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Those US marines who killed at least twenty-four Iraqi civilians in their homes in Haditha were under pressure and were ‘frustrated and fearful’. That is the kind of explanation the public in America and rest of the world is being fed. But that is an insult to the intelligence of world (and hopefully American) public who understand and know better. That does not wash even if, as is likely, the full investigation by the US military is never made fully public.
   Those marines (and thousands of others like them) in Iraq do not know who their enemy is and what they are fighting for? Indeed, they are frustrated; and are fearful too for they are up against not uniformed enemies but resentful resistant population.
   When the marines go berserk, as they did in Haditha, in Fallujah, Tel Afar, and numerous unreported locations, in a killing frenzy, they are driven by fear and often enough, guided by a racist slur by which they paint all Iraqis. The US military had had coined the phrase ‘gook’ to call all Vietnamese –– North or South. The ‘gooks’ of Vietnam had been fair game for the marines as are the ‘Hagees’ (Hagee is a racist derogatory term coined by the US military) of Iraq today.
   Marines are trained to kill and not in ethics of war; when they are frustrated and fearful, they run amok to kill ‘Hagees’ (as some kind of sub-humans) with no qualms.
   Their frustration is even more as the ‘enemy’ does not oblige them by lining up in neat formation to be mowed down by superior firepower they hold ready to fire.
   And this Iraq war has dragged on for far too long, even after their Commander-in-Chief triumphantly declared victory in 2003. As the going gets tough, they all wish to be home. The fun and game is over: Abu Ghraib, Camp Bucca, Fallujah, desecration of Iraqi heritage in Babylon, and plunder of Iraqi National Museum are forgotten. What more is left? Ah! The sweet oil ‘we’ must protect for posterity or shall we say ‘our’ prosperity?
   Iraq war has traumatised, brutalised, dehumanised, demonised both Iraqis and their ‘liberators’; made psychopaths out of thousands upon thousands of young soldiers sent to kill and destroy, in the words of their commanders by ‘shock and awe’. But the enemy is not finished, not awed or shocked, not even being beaten by brutality.
   Indeed, the families of those killed or maimed rue that fate and bear the heavy burden on their conscience –– or whatever is left of that. Their commanders do not show an iota of remorse or penitence; they are steadfast and vow to ‘stay the course’ whatever that course is.
   Vietnam War took a much heavier toll over a longer period, as if in slow motion. It took decades to exorcise the ghost of Vietnam from the American psyche. The Gulf War 1991 supposedly did achieve that end. What a perversion when you have to enact a macabre tragedy to remove the ghost of an earlier one that deeply hurt. Iraq war has extracted a staggering toll mostly of Iraqis but significantly of Americans too. That toll is counting.
   And now Haditha (Iraq) brings to mind the Mai Lai (Vietnam) massacre of civilians including very young children. Nearly 50 years after Mai Lai, comes Haditha –– a stark reincarnation of wartime crime without many parallels.
   In Mai Lai, the killing had been explained (or at least attempted to be explained) as the sudden outburst of revengeful rage by a bunch of frustrated and fearful marines; Mai Lai killed 500 or more innocent civilians. Then in the 1960s, American public woke up to the goings-on by their government and the military; they raised their voice loud and their fists high; their government listened and realised the futility of an unjust and unwinnable war.
   Haditha massacre of men, women, and children in their own homes is also being explained as act by a few frustrated and fearful marines against provocation (nothing more than the loss of one comrade by a roadside explosive). What about over a hundred thousand Iraqis killed since 2003 invasion? The US military does not care to do Iraqi body counts but others do care; it hides the American body bags from public view (to protect their innocent civilians from shock?) but count they have to keep. About 3000 soldiers have given their lives so far with tens of thousands maimed and crippled, perhaps for the rest of their lives. Yet, ask the marines, most do not know what for and whom they are fighting in Iraq.
