In the Red Zone

THE ART OF WAR

Readers of ITRZ know about my good friend Steve Mumford, the New York artist who inspired me to travel to Iraq by going there himself in April, 2003--and returned on three subsequent occasions.  This month's Harper's magazine (no link, sorry) features an eight page portfolio of his superb drawings and watercolors.  Short of actually going there, you can get no better idea of what Iraq looks and feels like, especially from the military side of things, than from Steve's work.

For a short profile I wrote of Steve for American Enterprise magazine, go here.  For Steve's experiences in Iraq, recorded in his highly-acclaimed series "Baghdad Journal," go here.

QUOTES OF THE DAY

Keeping the mullahs blind

Imagine what the recent fighting in Fallujah might have been like if Iraqi insurgents had the same caliber night-vision goggles as our own troops.

-- Dean Boyd, spokesman for Homeland Security Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division, on the need for stricter control of weapons and technology sales to Iran.

(Robert Block, Wall Street Journal)

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Dressing down the colonel

Bullshit!  It is your fault.  Just like everything here is your fault because you don't hold anyone accountable.  You don't discipline your troops.  You don't maintain basic standards.

-- Marine Captain Jamie Farrelly , responding to an excuse by an Iraqi officer named Colonel Yassir that the poor showing of Iraqi soldiers wasn't his fault. 

(Greg Jaffe, Wall Street Journal)

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Dead men tell no tales

I think they've got a problem.

-- Edward B. MacMahoh, Jr., speaking about federal prosecutors who have charged his client, Omar Abu Ali with aiding Al Qaeda.

MacMahon is refering to the fact that one of the two "unnamed co-conspirators" who claim that Ali had entered into discussions with Al Qaeda to kill President Bush died in a shoot-out with Saudi authorities in 2003.  The case against Abu Ali appears at this point very weak.  Worse, according to a federal judge, "There has been at least some circumstantial evidence that Abu Ali has been tortured during interrogations with the knowledge of the United States."

(Eric Lichtblau and Neela Banerjee, New York Times)

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And he's kind to children, too

In prison I discovered the human aspects of [Al Qaeda mastermind Ayman] Al-Zawahri’s character. I realized that his thoughts depended on an Islamist military coup d’etat of the ruling regime. In the meantime, he was a delicate poet who wrote Islamic poetry.

-- Egyptian lawyer and author Montasser Al-Zayat, on his new book Islamist Groups:  A View from Within

(Noha El-Hennay, Egypt Today)

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The principled Left

I thought it was right to oppose the war. But history moves on and the Iraqi people now have a golden opportunity to take back their country and build a decent non-sectarian democracy based on social justice. There are huge obstacles but I hope that parts of the left don't make themselves part of the problem by ignoring the urgent need to back the new Iraqi labour movement. Labour Against the War is standing in the way of solidarity and I have resigned to help alert the wider movement to the need to support Grassroots Iraq.

-- left-wing MP Harry Barnes, after resigning from the English group Labour Against the War.

(Labour Friends of Iraq)

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The Ptolemaic universe of the Saracens

The emotional reaction to the disaster is what was lacking. The Arabs’ ability to empathize with humanity at large is less than their ability to sympathize with each other. Our concept of humanity is still weak compared to our ethnic feelings as Arabs and Muslims, despite the fact that most of the victims were Indonesian Muslims. The truth is, Southeast Asians are not perceived as Muslims in the Arab world.

-- Gamal Abdel Gawad, analyst at the Cairo-based Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, speaking of the Arab world's weak response to tsunami victims

(Rania al-Malky, Egypt Today)

TERMS OF ENGAGEMENT XV

The Brave "Resistance"

In this week's The Nation, writer David Enders in Baghdad interviews a man named "Ali Hussein" (not his real name), who claims to be a commander in what Enders calls the "resistance."  It's interesting to note the courage of this "resistance," as articulated from a "guerrilla" himself.

