02/27/07 – Preti Taneja – The Scott Horton Show

For Antiwar.com and Chaos Radio 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas, I'm Scott Horton and this is Antiwar Radio.
The Iraqi people are way better off now than they were before.
Some idiot just one week ago here in February 2007.
Is that really the case?
My guest today is Preeti Taneja from Minority Rights Group International.
The website is minorityrights.org and she is a freelance writer and filmmaker.
And this minority rights group international has just put out this study called Assimilation Exodus Eradication.
Iraq's minority communities since 2003.
Welcome to the show Preeti.
Hi.
So this is a pretty sad story, this report that you have here.
It's not a good time to be an ethnic or religious minority in Iraq, is it?
Well, you're absolutely right.
It's a terrible story.
It's shocking that these communities that have survived, some of them have survived in this region for two millennia now facing complete eradication either through violence or through being politically assimilated.
And this is as the result of America's war of liberation.
Well, it's a result of two main things.
The first thing being policies that were in place under Saddam Hussein's past party and the war of liberation as you put it since then, which has brought to light the fact that these minorities are other and now are making them into a target.
Okay.
Now, most of us hear every day really about the Kurds, the Shia and the Sunni and these three main groups that divide Iraq, the North Kurdish and the Sunni triangle in the middle and the Shia rule the south.
But you list all different kinds of minority groups in here.
If they're ethnic minorities rather than some of them are both ethnic and religious, but some of these groups I've never even heard of in my whole life.
Can you give us a little bit of a kind of shorthand of the different groups that live in Iraq and have lived in Iraq?
Sure.
They're mixed, like you say, of religious and ethnic groups.
They include Assyrian Christians.
They include Jews, Yazidis, Mandaeans, which are ancient religious groups.
Shabaks, Palestinians who were refugees in Iraq in the time of Saddam Hussein's rule.
Turkomans, daily Kurds.
All of these groups are being persecuted now.
Many of them are leaving in huge numbers.
Traditionally, the older religious minorities make their homes in the north of Iraq in what is now the disputed territory between the Kurdish regional governorates and mainland Iraq.
Okay, now the Turkomans I've heard of in the context of them being forced out of Kirkuk, the rich oil land in the north.
Can you tell me about that?
Well, you're right.
The Turkomans do inhabit Kirkuk and they see it as a historical homeland for them.
They're not the only minority there.
The Assyrian Christians also live there and have some claim to historical roots in the area.
Minorities that I've spoken to have given us reports of how they've been offered protection in return for giving their vote to the Kurdish political parties.
There's a referendum on the future of the city coming up in December 2007 and sometimes those groups are being threatened to give their vote.
Sometimes they're offered protection or bribes.
And if I can rehearse for you my completely ignorant understanding of the recent history of Kirkuk, maybe you can help straighten me out a little bit.
If I understand right, it was actually historically an Arab city that then sometime back I think in the early 20th century the Kurds basically kind of took the place over from the Arabs.
And it was for a long time a Kurdish city.
And then Saddam Hussein had a policy of trying to dilute Kurdish power in Kirkuk.
And so he basically forcibly relocated a lot of Arabs up to Kirkuk and now the Kurds are forcing them back out again.
And the Turkmen and as you say the Assyrian Christians along with them.
Is that anything close to what's going on here?
I personally wouldn't comment going back further than the Arabization campaign of Saddam Hussein because these groups, all of them have deep historical roots in this region.
And this is part of the problem over who's going to run the place now.
And like you say under the Arabization campaign, Kurds and other minority groups were moved out of Kirkuk and Arabs were encouraged to settle there.
And now the reverse is happening.
And now let's focus on the Assyrian Christians if only because most Americans really couldn't care less about an Iraqi individual.
They might as well be cartoon characters to most of the people driving by listening to the show right now.
So Assyrian Christians, hey they're Christians that might make them actually people.
So what's happened to them as the result of America's toppling of Hussein from power?
The Assyrian Christians of Iraq have lived in the region for two millennia.
They still speak Aramaic which is the language of the Bible.
They define themselves as being Iraqi people as well as being very true to their faith.
And since 2003 they've just become naturally associated with the West and with the faith of people who are seen to be invading Iraq by militias and other insurgent groups.
So they've become a target for violence, for murder, for abductions, for kidnapping, for torture.
They've experienced the bombing of their religious buildings.
Under Ba'ath party rule these Christians were allowed to legally sell alcohol and now their businesses make them a target for bomb attacks and for threats and for intimidation.
And they make up a huge proportion of those who have now left Iraq.
