Iraq: Everybody's pawn
: Iraq is a mined chessboard with outsiders -- American left and right, Europeans, Saudis, Palestinians, and on and on -- all playing the big pieces while Iraqis are everybody's pawns. Iraq is at the center of political fights all over the globe but we hardly hear from the Iraqis.
So consider these related posts today. As they say on This American Life, our story today is in four acts:
: ACT I: AN IRAQI BLOGS: Ali writes another remarkable post about everybody else in the world speaking for -- and killing and killing for -- Iraqis but we don't hear from Iraqis themselves. He laughs at a huge demonstration organized by Hezbollah in Lebanon "protesting against the 'violations' of the American army in the holy cities of Najaf and Kerballa" while in Iraq...
Despite some alleged "Fatwas" and few speeches about “red lines”, most of the political AND religious leaders were calling for withdrawal of *all* armed forces and militias from the holy cities. No one called for jihad, and no one blamed the Americans, except for Sadr followers. There were almost no anti-American demonstrations regarding this issue, at least not any significant ones.
If one is to believe the media and the Arab leaders and Muslim clerics, the only conclusions that can be drawn from such a situation, is that there are no Iraqis in Iraq. The only Iraqis who seem to exist and “care about the Iraqi people” live outside Iraq!
Isn't that too true: judging from all the people speaking for Iraq, "there are no Iraqis in Iraq." So why, he asks, aren't Iraqis taking to the streets and demonstrating like Lebanese?
I guess there are only few answers to this question. It’s either that the majority of Iraqis don’t feel there’s such huge violation that needs to be protested against, or that they are more interested in their daily lives; their jobs and the future of their children than whining about buildings that as holy as they are to them, can not match their care about their jobs and children’s future.
This may give the impression that Iraqis are apathetic to what’s happening in their country, which could be true for some of them as a result of decades of oppression and hopelessness, but when one remembers that Iraqis did demonstrate a lot in the last year, such presumptions indeed seems to fit only a minority.
The only difference here is that most of the demonstrations the Iraqis made were not demanding ending the occupations. They were about improving life conditions and security; in other words things that really matter to them. Still there were political demonstrations, but the largest of these were, one demanding immediate elections and one condemning terrorism!!
And remember that that demonstration was not covered in major western media; it was, instead,
covered by a blogger in Iraq.
Ali tells you what Iraqis really do care about and it's what you and I care about: freedom and democracy.
The only way we can stop that is by continuing the building of democracy in Iraq. Once those outsiders lose any sympathy inside Iraq, and once the neighboring countries feel that it’s impossible to stop the process, they’ll give up and try to find other alternatives that might help them keep their decayed regimes alive, at least for few more years. It’s not that easy, but it’s that simple. This is a battle of wills above all.
: ACT II: PERSONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION: Now read Tom Friedman on
PMDs -- persons of mass destruction, the homicide bombers who are recruited by extremists to kill Israelis and now Iraqis.
We're so shell-shocked, we just treat this as another day, another suicide bomb in Iraq. But we need to think about this. My rough estimate is that there have been 50 to 75 suicide bomb attacks in Iraq in the last year. So the first question I have is this: Where are all these suicide bombers coming from? How do you just get these people off the shelf? ...
But the U.S. "occupation" of Iraq is only a year old, and the suicide bombings started there within a few months of U.S. forces' arriving, to liberate the Iraqi people from Saddam's warped tyranny. So what does that mean? It means that some group or groups have the ability to recruit a large pool of people willing to kill themselves in attacks against American or Iraqi targets on short notice — and we don't have a clue how this process works.
We don't know who these people are — although reports suggest they are coming from Europe, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia ...
"I don't think the P.M.D.'s are really a product of local Iraqi resentment against us," says Raymond Stock, an expert on Arabic literature and media based in Cairo. "They are mainly imported cookie-cutter killers, created by a combination of Arab mass media, certain extremist elements in Muslim culture, and some very shrewd recruiting by Al Qaeda and its ilk. When young, angry, futureless, sexually repressed people are taught that death is a permanent vacation of guilt-free pleasure, and they see it glorified in countless videos, all you need is a willing truck driver to ferry them over the border from Syria, Jordan, Turkey or Saudi Arabia and presto — a human bomb."
In our media, you'll hear these people called "insurgents," as if they are Iraqis with a cause. No, they are insane murderers from elsewhere. They do not speak for Iraqis. They murder Iraqis. We still need to hear Iraqis speak for Iraq.
: ACT III: THE CONE OF SILENCE: Now see Jay Rosen summarizing the issue I also raised a few days before: Reporters for Western media in Iraq aren't leaving the fortified Green Zone because it's unsafe. That means they're not talking to Iraqis. That means we're not hearing Iraqis.
: ACT IV: THE FLORIDA SISTERS: Here's an odd little story: Two Florida sisters start a web site -- and even send a press release out about it -- dedicated to presenting just the first-person voices from Iraq: Iraqi bloggers and military bloggers who have been there.
The execution is iffy: They do not include Zeyad and half the sites on his blogroll. But that's easily fixed. We can leave comments here suggesting more sites to include.
Nonetheless, hear what's behind their work: A desire to finally hear what happening in Iraq from people who are there, not chesspieces everywhere else in the world, all with their own moves in mind, not the Iraqis.
We do not know what is happening in Iraq. We do not know Iraqis are thinking. The weblogs are the first, best hope to find out but we need more of their voices and we need to listen to them.
