March 27, 2003

Escaped Iraqis Strongly Support the War - And Report that Many in Iraq Do As Well

This remarkable LA TIMES article by Johanna Neuman was buried on page 10 of the A section earlier this week, and hasn’t yet been widely noted. Excerpts (emphasis added):

WASHINGTON—As Iraqi Americans reach out to their relatives in Baghdad and Basra, in Kirkuk and Irbil, some are hearing words they never thought possible: Iraqis are speaking ill of Saddam Hussein.

They’re criticizing him out loud, on the telephone, seemingly undeterred by fear of the Iraqi intelligence service and its tactics of torture for those disloyal to the Baath Party regime.

“I was shocked,” said Zainab Al-Suwaij, executive director of the American Islamic Congress, a nonprofit group in Cambridge, Mass., that promotes interfaith and interethnic understanding. “It’s very dangerous. All the phones are tapped. But they are so excited.”

[.....]

“I’m so disappointed with the left,” said [Escaped Iraqi] Tamara Darweesh, who considers herself a liberal. “They are in complete denial because it doesn’t fit into their equation of the Mideast. But Saddam is an Arab leader who has killed more Arabs than Israel ever has.”

The antiwar protesters, she added, are “very condescending. They are supposed to be for human rights, but the suffering of the Iraqi people just doesn’t exist for them. They deny us our stories.”

[.....]

[Escaped Iraqi Tanya] Gilly is mystified that the peace movement puts so much faith in U.N. diplomacy. “The inspectors have been in the country for 12 years,” she said.

“It wouldn’t matter if you gave [Hussein] two more weeks, a month or even 10 years. It’s in his nature to defy.”

The full text is on the LA TIMES site here, and can also be accessed through the “continue reading” link below.

Current State of the Mid-East Economy

James Flanigan, the excellent LA TIMES economics columnist, has some eye-opening things to say about the Mid-East economy. Some excerpts:

That the region is in desperate need of help is beyond question.

The Arab countries of the Middle East contain 200 million people but not a single automobile assembly plant. Indeed, there is very little industry of any kind other than the oil-related complexes of the Persian Gulf area.

In many ways, the real story of the Middle East during the last three decades—or since the price of oil quadrupled in 1973—is that energy riches have not translated into any kind of true economic development.

Saudi Arabia is seen as a nation of wealth in many eyes, but its gross domestic product per citizen is only $6,900. Israel—with a far more modern, diverse economy—boasts a GDP per citizen of $16,300.

Trade among Middle East nations is practically stagnant—a strange fact of economic life in a place where haggling at the local souk is an art form.

The full text of the article is available at the LA TIMES site here.