Differently Abled Iraqis in America: On the 16th Anniversary

Sixteen years have passed since America (along with other countries) decided to topple Saddam Hussein and institute their own sectarian-colored government in Iraq. The U.S. move to disband the Iraqi military has also been the primary reason for the rise of armed sectarian conflict in Iraq. This post is a commemoration and acknowledgment of U.S. culpability. It hopes to center the lives of Iraqi people who still bear witness to the evolving events of militarism and imperialism. 

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Today while I was on the 101 bus venturing from Malden to Medford, I saw three Latino men discussing the motherland (pais) fervently in Spanish.  All wore fashionable hats as well as similar clothes. When two of them left the bus at one point, the remaining one joined the male bus driver and switched to converse in English. He remembered his homeland nostalgically as a place where he did not need to pay for juice or fruit. He also recounted how his hard-earned money in the U.S. could enable him to own property in the motherland. They both lamented the disappearance of a nearby Papa Gino's Pizza. The man bragged about his work and salary to the bus driver and wondered "how can someone earn without working?" He soon left after this statement and the driver wished him a good day.

First, I was struck by the capitalist contradiction in which his labor and remittances will contribute to the capitalization of his motherland, which I guess would also wipe out the practice of receiving free juice. Second, I was annoyed by his ableist understanding of survival, which is prevalent among Chinese immigrants as well. The second part took a while for me to digest and verbalize.

Today was also another class with Prof. Kamran Rastegar where we discussed the connections between colonialism and trauma. While the latter's definition has been criticized by some as Eurocentric, I found trauma as a useful concept to understand my own circumstances as well as the Iraqi friends I made in Louisville. One important intervention made by people caught in political events is that trauma is often ongoing. For my experience, the ideal "safe space" for processing trauma is often (sadly) only found in America or Western Europe, since lives of those in such places are placed at a higher value. Many places in Iraq continue to suffer under conflict and private security companies profit from the current scenario.

For many Iraqis, even after they enter the U.S., their trauma often cannot be addressed due to their racialized subaltern statuses. One of the Iraqi friends I met in Louisville, "A," struggles with the ongoing effects of trauma and the same ableist situations as told by the man I heard on the bus today. "A" believed that only work could secure himself a respectable livelihood in America. On the other hand, he also witnessed the demise of Iraqi men who do not become a middle-class family man, either due to their class position (lack of resources for marrying and/or supporting a partner) or due to their estrangement from American society. One of his former friends resisted wage labor and continued to live as a homeless person in Louisville. This former friend's existence calls to question the possibility of rehabilitating people traumatized by American imperialism. Similar to the man on the bus, "A" also acknowledges that "nothing is free in America," yet he also has a certain pride in his ability to work.

from : @johnnyrodgersis

22 hour
Y, a former mercernary and non-Arab Iraqi, found me as an ideal person to discuss his encounters with the American military-industrial complex. He acknowledged his privilege associated with his contribution to the (ever-changing) objectives of American presence in Iraq and how that helped him disabuse any Islamophobic biases from white people in America. He also demonstrated some conflicted feelings over his acts of killing, whether for political or economic gains. His trauma affected him in a negative way. Yet his trauma was not as obviously manifested as trauma of other Iraqis, or me, for that matter.

Others who did not contribute to America's military project had more ambivalent feelings toward their "new" life in America. Many did not relate to their opportunities in America in the same functionalist way as Y did. M, another non-Arab Iraqi, for example, did not adhere to masculine norms of either American or Iraqi standards and did not have the same impetus to integrate into American society as Y. M, as a receiver of unemployment benefits, was seen as less masculine in both Iraqi and American contexts than Y. Thus while America and its capitalism economy is structurally ableist and prefers immigrants with ableist bodies, the need to appear as ableist and available for work also depends on the subjectivity and masculine ideals of each person. Rutgers scholar Dr. Amir Moosavi has also argued that ideals of martyrdom (Shaheed) can be found in literary expressions as well as experiences of Iraqi and Iranian people during and after the Iran-Iraq war. These differences are important for people who wish to decenter white masculinity.

Another case that prompted my thoughts on this subject was the 《和陌生人说话》 interview with former mercenary Bai Xiaobao. One can watch the interview here on Youtube. Originally from a formerly semi-rural background, he achieved middle class status by risking his life in post-2003 Iraq. He leveraged the idea of necropolitics and capitalism to his advantage by serving four years (2012-2016) as a mercenary.

