Let's not become like Dubai - put education first!

Suffering from a seemingly hopeless case of paralysis, politics in Iraq must go on and look toward the future. Months after the elections in March 2010, and a government is yet waiting to materialize out of the tensions and contradictions that are the growing pains of this youthful constitutional democracy. May we hope to see a government emerge soon, one that is committed to peace, enlightenment, and independence from the West. 

Meanwhile, dreams and visions for a future and prosperous Iraq thrive in the minds of thousands of men and women, both within and outside of Iraq's border, dispersed across the globe in a diaspora that is hopeful, with or without the patience required for rebuilding a nation and restoring grandeur to what was once the cradle of civilization. 

With or without government, the question about what kind of Iraq we wish for the future is a pressing one, for many competing visions exist. The future of Iraq lies in the hands of the resources, of course oil and natural gas, around which the US and multinational oil companies have been circling like a vultures since the failed Hydrocarbon Law talks in 2007. 

Once a law is in place, it is of the utmost importance that a national revenue sharing scheme becomes the focus of any "deals" with multinational oil companies, eagerly waiting to "help develop" Iraq's untapped oil fields. An expansion of Iraq's public sector, and investments in the national infrastructure must be a top priority since oil, as we know, will one day run out, and many countries, particularly in Europe, are moving toward alternative and renewable energy sources. 

A similar problem with the inescapable finiteness of oil is on the consciousness of the Arab Gulf states, the UAE being perhaps the most notable example. Realizing that oil will not last forever, the UAE began to take measures in the 1980s to ensure that when the day the land was dry of oil, the country would still maintain means of self-determination, financially and politically. 

What can we learn from the Gulf states and the UAE? The answer is at once NOTHING and EVERYTHING. 

The UAE, with its pride Dubai, is somewhat of a golden child of the west, and the subject of mixed admiration and envy from many of its less well-off Arab neighbors. Once an empty spread of desert and a few fishing villages, the city of Dubai has become a metropolis of trade, hospitality, and financial services. We've heard it all before, the story is repeated with pride by the Emirati tourist authorities themselves. 

But the UAE success story is not only the story of luxury hotels, 6 star hospitality, golf courses and indoor ski slopes, it is the story of oppression, inequality, injustice, intolerance, and authoritarianism. Thousands of "guest workers" who live in labor camps are silenced in their inhumane treatment and working conditions, building new hotels and luxury apartment blocks for the well-heeled Westerners and Arabs who have become deaf to their moral consciousness and compassionate hearts. These workers, who give their lives, are never awarded citizenship, and may never receive any rights in countries where they have worked for decades. 

The crimes against humanity committed in the UAE are pardoned in the West by a twisted neoliberal ideology of happy capitalism and conspicuous consumption, carried literally on the shoulders of thousands of Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis, and Ethiopians who may never dream of a share in the golden city they have been building for years. The Emiratis themselves denounce any criticism as double standards from the West, they may be right, but their hearts are tainted with a consciousness that only the deepest compassion and immediate political reform can ever hope to redeem.  

While the UAE may think that its key to surviving in a competitive global market lies in its ability to attract Western investment, it has done nothing but created a playground for unleashed capitalism, as crude as the oil on which it feeds. The Emiratis themselves, a minority of the actual population remain useless and incapable of managing their own country. A process of "Emiratisation" has begun, whereby foreign companies are forced to hire a portion of Emirati nationals (almost like interns), is designed to tackle this problem, but the Western companies themselves are not impressed.

With the effects of the Global Finacial Crisis, the future of the UAE may already have been written. It is a gloomy one, where the circus of Western enterprise leaves the region, abandoning the Emiratis fend for themselves, uneducated and incapable; spoiled like rich children.

The future of Iraq must rest on future generations in a world where the foundations of turbo capitalism are beginning to rumble, in the wake of financial crises and a heightened awareness of the dangers and instability of free market reform and policy.

The future lies in education. Where the UAE erected luxury hotels that topped the charts of conspicuous living and indulgence for the rich, Iraq should erect public universities; state of the art facilities to foster enlightenment and reflection, research and exploration, all with the integrity of peace and independence from the West. In the future, Iraq may be known as a hub, not of financial services, fake waterfalls and fountains or the world's tallest buildings, but of universities, open to all.  

The revenue coming from the resources of the country must be invested in long-term goals to turn the region into a thriving educational and cultural center, actively at the forefront of diverse learning and research. The universities would not be modeled on the American principle of restricted access, with tuition fees and selective scholarships, but would be, as the new constitution guarantees, "free to all, in all its stages" (Article 34). The universities would attract researchers and scholars from the Middle East region, and from the world more broadly, helping rebuild the nation and restore onto the region its lost cultural and educational heritage. 

The universities would play a pivotal role in the constitutional and democratic development of Iraq, more so than the army, they would serve as the safeguards of peace and enlightenment, and would ensure the continued stability of this ethnically diverse part of the world. 

May we hope that the future government realizes the centrality of education, not only as a guaranteed right for its people, but as the most valuable of all long-term national investments. 

