I

 horrendous presentiment of yet another war is looming. Hawks in Washington, and their egregious apologists in London, are preparing to unleash a devastating war against Iraq under the pretext of “liberating” it from the dictator Saddam Hussein who is presumed to possess weapons of mass destruction, and hence a threat to US security. Students of the not-too-distant history would recognize that the Butcher of Baghdad had been a US-UK ally for well over three decades, and his use of deadly chemical weapons, against Iranian soldiers and the Iraqi Kurdish population, under the very watchful eyes of US and UK policymakers and military experts during the nineteen eighties has been well documented. The fact, as British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw averred on October 9, 2002 during his visit to Tehran, that the West had been wrong in cozying to Saddam Hussein’s régime during the 1980s, and that a wrong must now be righted, should not be taken at face value. Has the West’s conscience just been pricked and now it wants to right a wrong? Has the decade-long demonization of Saddam Hussein as an Arab-Hitler resulted from the sudden awakening of the intelligence and state apparatchik in the US and Britain? Is the imminent war being prepared at the Pentagon aimed to “liberate” the people of Iraq? Was it by happenstance that the New York Times credited Saddam Hussein in 1975, then vice-president but effectively the first man in command, for his “personal strength” in seeing to the “pragmatic” and “cooperative” nature of the burgeoning Ba’athist régime of Iraq? Were these epithets not testimony to the fact that this régime, with explicit US support and backing,1 overthrew the first republic in a bloody coup on February 8, 1963, executed thousands of leftists, progressive independents and communists and effectively abrogated an organically grown experiment towards establishing democracy? This very régime consolidated power in 1968, having liquidated even its erstwhile allies within elements of the Arab-nationalists in Iraq. It seems imperative that one at least attempts to probe a little beneath the thick surface of disinformation laid daily by US mainstream media outlets and scions of officialdom so as to endeavor proffering serious responses.

My main concern is the hapless people of Iraq, victim to four decades of an atrocious Ba’athist reign of terror aided and abetted by US-British self-serving geopolitical interests and a US-sponsored campaign of dehumanization, subjugation and sheer extinction through the imposition of genocidal economic sanctions during the last twelve years. How and where do they figure in the Anglo-American plans? A cursory review may help elucidate the point.

 

II

In 1976, Saddam Hussein struck a deal, orchestrated and blessed by Henry Kissinger, with the Shah of Iran, which promulgated the latter’s halting support for the Kurdish insurgents in Iraqi Kurdistan in return for Saddam Hussein’s giving away half of Shatt al-Arab, the water estuary at the tip of the Gulf, to Iran. (In 1980, reclaiming this estuary was the pretext for waging war against the new Islamic régime of Iran.) Immediately thereafter, the Iraqi régime, then presided over by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr (deposed by Hussein in 1979, then killed), unleashed its first cycle of deportations. Thousands of Iraqi Faili Kurds were driven out of their homes, barely with clothes on, and literally thrown at the Iranian borders. Their crime? The Ba’athist régime professed their impure lineage since their ancestors had originated from Iran several centuries back. Shortly after his palace coup and accession to power in 1979, and intensively during the early eighties, Saddam Hussein would deport more than 500,000 Iraqi Shi’ites, most of whom were Arabs, following the same pretext. Hundreds of children, old women and men perished in the rugged terrain between Iraq and Iran as the hapless deportees were unloaded from lorries and left to the elements and wild life, with no food or proper clothing. All this, and more horrendous atrocities, took place while the West, particularly the US and Britain, armed, traded, supported this régime and deliberately ignored the cries of the Iraqi progressive opposition, which experienced systematic torture and eventual exile: because it suited the West’s “strategic plans” and “national interests.”

Historical analysis has fallen victim to rabid trends glorifying theories of cultural specificity, especially, but not exclusively, applied to third-world societies. Their theoretical framework embodies cultural “incompatibility” and other varyingly sanitized and fragmentary versions of what may be presented as “identity politics” or “communitarianism.” Samuel Huntington—the arch proponent of this morbid picture epitomized by his thesis of the “clash of civilizations”— propounded some years ago that dictators in the East were a catalyst to development, then prophesied that owing to intrinsic “cultural differences,” the East was “destined” not to catch up with the developed West. To many of these pundits, Confucianism was responsible for China’s backwardness, but it is now the essence behind its accelerated economic development. These pseudo-theories are based on the prejudice that differences are always decisive, while similarities are the result only of coincidence: a parochialism that transcends any sense of rationality.

