Rolf Ekeus came round to my apartment one day and showed me the name of the Iraqi diplomat who had visited the little West African country of Niger: a statelet famous only for its production of yellowcake uranium. The name was Wissam Zahawi. He was the brother of my louche gay part-Kurdish friend, the by-now late Mazen. He was also, or had been at the time of his trip to Niger, Saddam Hussein's ambassador to the Vatican. I expressed incomprehension. What was an envoy to the Holy See doing in Niger? Obviously he was not taking a vacation. Rolf then explained two things to me. The first was that Wissam Zahawi had, when Rolf was at the United Nations, been one of Saddam Hussein's chief envoys for discussions on nuclear matters (this at a time when the Iraqis had functioning reactors). The second was that, during the period of sanctions that followed the Kuwait war, no Western European country had full diplomatic relations with Baghdad. TheVatican was the sole exception, so it was sent a very senior Iraqi envoy to act as a listening post. And this man, a specialist in nuclear matters, had made a discreet side trip to Niger. This was to suggest exactly what most right-thinking people were convinced was not the case: namely that British intelligence was on to something when it said that Saddam had not ceased seeking nuclear materials in Africa.
I published a few columns on this, drawing at one point an angry email from Ambassador Zahawi that very satisfyingly blustered and bluffed on what he'd really been up to. I also received—this is what sometimes makes journalism worthwhile—a letter from a BBC correspondent named Gordon Correa who had been writing a book about A.Q. Khan. This was the Pakistani proprietor of the nuclear black market that had supplied fissile material to Libya, North Korea, very probably to Syria, and was open for business with any member of the 'rogue states' club. (Saddam's people, we already knew for sure, had been meeting North Korean missile salesmen in Damascus until just before the invasion, when Kim Jong Il's mercenary bargainers took fright and went home.) It turned out, said the highly interested Mr. Correa, that his man Khan had also been in Niger, and at about the same time that Zahawi had. The likelihood of the senior Iraqi diplomat in Europe and the senior Pakistani nuclear black-marketeer both choosing an off-season holiday in chic little uranium-rich Niger… well, you have to admit that it makes an affecting picture. But you must be ready to credit something as ridiculous as that if your touching belief is that Saddam Hussein was already 'contained,' and that Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair were acting on panic reports, fabricated in turn by self-interested provocateurs.
Tag: corruption journalism george-w-bush diplomacy iraq terrorism vatican united-nations nuclear-weapons pakistan bbc north-korea sanctions saddam-hussein syria invasion-of-kuwait kuwait aq-khan baath-party baathism baathist-iraq baghdad damascus gordon-correa kim-jong-il libya military-intelligence niger nuclear-proliferation rogue-states rolf-ekeus tony-blair uranium west-africa western-europe wissam-zahawi
I resolutely refuse to believe that the state of Edward's health had anything to do with this, and I don't say this only because I was once later accused of attacking him 'on his deathbed.' He was entirely lucid to the end, and the positions he took were easily recognizable by me as extensions or outgrowths of views he had expressed (and also declined to express) in the past. Alas, it is true that he was closer to the end than anybody knew when the thirtieth anniversary reissue of his Orientalism was published, but his long-precarious condition would hardly argue for giving him a lenient review, let alone denying him one altogether, which would have been the only alternatives. In the introduction he wrote for the new edition, he generally declined the opportunity to answer his scholarly critics, and instead gave the recent American arrival in Baghdad as a grand example of 'Orientalism' in action. The looting and destruction of the exhibits in the Iraq National Museum had, he wrote, been a deliberate piece of United States vandalism, perpetrated in order to shear the Iraqi people of their cultural patrimony and demonstrate to them their new servitude. Even at a time when anything at all could be said and believed so long as it was sufficiently and hysterically anti-Bush, this could be described as exceptionally mendacious. So when the Atlantic invited me to review Edward's revised edition, I decided I'd suspect myself more if I declined than if I agreed, and I wrote what I felt I had to.
