shouldn't I be proud of this?

Guerrilla of the Week

The uprising in Iraq is still expanding…

But I still feel that Bush and Bremer are totally out of the picture…

All what we can hear from the coalition governments’ spokesmen, and from the international media news are some fake explanations and explanations…

Let me declare some points:

AsSadr is NOT reflecting a minority of Iraqis, this is a stupid big lie.
Whether we liked him or not, he is the political and religious leader for MILLIONS of Iraqis in the southern region…
There are 15 million Iraqis living in the south, and another 5 million in Baghdad, I can say that 5 to 7 millions of them can be considered as AsSadr followers.

AsSadr is NOT a mere twenty-something year old guy, that is playing games.
Whether we liked him or not, he is a phenomenon. When people in the south of Iraq look at Muqtada AsSadr, they see the history of his father, the deep roots of his religious supporter: AlHaeri.

AsSadr is NOT a small follower of the Iranian Government; he has very bad relations with the official government of Iran, unlike Sistani and Hakim.

AsSadr is THE GOVERNMENT in most of the cities of the south: Amara, Kut, Nasryya and Diwanyya and Simawa partially, and Najaf partially (Kufa is a small city in Najaf that is the center of AsSadr).

I mean… from my secular point of view… it is a disaster to have all of these extremist religious right-winged militias… but this is the direct result of the lost policy of the Bush administration, which are exactly what the expected problem of imported “democracy” would be, I used to call this cul-de-sac that we are stuck in: The Algerian Dead End. Algeria went through the exact scenario some years ago… do you want elections and democracy? The powerful extremist religion people are going to win :*)
You don’t want democracy and elections? Don’t start the mess.

It is the lack of vision that gives space and time for extremists to grow and build armies. Didn’t anyone think what the Anti-American army of Al-Mahdi is going to do?!
Arrange the election rooms?
Or play American football with the Army of the USA?
I mean… please… let me see a single integrated movement in Iraq!
You either act like Mr. Firm that can destroy everything with his tanks from the early beginning, or you act like Mr. Democratic and give the “majority” what they want!

All I can see is a collage, a random collection of rules, a bipolar mood in solving problems.

I am totally against the super imposed democratic experience of the west on Iraq, and as a secular left-winged Muslim I used to have my theories for modifying our communities even before the war. It is such a complicated task… to modify the values of our Patriarchal culture, and to change the social hierarchy based on power and strength. But this is a real long procedure, and a very sophisticated one.

Most of the people that I know (including myself) were against this war… and still are…
Why? Because we are Baathists and Saddamists? Because we are masochists who enjoyed living in the horrible life under the Iraqi government?
NO.
It was because we understood that the modifying must come from INSIDE… even if it took decades or centuries.

I know that I can’t come to Texas and tell people what to do…
Or to London… or to Madrid…
Not because I don’t have enough ideas… it is because my ideas will be OUT OF CONTEXT.

This is the exact situation of the Ideas of the Bush administration in Iraq, they are not bad at all… they are completely out of context…
And when they try to act like Iraqis sometimes, everything starts looking more paradoxical.

Iraq is not a part of the “Global Village”, and it won’t be a peaceful part if it was added by using tanks and bombs.

When I see the gradual evolution of the Jordanian community, and compare it with the Iraqi one, I feel really sad. The culture and behavior of the citizens of Amman (the capital of Jordan) went through a very gradual and comfortable period of changing, they joined the global village without explosions. Now you can find girls with pierces, tattoos, and red hair sitting in the same place with a religious Sheikh with long beard. People learned how to accept the other, and how to keep their national trend too. It doesn’t mean at all that I LOVE the lifestyle of Amman, but it is a good example of how can a community go some steps ahead and join the international regime without exploding OR imploding.

The case of Iraq is different; people feel that their personality, history and culture are being attacked. Everyone is defensive now, “they destroyed our museums, they want to delete our history”, “they are increasing prostitution and trafficking, this is against our religion”, “we don’t want Jewish people to come to our country”, “they are killing the Iraqi scientists”, you can hear dozens of those statements that are mere illusions most of the time, but the point is that a defensive community cannot be a friendly one. Attacking Iraq made people more conservative and self-protective.

All of these military steps that Bremer is taking now remind Iraqis of the Palestinian crisis, everything related to mass-public punishment will not give good results. Falluja under the siege is the wrong thing to happen, bombing Shia residential areas is the wrong signal to give, and saying lies in public is killing the hope that the CPA would be credible ever.

And the thing happening in Iraq right now, killing hundreds of Iraqis and dozens of coalition soldiers, is NOT just another mob. It is an uprising.

I am criticizing without giving answers, because the time of giving suggestions has not come yet.

As Guoying, my Chinese ex-girlfriend, used to say: “hold your sword still, until the right moment”.

If you want to read what is happening in Baghdad, from a mother's point of view...
read what my mother witnessed...
"They are holding RPGs in the nearby Husainyya (Shia mosque) and waiting for Americans to come, they want to burn them"