Upon my return from Baghdad, I found a note from Ralph Luker and a query as to whether things were any better in the country. He ended up by saying: “It's awfully hard here to get a decent picture of what's going on in Iraq. Some sources report only positive things; some sources report only negative things”. I think the way to answer this question is to look at the context of daily life in Baghdad, and to arrive at conclusions warranted by the evidence, and any evidence is better than none.
On my recent trip to Baghdad, I was confronted with a number of paradoxes. On one level, I daily heard bomb explosions at night, and people often began the day asking each other where the latest violence had occurred. On another level, there was an air of low-key normality that affected everyone I talked to, whether they were janitors, Directors of Museums or shopkeepers. If you didn’t bring up the question of the violent attacks inflicted on parts of Iraq both by the Coalition and the insurgents, you’d rarely hear it mentioned by people on the street or in offices. I think this is a result of two reasons. First, many of my meetings were with professional educators, librarians and Museum directors; I asked specific questions and received specific replies (except where a highly garrulous administrator would wend and weave about the inadequacies of the higher education sector in Iraq). Second, and quite unlike my first trip to Baghdad immediately after the war in June 2003 when strangers were accosting our delegation with their ideas on the past, present and future of Iraq, most people did not confide in strangers as easily, even if they were Iraqis who lived outside of the country. From my family members, I heard horrific stories of near misses on Ministry buses taking employees to work, kidnappings of university deans and the stratospheric increase in corruption on all levels. But on the formal level of Ministries and Research departments, the conversation was all about funding the future, and whether the world community really cared enough to invest in Iraq the billions promised last winter at the Donor’s conference.
Compounded to this sense of unreality was the geographic scale of Baghdad, and the vast problems affecting the transport of state bureaucrats and employees to their daily work. Baghdad is a very large city, and its transport infrastructure is at death’s door. Although many of the traffic lights were working this time, and policemen were everywhere directing traffic, the amount of cars imported over the past year only added to the decrepit vehicles still chugging along the roads and belching black smoke; predictably, they caused massive traffic jams. Being confined to a car on a heavily packed road in the city is not conducive to the usual daydreaming; in Baghdad, where suicide bombers have been known to plow into National Guards’ headquarters on crowded streets, this can be an enervating experience. But my Baghdad-based friends claim that cabs are the most reliable form of transport in Baghdad because, while your misfortune may have you passing by when an explosion has ripped through a police post, suicide bombers would not target a cab deliberately. This is the logic of Baghdad natives who have lived, and are still living, through very violent times, and I am forced to respect it.
So, too, is the emphasis on not leaving the house till after nine o’clock in the morning, or returning before five. Baghdadi residents have timed the explosions; they usually occur at seven or eight o’clock in the morning, and a further reprise may take place at six or seven o’clock in the evening. Even though nothing can be taken for granted, its better to be at home during those hours. In fact, I am told that precisely because of the heavy traffic jams and the timing of explosions, few administrators are lecturing their employees about punctuality.
Finally, it must be recalled that, throughout the past five months, two large city quarters have been pounded almost daily by American guns. Sadr city (consistently referred to by Iraq’s interim government as Revolution city or madinat al-thawra, its older name) is a huge slum that borders some very important real estate (the UN headquarters that was leveled last August 29 was situated close by). Haifa street, meanwhile, has been under attack almost daily by American troops; it too neighbors high-value districts, the Iraqi Museum neighborhood being only one of them. Through it all, Baghdadi residents are grimly going to work, shopping for food, visiting relatives in hospitals and sending their children to school. If you can imagine Brooklyn up in flames while the rest of New York daily goes about its business, you will understand the scale of the daily horror that is being visited on Baghdad.
Although those are my quick impressions of a city in perpetual turmoil, they are but that, impressions. I am lucky not to have seen the violence up close. But for all those Iraqis that were less fortunate than I, whose lives have been wrecked by misdirected bombings, hidden mines, nighttime raids and vindictive revenge killings, I have nothing but the utmost admiration. They are carrying on with a courage that is all that much finer and nobler because their travails are a daily occurrence, and not a rare foray into a danger zone.
