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Jon Alterman: Jane Arraf has spent more than a quarter-century as a journalist in the Middle East, working for National Public Radio, CNN, the Christian Science Monitor and other leading outlets. She was based in Baghdad under Saddam Hussein and has been going back in the years since his fall. Jane, welcome to Babel.
Jane Arraf: Thank you so much. I'm so pleased to be here.
Jon Alterman: What is the mood in Iraq these days? In many ways, Iraq has fallen from the consciousness of a lot of people in the United States. What is the mood?
Jane Arraf: I'm in denial that Iraq has fallen from the consciousness of people in the United States because it is still endlessly fascinating. The mood really depends—like in most of the eras of Iraq that I've covered—on who you're talking to, but a lot of the mood now has moved beyond the political class. All of the things that we think of as important—the formation of a government or what happens to oil relations with Iraq’s neighbors—a lot of Iraqis don't really care about. For instance, if you go to Baghdad, there are all these new restaurants, and there are shopping malls. Those are not the mark of progress or anything like that, but there really is a life beyond the politics in Iraq— particularly in Baghdad. Iraq is a country of young people now, and the mood really alternates between young people desperate to leave, and other Iraqis who are hanging in there, persisting, and trying to make things work.
Jon Alterman: Where's the money coming from to build all these restaurants and malls and other kinds of things?
Jane Arraf: Oh, that's a great question. The short answer is that part of it comes from money laundering clearly—because we're talking about restaurants that cost a couple million dollars to build, and then lots of money to run. There is also protection money, but otherwise, civil servants for instance—and most of the working people in Baghdad are civil servants—have some disposable income. And Iraqis love going out. If you look at places which we haven't thought about in a long time—like Fallujah, Ramadi, or Western Anbar, which is known primarily for all the fighting that went on with the Marines in 2003—there is a huge amount of investment there. A lot of that investment is coming from oil money being channeled into government projects that range from luxury hotels to new roads, so, the money comes from a variety of sources. But we can’t discount the distinct possibility that some of that is clearly laundering money.
Jon Alterman: You said that it's now a country of young people, and young Iraqis grew up in their early childhood under dictatorship. They dealt with a decade of war and uncertainty. You said a lot want to leave, but what are young Iraqis like? How plugged in are they to the world? I know you have a lot of experience across the region. How much are they like—and unlike—young Arabs from neighboring states?
Jane Arraf: They are similar in many ways. This is a generation that grew up with a memory of conflict—if not necessarily actually living through the conflict itself. They were young children during the war, but it's also a generation that grew up with internet, unlike their parents. And they have expectations. They look around at the rest of the world, and they want things. They want opportunities. They don't understand why they can't have them. One of the questions I've always asked Iraqis is aa very simple question that I keep asking even though the answer is fairly obvious.
There's so much inequality and so much unfairness, and so much injustice in Iraq, and I ask, “why don't Iraqis get more angry?” The answer I was always given is that they couldn't afford to get angry. Now, it's a new generation that has indeed gotten angry. We’ve seen that in the protests where young people went out and risked death—and hundreds of them died. They are in many ways a generation that has high expectations, and in many ways, they are also angry. I think that’s actually a healthy thing.
Jon Alterman: Was there a time you saw something that was surprisingly normal?
Jane Arraf: I am surprised every day by Iraq. Part of that is that it's a complex country, and I learn things every day. Something that is surprisingly normal I would have to say is restaurants. Surprisingly normal now isn't 100 percent great because it's surprisingly normal during a pandemic—which no one pays attention to in Iraq. The restaurants are absolutely full of people. Iraqis like to go out. They like to socialize. You have all these lovely rooftop restaurants now. You have patios. You have families in restaurants by the riverside at dusk along the river. You have kids playing football. Baghdad itself feels very normal, if normal is that you can go out and do what you would normally do without being worried too much about being blown up. Having said that, underneath the surface, there are really worrying currents. So many kids have dropped out of school during the pandemic. That could actually be a lost generation of millions of kids who don't even learn how to read or write. There’s the looming crisis when the oil money runs out. On the surface, though—if you go through the streets—it does surprisingly look just like a normal big Arab city.
Jon Alterman: That reminds me of the way Kuwaitis used to talk about Basra in the 1970s.
Jane Arraf: Basra was where they would go to have fun, right?
Jon Alterman: Yes. They would go to drink and dance and do all those things.