We have boys as young as 13 fighting with us.  Some of them we use to tell us where American troops are, others we give grenades and they throw them at Humvees and Bradleys. We recently killed a man who owned a uniform company because he was making uniforms for the Iraqi army. We kidnapped a cousin of Mowaffak al-Rubaie [national security adviser for Iyad Allawi's provisional government] and killed him.... There are so many stories of operations. Four days ago we killed four police officers. We warned them three times to quit. We have agents in the government, in the police."

And here is an example of the ethics of Ali's "resistance:"

We don't let people play cards, we don't let people drink.  We warn the person, and then break his legs or kill him if he doesn't stop.

To Enders' credit he asks why the "insurgency" doesn't also apply Islamic prohibitions against theft--which is, of course, one way the gunmen finance their operations.  "Drinking and gambling lead to desperation," says commander Ali. 

FEMINAZIS

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.

-- Frederick Douglass, "Letter to an Abolitionist associate," 1853

The photo in February 24th's New York Post shows a beautiful Iraqi woman with a proud smile and a dyed index fingertip.  This is the face of Iraqi democracy, the image seems to say.  The fact that she appears sans voile indicates that she is probably an ex-pat who voted beyond the borders of Iraq.  And that's important, because the caption of the photo reads:  "Iraqi voter:  she's not worse off."

If this unidentified Iraqi woman lives in North America or Europe, no doubt that is true.  But if she lives in Iraq--sorry, Mr. Murdoch, she is worse off. 

The photo illustrated "Democracy v. Women?"an op-ed piece by Collin Levey.  In the piece, Levey, an assistant editor for the Wall Street Journal, takes issue with a recent Amnesty International Report entitled Iraq:  Decades of Suffering.  Rather than criticize the report directly, however, she notes two newspaper headlines:  the Toronto Star's, "Rights Reduced, Security Worse since Occupation," and Al Jazeera's "Iraqi Women Still subject to Abuse."  As Levey asserts,

In each case, the subtext was clear:  Things have gotten worse for Iraqi women and America is to blame.

This is a classic rhetorical technique, perfected by Rush Limbaugh, and used by many pundits (including this one).  Instead of analyzing a particular issue or position, you attack press coverage of the issue, which gives the appearance of a critique of the issue itself.  In this case, Levey picks on two headlines to assert that the Amnesty International report is wrong, and that women, in fact, are not worse off today than under Saddam.  But that just ain't so.  Read AI's report.

I discovered this inconvenient truth for myself in the fall of 2003.  Because of crime and spotty electricity, which turned city streets into menacing gauntlets for anyone out past sunset, women could not venture out of doors as much as they did under the fascist Baathist regime.  (You can read my story written from Baghdad at the time here.) "You should have been here in the 1970s!" they would tell me.  "We could stay out until three, four in the morning!"  When I returned to Iraq a few months later, the situation had worsened:  now women feared not only criminals, but terrorists and the growing power of fundamentalist religious parties.  Today, my Iraqi female friends tell me that when it comes to safety and general freedom of activity, their lives are much more circumscribed than before the fall of Saddam.  And a large portion of the fault for this debacle has to go to the United States of America.

My credentials as an advocate for the liberation and reconstruction of Iraq hardly need establishing.  But I believe, as I wrote in In the Red Zone, that supporting the war does not mean ignoring or sugar-coating problems the conflict has inflicted on the Iraqi people.  The plight of women is one of those problems.  Not only has the end of Saddam made the day-to-day lives of Arab (as opposed to Kurdish) women more difficult, the rise of the Shia religious establishment promises to make their existence even more onerous through shari'a law.  (I refer the reader to my post last month, "Left Behind.")

Despite the manifold evils of their regime, the Baathists brought economic and social advancement for women.  After seizing power in 1968, the Nazi-inspired party declared its commitment to equal rights. Article 12 of its constitution states

The Arab woman enjoys the full rights of citizenship. The Party struggles for elevating woman's standard until she becomes worthy to enjoy these rights.

