Forgetting Iraq

Zaid Al-Ali* embarks on a different course in life after a visit to his native Iraq
It was just as people around the world started believing that the situation was improving, and just as they had started shifting their attention to other matters that I travelled to Iraq -- my parents' native country -- for only the second time in my life. Despite everything that I had heard from Iraqi and American governmental officials about the situation there, despite all that I read about the changes that the country has gone through since last year, I was not prepared for what I saw. Information provided by government should always be treated with caution, particularly when the information it provides relates to its own performance and to the consequences of its actions. But in the case of Iraq, the situation has now become totally out of hand: life in Baghdad bears no relationship to the declarations that government officials have been making, nor with the images that we see on our television screens, and that is something that I was only able to truly appreciate after visiting the country myself.
Iraq is a wealthy country, or at least it is supposed to be. It is one of the only countries in the region that had strong industrial and agricultural sectors and that had an educated class of professionals. This, I realised very soon after my arrival, is now purely wishful thinking. I caught my first glimpse of real Iraqis, as opposed to the comfortable members of the diaspora that I have become so accustomed to throughout my life, when I crossed the Jordanian border into Iraq. As I stood in the administrative centre of the border crossing, amongst what are in fact my countrymen, I felt, more so than at any other point in my life, completely out of place. I have never felt so foreign, so unwelcome, so uncomfortable, and so guilty. Each one of them, all of those that were there waiting as I was to be allowed through the border, seemed to be physically ill. It was an unbearable scene to watch. Without exaggeration, each one of them was suffering from some type of deformity or severe facial blemish. There was either something wrong with their face, had a leg that didn't work properly, or an arm that was too short, or something of that nature. Their skin was of an awful color. Their clothes were dirty and, when they weren't full of holes, didn't fit them. Their beards were soiled and untrimmed. They all looked tired and somewhat distressed as they shifted nervously from one desk after another, waiting to be granted permission to enter Iraq. If any one of them had bothered to take a look at me, I have no doubt that he considered me to be foreign. It felt much more like standing in the waiting room of a rundown hospital than at a border crossing. These people seemed to me to be clinging on to life only because they were forced to and not, as is the case in the Western world that I am used to, because they enjoy it. This is something that was confirmed every day that I stayed in Iraq, and everywhere I went in the country.
A HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IN DECAY: One of my reasons in going to Iraq was to try to determine how services such as public healthcare have been faring since the war, and I was very happy to learn that I have relatives that work in public hospitals in Baghdad and who were willing to show me around. A few days after my arrival, I visited Baghdad Teaching Hospital, a public hospital in Baghdad, with one of my uncles. It took us much longer than expected to get there because a bridge that we needed to cross had been cordoned off by American soldiers. My uncle spent the journey telling me of the damage caused by the war to Iraq's infrastructure, and told me of the things that he saw with his own eyes during that time. He described how, immediately after the end of the war, American soldiers broke into his hospital's car park and stole a large number of vehicles belonging to the hospital's staff in order to sell them in the market. The soldiers were not able to move one of the cars so they tore off the roof in order to steal all its contents. My uncle later showed me what was left of that vehicle: a charred carcass gutted of all its interiors, wheels and accessories -- and with no roof. He also recalled seeing American soldiers break down the doors of government buildings and inviting Iraqis to enter and loot the contents. A number of Americans and other foreigners seem to have made off with a great deal of Iraq's wealth, although some were caught in the act.
As we walked to the hospital from our parking space, we found out that the bridge we had planned to cross was closed by the American military because the hospital had been bombed, probably by insurgents, from the other side of the river, killing three people. My uncle struggled to understand why anyone would want to bomb a hospital. But when we learned that the shells hit the seventh floor of a particular building in the hospital's grounds, he said: "Of course. The Italians." A group of Italian doctors have been providing free medical assistance at the hospital for the past year. They work on the sixth floor of the building that had been attacked, and he believed that the attacks could only have been intended for them. Since the rise in the number of attacks on foreigners last year, a huge amount of security measures have been implemented in order to prevent attacks against the Italian staff. There are concrete blocks at the building's entrance that make the place resemble a military bunker much more than anything else. Behind stacks of sandbags there are armed soldiers. I asked whether it was possible to speak to the Italian staff, but was told that it was forbidden. These defensive measures are apparently not enough to stop attacks by Iraqis that are determined to see off all foreigners that have entered the country, whether under the banner of occupation or not.