So their numbers are being slowly eroded and this has been exacerbated since 2003.
And now the Arab groups that have come to power in the vacuum left when Saddam Hussein's regime fell.
Is it not the case, I think you say, in the study that they perceive the Assyrian Christians to basically be agents of the West, not really Iraqis and that kind of thing?
Well there's a lot of propaganda that incites people to hatred and there has been hate speech that identifies Christians as infidels.
And other groups as well such as the Mandaeans and Yazidis have been declared impure by those who seek to inspire religious intolerance in Iraq.
And those are the people who are really undermining the civil society structures there.
And Assyrian Christians are suffering very much.
Well what was the status of these Assyrian Christians under Saddam Hussein?
They were surely persecuted by him, right?
Well they were caught up in the Arabization campaign that you mentioned previously in Kirkuk.
But under Ba'ath party rule Christians were, like I said, allowed to trade in alcohol.
Iraq was a secular state and they worshipped freely.
They had churches, they were priests who regularly conducted services.
And compared to other minorities they are actually very well off.
So Saddam Hussein protected their rights.
Has the Ba'ath government protected them from the majorities?
As other minorities they did have a price to pay for that.
You have to be aware that under this Ba'ath party rule each individual has reported a feeling of being watched all the time.
They lived in a kind of dictatorship, a psychological dictatorship that was also enforced and they suffered from that alongside other Iraqi people.
So I think it is very dangerous to say that they are worse off now, but certainly they are experiencing very high levels of violence against their faith, against the people of that faith that they were not experiencing before.
Well I read a book, in fact I believe it was Scott Ritter's first book, the former UN weapons inspector and his book Endgame, he describes Iraqi society under Saddam Hussein.
Well he describes Saddam Hussein's leadership basically as the top mobster.
Rather than a Hitler he is more like Tony Soprano.
And that his dictatorship, obviously he has ultimate authority, but basically what he spent his time doing was trying to marry this group and that group to get this tribe and that tribe to go into business together and to basically try to bridge all these gaps and keep everybody basically balanced out.
Is that basically how the society was run before the invasion?
Is that your understanding?
Well my understanding from the feedback that I have had from minority groups, representatives, is yeah that is true, but each different group was used for the Ba'ath party political end.
For example the Palestinian people who are being terribly persecuted now were very much supported and endorsed by Saddam Hussein's government.
They were given special treatment, they were allowed in terms of jobs, accommodation, protection and they are paying the price for that now.
Right.
Now you also say in your report that one third of the refugees who fled Iraq, which total numbers I believe are in the millions, perhaps you can help me there, but that one third of these refugees are these ethnic minorities.
What percent of the population did they make up?
Well you are right, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees it is about 1.8 to 2 million people who have now left Iraq.
10% of the Iraqi population previously was made up of minority groups.
So they were 10% and now they are 30% of the refugees.
Yeah.
Those are the figures and of course these are estimates so it is very difficult to say because of the refugee registration process in each country.
So it is hard to be exact.
I see.
Tell me a bit about these Mandians.
I don't know anything about them.
The Mandian community is a Baptist community.
They are followers of John the Baptist which means that their religion, their religious practices actually predate Christianity.
They live in northern Iraq on the Nineveh plains which again is this disputed area now and they live in the cities that they are known in.
They are very familiar names to us in the west now because of the invasion cities like Mosul and also in Baghdad.
They are a pacifist religion.
Their religious law does not allow them to carry weapons.
The obvious impact of this is that unlike other groups in Iraq they don't arm themselves for protection in the current state.
So they are very vulnerable for that reason.
The carrying of weapons is completely not allowed by their religion.
Representatives of the Mandian community that I have spoken to have told me that the killing is equal to three deaths for every one person left alive.
They are very worried that their faith will become extinct, that the people will become extinct from Iraq.
Which is the common theme of this report that not only are these ethnic minorities in trouble but that the fear is that they may never exist again.
That this could be the end of many of these ethnic minorities.
And again quickly the title again of this report, Assimilation, Exodus, Eradication, Iraq's Minority Communities Since 2003.
But is that right that besides just the Mandians that even in some more of these ethnic groups that the fear is that they won't even survive as separate cultures ever again?
I think it is a very real fear.
I mean they will survive in other countries but they won't survive in their homeland which for some of them they have lived in for many many years.
Like I said these three things, this assimilation for political reasons, the eradication comes from the assimilation that they are facing.
It comes from the exodus that is happening and it comes from the targeted threats, the violence that these communities are experiencing that is specific.
I know in America women are counted as a minority even though they are 51% and everybody knows they make all the rules.