Jane Arraf: Poor Basra. I say poor Basra because it is such a potentially vibrant city with such an amazing culture—and such a history of poetry and everything else. Now, it is just so incredibly poor, and in the summer, it is like a version of hell—power cuts for hours at a time, no clean water, and schools that barely function. Basra is one of the big tragedies of Iraq.
Jon Alterman: Iraq has a deep cultural history. What's happened to that?
Jane Arraf: One of the really cool things in Iraq is that there is this revival of art and music, and it's never gone away because in the Arab world, Iraq has stood as a center of artistic and other creative talent. It’s really the only city that I can think of in the Arab world where you have extraordinarily figurative public art. And now, because the security situation is a bit better, you have art galleries opening up and art exhibits. A few months ago, they held the Babylon festival for the first time in years—which is actually on the site of Babylon. There was music and dancing.
There were some very senior religious figures who said, “This is haram. It's forbidden under religious law. You shouldn't have this.” There were threats—and it went on anyway. That has always been the wonderful thing about Iraq—that at its best, it encompasses all of these different forces. In the best of times, all of these forces manage to coexist, with all of the religion and the secular expression, the creativity, and the music. More than that, it shows the incredible potential to harness all of those forces and be something much better than it is now.
Jon Alterman: Where does sectarianism stand in Iraq right now?
Jane Arraf: Sectarianism was the driving factor behind almost everything in Iraq for way too many years after the war—after Saddam was toppled. It has receded. Sectarianism now isn't as much of a factor. Part of it is because it is very clearly a Shi`ite Muslim dominated country, and that is pretty well accepted as a fact. Now though, it’s also not so much a factor in everyday life.
Sectarianism was the driving factor when whether you where Shi’ite or Sunni was literally a matter of life or death. That was back when there was al Qaeda in the streets and when there were Shi`ite militia fighting them, and people were caught in between. That's not so much the case now. That doesn’t mean that it's not important because it's deeply important in politics, but it's not as important in everyday life. Certainly, when you ask about it, most ordinary Iraqis will say, “We're Iraqi first.” There is really a strong Iraqi identity that persists, no matter what religion or ethnic group they're from.
Jon Alterman: Iraqis went through a searing set of experiences, both with Saddam Hussein and then the war, and you saw a lot of those wounds being inflicted as a reporter. What are scars that you are you surprised have healed, and what are scars that you are surprised have proven surprisingly durable?
Jane Arraf: That's such a great question. The scars that have healed at least superficially—which I'm surprised at—is that you can go through a period in time where people were being kidnapped from the streets. They were literally having holes drilled in their heads. They were killed because they were Sunnis or because they were Shi`a. I’m surprised that you can go to a country where that doesn't happen anymore. That seems like a really obvious thing to say, but it still stuns me how you get from there to here. That doesn't mean that the scars have healed completely. There are so many dead and many missing. There are so many families who will never know what happened to their loved ones, but it’s a country that just somehow manages to stumble along without collapsing.
The scars that haven't healed are not so much related to 2003 and the toppling of Saddam Hussein—which was after all, almost a generation ago now. They are mostly related to the Islamic State Group (ISG) and the way that ISG irreversibly changed communities. It took over a third of Iraq and there are hundreds of thousands of people displaced. Many of them are still displaced and can't go back because their tribes won't let them go back. The legacy of the ISG still persists, and those scars are very deep.
Jon Alterman: You said that most Iraqis have moved beyond politics, but of course every society needs some kind of politics. Iraq is arguably in the midst of some sort of transition. Muqtada al-Sadr seems poised to be a kingmaker after October. There's been tremendous difficulty moving on and getting election results that lead to a stable government. Where do you think that stands? Where do you think Muqtada al-Sadr movement stands in trying to assert the leadership of a populist Shi`ite sectarian party?
Jane Arraf: The thing about Muqtada al-Sadr is that you'll remember him in his various incarnations. He first came to light in the United States as someone who had a militia fighting U.S. forces in the street. He had teenagers out with rifles shooting at tanks. That was the biggest threat to U.S. forces since the invasion. Then, he renounced violence, and he turned his militias into what he called cultural organizations— although they weren't really. Then, he decided to reach out to Sunnis and Christians, and now what he has is an organizational movement that's very different from where he started. It is one that encompasses diversity. It encompasses different sects. It appeals to different sects. It is—of course—very Shi`a-based because of the legacy of his family, which was revered. It's been an interesting transformation. The question I think people have is: for all the talk he has of ending corruption and having technocrats as ministers, is he actually serious about that? It's, as you mentioned, a very long process. Elections were last October. There's still no government formed. Now, he's teaming up with the most dominant Kurdish party to see if they can form a government, but there are all sorts of complications in the way. If you look at it clinically, it is a fascinating experiment. Obviously, it is one with huge and potentially dramatic consequences for Iraqis, but it's still very much up in the air what kind of government he'll oversee.