As we walked through the hospital, I spoke with some of the staff and soon realised that all the things that I had read during the embargo years relating to the status of Iraq's hospitals -- about the lack of investment, the inability to replace defective equipment, the lack of basic medicines, and the general inadequacy of the treatment available -- is still true today, and that there is no prospect of this changing soon. I visited a large number of departments, including the X-ray department, the children's unit, the radiology and cardiology departments. Only one in five of all the machines in these departments was in working order. The X-ray department had only one piece of equipment that functioned properly and most of the examination rooms had not been used in years. As soon as a machine breaks down, there is nothing to be done. It is impossible to repair as spare parts come from abroad and are therefore totally beyond the hospital's purchasing power, and cannot be replaced because the hospital's budget is simply too tight to afford purchasing any new equipment. I saw, in the children's department, what looked like a sophisticated scanner that was in use, and although I was initially impressed, I was explained that in fact the machine had been taken from the cardiology department because there was nothing left in the children's department that could be used.
Sanitation is another serious problem. Everywhere I went, in the hallways, the operating and examination rooms, the staircases and elevators, there were inexplicable black stains and in places even dark coloured puddles in the middle of the floor. At one point I saw what looked like cleaning utensils and wondered what point there was in cleaning a building with something so dirty. In the hallway of one of the departments, I saw a sink so filthy that it defied imagination. I was so surprised at the sight of the thing, that I decided that I simply had to take a picture, for no one would believe how dirty it was unless they saw it for themselves. Patients or patients' relatives sat or slept all over the hospital floor. Sometimes there were so many that you had to walk over them to cross the hall. Many looked like they had been there for days. And what patients there were. Old men suffocating, children bleeding, burns, broken limbs, cries, tears. Old women walking in circles, crying and crying. No one knew why and no one seemed to care. Through all this, the hospital staff stood idly by, incapable of doing anything to relieve the suffering around them. And, just about everywhere in the hospital, there are posters of the Imam Ali (a seventh- century religious figure who is revered by Shia Muslims), Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani and Muqtada Al-Sadr. How this possibly contributes to the well being of the patients or to the quality of their treatment was not immediately obvious to me, nor was it clear who actually places these posters on the walls, but in any event they can also be found in the medical staff's lounge.
At the end of the day, I sat in the hospital's cafeteria in disbelief at the filth, misery and despair that I had seen. We were joined by three of my uncle's colleagues from another of the hospital's departments. We spoke of many things, mostly in Arabic, but I slipped into English in order to better explain my field of work. I was struck by how well they all spoke the language and then learned that in fact medical studies in Iraq are carried out entirely in English. They asked why I had come to the hospital, and I answered that I was curious to see the state of Iraq's medical facilities and had asked my uncle to show me something that was representative. All three then reproached my uncle for bringing me to their hospital, which was, according to what they said, the cleanest in the country. But I was most disturbed when I learned how little it would actually take to make a difference. They asked me if I was in a position to gather a group of donors that would be able to contribute either medicines or financing to buy medicines. They explained that if this were possible it would make a great difference as the hospital is desperately short of funds and of basic medicines. I listened and thought of who I knew and what contacts I had that would be able to contribute to what I was expecting to be important sums of money. They eventually told me that what they needed would cost $300 a month. I answered that I didn't think that it would be a problem to raise that sort of money.
SECURITY, CORRUPTION AND LIVING STANDARDS: The question on everyone's lips after the war last year was whether the arrival of the American army was a good or a bad development for Iraq. From my observations and those of others, many families, even those that had prospered during the Saddam Hussein years, were split down the middle, with some arguing vehemently that there could not be anything worse than Saddam, while others could not stand the thought of foreign occupation. As far as I was able to tell, this schism has for the most part subsided, and not because everyone is now satisfied that they are better off with the Americans in charge. The shift in public opinion against the occupation probably has several causes, but judging from the conversations that I have had, nothing irritates Iraqis more, nothing has served to prove to them that the occupation is not designed to serve their interests or improve their living standards than the constant failures in the electricity supply, the incessant problems relating to corruption, as well as the failure to establish security and the rule of law. Iraqis cannot accept that the continuing problems in relation to these issues are unavoidable, and from that starting point inevitably reach the conclusion that the Bush administration is secretly plotting to keep Iraqis in a position of poverty and insecurity.
