The New Islamic Republic of Iraq

Iraq has officially become like Iran and Saudi Arabia. It is now a country that bans music, theater and alcohol, a country that I can call the New Islamic Republic of Iraq.

What a tragedy! Why don’t they call it “banning life”?

Is that art?!

Last week, the Iraqi government shut down social clubs that serve alcohol in Baghdad, enraging the educated class who demonstrated against the extreme Islamic-inspired order. Today, Iraqis woke up to hear a far worse order; the Iraqi Ministry of Education has banned theater and music classes in Baghdad’s Fine Arts Institute, and ordered the removal of statues showcased at the entrance of the institute without explaining the move.

In a country that went through wars, sanctions and a horrific totalitarian regime, art remained defiant against Islamic extremism throughout centuries. Art has always been an integral part of Iraqis’ lives. Yet today the turbaned Mullahs, who are turning secular Iraq back into the Stone Age, have denied Iraqis’ the right of keeping art part of their country, erasing the Mesopotamian heritage that we inherited thousands of years ago. I wish the Sumerian makers of the Golden Guitar were alive, 3000 years later to see what has happened to their country.

Iraqis raised their voice and democratically elected a secular slate last March, but the Islamic fanatics who wrote the post-Saddam constitution wrote it in a way that they will always be the winners who will get the majority of the seats in the parliament.

We need two things: a new constitution and an atheist regime. Not secular, atheist. That’s how we can achieve success in arts, science and modernity. As long as there is a religious regime, no country will ever progress! Gods and politics will never reconcile. I choose not to side with religion. I choose to side with sanity.  

Give Iraq a Break!

When Saddam Hussein used his tyrannical methods to control Iraqis, he left an entire population traumatized. I mean really traumatized, not my-cat-don’t-speak-with-me traumatized!

This is a fact, but what surprised me today as I was reading the news is finding out that there are Americans who claim they are traumatized by him!

Jane Arraf of the Christian Science Monitor reported yesterday that Iraq will pay $400 million for Saddam’s mistreatment of Americans. She writes:

The claims include compensation for emotional distress from the children of two contractors seized near the Iraq-Kuwait border in 1990.

Emotional distress?! Seriously? The entire population of 25 million are already traumatized, not only by the actions of the dictator who brutalized his own people, but also by the two successive U.S.-led wars and the 12 years of international sanctions when hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children died of hunger. Talk about emotional distress!

It is really disturbing to see such people file law suits against a country that is trying to stand up on its feet to rebuild and revive its life. What is more disturbing is that those people are so inconsiderate that just because they have “emotional distress” they want to prevent millions of dollars to be used in rebuilding a country that their very own country took part in its misery.

So let the “traumatized” contractor’s sons enjoy yet another beautiful day at school with their brand new backpack the Iraqi government paid for, and let the real traumatized Iraqi children battle their bomb-filled, insecure way to get to school.

Give me a break! Give Iraq a break! Isn’t it enough what had already happened?

Fierce Competetion to Shape Iraq’s Future

On Saturday, Iraqi people are going to the polling centers to cast their ballots in the country’s provincial elections. I’ve been following the elections news and thought I should share some information I have gathered in that regard.

For those interested in understanding what the ABCs of the elections are, read this MSNBC Q&A report.

As you may all know, violence in Iraq has decreased due to several factors, including the segregation of the cities and the neighborhoods within and the joint Iraqi-American military operations that helped fight the insurgents and militias who almost took over the country. But above all those factors was the fact that the Iraqi people themselves have finally realized that there was no need to fight each other anymore. This, of course, excludes the politicians. And this led to a relative reconciliation that has finally penetrated into the warring Iraqi society.

Saturday’s provincial elections are critical. I believe they will be a new kind of test where Iraqis are going to see if those they are voting for will take the country forward and not backwards. It is a test for Iraqis themselves as well. The results will reveal whether the people have learned their lessons of the past elections. Of course, it is hard to assume they did as democracy is still new and it’ll take them decades to understand how it should work.

