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Renewed Iraq Violence
After a relative quiet January, February saw a sharp increase of violent death in Iraq with 258 people killed. In March the situation seems to become even worse.
Last Thursday Thursday, a truck bomb killed 10 people and wounded scores at a livestock market near Hilla, south of Baghdad. Sunday a suicide bomber killed 28 near a police academy in Baghdad. Today a suicide bomber killed 33 at a a tribal reconciliation meeting.
The Thursday attack was likely against predominant Shia, Sunday's attack against state security and today against Sunni leaders cooperating with the state. That makes it likely that this campaign is run by former Baathists and/or some salafist takfiris.
What is the idea behind this campaign? To restart a sectarian civil war? To unsettle the government? To keep the U.S. in Iraq?
I see little chance for them to achieve any of those goals.
It’s simply wrong to assume that “these people have been killing each other for thousands of years” as if it’s an inherent or innate part of their (individual) personality.
Well, no. Actually, it isn’t.
The Sunni and Shia have been fighting for control of the Sunna ever since the Shia split from the Sunni line.
The Kurds have been fighting against the Arabs for as long as the two have co-existed; and if you include pre-Islamic history, then it’s in no way wrong to say that “these people have been fighting for thousands of years.”
Here in Taiwan, there is a small but vibrant Muslim community. Once you start to get involved with them, the most immediate thing that sticks out is that — unlike, say, the Indonesians, Malaysians, or Central Asian Muslims — the Middle Easterners are extremely clannish. Egyptians, Jordanians, Palestinians, Maghrebians — they all stick together, and they all share very similar opinions of one another (many of which aren’t very flattering).
Even within a relatively peaceful place like Jordan, the tribal lines are drawn with prejudicial distinction. Palestinians band together, and they are at the mercy of the Urban Jordanian security establishment; the Bedouin from the deserts do not enjoy the same authority as the urban Jordanians, but they are given freer rein to move around and do as they please than the Palestinians. Jordanian Christians have a culture distinct from Jordanian Muslims — and so on.
Lebanon is another good example. It’s a nation, right? Well, no; not really. “National identity” connotes a shared ethnicity and cultural background, but beyond doing business with one another, the Lebanese don’t have that. There’s Hamas; there’s the PLO; there’s Hizb’allah; there’s the Phalangists; Christians vs. Muslims; darkies vs. whities; and so on.
Iraq is no different in this respect. Yes, Hussein succeeded in enforcing a measure of peace and cooperation upon the people — but he did so at the point of a gun, utilizing torture, imprisonment, and cursory executions with no underlying legal process. Once he was removed, it was a certainty that violence would erupt along ethnic and cultural fault-lines — just as it did during the Second Persian Gulf War, when the U.S. encouraged the southern Shia to revolt and then hung them out to dry.
As i said before: i support any criticisms of the neocons, and how they handled the war. I always opposed it, and despise the people who created it. But we should not fall into the very ugly habit of blaming the U.S. for everything. I say this even as i am fully prepared to acknowledge that the U.S. invasion was the catalyst for the violence. I can agree with you when you say, anna, that:
Remove the pressure and the response goes away, apply the pressure the response returns.
But it is a terrible mistake — hubristic, in fact — to suggest that the pressures on this region ONLY come from the U.S. and its partner in crime, Israel. Setting aside Russia’s role over the last thirty or forty years, it is disingenuous to pretend like the Saudi-backed Salafis haven’t had a part to play in stoking these fires, just as it is to forget that Iran has a vested interest in seeing its Shia supporters come out victorious.
Then, of course, there are the Baathists. My suggestion to you, regarding the Syrian camps, would be that the Baathist elements are doubtlessly strengthened and re-inforced within Syria. But the suggestion that this indicates a shared, peacefully accepted national identity of some sort doesn’t follow.
The Baathists under Hussein were bloody, torturous, and lacked no compunction about such acts as gassing their own civilian population. Stuff like that doesn’t happen amongst a people who truly share a “national identity”, as was the case with France, Germany, or Britain, these last few hundred years.