("Necropolitics is the use of social and political power to dictate how some people may live and how some must die.")

Mr. Bai lived precariously along with other non-white mercernaries and prepared for his likely death: he wrote his mother's name as the recipient of the 4,000,000RMB life insurance. bought property near his hometown in China. He reflected how his worldview expanded after his encounter with Beijing and the internet where men discussed mercernary opportunities. Yet my question prompted by experiences of migration and globalization is that Bai Xiaobao's radical reassassessment of his life being more "valuable" in monetary terms in Iraq than in China. While he harmonizes his life choices by promoting China's society as stable and safe in comparison to Iraq, his acts of migration and re-telling can be subversive to China's state project.

Y similarly considered the idea of returning as a mercenary to earn money rather than play it safe with wage labor in the U.S. While ableism allows for some forms of labor, mercenary labor in Iraq has a logic that rejects the state's power of determining life and death. The Chinese and American government continue to profit from migrants in various forms, the former mostly of domestic migrants and the later being mostly migrants of color. Yet the biopolitics of ableism also relies on the idea that one necessarily appreciates one's body beyond all renumeration. If the concern of migrants are predominantly "who will take care of me when I am old," the mercenary (from subaltern backgrounds) has resolved this "money" problem with their own body.

Many of others follow the state logic that they will either die of natural death or state punishment and/or fail the stringent requirements for serving on mercenary forces. The bodies of these people often have to perform labor in order for their survival in America, despite that many aspects of their homeland had been destroyed by war and imperialism. Others, such as South Asian laborers, are exploited as well in Iraq. See: Documents Reveal Details of Labor Trafficking by #KBR Subcontractor in #Iraq.

Due to this reality of the people I know, I am very despondent. There should be more ways in the U.S. that addresse trauma without predicating on the assumption that the person will recover, since recovery is often centered around labor productivity. Centering the trauma of Iraqis should not require more labor from Iraqis, since it is the U.S. that created the dislocation in the first place. Yet there are also other participants in the post-2003 conflict, such as Bai Xiaobao, which complicate the politics of trauma and imperialism.


Further reading:

Achille Mbembe. 2003. Necropolitics.

Antonella Ceccagno. 2017. City making and global labor regimes : Chinese immigrants and Italy's fast fashion industry

Amir Moosavi. 2015. “How to Write Death: Disenchanting Martyrdom in two Novels of the Iran-Iraq War.” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, No. 35.

David Isenberg. 2009. Shadow force : private security contractors in Iraq. 

Gracia Liu-Farrer. 2011. Labor migration from China to Japan : international students, transnational migrants. 

Scott Fitzsimmons. 2017. Private Security Companies during the Iraq War: Military performance and the use of deadly force 

Ulrich Petersohn. 2013. The Effectiveness of Contracted Coalitions: Private Security Contractors in Iraq. 

Yun Gao. 2010. Concealed chains : labour exploitation and Chinese migrants in Europe.  

Is the concept of the military institution a Eurocentric one?

The modern-liberal paradigm assumes that the people who serve in any military is or should be divorced from politics. One should not have a particular allegiance, charismatic or otherwise, with their bosses or leaders. Within histories that have been written in a similar vein, the military in any non-European country is merely one of the many institutions playing catch-up with Eurocentric models of sovereignty. 

However, if we observe the history of Middle Eastern society without assuming a teleological narrative that culminates in the modern nation state, then we would possibly see that the military institution similarly did not have a smooth path toward the current model. The following sections will shift focus to scholarship of the Middle East. 

Shah Ismail I, Sheikh of the Safavi tariqa, founder of the Safavid dynasty, commander-in-chief of the Kizilbash Armies

Scholars of modernity and Islam have noted how colonialism and other factors have influenced histories of social organizations such as the ulama. There is a common method that looks for knowledge within the ulama, and historians are possibly biased in this respect, since the ulama is the institution that most resembles the current-day university. However, if one does not presume that soldiers are without a culture, then the rich history of Kurdish Alevis, Albanian Betakshis as well as Arab Shi'i tribes would be of great use for writing an alternative history of knowledge. A new method of history must review the bifurcation of "the people who fight" and "the people who study" as interlinked and criss-crossing, rather than atemporally distinct. Studies of Sufism such as the Naqshbandis have made very important contributions in this regard (see a quote on the similarities of ideas in Sufism and Shi'ism in footnote 1).

