| |
Iraq: Enemies and
neighbors
By Nir Rosen
BAGHDAD - R H doesn't like the neighbors who
live outside the immense white walls surrounding his
house. To enter, one must ring an intercom on the metal
doors in the entrance, just off a main road and across
from Saddam Hussein's former palace in Aadhamiya,
Baghdad's Sunni stronghold. A marble courtyard serves as
a parking lot for his Range Rover and BMW. Glass doors
lead to a large, opulent living room tastefully (a rarity
in Iraq) decorated with expensive Chinese and classical
European art, Persian rugs and an M-16 automatic rifle.
R H, a businessman from a wealthy family, and his wife,
who dons pants and a T-shirt and does not cover her
head, greet visitors on their leather sofas beneath
crystal chandeliers. A swimming pool lies in the center
of their manicured garden. They speak an educated
English and apologize for mistakes they attribute to
lack of practice. In their 40s, they look like a wealthy
suburban American family.
Sunnis
like R H represent the former elite of the country.
They now feel disfranchised, like the white minority
that once ruled apartheid South Africa, and fret over the
fate of their country. "The Americans made a big
mistake when they came to Iraq," he says. "Sunnis ruled
Iraq for 400 years. Sunnis always worked in
the security and administration of Iraq." After the war,
most of these Sunnis were dismissed from their
positions of authority and received no compensation, he says. "I
was never a supporter of Saddam," he is quick to
explain, "we hate him because he is the cause of
the current situation." He adds that Saddam confiscated
the successful food-processing plant that R H owned. "He took it
like a piece of cake." Saddam's son Qusay stole R
H's ancient-gun collection, and Saddam's brother-in-law
Mudhafar Khairallah imprisoned R H for two days on
weapons-smuggling charges that R H explains were but a pretext
to steal his gun collection. But, he adds, "I prefer the
old regime to this," gesturing outside in reference to
the chaos beyond the walls that guard his home.
In the beginning, R H says, American
soldiers based in palaces just down the street that used to
house Saddam and his relatives visited him often and were
very nice. He tells his wife to bring a framed plaque
from his study. It is a certificate of appreciation for
work done between May and September of 2003, given to him
by the ODA, or Operational Detachment Alpha (an "A"
team), of the SFG, or Special Forces Group. R H also has
a laminated card signed by detachment commander Mike
L Pearce. Pearce includes his three satellite-phone
numbers and tells the reader that R H assisted "US and
coalition forces in an effort to capture anti-coalition
forces in Baghdad" and that there is "no derogatory
information in his background". R H's wife explains that
they helped the Americans because "it was as if they
came from Mars to help us. Nobody else could have gotten
rid of Saddam." He received threats for helping the
Americans. When they learned of his collaboration with
the occupiers, some friends of the family were furious.
His neighborhood is not coalition-friendly. Neighbors
claim that the nearby US base is attacked nightly. R H
worries that his own son Ahmad, 22, "hates the Americans
very much".
Aadhamiya was the last part
of Baghdad to fall to the Americans, succumbing last April
10, a day later than the rest of the city. It was to
here that foreign fighters ("freedom fighters", as one
neighbor called them) retreated from the rest of the
country and tenaciously held out. They were fed and
hidden in homes and mosques by sympathetic locals. Some
were even driven by R H's neighbors to the Syrian or
Iranian borders. Those who died are buried in the
courtyard behind Aadhamiya's main mosque, Abu Hanifa,
itself greatly damaged during the fighting. After
Saddam's capture in December, rumors spread in Aadhamiya
that it was not their beloved leader after all.
Residents emerged to celebrate carrying pictures of
Saddam and wielding Kalashnikovs and even
rocket-propelled grenades. They clashed with US troops
and locals maintain that US forces were accompanied by
the Badr Brigade, the Shi'ite militia of the Supreme
Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, an
Iranian-sponsored organization. Others claim that Iraqi
police from the Shi'ite bastion of Sadr City also
attacked the Sunni revelers. Residents of Aadhamiya
accuse these forces of raiding the hospital to arrest
the wounded.
