[Peace-discuss] Deliberate chaos

Mon Apr 5 04:12:20 CDT 2004

[The following, written before the Shia uprising this weekend, considers
the US occupation of Iraq in the context of corporate globalization, and
raises the question of whether the US policy really means to promote
disorder in Iraq, presumably to forestall the emergence of a unified
government that would conflict with US control.  (Random thought: has the
Shia uprising forestalled the arrogantly announced US reprisal attack on
Fallujah?) --CGE]

from the April 05, 2004 edition -
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0405/p09s02-coop.html

Seeing Iraq through the globalization lens
By Mark LeVine

BAGHDAD AND AMMAN - If you haven't been in Jordan in several years,
Amman's fashionable Mecca Mall is a bit disorienting - especially if
you've just come from more than a week in Baghdad. There are luxury shops
selling designer clothes made in Syria, ads for "Sex and the City," a chic
bowling alley and coffee shops, and a multiplex theater showing first-run
movies, including "The Passion" - it's not hard to believe that
globalization is taking root in this corner of the Middle East, however
troubled its experience elsewhere in the region.

Only two weeks ago, however, as I had my final breakfast in Baghdad, angry
marches were already beginning as news of Israel's assassination of Sheikh
Yassin spread. As a friend and I entered the Mecca Mall cinema half a day
later and 500 miles west, we couldn't help wondering what Arabs are
thinking as they watch a movie that blames Jews for the execution of Jesus
(who is revered in Islam) on the same day Israel "martyred" someone Al
Jazeera described as an old man in a wheelchair. Indeed, days earlier, on
the first anniversary of the US invasion, thousands of Iraqis marching in
Baghdad chanted that Jews should remember the Battle of Khaibar, as
"Muhammad's army is returning."

The focus on Jews and Israel reflects a wider belief among Arab Iraqis,
Sunni and Shiite alike, that the US and Israeli occupations are twin
Golems of a globalization that they can not resist or control, one that is
causing the disintegration of the very fabric of their cultures and
economies even as it offers prosperity and freedom to a fortunate few.

It may be hard for Americans to understand the occupation of Iraq in the
context of globalization. But Iraq today is clearly the epicenter of that
trend. Here, military force was used to seize control of the world's most
important commodity - oil. And corporations allied with the occupying
power literally scrounge the country for profits, privatizing everything
from health care to prisons, while Iraqi engineers, contractors, doctors,
and educators are shunted aside.

Like economic globalization in so many other countries of the developing
world, this model in Iraq is an unmitigated disaster. My visits to
hospitals, schools, think tanks, political party headquarters, art
galleries, and refugee camps reveal conditions clearly as bad, and often
worse, than on the eve of the US invasion. So outside the Kurdish north,
there is almost universal antipathy for the occupation, for what Iraqis
refer to derisively as the "Governed Council" (whose members are dismissed
as paid employees of the occupiers), and for a draft constitution that
analysts here feel has enough holes to ensure continued repression and
corruption, however appealing the veneer of democracy.

But most Iraqis aren't even interested in high politics; they're worried
about the same things as Americans - jobs, healthcare, and education. And
the story is grim.

Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and USAID officials refuse to
publish vital health statistics and rarely visit hospitals, but hospital
officials continue to collect data that reveal woeful rates of mortality
and sickness, as well as acute shortages of drugs and equipment.

The CPA budgets only $10,000 to "rehabilitate" schools that then receive
little more than a paint job by CPA-hired contractors; Iraqi principals
complain that they could do the job for $1,000, and wonder where the other
$9,000 is going.

While security in daily life is improving around Baghdad, political
violence and suicide bombings are escalating.

The social rights granted to women by an otherwise oppressive Baathist
system, are being eroded in the new Iraq. And the plight of women is being
compounded by a growing religious conservatism, massive unemployment, and
lack of education and healthcare.

Iraq is sliding toward chaos; a state that many Iraqis increasingly
believe is exactly where the US wants them to be. A prominent Iraqi
psychiatrist who has worked with the CPA and the US military explained to
me that "there is no way the United States can be this incompetent. The
chaos here has to be at least partly deliberate." The main question on
most people's minds is not if his assertion is true, but why?

For example, many here see last week's carnage of Americans in Fallujah as
suspicious. To send foreign contractors into Fallujah in late-model SUVs
with armed escorts - down a traffic-clogged street on which they'd be
literal sitting ducks - can be interpreted as a deliberate US instigation
of violence to be used as a pretext for "punishment" by the US military.

The United Nations seems tragically poised to reenter Iraq under US
auspices - cooperation with the occupiers that could cause a repeat of the
violence that drove the UN out of Iraq last year.

The Kurdish drive for a federal-style political system is uniting Shiite
and Sunni Arabs against a seemingly common foe. A senior Sunni cleric
argued to me that federalism is the first step toward dividing Iraq, and
he and his dozens of machine-gun toting aides left little doubt about
their willingness to use force to resist it.

There are, thankfully, glimmers of hope that a truly democratic Iraq can
emerge. Groups of Iraqi, European, and American activists have been
working courageously together to build real democracy and freedom. A
senior Shiite cleric fondly recalled the former head of the Jewish
community as among his father's best friends and described how Jews and
Christians must be respected in Iraq.

The common opposition of conservative clerics and secular artists to the
cultural impact of the US occupation (which they equate with
globalization), coupled with Iraqi disdain for the rhetoric of both Arab
nationalism and sectarian ideologies can, if given time, nurture a vibrant
cosmopolitan public sphere. As a young filmmaker- musician put it,
"Building bridges between people is the best weapon against occupation and
hatred."

As I sat in a Baghdad Internet cafe watching Iraqi teenagers and
middle-aged business people check e-mail or research new products, it was
clear that Iraqis would like to profit from globalization as much as the
wealthy Mecca Mall patrons. As bombs and gunfire echoed blocks away, this
dream of a truly human globalization seemed both possible and singularly
urgent.

â€¢ Mark LeVine is an assistant professor of history at the University of
California, Irvine. He was co-editor of 'Twilight of the Empire: Responses
to Occupation.'