Richard H. Curtiss, Special to Arab News

WASHINGTON, 17 February 2004 — Explaining Iraq is a job that could take a long time. But let’s go ahead — with a couple of caveats. First, while there’s an exception for every rule, in Iraq’s case there probably should be at least two exceptions. Then, let’s listen carefully to Iraqis of all stations of life, but remember that they have some ingrained prejudices which sometimes are self-contradictory. So remember everything they say, and then move on.

While studying Arabic in Lebanon in 1963, I was asked to go to Baghdad on short notice. The Iraqi monarchy had been overthrown and its young king had been killed in the July 14, 1958 revolution. Until then Iraq had been one of the State Department’s largest Arab posts in the Middle East. As a result of the revolution, however, virtually the entire American Embassy had been evacuated. Five years later, another revolution had taken place, resulting in a new Baathist government and the restoration of full Iraqi-US diplomatic relations. Since I was already stationed in the region, my assignment was to assess whether a foreign service information officer was required again.

From the moment I arrived, people began showing up. All called that the US Information Service had some hard-hitting anti-communist material, and could I please find it and hand it over to the new Iraqi broadcasting service? That didn’t take long — although I had my doubts about using such strong material in a country which only days before had been leaning toward communism.

Within days the new Iraqi Information Ministry spokesman returned, asking, “Don’t you have some more of this good stuff?”

By then, in fact, I realized I indeed had plenty more, with titles like “When the Communists Came” — about the Korean War. I then found a large quantity of an excellent illustrated American history book. Schoolchildren came after classes to get their copies of that book. Iraqis are readers, I realized and they don’t just read the captions. With each day the number of students multiplied. We had to ration the supply, or we would have run out very rapidly.

At this point the moment I dreaded arrived. Washington inquired, “Do you think USIS Baghdad needs an information officer again?” With a heavy heart, I replied we needed one and the sooner the better. I knew this meant I wouldn’t quite finish the Arabic course in Beirut, because there was no one else available to go to Iraq. A month later, my wife and three children — with a fourth due shortly — had arrived for our new assignment. We had no regrets for the three years we lived there. The truth of the matter was that I became increasingly interested in this extraordinarily diverse population and I did my best to visit every corner of the country, security conditions permitting.

Iraq at that time was very unstable, and the new Baathist government lasted little more than half a year. Then there was another coup. Coups or not, our office kept plugging along. Because the personnel at the various ministries changed, I was expected to renew contacts that had withered away over the previous five years. Fortunately, Iraqis generally are friendly and hospitable people.

My trips took me all over the country, and I usually drove my own battered Opal, because the reviving embassy didn’t have enough cars to spare. It also meant that, when I took detours to see some of the storied sights like Ninevah, Ur and Babylon, my conscience was clear. Depending on how much time they had to spare, I would escort VIPs and other visitors to Babylon, for example, which was only an hour and a half away from the capital, and where there were thousands of fragments of 3,000-year-old broken bricks, many of them inscribed in cuneiform writing.

One of the reasons I was so fascinated with Iraq was because, along with Egypt and Pakistan, it was one of the three earliest birthplaces of civilization. Even though I moved on after three years, I kept returning to Iraq whenever the opportunity presented itself. Each time, unhappily, things seemed to be getting worse. I couldn’t abide Saddam Hussein, and felt deeply depressed by what he was doing to his hapless country.

Perhaps what concerned me most from my later visits was the fact that the Iraqis themselves were absolutely terrified to speak out on any subject. They looked desperately for a witness to show that they were not deviating in any way from political correctness. During my previous three-year assignment, Iraqis would express a political opinion at the drop of a hat, and in no time I could get the flavor of what people were saying on the streets, in souqs and in their homes.

On my return visits, however, candid expressions were few and far between. By then one could see what a disaster Iraq had become.

Now, for better or worse, “liberation” US style-has dawned in Iraq. I gather that Iraqis are speaking their minds again, and that’s all for the good. I gather, too, that Iraqis still have a contradictory streak in them. Virtually none of them want a Saddam Hussein back, but they also don’t want Americans to run their country. This is true for Iraqis from all parts of their nation.

Generally speaking the Shiites live in the south and extend all the way north to Baghdad. From there to Mosul and Kirkuk the Sunnis predominate. The Kurds predominate in the far northern uplands.

For centuries the Sunnis have tended to monopolize the Iraqi officer corps. They have the reputation of being tough, one might even say ruthless, and it was that group that Saddam Huseain encouraged and favored. In the Sunni heartland around Tikrit, Saddam had his inner redoubt, and Sunnis could generally find good jobs. Saddam also was seeking to increase the Sunni population at the expense of the Kurds by whatever means worked.

The Shiites now comprise 60 percent of the Iraqi population, and the Sunnis about 20 percent. The remainder are mostly Kurds, with a scattering of Turkmens close to the northern oilfields. There also is a tiny Christian minority, found mostly in the cities.

Only Saudi Arabia has larger petroleum potential than Iraq. Iraq has about 21 million inhabitants, compared to Saudi Arabia’s 15 million, counting expatriot workers who eventually return to their homelands.

Iranians outnumbered Iraqis by 3 to 1. During the 1980-88 war between the two countries, Iraq had to import laborers from Egypt, Syria and other countries to compensate for manpower shortages.

A concern of many during that war was that the Iraqi Shiites would join the Shiites of Iran. That did not happen, and it seems clear that, despite the strong influence of Iraqi fundamentalist Shiite clerics, Iraqis are Arab nationalists first and Shiites second.

In early February, however, a 17-page undated document was found, supposedly authored by Abu Musab Al-Zarawi, a Jordanian operating in Iraq with suspected ties to Al-Qaeda. His plan was to push Sunnis and Shiites into an Iraqi civil war. It has yet to be determined whether this document is fiction, or an actual blueprint for destabilizing Iraq.

The Shiites control a very large share of petroleum resources in southern Iraq, as do the Sunnis in the north. It’s the Kurds who are left out, and are deeply disturbed about it. Fortunately, the Kurds can work with the Sunnis if they choose to.

For many years the Zionists have believed that they can break Iraq into three separate countries — Shiite, Sunni and Kurd — and play one against the other at will. Not surprisingly, this is also the hope of American neoconservatives, who want to ensure that there will always be plentiful oil resources for Israel, via Iraq, since the Jewish state has no oil of its own.

Thanks to the policies of President George W. Bush, the neocons feel they have almost completed that plan.

That is the long and short of Israeli goals and that is why the United States had to go to war in Iraq.

Israel is also the reason the United States may, in the not-too-distant future, be used again elsewhere in the Middle East.

— Richard Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs magazine.