On my recent trip to Baghdad, I was confronted with a number of paradoxes. On one level, I daily heard bomb explosions at night, and people often began the day asking each other where the latest violence had occurred. On another level, there was an air of low-key normality that affected everyone I talked to, whether they were janitors, Directors of Museums or shopkeepers. If you didn’t bring up the question of the violent attacks inflicted on parts of Iraq both by the Coalition and the insurgents, you’d rarely hear it mentioned by people on the street or in offices. I think this is a result of two reasons. First, many of my meetings were with professional educators, librarians and Museum directors; I asked specific questions and received specific replies (except where a highly garrulous administrator would wend and weave about the inadequacies of the higher education sector in Iraq). Second, and quite unlike my first trip to Baghdad immediately after the war in June 2003 when strangers were accosting our delegation with their ideas on the past, present and future of Iraq, most people did not confide in strangers as easily, even if they were Iraqis who lived outside of the country. From my family members, I heard horrific stories of near misses on Ministry buses taking employees to work, kidnappings of university deans and the stratospheric increase in corruption on all levels. But on the formal level of Ministries and Research departments, the conversation was all about funding the future, and whether the world community really cared enough to invest in Iraq the billions promised last winter at the Donor’s conference.
Compounded to this sense of unreality was the geographic scale of Baghdad, and the vast problems affecting the transport of state bureaucrats and employees to their daily work. Baghdad is a very large city, and its transport infrastructure is at death’s door. Although many of the traffic lights were working this time, and policemen were everywhere directing traffic, the amount of cars imported over the past year only added to the decrepit vehicles still chugging along the roads and belching black smoke; predictably, they caused massive traffic jams. Being confined to a car on a heavily packed road in the city is not conducive to the usual daydreaming; in Baghdad, where suicide bombers have been known to plow into National Guards’ headquarters on crowded streets, this can be an enervating experience. But my Baghdad-based friends claim that cabs are the most reliable form of transport in Baghdad because, while your misfortune may have you passing by when an explosion has ripped through a police post, suicide bombers would not target a cab deliberately. This is the logic of Baghdad natives who have lived, and are still living, through very violent times, and I am forced to respect it.
So, too, is the emphasis on not leaving the house till after nine o’clock in the morning, or returning before five. Baghdadi residents have timed the explosions; they usually occur at seven or eight o’clock in the morning, and a further reprise may take place at six or seven o’clock in the evening. Even though nothing can be taken for granted, its better to be at home during those hours. In fact, I am told that precisely because of the heavy traffic jams and the timing of explosions, few administrators are lecturing their employees about punctuality.
Finally, it must be recalled that, throughout the past five months, two large city quarters have been pounded almost daily by American guns. Sadr city (consistently referred to by Iraq’s interim government as Revolution city or madinat al-thawra, its older name) is a huge slum that borders some very important real estate (the UN headquarters that was leveled last August 29 was situated close by). Haifa street, meanwhile, has been under attack almost daily by American troops; it too neighbors high-value districts, the Iraqi Museum neighborhood being only one of them. Through it all, Baghdadi residents are grimly going to work, shopping for food, visiting relatives in hospitals and sending their children to school. If you can imagine Brooklyn up in flames while the rest of New York daily goes about its business, you will understand the scale of the daily horror that is being visited on Baghdad.
Although those are my quick impressions of a city in perpetual turmoil, they are but that, impressions. I am lucky not to have seen the violence up close. But for all those Iraqis that were less fortunate than I, whose lives have been wrecked by misdirected bombings, hidden mines, nighttime raids and vindictive revenge killings, I have nothing but the utmost admiration. They are carrying on with a courage that is all that much finer and nobler because their travails are a daily occurrence, and not a rare foray into a danger zone.