Worshippers circle the shrine of El-Sayed El-Badawi; this mawlid is considered Egypt's most famous. Tanta, Egypt, Oct 16, 2014. Mosa'ab Elshamy

The transmission of Shi'ism and affective ideas of Shi'ism in regions such as Turkey, Iran, Iraq and the Gulf cannot be told separate of its military aspect. There are serious lack of comparisons in knowledge and ideas in this respect. Current scholarship generally assumes that the ulama has a greater say in matters of Islamic theology and doctrine. The divorce of certain Islamic practices from textual knowledge has been rightly pinned on colonial intervention and the rise of the nation-state. But what role has historians played in this process of privileging the ulama as an institution of knowledge? Paradoxically, the military as a modern phenomenon has also been studied as an important site of reform. Many military personnel from the Ottoman Empire accepted European training and played a decisive role in introducing new ideas that still reverberate in modern politics. Interested readers might look into the episodes of Ottoman History Podcast that devote to this particular subject, such as Military Education and the Last Ottoman Generation and Jafar al-Askari: Modernization, Martial Discipline and Post-Ottoman Iraq. Yet "military" and "education" in some histories have taken on a modernizing narrative trend, in which there could not have been educated military personnel before the advent of European knowledge. This neglects the alternative modes of education prior to European influence and/or colonization. Modernity in some aspects were imported, but cultural memory remained attached to alternative notions of justice and war, such as jihad. In this aspect, one could delve into earlier times, or review the interwar period with an even more skeptical view of modernity.

To recover jihad from a colonial and stereotypical view of jihadis or fanatics, one must recuperate military traditions within the context of Islamic history as well. Shiism is particularly an interesting facet to look at these issues, since they have provided significant alternative concepts of jihad. Recovering different modes of military knowledge can also help us revisit the erroneous assumptions that the Middle East was hegemonically dominated by one form of Islam.  

Footnote:
1. Quote from How to Conceptualize Ottoman Sunnitization by Derin Terzioğlu

Review of "The Ba'thification of Iraq"

As a writer, the author of  The Ba'thification of Iraq (2015) can be commended for his command of Arabic political terminologies. He also has a penchant for Stalin and Nazi rants. He offers the Baath-Nazi-Commie analogies liberally in almost every chapter, which reveal his obvious ideological leanings as an advocate of the 2003 U.S. intervention. The U.S.-led post-invasion debathification process used the experience of de-nazification from the 1940s rather dogmatically, as documented by Dr. Aysegul Keskin Zeren in her 2017 work "From De-Nazification of Germany to De-Baathification of Iraq."

Published November 15th 2015 by University of Texas Press

If the author went beyond facile analogies of Stalin and Saddam, he could possibly see clearly that many strategies and slogans of the Baath Party was copied and / or adopted from the Iraqi Communist Party. The 20th century analytical theme--the party system functioned as a crucial apparatus for state formation--is lacking. The author is primarily focused on establishing the Baath Party as an exception rather than the rule.

As a historian, the author of this book stresses certain contexts out of proportion and overlooks other contexts, such as British imperialism. He portrays Ottoman political culture as faction-ridden and corrupt and uses this distortion to explain the lack of coalition building in Iraq and the demise of Abd al-Karim Qasim in the 1958 coup. Iraq seems to appear out of Oriental chaos, only to be saved. 

This author has used his privilege as an American (official) to access the Baath Party documents which have been housed in Hoover Institution Archives, courtesy of an agreement with the Iraqi Memory Foundation; the negative implications of this arrangement for the historiography of Iraq and ordinary citizens have been explained by historian Saad Eskander (http://libraryjuicepress.com/blog/?p=439).
Finally, this review could not have been possible if I did not have years of engaged readings on the functioning of the Chinese Communist Party. More cross-region comparisons should be employed for de-Orientalizing histories of the 20th century.

