CPTnet
26 July 2005

IRAQ REFLECTION: Sanded in Baghdad

by Tom Fox

Spending three days in the Baghdad airport waiting to see if the sand and
dust storms would let up enough to allow flights to arrive (and allow me to
leave) was more stressful that I imagined. Six trips on the airport road
where vehicles often get shot at may have been a factor in increasing my
stress level.

A number of internationals shared my predicament. Some were private
security contractors who work for the large international firms like
Dyncorp and KBR and are paid substantial sums (many 1,000 dollars a day) to
protect international facilities and personnel. Others worked for NGOs and
organizations that were business-related, such as a firm that did management
training for Iraqi entrepreneurs.

Perhaps the stress of canceled flights and having to reschedule and arrange
transport back to the Green Zone or other international facilities made
their comments harsher than would be the case under different circumstances.
But nonetheless, I was dismayed by what seemed--to me at least--to be racist
and colonialist comments by almost every contractor or entrepreneur I talked
with.

Having grown up the southern U.S. with a very racist father, it was a
bizarre experience hearing almost the same comments about Iraqis that I had
heard as a child about blacks. The same venom was coming out of the mouths
of these internationals as they denigrated the people, culture and societal
norms of Iraq.

Equally disturbing for me was the colonialist attitude of most of the
business-connected internationals (most of the contractors I talked to were
South African or English and most of the businessmen were American and all
except one were white males.) They made remarks like, "We have to show them
how it's really done," or "They don't have a clue how it's done in the
West."

I have to assume the racist attitudes of the security contractors stemmed
from the human need to dehumanize and marginalize human beings before one
can justify killing them. Military leaders the world over have
indoctrinated recruits with dehumanizing rhetoric and these mercenary
soldiers seemed to have absorbed similarly dehumanizing attitudes.

The colonialist attitudes are harder to grasp. Is colonialism something
unique to white, male Westerners like me? Do we see Iraq the same way as
Kipling saw India? Do we believe we bear "the white man's burden," as
Kipling called it, to bring Western civilization to the uncivilized Arabs
and Kurds?

Those three days at the airport are woven deeply into my spirit. I'm
wondering if I have swallowed poison that will harden or embitter me. Or
perhaps I have been blessed with a homeopathic remedy of just enough poison
to begin to cure me of my own subconscious racist and colonist tendencies.
Once healed, maybe I will be able to help others cure themselves.