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INSIGHT
INSIGHT
Aired March 6, 2003 - 17:00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JONATHAN MANN, CNN ANCHOR: The other Iraqis. Millions of (AUDIO GAP) fled Saddam Hussein's Iraq, they worry about what's ahead for the people they left behind.
Hello and welcome.
It is a striking fact, but hardly a surprise when you think about it. A lot of people have done their best to get away from Baghdad.
There are 22 million people in Iraq, and there may be 4 million Iraqis who have left. They've distanced themselves as best they can from a police state, a ruined economy and a government on a collision course with the West. They have tried to stay close, though, to the people who are still there, and who now face a ruinous war.
On our program today, Iraqis in exile: the outsiders.
(NEWSBREAK)
The Iraqis who leave their country end up going where they can, most often to Muslim countries in the Middle East and South Asia, or to the more prosperous West. They're among the best educated people their country has produced. Many are politically active. Most are desperate for change.
And now they're wondering what the future will bring.
CNN's John Vause begins our look from a large Iraqi community in California.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's hard to decide what is most upsetting about Yassim Al-Habib's story: that he says his two brothers and cousin were first tortured and then executed by Iraq's secret police, or that he had to pay officials more than $2,000 U.S. to get their bodies back.
YASSIM AL-HABIB, IRAQI REFUGEE (through translator): This was to cover the cost, partly for killing them and partly for the electricity for keeping them in the freezer.
VAUSE: Or perhaps worst of all, that his story is not unique.
So many others who've fled Iraq say they have similar memories of life under Saddam Hussein. As many as 4 million Iraqis are living in exile, about 20 percent of the total population. To more than 300,000, the United States is now home and not surprising, they're among the strongest supporters of military action.
Spend some time with Iraqi exiles in El Cajon in southern California. They'll tell you they still fear Saddam, that somehow even here they're still not safe.
Salal Daley (ph) fled his country 27 years ago.
SALAL DALEY, IRAQI REFUGEE: When we were there, we had this fear. And we bring this fear with us, this fear we have.
VAUSE: Walk in to any mom and pop grocery store in El Cajon, and chances are it's owned by an Iraqi family.
John Mansel (ph) worked for his parents part-time while going to college.
JOHN MANSEL, STUDENT: A lot of people are just scared because they still have a lot of families back there.
VAUSE: John Khaliba (ph) is looked upon as an elder statesman helping new arrivals to adjust.
JOHN KHALIBA, IRAQI REFUGEE: You look left and right and you are not in Iraq, you are -- nobody is watching you. Here nobody will report you.
VAUSE: Still, behind the scenes, Iraqi exiles have convinced some peace protesters in the United States to carry anti-Saddam signs as well. They believe the Iraqi regime used those recent demonstrations as propaganda to claim worldwide support.
Still, those protests angered Yassim Al-Habib (ph).
AL-HABIB (ph) (through translator): In my opinion, these people are wrong. Iraq is our Iraq. If there are to be protests, it should be us who are protesting, because we are suffering from Saddam's regime.
VAUSE: At a meeting last week with Iraqis in Detroit, Deputy Secy. of Defense Paul Wolfowitz called on American Iraqis to stand up and tell their stories.
PAUL WOLFOWITZ, U.S. DEPUTY SECY. OF DEFENSE: As Iraqi Americans or as recent immigrants, you have a great stake in the outcome in Iraq. Many of you here today know the cruelties of the current Baathist regime first- hand or through your families. It is important that other Americans and indeed the entire world also understand the horror of this regime. You can help to improve public understanding by telling your story in Iraq, in America and around the world.
VAUSE: But feelings of mistrust run deep, especially after the United States encouraged and then refused to back an uprising of the majority Shia Muslims just after the Gulf War.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: With all due respect, why should the people outside in Iraq trust or believe what you just said or what the United States government says?
VAUSE: This time, the Americans say things will be different, and it seems most exiled Iraqis are so desperate to bring an end to Saddam's regime, they're willing to take the risk.
WOLFOWITZ: The United States seeks to liberate Iraq, not to occupy Iraq.
(APPLAUSE)
VAUSE: But after reports that Washington was considering installing a U.S. military governor to run Iraq for up to two years, there was widespread anger, a feeling that once again they'd been betrayed.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Most Iraqis hate to replace a dictator by another dictator because we are fed up of dictatorship.
VAUSE: Still, 3,000 Iraqis have already signed on for the fight. At a military base in Hungary, they're being trained by the Pentagon to work as interpreters, administrations, guides, support staff for any military operation, but they're not being trained for combat.
Tahid (ph) fled Iraq in the 70's, spending most of his time in California before joining the Free Iraqi forces.
