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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Karen Lawrence who wrote (76639)	2/22/2003 5:34:23 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Interesting comments from Stefan Sharansky's blog: Sherko Fatah is a prize-winning German novelist, born to a German mother and an Iraqi Kurdish father. Fatah maintains phone contact with his relatives in Iraq, and wrote about some of his recent conversations in Tuesday's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung I want to know why my uncle and his large family have stayed in Baghdad ... he knows the reality from the last war. High-tech professionals against conscripts like his son, whose own mother has to sew his uniform because the Iraqi state doesn't want to spend the money to buy him one. ... Is Sulaimania gripped by fear because of the impending events or because of the Baghdad regime's likely reaction? Neither, really. Everyone is anxious but also optimistic. They tell me that there has never been so great of a chance to topple the regime as there is right now, and never before have "Assyrians, Chaldeans, Turkmen -- everybody" been so united in their reading of the situation ... One can even see the loyalist troops who were recently stationed on the Kurdish border and how weak they look in comparison with years past. They are there only for defense, not for offense. For the first time in many years, I notice, it seems that the threat of revenge from the regime is not a great cause of concern. ... I am [often] asked why Germany is promoting a policy the result of which would undoubtedly keep the Baghdad regime in power. ... I try to explain, but am only met with incomprehension. Why would the Germans all of a sudden make this their own business, they ask. And I have to admit that here in recent months this has turned into a German-American issue, even something of a European issue. I say it, but I'd rather not explain it to them. Likewise when I'm asked in all seriousness how we even know that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction or at least the raw materials to make them. I can't bring myself to answer that it's not only here in Germany where we can at least guess what and how much we've supplied to Iraq ourselves. It has more to do with a general principle of rejecting the use of violence, I keep trying to explain, while I know that this beautiful stance is reserved only for those who know that their basic rights are secure. So, just some more indications, if it wasn't clear enough already. European opposition to war may be dressed up in a costume of human rights and justice. But it's hard to argue that it is motivated by serious concern for the human rights of those who have the most skin in the game. usefulwork.com