BAGHDAD - As befits these benighted
times, most of my thoughts concerning the nation of
Iraq, where I currently reside, tend to focus on
failure, incompetence, deception and disappointment. But
while such a focus is unavoidable, it is nonetheless
necessary at times
for all human beings, irrespective of their
condition or circumstance, to find something to provide
relief in trying times. One cannot live in blackness
forever.
To that end, and at considerable risk
to myself, I decide to take my first jog. The danger
lies not so much in the run itself but where you take
it, though normally a man running around anywhere in
Baghdad would attract a fair amount of attention (unless
of course he were being chased by a larger man, or at
least a man with a larger weapon, in which case it might
be regarded as commonplace).
My run will be
inside the exclusive Green Zone, administered entirely
according to US customs and standards by the good men
and women of Kellogg, Brown & Root, with the
invaluable support of the US military. In any event, I
am not the only jogger in the Green Zone; today three
women pass me on my run wearing only sports bras, Lycra
shorts, Walkmans and sneakers. This takes place nowhere
else in Iraq, I assure you.
But danger there is,
nonetheless.
Outside the Green Zone, a US
citizen who is an ethnic-Iraqi Arabic speaker, like
myself, can blend in readily and avoid being targeted,
to some degree at least. Within these castle walls,
safety generally reigns, as Iraqis generally cannot gain
entrance, and even Americans cannot enter with their
cars unless they have a badge, which I am fortunate to
have, given my status as a United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) contractor.
It
is the transition between zones Green and Red that is
troublesome. (It was in this transition zone that a
suicide bomber blew up Izzedin Salim, head of the Iraqi
Governing Council, or IGC, on May 17.)
Once I
near the walls, it is perfectly clear where I am headed,
and those small, tell-tale signs that make it obvious
that I have not been a resident of this country for the
past several decades suddenly become noticeable to all.
People you pass note that you wear a seat-belt, that you
have a goatee, the expression on your face, the cut of
your suit, the style of your hair - and the indifferent
glances of only two kilometers back change to hostile
glares. It is remarkable - in the space of five minutes
I have been transformed from an ordinary Iraqi into the
face of the enemy.
It was not always thus. There
was nothing close to this level of hostility when I
arrived last summer. To be sure, there was danger, and
those perceived to be working with the US were always
targeted by some, but there was a time when this really
was limited to former Saddamists and foreign fighters,
so that entry to the Green Zone was considerably less
tense, notwithstanding the occasional car bomb.
It is very different now. The general population
may not be in broad uprising, but it is fairly obvious
that their sympathy does not lie with those who enter
the Green Zone. I have become accustomed to this.
However, while I have watched the hostility grow
into resentment, disgust and anger, it is not rebellion
- that seems unlikely in the near future. I tend to
think that with every US blunder, angry and frustrated
Iraqis stare into the abyss of what life might be like
if young firebrands such as Shi'ite cleric Muqtada
al-Sadr or al-Qaeda-linked Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, most
recently identified in the videotaped beheading of a US
citizen, have their way. So they pull back from taking
any drastic steps. And it will likely remain thus.
But neither will the anger and disgust dissipate
quickly - anyone approaching the Green Zone can tell you
that.
In any event, once safely inside, I find
an appropriate place to park my car. Then I go for my
run.
I begin at the convention center, just
across from the Rasheed Hotel. The Rasheed was perhaps
the only decent hotel in Baghdad at the time the former
regime fell, Baghdad's other five-star hotels having
long been degraded through the sinister combination of
Saddam Hussein's criminal negligence toward anything not
built for or used by him, and the debilitating sanctions
of the United Nations.
The Rasheed's most famous
ornament, a mosaic of the first president Bush - George
H W - in the central lobby, was removed by the US forces
soon after their arrival. The hotel is now the domain of
the occupation forces and is not open to the public. It
is also the target of frequent mortar attacks, as it
lies dangerously near the entrance to the Green Zone. My
badge gets me inside, and at times I do venture in for a
cigar or the pirated digital video discs (DVDs) sold in
the lobby, but for the most part I avoid the place. It
is too stark a reminder of the most negative aspects of
the occupation. I have nothing against all the US
soldiers being compelled to fight this war, and my
greatest sympathies extend to them, but I still don't
feel comfortable watching armed and jackbooted
20-year-olds from the backwoods of the United States
tracking dirt around Baghdad's finest hotel.
