WAR: A PRESCRIPTIVE MEASURE FOR MIDDLE EAST MESS? published 2003-02-09

An Iraq-Canadian student with strong family ties in Baghdad calls for war – “It’s the only way that things will ge better,” he says. As the Go train pulled out of Union station, two Iraqi students from Ryerson’s Computer Science program are engaged in what could have been a heated debate about US war measures against Iraq. But Hamdi Hamoudi’s rhetoric is rational as he expands on his pro-war argument. “The Iraqi people are sick of Saddam (Hussein), they want regime change too, and if the only way to that is through America attacking Iraq then fine, so be it.” But Anees Montazar is worried about the innocent lives of people who have nothing to do with Saddam’s government, “so many will die, and for what? The Americans will come in, change our culture, and take our resources.” Montazar is not convinced that war is the answer. He wants to know if Hamoudi has family in Iraq. “I do. I still want war. When I lived in Iraq, I wanted the Americans to attack even then,” he replies as Montazar shakes his head. Hamoudi is not na?ve, he realises that US interests in ‘regime change’ in Iraq has more to do with eyeballing Iraq’s vast untapped oil fields than fostering freedom (as George W. Bush claims) around the world. “The US may be doing this for all the wrong reasons,” he says, but to him the means justify the end if the Iraqi people are liberated from the rule of a despotic leader. “There’s an Iraqi saying: our enemy’s enemy is our friend.” And having lived in Iraq through the trade embargoes, a direct result of Husein’s aggression in the Middle East, Hamoudi can say with conviction that the Iraqi people have no greater enemy than Husein. “People became bankrupt overnight. Many commited suicide. My uncle’s partner blew his brains out infront of him.” Saddam would pass a law banning, for example sugar, labelling it a luxury item, “and the next day all business men with ice cream or chocolate factories would be finished, their employees laid off.” The business community lived in fear and families went without food. “There was a time when a month’s salary was not enough for a kilo of meat,” he says. The relatively affluent Hamoudis were not one of the “nearly seventy percent of Iraqis who ever had meat on the table” but times were tough. When his family first moved from Canada to Iraq, it took 12-year-old Hamoudi a while to see how bad the situation was. The regular absence of basic amenities he had learned to take for granted in Montreal, soon drove the point home. In the searing desert heat, they would go without electricity for twelve hours at a time in his hometown of Mosul, the second largest Iraqi city. There were shorter power shortages in the capitol city of Baghdad but not by much. And then there were the constant calls for students at his school to join Hussein’s political party. One such recruiting attempt is etched into Hamoudi’s memory. Although on paper the government insists that membership is voluntary, seventy students, including Hamoudi, were told by their math teacher sign up. Thirty of the students were already members. It was the last class of the day, and as an incentive to join, the instructor offered the students a chance to leave school early. Some signed on and left for the day. The next incentive he offered was five extra marks on the final mark. More signed on. To the remaining few he said, “you’re not leaving till you sign on.” All but two put their names down and left. Hamoudi was one of them. He was taken into an office alone and asked, “why did you embarrass me like that? Why don’t you join?” Hamoudi realised that his family’s substantial donations to the school meant he had a little more leeway than the other students. He refused again, adding that although he “respected the party he had too much going on”, and was allowed to return home. He was told not to tell the other students that he had been let off so easily. Hamoudi has heard all the arguments against war but he says the need for change trumps them all. The oppressive political climate and abject poverty has sapped he spirit from the people of Iraq, but he is certain that there is still time for the people and the economy to recover if that change comes now. He fears that few more years under the current circumstances and Iraq may be headed in Afghanistan’s direction. “But you think it will be different if the America come in,” rejoins Montazar, “they will come in and plunder the country and install a puppet government, just like Afghanistan.” …And the debate continues as the Go train moves westward to Missisauga.