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 Allied 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.