But presumably they don't hold the power so that makes them a minority.
So what about the status of women in Iraq?
Well I am glad that you asked that question actually because while women in Iraq in general are experiencing high levels of violence and a lot of the time sexual violence.
Alongside that it is very difficult to report those kinds of crimes in a patriarchal society but inside that picture there is a story of the minority women who have even less say.
So they are suffering from two levels of discrimination.
They suffer because they are minorities and they secondly suffer because they are female.
For example Christian women must cover up their heads for the hijab even if they are obviously not Muslim.
They suffer the same sort of sexual violence and the risk of that violence because of their minority status and their female status.
Their personal status is going to be impacted in the future by the new Iraqi constitution and some women's groups have called for a better look at what the impact of the new constitution is on women.
So the picture for them is bleak.
I hope this isn't too much just for the libertarian click but it occurs to me that the real problem here is not so much the denial of the rights of minorities but the rights of the individual are really what are being jeopardized here.
In western society when the protestant reformation came around the catholics and the protestants fought like madmen for a long time but then they finally put their swords down and said you know what close enough let's just do business and get along and respect each other as individuals.
And that's really the problem here in Iraq is that everyone is a member of a tribe or a group or an ethnic this or a religious that and there is not a culture that respects the right of people to just be people and believe whatever they want.
I think as individuals when you speak to Iraqis they are so passionate that they want to live in a peaceful democracy and they want to live side by side and that is being made absolutely impossible by the current security situation.
You're right the human rights of everybody are being undermined by the constant terrorist activities that are going on there.
I mean every day we hear these reports of 30 people are killed in a bomb attack here or in a car bomb there, people are scared to leave their houses, their freedom to move around is completely curtailed, children are not going to school, there's a whole generation of young people who are growing up without education and all they'll ever know from their early years is this chaotic situation.
This state of their country that their parents are mourning even as it's happening but people are still absolutely determined, many of them are determined especially from the minority groups that I've spoken to to make sure that when this does change, when this security situation does improve and they believe that it will, they will stay long enough to see a new Iraq come to pass.
So the population of this country really, they have lived in a multi-ethnic society and they want to live in a multi-ethnic society.
The problem is that the very worst people are empowered as you say by the security situation.
The craziest religious extremists who want to cut a barber's throat for giving a man a shave, they basically have free reign to do whatever they want and no one's here to stop them.
At the moment it definitely seems that way, yes.
It seems that one cannot understand, you can't understand it unless you're there to know the level of fear and violence that people are experiencing and people will always use those chaotic situations for their own ends.
And you know something that the security situation required was that the candidates for the office whenever they finally held the elections, the candidates all had to run on religious and ethnic slates rather than as individuals and so everyone just went out and voted their religion.
Yeah, which is entrenching kind of a segregation and if you're not from a group which is going to have a candidate to run in the first place like a smaller minority then you're missing out on political participation at the very early stages of a new democracy as well.
Alright, ultimately democracy simply means that the majority holds all the power and get to do whatever they want which is why the place is at full scale war right now.
They're fighting over who's going to control the central state at the end.
Well, I can't comment on that actually.
No, I'm not going to get into this.
Again, it is part of the ethnic struggle though, right?
Whether the Sunnis are going to dominate or whether the Shia are and of course the Turkmen and Faleel Kurds and Mandeans and everyone else are caught in the middle.
I think the important thing is that whoever has the reins of power in their hands and if you read the Iraqi constitution it recognises the multiculturalness of Iraq, it recognises the history of the country and the pain that the communities have suffered.
It's a really stirring constitution and it's there to offer some protections in the future for minorities and for all Iraqis.
That's an interesting point.
The constitution attempts to address these things and yet the constitution seems to be completely unable to do anything about it, much like our own constitution here in America I might have.
Yes, it's a situation where it depends on the implementation, how it's going to work out in the future and at the moment because the security situation is what it is.
It's very difficult to have a rule of law.
Right, and now let me see if I can get you to draw a picture of the kind of, you said I'm sure very accurately that you'd really have to be there to understand the level of fear that the average Iraqi has to deal with every single day.
But I read reports about, I mentioned a bit earlier, barbers getting their throats cut for giving a man a shave, liquor stores being bombed, anything that CD shops and DVD shops you say in your study, anything that looks to represent the western world at all, that these people, if they're lucky they get run out of town, if they're not lucky they get murdered.
Yes, and you see we're living in an age where technological warfare is at a micro level so you could be waking up every day to a threatening text message or your family is experiencing letters posted through a letterbox and it's a constant level of fear which is hard to imagine how people can actually live with that.
