Frequently asked questions about Iraq
Dilip Hiro *
1/ Saddam is an aggressor. He has invaded two neighboring countries,
Iran and Kuwait.
A: Yes. When Saddam attacked and occupied Kuwait in 1990, the US declared
him an aggressor, rallied the UN Security Council, led a military Coalition
against Iraq, and expelled the Iraqi from the Emirate. In contrast, when he
invaded Iran in September 1980, Washington declared itself neutral in the war.
At the UN Security Council, putting the aggressor and its victim at a par, it
supported a resolution which called for a ceasefire. Actually, using back
channels, the administration of US President Jimmy Carter had encouraged Saddam
to attack Iran, whose military plans were known to the pro-American rulers of
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait weeks before the invasion. See Chapter 3, pg. 29. For
further details, see Dilip Hiro, The Longest War: The Iran-Iraq Military
Conflict (1991), pp. 71-72.
2/ Saddam is once again threatening his neighboring countries.
A: Which ones? As it is, in early September 2002 the Arab League”s
foreign ministers rejected “the threat of aggression on Arab nations, in
particular Iraq”, and reaffirmed “that these threats to the security and safety
of any Arab country are considered a threat to Arab national security”. Later
when the George W. Bush administration turned to the UN in its conflict with
Baghdad, Iraq listened to the advice of Arab capitals and accepted the unconditional
return of UN inspectors, thereby keeping intact the Arab League support. Unlike
in 1990, this time Iraq has not occupied a fellow Arab state. See further,
Dilip Hiro, “Iraq woos its neighbors” at www.thenation.com/August 19 2002/.
3/ Saddam gassed his own people.
A: US officials are evidently referring to the Iraqi military”s use of
chemical weapons in the Iraqi Kurdistan town of Halabja in March 1988 during
the Iran-Iraq War, and then in the area controlled by the Teheran-backed
Kurdish insurgents after the cease-fire in August. Since Baghdad”s deployment
of chemical arms in war as well as peace was known at the time, the question
is: What did the US government do about it then? Nothing. Worse, so strong was
the hold of the pro-Iraq lobby on the Republican administration of President
Ronald Reagan, it succeeded in getting the White House to frustrate the
Senate”s attempt to penalize Baghdad for violating the Geneva Protocol on
Chemical Weapons, which it had signed. This led Saddam to believe that
Washington was firmly on his side - a conclusion that paved the way for his
invasion of Kuwait and the 1991 Gulf War.
During the five years following October 1983, Iraq used 100,000 chemical
munitions. From the initial use of such agents in extremis to repel Iranian
offensives, the Iraqis went on to deploy them extensively as a vital element of
their assaults in the spring and summer of 1988 to retake lost territories. At
the time, even as the US government had knowledge of these attacks, it provided
intelligence and planning assistance to the Iraqi army, according to an August
18 report by Patrick Tyler in the New York Times.
Contrary to its proclamations of neutrality in the war, Washington had
all along been pro-Iraq. This tilt became an embrace after the re-election of
Reagan as president in November 1984, when Iraq and America re-established
diplomatic ties. From mid-1986, assisted by the Pentagon, which secretly
seconded its Air Force officers to work with their Iraqi counterparts, Iraq
improved its accuracy in targeting, hitting Iran”s bridges, factories and power
plants relentlessly, and extending its air strikes to the Iranian oil terminals
in the Lower Gulf.
It was against this backdrop that Iraq began striking Tehran with its
upgraded Scud ground-to-ground missiles in late February 1988. To recapture
Halabja, a town of 70,000 about fifteen miles from the border, from Iran and
its Kurdish allies, who had seized it in March, the Iraqi Air Force attacked it
with poison gas bombs, killing 3,200 to 5,000 civilians. The images of men,
women and children frozen in instant death, relayed by the Iranian media,
shocked the world. Yet no condemnation came from Washington.
It was only when, following the truce with Tehran on August 20, Saddam
made extensive use of chemical agents to retake 4,000 square miles controlled
by the Kurdish rebels that the Security Council decided to send a team to
determine if Iraq had deployed chemical arms. Baghdad refused to cooperate.
But instead of pressing Baghdad to reverse its stance, or face an
immediate ban on the sale of US military equipment and advanced technology to
Iraq by the revival of the Senate”s bill, US Secretary of State George Shultz
chose merely to say that interviews with the Kurdish refugees in Turkey, and “other
sources” (which remained obscure), pointed toward Baghdad”s using chemical
weapons. These two elements did not add up to “conclusive” proof. Such was the
verdict of Shultz”s British counterpart, Sir Geoffrey Howe. “If conclusive
evidence is obtained, then punitive measures against Iraq have not been ruled
out,” he said. But as neither he nor Shultz is known to have made a further
attempt to get at the truth, Baghdad went unpunished. See further, Dilip Hiro,
“Iraq and Poison Gas” at www.thenation.com/Special Report/August 28 2002/.
4/ Saddam is a terrorist.
A: According to the single page, headlined “Support for International
Terrorism”, in the White House”s 20-page document, “A Decade of Deception and
Defiance”, released on 12 September 2002, the last terrorist act sponsored by
Iraq was a failed attempt to assassinate former US president, George Bush in
April 1993 during his visit to Kuwait. See further Chapter 4, pp. 63-64.
5/ Saddam is harboring Al Qaida.
A: The White House”s document, “A Decade of Deception and Defiance”,
published on 12 September 2002, makes no reference either to Al Qaida or to an
alleged meeting between Muhammad Atta, the hijacker involved in 9/11, and Ahmad
Ani, an Iraqi intelligence official posted in Prague. See further Chapter 9,
pg. 214
6/ Saddm is funding Palestinian suicide bombers.
A: Iraq is giving $25,000 each to the families of the Palestinian
suicide bombers. After the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada against the
Israeli occupation in September 2000, the Palestinian Authority handed over a
$2,000 check to the family of the Palestinian killed in the uprising to
compensate it for the loss. Following this, the Arab Liberation Front, a
pro-Iraq Palestinian faction, started giving a $10,000 check to the family of
the latest Palestinian “martyr”. Later, when Palestinian militants resorted to
suicide bombings, the Front raised the compensation by $15,000. Of some 1,500
Palestinians killed during the first two years of the intifada, only 70 were
suicide bombers. In other words, Saddam had not singled out Palestinian suicide
bombers. See further, Chapter 9, pp. 190-191.
7/ Saddam has violated human rights grossly.
A: Saddam has been violating human rights ever since he became vice
president of Iraq in 1975. But that did not deter the US from assisting his
regime financially, militarily, and intelligence-wise during the 1980-88
Iran-Iraq War and later. China has been violating human rights in Tibet since
1959. More recently it has been persecuting the followers of Falon Gong, a religious
movement, on a massive scale. Yet Washington eased China”s entry into the World
Trade Organization in 2001. See further, Chapter 9, pg. 191
8/ Saddam is in breach of several UN Security Council resolutions.
A: Every time Iraq breached a UN Security Council resolution, the
Council took action against it. To say that the Council was not tough enough in
its responses, as British Prime Minister Tony Blair now does, is churlish. He
and his US counterpart never mention the numerous times they succeeded in
getting their way at the Council. For details of Security Council responses,
see Chapter 6, pp. 100, pp.112 , pp. 116-117. For greater detail, look up the
United Nations Security Council (Numbered) Resolutions in the Index of Dilip
Hiro”s book Neighbors, Not Friends: Iraq and Iran after the Gulf Wars
(2001).
9/ As Iraq has broken the UN Security Council cease-fire Resolution 687
(April 1991), the US is entitled to resume hostilities against it, and does not
require a separate Security Council resolution.
A: The UN Security Council, composed of five Permanent Members and 10
non-Permanent one, is a collective body. It is up to the Council to decide, by
the prescribed procedures, whether or not Baghdad had breached its Resolution
687, how serious a breach is, and how to penalize Iraq for it. No single member
has the unilateral right to draw its own conclusion - and simultaneously claim
that it is acting under the Security Council aegis. What a Permanent Member is
entitled to is the right to veto a resolution, passed by the required majority
of nine, it does not like. America can attack Iraq unilaterally by claiming
that it acted in self-defense, which is allowed according to the UN Charter
Article 51. But then it must prove that Iraq threatened it specifically. So far
Baghdad has done no such thing. For the US, to invade a sovereign country on
the assumption that it will threaten it some time in the future is
illegal under international law.
10/ Once the US has adopted the doctrine of pre-emption, its pre-emptive
strike on Iraq wil be amply justified.
A: The White House document “The National Security Strategy of the
United States”, issued on 18 September, shifts US military strategy away from containment
and deterrence to pre-emptive action against hostile states and terrorist
groups developing weapons of mass destruction. As a sovereign nation, the US is
entitled to devise its military strategy as it sees fit. But so long as it is a
member of the United Nation, it must abide by the UN Charter. There is no place
for a pre-emptive war in the Charter. It is up to the George W. Bush
administration to convince the remaining 189 members of the UN on this issue
and modify the Charter accordingly. Until then it must abide by the Charter.
