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CounterPunch
Weekend
Edition
August
10, 2002
Visit
Iraq
The Iraq "Issue" Must Break Out of the Zone of Silence
by Jan Oberg
Scholars do empirical work based on theories and
hypotheses. Journalists profess to describe reality. Diplomats
are supposed to know countries and policies by being present.
Western embassies in Moscow were particularly important during
the Cold War.
This has not been so with Iraq. Generally
- a word that means that there are exceptions - Western scholars
seem to think that they don't have to go there to know or form
their own opinions or influence those of others. Journalists
and their editors don't seem to think that they should go there
before they write their articles and editorials. Governments
are under-informed since many countries either have no representations,
low-level representations or cover Baghdad by shuttling in and
out from a neighbouring country from time to time.
This is not as it should be. Reports
everywhere tell us that the Bush regime is relentless in its
determination to start a major war against Iraq with the purpose
of toppling Saddam Husseyn. If it happens, as I presently think
it will, we face potentially unspeakable human suffering, mass
killing, refugee catastrophe and famine - in short, total chaos
- inside Iraq, incalculable regional consequences, Western conflicts,
perhaps a splitting of coalitions and alliances, not to speak
of soaring oil prices and global economic crisis.
Given the seriousness of the situation
for us all, the extent to which Iraq belongs to a "zone
of silence" is mind-boggling. Leading newspapers and websites
may have small blurbs about it, the US media a bit more, but
always about US planning of war and the US perspective, not that
of the other side. Media in the Nordic countries have a comparatively
large and qualified coverage of international affairs; but these
weeks and months, Iraq is simply not an issue. And if it is,
it is Iraq as seen from the West, the US perspective.
It's not difficult
to go there
TFF's team simply contacted the Iraqi
embassy in Stockholm and said we wanted to do an impartial fact-finding
mission, talking with as many different people as we possibly
could during a two-week stay. We explicitly said that we were
neither a solidarity nor a humanitarian organisation, but a scholarly
foundation with an interest in listening to the views as they
exist in Iraq/Baghdad. We wanted to get an impression of the
place and the living conditions. We also made it clear that our
message, if any, is that non-violence is more intelligent and
productive than violence.
This met no problems whatsoever. Neither
before, during, nor after mission did anyone try to "use"
TFF's team for propaganda purposes. All NGOs seem to be received
by the Iraqi Association of Peace, Friendship, Solidarity and,
together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Protocol Department,
our team was assigned two people who were responsible to set
up meetings with Iraqi individuals and organisations we had asked
to meet with. The leader of the tiny Iraqi-Swedish Friendship
Association, a former military turned successful businessman,
rapidly became a friend who really catered to our wish to sleep
as little and work as much as possible, took us around and tried
to open doors.
The mode of operation was simple: meetings
with Iraqi citizens were arranged by the mentioned association
and the ministry; meetings with internationals were arranged
by ourselves. We moved into a small private hotel after a rip-off
at the Al-Rashid Hotel where everybody foreign seems to be housed.
(On the card given to the guest, there is a dollar price and
an Iraqi Dinar price. When you arrive you think that it is the
same price given in the two currencies, but, alas, you have to
add the two together. One sum goes to the state, the other to
the hotel. This adds up to five star prices which TFF, as a principle,
does not accept.
We could move anywhere we wanted freely,
talk with people in the streets, go to religious places and take
pictures; however, the latter is not without restrictions. Monuments,
most palaces, military, semi-military as well as political buildings
are prohibited, but without signs saying so. So, you have to
ask. Even many of the thousands of pictures and monuments of
the President are not to be pictured by foreigners. The country
sees itself as being in war.
Getting over
the border and into Baghdad
We drove in from Amman, Jordan. It is
about 350 kilometres to the Iraqi border and then 550 or so to
Baghdad. It took us a good hour to enter Iraq at the border.
We knew we should not bring mobile phones in, so we had left
them in Amman. We declared our currency, and a document was made
for each of our computers and cameras. While waiting we were
served tea; everybody is friendly and polite. Bags have to be
opened, but neither books nor papers are investigated.
The officer in the little office where
the items are declared, shook our hands and said "Peace
be upon you" and "Welcome to Iraq", his hand touching
his heart. He has a Samsung computer on his desk, and while we
wait we can see a young scantily clad woman dance on the screen
accompanied by a small orchestra. We follow it while we wait
for him to do the paper work when he suddenly looks up and says.
"CD from Syria. Good, eh!?" A TV next to his simple
iron bed that he presumably rests on when there are no immigrants
coming, is on goggling without a picture. This is the first instance
of what we would later experience repeatedly: goods do enter
Iraq.