   Indeed, the frustration is deep and unremitting; even more because those who sent the marines to invade Iraq had assured they will be greeted by Iraqis with garlands in gratitude, not by bombs hurled at them in hatred. The number of soldiers, American and British alike, who are resisting call to return to Iraq tour has been rising.
   Haditha incident like many of its predecessors shows how war demonises and dehumanises normal human beings, and desensitises humans of their emotions too. The victors and victims alike pay the toll albeit not in the same coin or magnitude.
   But what about those who sent the soldiers to invade, occupy a far-away land, and kill to quell resistance by locals to that alien occupation? They bask in comfort of their war rooms; they utter pious platitudes from their red-carpeted pulpits. They remain the ‘untouchable’ and untouched. Has anyone of those suffered a loss of any of their dear and loved ones? Or paid a toll of grief and remorse?
   The marines acted like efficient killers they were trained to be. They kill under orders to kill. Those who lied to wage war, who obfuscated the mission, and only recently admitted mistakes but never with contrition, those who kept moving the goal posts of the mission: keeping America safe from Weapons of Mass Destruction, need to do a regime change in Iraq, to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq, had in fact themselves used weapons of mass deception. Yet, they shield themselves from public scrutiny and shun clear accountability by even more prevarications. Men of honour indeed! Why only the foot soldiers have to be named and shamed if at all ?
   Much water has flown down the Tigris and Potomac since 2003. Those who command the invading troops and those who waged an illegal war upon another people and their country may wish to clear their names by putting few marines on trial and punish them. Will that be enough or will that hold for long? Doubtful, for history has a way of catching up.
   After the Second World War, the Nazi war criminals were tried and executed in the Nuremberg trials. By almost the same logic many of them could have claimed innocence by saying the killing of Jews had been carried out by some German soldiers under great sense of duty as envisioned by their commanders and leaders of the Reich. But neither Hitler’s generals nor the soldiers escaped trial; few if any escaped imprisonment or execution. All were named and shamed for all times to come in history books. Why history should now judge any different or by any other standard?
   The streets of San Francisco, New York, Washington are unusually quiet. That is enigmatic. Mai Lai had provoked a deep groundswell of popular protest that eventually catapulted into a massive rejection and revulsion that ended the Vietnam War. But where are the marches and protests by the citizens against immoral war and inhuman atrocities in the name of liberty in the ‘land of the free and just people’?
   Has the American youth, once noted for moral idealism laced with strident activism, decided to insulate itself into a cocoon of consumerist comfort? Has the youth resigned to the perceived but not proven truth that there is no other way?
   How come the only outrage is by the parents whose dear ones have been killed or maimed; grandmothers who had once been young and idealistic when human values were stronger and winning?
   When will the human rights champions, world’s renowned jurists, the erudite victims of Holocaust, and countless other citizens with conscience, make their voice heard and heeded? When will the Live Eight and similar bands will stir awake the world’s somnolent conscience? When will the world sing the requiem to the human toll of all those killed, dismembered, orphaned and deeply humiliated?
   Yet, Haditha could just be the ‘Mai Lai’ of Iraq; the beginning of the end to a canard that has gone on for far too long as an affront to humanity and civilisation. Even if by twisted devilry, shall we raise a toast to Haditha? It could be the turning-point.

Recent events in the Middle East have highlighted two vital facts, both of which are unpalatable to the Bush administration. The first is that, given a free choice, voters in the region have opted to bring in Islamist parties or individuals to govern them. Secondly, the evolution of the fragile Iraqi government elected on sectarian or ethnic loyalties under the tutelage of the Anglo-American occupiers has provided a powerful argument to authoritarian and semi-authoritarian Arab regimes to resist political liberalisation.
   In January, Washington and other Western capitals were shocked at the landslide victory of Hamas in elections to determine the makeup of the Palestinian parliament. They shouldn’t have been surprised. The success of Hamas was just the latest manifestation of the rise of political Islam in the region’s electoral politics.
