8/11/2019 'You Don't Know the Fear I Lived In'

1/1

BY J BROOKS S P E CT OR

The beach resorts on the DelmarvaPeninsula, located betweenChesapeake Bay and the AtlanticOcean, are popular with Washing-tons chattering class throughoutthe muggy Washington summer, butthe area also has small towns whoseroots go back to before AmericasRevolutionary War in the 18th cen-tury. And so this area was a goodplace to digest a week of Washing-ton meetings with congressionalaides, international economists andforeign policy analysts.

A year ago, most people thoughtthis election would be a referendumon Iraq, but Americas growing eco-nomic difficulties have now madethe economy an even bigger con-cern for American voters.

Moving in right behind the econ-omy is a growing clamour for heal th

care reform, fuelled by rising med-ical costs and the inevitable gaps incoverage even for those who havemedical plans and health insurance(and nearly 50 million Americansdo not). Concerns about the econo-my and health care are usuallyissues that help Democratic Partycandidates win elections.

These economic concerns alsohave important foreign policyaspects, however. One is growingsupport for protectionist trade poli-cies that supposedly are a shieldagainst the continuing loss of man-ufacturing jobs in America, eventhough some experts argue automa-tion and increasing productivity areas important for job losses as compe-tition from nations such as China orMexico.

Hillary Clintons call to negotiatebetter terms for America under theNorth American Free Trade Agree-ment (Nafta) made a contribution toher victory in the recent primary inOhio and these same views may alsogive her an April 22 win in Pennsyl-vania, keeping her candidacy alivethroughout the American summer.

Officials of the DemocraticNational Committee said they lookforward to the moment the Oba-ma/Clinton fight is decided so theparty can take on Senator JohnMcCain in the general contest. But,

because the Obama/Clinton strug-gle has generated such interest andso many financial contributions andbecause it has brought so manynew voters into the system, somestates that have been reliably Repub-lican for a generation could be upfor grabs in the general election.

Senators Obama and Clintonremain close in the all-importantdelegate race Obama has moreelected delegates, Clinton still a fewmore of those super-delegates, cur-rent and former Democratic offi-cials. So, there remains a slimchance either will win the numberof delegates needed to clinch thenomination, unless either candidatecan somehow convince the nearly800 super-delegates as a group tosupport him or her.

The Florida and Michigan pri-mary results previously weredeclared off-limits in the delegaterace because both states violated a

party decision to keep the NewHampshire primary and Iowa cau-cus and races in two other smallstates as the first steps in the cam-paign. But gaining these delegatesmight be the wayto the nomination.

The essence is: can the Democ-rats effectively disenfranchise morethan 5 million voters in their pri-mary campaign, even as the partytries to draw new voters nationally?

Michigans job losses and protec-tionist sentiment and Floridasmany Hispanic voters could pushboth delegate totals substantiallyinto Clintons column if new pri-maries take place. As a result, theObama camp may yet oppose newprimaries, or procedural and finan-cial difficulties could sink plans toredo these primary elections.

Regardless of who wins theDemocratic nomination, some ana-lysts argued to me that a Democrat-ic victory might mean difficultiesfor an easy renewal of the AfricanGrowth and Opportunity Act, oreven a successful conclusion of theDoha trade round. (A liberal inter-national trade regime remainsimportant for South Africa as thiscountry continues to try to gainaccess and market share for manu-factured products globally.)

Obamas foreign policy team iswell populated with advisers with

an interest in Africa, includingAnthony Lake, the former nationalsecurity adviser, Susan Rice, theformer assistant secretary of statefor African affairs, and at leastuntil she resigned after callingHillary Clinton a monster in theBritish press Samantha Power,

journalist and Harvard academic.Power is best known for her PulitzerPrize-winning book on genocide.

Several unpaid advisers to theObama camp spoke privately aboutefforts to get the campaign to focussubstantively on Africa beyondDarfur and genocide, that is.

But, Susan Rice may have finallybegun to do just this with a recentarticle in The Washington Postthathighlighted the problems of weakAfrican states and Americas needto pay more attention to povertyalleviation and re-establishing part-nerships with key African states insupport of stability and growth.

Clinton last month called for theneed to end genocide in Darfur andto intensify anti-HIV/Aids, TB andmalaria programmes.

Both candidates have, in effect,acknowledged some positiveimpacts of the Bush presidency on

Africa. But, as one conservativepolicy analyst noted, upgradingAfricas ranking in the overallAmerican foreign policy agenda isimportant. Yet what exactly can bedowngraded to make more room forAfrica on this crowded and con-tentious list?

J Brooks Spector is a senior visit-

ing lecturer in international rela-

tions at the University of the Witwa-

tersrand and a former American

diplomat. He recently returned from

a month in the United States. He

writes in his personal capacity

The man had spotted thepretty young woman andgiven her his number. Hethought Zara, a young

Baghdadi medical student he hadseen partying with her colleaguesaboard a boat on the Tigris, might

just be his bosss type.Girls and young women lived in

fear of being spotted and randomlypicked for the Iraqi dictators eldestsons sadistic pleasure. When shedidnt call, he stalked the halls of themedical school where Zara traineduntil she simply refused to attend.

After two months, Uday SaddamHusseins man finally lost inter-est. You dont know the fear I livedin, said Zara. I literally shook formonths.

This is one reason why Zara (whodoes not want her surname pub-lished) lives in London and willremain grateful till her dying daythat the Americans came to liberateher country.

That was the way she felt evenbefore the kidnap and torture inDecember 2003 of her father, a cardi-ologist, one of the first victims ofwhat became a commonplace crime

the $20 0000 ransom, his subse-quent release, and the baffling deci-sion of the Americans to free thegang that carried out the crime.

Five years on from the start ofthe invasion and almost universalcondemnation of the Allies mistak-en path, Zara remains resolute inher support.

Despite the terrible price Iraqishave paid, she feels the death of Sad-dam has at least given Iraq a chance.She knows she has to qualify thatstatement.

She lives with her Iraqi husband,an architect, and young daughter in

the safety of London, her parentshave relocated to northern Iraqbecause of the violence in Baghdad,while her sister in Jordan studiesEnglish literature. Her brother, alsoa doctor, lives in England.

One of the things she thoughtshe would never see is the sectariandivide that has caused a virtual civ-il war. Zara is not only beautiful andextremely clever and engaging butalso half Sunni and half Shia, theproduct of a mixed marriage, com-mon in the old Iraq.

She may not be very optimisticabout Iraqs short-term prospects,but life under the former regimewas intolerable. I was not a practis-ing Muslim, but I started to praythat the Americans would come.

With the invasion only hoursaway on March 19 2003, Zara s fatherclosed his practice and went home.He stood on the roof of his house inKarada, a Sunni neighbourhood inBaghdad, willing the American hel-icopters to come, shouting andcheering them on. He told me this

over the phone and he was crying,he was so happy. He was veryagainst the Baathists.

She also cannot understand theanti-war protests that took place.These people simply have no ideawhat life was like before. They areidiots, she says simply, and thenapologises. Sorry, she adds imme-diately after, and tells the story ofbeing scouted for Udays pleasurethat instilled such fear in her.

Living under the Saddam

regime was like living with BigBrother, she says, reminding us ofhow toxic everyday life was.

We felt Big Brother inside ourbedroom, my father even felt himinside his bed, under the sheets. Itwas terrible.

My father couldnt even say any-thing in front of us out of fear whenwe were children.

He, too, and the rest of the fami-ly havent changed their minds onthe war despite the devastation and

the impact this conflict has hadaround the globe.

On April 9, Wisam, her brother,found himself in Firdus Square inthe centre of Baghdad when the stat-ue of Saddam Hussein was beinghacked down. Caught up in theexcitement of the moment, releas-ing decades of repressed emotionand hatred, he joined the crowd andhit the statue with his shoe.

Zara and her husband,Mustapha, watched the action from

London.A recent poll of public opinion

commissioned by four major broad-casting companies, including ABCNews and the BBC, suggests thatIraqis are more optimistic abouttheir lives than they have been formore than three years. The resultssuggest that people think things willcontinue to improve.

Zara would like to move back toBaghdad, were it not so dangerous.She understands the irony of her

views. I think I am speaking onbehalf of many true Iraqis whowere not in the Baath party, no mat-ter where you were from or who youwere Sunni, Shia, Kurd or Christ-ian we were all suffering and wewere all hoping to get rid of theregime.

That fear still exists and it is whyshe requested that her family namenot be used.

Later this year, Zara will beginher first job as a house doctor at a

hospital in north London. Despitehaving pushy parents (her motheris a gynaecologist), it was alwaysher dream to practise medicine.

She didnt have much troubleaccomplishing it, coming in the top20 of her graduating class in Iraq.Had she been a member of theBaath party, her marks would havebeen significantly higher.

There was pressure on studentsto join the ruling party, but herfather refused to allow it.

I asked him when I was 17 yearsold and in secondary school if I

could join so I could get the 10 extramarks that the party immediatelyadded to your score.

Even if I couldnt get into med-ical school, he absolutely forbade itand, actually, I agreed. Only peoplewho were incredibly opportunistic

joined. There was no excuse in beinga Baathi.

Her parents were doing theirpost-graduate degrees in the UnitedKingdom when Zara was born inLondon before the family returnedin 1980. Despite having a Britishpassport, she found it difficult toleave Iraq in August 2002, to moveback to be with her husband whomshe had met when he returned toBaghdad to visit his family.

Wearing a hijab and abaya, theheadscarf and long black robe, shewent with her father to the passportoffice near their home, pretending tobe an illiterate housewife.

My father was talking on mybehalf, and I acted very shy, as if Ihad been left in the corner for mywhole life. When I was asked for mysignature I told them I couldntwrite.