11/ Those European states that refuse to back the US on the Iraqi issue
are not facing up to the danger posed by the alliance of the terrorist groups
with one or more of the tripartite Axis of Evil - Iraq, Iran and North Korea -
and are appeasers.
A: Following the bombings of the US embassies in East Africa, the Bill
Clinton administration appointed an advisory panel, called the Gilmore
Commission, to examine the possibility of a terrorist group acquiring WMD from
a rogue state. In its December 1999 report, the Commission concluded that the
rogue states would be averse to entrusting such weapons to a terrorist group
because of the unpredictability of the group”s behavior to the extent of
turning the weapon against its sponsor, and that a rogue state itself would be
unlikely to use WMD due to the prospect of shattering reprisals.
To dub the Europeans differing with Washington as “appeasers” - the term
applied to British Premier Neville Chamberlain in his dealings with Adolf
Hitler in the late 1930s - is wrong. Unlike Hitler, Saddam was not threatening
territorial expansion, having ciome to grief in the case of Kuwait.
Impoverished, de-industrialized Iraq in 2002 had little in common with the
militarist, industrialized Germany on the eve of World War II. Finally, no
politician in the international community was suggesting buying off Sadddam
with concessions.
12/ Saddam kicked out United Nations inspectors.
A: Wrong. Advised by Petrer Burleigh, the US ambassador to the UN, Richard
Butler, the executive chairman of Unscom, withdrew UN inspectors so that the
Pentagon could start its 100-hour blitzkrieg on Iraq, without even informing
other Security Council members. By so doing, Butler did an inadvertent favor to
Saddam. Earlier, in its tussles with Unscom, Iraq barred UN inspectors of US
nationality, and later expelled them. But it never expelled UN inspectors per
se. See further, Chapter 6, pp. 129-130.
13/ Saddam behaved in a way that led to the withdrawal of UN inspectors.
A: This statement made by Colin Powell is an interpretation of what
happened. A contrasting interpretation is that by late 1998, the Clinton
administration had concluded that the UN inspections had yielded as much as
they could, and that it was also time to make military use of all the
intelligence it had collected legitimately through satellite imaging and
briefings by Iraqi defectors, and illegitimately by planting its intelligence
operatives on the Unscom staff. See further, Chapter 6, pp.97, 101-102, 127,
124.
14/ Saddam”s deep hostility to Israel is a barrier to peace in the
Middle East.
A: At the Arab summit in Beirut in March 2002, Iraq endorsed the peace
plan advanced by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, which offered Israel total peace
for its total withdrawal from the Occupied Arab Territories, including, the
Arab East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights.
15/ Saddam possesses chemical and biological warfare agents, and will
soon acquire nuclear weapons
A: A day before Vice President Dick Cheney stated the above, Hans Blix,
head of the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, and an
expert on disarmament since 1971, said in a television interview that there was
no “clear cut” evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. What
the White House provided in its 20-page document, “A Decade of Deception and
Defiance”, published on 12 Septmber 2002, was described by experts as a
recycled mixture of dated and circumstantial evidence that Saddam may be hiding
the ingredients for WMD, and seeking to develop a nuclear capability and to
weaponize biological and chemical agents. On nuclear arms the White House
dossier repeated the earlier assessment made by the London-based International
Institute for Strategic Studies that Iraq could build a nuclear weapons but only
if it managed to acquire enriched uranium from an outside source. See further,
Dana Priest and Joby Warrick, “Document against Iraq gives little new data
about weapons”, in the Washington Post, 13 September 2002.
16/ The reason why the White House does not spell out the details of the
information it has on Saddam”s progress in producing nuclear arms is that it
does not want to compromise its highly classified intelligence source.
A: In that case, the least Washington can do is to share this highly
confidential information with its Nato allies. This is what it did in the case
of Al Qaida and Osama bin Laden after 9/11. And its Nato partners were
sufficiently convinced to declare that the attack on the US had originated from
abroad. This in turn led to the activation of Article 5 of the Nato Treaty and
allowed the Pentagon unlimited use of Nato air space etc.
17/ The suffering of the Iraqi people stems from the policies followed
by Saddam. So he should stop blaming America for their misery.
