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Streetwise
Fighting for our future.
By Ali Al-Zahid
06.2006
Baghdad—After seemingly never-ending disputes,
Iraqi leaders finally reached an agreement on a new government.
In itself, this agreement involving the two main ethnic groups
and two chief religious factions is a reason to celebrate;
but Iraq still faces a long, obstacle-filled road to democracy
and unity. The task is not, as is often wrongly said, reconstruction;
you can’t reconstruct what never existed. What Iraq has to
do is start from scratch, after millions of deaths and a society
destroyed by 35 years of Baath dictatorship.
The Iraqi people now have two options. One is the
so-called Zarqawi or Baath option, which would mean years
of civil war, with millions of victims, culminating in the
division of Iraq into a northern Iraq governed by the two
big Kurdish parties and a remaining territory governed either
by Sunni or Shiite leaders.
The other option is to continue on the current
road a path that will require much effort and patience, and
will entail many casualties. This option has one major problem:
The political figures who are now running Iraq are no longer
trusted. Too much has gone wrong, and yet the political leaders
still ignore the danger they are in of losing the “Iraqi street”
the poor and uneducated people in the slums of Baghdad and
Basra. The group around Moqtada al-Sadr is addressing these
people, using the old and efficient Hamas principle: take
care of the people’s basic needs, and indoctrinate them.
Here’s just one example, which I personally witnessed
a short time ago. It was a meeting between project managers
who were working on the infrastructure of Sadr City, a slum
of Baghdad, and representatives of Moqtada. The meeting was
simply about the question of where and when to begin the construction
works in this Moqtada stronghold. The Moqtada people confronted
the managers with some absurd requirements; a second meeting
was scheduled, but again with no result; to a third meeting,
the Moqtada men came bearing arms. The message was clear:
Either their conditions would be accepted, or the project
managers would be killed.
The road to a new future will only work if the
“street” is reconquered. The street was won over once before
on April 9, 2003, when Coalition forces reached Baghdad. But
then they were lost, through corruption, the Abu Ghraib scandal,
and the failure to rebuild Iraq successfully. We have to understand
that these people are the key to the success of Project Iraq.
If we win this group over, Moqtada will have no support. Perhaps
it is thought that Moqtada can be controlled, but this is
a great mistake. Moqtada’s forces stay calm only because they
are growing every day, biding their time before wreaking havoc
on the country. In Iraq’s history, too many Shiites have been
victimized for the Shiite community to be easily split: Once
the group around Moqtada reaches critical mass, the solidarity
between them and the rest of the Shiites will be virtually
insuperable. It is therefore urgent that we take back the
street as soon as possible.
This is only one of the many problems facing Iraq.
But this path, difficult as it may be, is the only one that
can take us to the functioning Iraq we all dream of. We Iraqis
have to understand that the only solution is to stand together.
We are surrounded by enemies, and on the day we fail with
our nation-building there will, once again, be millions of
dead. Some believe that civil war is inevitable, and has to
take place in order to achieve unity; but the fact is we have
already paid with enough lives, we have already buried too
many friends and relatives.
Al Qaeda and the supporters of Saddam Hussein have,
since 2003, tried everything imaginable to start this civil
war but they have tried in vain. There are still a large number
of people who won’t be provoked, but with every terrorist
attack, with every assassination, the danger increases.
There is no prior instance in history in which
there were such vehement efforts made, without success, to
incite two ethnic groups to civil war. We Iraqis can say with
pride that that, so far, there is no civil war to speak of—even
if the world calls the current state of affairs a civil war,
and waits expectantly for a real one to break out.
Ali Al-Zahid is a member of the new Iraquna think tank. Under
Saddam Hussein, he was imprisoned after his father made critical
statements against the Baath regime
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