Would you also say that the Irish share a national identity? Northern Ireland? What about Scotland — would you say they share a national identity as British? What about the Basques?
These questions are not simple things to answer, and if one’s intent is to persuade people to re-think the causes and consequences of this war, it’s best to acknowledge the complexity, rather than trying to sweep it under the rug and blame everything that happens on the U.S.
The U.S. military is, obviously, NOT in control of everything that happens, there. Obviously because, if they were, the U.S. government wouldn’t be trying so hard to pull it out.
Posted by: china_hand2 | Mar 13 2009 6:34 utc | 17
chinahand, as i mentioned earlier, your assertions do not match the voices of most iraqi bloggers. for example, i have been reading some of the teens blogs for quite awhile, the war has gone on so long you can literally listen to them growing up and evolving thru their teens. they have mixed friends. in mosel when the purging of christians was occurring their was horror in their (muslim) voices when their neighbors were forced to move. the policy of walls is meant to force and then reinforce the separation all leading eventually to the neocon/zionist plan of division thru sect. in politie company in iraq you never ask what sect a person is and many of the people didn’t even know what their friends were prior to the war. according to them anyway.
an example from circa 06 a year in review by Konfused Kid, who now calls himself Catharsis.
This year contains the best day of my life: The Graduation Day, I have never felt such an exaltness and looseness in my entire life, I danced like crazy until i got too tired to stand up – maybe it’s also because i felt very cool that day – Our costume was a Mexican Mariaachi, I was the only one with the long hair wig and the fake big moustaches, I was the talk of the town! I also wrote a song for the march and had the guys sing it, I felt very happy that day.
That day was June 5, 2006, six days later was the worst day of my entire life, my four friends were killed – for most people, graduation is a big thing, for me it didn’t register much, because its joy was swiftly encompassed by the great sorrow that swallowed it – this event has changed my incredibly – I became very pessimistic towards Iraq’s future and have now entirely different thoughts about my identity, before this year I used to think of myself as an:
1. Iraqi first, and most importantly
2. Arab second.
3. Muslim thirdly, not as important as the first two.
But today, I am:
1. Muslim first.
2. Arab second.
and I don’t want to be an Iraqi, I didn’t ask for being one in the first place.
The longhand explanation requires much discussions for which this year-in-review has no.
For me, “Iraqi” now is just a tag I am identified with, cuz of my dialect, the place I was born, etc- as for the emotions it conveys, it don’t register here anymore. and I wonder if it ever did..actually. I am not even sad as I write this, I just want to say this out and loud for all to hear.
these friends of his, his very best lifelong friends. it was just brutal reading about their deaths. and sect had never been important to them.
9/22
They were the best of people. Two of them, my best friends, were Shiites; another was Sunni and the other was Christian — an example of unity that can never be portrayed in a million years by the hypocritical fake advertisements they numb us with on TV. Three of them lived in the internal hostel because their families were abroad, and each one’s story is sadder than the other.
Ninos, the Christian, was perhaps the kindest person I ever met, the type that fills you with a warm glow when you speak with him … you connected to a forgotten fountain of happiness that was spurred by his natural do-goodness. He had just two weeks until he would have finished his final exams and returned forever to the safety of Kurdistan, where his Assyrian family resides.
Yahya was a Sunni from Mosul, also a nice guy: He could not even hurt the ground he stepped on. (He and Ninos were roommates, and were called “the saints” by their neighbors.) His family had moved to Egypt after being threatened. He had one week until he was to leave for home, and on top of that, get married. The girl in question is in our academic department. She is now in a state of paralysis.
The third, Hobi, was a Shiite of Turkish descent from Karbala. He was my best friend. The day before, I asked him if we could take a picture together since this was the last year of college and I would probably never see him again after he set off for Spain, where his mother lives. Little did I know I would get that picture, and that it would be a picture of his grave.