Besotted by this trend, it has been suggested, on-and-off for well over a decade, that Iraq is an artificial formation and owing to its “ethnic” and “religious” diversity which caused much turmoil, only the scenario of cantonizing the country would, according to those pundits, prove stable. However, a crucial point, ostensibly obfuscated, is that social diversity could prove an element of strength to any one country. Fawaz Gerges, professor of International Affairs and Middle Eastern Studies at Sarah Lawrence College in the US, reduces Iraq’s vibrant, but troubled, history to being “the most violent and volatile country in the region.”2 He further supports his conclusion by relying on the veteran Egyptian journalist Mohammed H. Heikal’s pronouncement that “violence has become ingrained in Iraqi character.” Such absurd reductionism and marginalization of Iraq’s richly diverse political and intellectual fortitude not only runs contrary to the historical record,3 but smacks of the sheer submission of Arab pseudo-intellectuals to a culture of politico-religious fundamentalism originated and perpetuated by right-wing forces, whether in the East or West. No one does—nor should one—suggest the innateness of violence within Lebanese society as motley political and religious factions tore each other apart during the years of the bloody civil war. Neither should one profess the dismemberment of Egypt as a result of the politically motivated inter- and intra-religious hostilities that claimed hundreds of innocent Copt and Muslim lives—which marred the country’s social and political progress. And, how does the history of US slavery figure into the making of the American psyche; is prejudice engrained in the white man’s make-up?

A pseudo-psychoanalytical examination of human history is patently flawed. The agency that drives, and distorts, history does not solely lie within the realm of self-motivated communalism, or inherent psychological biases, but necessarily within the socio-politico-economic context of any one society. Hence, Gerges’s depiction that Iraqis turned “inward to the safe harbor of tribalism and religious and ethnic fractionalism,” completely misses the trajectory and reality of Iraq’s history, and speaks volumes of the schematic attempts by such pundits to talk-the-talk that gets them to US national media limelight: Abandon history and rationality, and you shall accede to the status of (well paid) “experts.” And, who is better to denigrate Arabs than an Arab lackey?

Since the emergence of modern Iraqi polity, sectarian chauvinism, while not explicitly enforced as in Lebanon, has been systematically institutionalized in all aspects of governmental political machinations, dealings and planning: the progeny of the British concocted Cox-al-Naqeeb4 plan laying down the basis for the pyramidal power structure in the nascent government of Iraq in 1921. The Ba’athists’ contribution culminated in marrying this structure with brutal means of political suppression. However, the experience of the Iraqi working class challenges the conceptual construct of sectarianism: workers who were poor, largely illiterate, and drawn from a wide variety of ethnic and religious communities, demonstrated not only the ability to organize labor unions but to sustain solidarity during long and drawn out strikes where the full repressive force of the British and the Iraqi state were brought to bear. Effectively, sectarianism was largely confined to the urban lower middle and middle classes, particularly members of the Sunni Arab community.5 When resorted to by the state and upper classes, it was viewed cynically and deployed for instrumental purposes. This matter has received only limited analysis and exposure over the whole of the twentieth century; consequently handing over unbridled control to ferocious right-wing forces, within and outside Iraq, to exploit this aspect and hence direct Iraq’s social diversity into a time bomb, when not exploding, severely damaging the societal structural fabric and, in this conjuncture, compromising the social consciousness of the people. As such, this resulted in the breakdown of the modern formation of society and the absence of any semblance of a popularly supported polity; and, consequently, culminated in the people slowly reverting to archaic notions of mobilization by relying on one’s family, tribe, sect and/or neighborhood.

Thereupon, efforts to establish a culturally pluralistic and participatory political system in Iraq can still draw on the experiences of the Iraqi working class. Their behavior demonstrates that the chauvinistic, exclusivist and repressive politics that have hitherto characterized Ba’athist rule do not represent the only future for Iraq, and solutions, that are lasting and progressive, may well arise organically. The history of Iraq’s working class indeed offers hope against the dominant notion that we are destined for a civilizational clash and a culturally based “politics of intolerance.”