A: Most outsiders, including American policy-makers, thought that the
Iraqi people would blame Saddam for the misery that has visited them since his
invasion of Kuwait, and that they would see the connection between the cause
(Iraq”s aggression) and the effect (UN sanctions, international isolation.).
This has not happened. Why? “Iraqis don”t take individual responsibility for
the invasion of Kuwait,” explains “Hatem”, a London-based Iraqi professional
who does not belong to any opposition group and visits Baghdad periodically.
“The sanctions that flowed from that event have created a popular feeling of
"us" and "them", the West. When it comes to apportioning
blame, most Iraqis think at the first level, and don”t get into secondary and
tertiary reasons. They say that Saddam put them in harm”s way but did not cause
harm. That was caused by the West, led by America. "Saddam did not drop
bombs on us, did not cut off our electricity and phones and water supplies;
others did that", they say.” And sanctions had provided Saddam with a
perfect alibi for all the ills in the country. “If roads are pot-holed, if
phones don”t work, if there aren”t enough medicines in hospitals, Saddam blames
the sanctions. On the other hand, he takes full credit for any improvement,
however slight - like, say, flower-beds appearing in Saadoun Street in Baghdad
[a thoroughfare].” Sanctions have helped Saddam to further tighten his hold
over society in which rationing is at the core of his control mechanism. See
further, Dilip Hiro, Neighbors, Not Friends, pp. 290-91.
18/ By lifting sanctions we will let Saddam resume armament.
A: Paragraph 20 in Section C of the UN Security Council Resolution 687
states that once the conditions regarding disarming Iraq and paying
compensation to those who suffered due to Baghdad”s aggression against Kuwait
had been satisfied, then “the prohibitions against the import of commodities
and products originating in Iraq and the prohibitions against financial
transactions related thereto contained in Resolution 661 (1990) shall have no
further force or effect”. But Security Council Resolution 1284 (December 1999)
altered the lifting of sanctions to suspension for 120 days at a time. Not
surprisingly, Baghdad refused to accept 1284. Since it is the right of every UN
member to defend itself, the Security Council will find it hard to justify a
ban on Iraq equipping itself with conventional weapons and missiles with a
range of up to 95 miles. After all, Iraq is in a region where every other
country is well armed, with some of them being over-armed.
19/ Saddam only understands relentless pressure.
A: This runs counter to the age-old wisdom of using carrot and stick to
achieve one”s aim. Saddam did follow the pattern of cheat-and-retreat. He also
saw how the US began moving the goal posts, starting with US secretary of state
Warren Christopher”s New York Times article in April 1994. It became
obvious to him as well as to most dispassionate outsiders that no matter what
he did, the US would not allow the clean bill of health to be issued to the
point of vetoing such a resolution at the Security Council.
20/ The American military action, followed by its occupation of the
country, will bring democracy to Iraqis as it did to Japanese after World War
II.
A: The length and pervasiveness of the US occupation of Iraq will be
determined by the stability of the post-Saddam regime. If the fledgling
government proves too fragile, Washington may well decide to put Iraq through
the democratization process that General Douglas McArthur did in Japan after
its defeat in 1945. Will the US achieve the same result? No. Because, unlike
the decimation that Washington is itching to inflict upon Saddam”s regime,
McArthur kept intact the regime of Emperor Hirohito, and used it as his main
instrument to democratize the country which experienced no break in its
monarchical order.
21/ At the UN Security Council, France and Russia are siding with Iraq
because French and Russian oil companies have signed lucrative contracts with
Iraq which will become operational as soon as the UN economic sanctions against
Iraq are lifted. This is sheer greed on the part of the Russians and the
French.
A: It is the prime duty of a government to look after its national
interests. The US does it all the time - even at the expense of breaking its
international obligations. Remember the Bush Jr. administration imposing
tariffs on imported steel in violation of the World Trade Organization rules?
In the oil-rich Arabian Peninsula, the American arms manufacturers and other
corporations reaped a rich harvest of lucrative contracts in Kuwait, Saudi
Arabia and other Gulf monarchies after the 1991 Gulf War. And US oil companies,
in collusion with their European subsidiaries, rushed to secure contracts for
repairing Iraq”s petroleum industry from the mid-1990s. See further Chapter 7,
pp. 166.
**************************
APPENDIX II:
INFREQUENT COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS (3,600 words)
1/Iraqi officials keep saying that American inspectors and other staff working
for Unscom spied for their government. Is there any truth in this?
