Posted on 01/12/2005 5:28:01 PM PST by chava
KurdistanObserver.com Of Arab Political Culture, the Kurds, and the Falsehood Called Iraq
By: Dr. Sabah A. Salih
January 7, 2005
It must be a symptom of Arab political culture’s utter disregard for civic responsibility and historical accuracy for so many of its members not to be able to get outside of their own heads regarding Halabja and the falsehood called Iraq.
Every time confronted with intellectual honesty regarding a Middle Eastern issue it has a different opinion about, Arab political culture—from Assadism to Saddamis, Arabism to Naserism, along with its all-time backer, political Islam—is quick to respond with the usual mix of accusations and denunciations: This is part of an ongoing conspiracy, hatched by Zionism and implemented by imperialism, to keep the Arab and Muslim peoples divided and weak.
Through rote learning, control over the media, the printed word, and a massive campaign of intimidation and falsehood by the nation state and the mosque, this single singularity is deeply engrained into the mind of millions. It is yet another indication that Arab political culture and political Islam still favor the dictatorship of the word to an active labor of thought—the willingness to give a story a fair hearing and, using the resources of logic and dialect, for analysis and evaluation. Rich in fiery denunciations, wholesale condemnations, character assassinations, and plenty of name-calling, this dictatorship aims for control of the mind from the bottom up. Here’s Sami Shawkat, directer general of education in Iraq in 1933, delivering a speech to schoolboys: “The foreigner for us is he who intrigues against Arab unity; and he is not only a foreigner in doctrine, faith and spirit, but he is also our bitterest enemy” (cited in Makiya, Republic of Fear: the Politics of Modern Iraq, p. 178). Here’s Saddam’s predecessor Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr addressing the nation on national television on October 9, 1968: “We shall strike mercilessly with a fist of steel at those exploiters and fifth columnists, the handmaidens of imperialism and Zionism” (50).
And here’s Sayyid Qutb, Osama bin Laden’s intellectual grandfather, describing one of the most common western cultural practices, a dance, in Greeley, Colorado, in 1948: “Every young man took the hand of a young woman. And these were the young men and women who had just been singing their hymns! Red and blue lights, with only a few white lamps, illuminated the dance floor. The room became a confusion of feet and legs; arms twisted around hips; lips met lips; chests pressed together” (Sign Posts on the Road, 1964).
These are not examples of thinking that have gone awry: these are examples of a closed mind, a mind paralyzed by the overwhelming weight of its own ignorance, hysteria, and tendency to be totalitarian. As national leaders, such men are not interested in helping a nation develop intellectually; their goal is rather to destroy the life of the mind, to impose a monopoly over the word, and to turn the citizen into a robotic imitator of the leader, both in word and deed. Such men, to use John Stuart Mill’s words, having “never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think differently from them . . . do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which they themselves profess” (Utilitarianism, Liberty, Representative Government, 1951, p. 9).
What makes this totalitarian method even more dangerous is that it makes assassination—which Bernard Shaw rightly described as “the extreme form of censorship”—the method of choice for silencing a pen, as the killing of Egyptian writer Farag Foda in 1992 and of the Algerian writer Tahar Djaout in 1993 all too painfully demonstrate.
Such assault on the life of the mind in much of the Arab and Muslim regions has in recent years been bolstered by the rise in the West of what is commonly referred to as Postmodernism, which professor Terry Eagleton correctly defines as the “belief that meaning is indeterminate, language ambiguous and unstable, the human subject a mere metaphor, history a frequently ‘undecidable’ text . . .” (Figures of Dissent, p. 154). In these regions, Postmodernism has simply come to mean an admission by the West that its centuries-old embrace of rationalism and secularism has been a failure, and that, therefore, the West is in no position to fault any society or government for what they do; now even the idea of human rights is seen as a purely Western invention irrelevant to non-Western societies. Even more alarming, the West’s presumed failure is seen as vindication that Arab political culture and political Islam have been right all along in portraying the West as a storehouse of decadence, greed, and conspiracies.
Postmodernism, thus, perhaps unwittingly, provided the adherents of the blame game with the intellectual respectability they never had. Now a mullah in London, or Frankfurt, or Paris, or Los Angeles could say the most ridiculous things about the West and get intellectual backing for it from Western academics. Arab women fleeing genital mutilation in the Sudan would be duly reminded that all cultural practices are sacred, and that opposing them would amount to committing treason against one’s culture. Those speaking out against human rights abuses are promptly labeled self-hating stooges doing Western imperialism’s dirty work. Postmodernism paved the way thus for the emergence of such media outlets as Al-Jazeera and Al-Manar televisions, both mouthpieces of the most reactionary and gibberish views.
