Iraqis on ”Success” and ”Progress” in Their Country
by Dahr Jamail
(Tom Dispatch)
This March 19 will be the fifth anniversary of the shock-and-awe air
assault on Baghdad that signaled the opening of the invasion of Iraq,
and when it comes to the American occupation of that country, no end is
yet in sight. If Republican presidential candidate John McCain has
anything to say about it, the occupation may never end. On January 7th,
he assured reporters that he was more than fine with the idea of the U.S. military remaining in Iraq for 100 years.
We’ve been in Japan for 60 years. We’ve been in South Korea 50 years
or so?As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded
or killed. That’s fine with me.
He said nothing, of course, about Iraqis injured or harmed or
wounded or killed. In fact, amid the flurries of words, accusations,
and debates which have filled the airways and add up to the
primary-season presidential campaign, there has been a near thunderous
silence on Iraq lately — and especially on Iraqis.
A recent ABC News/Washington Post poll
indicated that 64% of Americans now feel the war in Iraq was not worth
fighting. American opinion on the war and occupation, in fact, seems
remarkably unaffected by the positive spin — all those success
stories in the mainstream media — of these post-surge months. The
media now tells us that Iraq is going to be taking a distinct backseat
to domestic economic issues, that Americans are no longer as concerned
about it.
Once again, with rare exceptions, that media has had a hand in erasing
the catastrophe of Iraq from the American landscape, if not the
collective consciousness of the public. What, it occurred to me
recently, do my friends and acquaintances back in Iraq (where I covered
the occupation for eight months during the years 2003-2005) think not
just about their lives and the fate of their country, but about our
attitudes toward them? What do they think about the success — and
the silence — in America?
On October 6, 2004, George W. Bush proclaimed:
Iraq is no diversion; it is the place where civilization is taking a
decisive stand against chaos and terror — and we must not waver.
Iraqis, of course, continue to witness firsthand this decisive stand
against chaos and terror. In our world, however, they are largely mute
witnesses. Americans may argue among themselves about just how much
success or progress there really is in post-surge Iraq, but it is
almost invariably an argument in which Iraqis are but stick figures –
or dead bodies. Of late, I have been asking Iraqis I know by email what
they
make of the American version (or versions) of the unseemly reality that
is their country, that they live and suffer with. What does it mean to
become a secondary issue for your occupier?
In response, Professor S. Abdul Majeed Hassan, an Iraqi university faculty member wrote me the following:
The year of 2007 was the bloodiest among the
occupation years, and no matter how successful the situation looks to
Mr. Bush, reality is totally different. What kind of normal life are he
and the media referring to where four and a half million highly
educated Iraqis are still dislocated or still being forcefully driven
out of their homes for being anti-occupation? How can the people live a
normal life in a cage of concrete walls [she is referring to concrete
walls being erected by the Americans around entire Baghdad
neighborhoods], guarded by their kidnappers, killers, and occupation
forces? What kind of normal life can you live where tens of your
relatives and your beloved ones are either missing or in jail and you
don’t even know if they are still alive or, after being tortured, have
been thrown unidentified in the dumpsters?
What kind of normal life can you live when you have to bid farewell to
your family each time you go out to buy bread because you don’t know if
you are going to see them again? What is a normal life to Mr. Bush? If
we’re lucky, we get a few hours of electricity a day, barely enough
drinking water, no health care, no jobs to feed our kids?
Little teenage girls are given away in marriage because their families
can’t protect them from militias and troops during raids. Women cannot
move unescorted anymore. What kind of educations are our children
getting at universities where 60% of the prominent faculty members have
been driven out of their jobs — killed or forced to leave the country
by government militias? Is it normal that areas [on the outskirts of
Baghdad] like Saidiya and Arab Jubour are bombed because the occupation
forces are afraid to enter the areas for fear of the resistance? It is
always easier to control ghost cities. It becomes very peaceful without
the people.
On January 8th, President Bush held video teleconferences with
General David Petraeus and Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, as well as
with the U.S.-backed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and with
members of U.S. Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) in Iraq.
Afterwards, he told reporters
at a press conference, It was clear from my discussions that there’s
great hope in Iraq, that the Iraqis are beginning to see political
progress that is matching the dramatic security gains for the past
year. Members of the PRTs, he claimed, had told him that[l]ife is
returning to normal in communities across Iraq, with children back in
school and shops reopening and markets bustling with commerce. Bush
thanked members of those teams for making 2007, particularly the end
of 2007, become incredibly successful beyond anybody’s expectations.