 

III

The situation in Iraq presents a dilemma for its people, not so much because it is the only one of its kind, but due to the fact that internal repression has been intricately intertwined with imperialist Western designs. The extent of hurt and perpetual suffering has accumulated and become synonymous with the Iraqi milieu. A brutal totalitarian polity for well over three decades, and the devastating economic sanctions régime continue to strangle the people of Iraq and the country today is on the verge of social and economic collapse, placing the lives of its civilian population in great peril. In this human tragedy, the innocent people of Iraq are held hostage by the US-British policy of collective punishment and by Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror. There is no legal basis for US-British plans to wage war against Iraq, and an attack would be in violation of Article 1, Section 4, of the Charter of the United Nations which states: “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state... ” Furthermore, there can be no moral justification for the wanton punishment of an entire populace for the sake of deposing a political régime, however despotic it may be, and however desirable a goal this may be.

The response of Iraqi exiles and émigrés—particularly those living in the West—has reflected the dominant state of despondency that permeates political discourse within the entire Arab world. The “political kiosks”—inaccurately referred to as political parties or umbrella groups—that sprang out after 1991 and have been fully co-opted by one foreign intelligence service or another, but predominantly by those of the US: the Iraqi National Congress (INC), Iraqi National Accord (INA), The Monarchist Movement, etc., were the outcome of both (i) the fragmentation and successful marginalization resulting from years of systematically oppressing legitimate secular and religious opposition forces; and, equally importantly, (ii) US desire for complete control over a country that is hugely wealthy in intellectual and natural resources. The mere act of bombing Iraq, during the 1991 US-led Gulf war, would not, on its own, have ensured unchallenged US control and domination over the country. Its people needed to be humiliated into long-term submission in order to safeguard those treasured US interests: Hence the institution of the economic sanctions régime, while retaining Saddam Hussein’s police apparatus almost intact. Iraq’s infrastructure: water and electric facilities, bridges, even ravines, etc., was instead ferociously rained upon with B-52 bombers and long- and short-range missiles. A people and a mainly conscript army, out of eight years of depleting war with neighboring Iran and the ignominious adventure into Kuwait, rose up spontaneously and virulently a mere few days after the US-dictated ceasefire only to discover (perhaps naively) that their overthrowing Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and endeavoring to establish some democracy were contrary to US strategic interests. Another bombing campaign would now consummate this hegemony for the foreseeable future, and hermetically seal the entire region from irredentist tendencies for quite some time.

A weak Iraq reigned over by a ruthless, but now toothless, despot would serve those interests rather well. Iraq experimented with national rule for the interest of its people for a brief episode after the 1958 revolution. Plans, as now clearly evident from declassified US National Archives, to abort this experiment earnestly materialized once Law No. 80 was basically put into effect. Law 80 was to usher the gradual transfer of Iraq’s national curse, oil, from the almost complete hegemony of British-US companies to the control of Iraq’s inhabitants: A sacrilegious move that prompted the ferocious coalescence of US-British power to instigate and direct the Ba’athist-led coup of 1963, and the decades of disaster that ensued. Iraqi Ba’athists, with Saddam Hussein at the helm, have diligently and obsequiously served their US masters; contributed to ruining Iraq, materially and socially; abandoned the Palestinians on many an occasion—let them be massacred by Jordan’s King Hussein in 1970, for instance—while conveniently withdrawing Iraqi troops stationed just outside the refugee camps; killed over half-a-million Iranians and Iraqis in a pointless 8-year war which caused a serious set-back to independent industrial development in either country; contributed to the creation of two generations of Iraqis almost devoid of political national aspirations for self development, self rule and progress.

