I was warned by many before I left that Iraqis are brutish people. I was happily surprised to find everyone I met to be very knowlegable, understanding, and polite. Despite being new to the Iraqi dialect I found it easier to communicate and get along with Iraqi people in general than I do with others in other parts of the middle east where I've spent much more time.

My general impression from the whole trip is the huge amount of waste. So many people were killed and injured. So much culture was destroyed.
The people are still in a state of shock. They were prepared for a long battle. They have food, and supplies to last them till August. The biggest question on everyone's mind is "Where did the Iraqi leadership go?"

From an interview:
What do you think of that leadership? "They abandoned us at the moment we needed them the most."
How do you feel when you see foriegn troops on your land? "Pain and sorrow. We were fighting out of priciple. We consider ourselves much braver than them. But they have weapons....what can we do?"
What do you think of the new government they are making? "If Iraqi people are allowed to create their own national government and the foregners leave, everything will be alright. Otherwise there will be big problems for a long time"
What do you think will happen? "The only way the Americans can control Iraq is by creating another Saddaam to replace the old Saddaam."
What are you going to do now? "Wait. Until there is some order and security. Until we understand what happened. We have yet to hear from an any Iraqi official that the governement has fallen. Until we hear something all we can do now is wait."

"The Iraqi people are not looters. They are educated and cultured people."
Everyone is deeply distressed at the looting and arson going on all over the city. To Iraqis, this destruction is what "liberation" means. Almost all neighbourhoods have organized themselves into militias to protect their homes and local businesses. But they can't protect everything.
"Where are the Americans?" Iraqi people shout in anger pointing to their National Theater burning away. Americans: "Its not our job."

"The Americans have come to destroy, occupy and recolonise Iraq."
This is the main message people all over Baghdad have been telling me over and over.

Don't know what to ask... Did you think anyone could be really open to you as a Westerner, albeit a sympathetic one, after the invasion and overthrow of a dictator and the new imposition of the occupying forces? And how do you think we can help the peoples of Iraq achieve self-determination and democratic control over their own resources?

Did you meet any representatives of minority ethnic groups, such as Kurds?

I was really surprised at how important the arts are to Iraqi people. If there was one good thing Saddaam's government did, it was promoting art. No wonder most artists teaching in the middle east are Iraqi. Architecture, calligraphy, theater, music, ... I thought Arab culture died early last century, but its still alive in Iraq, and I'm sure I'll be hearing much more of it when/if the borders open up.

As for being a Westerner, that is a problem. But I can speak Arabic fluently and I'm familiar with middle-eastern people. I was there as an interpreter but I was also there to learn about a part of the world I never knew before. I didn't have any "agenda", unlike the journalists I was working for. When one man we were talking to interrupted the interview and spoke to me directly, "Don't translate this. I'm saying this to you, because you understand...." or when our driver turns around to say, "Don't tell the journalists but I was in the Republican Gaurd..." I think I was able to gain some people's trust. When the journalists went back to their hotel I'd hang around with the Iraqis in the lobby or outside to talk casually for hours. Most of what I learned about Iraqi people was that way. I was really annoyed by the journalists who would just aggressively pursue the details and not pay any attention to emotions and thoughts. The entire society is in trauma. They want to talk. I wanted to listen.
People are really afraid that their story wasn't getting out to the world. That people are getting the wrong impression of what was going on. We were at a site where the previous day at least 6 American tanks destroyed a two story apartment complex and turned a restaurant into a gaping black hole to kill a group of about 12 Syrians in the area. One of the men there describing the scene kept shouting with tears in his eyes "make him write it down! write it down!..."

Anyway,...how can we help? How 'bout: don't recognize any Iraqi goventment until there are free elections for all people in Iraq? But that's a discussion for another thread. I'm not an optimistic. The US put a lot of effort into taking Iraq. They didn't risk American lives to destroy a nation out of charity. They're not just gonna hand over their hard-earned prize to ungrateful Iraqis.

I met Kurds at a hospital. Unfortunately, their Arabic wasn't very good, and I don't know Kurdish. I met an Assyrian, but we didn't talk much. I only stayed in Baghdad.

There must be laws to protect all people's rights anywhere in the world. But there should also be sensitivity to the values of communities different than ours. The Ba'th government may have been secular, but compared to the rest of the middle-east with exception of the Arabian peninsula it is very conservative with religious law. Moslems had a large say in what was acceptable in Iraqi society and what was not.
I don't think there is a "rising fundamentalist sentiment". The majority of Iraqis are conservative Moslems. They have always been that way. Their demands have always been the same. (I think most of the people interested in the western idea of women's rights are among Christians and Sunni Moslems.) What I am afraid of is an Iraqi government unsympathetic to conservative Moslem demands. This will be percieved as a direct attack on Islam itself, and could lead to "big problems".