Friday, October 22, 2004 - 04:46
Comments
Writing from Jordan, two competing images jostled for ascendancy this week. The first was that of the funeral for Shaykh Zayed, the first ruler of the United Arab Emirates. The throngs that went out on the streets to weep openly at the sight of his funeral casket passing by were not only citizens of the UAE, they were people from many different nationalities and backgrounds. I am reminded that in one of the many opinion polls published on Iraqi citizens' new found awareness a couple of months ago, the state model that most everyone preferred was that of the UAE's. This left most Arab cosmopolitans gasping: what, Iraqis want to be ruled by oil-rich bedouin oligrarchs who've been married about seventeen times and still dispense largesse out of a box stuffed under their mattress? How wrong they were, and are. That misrepresentation of Shaykh Zayed's experiment in nation-building is so patronizing and so insulting as to be totally worthless: what he did for his citizens, and what Iraqis correspondingly yearn for, is his vision of a human security based on investment for this, and future generations. Shaykh Zayed's largesse was not only spent on weapons (and he bought enough of those to replenish several armies) but on his citizens' welfare as well: he built roads, hospitals, schools and established the whole paraphenalia of human security so often touted as a dream by global agencies. And I don't care if he had a "medieval" mentality, was overly pious or was too pro-American.
The other image is that of a chortling Bush celebrating his resounding defeat of Kerry. So this is the famous democracy you've all been touting? A democracy that re-elects mass murderers and religious bigots? Give me Shaykh Zayed's patrimonial, family-based, tribal-sourced system any day. At least I can live the rest of my days in peace.
The other image is that of a chortling Bush celebrating his resounding defeat of Kerry. So this is the famous democracy you've all been touting? A democracy that re-elects mass murderers and religious bigots? Give me Shaykh Zayed's patrimonial, family-based, tribal-sourced system any day. At least I can live the rest of my days in peace.
Thursday, November 4, 2004 - 03:20
MESA, or the Middle East Studies Association, held its annual November meeting in San Francisco amidst a crisis not of its making. Several hotels were on strike as the meeting began, and many MESA members did not attend out of sympathy with the hotel workers. As it so happened, halfway through the meeeting, the hotel workers and proprietors reached a deal and the strike was called off, too late, alas, for many scholars who had wanted to give papers or otherwise attend to Middle East -related business. For me, after seven years of non-attendance, San Francisco was a real shot in the arm. Most of my UCLA colleagues, people I had been in class with as well as several professors, were there so we caught up on news, mostly of children, mortgages and books in the pipeline.
At the annual IJMES dinner -- International Journal of Middle East Studies,-- MESA's flagship journal -- we missed Juan Cole, who had just passed on the journal's editorial duties to Judith Tucker, from Georgetown. Naturally, everyone was talking about the phenomenal success of Juan's blog. A colleague of both Juan's and I, Ken Cuno , now at the University of Illinois, recalled how at a past MESA conference, Juan had asked him for a ride to the nearest cyber cafe at 11pm one night. Obviously, the man does with very little sleep.
The rest of us traded the usual gossip, criticizing some panels and extolling others. I was surprised by how many panels there were on Iraq. They were not necessarily those dealing with the heavy security stuff that the rest of us shrug off as unreal, slightly delusional and devoid of substance. This is all the more fascinating as I remember lonely years at MESA past when there was barely a paper given on Iraq. At my rare presentations, I would be greeted with polite applause and little follow-up questions. (Of course, that could be the result of my conference style which is a cross between uneventful and uneven).
The two panels I attended on Iraq on the first day, however, were brimming with excitement. In the first, three scholars who had actually been to Iraq, with one staying for nine months, gave their opinion on the state of scholarship in Iraq today, the security constraints inhibiting progress, the role of politics in academia and the religious/sectarian/ethnic divide that was embroiling college campuses everywhere in Iraq. The second panel, entitled "Beyond Baghdad", had invited anthropologists with first-hand knowledge of Iraq to discuss their experiences. Again, I was surprised by how many American academics had been to Baghdad, that former no-man’s land, and how many of them had gained valuable insights on its history and culture. That last panel was interesting in the participants’ anti-war stance. With the exception of one anthropologist-turned-businessman, the panel was vehemently anti-war. Professor Robert Fernea, dean of Iraqi anthropology at Texas, said it best : “The Americans must leave”, he growled, “There is no other option left for them but to leave Iraq”.
At the annual IJMES dinner -- International Journal of Middle East Studies,-- MESA's flagship journal -- we missed Juan Cole, who had just passed on the journal's editorial duties to Judith Tucker, from Georgetown. Naturally, everyone was talking about the phenomenal success of Juan's blog. A colleague of both Juan's and I, Ken Cuno , now at the University of Illinois, recalled how at a past MESA conference, Juan had asked him for a ride to the nearest cyber cafe at 11pm one night. Obviously, the man does with very little sleep.
