The day after
Fallout from the US occupation of Iraq and the imperative to "democratise" continued to dominate the Arab press this week, finds Amina Elbendary
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Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reprints a cartoon by the late Mahmoud Kahil -- still relevant today
Haddad's cartoon in Al-Hayat depicts Iraq as a launching-pad for the US
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The US occupation of Iraq continued to dominate the pages of the Arab press this week. The London-based Lebanese daily Al-Hayat has since the beginning of the war adopted a narrative inspired by the Arabian Nights, whereby the lead story begins thus ".... and on the nth day of the war on Iraq...". While Al-Hayat continued to count this week as part of the chronology of the war, the newspaper's "War on Iraq" pages are now simply labelled "Iraq". Other newspapers, notably the London-based Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat have changed their "War in Iraq" pages to pages labelled "After Saddam."
NAME OF THE GAME: Much of the Arab press this week was clear about one thing: this was occupation. "Liberation or what?" asked Abdel- Wahab Badrakhan in Al-Hayat on 21 April, arguing that though the US was sensitive to the use of the word "occupation" to describe its presence in Iraq, this was the only word to describe it. Both the war on Iraq, and the subsequent occupation, were illegal, Badarkhan argued, adding that the US would ensure that it kept Iraq outside international law in order to maintain its freedom to act as an occupying force.
In Al-Sharq Al-Awsat on 22 April Mohamed Al- Hassan Ahmed also referred to the debate over US "invasion" or "liberation" of Iraq in his article on the "Arab World after the fall of Baghdad." However, debate over nomenclature would only get the Arabs embroiled in senseless discussions, keeping them from taking the initiative in shaping the new world order, he argued, adding that the unity of Iraq was crucial for the good of the Iraqi people and for the Arab body politic.
NO SADDAM, NO BUSH: Opposition to US occupation was also evident in reports from Iraq. Demonstrations in Baghdad and the south of the country occupied the front page of Al-Hayat on 19 April. That thousands of people liberated from a country-wide prison would put their victorious occupier on equal terms as the defeated Saddam, giving the invading forces a brief opportunity to evacuate, may have come as a surprise to the US, wrote Zuhayr Qasibati in the same newspaper on 20 April. Bush, and perhaps many in the region, had been surprised by the spread of Islamism in a country that knew little except fear and silence over three decades. The occupying forces have tough days ahead of them in Iraq, for they cannot accuse those demonstrating against Saddam and Bush under the watchful eyes of the US Marines of fundamentalism and extremism.
In his editorial on 18 April entitled "American Liberators trapped" editor-in-chief of the London- based Al-Quds Al-Arabi Abdel-Bari Utwan pointed to the lukewarm welcome both General Tommy Franks and Ahmed Chalabi had received in Iraq. Instead of flowers, there were demonstrations in Baghdad, Najaf and Karbala against the American occupation. The Americans had trapped themselves, for they could not afford the kind of heavy losses armed Iraqi resistance to their presence might entail. In the same newspaper on 19 April, Subhi Hadidi also warned of dire consequences for the Americans, pointing to the apparent popularity of Islamist opposition movements. What will the US do when the crowds start calling for Al-Imam Al-Sadr and Al-Sayed Ali Al-Sistani instead of Ahmed Chalabi and the INC, he asked.
RESURRECTION: As Christians worldwide were celebrating Easter, Iraqis were picking up the pieces of their shattered country and trying to rebuild their lives. On 21 April, Al-Hayat reported on efforts being made by Mohamed Muhsin El- Zabidi, head of the Executive Committee of Baghdad, to bring the civic administration back to running order. This news also appeared in other papers, especially as the US seemed reluctant to approve of El-Zabidi. He was on the front page of Al-Hayat the following day in an article describing him as "an unknown trying to take charge of reconstruction." Also on 22 April, Al-Zabidi appeared on the front page of Al-Quds Al-Arabi, where he vowed to continue managing the affairs of Baghdad by "popular mandate."
With the disappearance of Saddam Hussein, Iraqi opposition figures began to make their appearance in the Arab press this week. News of Ahmed Chalabi continued to appear, with Al-Hayat reporting on 18 April that an amendment to Jordanian law would open the way to closing the embezzlement cases in which Chalabi had been implicated when he was president of Petra Bank. Other faces of the Iraqi opposition also surfaced, with Al-Hayat on 20 April quoting Adnan Al- Bajaji as saying that political conferences similar to the one held in Nasseriya would be held in different parts of Iraq, leading up to a national conference to be held in Baghdad. This conference would be the basis for a transitional government representing all Iraqis that would eliminate US military rule. Part of the liberal opposition, Al- Bajaji hoped that the UN would play a leading role in Iraq, and that it would oversee the Baghdad conference. Asked whether Iraq would normalise its relations with Israel, Al-Bajaji explained that it would be up to an elected Iraqi government to decide, but that he doubted such a step could take place before the Palestinians had reached an agreement with the Israelis.
