Having worked in Baghdad for the Constitutional Support Program, Sara Johnson-Steffey reflects on a moment in time while wondering – did we forget about Iraq?
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I sometimes find myself remembering the sounds of Iraq.
The call to prayer, five times daily, piercing the haze of the air, a tinny shriek of bad amplifiers resounding across neighborhood after neighborhood like an announcer at a baseball stadium.
And helicopters layered over this, the dull thud thud of their blades as they flew low over our compound to land next door at the helipad.
The occasional burst of gunfire, I didn’t flinch at it then, I had my steel on, but I do now, when my dad and brother go out in the back 20 acres to target shoot.
The other layer, which I will forever associate with Iraq, is a certain selection of rap and hip hop. Music I couldn’t stand at home, with the harsh staccato noise, but for some reason all I could listen to over there. Their music will always bring back my Iraq.
Today I don’t listen to that kind of music. It’s too heavy, too much for my world. Instead my little man puts on what he calls “mama’s happy music” in the morning, soothing acoustic folk, a backdrop to the noises of my children playing happily, or not so happily, on the floor, stacking blocks, racing cars, chasing dragons with wooden swords. This is my life now, my background noise.
Nearly ten years ago now I was just home, taking in the news of pregnancy, just barely grappling with the trauma of the whole experience, reconnecting with my skinny underfed law-student husband, unsure of where to put my newly surfaced anxiety, looking for work, afraid for our future.
And now, I am a different woman. I am strong. I am sure of myself, most days. I am mama, mama to these three little ones anyway.
A friend of my mother-in-law wrote me an email the other day, asking what I thought about the latest political situation in Iraq. Umm, what situation? I had no idea what was going on over there. I had to spend an hour reading online to cobble together an answer for her. I never watch CNN anymore, it scares my little boy. Instead the TV is tuned to Sesame Street and Disney movies. I never read the paper. Who has time to read the paper? I never even read news sites online. I prefer to spend my time surfing celebrity gossip on my iPhone while trying to rock my toddler to sleep.
I had no idea what she was talking about, and felt a twinge of shame. Had I, like the rest of America, forgotten about Iraq? Hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, nuclear disasters, and uprisings in the Middle East, debt reduction political wranglings, and economic turmoil have swayed our short attention span, one by one. War became tiresome, too much for us. We don’t want to read about it. And even though the “war” was technically over years ago the same struggles remain, the same divisions.
An Op-Ed columnist in the New York Times once wrote about the “lessons” we could learn from Iraq in watching this latest Middle Eastern drama unfold. He wrote of the successes there. “Successes?” I thought incredulously, “Really?” The people came together to draft a constitution, he wrote. Umm, sure, they did, but many only because they were told to otherwise they get no share in the power and then only kicking and screaming at the unjust process. Civil war seemed imminent, he said, but it never came to that. Well, true. That was good. But, tensions are still high and things could disintegrate very quickly.
I never watch CNN anymore, it scares my little boy. Instead the TV is tuned to Sesame Street and Disney movies. I never read the paper. Who has time to read the paper? I never even read news sites online. I prefer to spend my time surfing celebrity gossip on my iPhone while trying to rock my toddler to sleep.
Meanwhile the Prime Minister–who was eventually re-established as prime minister after a breakdown in coalitions following the last election–had started usurping power from other agencies and departments. And after years in power he refused to appoint heads of the defense and interior departments, acting instead as their de facto head, fully controlling both the military and the police, and then he got the courts to give him power over the Central Bank and the independent agencies that monitor elections and corruption within government. And then later two key political figures – Prime Minister Maliki and Allawi, the head of the secular bloc – were no longer even on speaking terms, despite the US begging for reconciliation.
Like an Iraqi women I worked with once said, every Iraqi has a “mini-Saddam” inside of them. Power sharing, trust, and even further, devolution of power, is not known within society there. That is because for decades, there was no civic-mindedness to promote these qualities. There was no civil society where this was learned. Even within the government these qualities do not exist, or at the most are rare.
The editorial said the reason all of these things happened, these “successes” was because of one entity—America. The U.S. acted as the intermediary, holding everyone’s hands, begging everyone to play nicely, insisting that they do so with a military presence. And then, Obama pulled all troops out, amidst economic hardship here in our own country. No one cared about democracy building anymore when unemployment numbers were on the rise. Did they ever really care? Some of them, I suppose.
The International Zone is a ghost town now. Expats and armed Humvees no longer dominate the landscape. All the hot spots that I knew – the restaurants, the little kiosks vending tourist trinkets – are shut down. The bubble, the little America that we created, is gone, never to pop up again, well, not until the next forced experiment in democracy requires thousands of expats to swoop into a war zone and “save the day” with trainings and workshops and experts. I wonder if the world will ever do that again, on that level? Have we learned our lesson, trillions of dollars, thousands of lives later? I don’t think so. Or the bigger question, was it worth it? Who knows. I don’t think anyone could answer that question. For now, we have thrown up our hands and turned our backs on it all.
And, for another question, now that this grand experiment has ended, where does that leave Iraq? In for a long haul, I suppose, reclaiming their country for themselves, haggling over power, as always. Wondering when things will get better, hoping they do at least, someday.
And where does that leave me? Sitting in my cozy living room, the summer sunshine pouring through the window, my children sitting next to me, sweet girl with a head full of curls, her big sister with mama’s blonde hair and temper, and little man with his daddy’s big brown eyes, giggling over comic books and wreaking havoc from time to time. This is where I am.
Yet, Iraq is still in me.
And the tears well up in my eyes. For my blessings, for the eager life around me, and at the same time, for Iraq, those people, and their forgotten heartache, and too for the memories of those days, a strange longing to be back there, in the hazy setting sun, acrid smoke in the air, the call to prayer echoing around me.
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Photo: Senior Airman Kamaile Chan/Flickr