Completely not getting it
By Thoreau
The Washington Post starts off a story on Basra with this headline:
What they don’t get is that if the absence of violence was contingent on foreign occupation then it was never really a success story! A successful city is one with the necessary institutions to manage its own internal disputes and keep violence in check.
I am quite certain that a US withdrawal from Iraq, something that I am 100% in favor of, will result in even more blood-letting than we’re already seeing. I nonetheless support a withdrawal. It’s not that I’m some sort of Little Green Fascist or whatever, hoping to see Arabs die. Rather, it’s that there is simply no way for outsiders to stop the blood-letting. It’s happening now despite our presence, it will not stop until the fights are settled and a power vacuum is filled, and our presence does nothing to bring about the end of this fight. We prevent the final chapter from unfolding, but we don’t prevent the blood from being spilled.
Nonetheless, this likelihood is something that we must face honestly. We who are and have been against this war are and ought to be the honest people, while the people who have pushed this war are and have been the liars. They have been wrong in every single one of their predictions, they have lied about the alleged threats leading to the war, and so we should let dishonesty remain their domain, not ours.
Also, the violence in Basra shows another fact: Even the most successful occupation is still an occupation and not the birth of a liberal society. The British got much credit (probably deserved credit) for managing the best possible occupation. They have some experience with this sort of thing, and by all accounts they managed Basra as well as an occupied city can be managed. But as we’re seeing now, even the best occupied city is still an occupied city, not a city that can be stable under self-government.
Comment by Nell —
August 7, 2007 @ 7:53 am
Not to mention that the subhead ‘once called a success story’ is severely misleading. Basra’s been an inter-Shia battleground for the last three years; that ‘once’ was way back there — as in ‘once upon a time, in the summer of 2003′.
Comment by Syloson of Samos —
August 7, 2007 @ 8:50 am
There are a few examples of occupations which either aided the revival or laid some of the groundwork for the creation of a liberal society (though the former may be far more common than the latter).
Comment by Gsnorgathon —
August 7, 2007 @ 9:34 am
I’m curious to see examples of the former.
Comment by ajay —
August 7, 2007 @ 10:06 am
Syloson: what you should mention is that
a) most occupations in the last century have not assisted either the birth or the rebirth of a liberal society, and
b) most liberal societies that emerged or re-emerged in the last century have not done so as a result of occupation.
Comment by Syloson of Samos —
August 7, 2007 @ 10:13 am
ajay,
That kind of goes without saying.
Comment by Hektor Bim —
August 7, 2007 @ 11:36 am
The only thing that can be said for the British occupation is that they are ending it. I think there will be a steady drawdown of British soldiers without a formal announcement. Brown is getting out and drawing a much tougher line on Guantanamo. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out to Middle East, Tony.
Comment by Syloson of Samos —
August 7, 2007 @ 12:53 pm
Hektor Bim,
As I understand it, most of Britain’s soldiers have already exited Iraq.
Comment by roger —
August 7, 2007 @ 4:04 pm
Thoreau, you usually have an excellent bs meter. So I’m surprised it didn’t beep on the WAPO article, as pointed out by Nell. I mean, this is the third graf:
“After Saddam Hussein was overthrown in April 2003, British forces took control of the region, and the cosmopolitan port city of Basra thrived with trade, arts and universities. As recently as February, Vice President Cheney hailed Basra as a part of Iraq “where things are going pretty well.”
Rule no. 1. If Vice president Cheney hails something, it is usually a grotesque farce. Or a lie. Or both.
Rule no. 2 is any mention of a city ‘thriving with trade, arts and universities after the invasion in Iraq is either a complete lie or about someplace in Kurdistan controlled by a corrupt warlord.
Basra is the city that very quickly got rid of its liquor stores by the simple expedient of blowing them up, got rid of its barbers by beheading them, and got rid of its Baathists by piano wire. The article is lacking, of course, in any statistics about things like ‘migration from’ – so as to not deal with the issue of ethnic cleansing. But by 2004 the provincial government had become a theocracy that made the Taliban look permissive. This was the place that abolished the weekend because it was Jew friendly.
Now of course, in punditland, if no occupying troops are killed, everything is going swimmingly, even if there is sixty percent unemployment, no electricity, no working sewage system, and the police department is periodically raided to free the prisoners they are torturing inside it. In other words, conditions that would cause a revolution in the U.S. are ‘things going pretty well’ in Iraq. Partly because Iraq doesn’t really exist for the media honchos, and partly because the Iraq that the U.S. is continually trying to build is a fantasy version of the U.S. – that free market land of milk and honey. We American have our eyes on that prize.