Iraqi religious leaders have also risen to prominence since the fall of Saddam. The editor-in- chief of Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Abdel-Rahman Al- Rashed, wrote on 21 April on the Friday sermon given by the Sunni sheikh Al-Kabisi at the Abu Hanifa mosque in Baghdad, in which the sheikh had urged all Iraqis, Sunni and Shi'a, to unite. This sermon should not be construed as a political move aimed at making Sunnis on par with Shi'is , Al-Rashed argued. Different Iraqi communities, he wrote, have long coexisted, and their conflicts remain limited to those among their political leaders. The solution to the Iraqi mosaic had to be a civilian leader who respected people's rights and did not trap them in narrowly Shi'a, Sunni, Kurdish, Turkoman or Christian identities.
News of Shi'i figures took up much space, especially as Shi'is all over Iraq prepared to celebrate the martyrdom of Al-Hussein in Karbala on Tuesday. "Shi'a ulama declare their peaceful opposition to the Americans and warn of strife during the procession to Karbala," read one of Al- Hayat's banners on 22 April. On the same day, the Lebanese daily Al-Safir's lead article reported that both Al-Sistani and Muqtada Al-Sadr, prominent Shi'i clerics, had called for peaceful opposition to the US presence, also reporting that the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Mohamed Baqir Al-Hakim, would arrive in Iraq this week.
For his part, editor-in-chief of the Jordanian daily Al-Arab Al-Yawm, Taher Al-Odwan, warned that the unity of Iraq was in danger in his editorial of 20 April. The Shi'i revival was not simply the expression of religious sentiment, he said, since it also had a political dimension. This Shi'i revival aimed at installing an Islamist state, and equally worrying was the fact that Kurdish militias had secured oil wells in Kirkuk. Given these developments in the south and north of the country, Baghdad and central Iraq appeared to be living in a political vacuum, without a Sunni leader to replace Saddam Hussein, Al-Odwan argued.
On 19 April, Al-Hayat reported that it was the first newspaper to distribute free copies in Baghdad. Al-Sharq Al-Awsat also reported on 21 April on the first newspaper to start publishing in Baghdad since the war: the newspaper, Sawt Al-Shaab (People's Voice), is the mouthpiece of the Iraqi Communist Party, and it has been distributed free in Baghdad.
ARAB REGIONAL DISORDER: Inter-Arab relations have been traumatised by the occupation of Iraq, with attempts to assess the damage and heal the wounds prompting regional visits by various Arab leaders. Thus, the Riyadh Conference and the visits of President Mubarak to Syria, the UAE and Bahrain received ample coverage.
In Al-Wasat, a weekly political supplement issued by Al-Hayat on 21 April, Nabil Khalifa and Said Mahiyou both analysed the reasons behind the war on Iraq, arguing that it is a war aiming to change both the regional and the world order.
Trying to learn lessons from the Iraq war, Erfan Nizameddin wrote an article entitled "The fall of what is already fallen?" in Al-Hayat on 21 April. Iraq had not fallen alone, he emphasised; with it had fallen international legitimacy, the sovereignty of states, the reputation of the United States and the credibility of major states such as Russia, China and France.
The Arabs needed to reconsider their stances, policies and strategies, he said. The lesson to learn was the need to allow for the widest possible amount of popular participation in decision- making, not leaving the fate of nations and populations to dictators. Nizameddin also drew attention to Israeli efforts to exploit present circumstances, notably by extending an oil pipeline from Kirkuk in Iraq to Haifa, by extending a water pipeline from the Euphrates to Israel, and by settling Palestinians in southern Iraq after imposing Sharon's plan to deny the Palestinians' right of return and by winning contracts to reconstruct Iraq.
Writing in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyasa on 20 April, Khaled Abdel-Aziz Al-Saad also argued that the Arab regional order has been severely shaken. Arab regimes now had one sole choice: to quickly reconsider their ideologies. One-party systems no longer work, and nothing could be more dangerous than a lack of democracy.