Mohammad Mahri’i, an Iraqi journalist, has a rather different take on
the situation: The problem with Bush is that his people believe him
every time he lies to them, he writes me. His reconstruction teams
are invisible and I wish they could show me one inch above the ground
that they built.
Maki al-Nazzal, an Iraqi political analyst from Fallujah who has
been forced to live abroad with his family, thanks to ongoing violence
and the lack of jobs or significant reconstruction activity in his
city, which was three-quarters destroyed in a U.S. assault in November
2004, offered me his thoughts on the Western mainstream coverage of
Iraq.
The media should not follow the warlords’ and
politicians’ propaganda. It is our duty to search for the truth and not
repeat lies like parrots. The U.S. occupation is bad and no amount of
media propaganda can camouflage the mess inside occupied Iraq. We are
ashamed of the local and Western media [for] marketing the naked lies
told by generals and politicians. Comparing two halves of 2007 is
ridiculous.
Bush and his heroes, [head of the Coalition Provisional Authority L.
Paul] Bremer, [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld and now Petraeus
always lied to their people and the world about Iraq. U.S. soldiers are
getting killed on a daily basis and so are Iraqi army and police
officers. Infrastructure is destroyed. In a country that used to feed
much of the Arab world, starvation is now the norm. It is ironic that
Iraq was not half as bad during the 12 years of sanctions. Our
liberation has pushed us into a state of unprecedented corruption.
General David Petraeus, U.S. surge commander in Iraq, insists
that we and our Iraqi partners will?continue to look beyond the
security realm to help the Iraqis improve basic services, revitalize
local markets, repair damaged infrastructure and create conditions that
allow displaced families to return to their homes.
Iraqis know differently. Al-Nazzal is realistic:
Petraeus wants us to celebrate the return [to Baghdad]
of 50,000 Iraqis who were starving in Syria, when five million remain
in exile and internally displaced. What he conveniently forgets to
mention is that those who returned found their houses either destroyed
or occupied by others. He also wants to be praised for handing over the
nation’s security to militias he allowed to form rather than to
academics and technocrats. Iraq has no medicines in its hospitals, no
electricity, no potable water, no real security, and no well-guarded
borders. Nevertheless, some people say they are happy for what is going
on in Iraq!
Much as they would like to believe the claims of success and progress
from American officials, Iraqis — surrounded by disaster — cannot do
so.
37-year-old Sammy Tahir, a Kurdish education advisor living in Baghdad,
offers the following assessment of the cautious but upbeat claims being
made by Petraeus and others:
No improvement in any service can be found in Iraq. On
the contrary, we are much worse now and we are back to painting old
buildings to make them look better. Kurdistan is still full of
displaced Iraqis from southern and mid-Iraq.
About this Mari’i writes:
It was the generals who destroyed Iraq in the first
place and I do not see any improvement in basic services. For example,
most of Baghdad has been without electricity for about two weeks at the
time of writing!
Professor Hassan shares a similar view:
What the Americans hadn’t destroyed by the end of the
military operations of 2003, they have finished off over the past four
years, and I don’t think that the occupation forces and their assigned
government would like to do anything about the displacement of Iraqi
families, simply because they are the ones who created that situation.
The sectarian violence, which led to this mass displacement, was
initiated by the U.S. and its allies to divide the Iraqi community in
accordance with American plans and the published ‘new’ Iraqi
constitution, which emphasizes sectarian issues. The occupation would
like to divide Iraq into small sectarian and ethnic regions to be able
to easily command, control, and conquer them. The major objective of
the occupation is to control oil production and reserves in Iraq and
the Middle East region. Displacing families is, to them, acceptable
collateral damage.
According to Tahir:
Children always went to school before the late 2007
crackdown and it was mainly the military operations that stopped them
from doing so in some areas where the Americans attacked towns and
villages. Bush has been saying the same words since 2003, but things
have always gotten progressively worse in Iraq. He and his generals are
destroying both Iraq and the U.S. by continuing this war. The U.S.
economy will never hold against the expenses of war and Iraq is totally
destroyed.
During a surprise visit to Baghdad on January 15th, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said
that last year’s surge of American forces was paying dividends and
suggested that she could help push the momentum by her very presence
in Iraq.
