Who will put Iraq together again?

Who will put Iraq together again?


By Reza Jalali,

Copyright © 2006 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.
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About the Author
Reza Jalali, a Kurd from Iran, has lived in Maine since 1985. He works at the University of Southern Maine and writes and speaks nationally on Islam and the politics of the Middle East.



Once upon a time, in between the two great rivers Euphrates and Tigris, in a land called Mesopotamia, so goes an ancient Kurdish tale, lived a tyrant called Dehak.

The legend has it that Satan himself had helped Dehak to get to the throne and in return had asked Dehak for permission to kiss the king's shoulders as a sign of respect. With permission granted, two snakes, one on each shoulder, grew on the spots where the tyrant was kissed by Satan.

The frightened king was told that the coiled snakes posed no harm to him as long as they were fed the brains of the young of the land. So for years, the youth were arrested by the king's guards and executed to satisfy the snakes' appetites.

The day came when the guards came to ask for the last son of a poor Kurdish blacksmith called Kawa. He refused and followed by the angry mob of other grieving citizens, Kawa marched to the palace. Once there, he killed not only the snakes but also the tyrant Dehak himself. Fires were lit on the mountaintops to let others know the time of the tyrant and his snakes had ended and people were, finally, free.

SADDAM: FROM FRIEND TO FOE

With the quagmire of Iraq continuing with no end in sight, and the uncertainty about what will become of this shattered country, there are parallels between the ancient tale and the contemporary Iraq.

Saddam, responsible for the murder of thousands of Kurds and others, could himself be the tyrant kissed by Satan. During the Cold War, he was supported by the former Soviet Union, which we called the "evil empire." By the end of the Cold War, it was the United States that started to support the tyrant of Baghdad in his war against the mullahs in Iran, who by then were calling the United States "the great Satan."

This was when Iraq and neighboring Iran were locked in a long and bloody war - with the United States supporting Saddam - that left more than a million people on both sides of the border fed to the war's ever-hungry snakes.

Forward to today's Iraq and there is another twin set of snakes killing not only young men but women, children and old men as well.

The ongoing insurgency and occupation are the coiled snakes that feed on violence. They came to exist once the invasion of a sovereign nation, to the grief of the world, became a reality. Understandably, each snake thrives because of the other.

Then the question: Where is a good blacksmith when you need one? In absence of any blacksmith and an exit plan, we hear a mantra, parroted by all: We need to finish the "job." The stale fairy tales coming out of a tired White House, which promised us a repeat of Paris in 1945 with Iraqis lining the streets of Baghdad to welcome the Americans, continues to offer elections as the key to the happy ending.

FORCED MARRIAGES ON THE ROCKS

Iraq is a complicated place. What Medard Gabel said in describing wars as "a violent response to complexity by simple minds" seems to describe the situation in Iraq well.

Iraq before the invasion was a secular country, with more drinking water and electricity than now. With the exception of the Kurdish areas, today's Iraq resembles Iran under the mullahs when it comes to its women's rights, while resembling Israeli-occupied Gaza when it comes to the violence caused by suicide bombers and car bombs.

The Iraq that we broke is a precious china vase passed down the family line that was dropped and broken into many pieces when excessive force was employed to snatch it away violently from the thief of Baghdad.

To better understand Iraq, home to an ancient culture, one has to recognize the role of the British in putting together the modern Iraq, made up of vastly different ethnic and religious groups. This indeed was an arranged marriage, blessed by the British and intended to control Iraq's oil resources. As in most arranged marriages, each partner's consent was not sought. The Kurds in the north, Shias in the south and Sunnis in the middle found themselves together in a bond that was destined to unglue given the chance.

As forced arranged marriages go, this one, too, turned abusive with Kurds and Shias being the victims of horrendous domestic abuse. It's for this reason that Iraq will never again be a country as we knew it. Kurds seek a civil and honorable divorce, hoping that the oil wealth in Kirkuk could be their alimony. Shias in the south hope for the same, leaving the once-powerful Sunnis to become the new poor and weak.

It is sheer fantasy to pretend, as the Bush administration does as it attempts to remake the Middle East in the image of the United States, that Iraq will stay united, and democratic at that. Iraq is made up of warring tribes who have different visions of a future.

TRIBAL CONFLICTS CONTINUE

The Kurds, for example, are getting increasingly impatient with their leaders, who have been wooed by the occupiers into asking their people to postpone their dream of self-determination in the name of unity. To the Kurds, this is their historic moment to leave their sorrows behind and to begin a life of independence, security and prosperity. Their incentive to remain in a federal Iraq is to follow the orders of future Shia fundamentalist governments in Baghdad, which already behave more like the one in neighboring Iran.

The Sunnis have little to gain by joining the peaceful rebuilding of their nation as they, too, fear being governed by Iraqi ayatollahs. That's unless the minority Kurds and Sunnis receive assurances, guaranteed by the international community and the United Nations, that they have a secure future in the new country.

Just as elections conducted under occupation serve only to bare the fault lines of the Iraqi society, the Americans' support of one group over another could push the country toward civil war. For building democracies has never started with invasions and bombs.

"The human heart is the first home of democracy," writes naturalist Terry Tempest Williams. But there is little room in the hearts of ordinary Iraqis, which are filled with fear, hatred and intolerance. Elections or not, it is the national sense of unity that is missing. Indeed, a nation is built in people's imagination before it becomes a reality on the ground.

We broke Iraq, but own it and fix it, we may not. Repairing and rebuilding factories, bridges and schools is easy compared to rebuilding the lives of ordinary Iraqis and mending their shattered hearts and hopes. The happy ending to this tale is perhaps possible once the occupying forces have left.

Generations later, there still might be groups of clear-headed Iraqis - if they still want to be called that - who are removed from the cruelty of the old regime by time and place and separated emotionally from the brutality of the invasion and the criminality of the American-run Abu Ghraib prison and Shia militia-run gulags. They could sit together in a room to chart the course of a new nation that includes all its children and offers them a place at the table, with no armed Ame- rican guards at the door.

But between now and then, for sake of the future blacksmiths of our imaginations, we have to remain hopeful for Iraq.