I remember precisely the moment when I got the phone call at 10:30 p.m. telling me that three of them were dead.* The time went very slowly. The room, just a minute earlier moist and extremely hot, became sullen and cold. In the living room Nancy Ajram was loudly assuring us of her undying joy and devotion, strangely out of context.
I went upstairs and wept alone. I wept all day, frequently looking at the mirror and gesturing incoherently … Robert DeNiro would’ve been ashamed …
The next day, while I was walking in the protest in which the three coffins were held up high and marched around the college courtyards, everyone was crying, everyone was shouting — it was a terrible sight. But when I heard the shouts “No! No to Terrorism!” up ahead, I didn’t feel a thing. They were exploiting us, we the people, we the good people of Iraq who never looked at our good friends as Sunni, Shia and Christian — these divisions did not exist. We cried for them together. We prayed the Islamic funeral prayer over all three of them, even though it is supposed to be unacceptable in Islam to pray for the Christian dead. I didn’t feel that I wanted vengeance towards Zarqawi in particular. I didn’t know why then, but I think I do now: because it is not only Zarqawi who is to blame.
you can literally hear him change over the course of the year. scroll to 4/19/06. scroll to the finali in Friday, March 24, 2006
The Day I Tried To Go Home…
———–
FINAL SCORE
2 HOMEBOYS KILLED, 16 POLICE OFFICERS DEAD.
—————————————————————
And so here I am, back home after one of the most troublesome days I’ve yet met – made more intense by JIDIDA’s incessant fears and nagging.Today I was utterly and truly convinced of the helplessness of the political game, I lost faith again in keeping interest, true, I love my coutnry and I wish the best for it, and I may have been more optimistic in the past – much to the admiration of those stupid clueless Americans who just want someone to assert their legality of the war – FUCK THE EXCUSE, the country is falling apart, people, it takes strong strong wills to have more faith in this country, look everywhere on the blogosphere, hope is quickly dying…I just wanna swear my ass off at this horrible mess we’ve deteroriated into, it is now impossible, I tell you, impossible not to think of sectarian terms, as people are being divided into Sunni and Shiite territories, things do not look very promising. Six months earlier, I didn’t even know what the word ‘sectarian’ meant in English, after a death of a close family friend by Badr, I became aware of the danger, but I shrugged it off as something that cannot ferment a long-standing unity, but today, it is amazing how little evil work can change a belief so quickly – these days, every person I meet, there’s a little voice inside me that wants to know if he’s Sunni or Shiite, I’ve become hatefully familiar with all the discrmiminations between Sunni and Shiite and how to tell who’s who (names, areas, clothings, rings, vocal intonations)…All out Brother-against-brother Civil War? why the hell not….
The only place I feel free of these constraints is in college, most of my friends there are Shiite from southern governorates, and some of them are actually UIA-affiliated, they are also the nicest people – we spend our days talking girls and laughing head-over-heels, but when you get back to your repsective Sunni/Shiite territory, things are a lot different.
Well well, what to do, I guess I’ll turn up Metallica’s ‘Mercyful Fate’ and revel in swearing it all away as a last resort of an insecure teenage dude who’s weak with words..
[hip-hop backup beat]
F**k You
F**k Me
F**k Sunni
F**k Shiite
F**k Iraq
F**k USA
F**k Allys
F**k
F**k
Piss
C()t
D((k
Stupid Mothafa’in’ Politicans
at 10/18 he lists a whole bunch of iraqi bloggers and their reaction to the traitor bloggers (ITM) denouncing the lancet study. this is just ONE young voice, who has really changed during the war. i suggest you listen more to iraqi voices, especially of the youth before you make such sweeping statements.
Posted by: annie | Mar 13 2009 14:53 utc | 20
China_hand2, maybe I’m not being clear but, I think you’re drawing inferences and jumping to conclusions. Nowhere did I mention nationalism or national identity as it pertains to ethno-sectarian violence.