Solidarity, Dissimulation, and Making Space

Many recent articles now have discussed the rather unwelcoming world of activism and how it could potentially discourage activism. I personally have yet to be fully engaged in any offline activist community, due to my transient occupation as a student. But I do see these trends and feel the effect. Similarly, there have been heated debates revolving the politics of Ta-Nahisi Coates and Cornel West. While I do agree with West's analysis, there are also the issues of authority and personal relations at stake: Who gets to call someone a neoliberal? Who are we talking to? Where is the public sphere? Twitter? Cafes? Likewise, there have been intense name-calling among Arabs in the U.S., especially in light of the Lebanese-Saudi tensions. A Lebanese performer in Boston criticized the policies of Saudi Arabia last month, which caused many people to leave the venue in either outrage or dismay. I was not there so I am not sure what was exactly said. I wish there was a way for people to share their opinions without resigning to a simple refusal. Al Jazeera also published a good piece about the value of connected histories and a certain type of mindset that prevents these histories. I agree with him that "What we are witnessing throughout the Arab and Muslim world is a battle for the soul of the Muslim past to inhabit the spirit of the Muslim future." Perhaps that is also why Cemil Aydin's history book on The Idea of the Muslim world is so timely. He also shares a lot of contemporary connections with politics on a great episode of the Ottoman History podcast. He argues: through tracing the historical roots of Pan-Islamism, one can become wary of the sloganeering of politicians and rebel factions. The author of the Al Jazeera piece, Professor Hamid Dabashi, also published a book Being a Muslim in the World engaging in similar themes. 

I also have been questioned by an Iraqi Kurdish person in the U.S. in regards to my allegiance vis-a-vis Arab-Kurd relations, which prompted me to think: How should we make space for one another in this context?  Much effort is dedicated to explaining Others to an "American" public, but identities are fluid and Muslim / Brown-skinned folks living in the U.S. also should provide space for each other. In other words, we are also entitled to the public sphere to process our own beefs as much as anyone. 

A friend studying in Turkey wrote about the book markets of Istanbul and how patrons usually avoid political subjects. This phenomenon can be traced to the Ottoman era, and is a mark of being "cultured." Nowadays, most of us in the U.S. no longer have that leisure to be that "cultured." At the same time, too much criticism also can be a hindrance to forming solidarity.

It also reminds me of a history paper presented on a learned scholar who practiced dissimulation in the Ottoman era. The paper argued that the scholar was Shi'a and most people around him knew about it for decades on end. In my understanding, even dissimulation, in either the religious or political sense, is not simply an individual act and requires patience for and understanding of each other. Dissimulation (into whiteness or heteronormativity) requires not only the person to meticulously dissimulate and pose as a  authentic member of the "mainstream," but also a community of people who take him/her at his/her words and not reveal.

In a rather different context, for many who faced discriminatory checkpoints in the post-2005 urban Iraq, pretending to be a person from different sect was an important survival skill. While the scale of violence has yet to become that high in the U.S., there are definitely rising tensions around me. Much has been written about how to organize without leaking information about undocumented people to the ICE. Yet I am also speaking about a social issue. At times, exclusionary views seem to be much easier to espouse than inclusive ones, which then silences and erases certain people's experiences. How can we devise politics that allows space for thinking and debating, without invoking too much of a person's identity that s/he/they would rather not speak about? 

Below is an interesting passage on South Asian-Iraqi connections from page 45 of Recasting the Region by historian Neilesh Bose. Even though he was writing about political organizing of the early twentieth century, it is equally relevant to today as well. 

“Shatt-il Arab” one of Nazrul’s most well-known poems from this era, expresses the feeling of a Bengali soldier in Iraq, near the Shatt-il Arab, and his loving feeling of admiration for Arab heroes in Iraq, the ‘land of martyrs’. Repeated laments over the ‘spilt blood of valiant Arabs’ and pure Arabian riverbanks establish the poem as a paean to Arabic culture and Islamic civilization in that region. The poem also sings a song of fondness to that ancient land between the Tigris and Euphrates as a measure of universalist Islamic identity. The end of the poem places the suffering of the Bengali soldier, the pain, sorrow, and hurt felt in war, and in death, alongside the Iraqi army: Iraqi army! Here in this story / We in the Bengal army / Can say your suffering is ours!” Regarding Muslims identity, Nazrul places the Bengali and the Iraqi into a common Muslim world of mutual love and admiration. The Bengali protagonist remains a Bengali, never to be shorn of a particular cultural location. Muslim identity is part of a larger universalism which doesn’t exclude, but rather, actively includes the local sense of identity. It is one of the first poems to appear after WWI that combines a look towards the future with a feeling of belonging in the Muslim and Bengali world.

