Mick Hartley

Interesting review of Steven Vincent’s “In The Red Zone” by Amir Taheri:

Although a relatively short book, Vincent’s narrative is a dense one. It shows how most Iraqis, hating the past and fearful of the future, are struggling with contradictory feelings. There is this woman who assures Vincent that the worst has already happened in Iraq under Saddam Hussein and that the future, whatever its shape, cannot but be better. Later, we are told that she had been tortured and raped by the Ba’athist police. Then there is the old man who would hate Iraq for ever, even if it becomes a paradise on earth, simply because it has been “sullied” by the Americans.

Between these two extremes the people that Vincent appeared to agree on two things. First, the Ba’athist regime had reached a dead-end and had to go. And secondly, Iraq can have a future only if it acknowledges its diversity in a pluralist context.

Some of Vincent’s most interesting encounters, however, were with foreigners in Iraq. We meet a Canadian anti-war militant who expresses “understanding” for the crimes of Abu-Mussab al-Zarqawi and his terrorist gang while castigating the US-led coalition for “violating the human rights” of the captured terrorists. Then there is this American “peace group” going around Iraq to tell the Iraqi people that Saddam Hussein was not so bad after all and that George W Bush is worse! Most Iraqis, however, see the American peaceniks as nut-cases on the loose. […]

One important fact that Vincent noticed and reports is that the overwhelming majority of the Iraqis believe in a common identity that could be described as “Iraqitude” (uruqa). Some may not acknowledge it and a few, especially among the Kurds, may even deny it vehemently. But whether they like it or not they are all Iraqis as shaped by over eight decades of common life within an Iraqi state. It is, perhaps, for this reason that ruthless efforts by the Al Qaeda-style terrorists to provoke religious and ethnic conflict in Iraq have so far failed.

But the most important message of Vincent’s thrilling reportage is simple: a majority of Iraqis regard themselves as co-liberators of their country and thus feel that they have a direct stake in the success of “project Iraq.”

Vincent was murdered a couple of months back.