No. Actually, i think it’s just that i was making inferences and jumps between yours and Alex’s posts. I made the mistake that you were offering support directly for his perspective, when it’s clear now that you were simply offering up your own, much subtler points about what was going on.
I agree with you completely that this violence is not an innate “Iraqi” quality. Which i think you can easily believe, because i don’t really think there’s such a thing as an “Iraqi”, in the “Western” sense of the word.
But — just in case there’s any question about this – i also wouldn’t ever say there’s any greater or lesser tendency towards violence in any group of humans over another. Barring genetically incontrovertible evidence (which i totally do not believe we will ever have), then such a statement seems to me simply uncouth.
And the rest of your post i am in complete agreement with.
To respond to your implied question about the Muslim community, here: there is nothing contradictory in saying someone is clannish as a Muslim, and also clannish within Islam. In fact, one implies the other. I’d suggest that someone who sees the world from the perspective of a clan, would tend to conform to a sociology not too far away from:
first the immediate family, next the extended family, third the tribe, fourth the people/land, fifth the religion, sixth the business group, seventh the….
You see what i’m getting at; there’s nothing contradictory in saying that the Muslims are clannish as Muslims, and yet also clannish internally, as well.
However, insofar as you talk about the Iraqi society: well, i don’t need to hang out on Iraqi blogs. There are a few Iraqi, Jordanian, and Egyptian expats around here, and i can simply ask them.
Really: everyone in the Middle East knows that, historically, the lands surrounding Baghdad have been a hotspot for Persian-Arab conflict. Read the Wikipedia entry on it; it was founded in the Abbasid period, and within only a couple of generations the wars began — and continued, on, right through the Turkish possessions, into the present day.
Elsewhere in Wikipedia, we find an attributed comment:
Throughout most of the period of Ottoman rule (1533-1918) the territory of present-day Iraq was a battle ground between the rival Ottoman Empire and Safavid Iranians. Economically, Iraq was one of the least developed areas of the Ottoman Empire. The region suffered from frequent inter-clan struggles and major outbreaks of plague and cholera.
So really, you and Alex haven’t a historial leg to stand on, here.
Baghdad and the region surrounding it have been a historical battleground for centuries; first, between Arabs and Persians; next, between Turks, Arabs, and Persians; and, since the British carved up their empire, between the Kurds, Arabs, and Persians.
That part of the world is, socially, extremely volatile and prone to clan wars.
What i absolutely don’t understand is why you and Alex insist on denying these facts. Are you both so beholden to the idea of “nationhood” that you cannot conceive of legitimate, human society and culture existing outside of it?
Posted by: china_hand2 | Mar 13 2009 15:03 utc | 21
China_hand2, maybe I’m not being clear but, I think you’re drawing inferences and jumping to conclusions. Nowhere did I mention nationalism or national identity as it pertains to ethno-sectarian violence.
No. Actually, i think it’s just that i was making inferences and jumps between yours and Alex’s posts. I made the mistake that you were offering support directly for his perspective, when it’s clear now that you were simply offering up your own, much subtler points about what was going on.
I agree with you completely that this violence is not an innate “Iraqi” quality. Which i think you can easily believe, because i don’t really think there’s such a thing as an “Iraqi”, in the “Western” sense of the word.
But — just in case there’s any question about this – i also wouldn’t ever say there’s any greater or lesser tendency towards violence in any group of humans over another. Barring genetically incontrovertible evidence (which i totally do not believe we will ever have), then such a statement seems to me simply uncouth.
And the rest of your post i am in complete agreement with.
To respond to your implied question about the Muslim community, here: there is nothing contradictory in saying someone is clannish as a Muslim, and also clannish within Islam. In fact, one implies the other. I’d suggest that someone who sees the world from the perspective of a clan, would tend to conform to a sociology not too far away from:
first the immediate family, next the extended family, third the tribe, fourth the people/land, fifth the religion, sixth the business group, seventh the….
You see what i’m getting at; there’s nothing contradictory in saying that the Muslims are clannish as Muslims, and yet also clannish internally, as well.