Gender equality is a major issue not just for Iraqi people but the entire Arab world. The biggest problem, in my opinion, is not Islam itself, but Arab culture.
I was having a conversation with one guy and he casually told me how he once "had to" slap his girlfriend for wearing a shirt with a neckline that was a bit "too low". What can you say to someone from a society where slapping your girlfriend in the face is acceptable behaviour? Changing that society will take years of education. But that education has to be sensitive to Islamic values. If people are going change their behaviour it won't be because foreigners with foreign ideas tell them they should, they will change when they understand that their current behaviour is wrong according to their own religious values.
Does that make sense? I think this also needs a seperate thread

[ 20 April 2003: Message edited by: satana ]

satana, did you get any sense of the Sunni-Shi'a-Christian divide? i remember i was amazed by just how deep it seemed to go in Pakistan. one Sunni guy said to me, "well, we've already had the Ahmadis declared non-muslims, now we're trying to do the same with the Shi'is." good thing i didn't mention my mother, who's Ahmadi.

also, these stories about people confiding in the interpreter are very interesting. you know that certain Arab intellectuals have been railing for some time against the stupidity of the fact that the journalists covering the Arab world often have very little idea of what the cultures are like, and can't even speak the bloody language. i've had a hunch that the reaction of an Iraqi interviewee to a white American journalist communicating through an interpreter would be very different from his/her reaction to an Arab journalist speaking Arabic. on the other hand, it sounds as though some people are so desperate to get their story out to the world that they wouldn't care if they were speaking to an extraterrestrial. what was your overall impression?

also, just curious,

كيف اللهجة العراقية بالنسبة إلى اللغة العربية الفصحة؟

[ 21 April 2003: Message edited by: Mohamad Khan ]

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On the subject of Western journalists who don't speak Arabic, hasn't Rick McKinnis Rae learnt Arabic? Sounds like it from his reports. I would imagine that Robert Fisk speaks Arabic.

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yes, that's the great thing about Fisk. in fact, doesn't he live in Beirut?

I met some journalists who could speak some Arabic. One of the Japanese journalists in agency I was working for could communicate almost fluently with people in Baghdad. Another also knew very good Arabic, but could only speak in an Egyptian dialect which Iraqis had some trouble with.

Observing other news agencies interviewing people I've noticed that many Iraqis were quite open and casual with anyone coming up to talk to them. Most of the people had no jobs or businesses to go to at the time, and no idea how things are going to be like in the near future, or, even, what happened in the recent past. Maybe there was just a need to talk with anyone, desperation, or maybe they're just ordinarily open people. I don't know.

اللهجة العراقية شبيهة بالسورية لكن العراقييون يستتخدمون كثيرا من الكلمات الخاصة بهم, مثل:
"باوع" : انظر ,"خوش" : ممتاز , "هوا" : كثير," آكو" : يوجد
ويركبون جمل مثل:
"خوش كلام!" : كلام ممتاز!
ويلفظون التاء المربوطة (ة ) : "مأساة" تلفظ "مأسات"
هذه بعض الأشياء الذي لاحظتها أثناء وجودي في العراق

[ 22 April 2003: Message edited by: satana ]

i asked satana about what Iraqi Arabic is like, and one of the things he mentions is that, for "excellent," which is "mumtaadh" in Standard Arabic, they use "khush." not sure whether you know it, satana, but "khush" is a Farsi word meaning "good"; it's also been borrowed into Urdu. interesting that that linguistic borrowing is going on.

quote:

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Observing other news agencies interviewing people I've noticed that many Iraqis were quite open and casual with anyone coming up to talk to them. Most of the people had no jobs or businesses to go to at the time, and no idea how things are going to be like in the near future, or, even, what happened in the recent past. Maybe there was just a need to talk with anyone, desperation, or maybe they're just ordinarily open people. I don't know.

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yeah, i know how much time people seem to have on their hands in certain parts of the east, as compared to us. amazing that we have all this technology, luxury items and stuff, and yet they're the ones with all the leisure, it seems.

looks like people really want to have their voices heard.

btw, check this out; from an interview with Robert Fisk:

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After the Koranic Library was set on fire I raced to the headquarters of the Third Marine Force Division in Baghdad and I said there is this massive Koranic Library on fire and I said what can you do? And under the Geneva Conventions the US Occupation Forces have a moral, whatever occupations forces there are, and they happen to be American, have a legal duty to protect documents and various embassies. There was a young officer who got on the radio and said "there was some kind of Biblical library on fire," biblical for heavens sake, and I gave him a map of the exact locations, the collaterals on the locations to the marines and nobody went there, and all the Korans were burned, Korans going back to the 16th Century totally burned.

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satana, this is the first time I've read this thread all the way through.

Forgive me for reverting to type, but: Far. Out.

It is good to read people who are reporting straight -- there's just no substitute, and yet most North Americans, sadly, are living on a steady diet of the substitutes.

Robert Fisk's interview is great.

To the minimum of 14 civilians killed in Mansur I can add at least another 13 in Al-Musayyib on the Euphrates between Babylon and Baghdad. We interviewed a family where a cluster bomb fell in a date palm grove just a hundred metres from their house. But there didn't seem to be any evidence of any tanks or weapons in that area. Five were killed in that attack. Including the family's neighbour and her two children. In another part of town a bomb fell on top of a house where a whole family of ten was staying. Only two survived with severe injuries. A man and his brother. His mother, father, wife and children all died.

The road from Ramadi to Baghdad is littered with wreckage and shells, some unexploded. Entering the city around Zawra Park (where the famous sword gates are) we could still see bodies left to rot in civilian cars and even covered up bodies still lying on the side of the streets.

A doctor in Medical City described how planes would "clear" the roads into Baghdad, bombing everything and everyone in the way indescriminately, before the first tanks rolled in.

When American troops surrounded the city they set up controls on the road. Iraqis having never seen things like this before, not understanding English and afraid tried to pass through these controls without stopping. Many civilians were killed this way in the first days of the occupation.

quote:

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not sure whether you know it, satana, but "khush" is a Farsi word meaning "good"; it's also been borrowed into Urdu.

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