R H has a brand-new M-16
with a shortened barrel and a scope and flashlight in
his living room, in case the Badr Brigade comes for
him. Like nearly all his neighbors in Aadhamiya, R H
fears the Shi'ites and views them with
condescension. "Most Shi'ites are simple-minded," he says to justify why
this sect, which represents more than 60 percent of Iraq's
Arabs, should not be allowed to determine the shape of the
new government. "I will kill myself if they rule," he
cries out. He blames the looting that followed the fall
of Baghdad on its Shi'ite residents, whom he claims
also stole 27 mosques in Baghdad from the Sunnis and
warns that there are 5 million Iranians (Shi'ites) who
have sneaked into Iraq and are seeking citizenship. R H and his
friends fear that the Shi'ite majority "want to make us
like Iran". To demonstrate that "some of his best
friends are Shi'ite", R H adduces Mohammed, a servant in
his house. A young man in his 20s who serves tea to
guests, Mohammed agrees that the Shi'ite leadership is
extreme, explaining that when he and his family visited
the Shi'ite shrine city of Najaf for a wedding, they
found that clerics had banned music and were threatening
the lives of musicians. "You see," says R H, "they are
all gangs and the people in Najaf feel under siege."
R H is very pleased with US administrator L Paul
Bremer's announcement that Iraq will not have an Islamic
constitution, a verdict that enraged Shi'ite leaders.
"Religion is between you and God," he explains, voicing
his hope that Iraq will become a secular monarchy.
Although R H respects US-appointed Iraqi Governing
Council (IGC) members Ibrahim Jafaari, a Shi'ite
technocrat from the Dawa Shi'ite party, and Adnan
Pachachi, the septuagenarian former foreign minister, he
believes the rest of the IGC members "came to Iraq
temporarily, to make money and leave. Our only hope lies
in a monarchy." But he rejects Sherif Ali, the heir to
the throne, as "naive", preferring instead Prince Hassan of
Jordan, brother to the late King Hussein and a onetime
favorite of neo-conservatives in Washington. "King
Hussein saved Hassan for Iraq," he says. "The Shi'ites
are all armed and the Sunnis are all armed," he warns,
fearing a civil war such as was seen in Lebanon.
R H's immediate neighbors are the residents of
Aadhamiya's one Shi'ite neighborhood, Haybat Khatun
Street. "They hate us and we hate them," he says. Four
nights earlier, a Husainiya, or place  where Shi'ites mourn the
martyrdom of Husain, had been attacked in his
neighborhood. "It was not the time or place to build the
Husainiya," he says, "it was a provocation," adding that
"it is not a big deal, or organized operation, it was
just some kid." R H tries to dissuade his guests from
asking the Shi'ites down the street for their side of
the story, warning that they will "all lie and tell
stories, but do not trust them".
Across from R
H's house, Muntasad Abdul Jabar, 22, stands in his
grocery store. A Shi'ite himself, he confirms that the
Husainiya was attacked, pointing to it just down the
road, but adds: "We Shi'ites and Sunnis like each other
and help each other. Sunnis helped us build the
Husainiya." A hundred meters down the street from where
R H lives and Muntasad works, black flags for Husain
decorate the nearly finished Husainiya and mark the
start of a Muntasad month of mourning for him. As
neighbors watch, workers pour concrete hurriedly to
finish in time for the ceremonies. Juwad Hassan Juwad,
the 31-year-old in charge of the construction, explains
that in 1972 the street's residents asked the government
for permission to build a mosque or Husainiya, but it
was refused. Somebody from among the large group
congregating runs to a nearby house to bring the
original 1972 document officially rejecting their
request. "This is a Sunni city and they did not allow
it," Juwad says, adding that they asked several times in
the following decades but were repeatedly refused, while
permission was granted to build Sunni mosques.
Last May, a
local patron, Hamid Alwan al-Wajar, decided it was time
finally to build the Husainiya and to name it after his
father, Wakil Akram Hamid al-Wajar, who first tried to
initiate the project. The residents of the street, all
followers of the moderate Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani,
joined together to build the Husainiya, which is not
affiliated with any party. Several nights before it was
due to be completed, at 10:40pm, a bomb composed of
gasoline, dynamite and a timing device went off inside
the Husainiya. It was clear that the attacker had
intended to destroy a main column and cause the
structure to collapse, but damage was negligible. Unlike
many such attacks in Iraq, it was unprofessional,
leaving just a few scars in the column and blackening
the surrounding area.
The Shi'ite
residents defend their Sunni neighbors, describing a
Sunni delegation from Aadhamiya, including a
representative of Sheikh Muayad of the Abu Hanifa
mosque, who came the next day to condemn the attack.
Heads shake vehemently in the street of Haybat Khatun
when queried about a civil war occurring between
Shi'ites and Sunnis. They blame the attack on
"foreigners who want to divide us and cause retaliatory
attacks between Sunnis and Shi'ites". They do not fear
practicing their traditions in a staunch Sunni district.
One man asks rhetorically: "We weren't afraid under
Saddam, so should we be afraid now?"
(Copyright
2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication
policies.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