US threats towards Syria also received their share of coverage. On 20 April, the Syrian daily Teshreen's editorial stressed the country's adherence to international law, prompting Syria's sponsorship of a UN Security Council resolution calling for the removal of all weapons of mass destruction from the Middle East. It was Israel that had introduced nuclear weapons to the region, the editorial went on, and Israel was the only country in the region to have such weapons.
What does the US want from Syria, asked Hazem Saghiya in his 16 April editorial in Al-Hayat. Washington was not seriously threatening war against Syria, he reasoned, arguing that the US merely wanted Syria to stay out of Iraq, Palestine and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which also had ramifications in southern Lebanon through Hizbullah. Neither Syria nor Iran could continue in the present direction, and Syria needed, regardless of American intentions, to seize this opportunity to reform itself and turn towards democracy.
Writing in Al-Hayat on 19 April under the title "A third world war on Iraq, Syria and Hizbullah", Salim Nassar also put the US threats against Syria in perspective. Unlike the Europeans, the Americans, he pointed out, look at the Israeli- Palestinian conflict as one of many problems facing the Middle East and not as the central problem. Since both Iraq and Syria were closer to the European perspective on the Arab-Israeli conflict, isolating Iraq meant that the US could now corner Syria, especially as Europe was feeling politically marginalised.
On 21 April, Al-Sharq Al-Awsat reported on an interview with Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa on Egyptian TV, in which Moussa had hinted at his willingness to resign. Moussa had come under fire, particularly from Kuwait, for what was deemed his pro-Iraq (read pro-Saddam by some) stance in the League, since he had supported the resolution by Arab foreign ministers opposing cooperation with the American invasion. "That was what any Arab official should have done," Moussa stressed. Hinting that he was not going to ignore the accusations directed against him, Moussa said "there will be a time for this later, and it will not be ignored, because the Secretary-General of the Arab League is not a mercenary."
In Al-Quds Al-Arabi on 21 April, Abdel-Bari Utwan defended Moussa against the Kuwaiti attacks. Utwan explained that he had previously urged the Secretary-General to resign in protest at Arab impotence in the face of the invasion, but given the attacks he was now urging him to stay and "continue to stand up to those who seek to destroy Arab identity."
Kuwait's unabashed support for the US invasion has continued to put it under pressure in the Arab world, perhaps explaining the defensive tone of many Kuwaiti commentators. Writing in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Qabas on 20 April, Mohamed Mosa'id Al-Saleh asked "Why do they hate us?" In trying to answer this question, the writer in fact criticised the attitude of many in the Kuwaiti media who were describing the aid Kuwait was offering other countries to the point of humiliation, "as if we're not helping people for humanitarian reasons... but to stroke our own egos." He also criticised Kuwaiti members of parliament who had over-reacted when voices in other Arab countries opposed the war.
Also in Al-Qabas on 20 April Laila Al-Uthman defended the Kuwaiti position in support of the war and the Iraqi opposition, for only Kuwaitis, she argued, understood the plight of the Iraqi people. "We too hate occupation, and the occupation we most hate is that of a dictator over an oppressed people.... Yes, we are against occupation, and we are not happy that it is America that has come to liberate us and liberate Iraq. But what other way is there, when the Arabs do not move except to condemn and shout?"
These tensions were also apparent in a debate on Kuwaiti TV featuring ministers from Kuwait, the UAE and Bahrain, as well as the editor-in-chief of Al-Safir, Talal Salman, who wrote about his experience on 19 April. Salman lamented the attitude of the Kuwaiti presenter, and those of the other guests, who put him on the defensive for his opposition to the war. Salman argued that the fall of a dictator like Saddam Hussein did not legitimate occupation, and that the occupation of Iraq was an Arab defeat and could not be construed as a Kuwaiti victory. It would be folly to look at occupation as the cradle of democracy and to ignore the detrimental consequences it would have on Iraq and on the whole Arab region, he insisted.
While most commentators were aware that the occupation of Iraq had ramifications across the Arab world, Galal Al-Mashta writing in Al-Hayat on 22 April, warned against making a "cause" out of Iraq as has happened with Palestine. Too many pundits were preaching to the Iraqis, he lamented, denouncing those who had equated the fall of Saddam Hussein with the fall of Iraq. The Iraqi situation had its Arab and regional ramifications, and Iraqis needed strong support to overcome the decades of dictatorship, end foreign occupation, rebuild their state and establish a pluralistic democratic regime. "But there is a difference between support and patronising. Iraqis are not minors; their collective memory carries civilisational layers going back thousands of years that will help them find an exit from the wasteland of the last decades -- without turning them into a cause."