Outside stood 12 white Volvo trucks waiting
to enter; there are oil spills everywhere and queues of old cars
and road tankers. The duty free shop is like any other and has
a wide selection of liquor and wine. While you can't get wine,
beer or liquor at restaurants in Iraq, you can buy it and consume
it in private. Our driver fills the car with petrol - 200 litres
for 4 dollars! We exchange some dollars with a young boy at the
rate of 1900 Dinars to the dollar and off we go.
The sandy grey landscape, flat and stony,
stretches as far as the eye can see into the heat-bubbling horizon.
If you are searching for a few kilos of chemical substances,
or small parts of weapons of mass destruction, it could be buried
anywhere around without ever being found. The physical inspection
project is an absurdity; the only inspection possible must be
built on trust.
Here and there is a small box-shaped
home, a flock of sheep, a small cafe. But there is certainly
not much to see on this 2-3-laned straight road. We cruise at
about 150 kilometres per hour, and it is a dangerous road due
to animals on the road side, military transports, thousands of
trucks and drivers who seemingly don't even know what a driving
license is. Very sadly, our excellent driver took a Swedish diplomat
back to Amman by night, killed himself and his passenger the
week after we had driven with him; he lost control after having
hit a donkey at high speed.
However, military transports and thousands
of oil trucks were directed to another road parallel to the main
road. We see two types of trucks, those carrying oil from Iraq
to Jordan and those carrying other goods, including a lot of
hay. Over the days and months, the former must add up to quite
a few barrels. You meet the truckers when they gather at small
roadside restaurants lined with small stands selling fruits,
vegetables, cigarettes and dates. The rest are private cars stuffed
with goods, including medicine and other necessities, that may
be difficult to find in Iraq because some country has demanded
it be put on hold without even offering an argument.
We reach Baghdad around 9 p.m. to a great
surprise! Compared with Amman it is a very lively place. Shops
are open, there is lots of trade, and traffic is dense but police-regulated,
new and old cars are mixed. Colourful neon lights all over and
music mixing from all corners. Driving by huge boulevards, we
immediately see that shops are filled with customers and goods,
cars parked illegally are carried away by trucks. It's a rather
clean city and the atmosphere is relaxed. Baghdad is estimated
to have about 5 million inhabitants, one-fifth of the population.
The city is modern, but one easily sees
that is a shadow of what it must have been in terms of renovation
and maintenance. There is considerable building activity here
and there, not the least a gigantic mosque that will take ten
years to finish, new palaces, apartment houses, and public buildings.
One is struck by the hugeness of Baghdad and its endless high-speed
boulevards. While not without charm here and there, particularly
along the Tigris, it is not a city that reflects an impressive
history or the fact that it has been a cradle of civilisation.
The countryside
and its people
When you leave Baghdad, the scenery changes
and is reminiscent of poor developing countries. On the highway
toward Babylon, you see half-finished houses, water facilities
out of order and fences with barbed wire where all the metal
has been taken away and only the poles left naked behind. The
typical village is a series of houses on both sides of the four-lane
road with small shops selling cigarettes, groceries, and vegetables.
People, sheep and a few cows here and there move around in sand,
dust and filth. There is no end to the car repair shops, of course.
There may be large plantations, some surprisingly green but there
are also grey or light-brown agricultural fields that do not
seem to have seen water for months.
Bedouin men and women in black or white
dresses move slowly with their flock of sheep. Here a demolished
bus, victim of the murderous traffic; there a Vauxhall station
car from the 1950s; further along a Toyota with maize. Two men
try to repair a water pump in the sticky heat, approaching 50fC
(122fF).
Women, some completely covered in black
with only their eyes visible, fetch water from a well while men
drink tea and smoke under a tree. An over-filled Scania Bus has
seen better days when it passes a type of arch at the entrance
to a village on which a portrait of the great smiling leader
has been hung. You wonder whether, back in his palace in Baghdad,
he has ever been here or has a clue about the situation 50 kilometres
away? Now and then, but by no means in surprising numbers, we
see soldiers, checkpoints and (unmanned) watch towers.
We ask ourselves whether this is the
type of rural area which hundreds of thousands of Baghdad citizens
will flee to when and if their country is bombed and invaded?
There is no way that they could survive out here. The whole environment
smells of stagnation, de-development after years of domestic
mismanagement and international sanctions.
Iraq is a very unique country, but in
one sense it is like anywhere I have seen wars: it's the ordinary,
powerless people who pay the price of high politics. They have
no chance to get out of the double cage of domestic and international
politics.
