(Updated: Originally published November 16, 2006)
Proving that people are the same everywhere.
"The ‘Stay or Leave’ Debate in the U.S. Finds a Mirror in Baghdad" by SABRINA TAVERNISE
BAGHDAD, Nov. 15 — While Americans in a faraway land debate their fate, Iraqis have already decided on the cure. The only problem is that there is more than one set of Iraqis. Shiites want their country back. Sunni Arabs want a strongman. They cannot agree.
The landscape is that of a country sliding into war, and Sunnis and Shiites, like Republicans and Democrats, desperately look for ways out.
Shiites agree with many Democrats: American soldiers should withdraw to their bases. Sunnis say total control by the Shiite-dominated government could mean massacres.
The kidnapping was interpreted in different ways. Sunnis laid much of the blame with the government. Reflecting a broad shift that has taken place among Shiites, Sunnis had more sympathy for what they saw as the government’s plight. Militias, they said, were like parasites that the government would not be able to get rid of until it gained more control over security tasks now handled by Americans.
Militias are seen as a necessary protection against aggression by the other side. As Shiites have risen to power and filled the ranks of the security forces, Sunnis, who used to condemn the American forces, now often see them as a primary safeguard against Shiite violence. They do not trust the government, a concern that was underscored by Tuesday’s kidnapping.
And you will certainly find a full range of voices in Iraq amongst what I perceive as intelligent and bright people:
Tariq, a wiry man, gesturing animatedly with a thimble on one finger as he measured cloth in a tailor shop, said talk of sects was irritating. When asked, he simply replied, and said of the American troops:
“Muslim. We don’t want to see them in the streets. It’s like organized crime. If the government had sovereignty, it could combat all these things that are going on.”
Saad Abdul Razzaq, a Sunni whose brother was killed by Shiite militiamen a week ago, was of the strongman school. Five members of Mr. Abdul Razzaq’s extended family have died in violence since 2003. He would like to see a military coup, to be headed by a strongman, possibly Ayad Allawi, the former prime minister and secular Shiite with a past tied to the Baathists, the ruling party under Saddam Hussein:
“Democracy is not working. Only power can control Iraqis. He worked with Saddam. He knows his way.”
Ayad, an elderly man named, who was discussing politics with friends in central Baghdad:
“It’s a disaster if the American forces stay in Iraq, but it’s also a disaster if they go."
Abbas Fadhel, a college professor sitting in a social club in central Baghdad, spoke of the widening division and dim prospects for the future:
“The seriousness of this is that the sectarianism has penetrated to the educated people. They deny it, but when push comes to shove, you can see that they have become so.”
Husham al-Madfai, an architect who was sitting in his garden drinking beer Wednesday afternoon, discussing the student kidnappings, also said a coup would not work. He paused as two helicopters thundered overhead. The beer was running out, a problem he blamed on the Americans. All the alcohol sellers in his area, Mansour, have been killed, and most shops are now closed:
"It was really something humiliating. They went into a ministry and kidnapped tens of people. That means the government does not exist. All those militias will turn to fight against them. Who’s responsible for that? Rumsfeld. He should send us some beer.”
Muhammad Faisal, a Shiite whose brother and seven friends were shot to death in southern Baghdad on Sept. 23 while they were putting up a poster of a Shiite cleric, said the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki was like “a surgeon without his instruments.”
Shiek Mazin al-Khalaf, an Iraqi Sunni who speaks British-accented English, was enjoying a vodka. Iraqis are destined to fight, he said, because after years of abuse, they are capable only of abusing:
"Iraqis have been in prison since 1958, the year the monarchy was overthrown. The prisoners got out, they smelled the air, saw cars and cellphones. But they are criminals.”
Abd al-Karim al-Muhammadawi, a Shiite sheik from Amara, sitting on the other side of the table took issue with the description after Mr. Khalaf left the table, and hissed:
“Victims, not criminals.”
He said the only solution would be to ban the major political parties, declare martial law and begin again. The alternative, he said, is for the American military to leave Iraq completely and let the Iraqis begin a full-on civil war:
“This is better than the Iraqi condition now.”
Faaz, a student in Sadr City, the largest Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, agreed:
“I’d prefer to have what they had in Lebanon — a declared civil war. There is a lot of killing, but no one confesses what he is really doing.”
Sabah, a Shiite whose husband, a Sunni, was killed by Shiites in early September, sitting in her tiny living room in Karada, in central Baghdad, said a full-scale pullout would be a disaster:
“If the American forces leave Iraq, we will walk on bodies. The war would be face to face.”
I don't know what to think any more after reading Iraqi opinions.
What I do know is I want the U.S. to stop killing them, and I am dumbfounded by the wide range of opinion and experiences in that land.
May Allah bless them all.
And one year later, I no longer believe in the sectarian lie!
When I re-read this, I'm even more convinced!