I don’t think Basra is a lesson in how things will ‘deteriorate’ once the U.S. leaves. It is a lesson in how things have deteriorated under a braindead occupation. It should be cryingly obvious, by now, that Middle Eastern country’s have top heavy state sectors for a reason. A sensible policy in Iraq would aim first and primarily at absorbing the unemployed and getting the Iraqi infrastructure to work the Iraqi way – not via big American contractors. This would mean, for instance, expanding the state ministry of oil by three to four times. This will, of course, never happen. Although the U.S. happily violates its no deficit, and uses the government as the ultimate absorber of the unemployed, the fantasy America it projects on other countries has an anorexic public sector and a robust private sector just aching to make the country work. This hasn’t worked, isn’t working and won’t work in Iraq. It will cause mass, long term unemployment. It will cause guys to hang around in the street and at home, feeling useless and angry. But those guys can find a cause, surprise surprise.
That is why the longer we stay, the harsher the blood bath will be. The U.S. stubbornly feeds the condition, seeds the condition with arms, and bombs the condition when things get out of hand. This isn’t necessary. It is something the U.S. can stop doing while it withdraws. But it doesn’t seem to be in the American DNA to do it. A Pity – there goes another hundred thousand Iraqis.
Comment by Thoreau —
August 7, 2007 @ 9:34 pm
roger-
I admit, I haven’t followed Basra closely. The only thing I had heard was that apparently there wasn’t as much shooting in Basra as elsewhere, and this was credited to the British not screwing up too bad.
If things are as you say, well, I guess I wasn’t paying enough attention. And so my praise for the British in this post was unwarranted.
However, I think there’s a general point there that remains valid: It may very well be that a situation becomes worse, or even worse, or more visibly worse, or whatever, after occupiers leave. If that happens, it means that the situation under occupation, however good or bad it was, was inherently unstable and hence not a real accomplishment.
Comment by ajay —
August 8, 2007 @ 3:54 am
Roger’s description of Basra is a little hysterical. Basra wasn’t exactly a paradise, but in 2004-5 it and the rest of MND-SE was certainly a lot calmer than the rest of Iraq, with most of the unrest coming from the knowledge of the bad things happening further north. But it did, indeed, have a functioning university, and as Iraq’s major port city it would be odd if it didn’t have at least some trade.
Comment by Syloson of Samos —
August 8, 2007 @ 2:47 pm
ajay,
The entire area around Basra is famous for its agricultural production. As far as I know that remains in pretty decent shape.
Comment by roger —
August 8, 2007 @ 10:48 pm
I don’t think I’ve been hysterical. Here’s an Anthony Shadad piece about Basra on January 25, 2005:
In Basra, whose majority Shiite population has been largely spared the carnage of Baghdad, Hakim’s movement soon emerged as the best-organized, best-funded and most influential organization among 25 or so contenders in the city. The group is now seen as the dominant force on the city council, and leaders of the Badr Organization, its militia, hold the office of mayor and powerful positions within the city’s security forces.
With some other Islamic groups perceived by residents as little more than gangs, the party oversaw a growing conservatism in a city long famed as the most libertine in the region. Liquor stores, once numbering in the dozens, have shuttered. Shadowy, vigilante justice was meted out to former members of Hussein’s Baath Party. At high schools and at Basra University, women were encouraged — often by force — to wear veils.
“Those who control the power in the administration are the Islamic parties, so they should take responsibility for the situation,” said Majid Sari, the leader of a small party in Basra who is running on a secular slate known as the National Democratic Coalition.
As Sari spoke, the lights went out in his office. “This is one of the new government improvements,” he quipped.
A friend in the office chimed in: “And the sewage in the streets!”
The grim reality of Basra has proved a boon for opposition candidates. Over the four-day Eid al-Adha Muslim holiday that ended Sunday, some neighborhoods had electricity for an hour, if at all. One newspaper editor bitterly remarked that residents wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if they had a full day of electricity. Water quality has improved, thanks to a multimillion-dollar reconstruction project, but a dilapidated delivery network means it is still scarce in some areas. Complaints about corruption are rife, and residents say a fuel crisis that has gripped much of Iraq is exacerbated by the smuggling of oil to the Persian Gulf.
But it’s a prevailing sense of insecurity that nags at many Basra residents. Unlike the car bombs and mortars that have become a routine part of life in Baghdad, Basra is unsettled by a murky campaign of killings. Two men running in Sunday’s elections in the coalition of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi were killed this month, and an elementary school teacher, Iman Jawair, was shot dead in front of her house 10 days ago, apparently for not wearing a veil. Khairallah Malaki, a police brigadier who serves as the local government’s security adviser, estimated that as many as 10 percent of the city’s 13,000 policemen were loyal to religious parties rather than the civil leadership, a figure deemed low by opposition parties.â€
Here’s Knight Rider, after the murder of Stephen Vincent, August 7, 2005:
“Scores of assassinations have marred the relative peace and prosperity of Iraq’s southern port of Basra, a city near the Iranian border that’s dominated by Shiite Muslims and has been spared the extreme violence of Baghdad.
The assassins have targeted mostly men who are thought to have been connected to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party, which was dominated by Sunni Muslims. About 950 people have been killed since Saddam’s regime was toppled in April 2003, according to Majid al Sari, the Defense Ministry adviser for the southern region. About half of the dead, al Sari said, are Sunnis, who make up about 30 percent of the city’s population.
