May be it was not a war against Islam but a war for Islam!
Iqbal Latif- Zachary Latif, Paris
The soul of Saladin, the Kurdish general revered throughout the lands of Islam should have been very pleased. His descendents were brutally murdered through gassing are now integral part of a triumvirate that will now run Iraq. May be Iraq was not a war against Islam but a war for Islam. May be ‘Qom Ayatollahs’ could learn and like to defuse their activism, they should look at Sistani’s apolitical conduct and lack of lust for temporal powers, he took a back seat as ‘politicians’ conducted Iraqi squabbling in typical parliamentarian smoke filled rooms, the compromise where a Presidential council of three, Talebani a Kurd descendent of Saladin and a Shiite and a Sunni were elected shows the way this whole back drop politics had no inference from grand Ayatollah in Najaf. His deputies will be former President Ghazi Yawer, a Sunni Arab, and Finance Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi, who is Shia. The presidential team will nominate the key role of prime minister who will lead Iraq until new polls in December.
Momentum of peace has taken over lust of death, credit goes to behind the scene strategy and objectives of present global policies, more peace and more accommodation is only possible if ground root amendments to achieve peace are made, peace is not owed to great desire of having ‘no war’ peace is won by ‘demonstration of determination to the merchants of death’ their elimination is objective albeit it may take a lot of firm effort. Talebani election instead of ‘Vietnam scenarios’ proposed by lot of pundits and Karzai instead of grave likened situation in Kabul and a new peace initiative in Palestine are all collateral benefits of the war against terror, this is the big picture, change of thinking on ground floor level, the party of free gun slinging is over may be reign of terror is over. The caravan of peace has started,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said as he sent off the Pakistan-bound bus in front of a crowd of thousands braving freezing drizzle at the Lion of Kashmir stadium in Srinagar. “Nothing can stop it.” Separatists tried, firing two rifle grenades at one of the Muzaffarabad-bound buses soon after it left. But no one was hurt, the bus was not hit and did not stop. The bus will not stop. The caravan of peace shall not stop by fringe lunatics!
The deliberate quietening of the hotspots of the world is not because of the fact that people have overnight realised that ‘end of war is great’ and ‘concord and togetherness’ is preferred over death, it is rather the global carrot and stick approach that has worked wonders. Though little credit will be ever given to the chain of events, we cannot help but to see things in isolation not continuity of strategy, present political changes in the world are the fastest since 1990 implosion of communism and need fresh insights. The hidden iron curtain descended upon nation of Islam by the self-styled tyrants and bunch of terrorists is finally lifting. Can we rejoice to think of new opportunities which freedom brings!
Baghdad will once again take its role as the capital of Islam, with Kerbala and An-Najaf as the minarets bellowing the cry of freedom to the oppressed Shi'ites of the world. Iraq's parliament by electing Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani undid a crime of ‘Halebja’ that has scarred Iraqi conscious, For chemical Ali who was made to watch and other members of the baathists cabal it was a full circle of events ‘what goes around comes around’ came to haunt the members of the baathists cabal. Natural justice was adequately served as mastermind of Anfal campaign saw representatives of ex- victims installed as new President-
I always wondered where was the global Islamic conscience sleeping when nobody condemned Saddam for 5,000 dead in a single day in the chemical attack on Halebja, or Assad, or 30,000 killed in Hama? Majid infamously led the brutal Anfal campaigns against the Kurds in 1988, gassing to death 5,000 descendents of Saladin Ayubi with chemical weapons at Halebja. I think Kurds are Sunnis, as Saladin was, why Kurds are ethnically colored as separate entity to show lack of Sunni participation, actually Sunni sectarian nature of Kurds lends itself to credence that Sunnis are adequately represented, and federal nature of Iraq was safeguarded by the Shiites and the Kurds with more deference.
The excuse of Sunni triangle lack of representation is an excuse by those who are troubled to see the real people taking power in Iraq instead of ‘Tikritis rural cabal. Co-habitation instead of sectarian rifts hallmarked this new setup, Jalal Talabani paid tribute to "the martyrs of Kurdistan and the southern marshes," a reference to Shiites killed during a joint uprising against Saddam in 1991, Mr Talabani promised to establish a government committed to democracy and human rights.