Several factors have caused ordinary Iraqis to lose faith in the current political process. Firstly, the high unemployment levels have a very depressing effect on the population. Most Iraqis remain economically inactive. Although there has been an upturn in several business sectors, the vast majority is still unable to secure employment. I saw engineers, construction industry experts, teachers, journalists, former members of the armed forces, who were incapable of findings jobs, and many of whom asked me if I could help them leave the country. I also met several businessmen who told me that although they had been contacted by foreign investors in the first days after the war, most of the would-be investors abandoned their projects out of fear. One person I spoke with worked as a computing engineer in a company that counted the occupation authority as one of its clients. After he and a colleague had been warned twice by insurgents that they should resign, the colleague in question was killed in a drive-by shooting, thereby prompting him to resign from his position out of fear. The blame for all this, all these people told me, rests entirely on the Americans, who are either incapable or unwilling to make Iraq secure, something that Saddam, they never ceased to remind me, was certainly capable of doing. Shortly after fighting broke out in the city of Samaraa, which saw a great number of dead on all sides, I was stopped by an Iraqi police checkpoint in a nearby city. When one of the police officers discovered that I actually live in Western Europe, he shouted at me that I must be crazy to have come to Iraq. "Goddamn this country and all its wars!" he screamed.
Secondly, the most important factor seems to be the continuing failure of the electricity supply. Today one cannot expect to have access to electricity more than 50 per cent of the time, and most receive far less than this. In the Baghdad neighbourhoods that I frequented most, power is supposedly turned on for three hours and then turned off for that same amount of time, but the schedule is rarely respected. Electricity is usually cut off too soon, and often cuts off even during the three hours during which it is supposed to be functioning. In most other areas of Iraq, the schedule is far less favourable. A family I visited in Tikrit enjoyed only one hour of electricity for every four hours that it was cut off. Another family in Baghdad did not have access to electricity for two days straight. Many houses have private power generators but these are only powerful enough to allow televisions and lights to function. Air conditioning units are almost always out of the question as they require too much power for a private generator to be able to cope, something that infuriates Iraqis even further, particularly at night when the heat and humidity are sometimes at their worst. This was a problem every single night that I was in Iraq -- the electricity supply cuts off several times a night and at unpredictable times. At an individual level, this affects everything, particularly peoples' disposition and optimism, but on a national level, without electricity, there can be no water treatment, hospitals are vulnerable, and so on.
A number of different factors have been cited by public officials in order to explain this away, including insurgent attacks against the power grid and power plants. Before going to Iraq, I believed this to be the principle factor for the lack of electricity, but apparently I was wrong. In fact, the main reason seems to be, depressingly, under-investment. That the vast majority of the monies promised to Iraq have not yet been expended is nothing new. However, when I met one of the Iraqis responsible for the rehabilitation of the power grid, he explained the problem to me in rather stark terms. "So what if the insurgents attack the grid? All they can do is launch a few mortar shells, and we can repair that type of damage in just a few hours. The real problem is that there is no money. We only received 10 per cent of the funds that we were supposed to get. We could finish all the work by the end of this year and reach full capacity if they gave us what we wanted, but they're dragging their feet, so it's likely that it won't happen." Many have blamed the failure to establish a safe environment for foreign investors and workers for the lack of investment, but Iraqis are unimpressed, particularly as they learn that their national oil revenues are being used to disburse American sub-contractors that were appointed in no-bid contracts. "Goddamn the Americans," they shout as they jerk their heads backwards in exasperation during the summer heat. They cannot breathe, they cannot sleep, and they blame it all on America. I spoke to them of the Americans that I knew, the Americans that I had met in my life, that I studied, worked and lived with, but they were not interested. According to all the Iraqis that I spoke with, Americans are criminals, thieves, hypocrites, perverts, liars, and, of course, foreign invaders.
