Waiting in fear - the people of Iraq

From the Markaziya Secondary School for Boys in Baghdad, Iraq, Husam Muhamad writes in his broken English: "I would like to tell you I love my home, sky, river, tree, and I love everything here. The suffering of our children make me ask why? Why?! What did children do to USA? Mother's tears make me ask why?! What did the mothers do to USA?

"In America you eat and rest and laugh and play; you live without fear in America. In Iraq, there is no food, no medicine and we die. We shout in a loud voice let us live in peace, America. We love all people in the world: Black or White, Arab or Indian, Asian Americans or African Americans. We love the all without any discrimination."

This is one voice we never hear: the voice of one Iraqi other than Saddam Hussein and members of his Baathi party. Yes, behind Iraq's oil and its brutal dictator, are Iraq's people.

While Bush is beating the drums of war, the people of Iraq, and Baghdad in particular, are sitting on the edge of their seats in fear. They know, like I know, who will be the victims of any attacks launched at them by the United States. It will not be Saddam Hussein or his party; it will be the forgotten people of Iraq.

The impending war against Iraq isn't part of an effort to bring the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to justice. None of the 19 hijackers were Iraqi, and no one has produced any credible evidence that Iraq was involved in the ghastly terror.

People seemed to have forgotten what Saddam referred to as "the Mother of All Battles" in 1991, the Gulf War, turned in fact, into the "Mother of All Massacres." In the most lopsided war in history, upwards of between 100,000 and 200,000 Iraqis perished, compared to fewer than 300 allied troops, most of them victims of "friendly fire." Bush's new battle will be no different.

The Iraqi army has been reduced to one-fifth of its former size. The Scud missiles are gone. According to Scott Ritter, former head of the UN weapons inspection team in Iraq, Saddam's ability to produce weapons of mass destruction is virtually nonexistent. Any semblance of an air force is gone. Any viable strategic air defense system is gone.

What will the United States _ or possibly the United Nations, if it can muster enough backbone to lead the imminent charge _ face in Iraq? A nation of diseased, malnourished children who are forced to drink sewage-infested water because sanctions prevent the Iraqis from obtaining the parts necessary to repair war-damaged sewage treatment plants. A nation whose civilian infrastructure was destroyed, as a strategic priority, in the 1991 war; a nation whose livestock has been decimated by hoof and mouth disease, screw worm, and other scourges, because sanctions prevent the importation of the vaccines and pesticides needed to address such problems.

In short, Iraq is a nation with little will, and even less ability, to withstand the pounding they will inevitably be subjected to.

Some people claim that with war Saddam Hussein will be gone. That is good for the people of Iraq, right? George W Bush's promise to sow freedom and democracy rings hollow when one considers how little effort his administration has made toward nation-building in Afghanistan. It has been less than a year since the US military toppled the Taliban regime, and already conditions have deteriorated so badly that many farmers have reverted to growing more opium to support their families. This bodes especially ill for Iraq, which finds itself next in line for Bush's adventurism.

In the short term, the Iraqi people might receive better treatment if and when the US military overthrows Saddam Hussein: Iraq, after all, sits atop huge oil reserves, and Washington will want to establish and maintain at least a modicum of stability. The Afghan debacle is doubly tragic because this is the second time in the very same place that the United States has failed to reconstruct a state it helped to destroy.

Afghanistan's US-backed president, Hamid Karzai, presides over a government in name only. He has no power outside Kabul, relying instead on a network of ruthless regional warlords, many of whom behaved so murderously in the early 1990s that they actually managed to make the Taliban seem like a viable alternative. As foolish and callous as it was for Washington to walk away from Afghanistan after supporting a successful insurgency against the Soviet occupation, this time around is even less forgivable because of the more direct US role and because one expects a superpower to learn from its mistakes.

Iraq, of course, is not Afghanistan. Its population is better-educated, it has considerable economic potential, and its government _ for all its faults, _ has preserved something resembling order despite a shattering military defeat in 1991 and more than a decade of crippling sanctions. In short, it is a functioning society, something that Afghanistan under the Taliban was definitely not.

When and if the Pentagon completes its handiwork in Iraq, however, the two countries will have much more in common. The central government will have collapsed, removing much of the glue that holds Iraq's various ethnic and religious communities together. If the Americans follow their own (twice-tested and twice-failed) Afghan model, whatever puppet they install as ruler will be a virtual prisoner in Baghdad, opening the way for tribal warfare in outlying areas.

Bush and his advisers should know better than to assume that one can dismantle an entire nation's system of governance and then benefit from some magical process by which it rises from the dead to take on the organizational appearance of Massachusetts. The experience in Afghanistan, though, indicates that they either cannot understand that simple reality or cannot be bothered to care about the repercussions of their actions.

In the meantime, Iraqis like Husam and his family are waiting for the worst to come every moment of every day and night. I wish I could assure them of some light at the end of this tunnel, that they will not be targeted, that they will for once be considered, even remembered. Sadly, looking at history, I know of the tragedy to come.



Rana Abdul-Aziz is a senior majoring in International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies.