The Diplomat

 

Abdul Mone’m al-Khateeb: The current situation is very similar to one of Dante’s definitions of hell: Endless plunge into a bottomless hole.. In social theory oppression leads to dictatorship, and once dictatorship is removed, chaos ensues. In the monarchy days Iraq was under martial laws, it lead to totalitarian individual-centered dictatorships and naturally lead to the current disaster.

 

AK: When Iraq got its independence following the First World War, it was a very primitive society, and the process of building a modern country started brick by brick. The legacy of the monarchy period that followed was that, in a short period of time, it was able to create a legitimate state that enjoyed positive ties with its neighbours. But it was only a start and shouldn’t have been expected to be more than a start. After the July 14th revolution revolution, society regressed into a state much worse than it was under Ottoman rule. As the poem says “A thousand years may not be enough for a nation to rise, but a few hours are enough to bury it in mud.”

 

AK: People have to understand that there are no shortcuts to development – and at one point, people thought that revolutions were. Instead, it left us with illiterate dictators to lead the masses. Right after independence, Iraq started to develop a state of law, and the importance of the governance of the law that it grows with the society's culture and becomes rooted within it. After the military coup, the leadership was put in the hands of a bunch of unqualified lower-ranked army officers, whose only asset was the Arabic language and its rhetoric. I recall translating an interview between Abdel Karim Qasim and English writer Bertrand Russell’s secretary. I later took the man out for dinner and he said to me: “If this man was in our country we would simply laugh at him”. Saddam Hussein was no different. The only difference was that Qasim was a man of many negatives and Saddam was a man without any positives.

 

 

AK: Not exactly. I’m apolitical by nature. But once I got a chance and left to London, I felt a freedom that I have never felt before. For the first time in my life I hear the phone ring and not get scared. So I felt obligated to write a few articles about how pathetic the situation in Iraq is and that’s when the opposition approached me.  

 

 

AK: When dealing with Iran, Iraq has paid more attention to history and ignored geography. Iran is an imperial power, with a long border line with Iraq. Iraq turned its back to the fertile border and embraced the desert on the other side choosing to fight Iran. And look where that lead, Arabs have never ganged up against Israel but they did against Iraq, twice.

 

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