History News Network, WA
Jan 21 2007
The Death of Iraq’s Middle Class
By Keith David Watenpaugh
Mr. Watenpaugh is a historian and Associate Professor of Modern
Islam, Human Rights and Peace. He is author, most recently of Being
Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism, Colonialism, and
the Middle Class in the Arab Eastern Mediterranean (1908-1946)
Princeton: 2006. He is one of the only American academics to have
conducted research in Iraq both before and after the 2003 US-led
invasion and occupation.
On a blistering June afternoon in 2003 I sat in the Baghdad office of
the president of al-Mustansiriyya University, the historian Taher
al-Bakaa.
I was there as part of group of Middle East historians to assess the
condition of Baghdad’s universities and libraries in the wake of the
war. Outside, students were celebrating graduation. Inside, huddled
around a fan, we talked about past dictators and tyrants, and how he
would now revitalize his campus, which had been looted and burned
just after the fall of the city two months before.
There was an infectious confidence in him and others whom I met that
Iraq’s universities would play a positive role in the rebuilding of
the country and reestablishing links with the West.
Today, Al-Bakaa lives in Boston as one of more than 1.5 million
refugees who have fled the civil war in Iraq. Back in Baghdad this
week his campus was bombed and at least 60 students waiting for
minibuses to take them home were killed.
The New Refugees
This new refugee crisis dwarfs earlier Middle-Eastern crises
including that of the Armenians in 1915 and the Palestinians in 1948
and 1967. Beyond the basic numbers, what makes this crisis such a
fundamental challenge is that a large portion of the refuges are
drawn from Iraq’s commercial and professional middle class.
And just as those earlier crises sent shock waves throughout the Arab
world – and continue to do so in the case of the Palestinians – this
refugee crisis will have an impact on the stability and viability of
Iraq and the surrounding countries for decades to come.
Our normal image of the refugee – malnourished, languishing in dusty
camps – doesn’t apply here. Iraq’s middle-class refugees are its
teachers, doctors, college professors, scientists, bureaucrats,
technicians and entrepreneurs, the very people upon whom the future
of that country depends.
They are leaving for multiple reasons, but chiefly because of the
violence, which the UN estimates claimed more than 34,000 lives last
year, and the rational fear that the new Iraq will be run by
religious demagogues intent on turning back the clock on issues of
religious equality, their daughters’ access to education and
professional lives, and freedom of thought and expression.
In the old Iraq mixed middle-class marriages of Sunnis and Shia were
common; now these are deadly. The sectarian designation of one’s
coworkers at the office or of fellow students on campus was rarely a
topic of polite conversation or had much relevance, and now has
become the touchstone for most forms of social interaction.
Iraq’s middle class is fleeing at such rapid rate that over 40
percent has left since 2003. Add this to torrent a slow trickle of
Iraq’s educated classes from the 1970s forward and we’ve reached a
point where virtually everyone who could leave has left or fled to
Kurdistan. For all intents and purposes, Iraq’s middle class is near
death and what is left is just a pale shadow of its former self. It
has ceased to be a relevant feature of Iraqi society.
In Iraq, the loss of this class means the loss of the basis of civil
society and the disappearance of those Iraqis who would be committed
to a non-sectarian form of politics.
Welcomed … for Now
In the greater Middle East, at least for the moment, these new
middle-class refugees have been welcomed. A good example is the
recently established Syrian International University for Sciences and
Technology, which has filled its teaching staff with Iraqi scientists
and professors. These refugees have also pumped the equivalent of
billions of dollars into the stagnant even moribund economies of
their neighbors as they buy homes and businesses or invest. But every
course taught in Syria by an Iraqi professor means little to an Iraqi
student sitting in an empty classroom; every dinar spent in one of
Amman’s upscale shopping malls is one less to pay for goods or
services in Baghdad.
On the other side of the equation, these refugees constitute a
volatile addition to already unstable societies. Iraqi refugees are
treated either as tourists or illegal aliens in their neighboring
host countries. It is assumed that their residence is temporary. Past
refugee crisises suggest that most refugees, especially those from
the middle class, never go home. Disenfranchised and stateless they
will be increasingly resented by their hosts as competitors for
resources, jobs and political power. Iraq’s middle class refugees
will then become the raw material for a new generation of extremists,
angry and intent on violence directed not just against enemies in
Iraq and the Middle East, but also against those of us in the West
whose actions made them refugees in the first place.
US Responsibility?
The US government has an obvious moral and legal responsibility for
Iraq’s refugees. This is already recognized in special programs
established to aid those Iraqis, primarily interpreters and others
whose service to the US (what others would call collaboration) would
endanger their lives, come to America.
However, only a tiny fraction of those needing refugee status have
been admitted to the US under this plan. While publicly officials
cite concerns about national security, another explanation for this
resistance is that expanding this program would be interpreted as an
admission of failure in Iraq.
Nevertheless, key to any solution is creating conditions that will
allow Iraqis safety, but not preclude options to return. In the near
term, the US should offer unlimited extensions of temporary visas to
Iraqis. In the long term, the US should be prepared to absorb a large
portion of this refugee population.
The central irony of the middle class refugee applies here as well.
They make their homelands poorer by leaving, but make our societies
richer in coming.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress