CPTNET
May 22, 2003
From The Inside Looking Out: Report-21
Will The Real Ali Baba Please Stand Up,
by Jerrry Levin
(Amman, Jordan May 19, 2003) Not far from the East Bank of the Tigris
River in downtown Baghdad a massive sculpted monument to one of the
Arabian Night's most famous and celebrated stories Ali Baba and the
Forty Thieves stands in the middle of a very large and extremely busy
traffic roundabout. Installed by the Sadaam regime, it's a
spectacular work, which marks the specific moment in the story, when
Ali Baba's loyal slave girl, having discovered the plot to kill her
oblivious master, pours oil into the thirty seven jars in which the
potentially lethally larcenous thieves have been stealthily hiding,
while impatiently awaiting a signal from their chief to burst forth,
kill Ali Baba, and then recover their ill gotten loot.
If this particular story from the tales comprising the saga of the
thousand and one nights had not been resonating in the Iraq psyche
more deeply and more meaningfully than all those others told by
Scheherazade, then I doubt that the time, effort, and funds would
have been dedicated to create and install it. So there it stands
hugely conspicuous and immensely metaphorical.
For instance, more than one Iraqi to whom I've talked says this about
their deposed and still missing former leader, "Sadaam: Ali Baba."
A retired scientist went even further when he said, "All Iraq is a
septic tank. And Sadaam was the cover. I think he was Ali Baba." But
this man is no post Sadaam regime knee jerk occupation supporter. He
lives a block away from the university campus where he worked for
decades. "Rumsfeld bombed it," he complained. "He destroyed many
buildings. And I cried when I saw this. Rumsfeld is Ali Baba."
Another university official said quite angrily, "I did not agree
always with Sadaam. But he made Iraq a very great country for us. We
were the most advanced for all the people of the Middle East. But
Bush!? I think he was bigger Ali Baba. He made us poor again. Nothing
here is great now."
Bush and Sadaam, however, are only the tip of the Ali Baba iceberg.
The label applies to a multitude of other relationships. For example,
a Christian cab driver recalling Ayatollah Khomeini, the Taliban, or
the situation in the Sudan revealed his current anxieties when he
said, "Maybe Muslims will be Ali Baba." He worries, he says, "because
there are too many of them. I don't think they will protect us like
Sadaam. But, what can we do? Tariq Aziz [a Christian, ed.] was Ali
Baba too."
And, from the beginning of the war, many of the most influential
Muslims, especially Shia clergy, kept and have been keeping the "Ali
Baba" occupation at arms length. In that regard, Jay Garner, the
elusive outgoing Pentagon choice to preside over the allies' now
creaking behind schedule nation building process was being branded
an "Ali Baba" even before he stepped back on conquered Iraqi soil.
His Shia critics were that certain about their prophecies of
inevitable occupation ineptness and worse.
He remains for them a terrible reminder of their catastrophic Gulf
War legacy. Back then Garner became a hero for the Kurds in the
North, whom the U. S. protected from Sadaam, while Iraq's Shia, after
being encouraged by the first President Bush to revolt were then
abruptly deserted by the U. S. and left to twist slowly slowly in
Sadaam's decimating wind.
The "Ali Baba" label was also applied early on to exiled occupation
favorites who were allowed to return with the allies. The most
prominent of these has been Ahmad Chalabi, a convicted embezzler
wanted in two Arab nations, Jordan and Lebanon. Upon reaching Baghdad
and seizing some buildings for his headquarters, he formed a militia,
which is being gratuitously armed by the United States.
In addition these days any Iraqi name linked to any appointed interim
civil entity is automatically an "Ali Baba." So, as a result, we
hear "Ali Baba" rumblings connected to the names of all the
presumably occupation vetted candidates involved in Mosul's
imminent "city council" elections.
Then there are those profiteering from the petrol black market. They
too are being derisively and angrily labeled "Ali Babas." However,
the Iraqis who try to take cuts in the long long lineups for gas at
legitimate filling stations are "Ali Babas" too.
When it comes to the petrol crisis, the occupation can't win for
losing. In order to help alleviate the shortages and undercut black
marketers, they let it be known, but not very loudly or efficiently,
that they were setting up distribution stations of their own where
eight gallons would be given away free to each customer. "But," as
one cab driver said to me, "where are these places? I cannot find
them. I think this is an Ali Baba trick."
The thousands of squatters who have been moving into bombed out
ministries or taking over empty homes are the latest Ali Baba
manifestation, as are the longer running, still inextinguishable and
apparently irrepressible looters. However, there still is
considerable agreement among Iraqis that the most consequential "Ali
Baba" style looting in the aggregate is being conducted by the
occupation. Why else, we are continually reminded, would allied
soldiers have been sent to guard only the Oil Ministry during the
first days following the fall of Baghdad.
There's a dimension to this Ali Baba labeling phenomenon that is
curious. The name Ali Baba, while it has become synonymous in Baghdad
with thievery and chicanery, is nevertheless somewhat of a misnomer.
After all in the story, Ali Baba was a poor man who serendipitously
became rich by seizing an opportunity to steal from blood thirsty
thieves what wasn't theirs in the first place.
His most notable traits were an incredible credulity and a kind of
myopic obliviousness to imminent danger. In some ways he was a kind
of ancient Beverly Hill Billy or maybe Inspector Clouseau. Despite a
chain of violent tragedies and mayhem and/or potential tragedies and
mayhem swirling about him, because of events he had unknowingly set
in motion, and of which he was unaware, he nevertheless comes out
without a scratch.
So, even though he certainly wasn't the villain in the piece and
certainly not by any yardstick the craftiest, his name these days,
nevertheless, has become synonymous with thievery and trickery.
Strange.
But perhaps not so strange. Ali Baba was poor. But he wasn't entirely
honest
First of all, even though what he found were ill gotten gains, he
nevertheless did take what wasn't his. And, second of all,
restitution never did seem to occur to him. This thought leads me to
remember allied troops zealously guarding the Iraqi Oil Ministry,
while other critical venues were being looted and burned
And I also remember the apparent paucity of foresight and planning
(or was it more sinister than that), which resulted in an absolute
dearth of allied Military Police trained to do what troops have no
professional competence to do protect property and enforce order
until professional and trustworthy civilian competence can be
reestablished,
And that leads me to further recall the glaring absence of a
professional infrastructural resuscitation and construction force,
which should have been poised in the desert to move in immediately
behind the occupying army. But there was no such follow up
contingent, because a myopic U. S. Administration apparently was
oblivious to (or perhaps it was determined to ignore) the cascade of
warnings beamed from almost everywhere as to the inevitable
consequences of doggedly conducting regime change on the cheap.
So when I recall all that, I realize that the folks in Baghdad have
got it right after all. In Iraq there are more than enough Ali Babas
these days foreign and domestic to go around.
Christian Peacemaker Teams is a program of Brethren, Quaker and Mennonite
Churches. CPT P. O. Box 6508 Chicago, IL 60680 tel. 773-277-0253; Fax:
773-277-0291, E-Mail cpt@igc.org WEB www.cpt.org
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