And Iraqis need not look far in order to find something on which to focus their hatred. During the time that I was in the country -- after the occupation officially came to an end -- there were Americans everywhere I went. I saw hundreds of tanks, helicopters, humvees, I saw patrols and checkpoints, all American. I saw military vehicles stationed at just about every bridge in Baghdad. American military forces occupy a huge number of buildings all over the city, which are protected by massive concrete slabs and sandbags. On several occasions, the guns atop a Hummer were pointed straight at me when I tried to overtake very slow American patrols that were holding up traffic. American military vehicles often drive on the wrong side of the street, which -- according to Iraqis, who are absolutely convinced of this -- they only do in order to spite them. On one occasion, after waiting over an hour in sweltering heat for an American convoy to make way for traffic to proceed, a driver in the car next to mine opened his window and shouted that "Saddam is the medicine that will cure us of them!" The American military has uprooted a huge amount of palm groves in Baghdad in order to prevent insurgents from hiding within them, thereby transforming what were once elegant parks into horrible wastelands. I was stopped on my way to Tikrit by an American checkpoint and my car searched, a relative's house was searched in my presence by overexcited American soldiers who said that they were looking for insurgents, and American soldiers came to investigate the house once again after some of my younger cousins exploded extremely small firecrackers in order to celebrate Iraq's victory over Uzbekistan in the Asia Cup. A few days later I was in Amman on the day that Jordan defeated Kuwait in the same competition. The Jordanians were celebrating with massive fireworks and the mood was jovial all around with people congratulating each other. What a contrast to the atmosphere in Baghdad, I thought, where it seemed as if it was somehow forbidden to celebrate at all.
THE POLITICS OF EDUCATION: There is in fact a much more serious and deep-rooted problem that threatens Iraq's long-term future. For a certain amount of time, starting perhaps in the 1950s and continuing until the first half of the 1980s, there was a surge in the educational output and potential in Iraq. The country had some of the Arab world's best facilities for higher education, and attracted students from many parts of the world as a result. A great number of Iraqis completed their postgraduate education in Western European and North American universities. Many Iraqis of this "worldly" generation are well educated, politically and socially sophisticated, and bi- or trilingual. They are well travelled, and many even joined different political parties for ideological reasons. They are, however, over 45 years old, and are usually much older. The situation is very different for the average Iraqi born after 1965. He has lived the greater part of his life with the wars and political oppression that were imposed on him, and with the most comprehensive economic sanctions programme ever created. During Saddam's 24 years as president, political debate was forbidden. This was even the case within the Baath Party itself, which saw its attempts to instruct its membership in the ways of socialism and freedom from colonial oppression replaced by constant praise for Saddam as soon as he seized the presidency in 1979. It is no secret that, in the long run, a country cannot hope to survive without the free exchange of political ideas. This was something that Saddam, who seemed much more concerned with his image and life-style than anything else, either did not appreciate or did not care about. This, combined with the impoverishment suffered by the country through the war with Iran during the 1980s, the devastation caused by the international community's onslaught in 1991 as well as the latter's slow death policy imposed through international sanctions, has created a "lost" generation of uneducated Iraqis who are, on the whole, unaware of the ways of the modern world. The Herculean effort made by the worldly generation that lifted Iraq out of poverty and ignorance has therefore been undone in extremely painful and tragic circumstances.
