When I graduated from UCLA in June 1995 I wondered, while
sitting among thousands of fellow graduates, if my work would make
a difference in the world. Since that day, I have been involved in
conducting research on my native country of Iraq ““ its
history, politics and culture. I was born in the United States and
could never travel to my native homeland. My studies were the only
way I could connect to the land of my parents. After I finished my
master’s thesis at Georgetown University in 1997 on
Iraq’s intelligence agencies, again I wondered, “Will
my research matter to anyone?”
In February 2003 Tony Blair’s 10 Downing Street prepared a
dossier on Iraq’s “Concealment of Deception” of
Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction program. It was
presented as an “up to date” report by the British
government ““ one based in part on secret intelligence
sources. As a result, it served as the basis for portions of U.S.
Secretary of State Colin Powell’s statement to the United
Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003.
Shortly thereafter, it emerged that large parts of the text of
that British report were in fact copied ““ at times verbatim
““ from one of my own articles, “Iraq’s Security
and Intelligence Network: A Guide and Analysis,” which I had
written in September 2002 for an academic journal called the Middle
East Review of International Affairs (MERIA). This article was
based on my research done at both UCLA and Georgetown.
What’s more, journalists went on to dismiss Blair (and, in
effect, my work), because the report was based on a student’s
work. However, this incident demonstrates that while both the U.S.
and British government have invested millions, if not billions in
their intelligence services, the real intelligence lies within our
universities. For anyone at UCLA who is in the middle of a thesis,
or simply a term paper, this incident goes to show that a
student’s work does matter. The research you are conducting
can make a difference in the world.
My personal motivation for studying these Iraqi intelligence
agencies is that they have conducted some of the most atrocious
human rights abuses against my fellow Iraqis, including my own
relatives. In 1998 I was able to examine captured Iraqi
intelligence documents that were made available from the Iraq
Research and Documentation Project at Harvard University. The
project stores four million captured Iraqi intelligence documents
that provide crucial evidence for any post-Hussein war crimes,
tribunals or truth and reconciliation committees. For example, one
document that haunts me to this day reads as follows:
“We do not object to the decapitation of traitors. But it
would have been preferable if you had sent them to Security for the
purpose of interrogating them. Security personnel could have
extracted significant information from them prior to their
execution.”
This note was from “Chemical Ali” Hasan al-Majid,
Saddam Hussein’s cousin, and notorious for his use of
chemical weapons against the Kurds in 1987 to 1988. Another
document is instructions on how the Iraqi Special Forces should
deal with demonstrations inside of Kuwait, which Iraq occupied from
August 1990 to February 1991:
“Walk to the demonstration area, without vehicles and
“˜softly, softly,’ get close to the demonstrators from
behind and close their alternative routes of escape. Open fire with
everything you have, including rifles, automatic weapons, light
artillery and flamethrowers, with the aim of killing all the
demonstrators to serve as an example to others.”
Finally, I cannot forget a pink exercise book decorated with
pretty white flowers, which turned out to be a record of the
destruction of 397 Kurdish villages.
This is the Iraq I have known all my life. I fear what may be
discovered in the vast layers of Iraq’s jails, such as the
notorious Abu Ghuraib prison where some Western journalists were
recently held.
As an Iraqi-American, I believe that if Iraq develops into a
democracy in the future, it must take into account the abuses that
were conducted by the state in the past. The purpose of my research
is to record this experience through documenting the human rights
abuses produced by the Iraqi state itself. Other Middle Eastern
studies scholars must record the human rights violations of other
Middle Eastern countries so that they become a collective part of
the nation’s memory. By admitting the mistakes of the past, Iraq
can truly establish the foundations for a modern democratic
society.
Many doubt the Bush administration’s reasons for this war
and that is understandable. However, at the end of the day, I know
my country will be destroyed and the scars of this war will scar
generations to come. My only hope now is that the regime of Saddam
Hussein will finally be held accountable for its crimes against the
Iraqi people.
Al-Marashi graduated from UCLA in 1995 and currently works as an
Iraq Analyst for the Center for Non-Proliferation Studies.