I have finished another article on Iraq

[eudaimonia_nz]

I have been busy over the last few weeks finishing another article - I got asked to write something about Iraq for another NZ magazine, "Peace Researcher". Finished it on Tuesday

Comments

[clownfishdesign]

Is there any chance of reading the article online or something? I'd be quite interested to read about the 1920 uprising. My knowledge of modern history in that region is a bit lacking, being mostly derived from a love of Lawrence of Arabia

Personally I suspect that the current situation in Iraq is something of a grab-bag of causes.

I think, insofar as it is possible to generalise, that the general Iraqi position is something like Yes, thank you for deposing Saddam, the Ba'ath and the Mukhbarat - although it might have helped if you didn't support them for all those years in the first place - but no thanks for killing so many of us in the process. In any case, we'd very much like our country back now, so will you kindly fuck off?

A gross simplification, perhaps, but you get the gist of what I mean.

I think that in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, the insurgency was partly driven by die-hard remnants of the Ba'ath regime, and also partly by foreign "jihadists" - who seem to be an oddment of Muslim idealists and Waha'abi-style hardliners eager to fight the "Great Satan", and general shit-stirrers and trouble-makers.

In one sense, I wonder whether it mightn't be unreasonable to compare the influx of foreign fighters into Iraq to the International Brigades who flocked to Spain in the mid-to-late 30s? Certainly, I would regard the Spanish Republican cause as a great deal more noble and idealistic, but to an Arab the Iraq cause may appear equally so.

But I also think that, as the occupation has dragged on, especially given the extraordinarily hamfisted way the United States had handled it, there has been an general upswell of genuine resentment across the nation.

The Iraqis, from what I understand, have a strong sense of national, and personal honour, which has been tremendously affronted, on the one level by the abject humiliation of defeat and occupation by a foreign power, and on the personal level, by the often insensitive, downright antagonistic conduct of their supposed liberators. And this was before the Abu Ghraib bombshell.

Certainly the scramble for "reconstruction contracts" has reeked of an almost feudal squabble over the spoils of war - to paraphrase Joseph Conrad, the vilest grab for loot history has ever witnessed - which can only have helped fan Iraqi anger.

It's a pity really, as all that frustration and resentment only serves to play into the hands of genuine thugs like Muqtada al-Sadr.

For a long time, I've been of the opinion that, having started this mess, it was incumbent upon the U.S. to stick around and try and prevent a power-vacuum spiralling into all-out civil war. Lately, however, I'm thinking that it is the very presence of the U.S. Forces (give the nod) that is fanning the flames of violence, and the sooner they hand the country back into Iraqi hands, the better it will be all round.