TAHID, FREE IRAQI FORCES: I want to free Iraq from a dictatorship and make my people, including my family, free of Saddam. And we are hoping to establish a democratic society in Iraq. Within this democratic society, we can solve any ethnic problem or religious or any other nationality problem -- we could solve it within a democratic society.
VAUSE: The United States administration sees the Iraqi exiles as one of the keys to building a stable post-Saddam Iraq.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Anything this country wants, I am willing to do.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Each one in his field will participate in building -- rebuilding Iraq.
VAUSE: But long before any rebuilding begins, first Saddam must go, and many Iraqis here believe that must be done by sheer force.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There are two powers only in the world that can remove Saddam: God and America. And there is no other way.
VAUSE (on camera): And right now it seems almost all of the 30,000 exiled Iraqis who are living here in El Cajon are looking to America to answer their prayers so that one day they may go back to Iraq and that one day they will no longer live in fear.
John Vause, CNN, El Cajon, California.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MANN: We take a break, and then a conversation about difficult times in the Iraqi Diaspora (ph).
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MANN: Welcome back.
There are about 200,000 Iraqis making their homes in London, a city with ties to Iraq that date back to British colonialism in the Middle East.
CNN's Robin Curnow picks up the story there; concern about the coming war.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ROBYN CURNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Old paintings and fond memories, the treasures exiled Iraqis hold most dear.
A. EDAN, IRAQI EXILE: I used to take this way to go to my school, when I was in the (UNINTELLIGIBLE) school, as a shortcut.
CURNOW: Now the future of this city and its inhabitants, a worry. Fears that in any possible U.S.-led war against Iraq, the most bloody confrontations could take place on the streets of Baghdad.
EDAN: A lot of casualties. Children are going to die. Women, innocent people. It's going to fight from house to house, and by the same size of London. Imagine, you send the army now and you want to clear London. And you want to occupy London. How? How?
CURNOW: Despite deeply felt reservations about military action, Iraqis in Britain, like these delivering a letter of support for British leader Tony Blair, are united over one thing: their hatred of Saddam Hussein.
(on camera): There are about 300,000 Iraqis in exile here in the United Kingdom. Many are here because they had to flee from Saddam Hussein's regime, leaving behind family who not only face the stress of Saddam Hussein's rule, but also that of any sustained military action.
(voice-over): Life back home in Iraq is hard, they say. Reports of severe economic hardship as well as torture, murder and rape filter back to Britain. And Iraqi people at home and in exile are bracing themselves for war.
JABBAR HASAN, IRAQI COMMUNITY ASSN.: People here are very worried, stressed, anxious. We have continuous contact by our community asking of ways, how can we help, what can we do.
CURNOW: Some just home a war is swift and not too devastating, putting their hope on returning to help rebuild any damaged infrastructure.
MOHAMMED ALDERAJT, INFRASTRUCTURE SPECIALIST: I'm afraid if the infrastructure services become a target for any attack or military action, it will be less than zero level. It's very important to avoid the innocent and the infrastructure in any military attack.
CURNOW: The concern for Iraqis in Britain, what price will their people have to pay to be free of Saddam Hussein.
Robyn Curnow, CNN, London.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
MANN: The Iraqi army under Saddam Hussein has fought two disastrous wars in Iran and Kuwait. Desertion has been enough of a problem, human rights organizations say, that the government has resorted to amputations and even branding to punish and deter it. Desertion, though, is a constant in the Iraqi army, and young men leave the country to avoid military service altogether.
Joining us now is Wafaa Bilal, an artist who left Iraq in the turmoil of the war for Kuwait.
Thanks so much for being with us.
Can you tell us about your own decision to leave, about the conditions at the time?
WAFAA BILAL, IRAQI ARTIST: Absolutely.
Before '90 (ph) we were active at the University of Baghdad against the regime. And in 1991, when the uprising took place and then Saddam started crushing the uprising, we found ourselves forced to move from one town to the other, from Baghdad south until the border of Kuwait.
And accidentally, we crossed the border to Kuwait and then unfortunately were captured by the Kuwaitis and put on a military trial. And almost the order was given to execute us. But at the last minute, America happened, when one of us was an alderman, who were able to prove we are not Iraqi intelligence or Iraqi military, we were just people fleeing the oppression of the Iraqi regime.
MANN: It's an extraordinary story you tell, that you lived through, but you left out something enormous, which is what it was like to be in Iraq during the war.
BILAL: I was at the time in Baghdad, and it was an extraordinary time. I don't think it's ever possible to put it in words, because death and fear fill the air. I think you could see it in the eyes of children, the cries in their eyes.
