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CounterPunch
December
5, 2002
Time for an
Intellectual Intifada
by JAN OBERG
The demonising of the enemy before the war is
intense. The Swedish media, for instance, take for granted that
a war against Iraq will take place. No alternatives to war are
mentioned. Iraq has become a synonym for Saddam Hussein in the
Swedish media, leaving 23 million human beings in oblivion. Iraq
as a society and culture, from now on, belongs to the zone of
silence.
It is above all very important that not
even the tiniest element of humanness affects our perception
of the country. Iraqis must not be pictured as human beings,
mothers, fathers, children with hopes and fears, poverty or wealth.
We must only imagine Saddam and his palaces that we will pulverize
in a technological inferno. None of the potential consequences
of a full-fledged war are being discussed. Millions of refugees;
tens of thousands of dead and injured (both Iraqis and Americans,
especially if chemical weapons are used); environmental disaster;
a sky rocketing price of oil; possible spreading of the conflict
to Israel-Palestine; the need for hundreds of billions of dollars
for reconstruction that could take ten or even twenty years;
eventual partition of Iraq in three; war in Turkey against the
Kurds; and so on. Can anyone guarantee that none of that will
happen?
No, we are supposed to accept the war
because it will bring democracy, peace, stability, a market economy
and gender equity. But then not a word about the possibility
that it is all about taking control of Iraq's oil, not to mention
the oil of Saudi Arabia, who is no longer a reliable ally.
Thanks to TFF's e-mail services, all
the relevant Swedish media know that our team is one of the few
in the Nordic region to have been there. But not a single one
of them thought that it would be interesting to do an interview.
TFF is against the war, and has provided propositions for a non-violent
resolution of the conflict, in other words, the "wrong"
point of view. Instead, journalists from various media sources
(including "Dagens Eko") call us up because they want
to know how to travel there and get a visa, which hotel to stay
in and how dangerous it is. Unfortunately, we are not a travel
agency.
Bush wants to make us think that all
is black in Iraq and that all is white in the United States,
that it is the bad guys threatening the good guys. Most of the
people who believe that do not have the intellectual capacity
to see more than a two-fold matrix when what we need is a four-fold
matrix: there are good things and bad things in Iraq just like
there are good things and bad things in the United States and
in the West.
According to that logic, because they
are the evil ones, all that we do is by definition good. That
way, we are free to impose several unilateral demands on Iraq
(the United States will not promise anything in return), and
if Iraq does not comply it has made its own choice to be bombed.
So the West has no responsibility whatsoever for what it does
or how it chooses to influence and answer to Iraq's politics.
The Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh
is getting dangerously close to that war-legitimising logic in
a recent TT telegram following her meeting with Iraq's Foreign
Minister at the UN: "Iraq must give access to all facilities,
and I insist to all facilities. I pointed out that the responsibility
is now in the Iraqi camp - - it is up to them to decide if military
actions will be taken or not." Literally, this means that
the United States and Sweden are thereby no longer responsible
for their own actions. Even if we unilaterally dictate the conditions,
Saddam alone is responsible for our actions.
This is obviously philosophical nonsense
and it is totally immoral. Such reasoning could only be plausible
if there were a pre-established mutual agreement about the rules
of the game. It is absurd to claim that the US is not responsible
for the decision to bomb or not. It has the freedom to choose
to do something other than war. To cling to such views is to
distance oneself from one's moral responsibility, not to mention
eventually closing the borders to the traumatised Iraqis who
will begin to come knocking on our doors after the war.
In addition to the actual substance of
the conflict we have a gigantic communication problem with prejudice,
stereotypes and huge differences in the meaning of words. Above
all, we have a Christian and a Muslim political fundamentalism
that match one another perfectly.
Ofra Begio's book "Saddam's Word;
Political Discourse in Iraq" is an extremely useful tool
for those who want to understand the influence of culture and
language on this conflict. Among many other things, what I have
learned from Begio is that the Arabic language, through its politeness,
ceremony, its talking around the core of the matter, and its
many repetitions with tiny differences is very suitable for both
diplomatic and manipulative purposes. Further, the line between
rhetoric and action is rather fuzzy in the Arabic language. Rhetoric
can be so powerful that, when repeated many times and with sufficient
energy, a threat of war can replace a real war. It has a collective
self-absorbing function. Arabic, spoken by Saddam, is full of
code words and references to concrete past events that lead individuals
to interpret their own situation in a historical context.
Let us for example take the word "intifada",
which became known during the first intifada in Palestine in
1987. An Arabic dictionary from the 15th Century defines the
word as "Give me a stone so that I can save my soul with
it." The word describes a situation in which one runs from
an oppressor and tries to keep him at distance by throwing stones.
It became a core concept in the Iraqi Baath party ideology during
the 1960's. Little by little, the meaning of the word changed
to "uprising," to "make a revolution," to
"lead Iraq towards unity, socialism and freedom." The
word intifada was also used in the context of the invasion of
Kuwait. It was argued that the invasion was in support of the
Kuwaiti intifada against the corrupted Sabah family, Kuwait's
sovereign dynasty.
Another example is the concept of "thawra."
It is associated with "revolutionism" but has become
synonym with the highest, almost holy order in society. The word
can mean war or fight, but it can also mean to get the cows moving
and drinking water. Other meanings of that word are "a fight
against a foreign occupying power" or "a coup against
one's own regime if it is corrupted." When the Iraqi people
have had enough of war, revolutions, coups and political murders
the political content of the concept of thawra was oriented towards
"the highest good,"towards order and stability rather
than change.
In Arabic, words have a 'magical' and
emotional connotation that we do not really understand in the
West. There is nothing really magical about what comes out of
the mouth of our politicians. Arabic is an ocean of meanings,
associations and images. It is said about the Arabs that they
like words for their own sake, for the sake of poetry, sound
and eloquence. One can listen to people talk for hours without
even saying anything, it sounds so beautiful, just like music.
From what I understand, where we draw a sharp line between abstractions,
description of reality and fantasy, Arab countries do not make
such clear distinctions.
Such a language is perfectly shaped for
manipulation. Whoever is in power can decide that a certain word
will now have a new nuance and represent something that is not
clearly understood by all. For example, the word "yellow"
can appear harmless but it was used politically in reference
to the Mongol invasion 800 years ago and about Iran during the
war. Words are thus not only symbolic but they are also charged
emotionally: they enhance the mobilisation of strong positive
or negative feelings of belonging against "the others."
What we can be sure of is that what the
Iraqis are saying in this ongoing pie throwing contest with the
West is a lot more sophisticated than it seems to be in the English
translation. We should not believe that all the rhetoric and
statements about war and combat are in fact meant as concrete
war declarations: they can downright replace them. By saying
this or that and repeating it often enough, the promised actions
do not always have to be actually taken. It is the case for example
with all the speeches on Arab unity that concludes all Arab States
meetings.
One may hope that the war rhetoric of
the United States and Iraq will lead to similar results. But
I fear that we understand each other's culture so little that
we are on the course of collision. Perhaps what we need is an
intellectual and moral intifada in the entire Western world to
stop the war against Iraq!
Jan Oberg
is director of Transnational
Foundation for Peace and Future Research based in Lund, Sweden.
Translation from Swedish by Jean-Francois
Drolet.
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