Further intellectual backing for this kind of totalitarian thinking has come from a cabal of Arab and Muslim academics and journalists living and working in the West, chief among them the late Palestinian-American Edward Said, who in spite of some top-notch contributions to literary studies, was quite willing to bring himself to say, “It is . . . correct to say that every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric” (Orientalism p. 11). So there it is: an intellectual blank check for every writer and journalist and student to turn thinking into a simple game of finger pointing and name calling; that this has become the hallmark of much of the Arab media, most notably Al-Jazeera television and such London-based newspapers Al-Quds al- Araby and Al-Arab is not surprising in the least.
The political climate resulting first from the Iraq war and then from the U.S. presidential election has also contributed massively to this lack of critical thinking. The war galvanized a strange array of fundamentalists from the left and the right—but primarily from the left—against ousting tyranny. Their discourse purported to understand everything about Iraq, but which in reality, as Christopher Hitchens succinctly put in A Long Short War (Plume, 2003) was “good at explaining nothing” (p. 88). In their dogmatic opposition to the war, these fundamentalists created a dogma of their own about Iraq. In it, the complexity of Iraq as a land of several nations, created by the British after WWI principally for the benefit of a tiny Sunni Arab minority, was never allowed to be heard. The result was that this silence led to the emergence of a peculiar kind of discourse: it had all the usual anti-imperialistic trappings, but it ended up endorsing and legitimizing the very injustices British imperialism had committed against the peoples of Mesopotamia. To this day, this is the war opponents’ official discourse. Readers were—and still are—kept in the dark about the falsehood that Iraq is. As Margaret MacMillan points out in her accessible Paris 1919, a history of map-making after World War I, when Iraq was created by the British, it immediately become clear there were “no Iraqi people” and no “Iraqi nationalism” to speak of, only a mix of peoples and cultures that had lived side by side in semi-independent states for centuries. The basic fact that needs to be stressed here is that the whole idea of Iraq as a nation state has been a British invention.
More recently, John Kerry relied on this very same discourse to undercut a project that, though unintended by the Bush administration, is bound to dismantle once and for all the ugly British creation called modern Iraq and restore sovereignty at long last to the peoples of Mesopotamia. There was nothing wrong for Kerry to oppose the war; but opposing it at the expense of fairness was a moral and political blunder. Kerry’s rhetoric gave more credibility to the blame game theory I have been talking about than to the suffering of the Kurds and Shiites under successive Sunni Arab tyrannies.
The logical next move is of course to turn against the victims of Saddam’s tyranny, as many have been doing of late. The purpose is three-fold: calling into question the victims’ horrendous suffering, trying to portray the tyranny’s remnants and their gangster allies as freedom fighters, and giving the blame game a new impetus.
Let me offer one glaring example sent to me in the mail recently. It is by one Mohammed al-Obaidi, identified in the Al-Jazeera piece as an Iraqi working as a university professor in the United Kingdom. I cannot call the piece trash because it is worse and more dangerous than that. I cannot call it innocent, or amusing, because it is premeditated. I cannot call it scholarly because it does not rely on the resources of logic and dialectic and evidence to make an argument but rather on racist assumptions. I am not exaggerating.
Mr. al-Obaidi, as to be concluded from his affiliation with the so-called The People’s Struggle Movement in Iraq—a euphemism for Sunni Arab tyranny—is something of a Halabja revisionist, not as a scholar, though, the way, say, Ernest Nolte was in Germany, but rather as a shady falsifier of facts. Showing no civic obligation toward the facts, Mr. al-Obaidi writes: “Despite the doubt cast by many professionals as well as the CIA’s recent report, and after years of public relations propaganda made for the Kurdish leadership by the assistance and support of the Israeli Mossad, the issue of genocide has been marketed to the international community.”
So the bottom line here is that al-Obaidi—who does not speak Kurdish, who has never done fieldwork in Halabja, who has never talked to the survivors, in short, who has not given the story even a semblance of fair hearing—is now trying to market the usual, tiresome trash that no reflective or informed person can believe: a piece of revisionist history Arab political culture has long been in the business of promoting, especially concerning those that have come under its brutal occupation.
Everything in al-Obaidi’s piece is predictable. Predictable, because for someone to claim, as al-Obaidi does, that Halabja was all hype, despite the mounting evidence to the contrary, is to proceed, not according to facts, but according to the usual falsehoods Arab political culture is known for. There is no scholarship here, only conspiracy mania. Scholarship aims at uncovering the truth, whereas al-Obaidi is only capable of inflaming the passions, much like the Assads and Saddams. The bottom line: It is all a Jewish conspiracy. End of discussion.
