Silenced
This is so horrible! The situation it reports on – and the fact that the guy who wrote it was murdered yesterday.
As has been widely reported of late, Basran politics (and everyday life) is increasingly coming under the control of Shiite religious groups, from the relatively mainstream Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq to the bellicose followers of the rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr…And unfortunately, the British seem unable or unwilling to do anything about it…Fearing to appear like colonial occupiers, they avoid any hint of ideological indoctrination: in my time with them, not once did I see an instructor explain such basics of democracy as the politically neutral role of the police in a civil society.
So – guess what.
At the city’s university, for example, self-appointed monitors patrol the campuses, ensuring that women’s attire and makeup are properly Islamic. “I’d like to throw them off the grounds, but who will do it?” a university administrator asked me. “Most of our police belong to the same religious parties as the monitors.”
Nightmare. Nightmare, nightmare, nightmare.
An Iraqi police lieutenant, who for obvious reasons asked to remain anonymous, confirmed to me the widespread rumors that a few police officers are perpetrating many of the hundreds of assassinations – mostly of former Baath Party members – that take place in Basra each month. He told me that there is even a sort of “death car”: a white Toyota Mark II that glides through the city streets, carrying off-duty police officers in the pay of extremist religious groups to their next assignment.
And now the guy who wrote those words – who did not remain anonymous – has himself been assassinated.
Mr. Vincent and Ms. Tuaiz were kidnapped around 7 p.m. Tuesday, as they left a moneychanger’s shop in downtown Basra, by at least two men dressed in police uniforms and driving a police sedan, said a witness who spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing retribution…An officer in the Basra police department said Mr. Vincent had been working on a story about the role of police officers in the recent assassinations of former Baath Party officials…A recent comment on his blog showed that he was aware of the dangers of writing too openly about the Shiite parties of Basra, and that he had tried to be discreet in a recent story published in The Christian Science Monitor: “When you read this, keep in mind that for various reasons – not the least of which were safety concerns – the piece only scratches the surface of what is happening here.”
Hell. It’s just bottomlessly depressing.
Mr. Vincent said in conversations that he was particularly incensed about the sharp divide between men and women in the Islamic world. He said he had fully supported the American-led invasion of Iraq because he believed it was part of a much larger campaign being waged by the United States against what he called “Islamo-fascism.” But Mr. Vincent also said it was the duty of journalists to expose the pitfalls of the rising tide of Shiite Islam in Iraq to awaken the Bush administration to the kind of nation the White House was helping to create.
No doubt the rising tide of Shiite Islam didn’t want him doing that. Well, now he won’t be anymore.
Vincent’s blog is here. Worth reading, if the top post is anything to go on.
The coalition is caught between a rock and a hard place here. If the objective is to ‘return Iraq to the Iraqi people’ and let them decide it’s future, then the chances were always that it would be a future of score-settling, factionalism and religiosity. If the objective is to establish the roots of a participatory, equal rights democracy then it would have to be imposed as those with the power within both the administrative and social structure are unlikely ever to welcome the devolution of that power. As someone once said, ‘You give people freedom and what do they do with it? Anything they damn well want.’
Hence the downright stupidity of this entire clusterf&*&^^% exercise. Was this really worth 1800 American deaths and hundreds of billions of dollars-and tens of thousands of Iraqis? Has anyone benefitted but the War Pigs and their cronies (and the missing billions of dollars that have just “disappeared”?) Have we really “given” “the people” any “freedom” at all? Who are “the people” we’ve supposedly “liberated”?
God. I’d never thought I would look back fondly on the Administration of the first Bush.
Well some people have benefitted – I think. The Kurds have, for example (even, I believe, Kurdish women – who probably don’t thrive on being gassed any more than men do).
But other people do seem to be doing worse, including women who don’t want to be subordinated. It’s all extremely depressing.
“As someone once said, ‘You give people freedom and what do they do with it? Anything they damn well want.'”
Yeah. Hence the importance of constitutions and bills of rights – which of course are only as good as the people who draw them up make them. If the idea of “freedom” of the people drawing up the constitution entails removing the freedom of other people – like, say, the majority of the population, i.e. women – then that’s what they damn well want, and will do.
Does anyone know the status of the debate over the name of the new Iraq. I know the Kurds are very set on ‘Federal Republic of Iraq’, which might be promising (hey, trying to be optimistic here) but other factions favour ‘ Islamic Republic’ or ‘Arab Republic’, which are less promising. Would a federal Iraq have more chance of developing a recognisable democracy?
Being a pessmimist, I think the ‘Islamic Republic’ faction is going to win.
*agrees with Brian…
But Olivia, given that the US’ strategic position has arguably been worsened in the world, and given the horrific damage, the war still seems like an absolute disaster. Heck, as for the Kurds, they were already effectively liberated by the U.S. Air Force no-fly zone policy.
We have decimated the entire infrastructure of the country. We cannot even control the road between the Green Zone and the Airport. We have ignored the real “fight against terrorism” by focusing on a silly war the Chimp and his crew wanted to begin with.
There deem to be absolutely no justification for the war or the results of said war. I see this as America’s Syracuse-an arrogant, smug democracy unwilling or able to accept limits
Brian, I’m not trying to justify the war. I’ve always had large (not to say huge) reservations about it. I’m just not sure it’s true that no one at all in Iraq is better off because of it. In fact I think it’s not true.
>Heck, as for the Kurds, they were already effectively liberated by the U.S. Air Force no-fly zone policy.< Just for the record, that should read the US/British no-fly zone policy, proposed originally by the then Prime Minister John Major.