And it's not just because of the sound of the bombs or the impact of the bombs also, because they see the fear in their parents' eyes. Everybody gets disoriented.
Most of us didn't know what to do and most people left Baghdad that night, on January 17, 1991, and it became a total chaos at that time. Imagine 6 million people trying to get out of any city, and also bombing was dropped all over the city. And the air filled with the smell of death and smoke mixed together.
MANN: You left in a time of chaos. What does something like trying to get back in touch with the people you left behind -- what kind of communication do Iraqi exiles have with friends or family?
BILAL: It's really hard, because understand, the government monitors the communication between the families and people outside of Iraq.
We try in different ways. Recently it became more easy to communicate with the families and we just can't talk politics there, because you put them in harm.
MANN: Is there anything you can do to help them? People argue about the reason for the suffering, but Iraqis are suffering a great deal. The economy is in a terrible way. Ordinary consumer products are hard to find. Ordinary medicines. Is it easy to get those things into the country?
BILAL: It's not really easy. It's not easy at all.
In fact, every family lost many members of it. I lost three or four members of my family, due to the sanctions that are imposed on Iraq since 1991, for simple reason. For medication, high pressure medication, diabetes medication, they couldn't get that. And the inflation in the country is outrageous. I mean, a dozen eggs is 1,200 dinar while the salary of a person is 3,000 dinar a month.
So what people are living on -- some of them are not living -- but the rest of them are living on the rations that the government gives every person every month.
MANN: So do people like you feel lucky to be out of Iraq, or do you feel powerless and eager to try and change things there?
BILAL: I feel lucky in one way. I mean, there's no way I could say I am lucky because I left Iraq. Iraq, my country, is a beautiful country where there are beautiful people. But I feel lucky in one way -- I feel lucky so I could get out and explain to people what happened in 1991 in Iraq, explain the devastation, the impact of the war, and explain the relation between Saddam Hussein and the United States government for the last 30 years or so.
MANN: Wafaa Bilal, thanks so much for talking with us.
BILAL: You're welcome.
MANN: We have to take a break. When we come back, the role of exiles in what might happen after the next war, rebuilding Iraq.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MANN: The United States has plans for post-war Iraq. They include a big role for the U.S. military and U.S. government, a big role for most of the current Iraqi military and government. Iraqi exiles are being urged to lower their expectations.
Welcome back.
Iraqi dissidents have not formed a government in exile. The U.S. government talked them out of it. It could be the first of many accommodations that the exiles will be asked to make.
Joining us now is John Hulsman, of the Heritage Foundation, co-author of a paper called "Forging a Durable Post-War Political Settlement in Iraq."
Thanks so much for being with us.
Let me ask you about a durable post-war political settlement in Iraq. The United States government believes that essentially the exiles are not going to be, at least initially, not going to be a very big part of it. Why is that?
JOHN HULSMAN, HERITAGE FOUNDATION: I think they are going to be a part of it, but I think the idea of the past -- and if you look at kind of this administration, they criticized from kind of a top-down just add water and you get George Washington approach.
And so you want to work with people locally, meaning the three major groups -- the Shia in the south, the Sunni in the center and the Kurds in the north. And Iraqi exiles have a very critical role to play in translating between the Iraqis on the ground and the United States, both culturally as well as linguistically.
But we simply don't know what kind of electoral heft they have within their country anymore, and as a result, to impose a government from outside would mean that government would be seen as a puppet of the United States, and that's about the worst thing the United States could do.
MANN: Let me ask you to pursue that a little bit, because they are more educated than most Iraqis, being outside of the country. A good number of them are more affluent than most Iraqis. If they show up on the heels of a U.S. invasion, wouldn't they be welcomed by other Iraqis?
HULSMAN: I think generally they will be, and I think many of them may indeed have electoral heft within their own country. But again, I think that's something we have to decide on the ground.
I think a bottom up approach, looking at who is popular on the ground, working with leaders already in the country in an indigenous manner, is a lot better way to have a self-sustaining kind of state-building effort than to impose things from outside.
MANN: OK. You used a phrase more than once so I'm going to pick it up, "electoral heft." That's the kind of phrase you use in a democratic context, in a democratic tradition. The Iraqis outside of Iraq, in Western nations and in democratic countries in Southeast Asia, know all about democracy. The Iraqis inside Iraq are working in a very different context.
Are we looking at oil and water? Are these two groups really going to mix politically given the different traditions that they're respectively familiar with?
HULSMAN: Well, again, I think what we need to do is look at the fact that, say, in the north, where the Kurds are, there are tribal leaders already in place, and they have heft in the sense that they have cultural kind of authenticity. Their seen as the leaders of their peoples.
