COMMENTS:REPORTS FROM ABROAD-Iraq: What Price Development?
Timmerman, Kenneth R.
BAGHDAD — Development has become a sacred cow in Iraq. Despite an agonizing war now in its fifth year, costing an estimated $1 billion per month, vast public-works projects are under way. Using...
...My friend pointed to the vast development agenda, the sincere and laudable effort to spread literacy to the most isolated rural areas, the introduction of telephones, electric power, and a water grid where 20 years ago farmers hauled water by hand from the village well and had never seen an electric light bulb...
...It would be short-sighted to attribute this to a mere personality cult...
...Because mixing with foreigners is strictly prohibited, Iraqi technicians have reaped only a fraction of the possible benefit from the presence of wellqualified and usually good-willed Western engineers...
...Indeed, in a feat unequalled in contemporary history, Iraq erected a modern capital in three years' time where before there was only dust...
...Many of the men, however, are not at the front...
...Perhaps in error, the Iraqi press recently admitted the poor hit ratio by publishing the number of independently confirmed missile strikes as compared to the number of Iraqi air attacks in the Gulf: 6:26 for the month of January 1985...
...Iraqis are understandably proud of these achievements, and little inclined to accept criticism...
...Party members will openly tell you that if one day Mr...
...Indeed, with diplomatic relations just restored after a 17-year gap, the U.S...
...In Iraq, most are not...
...Foreign experts who have seen the system at work bemoan the results...
...285...
...As an Iraqi friend told me, it is considered a sign of opposition to the regime not to manifest one's support and admiration for the leadership...
...The sidewalks are packed, shops are open and full of fruit, fresh meat abounds...
...In the U.S.S.R., the commissars tend to be experienced officers...
...And yet, Iraq is in sore need of well-trained engineers, teachers, journalists, and technicians...
...On every other street is a Ba'ath party locale...
...In such a critical area as the Air Force, where efficient security is an obvious necessity, overbearing Ba'ath party control has made deep inroads in combat effectiveness...
...Embassy here has begun to offer eager young Iraqis the opportunity to continue their studies in the U.S...
...As in the U.S.S.R.—the model for the Iraqi system—squadron leaders need the approval of a political commissar for all decisions relating to combat missions...
...What is a generation," he said, "if the Ba'ath can lay the foundations for generations to come...
...Of mixed Iraqi and Soviet origin, today it constitutes the greatest obstacle to Iraq's development...
...Indeed, walking through Baghdad one almost could forget that the country is at war...
...Iraqi pilots fly with the cameras turned off...
...Using imported labor and imported technology, Iraq is building dams, road networks, factories...
...Do NOT FORGET," my official "guide" likes to remind me, "we are a country at war...
...But many potential students feel there is no point in applying, since they would never receive permission from Iraqi Security to leave the country—or, worse, that their request would throw doubt on their loyalty to the regime...
...Learning and progress depend on open minds, on contact with other cultures, and the free exchange of ideas...
...It has more to do with what one Arab friend calls "the millennial reputation of the Iraqis as the infidels of the Arab world...
...The Soviet Union is the most flagrant example of this...
...they say they have no film...
...At the next meeting, another militant raised the same tentative suggestion, adding to the list "and Makou Ahmed...
...Trainees are shuffled around to keep them from specializing—and thus from becoming indispensable— with the result that Western "training missions" tend to turn into full-time maintenance crews...
...One of the rare jokes that circulate here concerns "Makou Ahmed"—Ahmed, the Ba'ath militant who raised the most tentative suggestion at a neighborhood party meeting that perhaps the government could do something about "makou eggs," "makou butter," and makou many other food items, which tend to disappear from the shops from 284 one day to the next...
...And yet, it could all prove a short-lived dream...
...Syria another...
...They will use four MiG-23s to knock out a machine gun and fly right past a troop convoy without batting an eye, because the squadron leader knows the risks of taking an initiative...
...Instead, they are participating in the extraordinary effort of Iraqi intelligence to monitor every move, every phone call, every social gathering of every foreigner in the country—not to mention the surveillance of suspected internal enemies, from Kurdish rebels to Shi'ite fundamentalists...
...President became an "impediment to Iraq's progress" (as nearly happened after the military disasters of spring 1982), the party would not hesitate "to cut him down...
...Without an iron-fisted rule the country would immediately disintegrate into chaos...
...So as not to incur the wrath of their political overlords, terrified of losing aircraft (especially one of the new French Mirages), Iraqi pilots tend to fly their bombing missions at 10,000 feet, launching their Exocets too far from the target, and claiming "accurate and devastating hits" once they return to base...
...Thus, in popular neighborhoods, especially in Shi'ite areas, every house and shop puts on display its portrait of President Saddam Hussein...
...Indeed, few Iraqis would be surprised to wake up one morning to find that the face on the poster had changed...
...Foreign engineers frequently complain of the arbitrary treatment they receive from their Iraqi superiors, most of whom oversee development projects not for any technical expertise but because they are Ba'ath party members...
...THERE IS A RISK that Iraq will turn out like so many oil-rich Gulf states, purchasing the external trappings of industrial development without the deep-rooted change in mentality that must accompany them for real development to occur...
...No country in modern history has succeeded in rapid and deep-based development within closed borders...
...If one takes a closer look one might notice the large proportion of women working in banks and administrative offices, but this is no shock by Western standards...
...That arbitrary treatment is not mere pride or xenophobia but a veritable paranoia concerning security, riddling Iraqi society at all echelons, from the presidential palace down to the lowliest sandwich shop...
...The Air Force kept silent, and insiders said for good reason: the only proof the Iraqis could offer of a higher hit ratio would be film from on-board cameras...
...In other words, today's repression is considered an acceptable price to pay for tomorrow's glory...
...Repression in the Iraqi context can only engender backwardness, sloth, and revolt...
...MANY WESTERN DIPLOMATS, including the United States ambassador-to-be, David Newton, believe there is some chance Iraq will loosen up after the war...
Vol. 32 • July 1985 • No. 3