New Yorker Magazine’s Jeffrey Goldberg is a terrific writer; he needs no introduction. The New Yorker’s commitment to the truth and honesty and intellectual integrity has been ironclad. It is not for nothing that the publication Mr. Goldberg works for has been called by Harrison Salisbury “the best magazine that ever was.” At a time when much of the Arab media and Arab political culture were dishing out the usual lies about Halabja, when Western governments were discouraging coverage for fear of jeopardizing lucrative business contracts with Saddam, when the CIA was trying to put its spin on the affair, when the Reagan administration, to placate its Arab and Turkish allies, was adamantly refusing to talk to the Kurds, at a time when even the United Nations was acting like nothing had happened at Halabja, it was magazines like the New Yorker and journalists like Goldberg who forced the truth upon the consciousness of an indifferent world. Yes, some of these writers were Jewish; yes, some of these writers are people with dual citizenships. But to claim, as al-Obeidi does in his piece, that much of what Mr. Goldberg has written about Halabja is not a representation of what actually had happened but rather the product of some sort of a conspiracy by a man of “Israeli/American citizenship” is to reveal a deep-rooted commitment to a culture of lies and bigotry. Mr. Goldberg is capable of telling the truth about Halabja because intellectual honesty prevents him from doing otherwise. Mr. al-Obeidi is incapable of telling the truth about Halabja because, being the brainchild of Arab political culture, he is not accustomed to intellectual honesty.
Again, to call al-Obeidi’s product trash is to miss the larger point. What makes a grown man commit himself to disinformation, attach his name to it, not be embarrassed by it, and seek publicity for it? And what makes a network like Al-Jazeera decide that this is newsworthy? The answer is obvious. As I said at the start of this piece, Arab political culture is not known for analysis, debate, and openness; it is a culture of slogans, denunciations, hysterical outburst, and deep rooted racist assumptions regarding non-Arabs. Take a look, for example, at the way the term the Jew functions within al-Obaidi’s discourse: because Mr. Goldberg is a Jew, he is, like all Jews, out there in everything he does to harm the Arab and Muslim people.
As al-Obaidi’s example makes clear, one symptom of Arab political culture’s moral and intellectual bankruptcy is its pernicious attempt to label pro-Zionist any name, or people, or history, or nationalism, or tragedy it does not approve of. Invoking this label has become every Arab and Muslim demagogue’s first refuge; it goes hand in with this culture’s other forms of brainwashing. To imply, even remotely, that the Washington Kurdish Institute, and its founders and supporters, Kurds and non-Kurds, are agents of Zionism, as al-Obaidi’s does, is to demonstrate an amazing ability to operate with a mind severely biased and committed to flat-out lies. This is also a reminder that tyrannies in the Arab world don’t just happen; they are created and marketed by the likes of al-Obaidi. Men and women who cannot follow their thoughts beyond such phoniness are indeed the tyranny’s best allies. The question, at any rate, is not whether the Kurds have ties with Israel or not; the question is whether the Kurds have the right to decide for themselves to have such ties or not. To deny them such right, as al-Obaidi obviously implies, is to be wishing to see Kurdish nationalism in shackles once again. The good news is that those days are gone forever. As we say in Kurdish, let the likes of al-Obaidi eat their garlic and blow their horn.
In the quote I cited earlier, al-Obaidi says, “many professionals as well as the CIA’s recent report” cast doubt on the authenticity of genocide at Halabja. Who are these professionals? Professional in what field? Alas, al-Obaidi, unaccustomed to being a professional of any sort himself, offers only one name: Stephen Pelletiere. And why what this man has to say is to be believed while all the others are to be disbelieved? Mr. Pelletiere has worked at the U.S. War College and the State Department for years. On the eve of the horrific news from Halabja, Mr. Pelletiere went on national television, telling CBS’s Dan Rather that the Kurds could not be trusted. Evidence or no evidence, the man had already made up his mind: not only was Saddam not at fault but that the Kurds were somehow of an inferior race. Pelletiere since has been on the record for advising a hands-off policy towards Saddam and for urging the United States to distance itself from the Kurds. He made the rounds in Kurdistan a few years ago on behalf of the State Department, but he acted more as an enemy rather than as a friend of the Kurds. Now you know why he is so dear He is to the likes of al-Obaidi. Pelletiere has been adamant in his support for the continuation of Sunni Arab tyranny in Iraq. Many in the State Department and the CIA share this view.