Nationalism and religion have been employed, to suit their ends and in a manner peculiar to the circumstances of their environment, equally by Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush: Flag and God are ushered to whip up hysteria among the people and, hence, ensure their submission. What is most interesting, however, is the diametrically opposed significance and subsequent effects of these notions in the cases of Iraq and the US: the majority of Iraqis have never willingly accepted, nor genuinely believed, these implementations; they were, in essence, marshaled by Hussein and his clique for an Arab/Islamic audience, who had, to varying extent and foolishly, not rejected—partly because it appeared as an antidote to the inherent racism in Bush et al.’s rhetoric itself. It is as if Bush Jr. is assiduously buttressing Saddam Hussein’s credentials as a pious Muslim and Arab-nationalist: neither of which has ever been seriously substantiated by deed on Hussein’s part. (Segments of the Arab and Western Left had also unquestioningly taken Saddam Hussein’s novel credentials at face value: something that will seriously hamper their understanding of the intricacies of the imperialist-dictator complex, and ultimately distance them from the oppressed in Iraq and elsewhere in the third world.) In this entangling clash of rhetoric, the American people have seemingly begun to forfeit their essential civil liberties and human rights for a mythological conception of a perpetual enemy who is ethereal, “envious” and “jealous” of their “way of life.” The continued campaign of disinformation carried out by US mainstream media is bound to accentuate the level of historical, geographical, political and cultural ignorance that, alas, will necessarily translate into malice: From the manufacturing of consent, as Noam Chomsky aptly characterized the role of the media, to purposely manufacturing a clash of cultures.

While Iraq continues to be raped, Europe bleats every now and then in opposition. Effectively and essentially, it is engaging in, borrowing from the poignant description penned by Norman Geras, a “contract of mutual indifference.” Eyes are averted from the genocidal economic sanctions that may have claimed some half-a-million Iraqi children, and gravely effected lasting damage to the societal fabric—much as Europe ignored the gas chambers and became complicit actors in the Jewish holocaust, a guilt that is now manifested in basically having to ignore racist Israeli policies aimed toward dispossessing, humiliating and ethnically cleansing the Palestinians. However, the Arab world, demoralized, powerless and, basically, comatose, intermittently awakens to nefarious and pointless bouts of terror instigated by an obnoxious reversion to an irrational conception of history and a deformed yearning to a long-lost mythological age that seriously set them backwards: a defeatist cycle effectively nourished by the dynamics of the US imperialist-local dictator alliance.

Yet, sadly, many Iraqi exiles and émigrés foolishly try to convince themselves that the US seeks to “liberate” their hapless compatriots—in spite of the damning historical evidence to the contrary (which they should know so well) and the occasional spouting of expressive Pentagon war plans: military occupation of Iraq, akin to the British mandate of the early twentieth century, to establish firm control over the country in order to ensure the “uninterrupted and free flow of oil” under the direct auspices of the unchallenged emporium of our time. At least, the US administration does not shy away from vocally declaring that it is oil that it principally seeks to liberate: Listen to their words, and judge their deeds. Notwithstanding, Kanaan Makiya, a champion of the imperialism-better-than-fascism camp and an arch proponent of a US invasion of Iraq, summersaults rational reasoning by propagating the myth that it is necessary to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s régime, by whatever means appropriate, “[i]f the challenge represented by the [terror] attacks of Sept. 11 is going to be met.”6

Could it conceivably be moral for anyone, much less Iraqi exile/émigrés, to accept that one or two hundred thousand Iraqis might perish under Anglo-American bombing? If the price is worthwhile, why do those exile/émigrés not make their way right now to Iraq and present themselves as sacrificial lambs instead of the war-torn, sanctions-fatigued inhabitants of Iraq? Is death by US bombs and missiles somehow more humane than Saddam Hussein’s brutal killing machines? Are economic sanctions a “civilized” form of mass annihilation? To suggest that we may soon emerge from this malignant abyss would be pure fantasy and sheer foolhardiness. Nonetheless, there is plenty in Iraq’s history to suggest that we can oppose, in one breath, defiantly and unhesitatingly, both imperialist hegemonic power and repressive brutal dictators—almost always clients of the former.

It is rather apposite to draw to a close by borrowing a hypothetical setting from Terry Eagleton’s brilliant The Gatekeeper—A Memoir: If Brecht were to direct Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, he would have a sign lurking in the back of the stage which reads “He is not coming, you know!” It perfectly applies to Iraq. Only people, history’s prime agency of change, can effect progressive, lasting change within their society; otherwise, to discount their potential when they appear voiceless and the empire preternatural and invincible, would be folly.

Stockholm
23 October, 2002

Notes