My
run continues deeper into the Green Zone, toward where
the IGC meets. It is the group of 25 Iraqis picked by
the US to advise on matters concerning the United
States' administration of their nation. By way of fair
disclosure, I should note that I have recently begun
sitting on one of the committees created by the IGC,
reviewing and commenting on the types of legislation
sought by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).
Nevertheless, to say that the population of Iraq, which
was by and large patiently supportive of the IGC at one
time, has been greatly disappointed by its performance
would be a massive understatement. It is widely
considered by Iraqis and CPA officials alike to be
corrupt, inefficient and out of touch with those in the
street. The problem is not generally with the members
themselves. The Americans by and large picked - with
certain widely known exceptions - respected figures, and
their work seems well intentioned. Nevertheless, as an
institution, the IGC has been one of the most profound
and significant failures of the occupation.
Its
most recent fiasco, the selection of a new national
flag, is paradigmatic of some of the problems in the
eyes of the general population. The reds, greens and
blacks that dominate every Arab flag are absent, as are
the typical broad stripes, prominent stars and bold
contrasts. Instead we have a white background, two blue
stripes, a small yellow stripe and a big blue crescent
in the middle of the flag. I think the idea was to
signify a dramatic break with a dark past, but the fact
that the flag is an esthetic monstrosity and resembles
no flag in the region save, vaguely, the flag of Israel
is in the end what matters, not the intentions of the
individual IGC members. That the council actually
believed something like this would gain currency among
Iraq's population perhaps signifies how out of touch it
can be.
In any event, I have not seen the new
flag flying anywhere since it was announced. I have, on
the other hand, seen a number of old Iraqi flags
fluttering about, many more than before, an act of
defiance, one supposes, against the US occupiers and
their hand-picked advisers. Despite my connections to
both the IGC and the US government, I am actually
relieved by this; there was a time months ago that
defiance took the form of a picture of Iraq's heinous
dictator. The flag is a considerable improvement.
The IGC building is a bit off the road, it is
guarded by former Gurkhas, and access is strictly
limited. As I jog by, I look inside and see nobody
there. The Gurkhas eye me suspiciously and I keep
running.
I turn a corner and come to Celebration
Square. The square is meant to celebrate Saddam's
"victory" over Iran in what he termed the second
Qadissiya war (the first Qadissiya war being the
original Arab victory over the Sassanian Empire of
Persia that led to the Islamicization of modern-day
Iran). The second war was a victory because Iraq
regained exclusive control of the river that flows
between it and Iran, at a cost of nine years spanning
the 1980s and a million lives.
As perhaps the
single best example of exactly what a million lives
meant to Saddam, he later adjusted the border by treaty
with Iran in an attempt to get his former enemy's
support for his invasion of Kuwait. The river was shared
between the two nations, precisely as it had been before
their war: nine years of unfathomable destruction for
the right to control a waterway exclusively - for nine
months.
Celebration Square is dominated by two
major monuments, one architecturally impressive and the
other grotesque in the extreme. I pass the impressive
one and proceed to the grotesque, a parade ground of
reverence to violence, murder and mayhem.
It is
a large rectangular paved square with the dimensions of
an oversized soccer field. On each side a set of two
arms, cast from the arms of the dictator himself, are
thrust from below the earth, each holding a sword aloft
so that the swords are crossed. One set of crossed
swords constitutes the entrance and the other the exit.
Most repulsive of all, the ground out of which the arms
rise is surrounded by the actual helmets of dead Iranian
soldiers who fought in the war. Bullet holes and other
vestiges of violence appear on many of the helmets,
Saddam's arms crushing the skulls of Iranian boys.
I saw this once before, in 1990, after the war
with Iran and before Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, when
Iraqis were given a brief respite before being thrust
back into another conflict, this time with a much more
powerful enemy (the United States). It made me sick
then, and makes me angry now. A well-known Iraqi
dissident, Kanan Makiya, says the monument should stay
as a symbol of Iraq's darkest era. I cannot agree. I
cannot bear to look at the upraised arms of the man who
single-handedly destroyed a nation of such vast
potential, murdered millions and stole billions.