The means at Iraq's disposal to remedy this situation are a grim sight to behold. To say that public universities and schools lack facilities is an understatement and this is something that is felt by all those involved in the education system. The staff is discontented, constantly complaining of everything from the services provided to them by the State to their level of remuneration. The standard response that the president of Tikrit University offers in response to complaints of this nature is: "The country is poor. Nothing can be done." Teachers and professors are demoralised and students have been quick to take advantage of the situation -- to successfully complete all the exams in a given year costs only $100 in some universities. The physical establishments are not better. During my stay in Iraq, I visited a number of educational institutions in both Baghdad and Tikrit. If one were not told beforehand, it would be impossible to guess that these were educational facilities at all. I did notice that there were computers in some of the offices, but they were actually very primitive and cheaply manufactured machines (with the power switch marked "powre"). To make matters worse, universities were ransacked in the period immediately following last year's war, and their libraries burned. A visit to a law faculty in Baghdad revealed that there are no books in the libraries from which students may study their country's legal system. There are very few new books, despite greatly publicised donations from Western institutions -- there is not anywhere near enough to go around. The same is also true of a great many schools in both Tikrit and Baghdad. Teachers complained to me of how post-war programmes that were designed to "rehabilitate" their schools merely involved a fresh coat of paint on the walls, and that in fact teaching standards and facilities have not improved in any way. Classrooms in some of the schools often serve as storage facilities for debris, but much more depressing are the classrooms that are actually in use, and which are usually completely bare and filthy. In short, Iraq's contemporary education system is a disaster, both in absolute terms and in comparison to what it was like before the Saddam years.
But it is not only the case that the young in Iraq are not given the means to become politically and socially active -- they are not even invited to do so. Indeed, there are no political parties in the country that truly represent the interests of the Iraqi people. Aside from the fact that the entire political class in Iraq is today made up of people who have not lived in the country for at least 15 years (almost 50 years in the case of Ahmed Chalabi and 25 in the case of Iyad Allawi), political parties are not divided along traditional lines. The Iraqi National Congress and the Iraqi National Accord are considered in the West to be the more important political groups in Iraq but there is little ideological difference between them. It is not the case that one is conservative while the other is leftwing, or that one is in favour of healthcare reform while the other is in favour of increasing taxes. Neither subscribes to a particular political ideology and neither has contributed anything to Iraq's political development. However, each is led by a strong-willed character who does not get along with his counterparts and who is constantly being accused of corruption. Why would an Iraqi who is genuinely interested in the political future of his or her country be attracted to such institutions? Secondly, the real failure to improve the living standards of many Iraqis has disillusioned the young even further. The continuing problems relating to the electricity supply and the lack of security on the streets have caused already cynical Iraqis, even those that were hopeful of real change after last year's war, to become convinced that the United States does not have their interests at heart, thereby severely frustrating any chance of improvement through the political process. Finally, no efforts have been made to involve the Iraqi people at large in the political process. Free elections at an early stage might have galvanised the population, but the idea was rejected by the occupation authorities, who were much more preoccupied with reforming the economy instead. The result is that the political situation in Iraq is tragically artificial and devoid of any real application to the fundamental problems that Iraqis are facing.
I saw the very sad effect of all this with my own eyes, when I met some young members of what is supposed to be Iraq's new political class. We discussed the upcoming parliamentary elections. When I asked what measures are being taken in order to ensure that these elections are going to be free and open, they assured me that they are trying their utmost to ensure that this will be the case. I asked to know what the details of these measures are and was informed that they had only had two meetings with American officials and nothing else. I mentioned the possibility of contacting electoral observers from the European Union or the Carter Center. They had never heard of electoral observers. I explained the concept and invited them to contact these or other similar institutions. They had no idea where to start, they did not know how to obtain their contact details, none of them spoke any languages other than Arabic, and so therefore they asked me to contact the relevant authorities for them. On another occasion, a provincial governor issued an order according to which two individuals that had been arrested on suspicion of having committed a crime were to be released immediately and without trial. This order was delivered to the local courts by representatives of the regional authority while I happened to be visiting, and an argument ensued during which members of the judiciary argued bitterly against the order's legality. The members of the governmental authority could not even understand the nature of the disagreement. They had, apparently, never heard of the concept of the independence of the judiciary or the separation of powers. Some commentators have asked why it is that Iraqis who oppose the military occupation of their country do not use non-violent methods, which some consider to be a more efficient form of resistance than the guerrilla warfare that is currently taking place. One answer to this is that the vast majority of Iraqis have never heard of non-violence, Mahatma Ghandi or Martin Luther King.
