Nobody's smiling
Between a domestic regime's repression and welcoming a foreign invasion, "falls the shadow", writes Sharif Elmusa*
What is the most precious jewel in the eyes of the Pentagon and the US media today? Forget about the fall of President Saddam Hussein, never mind weapons of mass destruction, what CNN and Fox television cameras are really looking for in Baghdad are smiling Iraqis jubilantly welcoming the arrival of their liberators. These faces would vindicate the whole war. The death of those killed in battle would not have been in vain, as we are always reminded at military funerals.
The American war party had convinced its soldiers and much of the world that the Iraqi people were eagerly awaiting their appearance and would warmly welcome such forms of kindness as food handouts and water. If the Iraqis don't smile, they tell us, it must be because they are still haunted by the regime's long years of repression. But isn't the regime in Baghdad separated from the inhabitants of Basra and Nasseriya by hundreds of kilometres of highways manned by the US's awesome military machine? The people pouring in and out of Basra do not smile much, we are informed, because they are not yet sure if their liberators won't betray them as they did in the 1990-91 Gulf War. Maybe.
Still, between a domestic regime's repression and welcoming a foreign invasion, "falls the shadow", as TS Eliot might say. The majority of Americans themselves did not want a war without UN backing, but as I write, and as American tanks approach Saddam International Airport, a poll cites 90 per cent of the respondents as being satisfied with the progress of the war. Could it be that the Iraqis are not smiling because they are resentful of the US's refusal to lift sanctions, afraid for the future, or worried that their oil wealth might be leveraged? Aren't the Iraqis moored in thousands of years of sometimes brilliant history and a century of nationalism, constructed partly by tales of fighting British colonialism in the 1920s? Could it be that the repressed Iraqis are not thankful because their kin are being killed and wounded and they find themselves humiliated on highways and at checkpoints by their liberators? Anyway, aren't the people they are facing soldiers, laden with guns and ammunition, speaking in a foreign tongue? A soldier in uniform even under ordinary circumstances is hard to smile for; the uniform is somber and distancing. Reducing the reasons for a lack of welcoming spirit among Iraqis to government repression diminishes the thoughts and feelings of the Iraqi people to a convenient sound bite in the service of war promotion.
When the smiles do not materialise, the disappointment of American soldiers and correspondents can be great. Take, for example, the reaction of a US sergeant as his company entered farmland north of the town of Hilla, "bad guy" country, as reported in the New York Times on 31 March. The Iraqis they passed seemed to be minding their own business. No waving arms. Few even lifted their heads. The sergeant told the correspondent, "Hey...did you see that? None of the Iraqis are waving at us anymore." Imagine the heartache at such ingratitude.
The Americans, the British say, are novices, even cowboys, when it comes to inducing smiles among an occupied people. They, on the other hand, are veterans of this enterprise. They draw on long experience from the bygone days of empire and from Ireland. I don't know how successful they were, but eventually all colonised people managed, one way or another, to oust them. In this region the word colonialism, ist`imar, is associated with the British and the French. I cannot recall a time when I heard anyone mention the word with a smile. The US neo-conservatives seem intent on adding the Americans to the Arab historical memory of colonialists, something that has not happened before despite the US's consistent facilitation of the Israeli dispossession of the Palestinian people.
There is another problem from the point of view of the war planners with regard to Iraqi smiles, besides their scarcity. They are not infectious. The rest of the Arabs, except the cheering Kuwaitis, are not smiling. Nor are Muslims or the majority of the world's population for that matter. After the guns fall silent in Iraq the US will have to find ingenious and new ways of convincing them to smile in support of its overwhelming military power.
Naturally, not all Iraqi smiles are of equal worth. The more rag-tag those who bestow them the better. The same people who would have been presented in another context as poor and backward have suddenly come to possess a priceless commodity in the form of a simple wave at a soldier. Shi'ite smiles have been much sought after. But the closer the American forces get to Baghdad, the value of their smile will have a competitor. Soon, the prize will be the Sunni smile.
By contrast, the Kurds have been smiling for a long time, but hardly anyone notices. This is what is called being taken for granted. Or maybe the Kurds are not smiling. US interests at present are too varied to allow them, for instance, to take the oil fields of Kirkuk, something that would put a broad smile on their face. In this regard, Turkey springs to mind, even though lately its government has been less than fully cooperative because it has had to mollify public opinion resoundingly opposed to the war. In addition, the US government wants to manage the oil fields itself for the reconstruction of what it will destroy during the war. So whether the Kurds smile or not at present is hardly of consequence for the publicists of the war.
Then, of course, how will the US get all of Iraq's ethnic groups and politicians to smile at it and each other at the same time?
If I were an ageing Arab military commentator, I would advise the Iraqis that they don't need heroic resistance, fierce fighting and martyrdom. All they need is to withhold their smiles. This way they would be a hundred times more effective than old Soviet tanks, mortars and rocket propelled grenades. The Iraqi smile is so vital for an affirmation of America's belief in its goodness and the superiority of its values that a denial of a smile for its army would crush its ego. By refraining from smiling, the Iraqis would send an early warning message to the war party in Washington: the world may love Americans, but only up to a point.
* The writer is an associate professor of political science at the American University in Cairo.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 10 -16 April 2003 (Issue No. 633)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/633/op34.htm