                

Fashion criminals: banning the Burka in France

In France, it will soon be a crime to wear the full facial veil (popularly referred to as the Burka) anywhere in public. While the full facial veil is certainly not the national attire of the collective Muslim world, many Muslims and others have expressed concern that the new legislation is a move in the demonization and criminalization of the oriental Other, unprovoked and without justification other than a supposed attack on French secular values committed by wearing the veil. 

In France, no doubt, fashion is taken very seriously. Decades of innovation by grand fashion houses have produced the most extravagant expositions on the fashion runways of Paris. Widely celebrated as the cradle of modern fashion and haute couture, it is particularly curious that France now becomes the first nation in Western Europe to censor specific expressions of fashion.  

But wait a minute, the French would insist, a burka is not fashion, it's opression! In the political landscape of much of post 9/11 Europe, the burka is the site of unruly and untrustworthy Islamic fundamentalism. The stitching, the fabric, the color, the design: all is absorbed into the logic of Jihad, a war against Western civilization which lurks beneath this draping costume, the habit of hate and oppression. 

Yet the distinction between fashion and oppression can be slippery. Is a miniskirt a symbol of fashion or oppression? The feminists who burned bras in the 70s clearly thought the bra constituted something more than an innocent fashion accessory. What about a G-string, what about high heels when worn by men in the context of cross-dressing? Clothing is fraught with social meaning that produces effects which, when taken to an extreme, can result in the legal banning of certain forms of clothing.    

Clothing, in Western culture, has become intrinsically intertwined with expressions of the self, and specifically with the intentionality of the self. As such, to wear certain things is to fall into a presumptuous and speculative landscape about what one wants, such that:

- the woman who wears a business suit wants to make a career 

- the woman who wears a miniskirt and a g-string wants to have sex

- the woman who shaves her head and wears a leather jacket wants to tell the world she's different

- the woman who wears a Burka wants to destroy Western civilization (and be oppressed)

To suggest that one should not judge a book by its cover seems too late, since certain covers, indeed perhaps too much cover, can provoke anger and hostility from a Western point of view, where fashion as expression of the self is restricted to selves that want Western things, and that can be translated smoothly into Western (French) values. 

That the politicization of the Burka came as a result of 9/11 and subsequent wars on terrorism seems apparent, yet it remains unclear what it is that fuels the public's everyday outcry against wearing a facial veil. We might return here to the speculative landscape that defines the thoughts of individuals who wear certain things. It is possible that in the minds of a largely secular French public, the woman behind the facial veil is imagined to walk around with the following thoughts: 

"I hate this damned country!"

"I'm on my way home now to arrange for my daughter's circumcision!"

"Look at all you sluts who don't cover up, may you all burn in hell!"

"I'm going to use all the welfare money that I get from the government to buy more burkas!"

"If I could just get my hands on a bomb so I could blow up a train or something!"

Of course, in the real minds of the women who wear facial veils, we might find the rather disappointing pondering of everyday things such as:

"I hope my son did well in his math exam today"

"how come I have not lost any weight since that diet routine?"

"I wonder what it's like to swim with dolphins"

"I must remember to record that show on TV"

Beneath her habit, we might even imagine the possibility of white ipod earphones playing Barry Manilow. Who knows?

The controversial piece of legislation that is about to be passed in France cannot be properly understood without a mediation of the collective fantasies of a Western society which perceives the symbol of the Burka as a threat.  These perceptions must be deconstructed, and alternative accounts must emerge if we are to ever bridge the gap which is currently widening between the West and the Muslim world.  

    

Bauman or Hobbes? Peace versus security in Iraq

In the tradition of Western political theory, society begins with the organization of people into modes of co-existence. Co-existence, however, is problematic since people are forever haunted by their own primordial desires for material possessions and greed. Wary of this instinctual inclination, people renounce a bit of their freedom to a sovereign, the Leviathan (the State), who in turn guarantees security and the possibility of co-existence. Without this sovereign, society would break into a state of nature, a war of every man against every man. Such is the gloomy account of the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, and upon which much of contemporary political theory is structured.

A political theory of Iraq may well be premised upon such assumptions. Sectarian violence, uprisings, and clashes between different ethnic groups is a matter of security, and people are yet to enter into the Hobbesian social contract, the renunciation of a little bit of freedom, in order to be able to leave peacefully side by side. Indeed, much of the discourse on the political situation in Iraq hinges upon notions of "security". America justified its invasion of Iraq with reference to "national security", and the discourse is spreading into the political language of Iraq itself, which regards security as one of the key issues to be resolved before reconstruction can begin.

Within Baghdad itself, "security" is as tangible as the walls surrounding the Green Zone, an enclosed area supposedly shielded from terrorist attacks, a zone which still houses an American and Western presence, along with the newly emerging Official and Democratic Iraq. "Security" is barbed wire, machine guns, tanks, helicopters and bullet proof windows. "Security" becomes literally embodied in the American men and women who wear military attire, and the Iraqi police, uniformed and armed with weapons to combat disorder and violence on the streets.

