Opinion, May 2003, Al-Jazeerah.info
Human Price of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Israeli daily aggression on the Palestinian people
Mission and meaning of Al-Jazeerah
Cities, localities, and tourist attractions
An end to the family business of tyranny,
Sulaiman al-Hattlan
The Daily Star, 5/27/03
A few hours after the war in Iraq began
March 20, a Saudi friend called me in Washington: “You are lucky you are
in the US, you can demonstrate against the war,” he exclaimed. I
replied: “You are lucky not to be in the US, you don’t have to look
for excuses not to protest the war.”
Many fellow Arabs and other international friends expected me to rally
against the war. I was ambivalent about the war because I have known since
my days as a young reporter who frequently visited Baghdad in the late
1980s that even Saddam Hussein’s death would not have liberated Iraqis
from his tyranny.
Politics in Iraq, as elsewhere in the Arab world, is a family business.
Qualifications are irrelevant. Blood relationships reign supreme.
Ironically, while millions of Iraqis at home and in exile celebrate their
freedom, the broader Arab world is crying for the “dignity” of Iraqis
under the “US occupation” as if it weren’t shameful enough that
they had ignored the daily humiliation of Iraqis during 30 years of Saddam
Hussein’s brutal occupation.
The entire country of Iraq had been controlled as the private property of
Saddam Hussein and his family. Either of his sons, Odai or Qusai, was
prepared to inherit his father’s dictatorship. In Basra, Nassiriyah,
Najaf, and other towns and cities, millions had no voice in national
politics. Politics had been the affair only of the gangs in Baghdad. I saw
a devastated, deprived and depressed nation. And what I saw there could
doubtless be observed in any other Arab country.
It is time for Arab intellectuals to say publicly what they have long been
acknowledging privately: Arab leaderships have failed their people and
dragged them from one defeat to another, from one humiliation to another
and from one misery to another. A few of us recognize this reality, and
thus have been marked as “Americanized,” “Westernized” and
“secular,” labels that Arab regimes use to discredit our voices.
The future, in the Arab world, has always been God’s business. But this
hasn’t taken us anywhere. Look at our social failures: Severe gender
segregation and the lack of respect for women have created paralyzed
societies. The practice of art and music has become a sin in many Arab
countries. The educational system has produced thousands of fanatics and
has become a source of ignorance rather than knowledge. As a result, young
Arabs today live under a siege of political, social and religious taboos.
We must let go of this distorted version of history, which glorifies only
what our ancestors contributed to the ancient world’s civilizations and
blames our current problems on the influence of outsiders. Instead, we
have to focus on today’s reality of economic challenges, poverty, lack
of freedom and, indeed, lack of hope.
On the eve of this war, my friend on the other side of the Atlantic was
very angry.
“The dignity of Iraqis is slaughtered live on the screen,” he said. I
should have asked: “What about the ‘dignity’ of Iraqis during the
past 30 years under Mr. Hussein’s brutality? What about the
‘dignity’ of more than 3 million Iraqis in exile? What about the
‘dignity’ of millions of Iraqi soldiers who have been killed and
maimed by Mr. Hussein’s wars?”
Today, the good news is that Saddam Hussein is gone. Still, that is just
the beginning. Young educated Arabs must fight for their right to
participate in reforming their countries. The monopoly of family politics
in the Arab world must end.
To survive, we must encourage self-criticism, rewrite our educational
system and open doors for genuine debates about the critical issues that
our societies have long avoided.
Unless we begin an authentic dialogue about what really went wrong in our
political and social experience during the past century or so, the other
Saddams in our societies corrupt political and educational systems
will continue to produce disastrous results.
Saddam Hussein’s downfall is not a defeat for the Iraqi people. It could
well be Arabs’ challenge to a first step toward an understanding of
today’s reality and tomorrow’s potential.
Sulaiman al-Hattlan is a columnist for
the Saudi daily
Al-Watan and a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern
Studies at Harvard University. He wrote this commentary for The DAILY STAR
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |