Just read in the GLOBE (went to the grocery store today, could not resist the tantalizing headline "Chelsea's Wedding is Off"): Ian is back from Iraq and is living in California. Chelsea has moved to London where she has a new job, a healthcare consultant, $179K a year. Wedding is off for now. Mama H. told Chels she should experience more of life before settling down...
Never mind.
When Jalal Talabani assumed the presidency of Iraq in April, the streets of Irbil, in the country's Kurdish-controlled north, filled in celebration, and most of my students decided to skip that afternoon's English class. "This is a new beginning," Jihad, one of the few who did make it to school, told me. Yes, but the beginning of what, exactly? The beginning of the end of sectarian and ethnic conflict in Iraq? The beginning of the end of Kurdish uneasiness with their Iraqi identity? Or, perhaps just as likely, the beginning of the end of Iraq? [How about the beginning of asking too many rhetorical questions, Ian?
Not long after this, in a course I was teaching on U.S. history at the University of Salahaddin, I introduced a question of shared concern to both Americans and Kurds: Do federalism and diversity make a country weaker, or can they, over extended periods of time, in fact make a country stronger? The class included a handful of Islamists who saw in both me and the United States everything evil, but most had welcomed me to their country, and almost all had welcomed U.S. intervention in Iraq. One of the more engaged students gave a quick response that anticipated the answers of the majority of the group. "Pluralism and diversity might be part of what make America good," he surmised, "but they are not good for Iraq." "They might be good for Iraq," he added with a slight chuckle, "if the rest of Iraq was all Kurds."
Two Kurdish security officials outside one of the university's dusty classrooms advanced even more blunt opinions. A television in the corner was showing images of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib. Making use of my limited Kurdish, I grimaced and said "boshnea, hoshnea" -- not good, not nice. One of the guards smiled at me and shook his head, "Zurhosha, zurbosha" -- very nice, very good. The Americans, he asserted, screwed up at that prison all right; they hadn't gone far enough.
Hardened from years of war though the Kurds may be, neither the student nor the bodyguard was eager to see more bloodshed. It is of limited value to compare historical injustices but fair to say that a long-oppressed and brutalized people, as the Kurds were under Saddam Hussein, cannot be expected to abandon the biases they have adopted over years of hardship.
Just that sort of progress may very well be in their best interest, however, and it is certainly in the best interest of the American vision of a united and stable Iraq. In the long run, port access through Basra and a role in the larger Iraqi market might be better economically for the Kurds than independence as a state landlocked by confrontational neighbors. In the short run, both the political balance provided by the more secular Kurds and their continued receptiveness to the U.S. presence are useful in developing an Iraq that Bush officials -- or whoever follows them -- might proudly leave behind.
Around the time of my exchange with the security officials, a State Department program officer visited the president of the university. The officer asked after the number of buildings and students at the school's various colleges and sought to arrange a lunchtime visit for a prominent American writer. He did not, however, ask if the university was offering courses on federalism or sponsoring discussions on the benefits of diversity. There was no discussion of the best way to encourage the new generation to be optimistic about Iraq and not simply Kurdistan. In between twice asking about the enrollment, the official found it worthwhile to correct the president's use of the German "V" sound in his pronunciation of the name of the former deputy secretary of defense. "Wolf-o-witz. Wolf-o-witz," he said in a tone and rhythm appropriate for teaching phonetics to an ill-behaved student.
The battle of ideas, the fight for hearts and minds, must be fought like the war against the Iraqi insurgents -- requiring intelligence and waged day by day, door to door. Removed from abstract concepts of culture and modernity and the overarching reach of Al Jazeera and its U.S.-funded counterpart Al Hurra, the war of ideas is also fought in inane meetings like this one between an American bureaucrat and an Iraqi administrator. Front lines are in the basements of mosques, in the classrooms of colleges, and in every face-to-face meeting between Iraqis and Americans. Knowledge and respect are often the best weapons.
In Mosul, conflict between islamists and moderate students has plagued Nineveh University, once one of Iraq's most prestigious institutions. In Iraqi Kurdistan, less than 50 miles to the east, the war of ideas is not about the role of Islam but the more precise problem of Kurdish-Arab relations. While American officials in Iraq have emphasized a political balance of power, they have established few structures through which the country's dominant groups can begin to discuss injustices of the past. There are no school programs furthering the idea of the "new" Iraq, nor are there new textbooks in the northern universities that acknowledge Kurdish-Arab tensions or highlight the value of cooperation. Nothing is being done to convince Kurds on the street that Arab Iraqis should be given a chance to be trusted, and the security situation in central Iraq allows for little to be done to reconstruct the negative image of Kurds that Saddam helped foster for 30 years.
It is probably neither possible nor appropriate to force onto Kurds the belief that, in the new Iraq, Kurdish-Arab relations will be different. It can be the U.S. role, however -- true both to our interests in Iraq and our values as Americans -- to introduce the idea that change is indeed possible, and that, in the right setting, the mistakes and prejudices of the past can be exchanged for shared interests and mutual respect. We cannot say that it must be so, but, through support of local universities and schools and sensitivity to local politicians and media, we could introduce the idea that it might be so. For a start, this means no longer pretending that Iraq is one nation. And it means beginning instead to set up the extra-political structures -- the spaces for teaching, conversation and forgiveness -- that might, against the odds, make it so. source
(Ian Klaus taught English and history in Iraqi Kurdistan until last month. This article first appeared in The New Republic.)
Smarmy little know-nothing.
I've found it odd that Chels has been out of the limelight the past several months.