However, insofar as you talk about the Iraqi society: well, i don’t need to hang out on Iraqi blogs. There are a few Iraqi, Jordanian, and Egyptian expats around here, and i can simply ask them.
Really: everyone in the Middle East knows that, historically, the lands surrounding Baghdad have been a hotspot for Persian-Arab conflict. Read the Wikipedia entry on it; it was founded in the Abbasid period, and within only a couple of generations the wars began — and continued, on, right through the Turkish possessions, into the present day.
Elsewhere in Wikipedia, we find an attributed comment:
Throughout most of the period of Ottoman rule (1533-1918) the territory of present-day Iraq was a battle ground between the rival Ottoman Empire and Safavid Iranians. Economically, Iraq was one of the least developed areas of the Ottoman Empire. The region suffered from frequent inter-clan struggles and major outbreaks of plague and cholera.
So really, you and Alex haven’t a historial leg to stand on, here.
Baghdad and the region surrounding it have been a historical battleground for centuries; first, between Arabs and Persians; next, between Turks, Arabs, and Persians; and, since the British carved up their empire, between the Kurds, Arabs, and Persians.
That part of the world is, socially, extremely volatile and prone to clan wars.
What i absolutely don’t understand is why you and Alex insist on denying these facts. Are you both so beholden to the idea of “nationhood” that you cannot conceive of legitimate, human society and culture existing outside of it?
Posted by: china_hand2 | Mar 13 2009 15:03 utc | 22
@annie:
i don’t really think there’s such a thing as an “Iraqi”, in the “Western” sense of the word.
…could you elaborate on your meaning behind this statement?
Sure.
“Nation” in the European sense connotes a shared cultural and ethnic identity. A hundred or three years ago, it was even believed to be genetic. It was, essentially, an extension of “tribe” or “clan” that included enough extended social units to span a really large geographic region.
That’s not to say the concept is static and unchanging; it seems to me that, as of the present day, the French and Germans have gone on to elaborate this into “a linguistic collective”, with the French believing, basically, that if you speak French then you are French, while the Germans seem to believe something like only those born speaking German, in traditionally German lands, can be considered German (but i’m not necessarily beholden to those ideas; i’m just presenting them here as something for consideration — and of course, there are right-wing, reactionary challenges to these ideas, as well). The U.S. is another kettle of fish entirely, but essentially (and again, i’m just making a cursory gesture; it’s certainly a discussion that could go on for a very long time) involves nothing more than accepting the U.S. constitution and government as the pinnacle of human development (whether naturalized or native) — that is, one is either an avide proponent of “American Exceptionalism”, or one simply isn’t really “An American”.
But there are many, many places in the world where these sorts of qualifications don’t hold. Taiwan is one; Indonesia is another; most African nations, as well as post-Soviet republics (i’d guess). Yugoslavia tried to create a national identity, but always had to fight cultural resistance. As with Yugoslavia, so with Iraq: yes, the U.S. and Europe mercilessly exploited the divisions within those lands for their own gain, but the divisions were always there. The only Western European analogy that can be drawn to those situations are the Basques in France and Spain, i think.
If we were to envision a European equivalent to Iraq, it would be something along the lines of Thailand conquering Europe, and then combining Alsace-Lorraine, a large chunk of Western Germany, a large chunk of Eastern France, and Switzerland into an autonomous government unit.
Now, obviously arming each of those cultural groups against one another would be adding fuel to the fire (and, IMO, horrifically inhumane). But my point is that the fire would burn, regardless of whether or not the weapons were delivered. Certainly, Europe’s past up to the modern era is a clear record of that.
The conflicts between Sunni and Shia, and Arab and Kurd, have never been settled. This is a casual, commonly understood fact, and however wishfully youthful Iraqi bourgeoisie might want to pretend it had already been peacefully solved, the unfortunate truth is that it never was.
Posted by: china_hand2 | Mar 15 2009 4:55 utc | 37
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