“In the end it is the Iraqi people who will suffer”

Millions of people demonstrated last Saturday against a threatening war in Iraq. TU/e employee S. left that country more than ten years ago. Even today he is afraid to publish his name in Cursor. Many of his relatives, including his mother, still live in Baghdad.

No, S. prefers not to say anything about how he ended up in the Netherlands at the time. Nor about the position he once held in Iraq. What S., who has worked at the TU/e for four years now, does want to talk about are the consequences of a war for his former country and his amazement at the view adopted by the Dutch government in this matter. “If the Dutch population pronounces a clear no against a war, then surely a democratically elected government cannot as yet render assistance to this?” S. says with indignation. “I was surprised that Balkenende responded so quickly to a request for support from the United States, without so much as consulting the Lower House.”
In broad outlines S. tries to sketch the situation in Iraq: “Iraq is an exceptional country in the Middle East also. It has many different cultures and religions. Within the Islamic faith there are also different schools. Until World War II there were still Jews living in Iraq. I myself am a Kurd, a people that has already suffered greatly under the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Even in 1988 Kurds in Iraq were attacked by Saddam and murdered with chemical weapons. At the time hardly any attention was paid to this worldwide, for that matter. What the outside world needs to see clearly, however, is that there is a huge difference between the Iraqi people and the Iraqi government. With his Ba’ath party Saddam has absolute power. If you want to get a good job or a position at a university, you must be a member of that party. That is the only reason why so many people are members. It is not a membership that people enter into with their hearts”.

Not the solution
S. would also like to see Saddam go today rather than tomorrow. “A large-scale attack by the United States is not the solution, in any case not for the people of Iraq, who are bound to suffer most. As far as that is concerned the USA has already caused a great deal of misery with its blockade of medicines, among other things. The enormous
monetary depreciation that resulted from this has made bad blood as well.” According to S. the blockade should be resolved as soon as possible and the United Nations should get control of what can and cannot enter the country. “An action like ‘Oil for food’ is useless. It was fully controlled by the government.”
The image of Iraq sketched by the media S. finds extremely annoying. “Whenever I see anything about Baghdad on TV, it looks like a Third World country. It is not the Baghdad that I know and that is full of beautiful buildings and parks as well. In this way you get a totally distorted idea of what Iraq is really like.”
The Iraqi population is also under heavy internal pressure, says S. resignedly. “The media are totally controlled by the regime. Displeasing reports are simply banned from the country. Satellite dishes are strictly forbidden. The secret service in Iraq has supreme power. All of this implies that Iraq is actually not involved in the world.”
S. hopes that the conflict will be resolved through diplomatic channels. “Let the weapons inspectors do their work, do not hold the population accountable for the acts perpetrated by Saddam. At this moment the Iraqi people is having to cope with two Saddams: one in Baghdad and one in the White House.”/.