When Yahia Said allows himself on behalf of the majority of Iraqis to assert that the security situation is as close to normal as it has been since 1991, this resident of Baghdad can only conclude that he is offering the readers of openDemocracy a distorted picture of our reality.
Perhaps twenty-five years absence from Iraq followed by a single eight-day visit has indeed badly affected his judgment. During his long absence, did he ever see or hear any evidence, via the TV or any other media, of terrorist acts in Baghdad or any other Iraqi city to remotely compare with what is happening now?
What kind of news was he listening to? For his information, we Iraqis have only become accustomed to hearing about and living through such extraordinary events since the last war ended and Saddams regime collapsed.
How can anyone say this is close to normal? In the past, if we heard a gunshot, it was either at a wedding celebration or the Iraqi national football team winning another match (both well-established Iraqi customs). Anything else was a sinister exception to the rule.
Normal Baghdad was a seething, lively city, with some places always staying open to the crack of dawn, and the streets full of cars coming and going late into the night. Now, Baghdad is a city of ghosts. After 9:00 pm you will be lucky to see a few cars speeding homeward, anxious only to get off the road. No café or restaurant can be found open after 7:30pm.
Yahia Said mentioned the goldsmiths in Karada street. If he visited any of them and looked behind their reception desks what would he have seen? Machine guns and weapons of all kinds stacked there for self-protection.
This misjudgment is also revealed in Yahia Saids surprise at the polite normality of the policeman he encountered in Baghdad. In Iraq, as in other countries, there have always been bad elements in the police force. Yet in my whole life in Iraq I have never heard an Iraqi policeman treat people rudely for no good reason. To be sure, during the twelve years during which my country has endured hard siege-like conditions, there were officers who exploited their posts for personal benefit but no more than might be found in any police force in the world. Why then does Yahia Said insinuate such a negative picture of them?
In particular, he suggests that visitors to Iraq from other Arab countries would be lucky if their contacts with the police ended in mere verbal abuse. Perhaps he does not know that Saddam Hussein himself personally instructed all government employees to treat Arabs as first class citizens, and Iraqis as second-class! If he is not aware of this, then I will leave it to the reader to assess the basis of his other assertions.
Night curfews have not in fact been lifted yet. There is an exception during the holy month of Ramadan, when those who wish to pray have the right to attend late prayers in the mosques.
Yahia Said suggests that the streets are full of cars thanks to the absence of import duties. But if he looked more closely he would have noticed that these are not new cars as he implies, but used ones deserted by their former owners and shipped to Iraq to be sold at punishingly high prices as if Iraq were the regional dustbin for everyones garbage. The same applies, more or less, to all the other forms of merchandise.
So, are these really signs of Iraqi rebirth? No, this is the evidence of the painful bleeding of Iraq.
A rebirth, or a slow death?
This painful period must be seen against the background of the recent history, and here too Yahia Saids judgment is defective. It is surely true that the act of war should be used only as a last resort, once every available alternative has been exhausted. I do not wish to be taken as a defender either of Saddam Hussein or of his regime. But I see no evidence in Saids comments of any real effort to understand the true reasons behind the two Gulf wars.
We should read history with great care (and not the pseudo-histories dished up by Kuwait or Iran) to understand fully what role neighbouring countries and other parties played in pushing Iraq, or Saddam, into taking these fatal decisions. At any rate this must be a matter for the historic record, not for the idle speculations and propaganda of the foreign press. Someone who finds himself, like Yahia Said, far from home, should be especially vigilant.
But there is one point on which I can totally agree with Said regarding the critical mistake made by Paul Bremer, the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), in dissolving the Iraqi army.
This is a very important issue and one which deserves extended analysis. All military men like myself (whether they were officers or soldiers) were first deceived and then humiliated by this experience. After that, should we be surprised to see the steady increase of resistance in the last two months? Notice how effective and accurate it is in its targeting of the occupation forces.
Said has made up his mind based on eight days in Iraq and a few meetings with my countrymen and women. It is not enough. He ignores all reports from the country that suggest that some Iraqis actively welcome the violence directed against the occupation forces as legitimate resistance. I think that if he had stayed just a little longer he would have seen for himself that there is a significant proportion of the population who, even if they would not join in violent action themselves, nevertheless believe the resistance to be justified, and would wish it well if it had any chance of success.
A further point is important. A small percentage of these acts of resistance is indeed conducted by those who were hurt (in various ways) by the American occupiers or their allies. These people have been aggrieved as a result of their casualties and they act in a spirit of revenge.
At the same time, I must agree with Saids estimate that the vast majority of the Iraqi people do not want the American troops to leave at any time in the near future, unless they want to see Iraq turned into a giant meat grinder.
A rudderless country
For myself, I do not wish to be pessimistic. But, after eight months of occupation and thousands of unfulfilled promises, few can persuade themselves other than that things are getting worse and more complicated by the day, and that poor, miserable, leaderless Iraq is alone in the darkness. Who now will steer the country safely into harbour?
I do not know if what is happening here was meant to unfold in this way, or whether it was completely unintended. But the reality of recent events in Iraq is a true, inescapable measure of its chances of revival, whatever you may wish to read into the appearance of a few new cars on the streets of Baghdad.
Not even the worst of Baghdad life was in any way this bad in the not so old days. Yes, we must add in the same breath that things are improving. But so very, very slowly.