   But 2005 had started similarly, with Islamist candidates winning most of the seats in the first, and very limited, municipal polls in Saudi Arabia; the year ended with the religious parties — both Shiite and Sunni — performing handsomely in Iraq in the parliamentary elections held in December. The Shiite United Iraqi Alliance won almost four-fifths of the seats provided for the majority Shiites. Likewise, the Iraqi Accord Front, a Sunni religious coalition centred around the Iraqi Islamic Party, won 80 per cent of the places allocated for the Sunni community.
   In between last year’s Saudi and Iraqi polls came other significant events. In Lebanon, Hizbollah emerged as the pre-eminent representative of the Shiites, the largest sectarian group, which had been grossly under-represented in Parliament, in the general election held in the summer. And in Egypt, in the first legislative assembly poll not flagrantly rigged by the regime there, the Muslim Brotherhood registered a nearly 60 per cent success rate by winning 88 out of the 150 contested seats.
   
   A diversity of reasons
   The reasons for the Islamists’ advance, in each case and each country, are different. Take Iraq, for example. History shows that when an ethnic, racial or social group is persecuted or exploited, it turns to religion to find solace. Once Iraq became part of the (Sunni) Ottoman Empire in 1638, Shiites there were discriminated against. This continued after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire when King Faisal, a Sunni, was installed by the British, and Sunnis were the leaders of the Baath Party, which seized power in 1968.
   The mosque became the last resort for Iraq’s Shiites. Their religious hierarchy quietly set up a clandestine network during the years of Baathist rule. Then came the U.S. invasion. By following up the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003 with the destruction of the state machinery — letting all the ministries, except oil, be looted and burned by mobs and, worse still, instantly disbanding the military, police and intelligence apparatus — the Pentagon created a massive political-administrative vacuum. It was immediately filled by the hitherto underground network of the Shiite religious establishment, backed up by the militias of the Shiite religious parties, including the Badr Brigade, which was established in Tehran during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.
   As for the Sunnis, the dominant minority for three and a half centuries, the 13-year-long period of United Nations economic sanctions hurt them as much as it did non-Sunnis. Continued impoverishment had led the Sunni masses, predictably, to turn to Islam. So it was not surprising that once the Sunnis decided to participate in the electoral process, most of them favoured the Iraqi Accord Front.
   There is no evidence to show that Iraqis were overwhelmingly secular under Saddam. Public opinion polls were banned by his regime. A more reliable indicator is a confidential 2004 poll, the results of which were eventually leaked, conducted for the International Republican Institute (IRI), an offshoot of the U.S. Republican Party. Seven out of 10 Iraqi respondents said that Sharia — i.e., the Islamic canon — should be the ‘sole basis’ of Iraqi law, and the same proportion — 70 percent — preferred the idea of having a ‘religious state,’ with only 23 per cent preferring a ‘secular state.’
   The elections to Iraq’s transitional Assembly in January 2005, and to the subsequent Parliament, have underlined the veracity of the IRI survey. In the parliamentary poll, the secular Iraqi National List won only 9 per cent of the seats and the secular Kurdistan Alliance, 17 per cent.
   
   Why religiosity grew
   Egypt is the country where the Muslim Brotherhood, the region’s oldest political party, was established in 1928. By inflicting a swift and humiliating defeat on the Egypt of President Abdul Gamal Nasser, who was wedded to Arab socialism, in June 1967, Israel delivered a near-fatal blow to secular Arab nationalism. In their hour of downfall, most Egyptians attributed the Israeli victory to the Jewish devotion to their religion and turned to Islam for their own spiritual succour. Though outlawed, the Muslim Brotherhood began gaining in popularity.
   When Anwar Sadat, known for his earlier sympathies for the Brotherhood, succeeded Nasser in 1970, the pressure on the Brotherhood eased. Since then, the failure of Egypt’s pro-American president, Hosni Mubarak, to narrow the gap between the rich elite and the impoverished masses has provided the Brotherhood with an environment in which its slogan ‘Islam is the solution’ has acquired increasing appeal.
   Taking an overview, it is fair to say that both Arab socialism and American-style capitalism have failed to deliver the goods to the bulk of the Egyptian population, which seems ready to try the Third Way of Islam.
   The Palestinian case is altogether different. The 38-year-long military occupation of Palestinian areas by Israel has spawned a politics that has no parallel anywhere else in the Arab world. Because the Palestinian state is not fully formed, ordinary people are able to exercise direct pressure on the leadership. Fatah, the governing party, which has proved corrupt and inept in administering the Palestinian entity, has seen its standing wane. By contrast, Hamas, with its history of providing free social services to the needy, is not tainted by corruption or cronyism. The ruling Fatah movement has suffered from tensions between local leaders and those who spent many years abroad before returning after the 1993 Oslo Accords. The leadership of Hamas is almost wholly local.
   As a strategy to turn the Palestinians against Hamas, the sanctions imposed by the Bush administration are proving counter-productive. The Palestinians are blaming Israel and America, not Hamas, for their deepening misery. In the words of Gary Sussman, a political scientist at Tel Aviv University: ‘When people fight sanctions, it becomes a national project.’ The suffering public rallies around its government. This is what happened in Iraq in the 1990s under the U.N. sanctions.
   
   Zeroing in on Iraq
   Iraq’s elected representatives have adopted a constitution that, for all practical purposes, has turned the country into an Islamic republic. An article in the constitution states that Sharia is the fundamental source of Iraqi legislation. Another article says that no Iraqi law shall violate the undisputed principles of Islam. Both Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki and his predecessor, Ibrahim Jaafari, are leaders of the Islamic Daawa Party, committed to establishing an Islamic regime in Iraq.
   These salient facts go unmentioned by officials of the Bush administration in Washington and Baghdad. If officials say anything at all about the Iraqi constitution, they express sympathy with the Sunnis’ criticism of its federal provisions, which would affect the Sunnis adversely.
   It was only after the intervention by the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, an Afghanistan-born Sunni, that Shiite leaders agreed to a ‘review’ of the constitution’s fairness. Once the new cabinet had been installed, on May 20, the Bush administration rushed to mention that Iraq’s Parliament would review the constitution within the next four months to address the Sunnis’ objections.
   Sunnis fear that the existing Kurdistan Autonomous Region (KAR) in the northeast and the incipient Shia Autonomous Region in the south and southeast will garner the revenue from the oilfields existing in these areas, and leave the oil-less Sunni-dominated central and western Iraq penurious. It is unlikely that the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, with 130 seats in the 275-member Parliament, will agree to overturn the federal provisions in the constitution.
   By now, sectarian or ethnic identity has superseded the Iraqi national identity. The Iraqi Kurds have refused to compromise the KAR’s quasi-independence to the extent that it is the Kurdish militia that guards Iraq’s border with Iran and Turkey, and the regional government refuses to let national troops enter the three provinces constituting the KAR.
   The Kurds are ethnically different from Arabs and have inhabited the mountainous northeast of Iraq for centuries, but Sunni and Shiite Arabs have cohabited in the Mesopotamian plains since the rise of Islam in the seventh century. Greater Baghdad, accounting for a quarter of the national population, has been a mosaic of Sunni, Shiite and mixed neighbourhoods. Now the mixed districts are turning into single-sect neighbourhoods. Mosques that once attracted both Sunni and Shiite worshippers no longer do so. For protection, Shiite Baghdadis are turning to the uniformed police or army, whose personnel are mostly Shiite. Conversely, their Sunni counterparts call on local Sunni vigilantes for protection. A low-intensity civil war is under way in Iraq. This has caused alarm in other Arab countries.
   
   Regional consequences
   The feeling of foreboding is one shared by both governments and intelligentsia within the Arab countries. They realise that every major country in the area is susceptible to the kind of division that is roiling Iraq. In Syria, for instance, Sunnis are only two-thirds of the population, the rest being Alawi, a subsect within Shiite Islam, as well as Druze and Christian. In Egypt, one of the most homogeneous of the Arab states, nearly 10 per cent of the population is Christian. In Saudi Arabia, 8 per cent of citizens are Shiite, almost all living in the oil-rich eastern province — and victims of official discrimination.
