After the fall of Baghdad, the orgy of part angry part gleeful pervasive smashing and looting by uncontrollable and uncountable Iraqis that immediately followed was the most visible reaction to the city having just been "liberated." However, other thousands of orderly and presumably equally aggrieved and frustrated Iraqis began to react quite differently.
Although they too have taken to the streets, they are doing it in an orderly fashion. Using one of the occupation's tendered benefits-freedom of speech and assembly-they are hopefully exercising this theoretical new right by heading for the seat of occupation power in order to demonstrate their concerns and wishes, and protest the pace with which they are being addressed.
Even as the looters were doing their worst, these other more orderly Iraqis were doing their best to make use of this-for them-novel perquisite of a democratic environment to dramatically vocalize their frustration with not just the perilous and frightening undemocratic incidents from their difficult and too often uncertain totalitarian past, but also to voice their anxieties and anger over the uncertainties of their still undemocratic present-i. e. occupation rule. The occupation has created problems for the still tormented long suffering Iraqi people, the existence of which the protesters are trying to convey by means of these demonstrations. The signs and banners they carry proclaim their specific conceptual yearnings and/or perceived complaints.
Here's a sampling:
"Down with Sadaam. Down with all new repressive policies"
"Bosh (sic) Sadam no dvrnt (sic)"
"There will be no roles for criminals in the Army"
"Iraq is the home of free people civilizations"
"Liberty, Justice, and Independence"
"Shia and Sunna and all nations all united" signed, "SCIRI: Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq"
"Free our High School from U. S. Occupation"
"Where Human Rights? We need safe residence"
"Mr. Gorner (sic). We would like your face (sic)," and near to that sign this one: "We ask…Help Us."
"Please remove the old aggrissive (sic) administration from Daura oil refinery" signed, "The employees of Daura Refinary (sic)"
And finally this one: "Bush said: Day by day Iraqi people come closely from freedom. We say: Day by day Iraqi people become closely from Hell."
Such protests and such language are significant evidence of the fact that many Iraqis feel that the allies' war time propagandizing led them to believe that they would be able to expect much more from the occupation than they have been accorded so far. That is the reason why every day a few hundred to a few thousand Iraqis take to the streets to wave placards, written in both Arabic and English, unfurl banners on which their current grievances are also displayed, as well as chant and/or yell their complaints-augmented sometimes by a bull horn or two, or to simply stand together in what seems to me to be bewildered and/or confused silence while hoping to be able to share their troubles with any non-Iraqi passerby who will stop long enough to hear them out.
Most often those foreign listeners will be members of the international press or will be NGO or IO (International Organization) toilers whose mission in part is to know and communicate both Iraqi needs along with a sense of their exasperation and/or impatience with the pace of the occupation's restoration of such vital institutions as:
Security: three kinds-1) law and order, capable of protecting businesses, social and governmental institutions and also homes from looting, robbery, or an increasing squatter problem, 2) steady employment paying decent wages, which will not go to functionaries of the old regime, and 3) the detention, they claim, from time to time by the occupation of their leaders or would be leaders;
Electrical power to get and keep vital social, commercial, and governmental institutions up and running;
Gasoline in plentiful enough supply to enable Iraqis to travel for business or recreation without having to wait in traffic snarling lines for interminable hours, and which, as spring progresses, are getting more exasperatingly hot each day;
Sewers that work;
And garbage and trash collections that will finally get citizens who are living and working on side streets ahead of health issues exacerbated by rising mounds of refuse rather than falling behind.
But the problem for most Iraqis, especially protesters-disappointed as they are with the effects so far of the vexing aspects of regime change listed above-is that despite their efforts to be heard, they believe that they are not. That's why at some point during inquiring conversations with many of them, I am invariably and plaintively asked, "What will you do with what I tell you? What will you do with what you see here?" i. e. their placards and banners. "And whom will you tell about us?"
Whether or not these protests register constructively with those in the occupation, who not only are able to respond but-more important than that-who have the power to decide to respond, is difficult to determine. Decades ago Americans used to chuckle knowingly over a popular cliché that despite its banality still speaks directly-if not facetiously-to the problems Iraqis are expressing in the streets. "Let's run it [the solution] up the flag pole and see who salutes."