The rest of us traded the usual gossip, criticizing some panels and extolling others. I was surprised by how many panels there were on Iraq. They were not necessarily those dealing with the heavy security stuff that the rest of us shrug off as unreal, slightly delusional and devoid of substance. This is all the more fascinating as I remember lonely years at MESA past when there was barely a paper given on Iraq. At my rare presentations, I would be greeted with polite applause and little follow-up questions. (Of course, that could be the result of my conference style which is a cross between uneventful and uneven).
The two panels I attended on Iraq on the first day, however, were brimming with excitement. In the first, three scholars who had actually been to Iraq, with one staying for nine months, gave their opinion on the state of scholarship in Iraq today, the security constraints inhibiting progress, the role of politics in academia and the religious/sectarian/ethnic divide that was embroiling college campuses everywhere in Iraq. The second panel, entitled "Beyond Baghdad", had invited anthropologists with first-hand knowledge of Iraq to discuss their experiences. Again, I was surprised by how many American academics had been to Baghdad, that former no-man’s land, and how many of them had gained valuable insights on its history and culture. That last panel was interesting in the participants’ anti-war stance. With the exception of one anthropologist-turned-businessman, the panel was vehemently anti-war. Professor Robert Fernea, dean of Iraqi anthropology at Texas, said it best : “The Americans must leave”, he growled, “There is no other option left for them but to leave Iraq”.
Thursday, December 2, 2004 - 14:44
I thought I’d post something about the travails of historians outside of the US or Europe. To be a historian in Iraq is to be a target for all sorts of hostile forces: students who hate your politics, students who hate the grades you’ve given them, anonymous obscurantist religious forces who hate your “Western” suits and ties, and, as has been repeatedly stated, frightening elements that want to kill you just because you’re educated, and are educating other Iraqis. For many reasons, then, a number of Iraqi professors have been murdered, kidnapped and scared off from going back to work.
In this maelstrom of politics and revenge/ politics and gangland style killings, I called upon several professors that I know (and some I don’t know) to attend a conference in Amman, Jordan on the history and politics of identity in Iraq. Some cannot come, because they’re ill or are worried about leaving their families. Others rose to the challenge, even though it meant crossing the most dangerous road in the world, that linking Baghdad to Amman, bypassing Fallujah, Ramadi and a host of other Anbari towns that are being laid siege to by the Americans for their “anti-Iraq” elements (this is the new term coined by the US forces to label the insurgents). I am full of admiration for those brave souls, the more so that whatever tangible benefits that accrue to them for attending the conference – making new contacts, presenting their case to a broad rostrum of international scholars, and generally opening up to the world – cannot possibly make up for the life-threatening conditions that they live in. Just to put this into perspective, we hired a coordinator to assemble the Iraqi professors and see that their papers are in order for the trip to Jordan. On his way to Baghdad by road to accomplish this task, he was stopped twice, the second time by a group of mujahideen (the local term for “anti-Iraq” forces) who wanted to know if anybody in the car had a Western passport, and frisked everyone thoroughly just in case anyone was lying.
I am all the more impressed by those Iraqi professors’ determination to come to Jordan to present their case because even simple opinions have repercussions nowadays, and not only in Iraq. I asked a Kurdish historian, and several scholars of Sunni and Shi’i backgrounds (including a woman) to attend the conference; I’m still not sure that all of them will attend (I asked fifteen historians in all) but I’m certain that in the end we will have as representative a group of Iraqis as anyone can hope for. But I believe that those historians will present much more nuanced examinations of identity than others; even those historians espousing a polemical and sectarian line will add to our knowledge on Iraq simply because it springs from their life work and experience. They must be heard, even though at times they will contradict what Western scholars of Iraq espouse.
I say this because, regrettably, a politically correct version of contemporary events in the present Iraqi context has developed among North American and European scholars. Focusing on rigid sectarian and ethnic lines, and in some cases, providing the background for a possible partition of Iraq, these professional political scientists and historians are grossly misrepresenting what is a very complex situation. I find this version of events all the more appalling because those scholars are not Iraqi. Surely this would be considered unwarranted intervention by Iraqis interested in promoting democracy? Happily, none of the Western scholars invited to our conference completely share those views. But how long can we stave off the onslaught of the more narrow minded members of our profession? Perhaps our conference, a drop of water in a large sea, can help. I fervently hope so.
