Masghouf and Other Iraqi War Stories-I

Follow us:WhatsappFacebookTwitterTelegram.cls-1{fill:#4d4d4d;}.cls-2{fill:#fff;}Google NewsFrom Australia to Hollywood thousands protested the Iraq War's third anniversary. In India there wasn't even a whimper. In the mainstream media there were no reflective Op Eds, no outrage, no questions being asked. And let's forget the domain of TV news channels. We were just not interested enough. So often we hear eulogies about the 21st century being an Indian century. Newspaper headlines and byte gatherers all scream that the engines of the world economy are moving towards India and China. Yet, India and its mass media just do not have an opinion on Iraq.

The saddest part, though, is sense of loss both of history and time. Suddenly, our national interests have conspired to erase the past, beginning with the beginning, our civilization links. We have all studied in school history textbooks how the civilization that settled on the banks of the Indus exchanged notes with those on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. India army officers led successful World War II battles and for years trained the Iraqi armed forces. The fathers of two my colleagues have had stints in Iraq-one commanded the 10 Baluch regiment in the Second World War and the other was a flying instructor in the early 1980s, a decade before the first Gulf War.

On March 18 when the United States of America began its shock and awe bombing campaign, it was brutal, terrifying, spectacular and arrogant. It was not different from the carpet-bombing inflicted on Iraq during the first Gulf War. It was not different from the scorched earth bombing in Vietnam where Napalm bombs would burn everything as it burst-earth, grass, plant, trees, animals and humans. Two days before March 18, 2003 we were forced out of the De-Militarised Zone (DMZ), a 2km buffer zone between Iraq and Kuwait, set up after the first Gulf War. Luckily for us the UN troops deployed along the DMZ were led by an Indian officer, Brigadier US Klair and the international contingent had five other Indian officers. My cameraman, Vimal, (who is with TV18 now) and I had unfettered access to the DMZ. We would clamber up the watch towers and look into Iraq. It is one of the most fascinating things that I have done as a journalist.

Saeed Naqvi had pre-positioned Vimal and me in Kuwait on March 2, 2003 with just a one-line instruction: "Get into Iraq the moment the American invasion begins." We were not embedded journalists and in any case the idea of reporting the war through American eyes was quite reprehensible. We wanted to be independent narrators of what we saw. So how could be compromise our cognition, our understanding, our sights with those of the sanitized, clinical, 'us against them' vision of the Americans?

A week before the US invasion of Iraq a sardarji working as a public relations officer for the United Nations Iraq-Kuwait Observation Mission said that they had received orders from the UN Secretary General to vacate the DMZ. We were told that the War was just a cruise missile strike away. On March 18 when the cruise missiles wanting to knock Saddam dead while he was having dinner in a plush Baghdad neighbourhood.

A day later US President George W. Bush stated in an address to the American people:

"My fellow citizens, at this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger."

'Disarm': Disarm Iraq? No nukes were found, no chemical bombs, no biological weapons. What was disarmed was Iraqi pride, Iraqi nationhood, its heritage, its museums and its future.

'Free its People': For the Americans spreading democracy equals toppling Saddam Hussein. How can the oldest democracy in the world reduce its own proud democratic heritage to such farce? The people of Iraq are not free. They were captives of an obsessive dictator who was pathologically inclined to murder the feeblest of the dissenters. Nobody survived who went against him. Today they are captives of the weight of their own insecurities, expectations and aspirations. Today they are captives because they have no choice but to either be in the Sunni or Shia or Kurd camp. Today they are captives of their ethnicities and their identities. Today they are captive of their fears, of the suicide attacks, of the Swarming Americans, of Abu Gharib, of the guns they hold, of the unintended and sometimes intended bullets that buzz around when they take their family out to the market.

Along with thousands of lives the US invasion of Iraq has also robbed the country of its nationhood. That was over on March 18, 2003. There is no Iraqi nationhood. There are Kurds, Shias and Sunnis. There are various Shia and Sunni camps, each having foreign godfathers liberal with guns and ammunition. Then there are extra-territorial, super sovereigns, the Americans, who write the script and control the Iraqi Matrix. Finally, the free floating gun slingers, the foreign jehadists who fight without a cause, the Al Qaeda gang of murderers, all of them contributed to the disintegration of the Iraqi Nationhood.

'Defend the World From Grave Danger': This is a cult phrase. A classic. This is my favourite reductionist reason for waging war against another country. In fact 'Grave Danger' is looming over our lives. America now wants to go to war against Iran. It has reduced Afghanistan to a 10 km radius around Hamid Karzai Presidential mansion. It has destroyed almost every world heritage sites in Iraq.

India, once the leader of developing nations, a believer in an independent foreign policy, a non-aligned nation now in the 21st century has traveled the full spectrum to become America's natural ally. In the process, the country, its people and strangely its media lost its voice on Iraq. I covered the American Invasion of Iraq for Third Eye TV (contracted by Doordarshan) and a lot of Iraq stories will figure in my blog in the context of the War's Third Anniversary. But for now let me sign off with this poem of an Iraqi poet sent to me by a friend.




In my spare time


During my long, boring hours of spare time
I sit to play with the earth's sphere.
I establish countries without police or parties
and I scrap others that no longer attract consumers.
I run roaring rivers through barren deserts
and I create continents and oceans
that I save for the future just in case.

I draw a new colored map of the nations:
I roll Germany to the Pacific Ocean teeming with whales
and I let the poor refugees
sail pirates' ships to her coasts
in the fog
dreaming of the promised garden in Bavaria.
I switch England with Afghanistan
so that its youth can smoke hashish for free
provided courtesy of Her Majesty's government.
I smuggle Kuwait from its fenced and mined borders
to Comoro, the islands
of the moon in its eclipse,
keeping the oil fields in tact, of course.
At the same time I transport Baghdad
in the midst of loud drumming
to the islands of Tahiti.
I let Saudi Arabic crouch in its eternal desert
to perserve the purity of her thoroughbred camels.
This is before I surrender America
back to the Indians
just to give history
the justice it has long lacked.

I know that changing the world is not easy
but it remains necessary nonetheless.
Fadhil al-Azzawi (Iraqi poet)
© Translation: Khaled Mattawa

first published:March 21, 2006, 17:22 ISTlast updated:March 21, 2006, 17:22 IST
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