CPTnet
November 20, 2004
by Tom Fox
"People's homes are like the cells of a prison. And Iraq is the
prison." A friend of CPT here in Baghdad gave this assessment of
his country during a recent visit. His neighborhood is adjacent to an area that has been the
scene of daily clashes between insurgents and Iraqi National Guard troops.
"Things are such in my country that we can't trust anybody. We
don't know if we are with a friend or an enemy." Another friend
used these words to describe how it feels to travel the roads outside of Baghdad. Those of us
here on the ground see a different picture of Iraq than the one being painted by the American government and some American media. It is also a
different picture than the one being painted by some Arabic media and governments. Both Western and Middle Eastern governments and media seem to
be using broad brushstrokes to paint over each other's vision of events in this
troubled land.
One analogy that seems relevant is that of a pressure cooker. For
decades, the repressive regime of Saddam Hussein kept a lid on all the
religious, ethnic and cultural tensions that exist in Iraq. Sunni and Shi'a have
issues of trust that stretch back for centuries. Many of the Kurdish
people of the north feel a need to create a separate country. Tribal
cultural issues create tension within the country as well. Saddam and his henchmen repressed all of these tensions without doing anything to work on
solutions. The lid of the pressure cooker was put on so tightly that when the Coalition forces blew the lid off in March of 2003 everything spewed all
over the "kitchen." The Interim Government of Iraq and the
Multinational
Forces are now trying to scoop up the mess, throw it back into the pot and push
another lid on it. They are recreating the same unresolved conflicts that
have plagued the country for more than twenty years.
Our friends, partners and contacts here in Iraq are pessimistic about the future
of their country. I sense that the level of optimism and hope for the future is at a lower level than at any time since my arrival here in the
middle of September. Even people deeply involved and committed to
the electoral process here have told us that they are worried about the
possibility of fair and open elections taking place in all parts of the country.
Creating a decision-making process based on consensus is a foundation of
the work of Christian Peacemaker Teams. Building such a consensus process does not seem to be a foundation of the work of the Iraqi Interim
Government or of the U.S. led Multinational Forces. I pray that
people both here and in North America can reach beyond ego-driven confrontation
and arrive at a place of spirit-led consensus.