Although right-handed, she usedher left hand to scribble something.

I asked if that was enough, and theofficial said okay.

Zara had been practising medi-cine for two years by that time.Whenshe came to London, she discoveredthat she was pregnant. It wasntplanned and I was in denial becausemy plan was to do the conversioncourse so I could practise.

When her daughter was born,she put her studies on hold. Theychose the name Carmen becausethey wanted her to be anglicised;they call her Kooky and, like mostfive-year-olds, she is pretty cute.

Its fear, if you look really deepdown, fear of being rejected by soci-ety. But she also has an Arabicname, which is Karama. It meansdignity or pride.

One day she hopes the situationwill stabilise and they will return.Its only a dream and I dont thinkit will come true, but at least therewas a change. Otherwise it would beUday or Qusay in power, Saddamsnotorious sons, and then therewould be no hope.

MARCH 23 2008 THESUNDAY INDEPENDENT 15DISPATCHES

You dont know the fear I lived inA young mother and doctor now living in England tells of family life under the evils of Saddam Husseins rule, writes Heidi Kingstone

Zara, who prefers not to divulge her surname for fear of reprisals on her family in Iraq, recalls the time when she stopped going to medical school lectures to escape being stalked by Saddam Husseins sonsretainers. The men were constantly on the lookout for pretty young women to entertain their sadistic young masters PHOTOGRAPH: HEIDI KINGSTONE

Economics takes a frontseat in US election race

Communists are on thecomeback trail in Germany

Supporters wait to get the autograph of Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama after he spoke aboutIraq and national security in Fayetteville, North Carolina, this week PHOTOGRAPH: ALEXBRANDON, AP

BY CRAIG WHIT LOCK

Nineteen years after the fall of theBerlin Wall, the old East GermanCommunist Party is making acomeback.

Known these days simply as theLeft, the ex-communists have broad-ened their appeal by playing to Ger-mans anxieties about globalisation,wealth distribution and welfarecuts.

After scraping along for years,the Left now draws the support ofone in seven Germans, some pollsshow making it the third most-popular party in the country and apotential kingmaker in next yearsfederal election.

The Lefts rebound has stunnedGermanys mainstream politicalparties, which had written off theex-communists as relics of the ColdWar. Instead, the Left has upendedthe countrys once-stable political

system, increasing the odds that itcould come to power in a coalitiongovernment.

Most supporters of the Left livein economically struggling easternGermany, where nostalgia remainsstrong for the years of communistrule. In the past several weeks, how-ever, the party has won seats for thefirst time in regional parliaments inthe western states of Hesse andLower Saxony, as well as the city ofHamburg.

The mood is giddy in the Leftsparty headquarters in easternBerlin, located in the same buildingthat housed the German Commu-nist Party until 1933, when theNazis came to power. After years ofridicule, the Lefts leaders are beingtaken seriously as a political force.But even they arent sure how farthey can go or whether their cur-rent success is a flash in the pan.

The ultimate outcome is still aquestion mark, acknowledgedDietmar Bartsch, the Left partysgeneral secretary and a member ofparliament.

Weve had very strong successin the most recent elections. But thequestion is how long that will con-tinue.

Since 2005, Germany has beenruled by what people here call agrand coalition, a partnering of

the two biggest parties: the Christ-ian Democrats and the SocialDemocrats. The arrangement wasforced after the Left scored 9 per-cent of the vote and made itimpossible for either of the bigparties to form their usual rulingpartnerships.

The coalition has provedunwieldy, forcing both sides towater down their agendas as theystruggle to share power. The primebeneficiary has been the Left, whichhas stepped into the void as thecountrys leading opposition group.

The biggest loser has been theSocial Democrats, whose approvalratings have plummeted.

Defections to the Left have accel-erated since Gerhard Schroeder, thelast social democratic chancellor,approved a series of cuts in unem-ployment and pension benefitsstarting in 2003.

The Left calls for a full restora-tion of welfare benefits that have

been cut in the imperialist UnitedStates. Its critics warn that if itcame to power, the Left would soakthe rich with higher taxes and with-draw Germanys military frominternational commitments, includ-ing peacekeeping operations inAfghanistan, Lebanon and Africa.

Andreas Schockenhoff, a deputyparliamentary leader for the Chris-tian Democrats, accused the Left ofhaving no real plan for governing.

He said Germanys other partieshave a responsibility to treat theLeft as an outcast, the same waythey shun neo-Nazi groups thatoccasionally win seats in state legis-latures.

They are playing a role ofobstruction and protestation,Schockenhoff said of the Left in aninterview.

It is a populist approach, verydemagogic. They want to blame anypolitical change in our system onglobalisation and are outside thedemocratic consensus that we haduntil now.

Bartschsaid the Left needed tolay such doubts to rest.

We have to be a serious party,he said. We are committed to act-ing in a democrati c way. For us,change in society is only possiblethrough democracy no ifs, ands orbuts. Washington Post

SI_DIS_E1_230308_p15CMYK