A model city

The US occupation forces are not insensitive to the plight of the around 300 000 people they have driven from Fallujah. In fact, once the refugees are allowed to return, the ruins of their city are to be a model for the rest of Iraq. Dahr Jamail reports:

Another example of the winning of hearts and minds of Iraqis is being formulated for the residents of Fallujah. The military has announced the plans it is considering to use for allowing Fallujans back into their city.

They will set up "processing centers" on the outskirts of the city and compile a database of peoples' identities by using DNA testing and retina scans. Residents will then receive a badge which identifies them with their home address, which they must wear at all times.

Buses will ferry them into their city, as cars will be banned since the military fears the use of them by suicide bombers.

Another idea being kicked around is to require the men to work for pay in military-style battalions where these "work brigades" will reconstruct buildings and the water system, depending on the men's skills.

As with a number of other plans of the occupying forces, I am not sure which is more amazing: the plans themselves, or the expectation that they could really be implemented.

Who would monitor and enforce the wearing of badges, for example? The local collaborators cannot stand up to the resistance, and the US doesn't have enough troops to control the whole country. Now that US troops are caught up in Fallujah, the resistance has moved elsewhere. Dahr Jamail writes from Baghdad:

The goal of crushing the resistance and creating stability by destroying Fallujah has gone so well that resistance fighters here roamed freely about Haifa street today hunting for Iraqis collaborating with US forces.

They executed a man they suspected as being a collaborator in Tahrir Square, and then they moved on to Mathaf Square, just 3 blocks from the "Green Zone" where the interim government and US embassy are located.

When the US troops leave Fallujah, more members of the armed resistance (who are still fighting the US troops in the city) will return. Somehow, I don't see the collaborators who are executed three blocks from the Green Zone overseeing a system of ID badges and labor gangs in Fallujah.

Anguish management

Yesterday, reading about Fallujah while looking at background material for a demonstration outside the BBC, donating to an emergency response to help the refugees, listening to Patti Smith's song cash, I was overcome by an unexpected emotion.

Thinking about the reported 70% of buildings destroyed, homes in ruins, hundreds of thousands of refugees, hundreds massacred, rotting corpses eaten by dogs on the streets, continuing killing, I am overcome by anguish.

I am engulfed in a state of shock. The safe and stable environment of Britain seems unreal compared to the catastrophe the British are helping to create in Iraq. Indifferent responses here to the reality of war seem surreal; and I find it difficult to relate to shopping for groceries, listening to gossip about friends, everyday activities.

This is quite unprecedented. In connection with human rights issues I encounter descriptions of torture, mass murder, systematic starvation, home demolition, ethnic cleansing and such routinely. They do not leave me untouched, but my reactions are usually rather detached. Strong emotions are in fact most aroused by the behaviour of supposedly progressive people (say, liberal journalists or writers) from whom I would have expected better, rather than the atrocious behaviour of people from whom I know what to expect (say, members of the British government or US military).

So this was an unusual experience. I don't know the cause. The day before, I had read Alex Doherty's article Learning to feel. Doherty writes how on his visit to the West Bank even the proximity of the oppression made, surprisingly, no emotional impact on him. I don't agree with all of his analysis (such as linking pornography and violence towards women). But he makes an interesting point in connecting the lack of emotional response he felt to the out of place outbursts of some activists. Doherty writes:

At demonstrations and organizing meetings it is not uncommon to encounter activists and participants who make emotional outbursts that appear to ring false, statements of anger or sorrow that one intuitively feels derive not from really felt emotion but rather the desire to express emotions that one is not feeling.

I have encountered this too, and found it unsettling. I have become embarrassed at any association with the responsible person (even just being at the same meeting), and this has had a disproportionately negative impact. The contrast with the genuine, unaffected and moving speeches I have heard from trade unionists from Columbia, activists who have worked in Iraq and Palestine or long-time activists working in Britain is drastic.

I think one reason for these false outbursts is the following. When you identify yourself in a positive way as the member of a new group, whether it is activists, university students or live action roleplayers, you take certain things as proudly emblematic of the group. However, before you have some experience of how the group really works, commitment to these emblems is not grounded on understanding but simply on emulation of an image, and is thus necessarily shallow.

For example, I think it is not uncommon for beginning university students to feel they belong to a more intellectual, more scientific, more civilised group of people, and to affect this in speech and behaviour.

Likewise, feeling empathy with suffering and communicating the need to act are qualities most activists probably associate with their group. So I think that when people become open to one injustice or another -Israeli oppression, Columbian assassinations, corporate assault on society, anything- and want to work for change, they feel they should have strong personal emotions about the issue, which leads to the development of insincere, not well grounded emotional responses, which often seem transparently false.

I have certainly recognised this pattern in myself with regard to studying theoretical physics, and with regard to activism to a lesser extent (since I don't think of myself as really belonging to the group, not being very active).

This still doesn't explains the sudden private anguish.