You're well placed to provide ideas on these questions; if anybody else has suggestions, I'd love to hear them....
I have a couple of serious questions about items that seem to be regarded as common knowledge. I hate to reveal my ignorance, but I’ve seen these things in print many, many, times, without any real justification or citation of sources, and I’m wondering where they come from.
The first question concerns the Kurds. It seems almost universally agreed that the Kurds are doing rather well. We are told that they have a free press, civil liberties, free elections, economic growth. I’ve read direct references to “democratic Kurdistan”. Faoud Ajami assures us, in Foreign Affairs, that the struggle between the two dominant rival warlords has “subsided”.
I hate to be too cynical, but there is a part of me that wonders if just a wee bit of this is picture is wishful thinking. All Kurdish factions have a powerful vested interest in presenting the best possible picture to the US. Are we seeing what is really there, or what some people want us to see (and what some observers would like to see). On what reports are our impressions of what is going on in Kurdistan based? Are they the work of parachute journalists and pass-through visitors, or do they come from people with extended experience in the region, people who speak the language and who stayed long enough to get a clear picture of what’s really going on.
I’d like to believe the best, but I think we need an accurate impression, even if not all of it is what we want to hear.
The second question concerns the Iraqi middle class. Pundits assure us that Iraq possesses a large, competent, educated, and mostly secular middle class. We also know that Iraq has endured 35 years of crushing totalitarian dictatorship, in which the state has kept a lock on economic and political activity. We know that for much of the last ten years economic sanctions have reduced the Iraqi economy to a point where, in Pollock and Siegle’s words, “access to even basic necessities – food, housing, and medicine – is a reward for loyalty”.
These are not normally conditions conducive to the development or survival of a large, competent, educated, and mostly secular middle class. I’m not saying that it’s impossible for such a class to exist under these circumstances, but it seems a bit unlikely.
What do we really know about this middle class? How do we really know that it exists? What accurate reports do we have about it? In most developing countries the middle class is concentrated in urban areas. Is the Iraqi middle class concentrated in the Baghdad area? How close are their ties to Saddam? If they aren’t tied to Saddam, how did they stay in the middle class?
The assumptions sound lovely, but I’d really like to see the material on which they are based.
sr@ireallywannaknow.com
PS: I'd agree completely with your assessment of the people behind the MEforum site, but I'd have to say that any ideological prism that reveals no distinction at all between American and Israeli interests must be doing some serious bending of light. Of course that's what prisms do, ideological or otherwise.... |
