Let's pretend

I have an idea. Let's pretend that the conflict in Iraq is not really a sectarian war. Let's pretend that only Americans murder Iraqis. Right. Let's pretend that there were no problems before 2003. Yes, let's pretend that Saddamists had nothing to do with the current situation in Iraq. Let's pretend that Saddamists and their "mujahideen" did not intentionally blow up markets and police stations in order to PROVE that life was better for Iraqis before 2003. If only those damn Americans would leave, the "resistance" would stop blowing up markets. Everything would be hunky dory! Just like before 2003.

Many Sunni Arabs miss the good old days. So do the Iraqi Shia, I am told, probably because they're sick of being blown up. Saddam never blew up markets before 2003. Look what's happening now! This is "democracy" brought to you by the Americans. Fvcking Americans! The Iraqi Shia want to return to days when there were no tensions between the sects, when all was well in our beloved Iraq.

Sectarian Toll Includes Scars to Iraq Psyche

BAGHDAD, Sept. 16 [2007] — Violence swept over the Muhammad family in December, taking the father, the family’s house and all of its belongings in one chilly morning. But after the Muhammads fled, it subsided and life re-emerged — ordinary and quiet — in its wake.

Now they no longer have to hide their Shiite last name. The eldest daughter does not have to put on an Islamic head scarf. Grocery shopping is not a death-defying act.

Although the painful act of leaving is behind them, their minds keep returning to the past, trying to process a violation that was as brutal as it was personal: young men from the neighborhood shot the children’s father as they watched. Later, the men took the house.

“I lost everything in one moment,” said Rossel, the eldest daughter. “I don’t know who I am now. I’m somebody different.”

They are educated people, and they say they do not want revenge. But typical of those who are left from Iraq’s reasonable middle, the Muhammads have been hardened toward others by violence, and they have been forced to feel their sectarian identity, a mental closing that allows war made by militants to spread.

“In the past the country lived all together, but now, no,” Rossel said. “I don’t trust anyone.”
....
"Part of the sensitivity comes from trauma inflicted by Saddam Hussein’s government: years ago, Hashem’s grandparents were forced out of their homes by local Baathists and died in the desert. "

The Real Iraqis

Iraqis are often confronted by people who sometimes label them as "pretend" Iraqis, and often claim that we are not "real" Iraqis. We do not represent anything Iraqi, they often say. So this got me wondering: who are the REAL Iraqis? What does it take to be Iraqi? How many years of one's life must one spend in Iraq in order to gain the status of REAL Iraqi? 50% of your life? 100%? Or does it matter at all how many years we actually spend in Iraq, as long as we truly care for the welfare of all Iraqis, and want the best for Iraq? Of course this leads to the question: what is best for Iraq? And that leads to other questions that are endlessly debatable, and sometimes irreconcilable.

I like to think that real Iraqis do not commit violent crimes, they do not murder Iraqis. Iraqis who attack Iraqi Christians, even the Christians who collaborate with the US, belong in jail. Iraqi Christians are the descendants of Mesopotamia, and yet some Iraqi Muslims have murdered them, and have driven them out of the country.

Iraqis who blame the US, or even if they blame Bush only, for JAM & AQ killing Iraqis may also be real Iraqis. Some of them will never apologize for what Iraqis have done to each other, and would instead pretend that all innocent Iraqis who die violently are killed by the US.

Real Iraqis are the ones who defend each other, regardless of sect or religion, and do not kill Iraqis for being "un-Islamic". If Iraqis want Islamic law, they can move to Saudi Arabia or Iran. Real Iraqis are the ones who protest to protect their civil rights. They are not afraid to stand up for what is right, even if it defies the current Iraqi government, even if it defies the US, as long as it is just.

"No sectarian violence before 2003"

I might have posted this video before, for people who believe there was no sectarian violence before 2003. What is the definition of sectarian violence?

Just another market bombing

It's strange as I sit here, wondering if I should post this. I thought about posting only the text from the article, without commentary. I thought about asking if Safavids blew up the market, but then I thought that would be inappropriate. Does this bombing make the US and Iraqi government look bad? Does it highlight the lack of security in Baghdad, despite all the talk of improved security? Of course it does. On top of that, a bunch of apostates were killed today - the icing on the cake for Al Qaeda.

