| [T]he Iraqi academic Falih ‘Abd al-Jabbar wrote an article in the government-owned Al-Sabah al-Jadeed warning against the flight of the urban middle class from Iraq. The emigration of the educated and the skilled from the country, ‘Abd al-Jabbar argued, follows a more basic need than economic opportunity or future prospects, instead, middle-class Iraqis are leaving in order to save their lives. ‘Abd al-Jabbar believes that this loss is irreparable, since most of the émigrés will probably never return. The analysis takes a more sinister approach when ‘Abd al-Jabbar establishes a formula of “quality vs. quantity” among Iraqis. The major problematic for ‘Abd al-Jabbar is that “authentically urban” Iraqis are being replaced by “rural” ones who are now flooding the cities. These newcomers, whom the author refers to as “the marginal and migrant groups,” carry in them the seeds of social ills, they are “pre-modern”, their society is “closed,” “hierarchical” and “has a strong tendency towards violence,” according to ‘Abd al-Jabbar. Aside from the classist generalizations contained in the argument (whether regarding the “modernity” of city-dwellers, or the destructive effects of rural-to-urban migration), the author disregards the fact that most cities in the Global South have witnessed the same dynamics in terms of a sharp rise in the urban population; what distinguishes one experience from another is not the “quality” of urban residents, but the conditions in which they are integrated into society, and the quality of the state that is charged with building their social and educational infrastructure. Most importantly, such an analysis that “ranks” the “quality” of the population allows us to blame the spread of murderous sectarianism and increased violence on the sociological make-up of Iraq, and prevents us from investigating the institutions of political patronage that were built over the last years, fixing the livelihood and political identity of Iraqis –- almost exclusively -- around their sectarian belongings. |
Underneath the mask we don't find quite what we should have expected. M. Mohsen sounds like he ought to be tenured in Venezuela or Cuba. "Classist," for Pete's sake! And "Global South!" There can't be many neo-Iraqi subjects who think in those categories, no matter how Bedouin or Westoxicated they may be.
But perhaps that offstage-left Soc. Sci. claptrap is only M. Mohsen individually? His final sentence is most interesting of all, since it may express the overall agenda of Slogger City. It would appear (to them) that somebody has been deliberately setting up patronage institutions based on "sectarianism" ever since the militant Republicans first marched in. Who could be doing this odious deed? Hardly the GOP geniuses themselves, who have yet to exhibit any deliberation worth mention in their invasion and occupation policies.
In context, it looks as if customers are being solicited to blame poor M. al-Málikí and the U.I.A. caucus: if the current neo-regime owns the printing press, doesn't it probably own M. ‘Abd al-Jabbár's opinions as well? One gets the impression that the New Baghdad papers are at least as strict as the Washington Times or the op-ed page of the Wall Street Jingo about not disseminating any material they do not more or least agree with, and doubtless an organ literally belonging to the locally predominant faction would be even stricter.
But that hypothesis does not altogether make sense. Perhaps the pols of Da‘wa and SCIRI and the Virtue Party and the Sadr Tendency could somehow impose "sectarian identity" schemes of patronage upon Twelvers in general -- though even that much is doubtful -- but how could they impose them upon everybody? Did the Shi‘a start this racket rolling, and then the Kurdish and Arab Sunni and rootless cosmopolitan communities saw how well it worked for them and hastened to do likewise for themselves?
I do not think Slogger City wants us to take that view, because it comes close, after all, to suggesting that these sinister arrangements are "natural" in neo-Iraq, just the sort of thing one might have expected to happen once the Ba‘thís became unable to prevent them from happening. Mr. Bush's speechwriters were mistaken once again: GOP brand "Freedom" does not, in fact, "Mean Peace" -- somehow it turns out to mean rather "institutions of political patronage fixing the livelihood and political identity of Iraqis around their sectarian belongings."
That view, in turn, is within hailing distance of the sort of verbal shrug that one hears from disgruntled invasionites, "What can we do?, they've been killing one another for a thousand years over there" &c. &c. (Not a desirable neighborhood.)
In any case, M. Mohsen, and presumably his employers, inform us that these arrangements were "built," a word that, in English, strongly suggests that there must have been ascertainable builders. Furthermore, this is the Middle East we speak of, where there are multiple conspiracy theories about any human event of significance, and hardly anybody ever claims that such-and-such happened "naturally" or "freely." There is always somebody's thumb on the scale, even if sometimes the Levantines and Byzantines cannot make out exactly whose thumb it is.
For all his fierce rebuttal, M. Mohsen does not think that Dr. ‘Abd al-Jabbár's deplorable classist opinions created these institutions of sectarian identity. He is mainly worried that Jabbarism might distract the comrades from the real struggle, as Slogger City conceives it. At the same time, if sociological analysis be supposed an unimportant distraction from political accountability and political action, he who so supposes can be no great friend of "naturally" and "freely" -- although perhaps Dr. ‘Abd al-Jabbár is not very friendly either. M. Mohsen does not quote enough of his culprit to indicate where the latter supposes that "authentically urban" neo-Iraqi subjects came from in the first place. It does, however, look as if whatever factory produced them cannot be expected to supply unlimited quantitites of the product on demand.
The fierceness is remarkable, not merely as grossly inappropriate to summarization of other people's newspaper articles, but as addressed to a mere distraction rather than the actual enemy. I suspect M. Mohsen is worried that Jabbarism might move from sociology to politics, as it were, and start attempting to make sure that real control of public affairs is reserved to authentic urbanites and denied to the riff-raff. Again, there is no way to judge from the available evidence whether Dr. ‘Abd al-Jabbár plots anything of the sort, yet perhaps the bare possibility that he could do so seems enough to warrant a sort of preëmptive retaliation from the Sloggerites.
The analogy with Mr. Blair of Great Britain on the subject of Saddám Husayn could be pressed a bit farther still: is not Jabbarism potentially a sort of WMD, a weapon for destroying mass participation in politics? Even if all the parts have not yet been assembled nor the elitist terror device actually deployed, still, better safe than sorry!
I'm not altogether joking. The danger that the extremist GOP's neo-Iraq will stop even pretending to be "democratic" and become much like the other barracks-based republics of the Levant is not a private fantasy of my own. Why, just yesterday at Slogger City we read about disband the elected parliament and set up an emergency military administration if there is no success in forming an opposition coalition. M. Mohsen's stale scientific socialism is not a matter I can take altogether seriously, but nevertheless the colony he lives in really does rather resemble Latin America and suffers from certain caudillo and oligarquía dangers and problems that are real enough. His diagnosis is not necessarily all wrong because some of his treatment theories savor of snake oil.
From well outside the cock pit, though, I'd say that M. Mohsen is quite as "classist" as Dr. ‘Abd al-Jabbár is, and to some extent classist in the same sense. He's different insofar as he clearly wants to change the world, whereas the accused may desire no more than to interpret it. What they agree on, though, is that they both wish "classism" was a more salient category than "sectarianism" so badly that they have begun to take their desires for observations of fact. As it seems to me. Compared to that, it seems much less important that in some alternate universe where Green Zone politics is in fact based on economics rather than "sectarian" "identity," Dr. ‘Abd al-Jabbár would probably side with the bosses, and M. Mohsen certainly with the rest of us. Less important still is that they both think a good deal better of social scientizing than I do.
(By the way, it seems a logical enough remnant of the Cold War that Dr. ‘Abd al-Jabbár should social-scientize after the fashion of American neo-orientalism or "area studies," and M. Mohsen vaguely in a Marxist way. To notice this difference, however, is merely historical, and thus so entirely unimportant that it might as well be bunk.)
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