While one may be skeptical about the "objectivity" in the idealism invoked by the poet Nazrul, it is also a breeze amidst heated geopolitical contestations and certain venomous youtube comments. 

Iraq, Indian soldiers within the British forces in a suburb of western Baghdad in 1917. First shared by Old Iraqi Pictures

Some Moments from the film "Forget Baghdad"

The documentary film Forget Baghdad, made in 2002, is actually a remembrance of Baghdad. Four Iraqi Jewish writers living in Israel recount their childhood watching Egyptian and Indian cinema. They also recalled their Communist youth before they emigrated to Israel. Only one of the interviewees remained a communist after he left Iraq. Communism seemed to have been a very historically specific quest that resonated with them at the time, rather than a dogma. One interviewee recalls how he would participate in Marxist reading groups. He gave a very literal take on idealism and materialism, while the discussant leader wanted something more theoretical. Then a worker who had a nickname of “Big Thumb” provided an answer about how idealism and materialism were related in a dialectic sense. The interviewee felt disappointed in himself. I was surprised that such deep discussions took place in those times of Baghdad.

Trailer

All of them recall the protests in 1946 and how many strangers in the city were in solidarity with communists. I had read about Communist movements in Iraq before but I never read first-hand accounts. The site of protest—the British embassy— was close to the red light district, and one interviewee hid with the help of the prostitutes. Another interviewee, Sami Michael, is an award-winning novelist. During the protests, he found himself under the body of his friend which was being kicked by a police. He was so mad, he attacked the police while shouting, "He is an intellectual and he is about to die!" The police would have shot him if it wasn't for a woman in an abaya who stood between them. He ran to the river and was given a boat to escape. He escaped all the way to Mashhad and was hidden in a mosque, even though under normal circumstances he would not have been allowed. I did not know about the restrictions on Jewish people entering Mashhad before watching this documentary.

All the interviewees expressed the sentiment that most of the Iraqi Jews were not Zionists and did not want to leave Iraq as late as 1950. But there were bombs (allegedly planned by Zionists) in Jewish areas that scared many of them away.

Director Samir and his cousin Jamal Al Tahir in front of the Kremlin in Moscow. Originally from Dschoint Ventschr Filmproduktion.

In addition to the accounts given the by the interviewees, the filmmaker Samir provides a lot of context and paints a very complex picture. He shows how there were more politically-sharp newspapers accessible in Israel compared to the situation in Iraq. Many of the interviewees contributed to newspapers and reflected on their relationship with Arabic and Hebrew. The filmmaker  comments on how much of the Arab hostility towards Israel forgets that there are also Arabic-speaking people in Israel. The filmmaker also interviews the film studies scholar, Ella Shohat, who is also a Baghdadi Jew. She discussed how certain Israeli films tend to harmonize the issues of the nation by presenting Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews as culturally different but ultimately suitable for marriage and reconciliation. She is a Mizrahi Jew who felt a deep sense of alienation from Israeli society. She recalled how Iraqi Jews were forcibly sprayed with DDT when they landed in Israel. European-style bread would be subsidized by the state, while pita bread was not. Many Iraqi Jews labored on farms in order to win their position in society.

Shohat recounted her first time meeting an Iraqi Arab for the first time when she was in New York. Yet he was also foreign to the concept of Iraqi Jews and had not heard of the Farhood (pogroms). She exclaimed that people’s memories often forgets history. Now, fortunately, there is a Babylonian Jewry Heritage Museum dedicated to the history of people like Shohat.

The writer Sami also admits that sometimes he feels that “In the Arab world we are Jews, in Israel we’re Arabs.” He later laughs and says he is a baklava, a mix of both cultures. He complained that Israel is an ideologist country, superficial and small. Yet he said that he became more accustomed to settling in Israel once his daughter was born: for her, Israel will be her home; and for this reason, he decided to place his roots here for good.

