Tyrants and Trees
It was just another passing "occupation story". US soldiers had uprooted some palm, orange and lemon trees in a village in central Iraq. It was done "to punish villagers who did not give the US army information (presuming they possess such information) about the identity and whereabouts of those waging attacks against US troops. This form of collective punishment is, alas, a familiar tactic in the region. It's been used for years by the Israeli army against innocent Palestinian villagers. And it has proven, time and again, that it only hardens the resolve and determination of those being punished.
But what caught my attention in this case was that the American soldier bulldozing the trees was reportedly "playing loud Jazz music" as he was destroying the livelihood of those families.
One would have expected Heavy Metal, or Wagner at best! But perhaps it is naïveté on my part to think that, somehow, Jazz is just too incongruous with such violence and barbarism!
As I reread the story, I wondered about his choice? Was it Miles, Gillespie, or Coltrane? But perhaps he was trying to drown out the screams and wails of those who tended to the trees all their life and were watching them die, or the cries of his own conscience coming from within? No, the music was not a requiem for the dying tress! Witnesses said that he was laughing as he carried out the mission. A comrade of his, however, couldn't take it and was crying nearby (a softie who should be sent home!).
Collective punishment is not new for Iraqis. Having lived under Saddam's rule, they know it all too well, but they did not expect it to return so soon. This past July I returned to Iraq for the first time since 1991 to film a documentary. Our team, visited the small town of Al-Dijayl, about an hour west of Baghdad, where a failed assassination attempt was carried out against Saddam two decades ago. Al-Dijayl was having the first public commemoration for those who died in the operation, as well as the scores of relatives who would bear the brunt of collective punishment and guilt by association for years. The American officer at the Al-Dijayl police station, who asked us why we were there, didn't know about the commemoration, nor did he know that the sons of the town his troops were occupying had once tried to assassinate the evil tyrant. He asked me if I had "an attitude problem" when I pointed that remarkable detail out. A cousin of those who died in the operation happened to be in the vicinity and offered to show us around.
The man told us how Saddam had their orchards uprooted and their houses destroyed for "harbouring the attackers". He showed us where the orchards used to be and stood in what is now the main street passing through the town and pointed: "They were very beautiful, the palm trees and the oranges, and they were everything we had." It was years before they could have a crop again. They had to struggle to buy new land outside the village and dig a well, because the regime denied them any access to water. He insisted on taking us to the new orchards to feed us some fruit. One could see the pride and love in his eyes when he showed us the various trees and handed us the delicious fruit. "Al-Dijayl's fruits have an unmistakable taste," he added.
Lemons and oranges differ in shape, size and degrees of bitterness, but, at the end of the day, they are lemons and oranges; variations on the original theme. Tyranny also has that same basic and unmistakably bitter taste whenever and wherever it materialises. The wrapping and the sales-pitch may differ according to the tyrants' inclinations and ideological rhetoric, but the end result is as bitter as ever, even when accompanied by Jazz. The theme remains the same. Saddam's troops did not play any music while uprooting the orchards and destroying the houses. Empire brings its own music, or rather cacophony, with it.
Empires have always suffered from a certain deafness. A deafness afflicted by their own cacophony and inability to listen to anything but their internal monologue. While trees dies silently, humans do not and will not.
No cacophony can be loud enough or last long enough to drown out their cries. Empires, like tyrants, come and go but, alas, too many trees and too many humans will be uprooted.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 6 - 12 November 2003 (Issue No. 663)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/663/re6.htm