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Edited on Sat Apr-14-07 12:52 PM by igil
People in Iraq are fighting for the groups from which they derive their identities; one can violate honor either individually or by offending one's honor group.
The Iraqi Resurrection Party was originally secular. Then it became an extension of Saddam's own biases and hatreds, a function of his honor and interests. Early on, it included secular everybody. Later, it became increasingly dominated by Tikritis (tribal names for leaders being a no-no, since all the al-Tikritis would be offensive), and by extension other Sunnis. Shi'ites and Kurds were *not* equal to Sunni Arabs.
Early on, Hussein tried to diminish the authority of tribal leaders. He slighted religion. He pushed education. During the '90s, this was reversed: the percentage of kids not in school was higher in '99 than now, a decline that started in the '80s; funds were diverted through tribal leaders--where before they were rivals, now they were co-opted supporters--and tribal identity was again emphasized, this time officially. Many mosques were built; Shi'ite mosques were handed to Sunni imams. Imams overlooked their hatred of Hussein because hatred of Shi'ites and the UN/America was more important--that, and they were funded. Saddam was like Tito was like the USSR 'chairman': When each lost power, the bubbling pot that each had kept the lid on, even while racheting up the heat, boiled over. Tito left the preconditions for a civil war by favoring Serbs, and by not letting the ethnic minorities work out an accommodation; same for Saddam. In the USSR, in the '50s the Russians lorded it over everybody else, and in the '70s the "Ivans" perceived themselves as the victims of reverse-racism. Numerous ethnicities "sat on" mineral wealth. When Gorbie lost power, El'cyn was too weak to do much and autonomous regions in effect became independent; Chechen' exploded; and civil war threatened in numerous places. Fortunately, El'cyn managed, mostly, to prevent fighting.
Democracies *always* involve the majority telling the minority what to do, whether it's Jim Crowe or telling a landlord that he can't *not* rent to an unmarried homosexual mixed-race couple. In its purest form, a democracy is majoritarianism, even if only a minority of the population gets to vote. The US has never actually had that. *Liberal* democracies make an effort to provide rights to the minority, if only by saying they have the same rights as the majority. This, it turns out, is almost entirely a Western idea, and onethat's gotten stronger over time, but many features are similar to some other large empires. By building nation-states they eliminated low-level tribal differences; such a policy is now considered anathema in the trans-national post-nationalist West, but far too enlightened for many states. Building national solidarity where it differed from ethnic solidarity was not easy; just ask France, and for a failed attempt, Spain--with Italy being in between.
Nations and ethnicities need supporting myths. They don't need to be true. Nor are they the province of only white men. The Indians have their own myths, some ancient, some remade in the last two hundred years; the Americans had their own. Both emphasized the uniqueness and justness of their own traditions, and the propriety of their own claim to the land. Look at the Western Shoshone, who have been on their land "forever", even though it's a slam-dunk that they migrated there in the last 700 years, and the Palestinians, some of whom claim not just that they're descended from pre-Israelite tribes, but that those tribes were ethnically Arab and that Arabs originally build Jerusalem. Nice myths, if you can get them. In the West, we have this nice myth borrowed from Arabs that somehow Islam just spread, gleefully welcomed, and that millions of Africans (and Europeans) weren't taken as slaves by Muslims for a thousand years with justification cited from the Qur'aan: The Nation of Islam is partly built on this myth, when Islam spread in Africa sometimes by force, sometimes by having greater prestige, and sometimes because a Muslim couldn't be enslaved--so converting entailed safety. Hindutva wants to claim the Indus civilization for Indic-speaking Hindus; Dravidians (Tamils in particular) want to claim it for Dravidian (Western majority view, I think: Dravidian).
The Indians in New England had their own politics, and didn't perceive themselves as "Indian", just as tribes (after all, there was no nation-state, and ethnic identity was as fragmented as it was in Europe at the time). Some indeed "welcomed" Europeans because it played into their politics. In other cases, native tribes were in a bit of disarray and retreat because of disease. Even in Incas were sharply affected by disease, it seems ... *before any European got to them*. But both N. and S. American Indians were ok with the idea of territorial expansion by conquest, since most of them did it themselves when they could--not just Apaches, Comanches, and Navajo. The "white man's" history has enough examples of native empires and wars of aggression. Not acceptable by current standards, but fair play at the time.
Nations and ethnicities also need myths that determine boundaries--not only are they good, but others are bad. The greater pressure an ethnicity is under, the greater the need for these myths. Arabs love to believe that Jews and Westerners are out to destroy Islam because, well, Jews and Westerners are corrupt; Muslims have it that Xians distorted what Jesus brought. Hindutva's busily trying to stake out claims of Western oppression by stating that Indo-Europeans came from India and the standard tale is a fabrication. Russians hate the US for destroying their empire; and they hate Muslims for oppressing them for centuries. The Chinese claim their lack of glory is through Western oppression--partly true--but ignore how the Chinese empire was built, and what's happening in the extreme south and west and in Tibet. Even my half-brother's Sicilian grandmother could go on for hours how inferior the Calabrese were.
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