War Post

What would you say to people who describe 9/11, its precursors and the years since as part of an inherent clash of civilizations?

Well, for one thing it’s not inherent. Islam and the West have clashed in the past and have not clashed. There is nothing inevitable about it. Also, I think it’s wrong to think of it as a clash between civilizations, because Islam is not really a civilization but a religion that exists in civilizations all over the world. That is a mischaracterization. I think that, for the most part, the clashes come from a clash of identity within civilizations that feel threatened.

In Belgium, for example, the number one name for a child born today is Mohammed, which isn’t that surprising because Mohammed is the most popular name in the whole world right now. But if you were someone of Flemish ancestry, you must be saying to yourself, where is this going? What is happening to my country’s history and language, our precious place in the world? And if you’re Mohammed you’re probably thinking, they speak for someone else; I’m not one of them.

And it’s very likely that Mohammed has never been to Morocco, or may not even speak Arabic. But he’s really lost. It’s not surprising that he goes off to this mosque and associates with other angry and alienated young men and that Islam becomes more than a religion; it becomes a complete identity. That is why I call it a clash of identity within civilizations. It’s different wherever you go. It’s different in Europe than in the Middle East. It’s different in Indonesia. There are many different expressions of these feelings of alienation, rather than this clash of civilizations.

Lawrence Wright, in an interview I did for the Daily Star Egypt last summer, offering a new explanation — not Samuel Huntington’s "Clash of Civilizations," nor Edward Said’s "Clash of Ignorance." A compelling and unique response.

Read the rest of the interview here and another piece I did after talking with Lawrence Wright on the Huffington Post.

…the former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority argues that he "was absolutely right to strip away the apparatus of a particularly odious tyranny," including the Baath Party and the Iraqi army. He complains about "critics who’ve never spent time in Iraq" and "don’t understand its complexities." But Bremer himself never understood Iraq, knew no Arabic, had no experience in the Middle East and made no effort to educate himself — as his statements clearly show.

 Nir Rosen on Paul Bremer in the Washington Post.

Time and again, he refers to "the formerly ruling Sunnis," "rank-and-file Sunnis," "the old Sunni regime," "responsible Sunnis." This obsession with sects informed the U.S. approach to Iraq from day one of the occupation, but it was not how Iraqis saw themselves — at least, not until very recently. Iraqis were not primarily Sunnis or Shiites; they were Iraqis first, and their sectarian identities did not become politicized until the Americans occupied their country, treating Sunnis as the bad guys and Shiites as the good guys. There were no blocs of "Sunni Iraqis" or "Shiite Iraqis" before the war, just like there was no "Sunni Triangle" or "Shiite South" until the Americans imposed ethnic and sectarian identities onto Iraq’s regions.

Despite Bremer’s assertions, Saddam Hussein’s regime was not a Sunni regime; it was a dictatorship with many complex alliances in Iraqi society, including some with Shiites. If anything, the old tyranny was a Tikriti regime, led by relatives and clansmen from Hussein’s hometown. Hussein punished Sunnis who became too prominent and suppressed Sunni Arab officers from Mosul and Baghdad in favor of more pliable officers from rural and tribal backgrounds. Local Sunni movements that were not pro-Hussein were repressed just as harshly as the Shiites.

Bremer was not alone in his blindness here. Just two weeks ago, I interviewed John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, about the crisis of Iraqi refugees, who now number more than 2 million. He displayed the same dismal approach to Iraq as Bremer. Bolton claimed that most of the refugees were Sunnis, fleeing because "they fear that Shiites are going to exact retribution for four or five decades of Baath rule."

More.

I talked to Nir Rosen briefly for a newspaper story in January about the launch of IraqSlogger, focusing on the site’s Iraqi-based reporting.

“There’s a dearth of good information about Iraq given the security situation,” Rosen told The Daily Star Egypt.

A founding member of Praedict and IraqSlogger and regular contributor to the website, Rosen added, “What we really need are Iraqis to tell their own stories of survival,” admitting that “at this point there’s really no choice, because Western journalists can’t get around at all.”

“As Iraq becomes more and more difficult to work in, and more and more important in the region, that information vacuum becomes larger.”

A wife whose husband and two sons are fighting the Americans delivers messages and sometimes weapons to the highly organized resistance in her neighborhood. A father of three identified as “the Teacher” preaches Jihad and criticizes Baath party members for not defending their country as so many other Iraqis are.

A pensive man, he explains the Al Adhamiya resistance as a group that “formed spontaneously under the banner of Islam,” but then says, “before these events, I didn’t pray. I didn’t even know my way to the mosque.”

Read the rest of a recent review I did of ‘Meeting Resistance,’a new documentary on the insurgency from Al Adhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad, in the Daily Star Egypt. The film won the Golden Award at the Al Jazeera International Documentary Film Festival in Doha, Qatar last week.

I wrote both of these late last summer, as the Ford Scholar work was officially wrapping up. They kicked around for a few months, and  now I’m posting them here.

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Bomb Writing 

I’m going to be changing scenery. In a few days, I’ll be in Egypt, bettering my Arabic, haggling, and studying at the American University in Cairo. War Post will continue, moving on from its "summer research blog" tag into the fall and winter. The updates might be less frequent, and the scope may expand some since I won’t be devoting my time only to library books and soldier letters. Amitava Kumar will soon become another administrator for the site and blog when possible. Please do continue to read.

For the curious, I will be keeping a blog in Egypt, Cairo Post.