Mahri’i’s offers a lament for the American presence and those dividends:
It seems that Americans do not care about what has
been done to Iraq. They decorated Bremer, who is a war criminal, with
top medals. [In December 2004, Bush bestowed
the Presidential Medal of Freedom on him.] Why not honor another
criminal like Petraeus and other Bush administration officials with the
same medals for lying to them while their soldiers and our people are
getting killed?
Tahir, on the other hand, has a warning: It seems that all U.S.
politicians and the majority of Americans think the way [Sen.] McCain
does. But they should not think Iraq is Japan or South Korea.
Mahri’i agrees: Such leaders will write the final page of history for
their country. If Americans keep electing such adventurers, then I can
see the end of their country approaching fast.
Professor Hassan states what is clearly on the minds of many Iraqis
as the occupation grinds on and the American presidential race revs up,
though she may be more charitable than many of her compatriots:
Most Americans figured out the real reasons behind the
invasion of Iraq and the terrible consequences of that war for them,
currently and in the future. The American people I know are kind,
considerate, and understanding. I am sure they will do what it will
take to end this occupation. They know by now that this is not a war of
the American people; it is the oil companies’ war, so why should they
sacrifice their young men and women for oil companies’ greed?
Last October, speaking of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation at
Stanford University, where he is now a visiting fellow of the Hoover
Institute, former CENTCOM Commander General John Abizaid told the audience,
Of course it’s about oil, we can’t really deny that. General
Abizaid’s comment came roughly a month after former Federal Reserve
Chairman Alan Greenspan wrote
in his memoir, I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to
acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.
While many in the U.S., along with Bush administration officials and
leading presidential candidates (both Democratic and Republican)
continue to refuse to grasp the magnitude of the catastrophe that is
the occupation of Iraq, Iraqis don’t have the same luxury.
Early on in my time in Iraq, during the first year of the occupation,
the Iraqis I met were generally quick to differentiate between the
policies of the U.S. government and the desires of the American people.
Over time, after brutal U.S. military operations against cities like
Najaf, Fallujah, Al-Qa’im, Samarra, and Ramadi, after Abu Ghraib, after
Haditha, after the near-total collapse of their country’s
infrastructure and the shredding of its social fabric, I began to
witness occupation-weary Iraqis ceasing to draw that same critical
line.
Recently, a resident of Baquba (who asked not to be identified by
name for fear of retribution for talking to the media), told my Iraqi
colleague Ahmed Ali, The lack of security is a direct result of the
occupation. The Americans crossed thousands of miles to destroy our
home and kill our men. They are the reason for all our disasters.
Abu Tariq, a merchant from Baquba, believes the U.S. military intentionally destroyed Iraq’s infrastructure. He told Ali,
The Americans destroyed the electricity, water-pumping
stations, factories, bridges, highways, hospitals, schools, burnt the
buildings, and opened the borders for the strangers and terrorists to
get easily into the country. The one who does all these things is void
of humanity. I hate America and Americans.
Abu Taiseer, another resident of Baquba, summed up Iraqi bitterness this way:
At the very beginning of the occupation, the people of
Iraq did not realize the U.S. strategy in the area. Their strategy is
based on destruction and massacres. They do anything to have their
agenda fulfilled. Now, Iraqis know that behind the U.S. smile is hatred
and violence. They call others violent and terrorists while what they
are doing in Iraq and in other countries is the origin and essence of
terror.
Jalal al-Taee, a retired teacher, told Ali what more Iraqis than ever likely believe:
In Baquba, people have severe hatred towards the
Americans and a large number of residents have become enemies of the
U.S. army. The people of Diyala province have been oppressed and
treated unjustly by the U.S. army and the [Baghdad] government. In
order to improve the situation, the U.S. army should let the people of
this city rule it by themselves.
Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist, is the author of the recently published Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq
(Haymarket Books, 2007). Over the last four years, Jamail has reported
from occupied Iraq as well as Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Turkey. He
writes regularly for Tomdispatch.com, Inter Press Service, Asia Times,
and Foreign Policy in Focus. He has contributed to the Sunday Herald,
the Independent, the Guardian, and the Nation magazine, among other
publications. He maintains a website, Dahr Jamail’s Mideast Dispatches, with all his writing.
Copyright 2008 Dahr Jamail
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