In terms of the language, I could understand the word “fish” when Sami reminisced about the Iraqi specialty. I also understood the words spy (jasoos) and nationalism (al-qaumiyya). Overall it was a deep and engaging documentary film that clearly required a lot of effort.

Towards a Non-State Centric Understanding of Iraqi History

While reading historian Eric Davis's Memories of the State, I came across his description about how the British colonizers favored a compliant chess piece, Faisel II, and his regent, Prince Abdullah among the successors for the Hashemite royal family in the mid-1930s. Davis argued that the compliant Prince saw that the British could help him stay in power, and thus allowed for more British interference in Iraq.

Book cover

This description struck me because it seemed that the state harbors a magical "seat" where the person who manages to sit in that place, would become more invincible than other political actors. Thus generations compete for power at the magical seat, which replicates the preexisting organs and arrangements of the state, including colonialism arrangements such as the British mandate. It does not seem to be that much different from a pre-French revolution "monarchy," even though it is clear that the 20th century Hashemite monarchy was anything but like it. While Davis is aware of the differences and impact of colonial designs on the Hashemite monarchy, he still presumes a rather monolithic, state-centered narrative in the unraveling of the Hashemite monarchy for his readers.


The implicit question seems to be the age-old one: How can a "modern historical account" explain how an "Oriental despotic regime" becomes a "modern state," which has institutions providing checks and balances?

But this frame seems to be exactly the problem. The frame assumes that everyone is power-hungry as rational decision makers, and thus would definitely seize the opportunity to enter the power vacuum when available. In the Iraqi case, the colonialists could presumably offer anyone that magical seat, and anyone would capitulate. Even idealists such as leftists and nationalists might squander the opportunity during the power machination process. At the same time, states are also in competition with each other, and thus, they would all have to maintain internal stability to "get ahead" in the race. In Arab Spring, Libyan Winter, scholar Vijay Prashad has also noted how "regional stability" is also a key code word for U.S. foreign policy decisions in the Middle East. In this sense, one could see how there are people who support a state-centered narrative (including a wide range of people from U.S. foreign policy heads to certain Ba'athists and Communists), and those who would differ.

Rather than state-centered narratives, I find Foucault's conception of power more nuanced in order to understand these processes. He critiques the idea of power as a magical seat in Society Must Be Defended (p13):

In the case of the classic juridical theory of power, power is regarded as a right which can be  possessed in the way one possesses a commodity, and which can therefore be transferred or alienated, either completely or partly, through  a juridical act or  an act that founds a right—it does not matter which,  for the  moment—thanks to the surrender of something or thanks to a contract. Power is the concrete  power that any individual can hold, and which he can surrender, either as  a  whole or in  part, so  as to constitute a power or a political sovereignty. 

Under the Iraqi state's eyes, "Communists," "Shias," "minorities,"and "women" are separate categories. Davis takes cue from Gramsci in his formulation of the state and anti-state resistance. While Davis's book emphasized that there had been functioning political institutions and democratic activity in Iraq in 1954 and complicates a despotic stereotype of pre-1960s Iraq, his state-centric understanding of power is still limiting and replicates these monolithic categories of women, Shias, minorities and communists. Similarly, the good-intentioned policymakers have made and would continue to make the same mistake while navigating through ethnic loyalties and political affiliations of Iraq if they continue to view society from a state-centric vantage point.

Rather than staring at the magical seat, we should pay more attention to where the power projects itself toward and how it is embodied. Foucault also admits that there are not so many methods outside of this model to understand power. One can read more about that in his lectures. While recognizing the Iraqi Left-leaning intellectuals' enormous contribution in historicizing sectarianism, documenting "voices from below" and analyzing class formation in Iraq, I would also like to see more Foucauldian or non-state-centric analyses of Iraqi history.

Overall, the mainland Chinese academia also suffers from obsession with state-centric narratives. They are also using the same paradigms to understand the outside world as well. That is why I find studies on the effects of colonialism so curative to the current academic obsession. As Timothy Mitchell as written in 1991 in the article "The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics," "Political subjects and their modes of resistance are formed as much within the organizational terrain we call the state, rather than in some wholly exterior social space." This understanding would also become beneficial to critiquing and resisting the communist government: currently many dissidents cannot formulate a strong response to the assumption that "without the communist government, China will surely become chaotic." This assumption similarly uses the overempowering ideal of a sovereign that keeps things in check: Without that sovereign, any opportunist will seize the magical seat. To have any meaningful resistance against the increasingly prevelant communist state, dissidents and resisters have to undo this understanding of the magical seat.