Is anyone these days at the highest level of the occupation saluting: if only to acknowledge that the protesters' concerns are indeed being heard? Even when it is true that listening is going on behind occupation barriers, that's not the perception of Iraqis outside them who are anxiously clutching those placards and banners.
For instance, as we were being herded back from a barbed wire perimeter outside the entrance to the occupation's main base of operations for the third time by toughly intentional U. S. troopers, one frustrated demonstrator described the problem this way, "What is use of speech freedom, if we cannot know that someone is listening?"
"I know what you mean," I answered, "Bush did not listen to me either."
Another Iraqi in the crowd complained, "Why doesn't Garner talk to us? When we come here, it is like our words are stones dropping in the well. We do not hear them enter the water."
Garner, of course, is retired Lieutenant General Jay Garner. He heads up the Pentagon's Office of Rehabilitation and Humanitarian Assistance. I stress "Pentagon," because it is the U. S. military that is running the country right now. And in that respect it is the occupation that will still be controlling events on the ground here-through Garner-after an interim puppet government of Iraqis is set up. That event, Garner told a small gathering of NGOs and IOs recently, will happen-he hopes-at the end of this month. "
"Puppet Government," of course, is my name for what will be anointed then, not his. To better comprehend the concept: 1) think Afghanistan, or going even further back in time, think Vietnam and the series of puppet governments installed there by the U. S. during that monumentally violent humanitarian catastrophe for both Vietnamese and American families, and then 2) hope. Hope that much better will be accomplished for the sake of the long suffering Iraqi people with respect to their regime change, which, of course, also was achieved violently.
However, when it comes to the issue of direct occupation responses to the concerns being expressed by Baghdad men and women in the streets, non Iraqis are finding it much easier to gauge the occupation's unspoken point of view on such issues than Iraqis are, although, even for the internationals, it sometimes takes a bit of reading between the lines to do it. Comprehension often dawns as a result of operational assertions in connection with these issues, which are uttered by a variety of middle rank officers who can be accessed fairly easily by internationals but not by most Iraqis.
However, these officers are not policy makers. They are the "ours is not to reason why" military officials whose job it is to carry out policy set for them by those much higher ups in the chain of command. And the basic message not being delivered directly to the people in the streets asking for one, is that they are expecting too much too soon.
So what we have here-recalling the cynical words of the sheriff in Cool Hand Luke-in addition to big time plea coping-is also "a failure to communicate:" directly, effectively, and efficiently.
"You have to understand," said a frequently patronizing and rationalizing mid-level occupation minion (a Major assigned to facilitate NGO and IO efforts to deal with the consequences of the humanitarian mess his brothers and sisters in arms created). "You have to understand," he didactically counseled a group of international assistance specialists more than once, "that dealing with humanitarian complaints is your work. We're here to facilitate, but you need to do it."
(Why is it that every time someone begins an explanation with "You have to understand…" I am inclined to do exactly the opposite?)
Translation of the Major's polemic: If things are going too slow to suit the Iraqis, it's your fault: meaning the NGOs and IOs, who, because they are in a constant struggle to maintain their independence from the military, are, as a result, not inclined to reflexively salute whatever and whenever some new assertion-or directive, for that matter-is run up the occupation flag pole.
Meanwhile Iraqi protesters waiting more or less helplessly in streets outside well protected occupation venues are not getting answers to questions and issues they want addressed. Instead they are met with the impassive scrutiny of soldiers guarding allied perimeters or their often repeated commands to "move back," whenever it is clear that they fear a crowd may be on the verge of getting out of control.
So the demonstrations continue to reflect a pervasive feeling of being "had" by the occupation not only at those sites but elsewhere in Baghdad too. That feeling was expressed the other day by a remarkably good natured Iraqi university graduate waving a placard demanding that the occupation stop giving jobs to former Baath Party regulars (Sadaam Hussein's party) and instead give one to him. "Mister," he said, do you know Waiting For Godot?"
"You mean the play about the two men who don't move but talk and talk and talk while waiting for Mr. Godot; but he never comes?
"Yes, yes that one."
"So?"
"I think Godot is God. You think so too?
"Yes, I think that is who the author meant."
"So, Mister?"
"What?"
"Where is Jay Garner?"