The maxim of security is rarely called into question. We need security, everyone needs security. Life cannot go on without security. The withdrawal of security, the withdrawal of an American military presence, would result in  a war of every man against every man. To avoid a state of anarchy and chaos, security must be established, it must remain, it must be passed on, it must be ingrained. Hobbes was right. Or was he?

An alternative account of human co-existence is provided by the postmodern philosopher Zygmunt Bauman, who disagreed with Hobbes about the primordial essence of humans as greedy and ego-centric.  According to Bauman, a genesis of human co-existence is found, not in the wants and needs of the mind, but in the goodness of the heart. People are inherently good. People are driven by what Bauman referred to as a "moral impulse". The natural inclination of people in the face of Others is to be good. The culprit, according to Bauman, is not an instinctual egoism, but rather social institutions, and the bureaucratic organization. It is the walls that people erect around each other that deafen us to our moral impulse of goodness. It is the reconfiguration of people as pieces in a game of chess that eclipses our natural and unconditional willingness to be good, to be compassionate, and to extend our hand to the Other.

Bauman used this theory to explain the Holocaust in Germany of the II World War. Nazi Germany had in effect developed into a meticulous organization, where those who bore responsibility of the administration and execution of the Holocaust were simply performing tasks within the context of a larger purpose, which at times remained only abstract. Boundaries, borders, rules, regulations, procedures, policies created the conditions of possibility for the inhumane eradication of millions of people. Many of those responsible for these atrocities were not inherently evil, but were blinded and deafened to their moral impulse of goodness. The menacing threat, in Bauman's terms, was the inhumane Organization of Nazi Germany, founded on a discourse of racial differentiation, which created the conditions of possibility for the seemingly impossible.

In a rather naive and adventurous reading of Bauman and Hobbes, I suggest that there is a need to revisit the conditions of human nature and the current configuration of the language of "security". Let us, for a moment, suspend with the notion of "security", which is ridden with a Western understanding of suppression, and let us instead turn to the idea of "peace".

"Peace" resides within the heart. "Peace" is what people do in their everyday experience of momentary bliss. A Sunni woman in Aadhamiya inviting her Shi'a neighbor for dinner, a Kurdish family babysitting the child of their Armenian friends, or an Assyrian couple helping their Shi'a friends move house.

"Peace" opens up a realm of possibilities, whereas "security" is premised on restriction: restriction of space and movement. "Peace", like acts of compassion and generosity, ripples from one person to another, while "security" produces effects of suspicion, compliance, and fear.

"Peace" asks for your hand, "security" asks for your ID.

In a globalized marketplace of what Jonathan Rowe has referred to as "turbo capitalism", "security" has become a commodity, sold and traded, valued and depreciated, in a range of exchange modes. Security companies thrive in the midst of insecurity, offering bullet proof vests, highly trained security guards, superior intelligence gathering, and restricted access technology.

The Green Zone figures as a model of security. Peace, however, is organic. I invite you to share your reflections on how we might alter the discourse of security, and instead turn to the possibilities of "peace", possibilities which have yet to become articulated.
  

      



    

Living on the edge

Only recently, I spoke with my grandmother who is currently in Baghdad.  She had made the bold decision to return from the comfort of Sweden to a city which is portrayed in Western media and on Wikipedia as a strict no-go zone.  According to numerous accounts which flourish daily, deadly explosions and gunfire forms the everyday life of this city, once the cradle of knowledge and enlightenment.  I called on her mobile, her voice shaken with surprise at my stumbling Arabic, which has weakened through my diasporic years.  I asked how she was, she responded Al Hamdullah, and explained that the weather was much better than in Sweden.  I turned to the question of security, and she told of a recent explosion which had sent pressure waves, shattering every window in her house.  Luckily, she was in the bathroom at the time.  

Some people live on the edge.  The edge of being, the edge of life, the edge of hope.  She is only one of millions who live in a city, shaken by sporadic violence and seemingly unpredictable death.  She knows, better than many of us who dwell in the comfort of our Western societies, that life is precarious.

Ironically, the game of security and life and death appeared to contaminate through the virtual phone line, across continents, and into my kitchen, when a house mate pointed out that my conversation with my grandmother in Iraq had probably been registered in some hypothetical counter-terrorism CIA version of Western security.  I laughed at this, but the thought sneaks back upon me as I decide to produce a first entry on a blog about Iraq.  I contemplate the risk of registration, of the mark of suspicion which may or may not characterize the institution of Western security in the face of matters which relate to the Middle East.  

And then, in my mind, the windows of our house in Baghdad suddenly shatter into crystals of sharp glass, scattering across the floor.  I wake up from my self-regulating obedience to political correctness and precaution.  It is not I who lives on the edge, it is not I who have to worry if my partner will return safe home from work, or if my children should attend school tomorrow, or if I can safely go for a walk to pick up some groceries.  

It is the people of Baghdad and Iraq who give me the courage to speak my thoughts, it is their suffering which prompts me to write.  It is the courage of those who truly live on the edge which shadows my feelings of self-regulation and censorship.

I'll continue writing for them.