Rhonda,
Dr. Stanley Tambiah, an anthropologist who is from and writes about Sri
Lanka, who I believe is now at Harvard, wrote a book about looting and riots.
He calls such behavior a "leveling mechanism." The behavior is usually
stired up by rival political factions who want to distabilize things so that
the people in power look bad, and the other political parties can control.
Riots and looting are "leveling mechanisms" because it is an opportunity for
poor people to get stuff that normally they don't have access to. It
happens all over the world. One hundred years ago, in British colonial
areas in South Asia, Africa and the Near East where local elites were trying
to form nation-states and split from the Empire, these incidents were
rampant. The colonial governments usually
looked the other way because the targets were rival ethnic groups and not the
colonial governments -- e.g., Muslim merchants and Tamil bureaucrats in
Ceylon attacked by Sinhalese Buddhists who resented their better social
status. The riots/ looting became a means for disadvantaged groups to
seize power and blow off steam.
I think there were many things going on during the looting and riots in
Baghdad a few weeks ago. There were poor people from Saddam City [which has
now been renamed Sadr City, after a Shiite cleric] who rioted because they
are at the bottom of the economic heap and it was a chance to get a
refrigerator or air-conditioner -- luxuries they don't have access to. I
think other people resented the rich and middle-class in Baghdad, who are
Sunni while most of the poor are Shiite [an ethno-religious difference that
matters in Iraq]. I think other aspects of the riots were orchestrated by
mafia-type groups of gangsters who just wait for opportunities like this.
They sure had enough advance notice. Some of them may be foreigners.
Finally, the majority of Iraqi people do not want to be occupied by a
foreign power -- it looks too imperial to them. You know, the British were
in Iraq from 1914 - 1958., so it is a "been there, done that" experience for
the Iraqis.
You must remember that Iraq had one of the most educated and sophisticated,
urban populations in the Near East until the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), when
the economy started to have trouble, then came our embargo after Gulf War I
(1991).
There are still many, well educated modern people in Iraq, especially in the
large cities. They are certainly capable to rebuilding their country, but
they did not destroy it. We in the United States did with our bombs. Why
should their oil money pay for our destruction? It is like someone coming
and trashing your house, then making you pay for the repairs. I think
that attitude is strong in Iraq, even among Iraqis who admire the United
States. They are not stupid people and the majority wonder what the United
States' real agenda is. I just hope we don't let them down. The educated,
middle-class people expect the United States government to really deliver
democracy, freedom, a fair legal system, and the true benefits of a
parliamentary democracy -- not fat contracts for foreign companies.
pamela sezgin
professor of anthropology / museum consultant
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