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A glimmer of hope
Iraqi professor cautiously optimistic following election
By Jessica Ullian
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Shakir Mustafa, a CAS assistant professor of Arabic, says that the high turnout for the elections in Iraq gives him hope that his home country can rebuild. Photo by Albert L’Étoile |
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Shakir Mustafa has not visited his homeland for 14 years, and has not seen his mother for 5. When he speaks to his brothers and sisters, he hears descriptions of tanks in the streets and gunshots at all hours. He has watched his adopted country invade his native country and has waited two years for the occupation to end, as he believes it should. “Part of it is depressing, certainly,” he says, “the violence, the carnage, this awful destruction of the city’s infrastructure and resources.”
In the past few weeks, however, Mustafa, an assistant professor of Arabic in the College of Arts and Sciences, has started to feel something a little different — a small amount, “a glimmer, at least,” of hope. Iraq’s first democratic election, which took place on Sunday, January 30, produced some violence and bloodshed, as expected. But it also produced an estimated eight million voters, a turnout of approximately 57 percent — a sign, in Mustafa’s opinion, that his fellow citizens will ultimately be able to repair their country.
“The way that the Iraqis came out and voted, in defiance of terrible odds, that demonstrates to me that the Iraqis will do something to save the country,” he says. “There is a will to oppose terrorism.”
“A country with infinite potential”
Americans’ familiarity with Iraqi and Middle Eastern culture has grown since September 11, but in some ways the notion of Arab-Islamic culture as a distant other has been reinforced, according to Betty Anderson, a CAS assistant professor of history, who specializes in the Middle East. High schools and colleges all over the country, she says, have added information about Islam and the Middle East to their history and social studies courses, but generally fail to demonstrate the copious links between Arab-Islamic and European history. “When they add Islam, do they integrate it into a Western civilization timeline?” Anderson asks. “I think it’s taught as a separate area.”
For Mustafa, however, the cultural connections were clear long before he and his family came to the United States. Born in Baghdad, he studied English literature in college and graduate school at Mosul University. When he and his wife, Nawah Nasrallah, left Iraq, it was so he could pursue a doctoral degree in Irish literature at Indiana University, which interested him since both the Irish and the Arabic cultures similarly value education and religion and both were colonized by the British. They left in December 1990, just after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and the first Gulf War began. They have not been back since.
The family’s life in America has been “extremely positive,” Mustafa says, and they have developed a deep emotional connection to this country, based on the friendships they’ve made. But the connection to Iraq is equally profound.
“I identify with the Arab-Islamic culture,” he says. “I think it’s a country with infinite potential, very good people, great art, literature, food. And I still have a number of family and friends in the city — four brothers, three sisters, and a small army of nieces and nephews.”
Through phone calls and e-mails to his siblings, Mustafa has gained a sense of the situation in Iraq, which he says is best described as “a deep underlying ambivalence.” The people are open to the idea of democracy, he says, but they are aware of numerous factors that could hinder its construction — particularly the push for Iraqi leaders to quickly build a new government as American and other global leaders closely monitor their progress.
“The different factions didn’t have enough time to sort out their differences,” Mustafa says. “It could lead to clashes. The ghost of civil war — that’s a real threat in Iraq.”
In addition, he says that it seems unlikely that Iraqis will grow to accept the U.S. occupation, since many are skeptical U.S. leaders will truly allow the Iraqis to select any leader they want.
Conflicting views of democracy
Similar questions about the future of Iraqi democracy were raised by Strom Thacker, a CAS associate professor of international relations, in the 2003 report “Will Iraq Become a Democracy?” Examining the United States’ history of democracy-building in other nations, as well as the historical and cultural factors affecting Iraq, Thacker and coauthor Chappell Lawson, an MIT political scientist, concluded that an Iraqi democracy was unlikely. “Even with substantial increases in national income and extensive U.S.-imposed reforms, Iraq will remain a relatively poor, overwhelmingly Muslim country with little history of political freedom, located in a particularly rough neighborhood of the world,” they write. “Collectively, these factors substantially limit the prospects for democracy in Iraq. Although there is little reason to believe that Iraq’s next regime will be as bad as the one that Anglo-American forces replaced, there is equally little reason to think that it will be democratic.”
But from Iraq, Mustafa’s three brothers tell him that they are optimistic the election will bring positive changes. In the eight weeks leading up to the vote, many of Iraq’s unemployed found jobs as election workers — a significant development in a country where the unemployment rate is well over 20 percent. On election day itself, they told him, the turnout was “overwhelming” — and the polling place near their home in northern Baghdad was relatively free of violence. “They would hear shots once in
a while,” he says, “but they have gotten so used to those.”
Mustafa did not vote, since he would have to have traveled to Washington, D.C., to do so, and he did not think the international elections were adequately monitored to return accurate results. He is addressing his own concerns about Iraq by encouraging cultural education — his wife published a book of Iraqi culinary history and recipes, and he translates Iraqi fiction into English — and political curiosity. “I’m interested in having students look into the possibility of participating in and forming American foreign policy,” he says.
His emotional connections to both Iraq and America are strong, and he would like his current country to have a better and more informed perception of his former homeland. “I’d like to give an impression to my American audience that is slightly different from the one they are getting from the mainstream media,” he says. “A perspective that is colored by genuine concerns.”
11
February 2005
Boston University
Office of University Relations