I came to Iraq three days after Saddam Hussein fled Baghdad. It was April 12, 2003. At the time, Iraqis bristled when asked if they were Sunni, Shiite or Kurd. It made no difference, they said, they were brothers. And, in the heady aftermath of the war, for a short while it almost seemed true. That mood seems to be upon the country again, and it is most welcome after the last six years of bloody murders between Shiites and Sunnis; between Arabs and Kurds; between Muslims and Christians.
Will it last? Or are Americans, as they have been in Kosovo and Bosnia and perhaps now in Afghanistan, turning away from the inconvenient realities of ethnic and religious differences, the depth of animosities, of struggles for power and territory? As the country’s attention turns east to Afghanistan, I too have made the journey to Kabul, as my new assignment. It is tempting to make analogies between the two troubled places, and there are some, but there are at least as many differences.
What are the lessons of Iraq that I carry with me? The cultures are as different as mountains and desert, and for outsiders, there is a familiar struggle to see the place as it truly is, not as we might wish it would be. Back in 2003, the Americans wanted to believe that an age of brotherhood and integration, loosed by American military might, had come to Iraq. Many Iraqis wanted to believe it, too. Thinking too much about the depth of distrust, long latent between sects and ethnicities, would mean acknowledging that a frenzy of violence waited in the wings. They swept into the desert sands the centuries-long struggle of Sunnis and Shiites for dominance in the fertile river basin between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. It was as if officials thought that perhaps by saying they were brothers, they would become them.
Americans wanted to believe that their version of democracy was just waiting to spring to life in Iraq — a peaceful multi-ethnic, multi-religious society adhering to the rule of law. That longing to find in another country a mirror of ourselves trumped cold analysis and led to years of denial that came to an end only when the mutilated bodies at the Baghdad morgue mounted each day: to 30, 40 and finally 75 to 100. Shiites murdered by Sunnis; Sunnis murdered by Shiites.
I realized that a sectarian fight was starting to play out in November 2003, but I had no idea how far it would go. I should have been the canary in the coal mine — but like so many others around me, I did not want to believe what I saw. I was working for The Los Angeles Times then; it would be nearly four years before I would come to this newspaper.
It was early winter, gray and damp, and in a poor neighborhood called Washash a blind imam had been assassinated as he walked home from the dawn prayer on the first day of Ramadan. Killed with him was his brother and a small boy who acted as his guide. The area was run down, the houses cramped, the narrow streets littered. Under tattered awnings, an open-air fruit market sold mangy cauliflowers, browning romaine lettuce and bruised oranges. The neighborhood was predominantly Shiite although most surrounding areas were Sunni. Two years later Shiite thugs and killers would force many of the Sunnis to flee, but that hadn’t happened yet.
People in the market didn’t want to talk about the imam, who was a Sunni. They shrugged when I asked what had happened. I asked if he had debts, if he had hurt anyone. They shook their heads; even the Shiites among them were afraid of the gunmen. I found the imam’s house, a humble building with just one room to a floor on one of two streets where Sunnis lived. His son told me his father’s story. Blind for many years, his father preached at a small mosque just a few blocks away, rising every morning before dawn, using his blind man’s stick to help him arrive in time to offer the prayer. Soon after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the imam began to hear threats; when he had finished cleaning the mosque and emerged alone into the street, people would whisper that his time was up. Sunnis were no longer welcome there.
In the U.S., human-interest stories about marathon running trump coverage of a highly-competitive race.
Halloween has become a chance for children to help other children, not just rake in candy.
Read Full Article »