US battles weight of history

WASHINGTON – US forces bogged down around the central Iraqi town of Fallujah are battling far more than determined insurgents and the sweltering desert heat.

They are fighting the weight of history, says Middle East expert Rashid Khalidi, in what he calls the latest example of a superpower failing to learn from the past. Fallujah, a cohesive community, remains untamed more than a year after the fall of Saddam Hussein, largely because it unites three pillars of Iraqi society – tribalism, nationalism and religion.”It’s the nodal point, where everyone is related to everyone else,” said Khalidi, author of ‘Resurrecting Empire’ (Beacon Press), a crash course in Western colonial entanglement in the Middle East.That Fallujah was so ideally suited to resist foreign occupiers should have come as no surprise, Khalidi said in a recent interview from his office at New York’s Columbia University.In 1920, Sunni Muslim Fallujah was the jumping-off point for resistance to British occupation.Sheik Dhari, a native son, remains a national hero for killing British Colonel Gerard Leachman, blamed by Iraqis for brutal repression.From there, the revolt spread to the Shi’ite south, where the cause was championed by prominent clerics.British expulsion of anti-colonial clergy to Iran led to the revitalisation of the holy city of Qom, epicentre of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.Fallujah’s strong-willed history dates back more than a millennium, Khalidi said, united by the austere form of Islam shared by the Shammar tribal confederation that has long plied the caravan route to northern Saudi Arabia.Even the dictatorial Saddam was careful not to alienate the Fallujah tribesmen.Yet there are no signs US policymakers were at all prepared for the opposition they faced around Fallujah.Pro-war ideologues had assured them the oppressed Shi’ites would welcome US forces, while the once-dominant Sunnis would knuckle under to a concerted show of force.Those assurances proved deadly wrong.”People can learn from history, but America is a very ahistorical country,” said Khalidi.”The United States has never worried about other countries before.It’s made for a relatively simplistic view of the world,” he said.All that began to change with the attacks of September 11 2001.America soon found itself caught up in a global religious and political struggle for which it was uniquely ill-prepared.”It was particularly infuriating for me as an historian,” Khalidi writes, “because all too much of the extensive public debate about the relationship between the United States and the Middle East, particularly since September 11 2001, has been taking place in a historical vacuum.”What would Khalidi have us learn from the past?* Opposition to foreign occupation has always been blamed on religious and cultural “fanaticism.”* Much of the region’s ethnic and sectarian tension was introduced by the colonial powers.* Relentless support for Israel against Palestinian aspirations and the propping up of unpopular dictatorial governments long ago discredited US foreign policy in the region.* Finally, there is good reason for scepticism when ideals are invoked to support Western occupation, in this case “bringing democracy” to the Middle East.Khalidi opens the first chapter with some poignant quotations: “Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators,” General Stanley Maude, commander of British forces, declared in Baghdad on March 19 1917.Eighty-six years later, in April 2003, an echo could be heard from US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld speaking to American troops in the Iraqi capital: “Unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conquer, not to occupy, but to liberate, and the Iraqi people know this.”- Nampa-ReutersFallujah, a cohesive community, remains untamed more than a year after the fall of Saddam Hussein, largely because it unites three pillars of Iraqi society – tribalism, nationalism and religion.”It’s the nodal point, where everyone is related to everyone else,” said Khalidi, author of ‘Resurrecting Empire’ (Beacon Press), a crash course in Western colonial entanglement in the Middle East.That Fallujah was so ideally suited to resist foreign occupiers should have come as no surprise, Khalidi said in a recent interview from his office at New York’s Columbia University.In 1920, Sunni Muslim Fallujah was the jumping-off point for resistance to British occupation.Sheik Dhari, a native son, remains a national hero for killing British Colonel Gerard Leachman, blamed by Iraqis for brutal repression.From there, the revolt spread to the Shi’ite south, where the cause was championed by prominent clerics.British expulsion of anti-colonial clergy to Iran led to the revitalisation of the holy city of Qom, epicentre of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.Fallujah’s strong-willed history dates back more than a millennium, Khalidi said, united by the austere form of Islam shared by the Shammar tribal confederation that has long plied the caravan route to northern Saudi Arabia.Even the dictatorial Saddam was careful not to alienate the Fallujah tribesmen.Yet there are no signs US policymakers were at all prepared for the opposition they faced around Fallujah.Pro-war ideologues had assured them the oppressed Shi’ites would welcome US forces, while the once-dominant Sunnis would knuckle under to a concerted show of force.Those assurances proved deadly wrong.”People can learn from history, but America is a very ahistorical country,” said Khalidi.”The United States has never worried about other countries before.It’s made for a relatively simplistic view of the world,” he said.All that began to change with the attacks of September 11 2001.America soon found itself caught up in a global religious and political struggle for which it was uniquely ill-prepared.”It was particularly infuriating for me as an historian,” Khalidi writes, “because all too much of the extensive public debate about the relationship between the United States and the Middle East, particularly since September 11 2001, has been taking place in a historical vacuum.”What would Khalidi have us learn from the past?* Opposition to foreign occupation has always been blamed on religious and cultural “fanaticism.”* Much of the region’s ethnic and sectarian tension was introduced by the colonial powers.* Relentless support for Israel against Palestinian aspirations and the propping up of unpopular dictatorial governments long ago discredited US foreign policy in the region.* Finally, there is good reason for scepticism when ideals are invoked to support Western occupation, in this case “bringing democracy” to the Middle East.Khalidi opens the first chapter with some poignant quotations: “Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators,” General Stanley Maude, commander of British forces, declared in Baghdad on March 19 1917.Eighty-six years later, in April 2003, an echo could be heard from US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld speaking to American troops in the Iraqi capital: “Unlike many armies in the world, you came not to conquer, not to occupy, but to liberate, and the Iraqi people know this.”- Nampa-Reuters