[whataretheysaying] Mary Madigan: Race, religion and power

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Posted by Mary Madigan:
Race, religion and power
http://whataretheysaying.powerblogs.com/posts/1177087385.shtml


   In his report from Kirkuk, [1]Where Kurdistan Meets the Red Zone
   Michael Totten discusses race and religion and power relationships
   between the Arabs, the Kurds and the Turks.

     Kirkuk is divided between Kurds, Turkmens (who are related to Turks
     in Anatolia, not Central Asia), and Arabs. The Arab quarter is
     extraordinarily violent. The Turkmen and Kurdish areas arenât so
     much, although random acts of terrorism and mass murder can and do
     erupt anywhere at any time.

     People in areas where the Baath Arabs live help terrorists plant
     bombs, Hamid explained as he drove. The Baathists have no support
     whatsoever in Kurdish and Turkmen neighborhoods. Terrorists have a
     much harder time operating in those places, so they donât bother
     much. The available methods of killing are limited without local
     logistic support. Everyone knows everyone else. Strangers are
     instantly suspected, often searched, and apprehended if necessary.

     Kirkukâs terrorists are, my Kurdish hosts explained, mostly
     Baathists, not Islamists. Their racist ideology casts Kurds and
     Turkmens as the enemy. Theyâre boxed in on all sides, though, and
     in their impotent rage murder fellow Arabs by the dozens and
     hundreds. They have, in effect, strapped suicide belts around their
     entire community while their more peaceful Kurdish and Turkmen
     neighbors shudder and fight to keep the Baath in its box.

     American readers may be uncomfortable by the explicitly racial
     nature of this description, but thatâs just how it is in Kirkuk and
     I cannot apologize for it. Iraqis kill each other over race and
     religion and power. If you go there yourself you had better pay
     attention to who lives in which neighborhood and what they think of
     others. Otherwise you will not survive. I'm a bit awkwardly
     self-conscious about it, but race blindness is punished in Iraq
     with the death penalty.

     Not every Arab in Iraq is a terrorist, obviously. Most of the
     victims of terrorism in Iraq are Arabs, after all. And there is
     nothing at all about Arabs as Arabs that makes them dangerous or
     hostile to me as an American. I lived in a Sunni Arab neighborhood
     in West Beirut for six months. All my neighbors were lovely. Not a
     single one was a terrorist. Lebanese politics is unstable and at
     times deranged, but itâs nevertheless orders of magnitude more
     civilized and mature than politics in Iraq, poisoned as it has been
     by (as Fouad Ajami put it) Saddamâs legacy of iron and fire and
     bigotry...

     ...Kirkuk is historically a Kurdish and Turkmen city, but Saddam
     Hussein tried to Arabize it. He forced out as many Kurds and
     Turkmens as he could and resettled the neighborhoods with Arabs
     from the South. He hoped to use the Arabization campaign to solve
     two of his ethnic and sectarian problems at once. Most of the Arabs
     he placed in Kirkuk were undesirable Shias from Karbala and Najaf
     he wished to be rid of. The city is now torn, then, along racial
     and sectarian lines. The legacy of Stalinist politics will take a
     long time to die.

     âCan you explain the main reasons why Saddam Hussein changed the
     makeup of this city?â I said. âWas it for the resources, because of
     the Baath ideology, or both?â

     I heard a loud thump somewhere off in the distance and wrote
     âpossible explosionâ in my notebook. No one else seemed to notice
     it, though.

     âIt was for ethnic reasons,â Mam Rostam said. âThe proof of this is
     that not only Kirkuk was involved. Suleimaniya and Erbil were also
     involved. They wanted to remove all the Kurds from everywhere in
     Iraq. They just destroyed whole villages and provinces and moved
     people into collective towns and concentration camps. Some of the
     Turkmen villages around here were demolished for the same reason.
     The point was to make it an Arab area, and no other. Saddam Hussein
     intended to be the leader of the Arab nation, the whole Arab world.
     He didnât want anyone other than Arabs to exist around him. That
     was his policy.â

     Saddam Hussein wasnât content merely to force Kurds and Turkmens
     out of their homes so he could move Arabs in. He also smashed their
     villages and neighborhoods with air strikes, artillery, chemical
     weapons, and napalm. ..

     ..âThe Arabs use Islam as a cover for their aims,â Mam Rostam said.
     I hear this time and again from Kurds in Iraq who are just as
     Islamic â but much more liberal and democratic â as the residents
     of Fallujah.

     âThe Ottomans didnât do this,â Patrick said. âThey didnât try to
     make everyone Turks.â

     âEven when people gave birth here it was forbidden to give them
     Kurdish names,â Mam Rostam said. âThey were only allowed to give
     their children Arabic names. If a Kurd wanted to purchase real
     estate he had to have it purchased in an Arabâs name. Otherwise he
     could not have it. During the Anfal operations they took young
     women and used them as sex slaves. Even when the Mongols invaded
     they didnât do this. They just donât like people who are not Arabs.
     Whoever is not an Arab is an enemy, and they use religion as an
     excuse for their evil goals.â

   This story, told by the "famous or infamous" Mam Rostam deftly
   captures Turkish attitudes towards the Kurds

     âIn Hamburg, Germany, there was a restaurant opposite the Turkish
     Embassy,â Mam Rostam said. âThat restaurant was named Kurdistan,
     and they flew the Kurdistan flag. The Turkish government sent a
     notification to the German government that said If you donât remove
     that sign and that flag and that name from that restaurant, we are
     going to pull our embassy out of Germany. And they did it. The
     Germans removed it...

   Read the rest of this cliffhanger post [2]here..

References

   1. http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001417.html
   2. http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001417.html