"Iraqis were enjoying a pleasant spring evening when a roadside bomb hidden under a vendor stall detonated in the primarily Shiite, middle-class Baghdad neighborhood of Karradah. Five minutes later, a suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt detonated, Mohammed al-Rubaie, the head of the Karradah municipality, told the state-run Al-Iraqiya TV.

He said more than 50 civilians were killed and more than 100 injured. Many of the victims were teens or young adults, and four were women, police and officials at three hospitals said."

Some people found it odd that there were no explosions during Ahmedinejad's visit to Baghdad. Could it be that Ahmedinjad or one of his agents left that bomb in Karrada? Or perhaps it was one of those Psy-Ops operations, designed to create hatred for Al Qaeda. These theories seem so far fetched to me, so ridiculous. Just a year ago while having dinner with a friend (Palestinian), I started talking about Zarqawi and she interrupted “IF he existed” – I was shocked. IF he existed?? Then today I read some comments that reminded me that MANY people believed that Zarqawi was the work of the US government or never even existed!

Also I find strange the cartoons depicting Ahmedinejad as being protected by the US military during his visit to Baghdad. In one cartoon, a US soldier is actually saluting the Iranian president (yeah I don't think so), on the same day that UN sanctions were imposed on Iran. IraqPundit said that Ahmedinejad was NOT protected by the US military, and IraqPundit also pointed out that Ahmedinejad did not even visit Najef or Kerbela! What? Sistani, the Safavid, would not see Ahmedinejad?? What do critics of Sistani have to say about that?

PS: This Wikipedia list of suicide bombings in Iraq needs to be updated.

Terrorists exploit the poor and uneducated

This NYT article, "Violence Leaves Young Iraqis Doubting Clerics", is a must read. Iraq Pundit covered it in his excellent post "Secularism is returning to Iraq". The article explains why young Iraqis have lost faith in extremist clerics, and why so many Iraqi Shia voted for cleric-politicians in the first place:

“When they behead someone, they say ‘Allahu akbar,’ they read Koranic verse,” said a moderate Shiite sheik from Baghdad, using the phrase for “God is great.”

“The young people, they think that is Islam,” he said. “So Islam is a failure, not only in the students’ minds, but also in the community.”

A professor at Baghdad University’s School of Law, who identified herself only as Bushra, said of her students: “They have changed their views about religion. They started to hate religious men. They make jokes about them because they feel disgusted by them.”

That was not always the case. Saddam Hussein encouraged religion in Iraqi society in his later years, building Sunni mosques and injecting more religion into the public school curriculum, but always made sure it served his authoritarian needs.

Shiites, considered to be an opposing political force and a threat to Mr. Hussein’s power, were kept under close watch. Young Shiites who worshiped were seen as political subversives and risked attracting the attention of the police.

For that reason, the American liberation tasted sweetest to the Shiites, who for the first time were able to worship freely. They soon became a potent political force, as religious political leaders appealed to their shared and painful past and their respect for the Shiite religious hierarchy.

...Some Iraqis argue that the religious-based politics was much more about identity than faith. When Shiites voted for religious parties in large numbers in an election in 2005, it was more an effort to show their numbers, than a victory of the religious over the secular.

“It was a fight to prove our existence,” said a young Shiite journalist from Sadr City. “We were embracing our existence, not religion.”

It saddens me that young Iraqi minds were brainwashed and made to believe that killing Iraqis of the opposite sect, or of a different religion, would be rewarded in heaven. But are insurgents and young Iraqis recruited by terrorists really motivated by religion as much as they are by money?

'Of the 900 juvenile detainees in American custody in November, fewer than 10 percent claimed to be fighting a holy war, according to the American military. About one-third of adults said they were.

A worker in the American detention system said that by her estimate, only about a third of the adult detainee population, which is overwhelmingly Sunni, prayed."

