Karagoz

A little over one week ago three buses carrying workers - of majority Shiites - were hijacked; one was carrying workers from Thawra city (Sadr), the second from Sho'ula city and the third from Hurriya city. The hijackers murdered all the Shiite workers (based on names and identifications) and spared the Sunni workers. Since this event took place Abu der’ra of Thawra city and his gang commenced making raids on Sunni areas like Al-Fadhal and the New Sulaikh, where he captured Sunni men and either killed them or bartered them with missing Shiites (dead or alive) who were either captured or killed by Sunnis of the Ramadi gangs.

Another event took place 3 days ago when one of the Baghdad- Amman drivers (Shiite) was pulled out of his car by a gang in front of his Sunni woman passenger, and was shot to death while was being called a ‘Shiite dog’, and the gang took the driver’s car away. Later the passenger reported the incident to the driver’s family in Thawra city, and Abu Der’ra made the necessary contacts with a Ramadi gang and asked them to return the ‘favor’ as Abu der’ra had once bartered one of their gangsters alive! The Ramadi gang confirmed that the driver’s corpse will be returned but without the car.

Neither these sordid puppetry stories commenced by opening a Pandora’s Box in 2003 nor they started when the Baath party of Al Baker & Saddam took control in 1968. This may go farther back: "I do not understand the squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favor of using poison gas against uncivilized tribes!"- Churchill speaking of the Iraqi civilian population.

The Baath party advanced to power at the peak of the Cold War, when the party took the advantage of the fertile progressive thinking of the Iraqi society and its intellectuals at that time, and appealed to the masses through the implementation of scientific socialism (equality), unity and freedom of thoughts from the imperialist forces of the USA who helped Israel in the seven days war of 1967, however, the real play had merely had an intermission to change the Karagoz costumes. And this time the Soviet Union was to accommodate our social derive for progress that quenched our thirst for wonderful social movements like women liberation, the eradication of illiteracy, the continuation of urban planning, free health care and education and many more in return for supplying us with a gigantic arsenal and military hardware! Conversely, the Baath party had strengthened its grip to power through nepotism and fear display, which in reality shows that the party couldn’t care less about our social cohesiveness and progression. And the achievements made then were the fruits of the Iraqis who truly believed in great ideas.

In the early 70s the Baath party committed public crimes under the guardianship of the Soviet Union similar to the public crimes Pinochet of Chile committed under the guardianship of the USA, and it was all part of the same global theater. And the examples are numerous. However, progression means evolution and evolution means new men/women in power, and that, of course, was never on the Baath agenda, which meant it was time to shift course, and as the Soviet once told the late president Nasser of Egypt that the Arabs take off with the Russians and land with the Americans.

In 1977 the progressive thinkers in Iraq were unmercifully dealt with and most were coerced into exile including the progressive Kurds. And the Iraqis, all of the sudden, were faced with the bare and grim reality of returning to tribal mentality and stone-age capitalism instead of picking the fruits of social development and moving into free market economy. And in three years we found ourselves entangled in a war with America’s number one enemy, the ‘fire-worshipers’ of Persia!!

As once said there is no new wave but only the sea. And that goes for the super powers and their seasonal séance trance and theatrical performances. Whether the USSR invaded Afghanistan or the USA invaded Iraq. Whether Bin Laden is a freedom fighter in 1985 or a world terrorist in 2001, whether there is a tyrant Shah or a tyrant Mulla; whether Algeria, Libya and Saudi Arabia are good Muslim countries and Sudan, Palestine and Syria are not; whether Kyrgyzstan is an independent democracy and Lebanon is not, in the end it’s all part of the same Karagoz.

Gangsters of Al-Thawar city and Al Ramadi, or the pro-government gangs of Soulagh are simply a momentary lapse of reasoning in the puppetry story similar to what happened in Rwanda, East Timor, the Balkans, Liberia etc. and their anecdote scenes are being watched with ridicule and satiric by the elite audience, but soon it will be over when the costumes for the new Karagoz get prepared as the show must go on.