Which brings me to Mr. al-Obaidi’s other source of disinformation. First of all, it must be a sign of utter desperation and hopelessness for a man identifying himself so high-mindedly as a spokesperson for something as loftily described as The People’s Struggle Movement to turn to the CIA for help. In the discourse of Arab political culture, aren’t the CIA and the Israeli Mossad something like twin, wicked brothers? Aren’t they supposed to be committed to spreading falsehood and working day in and day out trying to find ways to plot against the Arab and Muslim nations? I guess desperation can sometimes create some very bizarre bedfellows.
If al-Obaidi had done some elementary research, he would have easily learned that the CIA has always been in the dirty business of undermining, rather than advancing, the Kurdish interest. Furthermore, the spy agency has not been all-that adept in its investigations and predictions; its record since 9/11 speaks for itself. Virtually everything the CIA and Stephen Pelletiere have put out on the Kurds is tainted not just by prejudice and a terrible lack of knowledge about the Kurdish situation but also by an utter disregard for such knowledge. It is with an exact colonialist mentality that al-Obaidi operates here. They all maliciously and arrogantly ignore or distort what the Kurdish people themselves have to say. This approach has zero credibility, for in the final analysis Halabja is Kurdish; it is part of a wounded nation’s long struggle against tyranny. To approach it as something else, as al-Obaidi does, is to look at a historical reality through ideological blinkers, something the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek aptly describes as a “prohibition against thinking.”
Finally, lurking beneath Mr. al-Obeidi’s shabby text lurks another, a bigger text. According to this larger text, the Iraq that al-Obeidi considers to be legitimate is the Iraq that was custom-made by British imperialism in 1925 and offered as a colonial gift to the Sunni Arab minority led by King Feisal I. But don’t take it from us Kurds when we reject this Iraq as an artificial creation; take it from the King himself. In March 1933, the King, exasperated by the fact that Iraq was not one nation but several and that therefore it could not be governed as a nation state the way the British had wanted, wrote: “There is still—and I say this with a heart full of sorrow—no Iraqi people but unimaginable mass of people.” No Iraqi people indeed. As Christopher Catherwood writes in his recent book, Winston’s Folly: Imperialism and the Creation of Modern Iraq, this was indeed the Iraq Winston Churchill created and secured international legitimacy for. (So now you see, why we have good reason to be suspicious of phrases like “international legitimacy,” “international community,” “international law,” and the all the rest.)
Sadly, the truth about Iraq—especially Iraq under Saddam—has always had few takers. In 1992, when Iraqi author Kanan Makiya was trying to get his classic book, the Republic of Fear, published in America, no publisher would touch it. By then, Postmodernism had persuaded many that to try tell the truth about an Arab tyranny was to engage in a racist undertaking. When the excellent scholarly book finally did get published, the hatchet wielders, taking their cue from Said’s Orientalism, were ready to butcher the author. In the academic jargon, the author was described as a self-hating Arab, a native informer, and other such nonsense.
Then Arab political culture got into the fray, heaping every imaginable abuse upon the author. Even those who knew Saddam’s tyranny first-hand took the bait. An Arab friend of mine one night called and said, “This book is the work of Zionists.” When I asked him to explain, all he was capable of saying was the usual tiresome line: “Only the Jews do this kind of stuff.” Years later he gave the very same explanation when Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses was decreed by the late Ayatollah Khomeini to be anti-Muslim. Al-Obaidi’s purpose here is the same: using words as a stopgap.
That’s why, as far as the big picture is concerned, there nothing new in al-Obaidi has to say: Arab political culture has always been hostile to Kurdish particularity.
What is new is that its author, being affiliated with a western University, can now hide behind western scholarship in the waning days of Postmodernism to give his shady enterprise a degree of respectability among the already converted. The idea is simple: if revisionist historians can claim with a straight face that the Holocaust did not happen, then why can’t an Arab demagogue claim the same about Halabja, especially now that the market is glutted with anti-Bush loudmouths still smarting from the Kerry defeat?
Let me conclude by giving the last word to the late Arab poet Nizar al-Qabbani, who following Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait wrote these lines in response to the gibberish put out at the time by Arab political culture:
Every twenty years
Comes to us a gambling man
To stake our country and culture
And resources and rivers
And trees and fruit
And men and women
And the waves and the sea
At the gambling table.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
We die: broken, hated
Cursed like dogs
While our philosopher in his shelter
Cogitates destruction into victory.
WOW!!! Excellent post, thank you.
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