SHOCKED AND AWED: What shocked Arab public opinion most was the rapidity of the fall of Iraq and the reaction of the Iraqis to liberation. "The shock is that they were shocked," argued Mohamed El-Rumaihi in Al-Hayat on 16 April, however, saying that the Arabs had not known how oppressive the fallen Iraqi regime was. Had they known, they would not have been surprised at the Iraqi people's reluctance to fight in support of it.
"The movement of one street, the quiet of another," wrote Mahmoud El-Rimawi in Al-Hayat on 21 April. While the Iraqis had taken to the streets after the fall of the regime, other Arab streets had witnessed a period of calm. Instead of carrying on their anti-war activities, Arabs had been shocked and disappointed at the fall of Baghdad without a fight. The degree to which the Iraqi regime was unpopular was perhaps surprising to Arabs outside Iraq, El-Rimawi wrote. The Arabs had been surprised that Iraqi hatred of the regime equalled or surpassed opposition to foreign occupation.
In Al-Hayat on 20 April the Iraqi writer Abdel- Ilah Al-Na'imi explained that those surprised and shocked at the fall of the Iraqi regime were insulting the average Iraqi, "accusing him of failing to stand up to Cruise missiles and B-52 bombers and Abrams tanks with an empty stomach and a sick body exhausted by 12 years of sanctions and a pride hurt by 35 years of injustice and humiliation. The Iraqi [citizen] was expected to defend a nation in which he knew no safety for many long years of injustice intersected by two catastrophic wars."
Most Arab newspapers denounced the looting of ancient Mesopotamian and Iraqi artefacts from the Baghdad Museum and the National Library and Archives and held the occupying forces responsible.
Teshreen quoted American and German experts on 19 April arguing that what had happened to the Baghdad Museum was planned and that Washington should accept responsibility. In Al-Hayat, also on 19 April, Farouk Youssef deconstructed the whole episode: "What is left of Iraq's memory," he asked, "for Iraq and for the world?"
"America, which doesn't seek to rob the past as much as it seeks to forge the future, is trying through its attempts to obliterate the memory of a living people like the Iraqis, to obliterate the un- American Other." American tanks had been driving through Baghdad's streets at the time of the looting, he said, and they had been quite capable of keeping the mob out of the Oil Ministry.
Salman's 19 April editorial in Al-Safir insisted that the damage to the Baghdad Museum had been planned by the occupying forces to sully the image of the Iraqi population. The majority of the treasures were "kidnapped on order" and were probably being divided between American and Israeli museums, he guessed. This was a theme followed up in his editorial on 22 April where he added that by destroying Iraq's political and cultural institutions Saddam Hussein had in fact chosen his successors -- the occupation figures Tommy Franks and Jay Garner. American occupation forces had destroyed the collective memory of Iraqis, Arabs and Muslims in general; and now "the destroyers of museums and libraries are here to teach democracy."
DECONSTRUCTING RECONSTRUCTION: Arab newspapers were full of news and opinion related to US plans to reconstruct Iraq. In his editorial on 20 April in Al-Hayat, "The first drop of rain ... and the last," Qasibati pointed to the dilemmas facing the five neighbouring states of Iraq who had met in Riyadh. All these countries were nervous of the infiltration of Israel into Iraq, a point muted at the conference. "Isn't it ironic that the Jewish state, which had failed to infiltrate the Gulf under the banner of Madrid peace, is about to succeed under the banner of liberating Iraq?... The first drop of rain is black," he concluded.
Al-Quds Al-Arabi also reported on 22 April that Israel was trying to arrange deals for the reconstruction of Iraq, while Israeli tourist agencies were planning flights to Baghdad.
Elsewhere in this week's Arab press, in Al-Hayat on 21 April Ahmed Muwwafaq Zeidan wrote from Islamabad in Pakistan on "Afghanistan after its liberation from the Taliban." Power rested with the war lords -- in fact the Taliban themselves were reorganising -- and reconstruction plans remained mirages as the promises of donor states had not materialised, he reported. Would the same scenario be repeated in Iraq?
The occupation of Iraq spurred other debates as well. On the pages of Al-Hayat a debate started by Esaam El-Erian and Mohamed Ibrahim Mabrouk over the definition and validity of jihad in political theory, especially as it applied to the case of Iraq, inspired further articles by Mu'tazz El-Khatib and Ammar Ali Hassan on 22 April.
Also of interest was an on-going series by Hazem Saghiya, out every Tuesday in Al- Hayat and now in its eighth instalment, telling "The story of the Ba'th in Iraq."