Jon Alterman: Is it your sense that ultimately, he will be in a central position when the dust settles?
Jane Arraf: He absolutely will. His block is the single biggest number of seats in parliament. There was extremely low turnout of voters and the bigger Iran-backed parties didn't do nearly as well as they thought they would. The reason that his organization did well, was not just because of the large support that he has. It is because he and his advisors figured out how to make the most of a new electoral system. You could see it when you went out in the polls. You could see it when you talked to voters. They had figured out where to field candidates to get the maximum number of votes. They had drawn up maps. It was something that seems fairly obvious, but not a lot of other political organizations did that. That’s an indication that he is a political strategist, and that is expected to serve him well.
Jon Alterman: That’s about the present, and now I want to ask you about the future. The world is going to go through a global energy transition sometime over the next three decades. Oil is going to be much less of a strategic commodity in the future than it is now. A lot of Iraq’s current boom is a consequence of oil money, and a lot of the economic security in Iraq is a consequence of oil money—to the extent that there is economic security at all. Have Iraqis begun to think about what an energy transition will look like in the world and what impacts an energy transition will have on Iraq?
Jane Arraf: There are some who have begun to think that way. The current president, for instance, and the current finance minister have thought about it, but they are in the minority. Iraq has a political and economic atmosphere where you grab whatever you can get. It has a huge public service sector—Something like 90 percent of oil revenues go to pay salaries and pensions. There is going to be a huge economic reckoning when the oil money runs out. They're not doing a lot about it because I think—as in many countries in similar situations—there isn't a lot of long-term thinking. The thought is essentially, “how can we make things work now?” And more importantly, “how can we stay in power?” We can't really mention the economy without mentioning the death spiral that is the endemic corruption in the country. There is staggering corruption, and although various governments have said that they're going to try to tackle it, they never really make much of a dent.
Jon Alterman: Is this corruption in terms of the government spending of oil revenues, or is there some other source of money that's fueling corruption?
Jane Arraf: It's corruption in almost every aspect of Iraqi society. It starts from the smallest of transactions, where if you're an Iraqi and you go to try to get documents or perform some routine bureaucratic errand that you're trying to run, you end up having to pay somebody for the things you're entitled to. It goes from that all the way to the directors-general of ministries controlling contracts and funneling them to their friends or demanding kickbacks. It also goes to things that aren't quite as common now, but certainly in the past have resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes—which is corrupt arms deals and major deals that involve bribery. It goes all the way across the board. It has become a way of life. The thing about that is, if you're not corrupt, it's very hard to get along in that system.
Jon Alterman: That cuts against what you were talking about at the beginning with the boom in restaurants and investment and other things. It undermines outsiders’ willingness to play in Iraq because of a sense that this is an insider's game and it's a corrupt game.
Jane Arraf: It does absolutely. There is an increasing amount of regional investment, but if you look at foreign investment, it is a very tough place to do business because of the climate of corruption that surrounds it.
Jon Alterman: Afghanistan also dealt with a lot of corruption, and the United States withdrew from Afghanistan. I can't imagine a lot of Iraqis didn't think that could have implications for them. How did people talk about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and what it meant it for the future of Iraq?
Jane Arraf: We are in a sense—I think—obsessed with U.S. troops and troop levels in Iraq. There is a category of Iraqis that are also equally obsessed, and they have demanded that the United States draw down troops to the point where there are now about 2,000 of them. The United States declared at the end of last year that there were no longer any combat troops. That means that there is a certain, essentially minimal level of troops there that are—according to Iraqi military officials—still needed for training, advising, intelligence, and air support. As for ordinary Iraqis—the ones who take a political view of this—they would probably tell you they don't want any U.S. troops there, but for the most part, it's not really a factor anymore. It has been years since Iraqis have seen a U.S. soldier anywhere. They stay on their bases. They support their Iraqi counterparts. You don't see them out and around. It's just not that kind of climate anymore.
Jon Alterman: Those are absolutely remarkable changes. Jane Arraf, thank you for joining us on Babel.