Grossman,
managed to deliver a long briefing to foreign reporters on "Assisting Iraqis
With Their Future, Planning For Democracy" without any specifics on the
issue. While Grossman summarized U.S. plans and offered statistical details
on economic reconstruction, dealing with weapons of mass destruction,
humanitarian assistance, and the role of the United Nations in all these
things, all he could say about the central political question was that the
Bush administration "seek[s] an Iraq that is democratic." Unlike its
experience in Afghanistan, the administration has had months, if not years,
to think about what democracy in Iraq would look like. And yet when the
journalists asked Grossman to elaborate on the subject, he could add almost
nothing.

Why? Does the United States have any ideas on this pivotal subject? Will the
administration push for those ideas in the establishment of the
still-ambiguous Iraqi interim authority that Grossman mentioned in his
briefing? And what is the role of the leadership of the Iraqi opposition
elected in Salahuddin last month? These are the questions I am left here to
argue about with American officials while the war's progress provides a more
pleasant soundtrack.








_________________________________________________________________
STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To Search in the Gambia-L archives, go to: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/CGI/wa.exe?S1=gambia-l
To contact the List Management, please send an e-mail to:
[log in to unmask]

To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface
at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~