born 1976, political Scientist and freelance journalist
[17/02/2010]
Military scrapyards. So that nobody forgets the past. Oil and gas burning in the distance, misty, with the greyish, wintery color of December. A wall of rain that you cross and there is no country behind it; just an endless, predictable and eternal succession of military checkpoints of the Iraqi army.
From Basra to the north, to Nassiriya. The military checkpoints are not a decoration or a joke. With only one look the foreigner, all too evident in his appearance and despite his continuous silence and his evasive looks, must get out of the car repeatedly while his companions give explanations, show papers, open bags and rucksacks. Within only a few minutes you have drawn their attention, arisen their curiosity. The look. They write down names, telephone numbers, the license plate, the origin and destination of the journey. They communicate with the other outposts. The following checkpoint is waiting for us, forewarned, and the routine is repeated once again. An American transport helicopter crosses the sky. It flies low. So that, if after two hours on the road and a few days in Basra, we should forget that they are still there.
A two-way highway, with three lanes in each direction crosses the land in front of the military airport of Imam Ali, built under Saddam's regime, now under the control of the American army. A convoy slowly crosses through three of the lanes. Transport trucks. The fourth lane, in the opposite direction, is taken-up by security. The unavoidable escort. The Iraqi cars are forcefully stopped, blocked in the ditch. In the distance, camels and Bedouins -in an oriental cliché- ignore them. A lost hour. Silence. Nobody looks at the soldiers. They only want to continue their journey. "When you have to catch a plane or travel for an appointment, you always have to plan on an extra day, due to the time you have to waste. This time it has only been an hour, but I have waited up to eight. Without any explanation." Raisan Abu Ali, a driver used to this route, avoids going on a rant, laconic, but he has made his point clear.
To the right, Nassiriya, to the north, Baghdad. To the left we approach Samawa, an unavoidable stop on the way to Najaf. At full speed, the car overtakes dozens of pilgrims carrying black flags. In Iraq you have the same probabilities of dying in a road accident than in a terrorist attack. In Batha, a town with a few hundred inhabitants, the mosque receives the pilgrims. Like all mosques do. Food, drink, prayers and rest. They have three or four days left before they reach the holy city. The Imam pleads for alms between prayers, in order to repair the mosque. Tea and no more than 15 minutes in each place. The next town, Warka, is the last palm tree oasis until the outskirts of Samawa, where the impressive cement factory in charge of polluting the city, welcomes the visitors. Once the routine is broken, the papers and explanations are not enough. Abdullah Al Maliki is asked to step aside for longer than usual. It costs us 50 dollars. They are very angry. Better not to argue. Raisan and Abdullah sware to Allah during various minutes with bombastic displays of their outrage. It is the first, but not the last time that money will avoid unnecessary waiting hours in a police checkpoint.
Samawa and finally, after about 30 kilometers, Rumaitha. 450 kilometers north of Basra. A rundown town, with hardly any asphalt and, like the rest of the country, with intermittent electricity. It has rained and we move through a quagmire of mud mixed with garbage. Ali Karim Shaib, a civil servant in the Ministry of Agriculture awaits us in what used to be the police station during the British occupation. It is now an old people's home and an Islamic bookstore. “Welcome to Rumaitha".
Kareem Bidash, the mayor of this town (population: 12.000), is anxious to receive the foreigner and to transmit his points of view. He schedules a meeting with us, after his English lessons, in the only academy of the area. Hamed, his teacher, was a translator for the American army for two years and he chose to establish himself as a teacher with the money he saved (1.400 dollars a month) rather than move to the United States. He talks like a soldier “Y'know? Got it?” and he is friendly and open like the average American and welcoming like the average Iraqi. Where many would see the classic figure of the collaborator, you find instead a young man who has been able to escape from poverty and who does not want to look back on the experience he has lived. He does not answer questions related to what he saw or did during his service.
- Are you afraid that people might talk badly about you after having worked for the Americans?
-"No, because everybody knows that we only do it for the money. If more people knew English, there would be queues in their camps. Ali Shaib agrees "I have various friends who do it and they all say the same thing, I swear. Only for the money". Has he told you any story? "No. He has never talked with us about what they did. Even his family left the town for fear of reprisals. But now the situation is different, there is not a problem in that sense".
