Iraq’s Sectarian Monster
By Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada
It must pain every sensitive nerve to see Iraq being gorged by a sectarian monster reminiscent of the Dark Ages. It grates all the more on the sensibilities of this scribe who had spent three years in Iraq, during its most trying period, as Pakistan’s Ambassador, from 1996 to 1999.
Those were difficult days for Iraq and the Iraqis. In fact, describing that dark epoch of Iraq as ‘difficult days’ would be a gross underestimation of the wrenching experience that a nation of 22 million—Iraq’s then population—was oppressed to go through by the powers-that-be who thought they could coax the oppressed Iraqis to get rid of their tyrant, Saddam Hussain.
Iraq, as discerning readers would recall, was punished by the Western powers for its invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. International sanctions were imposed by a UN at the beck and call of the Western powers. These sanctions remained in force even after the liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. If anything, the sanctions were tightened even further following Gulf War-One. The screws were turned tighter by also slapping on Iraq a ‘No Fly Zone.’
So stringent were the so-called UN sanctions that President Bill Clinton’s National Security Adviser, Sandy Burger, had no compunction in touting them as history’s harshest restrictions ever imposed on a sovereign state.
Not only were the Iraqis starved of all contacts with the outside world, but the biting sanctions starved them and their children, literally, too. This scribe used to joke with his friends who rued his ‘isolation’ that ‘my airport was only a thousand kilometers from my home in Baghdad.’ Every time that the need arose for me and my wife (our grownup children stayed safe distance from Iraq and only visited us occasionally) to travel abroad, we had to brave the elements of a thousand kilometer land trek to Amman, Jordan.
The eight-hour land journey across the Iraqi desert—in the comfort of our spacious air-conditioned official car—was, at worst, an inconvenience for us that we put up with equanimity. But the Iraqis—men, women and children—suffered its torture and ignominy for 13 long years in every sense of the word. My wife used to cry, while my heart bled, seeing children scavenge garbage dumps for scraps of food.
The ostensible logic for that blatant and all-too-obvious violation of the Iraqi people’s dignity and human rights, offered by glib Western gurus and pundits with straight faces, was that it was necessary to open the eyes of the Iraqi people. To them—the pundits—those inhuman sanctions were a necessary tool to convince the Iraqis that it was all because of the tyrant ruling over them.
But the Iraqis had a sense of their country and society that conveniently evaded the Western gurus. They knew, in their heart of hearts, that the dictatorial rule was the mantra that was keeping the latent monster of sectarianism in chains and keeping the country together.
Those, like this scribe, who experienced Iraq in those trying days of tribulation for the Iraqis would vouch to it how effective and successful Saddam was in his mission to keep Iraq intact. He dealt with Iraq’s centrifugal forces with an iron hand and kept the lid firmly over them. Iraq under his dictatorial rule was an epitome of a society free of crime. A girl could walk the streets of Baghdad, or any other city for that matter, without fear of being molested or stopped even in the wee hours. There was no threat to life, no murder or robbery, in places big or small. Even those who didn’t live in accord with Saddam’s harsh rule lived in complete satisfaction that there was no crime stalking the street outside their homes.
Eleven years from that moment Iraq is a picture of utter desolation. The country is being devoured by the beast of sectarianism. A weak, wobbly and moth-eaten incumbent Iraqi government—corrupt to its bone-marrow—is standing by as a mute spectator while Iraqi unity and cohesion is being sundered, brick-by-brick.
Iraqi was a model of sectarian harmony. Unlike Pakistan, where Shiite and Sunni mosques have always been separate and clearly marked as such, there were no Shiite or Sunni mosques in Iraq; people of all sectarian denominations prayed together under the same roof.
However, those who might think that the jinni of sectarian schism has only been released accidentally under US military occupation need refresh their knowledge of the neo-con agenda that brought neo-imperialism to the shores of Iraq.
It was a lynchpin of the neo-con script for Iraq to unleash its latent sectarian forces in order to weaken it from within. This scribe can recall a brief argument I’ve had with Paul Wolfowitz at a conference in Ankara, Turkey, in early 2000. He laughed off any suggestion that Iraq could only be held together under a strong leader with the will and gumption to keep a firm lid on its sectarian fault lines and just harped on the potential ‘blessings’ of democracy for the quarry that Iraq was to him and his ilk.
A principal, nay the principal, objective of the Iraqi invasion—which, incidentally, had been on the neo-con anvil for well over a decade since they started hawking their imperialist dream of an American 21 st Century—was to weaken Iraq to the point where it would cease to pose any ‘threat’ to the plan for Israel to lord over the Arab world and the Middle East as its only regional power backed up by the 21 st century’s sole super power.
Many a pundit believe that the chief objective of insulating Israel from any Iraqi threat has been fully realized; Iraq has lost its capacity that it had to pose any threat to Israel.
However, the sectarian beast stalking the Iraqi landscape in the wake of the terror unleashed by the radical band of murderers—under the banner of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)—may, in the end, prove that the euphoria was premature. The ‘victory’ that was proclaimed on the heels of the invasion of Iraq would, in the truest sense of the word, be nothing more than pyrrhic. - K_K_ghori@yahoo.com
(The writer is a former ambassador and career diplomat)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Back to Pakistanlink Homepage
