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Four Years
ABC NEWS/USA TODAY/BBC/ARD POLL – IRAQ: WHERE THINGS STAND (pdf)
- Eighty percent of Iraqis report attacks nearby – car
bombs, snipers, kidnappings, armed forces fighting each other or abusing civilians.
- More than half of Iraqis, 53 percent, have a close friend or
relative who’s been hurt or killed in the current violence. One in six says someone in
their own household has been harmed.
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In November
2
2005, 63 percent of Iraqis felt very safe in their neighborhoods. Today just 26 percent say
the same. One in three doesn’t feel safe at all. In Baghdad, home to a fifth of the
country’s population, that skyrockets: Eighty-four percent feel entirely unsafe.
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In 2005, despite the difficulties in their country, 71 percent of
Iraqis said their own lives were going well. Today that’s been all but halved, to 39
percent.
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In 2005, two-thirds expected their lives to improve over the coming year. Now
just 35 percent see better days ahead.
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The
number of Iraqis who call it “acceptable” to attack U.S. and coalition forces, 17 percent
in early 2004, has tripled to 51 percent now, led by near-unanimity among Sunni Arabs.
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Nationally, 12 percent report that ethnic cleansing – the forced separation of Sunnis and
Shiites – has occurred in their neighborhoods. In mixed-population Baghdad, it’s 31
percent.
- In rare agreement, 97 percent of Sunni Arabs and Shiites
alike oppose the separation of Iraqis on sectarian lines.
- [F]ewer than half of Iraqis, 42 percent,
say life is better now than it was under Saddam Hussein, …
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Forty-two percent think their country is in a civil war; 24 percent more think one is
likely.
- Barely over four in 10 expect a better life for their children.
- Three in 10 say they’d leave Iraq if they could.
The survey was conducted by a field staff of 150 Iraqis in all, including 103 interviewers,
interviewing 2,212 randomly selected respondents at 458 locales across the country from
Feb. 25 to March 5.
You don’t have to Google very far into this story to learn that the Arab paramilitary being used against the black Africans is no ragtag outfit…
no kidding…
copeland – seriously recommend that you at least read the mamdani essay in the LRB linked in #8 above to understand the situation, wrt it not being a genocide and not being a case of an ‘arab’ govt killing ‘black africans’.
The conflict in Darfur is highly politicised, and so is the international campaign. One of the campaign’s constant refrains has been that the ongoing genocide is racial: ‘Arabs’ are trying to eliminate ‘Africans’. But both ‘Arab’ and ‘African’ have several meanings in Sudan. There have been at least three meanings of ‘Arab’. Locally, ‘Arab’ was a pejorative reference to the lifestyle of the nomad as uncouth; regionally, it referred to someone whose primary language was Arabic. In this sense, a group could become ‘Arab’ over time. This process, known as Arabisation, was not an anomaly in the region: there was Amharisation in Ethiopia and Swahilisation on the East African coast. The third meaning of ‘Arab’ was ‘privileged and exclusive’; it was the claim of the riverine political aristocracy who had ruled Sudan since independence, and who equated Arabisation with the spread of civilisation and being Arab with descent.
‘African’, in this context, was a subaltern identity that also had the potential of being either exclusive or inclusive. The two meanings were not only contradictory but came from the experience of two different insurgencies. The inclusive meaning was more political than racial or even cultural (linguistic), in the sense that an ‘African’ was anyone determined to make a future within Africa. It was pioneered by John Garang, the leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in the south, as a way of holding together the New Sudan he hoped to see. In contrast, its exclusive meaning came in two versions, one hard (racial) and the other soft (linguistic) – ‘African’ as Bantu and ‘African’ as the identity of anyone who spoke a language indigenous to Africa. The racial meaning came to take a strong hold in both the counter-insurgency and the insurgency in Darfur. The Save Darfur campaign’s characterisation of the violence as ‘Arab’ against ‘African’ obscured both the fact that the violence was not one-sided and the contest over the meaning of ‘Arab’ and ‘African’: a contest that was critical precisely because it was ultimately about who belonged and who did not in the political community called Sudan. The depoliticisation, naturalisation and, ultimately, demonisation of the notion ‘Arab’, as against ‘African’, has been the deadliest effect, whether intended or not, of the Save Darfur campaign.
that’s just one aspect of the western spin. the crimes & attrocities, as mamdani points out, have been attributed equally to warring sides in the conflict by international investigators. yet most western media reports focus on the regime & leave out the role of the rebel forces in the conflict.
mamdani states that
The dynamic of civil war in Sudan has fed on multiple sources: first, the post-independence monopoly of power enjoyed by a tiny ‘Arabised’ elite from the riverine north of Khartoum, a monopoly that has bred growing resistance among the majority, marginalised populations in the south, east and west of the country; second, the rebel movements which have in their turn bred ambitious leaders unwilling to enter into power-sharing arrangements as a prelude to peace; and, finally, external forces that continue to encourage those who are interested in retaining or obtaining a monopoly of power.
there are a lot of countries/companies, local & international, w/ vested interests in how things turn out in sudan. the u.s., for instance, as i pointed out in #13 above, works closely w/ the govt in khartoum. yet it u.s. has also long been involved in supporting the opposition, funding garang’s SPLA even as it used terrorism against villagers and others. and support for other NDA groups, the SLA, etc…
so it’s a complicated sitch over there in the sudan. nothing like the fairy-tale good vs evil stories generated in western media & used to manipulate public comprehension & political pressures on actors in sudan & foreign legislation/military circles.
keith harmon snow breaks it all down, in terms of resource extraction, like this
There is no mistaking this: the conclusion that can easily be drawn, if we reduce the Darfur situation to the simplest terms, is that it is about oil, the Chinese and Arabs have it, and we want it. Who is “we”? While some powerful corporate factions connected to the Anglo-American-Israeli power structure are cooperating with the Government of Sudan, others are excluded from the profits to be made on oil and, as we will see, other things.
So how do powerful corporations excluded from a piece of the Sudan pie get at that pie? Divide and conquer. Covert operations. Psychological operations. Unwittingly obtuse English professors jumping up and down and screaming, “atrocities, atrocities, atrocities.”
Here’s the scenario.
First: create instability and chaos that gives the appearance of Arabs fighting Africans (it’s always those other people over there killing each other). Second: wage a media campaign that focuses a laser beam of public attention on the rising instability. Third: whip up public opinion and fury among a highly manipulated Western population who will, quite literally, believe anything. Fourth: make sure the devil—this time it’s the Janjaweed—comes on horseback. This latter point underscores the tight, unwavering narrative of good versus evil. Fifth: demonize the “enemy” [read: dirty A-Rabs] and their partners [Chinese oil companies]. Sixth: onward Christian soldiers and their “humanitarian” armies; enter “Save Darfur!” and, voila!, a movement is born. Seventh: continue to chip away the power of the enemy by chipping away at their credibility. Eighth: under the banners of high moral approbation, and with full support of a deeply caring Western public, overthrow the malevolent forces [of Islam and the Orient] and instill a benevolent, peace-loving, pro-democracy government. Last: wipe away the sanctions, no longer needed, and bring much-needed “development” to another backward country. And there you have it: yet another civilizing mission to conquer those barbaric Arab hoardes, and those starving, helpless, uneducated, diseased, tribal, Africans.
meanwhile…
Posted by: b real | Mar 21 2007 4:31 utc | 15
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