An Iraqi Girl Smiles ...

I took the below picture at an anti-war public display last year (in October 2007). This is Ulia Tahi, age 9, who was killed around 17-20 June, 2005. Next to her picture-frame are her shoes and a candle lit in her memory. This particular image made me very sad and has stuck in my mind since then. It makes me somber every time I see it.

Today I was searching for some image on google and came across with this wikimedia link. To my surprise, this link contained this exact picture, but with the caption "Iraqi Girl Smiles". The picture was taken on 7 March, 2003. Ulia was still alive then...

This finding renewed the grief. I felt as if I am seeing her smiling and cheerful standing right in front of me. And I felt as if her life from the moment that picture was taken on 7 March, 2003 to 17-20 June, 2005 played like a film in her curious eyes within a few painful instants. I could see the US invasion in Iraq that happened within couple of weeks, on 20 March, 2003. The declaration of "mission accomplished" in the following May. The capture of brutal Saddam Hussein in Dec, 2003. The everyday bomb explosions and violence, the death and destruction in the following two years. Ulia must have spent her last days in the middle of all that chaos, until...

Was she even able to smile during those fearful days? How did she die? How was it for her parents to see her leave this world so young? Were they alive to see her die? My heart wondered about these questions. No answer. Just a painful sight for me in that picture.

Here is what the author of this picture wrote when she uploaded it on wikimedia (dated: 5 Feb 2005):

Iraqi Girl Smiles
Iraqi girl living next to Al Daura Oil Refinery in Baghdad pauses for a smile amongst jostling children.



"I managed to snap a picture of this stunning looking Iraqi girl while I was touring Al Daura Oil Refinery as part of the Human Shield Action to Iraq. I took this photo, and many more, of the children living next to the refinery where their parents worked. They were all quite enjoying themselves and I managed to get mobbed a couple of times. I often look back on this photo and wonder if she, and her friends, are still alive. I hope to go back one day and find out." —Christiaan 11:58, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Ulia was alive when Christiaan posted that picture online. The wikimedia page says that this image was selected as a picture of the day for March 15, 2005. Ulia was still alive then. She is not with us anymore though. But wherever she is now, I am sure she is happy and smiling, inshallah.

Some estimate that a million have already died since March 2003. Add another million or so who died under Saddam's brutal rule and as a result of international sanctions. Ulia's story is but one of those many thousand stories that need to be told.

Stop the war. Stop this injustice. Do some thing. Anything!

Berkeley Teach-in Against the Israeli War on Lebanon

The following clips are from a Berkeley Teach-in which was organized after the Israeli war on Lebanon in Summer 2006. I came across with them just recently. I think the insights offered are still relevant and helpful to understand the macro and micro politics in the region.

These short clips could also serve as a useful starting point for discussions in your educational gatherings. Below, I have added titles and my brief comments for each of the presentations.

(Click on each title for the corresponding clip)

Political Process in Lebanon and the Israeli Invasion

Saba Mahmood opens up the session with a brief overview of Lebanese politics. She talks about the increasing maturity of Lebanese politics over years, as seen in the formation of political ethics of sorts and the shared efforts toward preserving sectarian harmony. One of the primary motives/resultant of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006 was to damage this political process.

The Utility of the War on Terror for the Empire

Charles Hirschkind sheds light on the utility of the war on terror for the empire. He argues that instead of targeting Al-Qaeda, the war on terror is more focused on targeting anti-imperial movements in certain Muslim countries, and protecting pro-US dictatorial regimes. In a cautious tone, he also emphasizes the importance of understanding the context in which violent tactics of certain resistance organizations emerged. You may not agree with everything he says. I for one do not. But he surely offers some critical insights that many of us would appreciate.

Jewish Teachings Require Criticism of Israeli Brutalities

Judith Butler describes the circumstances of Lebanese war and the political-legal maneuvering by international peace keeping bodies. She inquires into the politics surrounding UN resolutions and their implementation. Outlines the strategic aims of Israeli War on Lebanon in 2006. She finally argues that criticizing the Israeli entity is not anti-semitism. That a true understanding of Jewish teachings makes the criticism of Israel not only possible but also obligatory.