In this maelstrom of politics and revenge/ politics and gangland style killings, I called upon several professors that I know (and some I don’t know) to attend a conference in Amman, Jordan on the history and politics of identity in Iraq. Some cannot come, because they’re ill or are worried about leaving their families. Others rose to the challenge, even though it meant crossing the most dangerous road in the world, that linking Baghdad to Amman, bypassing Fallujah, Ramadi and a host of other Anbari towns that are being laid siege to by the Americans for their “anti-Iraq” elements (this is the new term coined by the US forces to label the insurgents). I am full of admiration for those brave souls, the more so that whatever tangible benefits that accrue to them for attending the conference – making new contacts, presenting their case to a broad rostrum of international scholars, and generally opening up to the world – cannot possibly make up for the life-threatening conditions that they live in. Just to put this into perspective, we hired a coordinator to assemble the Iraqi professors and see that their papers are in order for the trip to Jordan. On his way to Baghdad by road to accomplish this task, he was stopped twice, the second time by a group of mujahideen (the local term for “anti-Iraq” forces) who wanted to know if anybody in the car had a Western passport, and frisked everyone thoroughly just in case anyone was lying.
I am all the more impressed by those Iraqi professors’ determination to come to Jordan to present their case because even simple opinions have repercussions nowadays, and not only in Iraq. I asked a Kurdish historian, and several scholars of Sunni and Shi’i backgrounds (including a woman) to attend the conference; I’m still not sure that all of them will attend (I asked fifteen historians in all) but I’m certain that in the end we will have as representative a group of Iraqis as anyone can hope for. But I believe that those historians will present much more nuanced examinations of identity than others; even those historians espousing a polemical and sectarian line will add to our knowledge on Iraq simply because it springs from their life work and experience. They must be heard, even though at times they will contradict what Western scholars of Iraq espouse.
I say this because, regrettably, a politically correct version of contemporary events in the present Iraqi context has developed among North American and European scholars. Focusing on rigid sectarian and ethnic lines, and in some cases, providing the background for a possible partition of Iraq, these professional political scientists and historians are grossly misrepresenting what is a very complex situation. I find this version of events all the more appalling because those scholars are not Iraqi. Surely this would be considered unwarranted intervention by Iraqis interested in promoting democracy? Happily, none of the Western scholars invited to our conference completely share those views. But how long can we stave off the onslaught of the more narrow minded members of our profession? Perhaps our conference, a drop of water in a large sea, can help. I fervently hope so.
Monday, December 13, 2004 - 05:29
Ten days ago, our conference on Iraqi history and identity came to an end. It was full of surprises. I had asked two journalists from internationally renowned papers not to attend because I was worried that our Iraqi participants would feel threatened by Western exposure which might reflect badly on them on their return. Instead, the opening session, chaired by His Royal Highness Prince Hassan bin Talal, attracted a frenzy of television reporters, and at least one Arab satellite channel. I was sitting at the main table feeling completely bewildered when a friendly conference participant pointed out that some of our Iraqi guests were happily being interviewed! Holy Smoke! Serves me right for being such a sap.
Then there was the meeting of minds thing. The mixture of Iraqi academics and Western scholars was meant to produce a collegial exchange between academicians involved in researching Iraq, and its culture, society and state. Instead there were sharp altercations between theoretically inclined historians from the US who rubbished some Iraqis’ empirical research, as well as a collective shudder of disdain on the part of the Iraqis for some of the more arcane flights of fancy produced by Western historians of Iraq. There was also a complete collapse of civility after one Iraqi historian implied that Shi’ism was primarily an Iranian phenomenon in Iraq; the rebuke to his statement was so severe and so sarcastic that it completely went over the Iraqi historian’s head. Meanwhile, a paper on the role of women in Baathist Iraq was completely savaged by the Iraqis because it dared to touch on the very real phenomenon of prostitution under the sanctions regime. “Our women are virtous!” thundered an Iraqi participant, completely misunderstanding the import of the panelist’s findings. Finally, a panel on the famous coup d’etat of the late politician Rashid Ali al-Gaylani in 1941 produced impassioned first-hand testimonies from some of the older Iraqis in the audience, which met with a bemused silence from some of the Western contingent of historians. The conference was turning into street theater, which did not please everyone.