The mayor, eager to practice the English he is learning, intervenes, talking about his one month trip to the United States, in order to participate in a seminar for Iraqis holding public office, before the elections. "These youngsters are depoliticized. They do not remember what life was like under the former regime and they are not aware that the Americans have been true to their word. They came, they overthrew Saddam and now they will leave after establishing a new regime". Ali, my host, who works for the Environment Ministry, measuring and studying the uranium pollution levels left by the American bombings, adds that "they have also left some nuclear pollution and many dead", something Ahmed finds justified. The nearby city of Samawa is polluted because "Saddam Hussein filled it with soldiers knowing that it would be bombed".
Ali Shaib remembers "when I was studying Physics in Baghdad. Three days before the war I decided to go back home because it was safer. The bombings started and we lost connection with the outside world. One night I went to sleep with Saddam's army at the door and I woke up the following morning with an American soldier there. In my street we gave them water and food. We invited them to drink tea. We were happy. The Ba'athists had left".
- AAre you aware that this is not the politically correct version?
-"Of course. But this is what happened. Later, things changed, obviously. But in this town, we have never had a problem with them. Many of us have worked with them at a certain time. They haven't been around for more than six months. There has been no resistance here, no explosions or searches. No foreign soldiers have entered into our homes".
- And what happened with the Ba'athists?
"Some of them are dead, others in Syria or Jordan and others have remained, closed in their houses forever. They know they cannot leave". - What do you mean when you say they cannot leave? - "The first day they were scared of the reactions of the people, on the second too, on the third even more so, and slowly but surely, six years have gone by”. -Is it possible to talk with them? -No, many people do not know that they are in their houses, hiding. If it were widely known that some are still in their houses, they would be killed immediately. I visited one of them not long ago because he was a friend of my father and I know that they need help but I can't take you where they are, if someone discovered it, they would kill him"..
I ask the mayor if he thinks reconciliation between the Sunni and the survivors of the old regime is possible, as a member of the Al Dawa Party and the most voted politician in the town. "The Ba'ath party must be legalized again and it should take part in the political process. All the professionals and intellectuals of the party who do not have their hands stained with blood should go back to their posts and back into the civil service. For example, most of the diplomats and many university professors. It would be for the good of the country. Integrate within the democratic system those who think differently and not keep them underground and armed. Take the example of the Mahdi Army. It used to be a ferocious militia and now they are just another political party (Saad) and it is not them who are destabilizing the country. My opinion is clearly that the Ba'ath party should be legalized and reincorporated into Parliament. The Iraqi democracy will come out stronger if it is".
The mayor of a small town is allowed to express these kind of opinions, that are not shared by the government, but that have been voiced repeatedly over the weeks. The higher the post, the less connection there is between the will of the citizens and the decisions taken.
In the first week of January, the Commission for Responsibility and Justice, met in Baghdad with the aim of selecting those who were eligible for the oncoming, 7th of March elections. They banned more than 500 candidates, accused of having belonged to the Ba'ath Party. True or not, the will to integrate them into the political system is, according to Ahmed(the former translator of the American troops), Ali Sahib and the Mayor of Rumeitha, the only possible solution on the road to reconciliation.
But the fact is that many of the candidates who have not been allowed to present their candidacy are not, as one would imagine, members of the old regime; they are high posts of the one now in office, political rivals of Prime Minister Al Maliki. It is especially surprising that Abdel Qader al-Obeid, the actual Defense Minister, is not allowed to stand, bearing in mind that he is behind the relatively succesful transfer of security from American to Iraqi hands in the past year. The motive: showing his public support for Iyad Alaui, the main rival of Prime Minister Al Maliki in the opinion polls, and participating with him in the alternative list to the actual Prime Minister. In present-day Iraq, even the laws of reconciliation with the past are used, nearly always, to defend private interests.
200 dead and four consecutive suicide attacks later, directed against Shiite pilgrims or against facilities that are considered symbolic of the image of security that is trying to be implemented from Baghdad, and after less than a month after the original decision (and with a visit of the American Vice-president in between), the Electoral Commission revoked the prohibition and the vetoed candidates are finally able to participate in the elections.