Well, one solution that's been offered up is the idea of going ahead and I guess drawing hard lines between the kind of soft regional borders that already exist in Iraq and partitioning the country.
What's that going to do, not so much to the Sunni minority but to some of these other smaller minorities, what's going to happen to them when they're stuck on the wrong side of the lines?
Well, I think that partition would be one of the worst things that could happen for Iraq in general and for minority groups unless each region offers concrete protections of minority rights and you could end up with a region where Syrian Christians are the majority in power or the minority in power and then other groups need their rights protected, it's the same for any place or any part of the country.
I definitely think that partition could exacerbate the violence and the level of violence that these communities are experiencing.
What, if anything, is being done about this?
Is anyone trying to help these people?
There are civil society organizations that are working inside Iraq to try and voice the concerns of these communities.
It's very difficult to do that.
That's where studies like this come in and getting these issues out into the world, into the countries where we perhaps every day don't realize what's happening, especially to other communities, is very important.
It must be recognized by the Iraqi government and the international community that these are minorities and they are suffering.
They are being specifically targeted because of their religious and ethnic difference.
And unless that is recognized, this will continue.
I think it's also very important that governments that make up the coalition forces take seriously the threat that these minority groups are facing and shoulder some of the burden for refugees.
It's currently placing such great stress on Jordan, on Syria and neighboring countries of Iraq.
And there's a lesson here for Americans, too, if you don't mind me getting too preachy at the tail end of your interview here, that actions have consequences.
And you can't just go around saying, hey, we're Superman.
We get to go liberate everyone without innocent people who have absolutely nothing to do with our plans suffering.
And in this case, suffering as though they've been thrust into the pits of hell, as a result of our, you know, we get to do whatever we want because we're the biggest guy on the block attitude that we have here in America.
I think you're right.
These communities are suffering very, very much.
And they're suffering, you know, when a bomb goes off, it kills Muslims, you know, that gets used by insurgent groups to incite hatred against those who are not Muslim.
When the Pope makes comments that seem to be negative towards Islam, Iraqi Christians have suffered in return.
Yep.
Which, again, goes back to the worst being empowered and these collectivist ideals that, you know, somehow some poor Syrian Christian in Kurdistan is guilty and responsible for the comments made by the Pope he's never met and whose religion he doesn't even really believe in.
Yep, that's right.
And the same thing happens to Muslims, you know, living in Western countries when, you know, they become targets of ignorance and fear after terrorist attacks.
Absolutely right.
And then it's a cycle that just perpetuates itself back and forth, back and forth.
I think it's very important at that point because it really is affecting a generation of young people and that is one of the most saddening things.
You cannot imagine how many years it may take those children to grow up to not feel a sense of loss, to not feel, who knows, not feel a sense of anger or violence that will just carry on and carry on.
That's right.
There are four-year-olds now who've known nothing but this war their whole life.
Sure.
And, you know, if their parents are forced to convert, that will affect their whole history and their future because many people, you know, are threatened with that and, you know, to them their faith is equally as important as it is to the next person or your ethnic identity, I mean, you know.
Right.
Well, I mean, the lesson here is that the world is a hellish place in a lot of ways, but that we shouldn't go around making it worse.
That's the lesson I take from this.
You know, this is never going to be a perfect world.
But when we go in and overthrow the minority dictator, what do we think is going to happen?
I think it's important to realize, though, that under Saddam Hussein's government, the level of fear, the organized violence and assimilation campaigns and intimidation on normal people, the denial of rights to some minorities was there and did exist.
In many ways, what we see now is the lid coming off the pressure cooker from all of that time.
Sure.
And, of course, Saddam Hussein was America's dictator, too.
Well, there you go.
Yeah.
Now, Preeti, is there any real reason for us to have hope for the future of what's going to happen in that land?
I think the Iraqi minority communities that I have spoken to, the representatives that I've spoken to, strongly believe that they can stay long enough to make an Iraq that's peaceful and democratic and they can bring their children up in that.
And they very much want to because this is the country that they have ancestry in that goes back thousands of years and they have as much right to be living there as anybody else.
And people are becoming more and more organized.
So, yeah, I think there is some hope.
As long as we can work towards making the security situation stabilize and recognize that these communities exist and support them in every way that we can, they will survive.
That's good that we can end on a note with a little bit of hope.
Yeah.
It's Assimilation, Exodus, Eradication, Iraq's Minority Community Since 2003 by Preeti Taneja.
Thank you so much for your time today.
Thank you so much.