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article is provided courtesy of Stars & Stripes,
which got its start as a newspaper for Union troops during the Civil War, and has been published continuously since 1942 in Europe and 1945 in the Pacific. Stripes reporters have been in the field with American soldiers, sailors and airmen in World War II, Korea, the Cold War, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Bosnia and Kosovo, and are now on assignment in the Middle East.
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By Ward Sanderson Stars and Stripes European Edition
BAGHDAD, Iraq
- Like their post-World War II predecessors, American forces in Iraq
wrestle to uphold two conflicting mandates: encouraging free speech
in a newly open society, while at the same time enforcing strict bans
on speech promoting violence or the ousted political order.
Is free speech with exceptions free? Then again, those who would promote
religious violence against infidels or a return of the Saddam
days would likely gag or shoot anyone who disagrees. Free speech would
be out the window.
It’s a delicate blueprint America follows as it tries to construct
a popularly chosen — but definitely not fundamentalist, definitely
not Baathist — order in Iraq.
“We have to strike a balance between the protection of free speech
and the protection of a free press in the new Iraq, and the protection
against incitement of violence against the coalition or against fellow
Iraqis,” said Dan Senor, spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition. “And
so that is the determination we must make. For instance, if there
is a newspaper that’s inciting violence, about where does one draw
the line, where does one cross the line and begin to incite violence
and turn the clock back on Iraq?”
The line might be murky when it comes to religious activism — though
some allegedly pious music selling here in loads clearly calls for
death to Yanks. That’s illegal, mufti-motivated or not. And the coalition
certainly gives a clear definition of the banned speech that is purely
political. Public pining for Saddam, like Hitler before him, is completely
off-limits.
“To the overwhelming majority of Iraqis, the Baath party represents
a few things: torture chambers, rape rooms, mass graves, chemical
attacks,” Senor said. “It is very important for the Iraqi people to
know that Saddam Hussein and his evil regime and the Baath party are
gone and they are not coming back. And anyone that would seek to use
the messages and the images and the symbols of the Baath party to
indicate anything else will not be tolerated during this reconstruction.”
For soldiers on the ground, deciding what is and is not allowed speech
comes down to what a boss says.
Pfc. Jason Ogris, sitting behind the controls of a Bradley fighting
vehicle at the coalition base access known as Assassin’s Gate, said
he doesn’t normally understand what the Iraqis are protesting when
he’s on guard duty. He can’t read the signs. So he relies on commanders
to tell him whether a protest is of violent intent.
“But if I see a weapon,” Ogris said, “I’ll shoot.”
Spc. Mike Sellers, another 1st Armored Division soldier, said he’s
seen about 20 protests numbering from about 50 people to thousands.
In the past, they denounced the Americans or called for the return
of Saddam. Now, protesters mostly call for back pay, new jobs or direct
elections.
But protesters and soldiers can still clash.
“They’ll basically flood the gate,” Sellers said. “... You cross the
wire, you’re going to jail. Period.”
The troops will typically identify the leader and tell that person
to order protesters to back away from the gate.
“They’ll do whatever he tells them,” Sellers said.
If that doesn’t work, soldiers will arrest and detain the leader for
the day. Wielding both megaphone and muzzle may be a contortion act,
but it’s not a new routine.
“There is a rough parallel between the de-Nazification program after
World
War II and the curbing of anti-U.S. speech in Iraq today,” said
Thomas Allen, a historian and author of several books, including “World
War II: The Encyclopedia of the War Years 1941-1945.”
“The war criminal trials established the Nazis as illegitimate,” Allen
said, “but when we had to deal with Germany on a day-to-day basis,
we had to lower the bar a bit and let small-fry Nazis hold government
jobs.”
While the parallel may be true of Baathists, it applies less to Islamists.
“The Nazi Party was a political organization and could be dissolved,”
Allen said. “Religions, as we are learning, are not as easily dealt
with.”
Germany had ample experience with democracy prior to Hitler. Even
so, the postwar transition wasn’t instant. A peace treaty wasn’t signed
until 1952; West Germany didn’t enjoy full sovereignty until 1955.
“Don’t forget,” Allen said, “that this took a while.”
A Day in December
In Iraq now, as in Germany then, democracy isn’t emerging fit and
tanned without scrapes and tumbles.
On Dec. 17, students at Amriya High School in Baghdad threw rocks
at U.S. armor after soldiers detained 10 of their friends from the
campus. Two soldiers reportedly returned the sentiment by firing over
the students’ heads.
The students were detained after they had attended a pro-Saddam rally
the previous day.
“I tried to advise some of the students before they went to the demonstration,”
teacher Ahmed Jassam said. “I told them the Americans will be after
you if you do something like that. But they told me ‘It’s a free and
democratic country now, and we will protest peacefully to say what
we want.’”
Protesting in favor of Saddam while invoking the spirit of democracy
may seem a contradiction. But one 15-year-old, who gave his name only
as Mohammed, said it was more about the frustrations of daily life.
Many of the parents of students at Amriya owed their jobs to Saddam.
“There is no fuel. There is no security. There is no safety,” Mohammed
said. “Because all of that we go in a demonstration to challenge the
U.S. forces who did nothing better than Saddam.”
A reporter saw soldiers take Mohammed, Ibrahim Ahmed, 14, and another
boy, throw their books into the street, and roughly search them. The
boys begged the soldiers to leave them alone. The soldiers laughed.
When troops left with several students, remaining students and the
soldiers traded rocks and rounds.
“Is this the freedom and the democracy that America brings to us?”
some in the crowd shouted. “We should be ashamed if this is the freedom.”
Principal Baker Fathel insisted that a U.S. commander promised that
he merely wanted to speak with the students.
“He promised me that the Iraqi police will control everything and
no one will be arrested and no force will enter except the Iraqi police.
And they showed me some pictures of the day of the demonstration,
and they wanted to talk with those students and nothing more. What
can I do to prevent the U.S. soldiers from taking the students from
the classrooms, and how could I know that the U.S. commander is a
big liar?”
Students, however, charged Fathel with helping the Americans bust
them. When the Amriya incident was brought up at a news conference,
coalition spokesman Senor reiterated that pro-Baath-party speech is
simply not allowed. As for those detained, Ibrahim said they were
thrown into a cell with a group of students arrested the day before.
Ibrahim said he and the others were released later the same evening
following determined, but admittedly polite, interrogation. Ibrahim
said he waited anxiously for two hours before troops interviewed him
for about 30 minutes.
“They started to talk with us so nice and give us some food and the
translator told us, ‘All of you will leave soon.’...They asked me
and the others the same questions: Where do you live? Where did your
father work before and after the war? Is your father a Baathist? Do
you have any relatives who are Ba’athists?”
He said soldiers and the school principal rode home with them. Each
students’ father was warned not to let this sort of thing happen again.
These days, Ahmed said, the free speech practiced by his friends typically
ends at the topic of that day in December.
“I and the other boys didn't speak about this subject again, and when
someone asks us about it, we just ignore him because we’re afraid
to be arrested again.”