In this post, I’ll try to post some of the main concerns and most important issues that are related to the elections:

– Shiites, Maliki and the south

In most of the provinces across the country, the direction nowadays is not religious. People no longer care about the fact that the candidate is the son of the prophet, his grandson, or even the prophet himself. All they need is clean water, electricity, jobs and security. This is a milestone in the road of understanding that religion should be separated from the state. In this regard, Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki, an Islamist and a leader of the Dawa Islamic Party and who runs The State of Law Coalition slate, is not using his party’s religious mottos. In an interview with the Washington Post, a campaign manager for the Shiite coalition said, “Maliki is Islamic as a person, but as a statesman? No, he’s secular.” He added that there are other priorities he and his candidates need to consider.

Ghassan Al-Attiyah, a secular political analyst has noted this change as well. Yet, he told the Post that the important question is if Maliki is sincere in “wearing the mantle of reform instead of Islam.”

In a recent poll conducted by the widely-read independent Azzaman newspaper and Al-Sharqiyah satellite TV, Maliki and his State of Law Coalition are on the top of the charts. According to the Washington Post and the New York Times, Maliki’s popularity these days has risen due to his strong statements regarding the centralization of the Iraqi government, which I think is a tactic he’s using to win the votes because he knows some Iraqis, except the Kurds, do not want the country to be divided into federal regions. This tactic is scaring his Kurdish and other Shiite rivals, of course. Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, the cancer-ill leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, has been calling uninterruptedly for separating southern Iraq from the rest of the country in a federal region that will look hugely like Iran and be run by Mullahs and Ayatollahs. The Kurds on the other hand are not worried about that. They already have their federal region, ruled by them democratically. However, their concern is how much power should the central government own. They have not yet gotten rid of the trauma Saddam had caused in brutalizing them and their rights. The outspoken Kurdish member of the Iraqi parliament told the New York Times that “people think [Maliki] has overreached.” It has even reached the extent that Waleed Salih Sherka told the Post that “[Iraqis] got rid of the dictator and nightmare Saddam Hussein only to get this new dictator wearing the uniform of democracy.” Wow, the competition is fierce. Several Iraqi and American newspapers have also mentioned that there have been some heated discussions recently between the Masoud Barzani and Maliki.

In addition to Maliki’s coalition, other candidates from other political parties are competing to win some seats. Those include the communists, the secularists, members of the Fadhila party, the nationalists, and some independent candidates who gain their support from the tribes in the provinces.

– Anbar, once restive now tries to be democratic

Anbar province was one of the most violent part in the country. Who of us doesn’t know the Fallujah battle? Today, the Sunnis in Anbar are focusing on democracy rather than violence. The Post’s Anthony Shadid reported from Ramadi, the provinces’ capital, that competition is fierce between the tribes-backed candidates and the political parties. Anbaris may find it hard to have technocrats or seculars to rule the province. They are left with the tribes because these tribes revolted against Al-Qaeda and restored the power from the terror organization. The tribes insist that The political parties like the Iraqi Islamic Party are not beneficial for the province. Shadid quote one of the candidates calling the IIP “liars” and “cowards.” They call Harith al-Dhari, head of the Muslim Scholars Association and a strong supporter of al-Qaeda in Iraq, “a barking dog” since all he does is complaining from his comfort zone in Jordan.

In any case, the Post reported that of the 29 candidates in Anbar, 15 are tribal figures.

Believe it or not, a group of secular liberals are also running in this election. The Post reports that “Shiites and Kurds sit on their board. So do a Christian and a Jew, one of the handful left in the country.” The paper said they advocate human rights and transparency, and end of corruption and the rehabilitation of Iraq. However, Shadid observed that “no one seems to be listening [to them]. “No one really can,” writes Shadid.

