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CounterPunch
February
25, 2003
Dispatch from Baghdad
Living Against
Disaster
by RAMZI KYSIA
"War is disaster," young Zeinab
told me. "Do you know what it is to live your entire life
in disaster?"
Zeinab studies English at Baghdad University,
and she represents an entire generation of Iraqis raised in the
nativity of war--childhoods interrupted by air raid sirens and
the funeral wailings of wars with Iran and then America, teenage
years exhausted under the weight of sanctions, and adult lives
beginning under the promise of an even greater devastation.
You who are reading this, pay attention:
Iraq lives in disaster-- will you live against it?
The storm George "War" Bush
has been promising to deliver for over a year is almost upon
Iraq, and yet Baghdad remains surreally calm. The panic Americans
show with their stockpiling of water and iodine tablets, their
ridiculous plastic sheeting and duct tape talismans, is largely
absent in Iraq. Life ambles on here as normal, whatever that
could mean in this battered country.
I think of the teenage girl who accosted
a group of American peace activists in a hospital several years
ago. After watching her infant sister struggle and die of malnutrition,
she yelled out at them, "What is the difference between
me, I am 16, and someone in your country who is 16? I'll tell
you the difference--we cannot feel anymore."
It's a lie, of course. Under the surface,
everyone here is terrified and depressed. While the politicians
pretend that this war is about weapons of mass destruction and
the liberation of Iraq, Iraqis pretend that the war will not
happen. Much of the peace movement, for its part, pretends that
something called "containment" can work--if America
will only work within the UN and give weapons inspectors a chance,
then we can find a peaceful solution.
We will all soon be shorn of our pretenses.
George Bush wants war. He wants war because
of the trillions of dollars of untapped oil that lie beneath
Iraqi sands. He wants war because of the power that control of
that oil will give him--the power to destroy OPEC, the power
to freely attack Saudi fundamentalism, the power to impose American
and Israeli hegemony upon a hapless Middle East, the power to
intimidate Europe and Asia.
George "War" Bush wants to
send a message to the world that America is the paramount power
and none may withstand him.
Control of Iraq's oil will generate tens
of billions of dollars in profits for the U.S. multinationals
exploiting it and rebuilding Iraq. Control of Iraq's oil will
mean that the neoconservatives can finally attack Saudi Arabia--with
threats and intimidation at first, later with force if they so
desire--without the worry that a halt to Saudi oil production
could cripple a dependent world. Control of Iraq's oil will mean
that Europe and Japan, so much more dependent on Middle Eastern
oil than America, must go through George Bush for their energy
needs. And the sheer spectacle of destruction that war will bring
will intimidate enemies and allies alike for years to come.
The weapons inspectors are irrelevant.
Whether the UN authorizes war or not is irrelevant. Whether Iraq
has proscribed weapons or not is in the end irrelevant. With
dividends so enormous, mere facts and legalities will not stop
this storm. George Bush wants war, and he will have it.
The time for persuasion, for reasoned
argument, is long past. Our leaders are self-observably unreasonable.
If there is hope of stopping this war, then it will be because
we the peoples of this world engage in massive, nonviolent civil
disobedience, shut down our governments, and overthrow the institutions
of war. We have but short days. We have to begin to ask--what
will we risk for peace?
This war will be a reverberating catastrophe,
with far-reaching consequences for us all. To those who say they
are not "political," we must demand: will you become
political when the explosions from this war--dropped by U.S.
warplanes or brought by suicide bombers--rock our own homes?
Will you become political when the secret police--wrapped in
red, white, and blue--come for you?
Massive, nonviolent civil disobedience
brought down the Berlin Wall, and after it the Soviet Union.
Nonviolent civil disobedience brought down the tyrant Milosevic,
and nonviolent civil disobedience can bring down the tyrant Bush.
The simplest acts can have thundering
consequences. A tired, middle-aged housekeeper named Rosa Parks
went to jail rather than give up her bus seat to a white woman,
and so brought down 100 years of state-sponsored oppression and
terrorism against black Americans. A young activist named Nelson
Mandela went to jail for decades and became the nexus for the
revolution that brought down Apartheid.
Protest is not enough. George Bush is
not listening. Donald Rumsfeld is not listening. Colin Powell
does not care. As Alexander Haig, another former general and
U.S. Secretary of State, once said, "Let them march, so
long as they pay their taxes."
You who are reading this: pay attention.
20 years of war and 12 years of economic sanctions have taken
their toll on Iraq. I know so many engineers and college professors
forced to drive taxis to earn a living. I know doctors who break
down crying when they talk about all the suffering they've seen--all
the patients they've lost because of the blockade. I know kids
who've had to leave school, and beg in the streets to support
their families. Their faces haunt me.
Half of all Iraqis are under the age
of 18. Shall we make war on children? I know a young Baghdadi
boy named Mehdi, born at the very end of Desert Storm, a child
of war. He is 12 years old but malnutrition has stunted his growth
and he could pass for 8 or 9. His father died 5 years ago, and
he lives with his mother, younger brother, uncle and 3 cousins
in a run-down apartment in central Baghdad. His uncle's lamed,
or perhaps just lazy, for all 5 boys must beg in the streets
to earn their keep. Mehdi makes 75 cents a day selling candy,
and every time he sees me he runs to try to kiss my hand in the
hope that I'll by him a meal.
Iraqis no longer have the reserves to
withstand another storm. Because of sanctions, most Iraqis are
now totally dependent on food rations distributed by the government
and the UN. 24 million people are fed each and every month in
the biggest breadline in world history. A breadline that will
collapse when war begins.
You who are reading this: pay attention.
War will not help the Iraqi people. War is not liberation. War
is devastation and death.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were
killed in the war with Iran. Hundreds of thousands were killed
as a result of the war with America in 1991. Hundreds of thousands
more have been killed through 12 years of the most oppressive
blockade in modern history. The world has stood in silent witness
before the mass destruction of human life in Iraq.
You who are reading this: pay attention.
This war will be a disaster for us all. For our brothers and
sisters in Iraq who are already living in disaster, will you
live against it?
You who are reading this: please answer.
We have but short days--what will you risk for peace?
Ramzi Kysia
is a Arab American peace activist and writer. He is currently
in Iraq with the Voices in
the Wilderness Iraq Peace Team , a project to keep American
peaceworkers to Iraq prior to, during, and after any future U.S.
attack, in order to be a voice for the Iraqi people. The Iraq
Peace Team can be reached through info@vitw.org
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