Mr. Talibani (ph) and Mr. Arbarzani (ph) are the two major leaders of the Kurdish group. They're already in place. Quasi-democratic, certainly not a Jeffersonian system, but they do indeed have legitimacy, which I think is the key word.
Whether the exiles have legitimacy or not is a fact that will only be borne out when they return. Some of the groups say they do. If that's the case, we will soon see that. And if not, I think we'll have to take that on a case by case basis.
But imposing from outside anybody on the Iraqi people is merely a recruiting posture for al Qaeda, and I'm delighted to see us not do that.
MANN: I'm really intrigued by what you say, because over and over again you keep saying that this essentially is an unknown situation and we shouldn't judge it in advance.
Presumably, if the dissident opposition, if the exiled opposition of Iraq, had impressed people around the world, if they had a Nelson Mandela of Lech Walensa or someone who really carried themselves well on the world stage, people would not be taking a wait and see attitude.
Has the opposition -- have the exiles essentially blown a good opportunity to make alliances that would be useful after Saddam Hussein?
HULSMAN: Well, I think that there's no doubt that if you look at the Iraqi opposition and their efforts to coalesce over the last couple of years, you have a very broad spectrum of people ranging from in some cases socialists through monarchist through democrats, through capitalists, and the only thing they really have in common holding them together in a basic way is a hatred for Saddam, which is certainly genuine and understandable.
But I do think this administration is much more interested in pursuing a very different kind of state building than the last one, so imposing anybody, I think, would be a terrible mistake, because all you're going to do is make them seen as the butt end of an American dictate, and frankly, again, that would be the worst thing we could do for the people of Iraq, for a self-sustaining kind of settlement there, and regarding al Qaeda.
You don't want to play into the hands of your enemies here.
MANN: And yet the Iraqi exiles, they say essentially that they feel they've been double-crossed, they've been misled by the United States administration, because they have been so politically active, so eager for regime change for so many years, and now that it's close, Washington really isn't listening to them.
Do they have any reason to feel ignored? Are they essentially right?
HULSMAN: No, I don't think they are. But, I mean, I do think that there have been efforts to try to unify them, some led by the Iraqi exiles, some led by the United States.
But again, this disparate group has found it very hard to agree on basic things, and I think that that has been a factor, certainly, in them not being included in a government in exile.
But, again, I, speaking personally and in my paper, would be against any imposition of a government in exile upon the people of Iraq. That's absolutely the wrong way to go about it. That's what went wrong in Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo. If we're seen as imposing leaders, they're seen as colonial puppets of the United States, and that isn't a self-sustaining kind of situation.
I grew up in a Republic, not an empire, and I'd like to continue to live in one myself.
MANN: Let me ask you if the exiles do tell us something very important about Iraq, because of their diversity, because of their inability to unify, because of the suspicion between groups. Is that essentially Iraq in microcosm? Is the entire country going to see the kind of political problems that these organizations have had with each other?
HULSMAN: I think to some extent, yes. Which is why I think we have to take things on a regional kind of basis.
I think the way that we treat the Kurds, the Shia and the Sunni should vary case by case, looking at their specific situation. Too often we have a one-size-fits-all formula that we impose from the outside on people around the world in these countries I named under Clinton -- Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo.
We have to be very careful to look at Iraq, see that it was three Ottoman Empire provinces stitched together by the British, that although these entities have cohesion internally, the idea that they are a nation in the sense that we would use, with a common history, language, culture, aspirations, I think is probably not the case.
And so, as a result, a very decentralized outcome of state, where there's a lot of local power, makes a lot of sense. And the reason for that is it actually fits the facts on the ground in Iraq. To that extent, I think the exiles do mirror what we're going to find within the country.
MANN: One last quick question for you. Our previous guest, Wafaa Bilal, kept talking about how terrible life was in Iraq during the war to liberate Kuwait. There's another war that might be coming. By and large, do you think most Iraqis would be willing to endure that kind of punishment if indeed the government changes and the country becomes democratic?
HULSMAN: You know, I think they will. I think in Afghanistan there was a great deal of talk about the immense fighting they were going to have to deal with, and people realized that when push came to shove, people weren't willing to die for the Taliban.
The great thing about Saddam Hussein is he has set the bar so low in terms of governance with his horrible record on politics, human rights and economics, that when we come in, when we empower people in Iraq to help themselves, to make things better than that very horrible base level, is something I think a lot of people will endure, and I think the United States in many cases may find themselves being seen as liberators, certainly in the north and the south of the country, rather than as oppressors.
MANN: Well, we'll know, I think, in short order.
John Hulsman, thank you so much for talking with us.
HULSMAN: We will indeed. A pleasure -- Jonathan.
MANN: That's INSIGHT. The news continues.
END
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