Against the tribes’ candidates run the Iraqi Islamic Party which created a coalition with some tribes. Called “Coalition of the Educated and Tribes for Development,” the coalition includes four Sunni political blocks, according to the Opinion Web site, Niqash. It also mentioned that violent incidents might occur between the competitive factions. One of the candidates Shadid interviewed was Hamid Al-Hayes who threatened to “kill all of their candidates” if theirs are attacked.

– Nineveh and the Kurd-Arab divide

It’s been continuously reported that the Kurds in the north are trying to include some of the non-Kurdish lands to their region. Their efforts include attempting to control parts of Nineveh province which is the home of Mosul, Iraq’s largest second city after Baghdad.

Since the election campaigns started, violence increased in the restive province. Niqash reported that several members of the competing political factions have been killed since the campaigns started. Observers believe these assassinations aim to destabilize the area.

In the northern province there are basically two slates, one include Arabs and the other include the Kurds. The Washington Post observed that Arabs in the province are looking forward to win in order to “appoint a governor and use their political power to roll back the Kurdish expansion.”

***

In the midst of this race of who will run the provinces, election posters have been stuck on almost every building and electricity post. Since corruption is a disease Iraq is still suffering from, some candidates used several methods to make people vote for them. Azzaman reported that Iraqis have been complaining about pressure and threats carried out by some parties to force them vote for their candidates. The threats varied, including assassinations and kidnappings. The paper added that they have even tried to bribe people to vote for their candidates.

***

I wish I had the time to write more about everything related to the elections. However, I suggest you read the articles I have linked to in this post for a better understanding of how this election is shaped.

blog.bassamsebti@gmail.com

Seeing Our Past in ‘Betrayed’

It was the same scene playing in my mind as it was on the stage. A young man called Adnan standing between mutilated dead bodies at the Baghdad morgue, looking for his friend’s body. As I was watching, I recalled how I stood in the real morgue back in 2006. The smell of the decaying bodies and the horror of being identified by the militias who were controlling the morgue flashed back into my eyes. I couldn’t but feel the warm tears pouring, watering my cheeks. The whole scene reminded me of the story I covered for the Washington Post when Shiite militiamen killed hundreds of innocents after the Samarra shrine bombing in 2006, an incident that triggered the civil war between the Sunnis and Shiites in the war-torn country.

The horrific scene was performed in Betrayed, a play by the The New Yorker writer George Packer, author of the acclaimed The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq. Betrayed, which was screened at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater, is about the plight of the Iraqis who worked for the Americans who were either killed or threatened to be killed by the extremists who considered them traitors, spying for the occupiers and who were betrayed by their American employers who did not help them survive or flee the country for protection. The idea of the play started as an article in The New Yorker by Mr. Paker who adopted the play’s plot and characters from real stories and information he gathered as he reported in the article.
The play was great. The New York Times put it in the best words:

“But the clarity of the writing, the urgency of the story being told and the fine performances give the play a sharp dramatic impact and a plain-spoken beauty. Painful human experience is presented here as just that. Nothing else is necessary to awaken sympathy, despair and awareness of a grave moral failure on the part of the American government.”

Last night was great not only because I watched the play, but also because I had the chance to meet George Paker whom I consider my idol, along with Anthony Shadid. I never want anything in my career life just to achieve at least half of what they achieved. Mr. Paker was a very nice person. We talked about the article, the play and of course his book The Assassins Gate.

Before the play started, my Iraqi friends and I had the chance to speak with celebrity and American actress Sarah Jesscia Parker who was hosting the play along with Matt Dillon, and Refugees International. We had the chance to speak with Sarah Jessica about how we lived and worked for American organizations, be it for the government or for the U.S. newspapers. My friend, B, whom the play was partly based on her story as a young woman working in the Green Zone for the Americans, explained to the superstar the reality of the daily risk she put herself in to do her job. Parker was all ears. It was the second time she attended the play. She said she was ready this time. She brought her tissues.

blog.bassamsebti@gmail.com

In modern Islam, Shiites Revived and Sunnis did not like that!