Most amazingly, the constitution tackled perhaps the primary social phenomenon that limits women's lives, freedom and futures:  tribalism.  According to article 43:

Bedouin life is a primitive social status that undermines the national production and renders a large portion of the nation paralyzed. It is a factor that precludes the development and progress of the nation. The party is striving to modernize Bedouin life and give Bedouins lands together with the cancellation of the tribal system and the enforcement of the State's laws on them.

Who on the right or left says today?

In 1970, Baathists declared women equal to men under the law, even as the Party drove down literacy rates and brought females into the work force.  In 1980, one year after Saddam seized absolute power, women won the right to vote.  Within a few years, their participation in the civil service rose to 40 percent.  By 1987, women held 13 percent of the seats in the National Assembly (an unheard of percentage then in the Middle East); in 1990, they made up 22 percent of university teaching positions and 13 percent of administrative and managerial jobs. 

Today in nearly every category (except, interestingly, the number of seats in parliament), the condition of women has deteriorated.   This is particularly true in literacy, health and crime rates.  To be fair, this problem began years before the U.S. invasion:  in the 1980s, as Saddam began to lose the Iran-Iraq war, he turned to support from his country's tribal sheiks, re-introducing patriarchal social customs the Baathists had tried to suppress.  Worse, as his regime begun to crumble in the mid-1990s, the tyrant attempted to garner support from the Shia by allowing shari'a regulations regarding women and family life to permeate, and in some cases, supplant Iraqi laws. 

Again, I am no apologist for the Saddam years.  And to be sure, many Iraqi women prefer the chaos of today to the "stability" of the past.  "What kind of freedom did we have under Saddam?  The freedom of the grave," Baghdad feminist Hanaa Edwar told me. 

Still, we must be honest here.  By destroying Baathist authority and letting the Shia genie out of the bottle, the U.S. has exacerbated social tendencies and conditions that impact women's lives for the worse.  This is the cost--or perhaps the birth pangs--of democracy, one might say, and I believe the Iraqi people will bear them, as they have so many other disappointments, setbacks and torments.  But for right-wing pundits to declare victory and ignore what this new Iraqi society means for females, seems shallow and morally questionable. 

A century ago, the North abandoned the cause of black enfranchisement in the years after the Civil War and allowed apartheid to resettle in the southern United States.  We have far less influence over Iraq, of course, but we must take steps to insure a similar catastrophe does not take place in that newly liberated land.  If the plow of democracy only churns up the topsoil of Iraqi society, and does not dig deep into the substrata of tribalism and patriarchal domination, then our efforts in that land will be half-measures at best.  We must continue, in modern form, Douglass' concept of abolitionist "agitation."  Women must be free--religious and social customs be damned.

FRIDAY'S LIBRARY

As I recover from a slight cold and watch Manhattan dig out from last night's snowstorm, I'm checking out--and so should you:

Amsterdammed Opinionated, where Myrtus, the self-described "Berber for Bush," links us to a discussion of women and Sufism. 

The evidently Sunni Baghdad Dweller, who raises some questions--and offers accompanying pics--regarding the Shia't Ali.

Heretical Librarian, where David Durant offers a nice overview on "signs of change in the Arab world:"  From your blog to Allah's eyes, David.

Hyscience, who links us to a Newsweek story about how the "noose is tightening" around the Z-Man.  I had to double-check the date on the story;  it seems we hear this report once a week. 

Ninecharlie reminds us of another reason, along with Arthur Chrenkoff and Mad Max, why we love the Aussies.

And this is interesting, if true, from Regime Change in Iran.

Stocks or ballots in Saudi Arabia?  And maybe the answer to this question is--lucrative contract kickbacks and other forms of construction hanky-panky?

Finally, ABC News asks the questions that has perplexed me (and what on earth is a 49 year old doing heading up his fan club, anyway?)

Speaking of ABC News--if UFOs are real, why hasn't one ever malfunctioned or crash-landed?