A: There is ample evidence of this. The details are to be found in the
stories published in the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street
Journal, and Boston Globe from mid-1998 to early 1999 - and in Scott
Ritter”s book Endgame (1999). After years of silence, the extremely
discreet Rolf Ekeus, head of Unscom during 1991-97, told the Swedish Radio in
August 2002 that the US had planted its nationals into Unscom, who were engaged
more in trying to locate Saddam Hussein than carry out inspections or
monitoring. The details of the complex “Shake the Tree” operation, implemented
by a team of US inspectors and technicians, to eavesdrop on the highly
confidential Iraqi military communications are described in Chapter 6, pp.
101-102. . The US director of this operation shared this classified information
with a fellow-American and a former government official, Chalres Duelfer, to
ensure that Unscom”s eavesdropping procedures remained intact - but not with
Duelfer”s boss, Ekeus or even his openly pro-American successor, Richard
Butler. Furthermore, American undercover agents were assigned to contact the
commanders of the elite Special Republican Guard on the eve of a planned
anti-Saddam coup on 26 June 1996. The details are in Chapter 6, ppÉ Ritter
refers to the close links between Butler and the US National Security Adviser,
Samuel Berger, to the extent of daily briefings on ongoing inspections which
were agreed beforehand with Berger. Barton Gellman in the Washington Post
of 28 August 1998 refers to “a standard procedure” whereby “Mr Butler”s senior
staff briefed a liaison officer from the CIA on the target [for inspection]”.
For further details, look up the Index for “Barton Gellman”, “Charles Duelfer”,
“Operation "Shake the Tree"“, and “Scott Ritter”, and follow up.
2/ Okay, but there is the argument that by trying to deceive Unscom
repeatedly, Saddam drove the US to resort to underhand methods and misuse the
UN.
A: This argument assumes that what the US did was to react to the acts
of deception by Saddam. But there is at least one known example of Washington
abusing the UN for its intelligence ends when it did not have the kind
of rationale provided by Saddam. That was in 1975. Following the March 1975
Algiers Accord between Iran and Iraq, the Shah of Iran withdrew his support to
the Iraqi Kurds fighting the Baghdad government from the Iranian soil. Due to
the resulting humanitarian crisis, the UN sent its aid personnel, drawn from a
few contributing member-states, including the US, to Iran. The American
contingent included American intelligence agents with a mandate to salvage as
much of the Kurdish military campaign against Baghdad as they could. See
further, Dilip Hiro, Neighbors, Nor Friends: Iraq and Iran after the Gulf
Wars (2001), p. 118.
3/ After the Gulf War, the United States, assisted by Britain, imposed
air exclusion zones on the Baghdad government in the north and the south,
covering more than 60 per cent of Iraq. Are these authorized by the UN Security
Council?
A: The US and the UK cite Security Council Resolution 688 (April 1991)
to rationalize their imposition of these zones. But there is no mention of such
zones in that document. Indeed, as the resolution was not passed under Chapter
VII of the UN Charter, it did not authorize use of force by a UN member-state
to implement it. When challenged, the US argues that its action is “derivative”
of Paragraph 6 of Resolution 688, which appealed “to all Member States and to
all humanitarian organizations to contribute to these humanitarian relief
efforts” for the Kurdish refugees created by the failure of the Kurdish
uprising after the Gulf War. The linkage between humanitarian relief and
stretching an air umbrella over this region remains unclear. For example, the
UN”s World Food Program has continued to provide free food to tens of thousands
of indigent Iraqi families living under the direct control of the Baghdad
government. In any case, even that sort of reasoning cannot rationalize Operation
Southern Watch, which was imposed in August 1992 - 16 months after Resolution
688 was adopted. After consulting the British and French leaders, US President
George Bush Sr. decided to impose an air exclusion zone in the south to
safeguard the Shias there. This had more to do with Bush Sr. punishing Saddam
for his long stand-off with Unscom and the International Atomic Energy Agency
on disarmament in the previous month rather than protecting the Shias in the
south. The Pentagon”s standard statement that “The purpose of the no fly zone
[in southern Iraq] is to ensure the safety of Coalition aircraft monitoring
compliance with United Nations Security Council Resolution 688” is a typical
example of a circular argument. The fact that enforcing an air exclusion zone
in the south did not stop Baghdad”s ground-based attacks on the southern
marshes providing refuge to Iraqi fugitives, often dodging conscription,
underlined Washington”s purported concern for civilians. That the real reason
for maintaining the air exclusion zones in the north and the south was
political, rather humanitarian, became public when US secretary of state,
Madeleine Albright said in November 1999, “I believe that through our...
continued patrolling of northern and southern no-fly zones, we are able to keep
Saddam Hussein in his box.”
