The Hindu : Baghdad... the gift of God

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Apr 08, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

Baghdad... the gift of God

By M.H. Ansari

Over Baghdad is stationed death`s loud herald...

Weep for her, then, weep for time`s rapine there!

(Ibn Batuta, quoting the poet Abu Tammam.)

Human settlement at this bend of the serpentine Tigris predates Islam. The name itself is Persian and means "given by God". The Abbasid Caliph Mansur, looking for a place to garrison his non-Arab troops away form the capital Kufa, laid the foundations of the city in 762 A.D and called it Madinat al-Salam or City of Peace. For the next five centuries Baghdad was the centre of a great civilisation that absorbed and distilled the wisdom of the east and of the west and contributed to it in ample measure. Its decline commenced after three centuries. The Moorish traveller, Ibn Jubair, in 1184, bewailed its loss of glory but praised the humility and pride of its people (and the beauty of its women). In 1256 A.D the Mongol army of Halagu overcame the city and the caliphate. Treachery in high places played a role. The last Abbasid Caliph was trampled to death and the city pillaged: "for thirty-four days the sword was never sheathed. Few escaped. The slain amounted to 1,800,000 and more". Thereafter, the eclipse was total. The city became a provincial capital, occasionally changed hands, but never recovered its grandeur.

Baghdad re-emerged in modern times as the capital of the new state of Iraq with an imported king at the helm, thanks to a British imperial dispensation. Full independence in 1932 was preceded by twelve years of British Mandate; the latter term, in the words of the High Commissioner, Sir Percy Cox, "was anathema (to the Iraqis) from the first" since it involved a dual system of authority — national and foreign — and created the anomaly of a government sovereign in name but not in

A new Anglo-Iraqi Treaty in 1930 guaranteed British privileges, including air bases in Iraq. This arrangement was replaced by the Baghdad Pact in 1955 but lapsed, along with the monarchy, with the Revolution of 1958. Over the next few years the Iraqi state developed a republican shape and an ideology of pan-Arab nationalism rooted in the ideas of Michel Aflaq, born in a Greek Orthodox family in Syria. Aflaq viewed Arab nationalism as transcending religious or sectarian divisions; he advocated a synthesis between nationalism and socialism, and sought Arab unity. Like other proponents of pan-Arabism, he made the fatal error of ignoring the distinction between being and becoming, between the Arabs being one people or wishing to become one people. The imprint of National Socialism of Germany was also discernable in his thinking. This undigested ideological package produced a clear preference for an authoritarian state in which the party subsumed the state and both, in turn, relegated the individual and his freedoms to a secondary position. Thereafter, it was only a question of polishing the techniques of control and action. The cult of personality, combined with a doctrine of infallibility, did the rest. Iraq, circa 1974, became a model of stability and was applauded. There was however a snag in this near-perfect arrangement: a surfeit of stability at home led to adventurism abroad, in the expectation that a successful adventure would strengthen the standing of the adventurer within Iraq and in the Arab fold. Saddam Hussein sought an Arab platform; his success lay in articulating the dreams and grievances of other Arabs.

The present travails of Iraq are in great measure self-inflicted. The invasion of Iran in 1980, and of Kuwait in 1990, were acts of aggression plain and simple. How were they seen in regional and global terms? The first was applauded, the second condemned. Both were undertaken for political gain through territorial concession, at a moment judged to offer political and military opportunity. Both proved to be major errors of judgment. Both extracted a high cost from Iraq and the Iraqis; the second isolated Iraq internationally and within the Arab fraternity. The saving grace in the 1991 war was the bottom line in U.S perception: "Our policy is to get rid of Saddam, not his regime". By June 1991, the CIA had received a Presidential directive "to create conditions to remove Saddam Hussein from power". The invasion launched last month by the "coalition of the willing" was an acknowledgment of the failure of that earlier policy.

As on so many occasions in the past, Baghdad will resist and eventually submit to the conqueror. Once more the blood of the innocent will colour the waters of the Tigris. Some who repose faith in the Biblical prophecy of "a destructive wind against Babylon" by "great nations from the land of the north" that will "not spare her young men" may even justify the act. Many, motivated by other beliefs, may seek salvation in retaliation. The post-conflict scenario in any case remains unclear. Ms. Rice has asserted that America, rather than the U.N, would control the rebuilding of Iraq. The U.S. nevertheless would seek to go beyond its non-descript coalition to obtain political legitimacy for its aggression. Either way a group of Iraqis would need to come into the picture. What would be their credibility and political legitimacy? Would they not be part of the same dual system of authority that was anathema to Iraqis in the period of the British mandate? Would the Kurds, having tasted de facto independence under the Anglo-American umbrella, resubmit to the authority of Baghdad before having settled the terms of their autonomy? Can an interim administration settle these terms and impose them on an elected government? After four decades of harsh one party rule, how difficult would the transition to democracy be without an exercise in reconciliation in different strata of Iraqi society?

The people of Iraq consider themselves part of a larger Arab family. Recent weeks have shown the intensity of public rage notwithstanding efforts by governments of the region to walk a fine line of political correctness.

The sentiment of pan-Arabism, as distinct from its political movement, is very much alive; a new grievance, relating to Iraq and its people, would stroke the fire. It is another matter that agitation has to give way to critical thinking since, as the Syrian historian, Constantin Zurayq, has remarked, "failure to understand catastrophes is even deadlier to a people than catastrophes themselves".

The fall of Baghdad will not be easily forgotten. The Iraqi poet, Jamil Zahawi, explained it in a couplet many years back:

When ruin overtakes that land upon whose soil

You grew up, and you sorrow not, you are a stone.

(The writer is a former Permanent Representative of India to the U.N.)

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