Not long afterward, an Iraqi comrade sent me without comment an article Edward had contributed to a magazine in London that was published by a princeling of the Saudi royal family. In it, Edward quoted some sentences about the Iraq war that he off-handedly described as 'racist.' The sentences in question had been written by me. I felt myself assailed by a reaction that was at once hot-eyed and frigidly cold. He had cited the words without naming their author, and this I briefly thought could be construed as a friendly hesitance. Or as cowardice... I can never quite act the stern role of Mr. Darcy with any conviction, but privately I sometimes resolve that that's 'it' as it were. I didn't say anything to Edward but then, I never said anything to him again, either. I believe that one or two charges simply must retain their face value and not become debauched or devalued. 'Racist' is one such. It is an accusation that must either be made good upon, or fully retracted. I would not have as a friend somebody whom I suspected of that prejudice, and I decided to presume that Edward was honest and serious enough to feel the same way. I feel misery stealing over me again as I set this down: I wrote the best tribute I could manage when he died not long afterward (and there was no strain in that, as I was relieved to find), but I didn't go to, and wasn't invited to, his funeral.
Tag: united-states prejudice cowardice imperialism jane-austen george-w-bush pride-and-prejudice iraq vandalism london iraq-war fitzwilliam-darcy edward-said baghdad house-of-saud iraqis mendacity national-museum-of-iraq orientalism-book race-card the-atlantic
You might think that the Left could have a regime-change perspective of its own, based on solidarity with its comrades abroad. After all, Saddam's ruling Ba'ath Party consolidated its power by first destroying the Iraqi communist and labor movements, and then turning on the Kurds (whose cause, historically, has been one of the main priorities of the Left in the Middle East). When I first became a socialist, the imperative of international solidarity was the essential if not the defining thing, whether the cause was popular or risky or not. I haven't seen an anti-war meeting all this year at which you could even guess at the existence of the Iraqi and Kurdish opposition to Saddam, an opposition that was fighting for 'regime change' when both Republicans and Democrats were fawning over Baghdad as a profitable client and geopolitical ally. Not only does the 'peace' movement ignore the anti-Saddam civilian opposition, it sends missions to console the Ba'athists in their isolation, and speaks of the invader of Kuwait and Iran and the butcher of Kurdistan as if he were the victim and George W. Bush the aggressor.
Christopher HitchensTag: george-w-bush communism iraq anti-war socialism iraq-war leftism middle-east democratic-party-united-states ba-ath-party saddam-hussein invasion-of-kuwait kuwait baghdad kurdish-people peace-movement republican-party-united-states opposition-to-the-iraq-war al-anfal-campaign iran-iraq-war iraqi-communist-party iraqi-kurdistan labour-movement
Di antara pertikaian antarmazhab yang mengakibatkan pergolakan dan kekacauan adalah pertikaian antara mazhab Ahlus Sunnah dan Rafidhah pada tahun 655H. Pertikaian ini dimenangkan Ahli Sunnah sehingga bertambahlah kebencian kaum Rafidhah terhadap kalangan Ahlus Sunnah. Wazir Ibn al-‘Alqami yang menganut mazhab Rafidhah menekan kaum Muslim Ahlus Sunnah dan meminta Hulagu Khan, pemimpin Tartar menyerang wilayah Islam. Permintaan ini dipenuhi Hulagu Khan yang berhasil menduduki Baghdad, menjatuhkan khalifah dan menghapus sistem kekhalifahan dan membantai penduduk tanpa pandang bulu sehingga kota itu banjir darah.
Yusri Abdul Ghani AbdullahTag: islam sejarah baghdad ahlu-sunnah-wal-jamaah rafidhah syiah
The most basic barrier was language itself, very few Americans in Iraq whether soldiers or diplomats or news paper reporters could speak more than a few words of Arabic. A remarkable number of them didn't even have translators. That meant for many Iraqis the typical 19 year old army corporal from South Dakota was not a youthful innocent carrying Americas good will, he was a terrifying combination of firepower and ignorance.
Dexter FilkinsTag: humanity war iraq osama-bin-laden baghdad middle-east-conflicts
There is a little bit of everybody in everybody.
Leonard LeventonTag: historical-fiction new-york iraq espionage saddam-hussein baghdad assassination-plot cannes-film-festival cia-ex-kgb vietnamese-women
Gentlemen. You are looking at the true Abraham Lincoln of Arabia. And in order to end our internal bickering - our civil war, if you will - I have solicited your aid.
Leonard LeventonTag: historical-fiction new-york iraq espionage saddam-hussein baghdad assassination-plot cannes-film-festival cia-ex-kgb vietnamese-women
Next time -- we will roll out the red carpet for you in the United States of Arabia, my brethren!
Leonard LeventonTag: historical-fiction new-york iraq espionage saddam-hussein baghdad assassination-plot cannes-film-festival cia-ex-kgb vietnamese-women
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