A History of Hezbollah

Zeina Zaatari starts with sharing some ethnographic quotes from her research in Lebanon in 2001. She then presents a history of Lebanese-Israeli relationship. Argues that Hezbollah, although supported by Iran-Syria, is very much a Lebanese phenomenon. Briefly alludes to Syed Musa Sadr's involvement, formation of Amal, Syed Fadlallah's role in educational activities and his perceived connections to Hezbollah, and finally comes to the formation of Hezbollah. Her description of Vilayate Faqih may not be fully accurate, but, that shouldn't distract one from the main theme of her talk. She describes Hezbollah's organizational capacity, social welfare projects, outreach avenues, all of which were targets of Israeli bombardment in Summer 2006. She also describes the dynamics of Hezbollah's influence among its following. Although she warns against seeing these dynamics in instrumental terms, she still focuses on clientalism, and does not give sufficient value to identity attachments and religious commitments of the followers among the Shias and the support from well-wishers from among the general Lebanese population and beyond Lebanon.

The Arrogance of ZioNazis

Beshara Doumani addresses the question "Why Can't They Get Along (in Middle East)?" The answer, according to him is that they can't along because of decades-long dispossession of one group by another, which has only intensified recently. Using a number of anecdotal examples, he argues that the arrogance of ZioNazis is directly responsible for the intensification of violence, the failure of many international interventions for peace, and the suffering of the Palestinian people. He seems to believe in the two state solution; he was subsequently questioned on that in the Q&A session.

Q&A Section

I especially liked the comment/question on co-existence with the right to return as a solution, which is also advocated by Edward Said, among others.

"Iraq in Fragments": A Critical Review

Speaking of self-fulfilling prophecies and media images (see the previous post), have you seen this recent documentary called “Iraq in Fragments” directed by James Longley? (here)

Apparently, it has won tons of awards in the Sundance Film Festival and was also nominated for the Oscars. It was screened all across North America between November 2006 and April 2007. A few of us watched it last year. My immediate impression was: DISAPPOINTING - to put it politely. I jotted down below thoughts afterwards and shared them with a few friends.

Longley spent over two years in Iraq from 2003 for this documentary. He used the everyday, lived experiences of Iraqi people as a lens to tell a bigger story of the politics and experiences of factionalism in Iraq. The idea was great and the resources he had access to could have helped him knit an intricate and complex portrayal of the ground reality. Like it is in reality. But, that did not happen in this documentary.

The documentary focused on the obvious three communities in Iraq – the Sunnis, the Shias, and the Kurds – and how their 'differences' - political and to a lesser extent ideological - are disparately opposite and irreconcilable. No mention of commonalities among them - like shared culture and religion, and intermarriages, friendships, and tribal relations - that cut across these factional lines, which are widespread in that society according to many scholarly studies.
A logical question that may come to any critical mind is that if it's that bad, then how did these communities put up with each other over such a long history? Why did it become so bad recently? We get no answer to these questions. The documentary made no attempt at presenting the current escalation of violence in its political and historical context. Consequently, an uninitiated viewer only gets an essentialized image of the ‘differences’ that appear as irreconcilable among these three communities.

For the Kurdish and Sunni cases, the documentary focused on the lives of young boys and people surrounding them. You see innocence, suffering, feelings, emotions that are real and that any viewer can relate with. But in the Shia case, the focus was instead on a leader of a militia, his ideological views, rhetoric, leadership, etc. How are all these experiences comparable in the first place? Moreover, we see no representation of female experiences in the current turmoil. Such an imbalanced portrayal furthers the differences in the minds of the viewers and presents a division of Iraq as the only ‘natural’ solution.

A friend, who was with me at the screening, drew my attention toward an underlying and very subtle depiction of hypocrisy in all three stories in the documentary. The documentary seem to depict that what the adult say and what they actually want are two different things. It reminded me of the imagery of 'cunning' Arabs that cannot be 'trusted' which runs deep into the Orientalist discourse (remember the movie, "Lawrence of Arabia"). I thought that was an interesting observation.