My increasing empathy for those who risk their lives for an alien people is fuelled by the hope of a thriving civilization re-establishing itself on the banks of the Tigris. There is a primary reason in that Iraq does not have a history of strong Islamist movement and like other Middle Eastern populaces the Iraqis have strong tribal & clan connexions that prevent the formation of an Islamic state. There must be an underlying national culture to allow for the propagation of a specific Islamic ideology and indeed those who have been of the Islamists persuasion either belong to the minority culture (MMA in NWFP & Baluchistan because of the Pathans) or the urban proletariat (Algeria’s Arab failed to persuade the Berbers to Islamism). Ethnically diverse nations cannot just look to Islam as a bond for there needs to be a strong national culture to provide an uniform platform (Iran’s culture is heavily Persic-centric and has strong assimilatory tendencies, which is why the Kurds of Iran tend to be the most integrated). Iraq is bifurcated along ethnic lines and Islam cannot be the sole unifying influence (perhaps in a few decades if the Baghdadi Sunni culture permeates the entire nation then there is the possibility for an unified Islamic movement but that would also have to assume an uniformity of Arabic dialects). The secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan shows that Islamic ideology alone cannot hold a nation together for there must be a linguistic, cultural or historical rationale. Allah has a thousand names and that axiom holds true in the Islamic Crescent.
Iraqis at any rate are historically a very secular population and seem alien to the orthodox “desert” Islam that is said to be practised from Morocco to Pakistan (whereas the lands from Bangladesh to Indonesia practise the variant known as “Monsoon Islam” derived significantly from Hindu culture). As the war taught us Iraq is pretty much a few scattered cities in Al-Jazirah (the island between the Tigris and the Euphrates) and the tribes in the desert as far as the eye can see. In the years of infrastructure and redevelopment the possibility of the population turning to extremist Islam seems rather far-fetched for relatively active and burgeoning economies tend to have politically apathetic populations.
Iraqi Shi'ism does not allow for a strong religious presence in the government, the Ayatollahs may be running the show in Basra but they are theologically prohibited from wielding power in the style of Khomeini. It isn't in the culture of south Iraq (or of any other Islamic nation) to embrace a theocratic form of government as in Iran.
Iraqi Kurds are notoriously secular (though their Turkish counterparts vehemently practise Islam to flaunt Islamic values to secular Turkey) and at any rate I believe they practise a variant of Sunni Islam that is quite heterodox.
The Sunni Arabs of Mesopt (middle and Western Iraq, Baghdad etc) were the bulwarks of Arab nationalism and are least prone to adopting Islam. As I see Kurdish minority gaining free voice, Shiite majority that was being trampled by the ‘Tikritis clan’ for decades finding its voice and acting in a manner of reconciliation helping maintain federal Iraq together, I cannot help me but to think that long denied dream of freedom of Iraqis is finally realized, those who were made forcibly alien to ballot boxes showed up to fill them and deserve their self-government. Democracy is Islam is not extraterrestrial event, as it is made out to be by Saddams and tyrants of the world, it has to become a part of growing up of our society.
Islamism in the Crescent has always been misunderstood. Political Islam is an oxymoron since virtually all political platforms and movements in the Islamic world rely to a certain extent on Islamic values and thoughts. Secularism as understood in the West is a foreign concept since in virtually no Islamic nation (even Turkey or Tunisia) is there a truly secular ideology (in the end Ba'athism was tainted by Pan-Islamic appeal).
Liberalism in Iraq will have to be an organic outgrowth of that nation's culture; it will be the final test whether Islamic cultures can allow for liberal democracies in the Western mould. I would hazard that the institutions, which will arise in Iraq will be a direct consequence of that nation's heritage (much as in Japan where the democratic structure has been adapted to the indigenous Japanese cultures and Keiretsu survives despite the destruction of the 4 Zaibatsus). Saddam and Ba'athism was perversion of traditional Iraqi culture and impeded the evolution of a nation state. What will be the result of the invasion is the reversion to the indigenous trends and geopolitical faultlines in Iraq. |