Thought for the day:

To believe in our own thoughts, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men--that is genius.

-- Emerson, Self-Reliance

QUOTES OF THE DAY

[Illness, exhaustion and work have consumed me for the time being, so blogging will be light again.  I do have a post up on Chester today, which I hope you will read.  Tomorrow, insha'allah, I will be in better form.  But for the time being--]

Parental notification

It's lies.  It's all lies.  The government lied from the very first day.

-- Omar Abu Ali, father of Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, whom the U.S. government has charged with providing support for terrorism and for training with Al Qaeda. 

Also mentioned in the federal indictment are Abu Ali's alleged plans to assassinate George Bush.  For more details, check out my aforementioned post on Chester.

For the federal indictment of Abu Ali, go here.

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Exit polls

Unity is more important than winning.

-- Ahmad Chalabi on why he withdrew his bid to become the Shia nominee for the Prime Minister position, promising to support Ibrahim Jaafari instead.

I have heard they don't want me.  Why, God knows.

-- Ayad Allawi, remarking on the fact that Iraq's religious leaders do not want him to serve as the country's prime minister.

Still, the Shia alliance controls 140 parliamentary seats out of 275--meaning they have to curry support from the Kurds--who control 75 seats--and possibly Allawi's slate, which holds 40.  As Kurdish politician Barham Salih put it,

Anything is possible.  In the past, it used to be Saddam Hussein who made all the decisions for us Iraqis.  But now this is an open game, and you will see shifting alliances.

This includes the possibility of some Shia defecting to join the other parties.  Or, as Allawi told the New York Times,

What it boils down to is that there are a lot of secular Shiites in the alliance.

With many issues to solve, among them the nature of federalism and the place of Islam in the new constitution, the disposition of Kirkuk and revenue-sharing agreements over oil.  Not to mention the fascist counter-liberation.  On this point, at least, Jaafari sounds encouraging:

I don't believe that anybody, be they Sunnis or any other religious doctrine, will allow these people to destroy our country, and there should be a force that will stop them and put an end to the bloodshed.

(John F. Burns, Dexter Filkins, New York Times)

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Passive-Aggressive

We expect your retaliation. It is what unites us and divides you.

-- from the HBO-BBC TV movie "Dirty War," which depicts a fictitious dirty bomb attack in downtown London. 

In this particularly chilling scene, English investigators warn an Islamofascist that the U.K. will strike back for the terrorist attack he organized on London.  The character's reply articulates the very core of terrorist tactics.  The question remains, however:  how would a country react to a terrorist attack on one of its major cities, especially if invading a country--such as Iraq--is not an option?  By secretly forming Christian suicide militias to attack Muslim holy sites, but leave no trace of government involvement? 

King of Fools on ITRZ

King of Fools reviews ITRZ:

No matter where you stand on Iraq, In the Red Zone is outside of your echo chamber. I highly recommend reading it.

Read the rest here.

QUOTES OF THE DAY

She's baa-ack...

I honestly cannot explain why Americans consistently embrace war and are now talking about expanding it.

-- anti-war maven Leslie Cagan, now the national coordinator of a new group called United for Peace and Justice.

(Roderick Boyd, New York Sun)

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Junk mail

If I were in Iraq and read that the youth of our nation doesn't believe in what I'm doing, it would mess up my head.

-- Pfc. Rob Jacobs

Last month, Private Jacobs, who is stationed in Korea, received a batch of letters from sixth grade school kids attending JHS 51 in Park Slope, Brooklyn.  The letters were part of a school assignment organized by the kids' teacher to show support for our troops.  But as the New York Post reported, one girl wrote her misgivings that Jacobs is "being forced to kill innocent people."  Another wrote, "I strongly feel this war is pointless," while a third future Leslie Cagan predicted that with Bush's re-election, "only 50 or 100 [soldiers] will survive."  Perhaps watching too much Al Jazeera, a boy accused GIs of "destroying holy places like mosques."  New York's Department of Education is looking into the matter.

