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Politics : Foreign Policy Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (2525)	1/21/2003 6:46:37 PM
From: Alastair McIntosh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15987

The International Crisis Group is an independent organization which appears to be respected by all sides of the political spectrum. MARGARET WENTE of the Globe and Mail used their Iraq report as the basis for her column today. theglobeandmail.com What do Iraqis fear more than war? More Saddam By MARGARET WENTE Tuesday, January 21, 2003 The peace parties were out in force this weekend. They marched in Washington and San Francisco, London and Toronto. "Blood and oil don't mix," read the placards. "Regime change starts at home." Callers jammed the CBC's weekly phone-in show to denounce the imperialist United States. Jessica Lange showed up. Even the Pope got into the act. He wants peace without violence, which is without doubt a fine idea. One protest sign read, "Would Jesus bomb them?" There's just one problem with all this lofty moral talk. So far as the Iraqi people are concerned, liberation can't come soon enough. This is a dreadfully inconvenient fact for peace protesters. So they ignore it. The Iraqi people aren't crazy. They don't want their country bombed either -- unless the alternative is more Saddam. In which case, what's the holdup? You won't hear this point of view in dispatches from your average Western correspondent. The reason is simple. Your average Iraqi citizen would rather not be dipped into a vat of acid or have his kids expelled from school. An independent research outfit called the International Crisis Group has made an effort to get around this problem. (The ICG, based in Brussels, is widely respected for its non-partisan reports, and it is by no means pro-war.) Last fall, it sent a non-Western, non-white research analyst to Iraq to conduct extensive secret interviews. "He has been going to Iraq for a number of years," the ICG's Joost Hiltermann told me from its regional office in Amman. "He knows these people well. They trust him." What's striking in the interviews reported by the ICG is their unanimity. Everyone wants regime change. "What we want is simply a dose of stability. We have suffered enough due to our leaders' mistakes," said one typical respondent. "We want to become a normal country once again, a state that enjoys good relations with its neighbours and that is no longer an international pariah." As the rest of us debate if it's wise to go to war, Iraqis live in a state of siege that has persisted for more than two decades. They've put their lives and futures on hold. The central question for them is not if there will be a war. The question is when their own war will finally end. The Iraqis who spoke to the ICG believe that foreign intervention is the surest and most dependable way to end the war against them. That doesn't mean they're fond of the U.S. They think the American regime is driven by power, not ideals. But they also think that American intervention, and a prolonged U.S. presence afterward, is their best bet for getting their lives back, and ultimately their country. What they fear is not too much U.S. interference, but too little. "If the Americans are committed to overthrowing the regime, they also must be committed to rebuilding a country they directly contributed to destroy," one Iraqi told the ICG researcher. "The United States must guarantee law and order, and they must oversee Iraq's rapid reconstruction." "Iraq was used to being a highly educated, highly developed society," says Mr. Hiltermann. "People are desperate to get back to that. They're saying, 'Let it happen fast. Let this be over with. Let us be normal citizens of the world again.' " Two other important points emerge from this extraordinary survey. Iraqis deeply distrust the various exile groups. They figure they're just another bunch of thugs. And they haven't thought much about the details of a post-Saddam regime. Under Saddam, confessed one Baghdad intellectual sadly, "we have become political dwarfs." Unlike protesters, Iraqis don't have the luxury of engaging in high-minded political debate. They're too busy trying to survive. As one person said, "Iraqis will judge the situation based on one criterion: whether they have enough to eat." A few dozen interviews are not a Gallup poll. Yet everyone who has been able to gain access to the private thoughts of ordinary Iraqis has heard similar opinions. They are hungry for deliverance. They are counting on the West for it. The views of the Iraqi people are, alas, not enough to justify a war. Perhaps Saddam can be peacefully disarmed after all, in which case we may choose to leave him alone to continue torturing his own people to his heart's content, so long as he can't pick on other ones. Or perhaps the risk of regional instability really is too great, or the number of potential body bags too high. There are many reasons to oppose a war. But the best interests of the innocent Iraqi people are not among them. And the sight of sanctimonious Westerners pretending to speak for them, and demanding that they be kept enslaved by the most brutal dictator outside North Korea, is not an edifying one. War is terrible. But there are worse things. Just ask the people of Iraq. mwente@globeandmail.ca