I cannot help but think that this documentary was made with a specific kind of anti-war argument in mind: Iraq is a mess now; it may have been in a better state before we got in. The people are messed up, you cannot solve their ideological and political differences, they would keep fighting with each other. The best option for us is to get out as soon as possible. The reification of 'fragments' serves well for this argument.

Here is the screening schedule, fyi.

PS. I shared the above thoughts with a few friends. One friend wrote back with some insightful thoughts. Below, I copy a couple of points from my response to that feedback.

- My primary concern was about the simplistic portrayal of reality and the reification of identities in this documentary. I suspect that it is produced for the consumption of a specific kind of anti-war argument. This portrayal could also contribute to a policy consensus on the division-of-Iraq solution, although I don't think this was Longley's intention or his personal politics. But it works to that effect, in my opinion. My general argument is that no depiction of Iraqi reality in the US is without consequences on the future of Iraq. It would be too naive on the part of the director to simply think of portraying the reality with 'objectivity' and no concern for the political consequences. I don't think he is that naive. And I think that these kinds of documentaries, columns, blogs on Iraq all have profound effect on policy and politics.

- On my friend's point about the passive form of documentary structure, which avoids the issue of causal connection; that is, who is responsible. My comment: Reality is much more complex than the simplistic three categories Longley presents in his documentary. His documentary starts with a Sunni in Baghdad expressing that they were better off under Saddam. A particular kind of focus on a specific Shia Militia (them beating up people who sold alcohol; their militant might; how they want to control the country using the channel of elections) in the second section, following the Sunni case, would automatically make the viewer think that Shias have replaced the previous dictatorship. They are the new dictators now (something the an American-Muslim scholar recently claimed on his blog, calling the top religious authority in Iraq a new dictator after Saddam). True, Longley does not venture into tracing the cause-effect, i.e. who is responsible, what is the political and the historical context. But the structure of this documentary and its content inevitably leads an uninitiated viewer into make these causal connections, if un-intentionally. Documentary is a form of art, and art touches hearts and minds at a deeper level.

The simplistic causal connection that's coming off at the moment could be averted even in the passive documentary form, by presenting the complexity, the confusion, the contradictions, which is what the ground reality is. Why does the portrayal have to be in the neat, simplistic three categories? Does Saddam or ex-baathist represent all Sunnis and a particular Militia all Shias?

If Longley's aim was to present 'the other side of the story' or the 'actual experiences of people' or 'through the lens of their experiences a larger story', I don't think he did a good job at any of these. Hence, my disappointment.

Iraq in Fragments: A Self-fulfilling Prophecy?

The US Senate recently voted for a soft partition of Iraq. This was an unbinding resolution to divide Iraq on ethnic and religious lines into three federal governments. One wonders, who gave them to right to talk about dividing Iraq in the first place?! Who are they to decide the future of the Iraqi people? The US is part of the problem, not solution. As Juan Cole rightly says in his recent blog entry, "First they messed up Iraq by authorizing Terrible George to blow it up, now they want to further mess it up by dividing it. It makes no sense..." It seems to me that those in the US Senate are following a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is, a false understanding or prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true.