On the whole, however, it went well. There was a great deal of interest on the part of some Western historians to strike up communication with the Iraqis and I believe some promising initiatives were introduced. Books were exchanged, umpteen cups of coffee were drunk, and late at night, the Iraqis were able to recount their plight to friendly and receptive ears. For some of the Iraqi scholars, it was a mind-blowing experience : they could hardly believe that there were so many Western scholars interested in their history. For American, European and Japanese historians, archaeologists, sociologist and anthropologists, it was a chance to practice their fluent Arabic and receive hearty congratulations for mastering such a “difficult” language.
As the Chinese sage said: “ The longest journey begins with the first step”. I’m glad that we held the conference, and I know that more of these meetings will reduce the journey’s length considerably.
Then there was the meeting of minds thing. The mixture of Iraqi academics and Western scholars was meant to produce a collegial exchange between academicians involved in researching Iraq, and its culture, society and state. Instead there were sharp altercations between theoretically inclined historians from the US who rubbished some Iraqis’ empirical research, as well as a collective shudder of disdain on the part of the Iraqis for some of the more arcane flights of fancy produced by Western historians of Iraq. There was also a complete collapse of civility after one Iraqi historian implied that Shi’ism was primarily an Iranian phenomenon in Iraq; the rebuke to his statement was so severe and so sarcastic that it completely went over the Iraqi historian’s head. Meanwhile, a paper on the role of women in Baathist Iraq was completely savaged by the Iraqis because it dared to touch on the very real phenomenon of prostitution under the sanctions regime. “Our women are virtous!” thundered an Iraqi participant, completely misunderstanding the import of the panelist’s findings. Finally, a panel on the famous coup d’etat of the late politician Rashid Ali al-Gaylani in 1941 produced impassioned first-hand testimonies from some of the older Iraqis in the audience, which met with a bemused silence from some of the Western contingent of historians. The conference was turning into street theater, which did not please everyone.
On the whole, however, it went well. There was a great deal of interest on the part of some Western historians to strike up communication with the Iraqis and I believe some promising initiatives were introduced. Books were exchanged, umpteen cups of coffee were drunk, and late at night, the Iraqis were able to recount their plight to friendly and receptive ears. For some of the Iraqi scholars, it was a mind-blowing experience : they could hardly believe that there were so many Western scholars interested in their history. For American, European and Japanese historians, archaeologists, sociologist and anthropologists, it was a chance to practice their fluent Arabic and receive hearty congratulations for mastering such a “difficult” language.
As the Chinese sage said: “ The longest journey begins with the first step”. I’m glad that we held the conference, and I know that more of these meetings will reduce the journey’s length considerably.
Wednesday, January 19, 2005 - 05:47
Among the daily horror of escalating civil war in Iraq, I take refuge in history. I believe that what a people once was cannot completely be erased by the interventions of the present, no matter how crippling the burdens of oppression, external interference and war. This realization has gradually dawned upon me as I continue to interview older Iraqis in Amman, Jordan, for a project on the monarchy period in Iraq (1921-1958). While an informed perspective on Iraq’s history as well as a dose of common sense would require us to note that that younger Iraqis, who have weathered persecution, instability, continuous military conflict and radical economic deprivation may realistically have nothing in common with an older, more worldly class of compatriots, who have lived abroad and are, for the most part, at ease in exile, I continue to find interesting connections and relationships between older and younger Iraqis that defy barriers of class, confession, ethnicity and power. Even now, as ethnic cleansing and religion-based ideologies take hold in certain parts of Iraq, Iraqis in exile in Amman very often refuse to enter in the heavily politicized arena of sectarian-baiting and racist abuse that passes for a certain kind of power discourse at home.
In conversation with older and younger Iraqis in Amman, I have been led to believe that there are two reasons for this. The first is that only certain groups of Iraqis are participating in the hellish assassinations and counter-assassinations, kidnappings and forcible deportations taking place throughout Iraq. While it is true that the political equation is muddied by the frequent interventions of insurgent movements, powerful militias, American “security” operations and an inchoate, often rudderless and vengeance-prone underclass, it is also true that bonds of solidarity and national cohesiveness are not completely frayed. As one Iraqi recently told me, “The vast majority of Iraqis are spectators to this onslaught, and are watching, waiting and hoping for sanity to return”.