Of course we see Babylon here; it's being
rebuilt to a certain extent. The huge walls and few original
stones and reliefs are impressive. The attempts to rebuild Babylon
and the small tiles inserted with a text stating that Saddam
Husseyn is the builder and protector of it all, feels slightly
pathetic given the misery we have just passed through.
Hopes among
the disadvantaged
However, we are in Babylon not merely
to see this but to visit some UNDP micro-credit programs. In
Babylon town we meet a young energetic woman who speaks a few
English words. She is in a wheelchair and tells us that she recently
finished her education in computer science at the Babylon College.
She then applied to the UNDP for a micro credit and got $750
US after having also been accepted by the Iraqi Ministry of Labour.
She was trained by UNDP and she now runs courses with all types
of students, local (older) citizens, even one in the shop who
does not own a computer but hopes to one day. The walls in her
little combined shop and classroom are filled with manuals and
there are advanced programs on several of the computers in the
room.
The local UNDP people also take us to
an unmarried carpenter born without legs in 1964. He is repairing
a rather large rococo chair with some gold paint on it when we
arrive in his little shop. He has received $500 US and he pays
back about $25 every month. The huge cupboards he builds by sitting
and crawling low on the floor, cost about $80 US. He has a good
chance to repay the loan within a few years as his business grows.
He has just invested in a saw but his greatest wish in the future
is to be able to buy a wheelchair that cost about $75 US. We
leave with a sense of hope; he has a chance to prosper because
he makes incredible things with his hands and works hard. It
is impossible to miss the pride and the hope in his brown eyes.
We also visit a bazaar area where a young,
round man has been helped to run a shoe shop. He buys Chinese
and Syrian shoes and sandals in Baghdad for 7,500 Iraqi dinars
a pair (about $3 US) and sells them for 9,000. We hastily enter
all kinds of shops in the bazaar and ask for the prices. ($1
US = approx. 2000 Dinars) A piece of soap 250, make- up powder
2000, a blouse 16,000, hair conditioner 6,000, night gown 7,500,
a kilo of olives 1,000, rice from Southern Iraq 200 per kilo,
100 grams of curry 500, flour 500 per kilo. The ordinary citizen
who has a job will hardly have more than $5-10 US a month, 10,000-20,000
Dinars. Those who have a job, or a pension, must share it with
family and relatives who don't.
Here, like everywhere else and in Baghdad,
we meet only kind, welcoming people. We would not have been surprised
if someone thought we belonged to the West (we do!), were Americans
or otherwise guilty for the sanctions, a major cause of their
misery. Not one person did during 14 days; we felt safe everywhere.
We took pictures, many asking us to do so, and the children of
course indescribably happy to see themselves on the monitor of
the digital camera. Shop owners invited us in, offered sweet
tea, and showed us their neatly arranged produce and commodities.
Here you may get a pen, here is something sweet to taste. "Welcome,
welcome, wher' you from?"
The classic Arab hospitality and welcoming
attitude towards the stranger has certainly not been destroyed.
Their gratitude and joy over the fact that somebody has come
a long way to ask them about their lives is so touching.
These are the people we, who have been
there, think of when we read about the Bush regime's plans to
bomb the country. Even if the peasants, Bedouin shepherds, the
young handicapped computer woman and carpenter and our bazaar
friends may not be killed, their dreams and hopes - like those
of 25 million other innocent Iraqi civilians - will be brutally
crushed.
There is no
humanity without empathy
When you are here, and see with your
own eyes, there are other pictures of Iraq than those you get
sitting back home. One reason that so few scholars, journalists
and diplomats go there is that it opens your eyes to another
reality, a broader human reality, of this problem called Iraq.
It becomes impossible not to sympathise with the 25 million people
sitting for decades in a double cage.
It becomes difficult to accept that cold-blooded,
emotionally numbed people in your own Western "civilisation"
have nothing else to offer the Iraqi people than their present
lives, where they live like animals in a zoo (the Oil for Food
Program just keeps people alive on a minimum of calories) and
a future of war. That war is bound to destroy their few simple
belongings, homes, water supply and produce. It will be the climax
of decades of dehumanisation and humiliation. How could it ever
lead to peace and justice?
Only one conclusion is possible when
you go there: the Iraqi people deserve the world's sympathy,
not our bombs. If you go there, you will hardly be able to advocate
war. Not one international staff member or mission chief we met,
most of whom have worked there for months and years, thought
sanctions was an effective political tool or that an invasion
would solve more problems than it would cause.
If TFF can go there, so can thousands
of other citizens, NGOs, media people, scholars and diplomats.
Please do, and find out about the other angles you never get
here.
Jan Oberg is director of Transnational
Foundation for Peace and Future Research based in Lund, Sweden.
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August 10/11,
2002
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