Access to the Iraqi Field

In between a trip to Prague, I have been reading books on the modern history of Iraq, the legal history of women's rights in Iraq, and biographical narratives of diasporic Iraqi women. This coming month also marks the third year since I permanently moved from Beijing, which was my home for many years. Many reflections on diaspora and the meaning of living abroad came up when I read books on Iraqi politics as well as Kundera's classic The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I also compare diasporic conditions cross cultures during my time spent with the Pakistani student community in Gottingen. While the background of my interest is mostly personal, this blog post will mainly address the political issues and questions of methodologies that surfaced when I read the books on Iraq.

In her book Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present, Dr. Nadje Sadig Al-Ali presents material she gathered through interviews with women from four different diasporic communities, including Amman, London, San Diego, and Detroit. There are many similarities between the Iraqi communities I am reading about in Dr. Al-Ali's work and the Pakistani community I encountered, such as the highly contested narratives of the twentieth century. Given the hetergenous makeup of the Iraqi diasporic community, with different ethnic groups, sects and classes occupying different social and political lives, the matter is evidently complex. Generations also mattered: the order of persecution entailed a different relationship with politics. This was also spelled out to me during a conversation with a Kurdish friend, P., who comes from Syrian-occupied Kurdistan. He has stayed in Germany for many years and most of his family is here. He works, studies, and likes the idea that his future would be bounded with Germany. I told him during a conversation about the sufferings of my other Syrian friend who lives in India right now and has been separated from his family since the war started. He replied that indeed, it is a hard life for my friend and other recently exiled Syrians, but his own family had established themselves abroad earlier because they have been persecuted earlier as a religious minority. In other words, my friend may suffer now, but it's because he didn't have to think about it earlier. We each receive our own due in time.

Al-Ali also addresses the sectarian issue through her experiences in the field. During her research in the U.S., she stays with various Iraqi families and acutely notices the differences in locale and socialization. During her research in Dearborn and the broader Detroit Area, the issue of sect becomes strong enough for her to voice her own opinions in this particular situation:

As I talked to the group of young women refugees, it became evident that at least this group of recently arrived women had a very strong sense of their roots and identity, both as Iraqis and Shi'is involved a strong sense of entitlement in terms of rights and privileges in the new Iraq. It also entailed a very strong and, for me personally, disturbing sectarianism that was directed not only at Sunni Iraqis but also at Iraqi Chaldeans. Khadija, just like Fatima and her sister Zeinab, criticized Iraqi Chaldeans for having been supporters of the previous regime and for failing to engage in anti-government activities in previous years. I was puzzled by this sweeping generalization and condemnation of the Chaldean community. Although several Chaldeans I talked to had clearly appreciated the generally secular nature of the previous regime, especially before 1991, which allowed for the relative religious freedom of minorities, many of the more established and well-to-do Chaldean families have been active supporters of the Bush government and his war on Iraq. (p38, emphasis my own)

I also encounter this question of methodology when I conducted research in Germany and Lucknow. When I encounter South Asian and Iraqi Muslims and explain that one of my research interests include Shi'ism, it often sends a message that I am someone who has affinity with the imagined community of Shi'as. The scope of the imagined community depends on the world view and values of the person in question, and how he or she would answer the question of "who is a Shi'a." For me, the question is extremely delicate and variable on situation.

A picture of Imam Hussain in a food store owned by Iraqis. Louisville, KY,  2016

The paragraph by Al-Ali also raises the question of politics and religion: to what extent can one draw the line between sectarianism and political activism? Many of the NGOs and charities related to Iraq claim that they service all sects, which clearly shows there are many NGOs and charities that have particular sectarian identity, subtle or not. When does a "sectarian" conversation or situation call for an activist scholar, such as Al-Ali, to intervene? This also goes back to the debate within race and sociology: is one studying a social group for the purpose of an empirical understanding, or is there an ethical obligation to that group's future? When one labels and understands situations through the lense of sects in an informed manner, the research is usually empirically rich and analytically strong. But what are the additional methodological concerns?