Says Jacobs, "It boggles my mind that children could think this stuff."

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Dept. of Pointless Distinctions

Our aim is to make students aware of the danger of terrorism.  The problem is that some youth cannot distinguish between Jihad and terrorism, though there is a sharp line between the two.

-- Saudi education official Bahiya Al-Nagadi

Al-Nagadi is referring to the just-completed two-week educational effort mounted in the Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, intended to teach school kids the downside of supporting Islamofascists.  Let's hope they do a better job than JHS 51.

(Arab News)

HOLLYWOOD CANTEEN

The Wall Street Journal's John Lippman related the bad news last Friday:  Hollywood is preparing Iraq war movies.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love war flicks (although, since I returned from Iraq, I can no longer endure violent or overly-suspenseful movies)--preferably along the lines of John Wayne's Sands of Iwo Jima, or, more recently, Mel Gibson's We Were Soldiers.  Still, the thought of the same industry that gave Michael Moore an academy award filming the liberation of Iraq causes my heart to sink faster than Halle Berry's career after Catwoman. 

And indeed, since this is Hollywood, we can probably figure out the plots of most of these movies beforehand.  Let's see... White House officials will always be portrayed as obtuse or corrupt or both--while Our Hero will invariably be an outsider who Knows The Truth but can't get anyone to pay attention until it is too late...but wait!  That is the plot of Richard Clark's Against All Enemies, the screenplay for which is being written even as we speak...

Lippman notes that the best-selling Jarhead is in production (but wait, wasn't that Gulf War I?), along with something called Syriana, about how the "U.S. underestimated the terrorist threat before 9/11." (Hmmm, will the terrorists be Islamic, or pony-tailed white guys with vague central European accents?)  George Clooney plays a CIA agent, and Matt Damon an--oh Lord--oil company executive.  Do I detect the tar-pit smell of a conspiracy theory?

And landing like a laser-guided smart bomb in the "Oh God, Please Spare Me" category is "The Tiger and the Snow."  According to Lippman, this will star Roberto Benigni as--oh the humanity!--a "love-struck Italian poet stranded in Iraq at the beginning of the U.S. invasion."  Perhaps I'm too hasty, and this will be okay.  If so, I will gladly eat my copy of Orlando Furioso.

There is one possible bright spot in the Hollywood gloom, or glitz, as the case may be:  "Fallujah."  Based on a book by Reagan-era assistant secretary of defense Bing West, the story focuses on the Marines' involvement in the city from its liberation in April, 2003 to its re-liberation in December, 2004.  Harrison Ford is contemplating the project.  No production date has been set.  And that's okay:  if they wait long enough, maybe the movie will have a happy ending

ANSAR AL-DAJJAL

About a year ago in Kirkuk, I met a young man at the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan named Pola.  A thin figure with bad teeth, a bowl haircut and small black eyes set deep in the crevice between his cheekbones and brow, Pola seemed looked much older than his 30 years.  And no wonder.  In the mid-1990s, he told me, Baath party officials exiled him to Halabja, a city still traumatized by Saddam's 1989 poison gas attack, which killed 5,000 people.  At the time Pola lived there, the Kurdish terrorist group Ansar al-Islam was active in the region.  On one occasion, the pro-Baathist paramilitaries left 42 decapitated bodies in Halabja's central square; another time, they left 17 headless corpses.  Pola escaped from the cursed town and made his way to the Northern No-Fly Zone and the protection of U.S. and British warplanes.  He joined the PUK and during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, helped the organization, along with American Special Forces destroy Ansar al-Islam bases.

"American freed me twice," he said, tears glistening in his age- and experience-worn eyes.  "Once from Ansar al-Islam, and once from Saddam.  In every house in Kurdistan, there is a picture of President Bush.  He and American brought us freedom."