As a result, many Sunni families are selling their homes and migrating to other provinces and countries.
They aren’t the only victims.
“Even among those Baathists who have been killed, there were Shiites,†al Sari said. “Daily, we find bodies, and 90 percent of them are political crimes.â€
Many of the killings are attributed to men in police patrol cars who kidnap and kill or commit drive-by shootings.
A Washington Post story, December 16, 2005, proclaims “A Politician’s Optimism in Ghostly Basra; Secular Shiite Candidate Chafes at the Heavy Hand of Conservative Clericsâ€
The reporter follows a secular politician who is running for office in Basra. Somehow, the renaissance of arts and trade seems to escape all observers.
“When he returned to Basra, he was discouraged. The city “looked like a country from the old ages,” Sari said. It is not much improved. The streets are trash-strewn and shabby, the square concrete buildings dull and grim. Even the river that runs through town seemed resigned to the garbage strewn on its banks.
“I expected great change and reconstruction,” Sari said of the last two years. “We had great promises for millions of dollars in projects from the Americans. But it didn’t happen.
He passed a market, closed for the election curfew. “Here you can buy vegetables, weapons or explosives,” he said.â€
Wow. A quote worthy of Leonardo in Florence.
To speed up this travelogue of beautiful Basra, fast forward a year to December 26, 2006. Another Washington Post story:
About 1,000 British and Iraqi troops raided a police station in the southern city of Basra on Monday, killing seven gunmen and taking custody of more than 100 prisoners who were believed to be marked for execution by a renegade police unit.
Many of the prisoners at the Jamiat police station showed signs of torture, including cigarette and electrical burns, gunshot wounds in their legs and knees, and hands that had been crushed, said Capt. Tane Dunlop, a spokesman for British forces in Iraq. The station, a base for a squad known as the serious crimes unit, was later blown up by British forces.
The targeted unit “was in fact living up to its name,” Dunlop said. “It was conducting serious crimes rather than preventing it.”
Iraqi police forces are widely thought to be infiltrated by Shiite militias, but British military spokesmen said the rogue elements in this particular unit were involved in gang-like activity rather than sectarian killings.”
The last sentence is a relief. It is also a lie. To say that Basra was doing well is to set the standard for doing well pretty low. As well as Kabul in 1998? Well, at least we accomplished something.
Comment by ajay —
August 9, 2007 @ 4:54 am
Roger – I see stories about liquor stores closing, not being blown up; which is what you said was happening. I don’t see evidence of a regime “worse than the Taliban”. Women at schools and the university are being forced to wear the veil, and that’s rough, but the Taliban didn’t let them go to school at all. (Note that the very story you quote confirms that the university was functioning – which you dismissed as a lie!)
You exaggerated an admittedly bad situation.
Comment by roger —
August 9, 2007 @ 11:20 am
Ajay, obviously you see what you want to see.
The larger point stands: the Washington Post story of a few days ago was ridiculous. It is ridiculous to call Basra a success story. It is ridiculous to say that now, that the British are leaving, it is deteriorating. It gives a completely false picture of Basra in order to support a pro-war meme – if we leave, there will be a bloodbath. The falsity is not that the possibility doesn’t exist – the falsity is in the fact that there is a bloodbath going on right now. Deterioration – like how? Like the militia are going to take over the police? That happened in 2005. Like they are going to torture people? That, too, has been happening since at least 2004. Like women are going to be forced to wear the veil? That has happened long ago. Like the Sunnis will be forced to migrate? That too has already been happening, and increased dramatically in 2006.
So what is your point, Ajay? Are you saying the Post story is at all accurate? How?
Oh, and just for the hell of it, a story from 2003, in the midst of the Basra renaissance, about – firebombing liquor stores. This is from the NYT:
MARC LACEY New York Times
Saturday, May 24, 2003
Basra, Iraq — The discos used to close at dawn. The bars served up everything from Scotch whiskey to Iraqi wine. Basra was a party town in the 1970s and 1980s, one that drew not only locals but Kuwaitis and other foreigners eager for revelry in a region that is otherwise as dry as a bone.
“There would be dancing and drinking until the sun came up,” said Kassim Salman, an Iraqi tour guide who used to partake in the night life.
Those days are long gone, squelched under Saddam Hussein’s rule and now wiped out completely by a wave of Islamic activism that has taken its place.
ussein shuttered Basra’s dance halls and bars in the early 1990s, although he allowed the minority Christian population to keep their liquor stores open under government oversight. Since Hussein’s fall, however, the owners of the liquor outlets have seen their livelihoods dry up with a series of attacks on the alcohol industry.
Liquor stores’ contents are looted, like so much else in Basra. One store owner recently had a firebomb thrown into his shop. At least two have been shot dead. Many store owners throughout Iraq’s second largest city have received threats from armed men, telling them that the new Iraq does not allow alcohol anymore.”