The second reason is that, once Iraqis are safely, if only temporarily, settled in Amman, bonds of civility re-emerge and people that would have been at odds with one another in Baghdad or Basra or Mosul, face a new reality. Regardless of the cauldron in their home country that pushed them out of their homes into exile, they are regarded by Jordan as Iraqis, first and foremost. Despite the sectarian and ethnic resentments that may brew deep in their collective psyches, which are frequently directed at fellow Iraqis, Iraqi exiles are monolithically seen by organs of the Jordanian government and security
agencies as an undifferentiated, potentially threatening refugee “problem” justifying increased Jordanian vigilance. And, as often happens in other migrant communities all over the world, this leads to reinforced bonds and support between Iraqis at all levels.
I have sometimes been accused of romanticizing the ties that bind Iraqis together. I was even told in Amman, at the conference on Iraq in January 2005, that because I was an Iraqi expatriate and had not lived through the turmoil of the Saddam Hussein years, I was sweeping under the rug hundreds of years of animosities that, taken together, defined the real Iraqi condition. I don’t think that’s true. I know how visible sub-national loyalties have become, and how categories of sect, ethnicity, social background, political affiliation and religious identity have assumed the primacy once reserved for national solidarities. But I don’t despair at the thought. Iraqis take their national identity for granted in a way that often baffles foreigners. With the major omission of the Kurds, who have taken a decisive step towards eventual separation and Kurdish nationhood that has very little echo in the rest of the country, most Iraqis are not subsuming Iraqi nationalism under communal or primordial labels to negate it altogether, but retrenching into social and communal solidarities out of fear, confusion at the breakdown of the state, or even material rewards held out by emergent forces in the new economy.
In fact, the collective Iraqi experience is shaped by thousands of years of such haggling between communal and “national” forces. The negotiation between both is riven by endemic divisions that are characteristic of the nation. To exaggerate these divisions or consider them in any way disruptive of the “peace” that supposedly typified earlier periods, such as the era of royalist Iraq, is not to know the country or its people at all, and the continuous process of re-imagination and re-conceptualization that uncertainly holds both together.
Sunday, November 12, 2006 - 03:43
As a corollary to the piece I wrote below, let me tell you a typical Iraqi story. In the early twentieth century, after the defeat of Turkey in the First World War, and at the peak of ongoing pogroms against Armenians, Armenian refugees began fleeing Turkey to adjacent Arab countries for safety. A young woman with two children found herself in Diyarbakr, in what is now southern Turkey. At that time, Iraq, Syria and even Turkey’s borders were tenuous constructs, having only very recently been mapped out at successive international conferences where the British and French held sway. Much later on, in the early 1930’s, Iraq and Syria would exchange Agreements pledging to uphold their part of the new borders, and the new monarchies of Iraq and Saudi Arabia would come to similar terms on their respective frontiers.
But to this young Armenian woman, fleeing the chaotic upheavals of war, any place that offered her haven was home. As it so happened, Diyarbakr abutted on to northern Iraq, then the unregulated borderland for hundreds of tribesmen, who crossed yet un-demarcated frontiers in search of pasture and markets without giving a hoot about state sovereignty, and only changed their roaming habits after being defeated by the RAF’s bombing campaign in the Iraqi desert. Meanwhile, in the ensuing melée of expulsion, flight and massive refugee dislocations so typical of the disastrous aftermath of military defeats, this young woman became separated from her son, then only two or three years old. Try as she might, she was unable to find him, however hard she searched in the teeming population centers hastily set up under International auspices. Disconsolate, she finally moved to Baghdad to live with relatives, still hoping for the eventual recovery of her son.
In the meantime, the little boy had been rescued by several tribesman of the Shammar confederacy, a large and powerful tribe that straddled the frontiers of northern Iraq, most of Saudi Arabia, northern Syria and southern Turkey. The child was taken in by an important Shammar chieftain, if not the paramount shaykh (here my facts get fuzzy) and brought up as a Muslim. After the postwar turmoil died down, and people could more easily move about the country, the mother was able to track down her son and, enlisting the help of several notables, both Christian and Muslim, was able to bring him back with her to Baghdad.