I thought of my encounter with the Kurd today as I read Edward Wong's New York Times piece headlined "Attacks by Militant Groups Rise in Mosul."  According to Kurdish officials whom  Wong interviewed, "Islamist" groups like Ansar al-Islam and its off-shoot Ansar al-Sunnah are responsible for most of the attacks in Mosul, while activity by ex-Baathists and Saddamites (for some reason the Times calls them "nationalist insurgents") has lessened. Moreover,

though the two Ansar--meaning "supporter" or "follower"--groups have little connection to Baathist...they are forging strong ties to the network of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi...

If true--and some American officials, writes Wong, still believe Baathists to be organizing terrorist attacks--this represents a significant, if not unexpected development.  Increasingly, we are seeing the home-grown Iraq component of the counter-liberation diminish, and the foreign jihadist element come to the fore-front.  Not only that, but, as the press has reported lately, the Sunni obstructionists are having second thoughts about maintaining their "insurgency" and seek to reach a political settlement.

The Financial Times' Charles Clover reported yesterday that the Association of Muslim Scholars--who claim to represent some 3,000 Sunni mosques--has been meeting with tribal leaders from the Sunni Triangle region in order to create a "broad-based political front,"  Clover notes that Association spokesman Sheik Omar Ragheb al-Kubaisi

stressed that his group, which opposes the U.S.-led occupation [read:  liberation] of Iraq, is not connected to the armed insurgency, but is seeking political rather than military way to force coalition troops to leave.

This makes no sense, of course, because the Sunni "armed insurgency" is creating the very need for coalition troops to remain in Iraq, but never mind.  What's important is the final graf in Clover's story:

[Kubaisi] also sought to distinguish between the "legitimate" resistance and foreign Islamist extremists led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.  "We reject the path taken by Zarqawi.  He does not represent the Iraqi resistance.  He is not even Iraqi, he is Jordanian.  We reject the path he has taken, he has destroyed the reputation of the Iraqi resistance."

Is this the same "resistance" that has murdered thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, transformed Fallujah into a slaughter pen and butchered Margaret Hasan?  It's hard to imagine anyone "destroying" their reputation further, but we'll let that go, too.  The point is the daylight opening up between the Sunni Arab reactionaries and their one-time partner in mayhem, Zarqawi. 

This development was one of the most striking aspects of Michael Ware's recent story in Time, "Talking with the Enemy."  Ware reports how U.S. officials are beginning talks with the "self-described nationalist insurgency."  Or, as one middle-aged ex-Baathist tells an American military commander, "We are ready to work with you."

What do the bad guys want?  Says Ware,

the rebels have told diplomats and military officers that they support a secular democracy in Iraq but resent the prospect of a government run by exiles who fled to Iran and the West during Saddam's regime.  The insurgents also seek a guaranteed timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal...

Evidently, the Saddmites are flexible.

[T]hey would accept a U.N. peacekeeping force [hide the women and children!] as the U.S. troop presence recedes.  Insurgent representative Abu Mohammad says the nationalists [sic] would even tolerate U.S. bases on Iraqi soil.  "We don't mind if the invader becomes a guest," he says...

(Remind me, what these "nationalists" are fighting for again?)

The mooshkelay in all this is Zarqawi.  As Ware notes,

[A]l-Zarqawi and his allies have silenced nationalists by threatening to kill them if they negotiate.  The Western observer close to the discussions says, "Al Zarqawi keeps pulling the process away from 'fight and negotiate to 'pure mayhem.'"

Well, well.  The Saddamites signed their Faustian pact with Ansar al-Shaitan and now they're confronting the bill.  Two years of murder, for what?  Despite what reporters write, their "nationalist" uprising was always a chimera, an illusion to stroke their humiliated egos.  Now that they seek a role in the maturer game of nation-building (the real nationalist cause) the demons they conjured--the Ansars and Zarqawis and Al Qaedas--will not let them rest.  Too late the Sunni "insurgents" are awakening to the truth:  they tried to pitch liberated Iraqi into Hell; instead, they only succeeded in plunging into the abyss themselves.