“As a group, they are not religious,” said Maj. Gen. Douglas Stone, the head of detainee operations for the American military. “When we ask if they are doing it for jihad, the answer is no.”

Muath, a slender, 19-year-old Sunni with distant eyes and hollow cheeks, is typical. He was selling cellphone credits and plastic flowers, struggling to keep his mother and five young siblings afloat, when an insurgent recruiter in western Baghdad, a man in his 30s who is a regular customer, offered him cash last spring to be part of an insurgent group whose motivations were a mix of money and sect.

Muath, the only wage earner in his family, agreed. Suddenly his family could afford to eat meat again, he said in an interview last September.

Indeed, at least part of the religious violence in Baghdad had money at its heart. An officer at the Kadhimiya detention center, where Muath was being held last fall, said recordings of beheadings fetched much higher prices than those of shooting executions in the CD markets, which explains why even nonreligious kidnappers will behead hostages.

“The terrorist loves the money,” said Capt. Omar, a prison worker who did not want to be identified by his full name. “The money has big magic. I give him $10,000 to do small thing. You think he refuse?”

When Muath was arrested last year, the police found two hostages, Shiite brothers, in a safe house that Muath told them about. Photographs showed the men looking wide-eyed into the camera; dark welts covered their bodies.

Violent struggle against the United States was easy to romanticize at a distance.

“I used to love Osama bin Laden,” proclaimed a 24-year-old Iraqi college student. She was referring to how she felt before the war took hold in her native Baghdad. The Sept. 11, 2001, strike at American supremacy was satisfying, and the deaths abstract.

Now, the student recites the familiar complaints: Her college has segregated the security checks; guards told her to stop wearing a revealing skirt; she covers her head for safety.

“Now I hate Islam,” she said, sitting in her family’s unadorned living room in central Baghdad. “Al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army are spreading hatred. People are being killed for nothing.”

I think the overall message of the article underscores the importance of education and reviving the Iraqi economy:

'The population they [terrorist recruiters] focused on, however, was poor and uneducated. About 60 percent of the American adult detainee population is illiterate, and is unable to even read the Koran that religious recruiters are preaching.'

Upside Down Priorities

My father called me earlier, after returning from Paris, where he attended a conference on Iraqi oil. He told me about the conference and I asked him why the Iraqi government does not resurrect the Iraqi National Oil Company. He said it's because they are asleep; they are more focused on latmiya than on oil and the economy. They would rather award upstream contracts to big oil because it's easy, and because the cash is quick, I imagine.

While searching for a good latmiya video to link to, I found a video memorializing the attacks on Ashoura. The video is itself a latmiya, drawing parallels between Husayn and the victims of such attacks. It is not clear which attack the footage comes from, even though the title says 2005-2006. There have been many Ashoura and Arba3een bombings - the largest in scale occurred in 2004 - today happens to be the 4th anniversary of that attack. I don't know how many have been killed this year, but at least 63 were killed in one bombing. I realized that the people who attack pilgrims have their priorities upside down too.

Can a guy named Hussein become the next US President?

Update (3-1, 8:15 pm): the letter is a fraud! But it seemed so real. Thanks Fayrouz for the heads up! Since the letter was not written by Obama, I deleted the text, but I will link to a site that published it. The letter is all over the web.

I received the letter below, written by Barack Obama, from one of my cousins in the UK. The attention on Obama is now international, and much of that attention is being paid by Muslims from all over the world. In this letter Obama brings up the issue of his middle name, Hussein, and points out that some people may think it's problematic for him to share the name of the former Iraqi dictator. I'm sure Mr. Obama knows that Hussein is a very popular name among Muslims, especially as a surname, but I wonder if Barack knows the story of Imam Husayn ibn Ali, and how popular Imam Husayn (personally I am annoyed that Saddam's last name is Hussein, so I spell it differently than Imam Husayn's) is among Muslims, especially Shia. Obama's success in the Democratic Primary thus far is historic, even if he doesn't win. Arabs and Muslims are watching closely.

PS: Hat tip to Nibras for the great photo.

Letter from Barack Obama on His Muslim Heritage