Of the two air exclusion zones, the southern one has proved
strategically valuable to Washington. The Pentagon perceives it as a means of
denying Baghdad the opportunity to train its pilots in the southern Iraqi
airspace and as a source of intelligence input in its early warning system. See
further, Chapter 7, pp. 147-149.
4/Some experts argue that every time the US bombed Iraq, it lost ground
diplomatically and generates hatred among Iraqis. Is that true?
A: There is much evidence to support this view. Besides the 43 days of
non-stop bombardment of Iraq during the Gulf War, the Pentagon bombed Iraq in
January and June 1993, September 1996, December 1998, and February 2001. This
series of military strikes convinced most Iraqis that Washington was against
them as a people rather than against Saddam and his coterie. The negative
diplomatic impact of the 100-hour blitzkrieg of Operation Desert Fox in
December 1998 - condemned by China, France and Russia - was so severe that it
took the Security Council a whole year to come up with a new inspection and
monitoring regime under Resolution 1284. China, France and Russia refused to
back the resolution, and abstained - primarily because it altered the provision
of complete lifting of sanctions, as specified in Resolution 687 (1991), to a
suspension of 120 days at a time.
Secondly, because the Pentagon”s massive Operation Desert Fox could not
be implemented while the UN inspectors were inside Iraq, they were withdrawn by
Unscom chief Richard Butler. By so doing, he provided Saddam a chance to
negotiate their return. Finally, as Americans must know from their own
experience, when a country is attacked, its citizens rally round their leader,
no matter how inept and/or brutal. This what American did after September 11,
2001. And this is what Iraqis do every time their homeland is hit by US bombs
and missiles.
5/ There is a big gap between how the people in the West and the Arab
and Muslim world view events of international importance. This became starkly
obvious during the Pentagon”s attack on Afghanistan in 2001. The presentation
of the US military strikes on the Arabic language television channels,
especially the popular Qatar-based Al Jazeera satellite television, had little
in common with what appeared on the screens showing material supplied by the
BBC or the CNN and other American channels. What lies at the root of this
disjunction? And between these two broad systems, which one is more objective
and trustworthy?
A: To say that the media, especially the broadcasting ones, play a vital
role in shaping popular perceptions would be to state the obvious. What even
the most enlightened Western journalists fail to realize is that (a) most
people in the world get their information primarily from their national radio
and television, and (b) most people trust their own media, however censored or
distorted. In the English-speaking world, given equal access to the CNN and the
BBC, Americans turn to the CNN and Britons to the BBC, with each group trusting
more its own television channel than the rival. By the same token, most
Egyptians stick with their own radio and television channels, as do most
Syrians. The situation is particularly acute in Iraq. Due to the communications
and educational embargo since 1990, most Iraqis don”t know what a fax is, or a
mobile phone. Even middle and upper middle class Iraqis have no access to
foreign publications or television. The people living in Iraq are exposed to
nothing but the state-run Iraqi radio and television.
The subject of the disjunction between the West and the Arab and Muslim
world is very broad, and beyond the scope of this book. Suffice it to say that
this gap, already very wide, will grow dangerously wider, if there is an
invasion of Iraq by the US or US-led Coalition.
The question of objectivity was addressed succinctly by Max
Rodenbeck,the Cairo-based correspondent of the Economist in a New
York Times article in April 2002. “As network coverage of Vietnam shocked
Americans with the immediacy of a far off war, satellite television”s
insistent, graphic imagery of the [Palestinian] intifada has taken this bloody
drama into millions of Arab households,” he wrote. “The drama generates not
weariness with war but a thirst for justice, for sacrifice and revengeÉ Some
Palestinian casualties have become household names from Morocco to Muscat -
Muhammad Dura, the 12-year-old boy from Gaza whose father could not shield him
from a hail of Israeli gunfire, or Wafa Idris and Ayat Akhras, the first female
suicide bombers.” Yet, argued Rodenbeck , “Arab coverage of the conflict is not
really much more one-sided than, say, America”s gung-ho coverage of the Gulf
War. Or, for that matter, Israeli reporting on the intifada. It does not
require subtle manipulation to frame the ongoing tragedy as an epic struggle of
the weak against the strong. The imagery saturating Arab screens of tanks
crushing ambulances and helicopters rockets refugee camps is, alas, all too
real."
….
* Granta, April 2003. From Iraq: A Report from the Inside
Regresar a la Página
Vigente de América Semanal...