In evaluating narratives of women's rights in Ba'athist Iraq, historian Noga Efrati has noted in her book Women in Iraq how positionality affects the written historical accounts.

Doreen Ingrams and Deborah Cobbet present the clearest examples of following only one narrative. Whereas Ingrams favors the Iraqi Women's Union narrative, Cobbett bases her work on the League for the Defense of Women's Rights narrative. Their contrasting historical probes were probably influenced mainly by their conflicting attitude toward the Ba'ath regime as well as by their personal connections with different Iraqi women. Ingrams, at least at the beginning of the 1980s, sided with regime supporters, whereas Cobbett sided with its opponents. (p134, emphasis my own)

Furthermore, what happens when one relies on one's own group identity to gain access? Researchers such as Nadje Al-Ali (p29) as well as anthropologist Hayder al-Mohammad have mentioned how their family introduced them to certain contacts in the field. Al-Ali has also met many contacts through her own activism in London and Hayder al-Mohammad established contacts from arising circumstances over the length of five years in Basra. Dr. Lila Abu-Lughod also discusses her father's role in her field:

[M]any people remain intrigued by what I wrote about my father having introduced me to this community, perhaps because it makes us think hard about our inevitable positionality in fieldwork. I understand my father’s motives a bit differently now that I am a parent, but I also worry that people exaggerate the importance of this introduction. I still treasure the ways I was able to participate in the intimate and lively women’s world. I know that it was a bit easier for me to be part of this family because of this identity. But even though being perceived as Arab, Muslim, and respectable (under the protection of my father) was important, I don’t think we should overstate its importance. Fieldwork is intense and interpersonally complicated for everyone. Once you are there, no matter how introduced, it is you—as a person—who develops the relationships you do, even as you never escape your locatedness.

It would be an overstatement to say that their research would have been markedly different without the family contacts; still, the question is unresolved in my mind. Al-Mohammad does a wonderful job of historicizing the idea of "tribes." He questions the method which sees tribes as the dominant form of social organization in his 2011 article "You have Car Insurance, We have Tribes." Still, access to tribes were crucial in the field, and the male Iraqi identity was no doubt a gamechanger in terms of on-the-ground research. He writes, "Many leaders are very generous, not only with their wealth and power, but also with their time. Many have also been tremendously protective of me, with no hope of ever seeing anything in return other than friendship and gratitude." Identity plays such a crucial role in these sites, and thus to present oneself with an established lineage (sect or locale) affects how one is perceived in the field. I would like to read more about the implications of this approach.

Al-Mohammad passionately argues about his positionality in an interview and invokes his "brown eyes" that sees what non-brown eyes fail to see--

I have skin in this game, to invoke an idiom I am rather fond of. I’m an Iraqi. I consider Basra my home and not London where I have spent more than twenty years. The problem is, then, where can I turn to that has been relatively untarnished by the theorizers and fly-by-night Iraq specialists? What I noticed was that events, local happenings and moments, are too small for the young bucks, trying to make their name in this racket, to get their hands dirty in. They also did not have access to such experiences, nor did they have a grasp of the background knowledge and ways of life of ordinary Iraqis, hence struggled to notice the significance of certain events. Many have conducted interviews in the north of Iraq in Erbil, or outside Iraq in Amman and Cairo with Iraqi refugees, but essentially, everyday life in Iraq has been beyond the reach of the machinery.

Finally, it is appropriate to end with this observation on academia by Hayder al-Mohammad, to understand the importance of entering the field with his particular approach:

The reason why anthropologists have turned to institutions, cults, groups, and scholars is because of the obvious difficulty in locating one’s fieldwork. Not being natives of the region where they are working in, most anthropologists have few doors open to them. But what starts off as a difficulty in locating where one should, and actually could, conduct fieldwork has a very serious impact on what is studied and how it is studied. Clearly, working with religious scholars and Imams will give you a very limited picture of Islam as it is lived.

...

Most anthropologists do not make clear at all how extraordinarily artificial the pictures they draw of Islam and the life of Muslims are because of the limitations of where they do their fieldwork. So artificial indeed that I have on many occasions sat with my ethnographies of Islam and translated it into Arabic to small crowds in Iraq for most to eventually breakdown into fits of laughter. The comments I hear on many occasions tend to be: “They must think we are really stupid in the West.” (emphasis my own)