Here is how a false understanding is fulfilling itself in the Iraqi case: You are a typical senator. You rely mostly on your staffers and mainstream media to learn about matters pertaining to foreign policy. Especially when you are not part of the Committee on Foreign Relations. Even when you are, you obviously don't have time to read the core scholarly research on all international conflicts and different regions by yourself. So you prefer to get a simplified, straightforward, summarized view of each issue and each region, including Iraq. But you start off wrongly, as in your quest for simplified understanding, you perceive the Iraqi society as fundamentally divided into three neat categories: the Shias, the Sunnis, and the Kurds. These people fall neatly into these 'distinct' categories in your imagination with clearly discernable 'differences' in beliefs, attitudes, dialects, cultures, life preferences, etc. There is not much fluidity or overlap among these identities. Further, you perceive these groups in existential opposition to each other: they hate each other, they do not want to live together, otherwise, how can you understand the current conflict. That they only needed a catalyst, such as a sudden break up of the political status quo and state structure, to start killing each other. In this simplified understanding, the policies of divide-and-rule of the current administration, such as the "The Redirection" (here) or "Shifting Targets" (here, both articles by Seymour Hersh), are supposed to have no effect in politicizing and transforming sectarian relations. As if politics had no role in generating hatred among these groups in Iraq. In this understanding, politics matters not as much as the supposedly primordial differences between Sunnis and Shias do. You see the people and their identities not in their complex social reality, rather, in simplistic categories that can help you make voting decisions, or at least, justify your voting track. This simplified image is very far from the ground reality, but you think that it is the truth.

The result: a) You neglect the role of politics, and consequently, the possibility of finding solution through politics. That is, through talks, through negotiations, through trust building, through just solutions. b) You miss the possibility of finding solutions in the common cultural resources, in the commonality of religion among the Iraqi groups, in their shared culture and history. Hence, you end up suggesting the old colonial solution of dividing up people through territorial boundaries. And how do you validate it? With a justification like this: ‘because they were divided in the first place, hence the divide-up solution.’ You justify and validate this logic by referring to none other than the logic itself. Talk about tautological reasoning! How a false perception is causing itself to become true!!

How should we perceive Iraq then? I refer the readers to an earlier post where I shared similar concerns. There I pointed out the dangers of focusing only on the ‘differences,’ and I stressed that we should not overlook the common cultural and religious factors that bind the Iraqi society together (See here).

It is so terrible to see that the public is also buying into this distorted imagery, this wrong portrayal of the Iraqi social reality. Even some Muslims, outside of Iraq, who are deeply saddened by the violence and bloodshed, have also started to see the division as the best solution. This is the power of media. It effectively distributes the public opinion messages, which reproduce themselves in the minds of the general public. Through these messages, these perceptions, these lens, the general audience interprets the news about Iraq and would judge political solutions like the division of Iraq. It is through this combined role of policy making (power) and media (knowledge) that the self-fulfilling prophecy about Iraq is materializing itself.

Another example of such this self-fulfilling prophecy can be found in the “clash of civilizations” theory by Samuel Huntington, which for many people has become the standard examining glass to interpret terrorism and the war on terror. (See its criticism here.)

In my next post, I want to look at James Longley's documentary, "Iraq in Fragments" (see image). This documentary is a good illustration of the concerns I share above.

The Askariya Mosque and the Muslim Ummah

The desecration of the Holy Askariya Mosque is a painful sight to all lovers and followers of the Prophet and his family. My condolence to all of you on this tragedy.

We are at a very sensitive juncture of history. Our collective actions as Muslims and as people of conscience are largely going to determine our future. The two attacks on the Askariya Mosque were evidently aimed at furthering sectarian violence and destabilizing Iraq. Perhaps even aimed at spilling sectarian violence out of the Iraqi borders into neighboring countries. It is difficult to ascertain who perpetrated these crimes. But it is clear that the situation in Iraq only worsened after the last attack on February 22, 2006. That is what the perpetrators wanted. The occupying forces are ultimately responsible for the protection of the civilians and the holy sites. They have obviously failed so far.

Iraqis need to take charge of their future in their hands. Only through unity can they defeat the plots of those who wish to divide them. And only through peace can they speak out to those who wish to provoke violence. The Muslim Ummah needs to send a resounding message to the Iraqi people and to all the people of the world - Muslims and Non-Muslims alike - that all Muslims are united and cannot allow such violence to be perpetrated in their name. The Muslim Ummah should denounce the sacrilege of all holy sites and the bloodshed of innocent lives across Iraq. And they should urge all people of conscience to join them in this cause.

The three images show the sacrilege of the Askariya Shrine after the two attacks. From top to bottom: a) Taken in Feb 2004, b) Taken after Feb 22, 2006, c) Taken on June 13, 2007.