Unable to tear down the monument itself at that
moment, I spit in its general direction and continue on
around the parade grounds to the other end. Along the
way I pass the building where the Revolutionary Command
Council (RCC) once sat. The RCC was, in theory,
responsible for legislative and executive authority in
Iraq in the Saddam era, though in fact Saddam alone
ruled, and the RCC was just one of his many tools. In
theory, the judiciary was an independent branch of
government, but I am aware of only one occasion in which
a judge (Judge Dara Nor al-Din, who now sits on the IGC)
ruled an RCC decree unconstitutional, and he spent two
years in prison for his trouble.
The RCC
building is going to become the locus of the Special
Tribunal that will try members of the former regime, a
fitting irony indeed given that the larger criminals
were all at one time or another RCC members.
I
finally come to the other end of the parade-ground
monument and stand directly under the two swords
overhead. Two Iraqi policemen eye me suspiciously, until
I show them my US badge, then they wave and sit down
again. An old Iraqi flag flies in front of where they
sit, almost midpoint between the swords and slightly
behind them. Even in the Green Zone, it seems, the new
flag cannot be flown. I stand for a moment, and turn
back. I have had enough of the swords, and the run has
already taken almost three-quarters of an hour. I need
to get back.
On the return, I pass by the
monument for which I have considerably more respect, the
Tomb of the Unknown Martyr, identical in concept to
America's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, though the name
varies slightly in keeping with the more hyperbolic
nature of the Arabic language. The tomb itself is fenced
off, and two Iraqi policemen guard the entrance. I hide
my Iraqiness by refraining from Arabic, muttering
something in English and flashing my US badge, and keep
running. In Hong Kong, where I am from, this sort of
thing never bothered me, but there is something
fundamentally wrong with receiving better treatment when
you can show you are not a citizen of the country.
The Tomb of the Unknown Martyr is a solid
circular upward-sloping structure with a hole at the
summit; the tomb lies below. I take to the side of it
and run up, by now fairly exhausted from the heat and
exertion and determined to make this the end (I can walk
back to the car). Breathless at the top, I take a moment
to look. The tomb is just ahead of me, with flowers laid
by its side. Nobody is supposed to be here, access is
very limited, so it's either the police or the cleaning
staff who have decorated the grave. This is a proud
people, proud of their nation, their heritage, and their
religion. Anyone who seeks to rule here should take
heed. Even those who work with the Americans do not
forget their martyrs.
In front of the tomb is a
nonsense quote, no doubt by Saddam, though his name has
been scratched out, about how the mothers and fathers of
the unknown dead can take comfort here where the unknown
martyr lies. Empty words indeed, and emptier still when
one considers the pathetically small amount of
compensation Saddam offered to those whose loved ones
died in war. In the West, Saddam's payments of US$25,000
to each Palestinian suicide bomber are prima
facie evidence of his support of terrorism, and
indeed they are, but to Iraqis, they are first and
foremost a criminal diversion of resources. The number
of families struggling to survive because of the loss of
a breadwinner in one of Saddam's many wars is
staggering. This, to Iraqis, is where the money should
be directed, not to a war in another land.
When
I finish the run I look out on the city of Baghdad. The
River Tigris flows nearby, the Palestine Hotel stands by
its banks, the suspension bridge over the river further
downstream. Famous mosques dot the landscape, and they
have just begun a call to prayer. Gardens of palm trees
are visible near the horizon. Sometimes, at times like
this, despite the war, the violence, the hopelessness
and the occupation, I never want to leave. May Baghdad
live forever.
It is time to go. I walk back to
the car. The T-shirt, shorts and sneakers slip off, and
on come the cotton shirt, dress trousers and polished
shoes worn by Iraqis. While I normally prefer not to
change into clothes like this after a run and before a
shower, it cannot be helped in this case. There are few
things more dangerous than to drive around Baghdad in
obviously American clothing. I comb my hair, take a
drink of water, and drive out of the Green Zone.
Haider Hamoudi is an Iraqi-American
lawyer now working on a US government-funded
legal-education project in Iraq.
(Used with
permission of The Standard, Hong Kong.)
for all human beings, irrespective of their
condition or circumstance, to find something to provide
relief in trying times. One cannot live in blackness
forever. 
