Author: Nicholas D. Kristof
Publication: The Asian Age
Date: June 27, 2003
Basra, Iraq: Still no luck in my
quest to help the US administration find Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
But meanwhile, I'm getting the impression that America fought Saddam, and
the Islamic fundamentalists won.
For a glimpse of the Islamic state
that Iraq may be evolving into, consider the street execution of an infidel
named Sabah Ghazali.
Under Saddam Hussein, Christians
like Mr Ghazali, 41, were allowed to sell alcohol and were protected from
Muslim extremists. But lately extremists have been threatening to kill
anyone selling alcohol. One day last month, two men walked over to Mr Ghazali
as he was unlocking his shop door and shot him in the head - the second
liquor store owner they had killed that morning.
An iron curtain of fundamentalism
risks falling over Iraq, with particularly grievous implications for girls
and women. President Bush hopes that Iraq will turn into a shining model
of democracy, and that could still happen. But for now it's the Shiite
fundamentalists who are gaining ground.
Already, almost every liquor shop
in southern Iraq appears to have been forcibly closed. Here in Basra, Islamists
have asked Basra University (unsuccessfully) to separate male and female
students, and shopkeepers have put up signs like: "Sister, cover your hair."
Many more women are giving in to the pressure and wearing the hijab head
covering.
"Every woman is afraid," said Sarah
Alak, a 22-year-old computer engineering student at Basra University. Ms
Alak never used to wear a hijab, but after Saddam fell her father asked
her to wear one on the university campus, "just to avoid trouble."
Extremists also threatened Basra's
cinemas for showing pornography (like female knees). So the city's movie
theatres closed down for two weeks and reopened only after taking down
outside posters and putting up banners, like this one outside the Watani
Cinema: "We do not deal with immoral movies."
"We're now searching all customers
as they enter the movie theatre," said Abdel Baki Youssef, a guard at the
Atlas Cinema. "Everybody is worried about an attack."
Paradoxically, a more democratic
Iraq may also be a more repressive one; it may well be that a majority
of Iraqis favour more curbs on professional women and on religious minorities.
As Fareed Zakaria notes in his smart new book, The Future of Freedom, unless
majority rule is accompanied by legal protections, tolerance and respect
for minorities, the result can be populist repression.
Women did relatively well under
Saddam Hussein (when they weren't being tortured or executed, penalties
that the regime applied on an equal opportunity basis). In the science
faculty at Basra University, 80 per cent of the students are women. Iraq
won't follow the theocratic model of Iran, but it could end up as Iran
Lite: an Islamic state, but ruled by politicians rather than ayatollahs.
I get the sense that's the system many Iraqis seek.
"Democracy means choosing what people
want, not what the West wants," notes Abdul Karim al- Enzi, a leader of
the Dawa Party, a Shiite fundamentalist party that is winning support in
much of the country.
Mr Enzi is the kind of figure who
resonates in mud-brick Iraqi villages in a way that secular American- backed
exiles like Ahmad Chalabi don't. While Mr Chalabi was dining in London,
Mr Enzi was risking his life on secret spy missions for the Dawa Party
within Iraq, entering from his base in Iran.
Four of his brothers and one sister
were executed for anti-government activities, and Mr Enzi was himself sentenced
to death in absentia in 1979. He was once arrested in Iraq on a spy mission,
but officials did not realise who he was and released him a month later.
I found Mr Enzi brave, admirable and medieval.
What should we do about this?
I'm afraid there's not much we can
do to discourage fundamentalism in Iraq, although staying the course and
building a legal system may help. For now, the US seems to be making matters
worse by raiding offices of Ayatollah Muhammad Bakr al-Hakim, who ran an
anti-Saddam organisation from exile in Iran and who in the past advocated
an Islamic government. Cold-shouldering Mr Hakim is counterproductive.
It bolsters his legitimacy as a nationalist and further radicalises his
followers.
We may just have to get used to
the idea that we have been midwives to growing Islamic fundamentalism in
Iraq.
By arrangement with the New York
Times