   This state of affairs has provided powerful ammunition to authoritarian Arab regimes resistant to political reform. They warn that the American model of democracy will tear apart national identity and create divisive sectarian and ethnic identities, turning the region into mini-states along the lines of the post-Yugoslavia situation.
   Also helping in this direction is the intense anti-Washington sentiment in the Muslim world stemming from the U.S. invasion of Iraq after making assertions about it that turned out to be false. There is little difficulty in marginalising the advocates of political liberalisation by describing them as allies of the hated Bush White House.
   At the same time, there is much schadenfreude at Washington’s mounting predicament. ‘The Iraqi debacle is throwing U.S. policy off balance,’ said a recent editorial in Al Ahram (The Pyramids), the official mouthpiece of the Egyptian government. ‘The United States needs friends in the region. It needs them to help it emerge from the Iraqi quagmire, but there is a price to pay, and that price may involve abandoning democratic reforms in Arab countries.’
   
   Democracy on ice
   In fact, the Pentagon’s assault on Iraq put a brake on the liberalising trend — more marked in the economic and informational fields than in politics — that had been in progress in the region since the mid-1990s.
   Like the rest of the world, Arab countries were affected by the economic globalisation movement that gathered momentum with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the transformation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in January 1995. Globalisation loosened the grip of dictatorial Arab states over the economy.
   Equally, the arrival of the Internet and satellite television during the latter half of the 1990s undermined the monopoly over information that most Arab governments had arrogated for themselves.
   The launching of the Doha-based Aljazeera satellite TV channel in 1997, followed by the abolition of censorship by Qatar’s ruler, Shaikh Hamad ibn Khalifa al-Thani, in 1998, broke the long-established mould of state-managed news in the Middle East. Aljazeera also pioneered talk shows, debates and investigative journalism of the sort not witnessed in the region before. The network broke taboos by interviewing Israelis and tackling such controversial issues as the role of religion in politics. At one time or another, almost all of the Arab states have closed down the local Aljazeera bureaus in protest against its editorial policies. Yet audience figures of some 35 million in the Arabic-speaking world have so impressed their governments that they, too, have tried to incorporate some of Aljazeera’s features.
   Similarly, the information explosion from the early 1990s onward has impacted the Arab world. Internet use has become more common, and there has been a mushrooming of satellite television channels. The governments try to control information by blocking websites and banning satellite dishes. But those savvy about Internet technology invariably find ways to circumvent the barriers. Satellite dishes have become small enough to be mounted indoors.
   Yet these developments have proved insufficient to prime a vigorous movement for political liberalisation, committed to a representative government through elections and a choice of political parties. Perhaps what was missing was a catalyst to transform economic liberalisation and the information explosion into an instrument for political reform. Those who urged Washington to invade Iraq confidently predicted that a democratic Iraq would come into being in the post-Saddam era, becoming a beacon of liberty, good government and the rule of law for the Arab world. Three years after Saddam’s overthrow, the reality is chaos and violence.
   Instead of initiating and aiding a democratic wave in the Arab world, Bush’s invasion of Iraq has achieved the opposite result. Thus humbled, the Bush White House should accept political reality, and deal in a reasonable manner with organisations such as Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hizbollah — as it is already doing in the case of the United Iraqi Alliance and the Iraqi Accord Front.
   The Washington Spectator, June 2, 2006

The idea that some thrity- and forty-somethings want to be identified as the Young Turks of the BNP is preposterous. Just like their older colleagues, they are after power, albeit in a more sophisticated style. The original Young Turks, those who overthrew the lecherous monarchy in Turkey and then fought colonialism, were patriotic, selfless officers who made little, if any, personal gain from their time in public limelight. Quite a far cry from the Hawa Bhaban crowd.
   ES
   US
   

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