Among the members of the lost generation of Iraqis, there is a sense that political discussion is utterly pointless, not only because it was forbidden for so long, but also because the result of politics in Iraq, the result of all the efforts that were made by the thousands that applied themselves from the 1950s onwards in order to ensure the social, economic and political evolution of their country, is the American occupation of Iraq, which is to say, total failure and humiliation. This is reflected on a number of different levels. Firstly, throughout my time in Iraq, I asked every person that I met under the age of 40 whether he or she was a member of a political party, or even whether any of them knew anybody that was. I did not find or even hear of a single such person. Often, my questions relating to politics were met with derision. Sometimes I even encountered violent reactions from people who shouted that nothing good could come from political discussion. Not a single time during my time in Iraq did I see a poster or political marking in favour of a politician. Only religious figures received the benefit of that sort of attention. The images of various political events, the signing of treaties, and handovers of sovereignty, are constantly broadcast on Al-Jazeera but no one pays any notice. It is probably fair to say that much more importance is attributed to these events by the average American than by the average Iraqi. Secondly, there is so much cynicism amongst Iraqis that they are not willing to make any effort to improve the lot of their country, for they are convinced that no matter what they do, the situation will not improve. It is widely known in Tikrit that the four-ton generator that the city municipality recently purchased actually weighs two tonnes, but that the vendor charged the price of a four-ton generator, and yet no one is willing to initiate a prosecution, to bring the matter to the attention of the police, or to ask the municipality to preserve public funds. Why bother when the money will just be stolen by someone else?
One middle-aged Iraqi, who spoke perfect English and who had graduated from a prestigious university in the United Kingdom during the 1970s, told me that Iraq had no future, and that there was no point in putting any effort into it. "I hope", he said, "that this visit of yours to Iraq will be your last. Stay abroad and live your life there. There is nothing for you here." He explained that the reason for his pessimistic outlook was that "the young have no education". But wasn't it also the case that the generation before his was also lacking in basic education? Wasn't it the case that his generation pulled itself out of ignorance through its own skill and zeal? The response to this was a broken smile, and a shrug. Iraqis are a dead people. I saw them as they sat in the souq, I saw them as they walked through the filth that infests every inch of every street, I saw them as they lounged in the luxury or the poverty of their homes, and yet, no matter where they were, no matter what their station in life, they breathed the heavy and dusty air of the country into their lungs and sighed in relief every time they expelled it from their bodies. Their despair is constant and all encompassing. They despair when they laugh and despair when they argue. The only place where I did not feel this was on the east bank of the river Tigris near Tikrit -- a place that bears almost no sign of having evolved since the times of Babylon, a time when the people of this country may very well have been happier than they are now.
Iraq is in the throes of a serious crisis, and this is not the type of thing that can be remedied through investment, occupation, or even by a war of liberation. It is probably the case that the lost generation of Iraqis will never be revived, and it is probably also true that the worldly generation that existed before is too tired and cynical to contribute much that is positive today. It may very well be true that the best thing to do at this stage is to focus on those that have not been totally withered away by war, sanctions and by Saddam's rule. There is an entire generation of Iraqis who are still young enough to be inspired into action and into some type of political consciousness that could serve as the driving force for a reinvigoration of Iraqi society. What is therefore desperately needed, more so than new power generators and facilities for the oil industry, more so even than medical equipment, is books, new materials for education, and, more so than anything else, teachers. Iraq must be put back on its feet, it must become self-sufficient again, and the only way that this can be done in the long run is for the people to stand up and educate themselves.
As it has become painfully clear over the past year, Iraqis cannot count on anyone to help them in this regard except themselves. After the war last year I believed that there was nothing that I could do to affect the course of events in Iraq. Today, I realise that everything there is either at a standstill or moving backwards, and that the only thing that can change this is individual effort. If it is true that the young have not been taught anything useful over the past 20 years, then the old must individually and collectively go to the schools and to the universities in order to teach, and if it is true that there is a diaspora of Iraqis that has left the country and that has benefited from social and educational systems that were not available within the country, then these same people now have a duty to restore some dignity to Iraq and to ensure that there will be a future there for generations to come. And if this applies to them, then it also applies to me, which is why there is no option, and why there is no choice but for me to resign from my current life of comfort, and to embark on a life that will hopefully be of some use to someone other than myself.
* The writer is an attorney at the New York Bar, currently practicing international arbitration law in Paris