A few days ago, I finished reading a very interesting book about the Middle East and more specifically about the Shiite Muslims. The Shia Revival by Vali Nasr is a must-read for all those who have no idea what the terms ‘Shiite’ and ‘Sunni’ mean. I actually recommend it more for those who are interested in knowing why there is a difference in the two terms and why was all this fuss called ‘sectarian war in Iraq.’
Although I knew many things mentioned in the book, I still found that there were things I did not really know. Nasr narrates, analyzes and discusses them in details.

I have a friend in Philly who is a Shiite Muslim from Saudi Arabia’s infamous Qatif city. We have always sat and discussed issues that concern our region, religion, and our lives as they are related to these things. One day, I was completely upset and mad at what I had discovered in our religion. The discussion we both had led to realizing that it’s not the problem was not in the religion itself more than the practitioners of Islam themselves who used certain things and interpreted them the way they wanted them to mean. The goal is to make others believe them, and nothing other using certain things from the religion to make them believe in was better than that. During that discussion, I told my friend about my memories of Islam in Iraq. I remember leaning back on the plastic chair, saying “Our religion was simple. The war made it gross.”

Indeed, it was as simple as knowing the basic things in the Quran, knowing your prophet is Mohammed and your God is Allah and that there were other prophets whom God chose to deliver his messages. Yes, there were Sunni and Shiite differences, but among the people (at least those in Baghdad whom I was one of) it was not something we really cared about. During those years, books about religion were rarely found. The secular Baathist regime made sure people in my generation do not understand or know what the real history behind the two sects was. My family did tell me that the Shiites were victimized throughout history, especially during the Abbasid Empire era, but they never really went into details about it nor they stressed on making me or my sister insist on knowing it because it was not a big deal then.

The internet revolution and the flow of the books and the articles about the real history between the two sects appeared on surface in the aftermath of the US.-led invasion of Iraq, letting me and many others in my generation be able to read and learn about that grim and gruesome history of wars and struggle to get power.

One of these books is the Shia Revival. The book opened my eyes to many things that I did not before the war. I knew it all started when Prophet Mohammed died but did not know other details, including the fight between Iran and Saddam was a Shiite-Sunni fight. I know understand why the Arab countries supported Saddam against the “Evil Persians” and why Iran went on for eight years to fight Saddam. The goal was who would dominate? The Sunnis who wanted the Arab World always be Sunni or the Shiites, represented by Iran then, who wanted to spread their faith to a larger crowd in the Arab World?

Addressing the West in his book, Nasr relates the Shiite rituals to those of the other religions. This was something that I did not really know. Nasr also talks about Saudi Arabia’s Wahabism a lot. It is widely connected to the struggle between Sunnis and Shiites these days. It goes way back to the days when the Wahabis invaded the holy city of Karbala where Imam Hussein is buried and slaughtered the Shiites there, believing that they were infidels and tomb worshipers. He also writes about the Lebanon Shiites and how they emerged as a fighting and strong force in the region, making even Sunnis follow them in their fight against Israel which was occupying their land for decades. Then, came the Iran-Iraq war and the whole struggle of keeping the Shiites away from domination. There is also a long, detailed and very interesting chapter about Khomeini and his role in Shiism, followed by an interestingly-analyzed chapter about the new Iraq which he called it ‘The first Shiite Arab state,’ a term that I’ve never heard before and a one that is so true.

Overall, the book shows that the struggle is not religious more than political. Peoples from both sects were caught in the middle of this conflict. They were used and brain-washed over the decades to create differences.

Anyways, it is a wonderful book and a good source that I strongly recommend to readers interested in learning about political Islam.

The other book I’m sunk in its waters now is Robin Wright’s Dreams and Shadows: the future of the Middle East.

Blog.bassamsebti@gmail.com