Now here is the crux of the story: the Shammar chief sent several tribesmen to escort the boy and his mother to Baghdad, and to stay with them for awhile. He did this because he wanted the boy to acclimate to his new surroundings and to help him come to terms with his Armenian family after such a long absence. The tribesmen remained until they felt that the boy had assimilated to his new context, and then they left.
The story was told to me by the now-grown son’s daughter, and it illustrates a fundamental principle in Iraqi society. Up till very recently, the fluidity of relations among various sectors of Iraqi communities, ethnicities and sects was such an ordinary occurrence that it hardly caused a ripple in the broader society at large. This example goes some way to show the flexibility of intra-ethnic relations. So there you have it: An Armenian boy, saved from an uncertain fate by Arab tribesmen visiting the local market, brought up as an Arab Muslim with all the anti-urban biases a tribal society could muster, taught the folklore and poetry of the tribes and the customs and traditions of the eponymous founders of the confederacy, was yet re-inserted into his own original family with the help and support of his adoptive clan, to the consternation of virtually no-one!
By the way, the Armenian man in question became a great expert on tribal oral poetry, something that ordinary Iraqi city dwellers find difficult to understand, let alone emulate, and until the last years of his life, kept trying to teach it to his family and friends. For me, that alone is worth the price of admission to his own private history of growing up Iraqi.
But to this young Armenian woman, fleeing the chaotic upheavals of war, any place that offered her haven was home. As it so happened, Diyarbakr abutted on to northern Iraq, then the unregulated borderland for hundreds of tribesmen, who crossed yet un-demarcated frontiers in search of pasture and markets without giving a hoot about state sovereignty, and only changed their roaming habits after being defeated by the RAF’s bombing campaign in the Iraqi desert. Meanwhile, in the ensuing melée of expulsion, flight and massive refugee dislocations so typical of the disastrous aftermath of military defeats, this young woman became separated from her son, then only two or three years old. Try as she might, she was unable to find him, however hard she searched in the teeming population centers hastily set up under International auspices. Disconsolate, she finally moved to Baghdad to live with relatives, still hoping for the eventual recovery of her son.
In the meantime, the little boy had been rescued by several tribesman of the Shammar confederacy, a large and powerful tribe that straddled the frontiers of northern Iraq, most of Saudi Arabia, northern Syria and southern Turkey. The child was taken in by an important Shammar chieftain, if not the paramount shaykh (here my facts get fuzzy) and brought up as a Muslim. After the postwar turmoil died down, and people could more easily move about the country, the mother was able to track down her son and, enlisting the help of several notables, both Christian and Muslim, was able to bring him back with her to Baghdad.
Now here is the crux of the story: the Shammar chief sent several tribesmen to escort the boy and his mother to Baghdad, and to stay with them for awhile. He did this because he wanted the boy to acclimate to his new surroundings and to help him come to terms with his Armenian family after such a long absence. The tribesmen remained until they felt that the boy had assimilated to his new context, and then they left.
The story was told to me by the now-grown son’s daughter, and it illustrates a fundamental principle in Iraqi society. Up till very recently, the fluidity of relations among various sectors of Iraqi communities, ethnicities and sects was such an ordinary occurrence that it hardly caused a ripple in the broader society at large. This example goes some way to show the flexibility of intra-ethnic relations. So there you have it: An Armenian boy, saved from an uncertain fate by Arab tribesmen visiting the local market, brought up as an Arab Muslim with all the anti-urban biases a tribal society could muster, taught the folklore and poetry of the tribes and the customs and traditions of the eponymous founders of the confederacy, was yet re-inserted into his own original family with the help and support of his adoptive clan, to the consternation of virtually no-one!
By the way, the Armenian man in question became a great expert on tribal oral poetry, something that ordinary Iraqi city dwellers find difficult to understand, let alone emulate, and until the last years of his life, kept trying to teach it to his family and friends. For me, that alone is worth the price of admission to his own private history of growing up Iraqi.
Friday, November 10, 2006 - 03:02
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