Britain In The Collective
Memory Of IraqBy Marwan Asmar
04 November, 2007
Countercurrents.orgBefore the invasion of Iraq in 2003, I used to think about Britain regularly, having lived there in the 1970s and 1980s. After the invasion and the straddling of British and American troops on Iraqi soil, I consciously tried to blot the UK out of my collective memory.
My politics took the better part of me, I wasn’t about to continue to let my nostalgia override the imperialistic convulsions of a nation that keeps harping back on empire and king and country. I think I was becoming politically mature, or to use a cleverly devised western term politically correct.
For me Iraq was a very definite schism in my perception, it was a sharp, deep divided cut. I could not continue to reminisce about a country that has actively supported the invasion of another country and the ‘flushing’ out of its political regime especially when it was supported by many western states in the past.
Despite the fact that I grew up to believe in the separation between politics and country, and/or politics and culture and society, I have reached a situation where I could no longer do that, but I jumbled everything up and rejected it all. For me Tony Blair, then prime minister, was as much to blame for the war, as the British man-in-the street.
I was becoming guilty of making generalizations but I didn’t care, and the powers that be—the top political establishments in the USA and Britain—probably realized that and encouraged it. It was sad as well because good, descent people in these countries rejected the idea of going to war in the Middle East.
They vocally made their voice heard through demonstrations and strikes, in the media, and through mobilization of support that continued for months, right up till May 2003, but they proved useless, almost peripheral to the slippery-slope of war. Democratic politicians and presidents like Tony Blair and George W. Bush turned their backs on the street and popular voices, arguing of a political constituency of their own.
People become a cheap commodity whether they are under democratic systems, totalitarian regimes and autocratic politics. In the end it is the state machine that matters overriding the essentialist elements of a country, a people, a culture and civilization.
Thus as it happened because of the war, and the subsequent mayhems and killings in Iraq that became the norm in 2004, 2005, 2006 and today, politics and culture became intermingled, dictated from the top downwards. Politics came to rule and the country came to be ruled by politics, there was no separation between the two.
That’s why after 2003, I took the fateful decision—a decision that become firmer as the killings on the ground increased in Iraq—that the time I lived in the UK was in the past, and it should left there bottled up. It was a pity really because I cherish these days, days of political, cultural, and intellectual developments, and narratives that should be talked about and discussed amongst my family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances because this is the way to increase dialogue and cultural cooperation.
In the new climate of military and political occupation one can hardly talk about his set of experiences or the liberalisms he was exposed to in a country like Britain. It became difficult to talk about the more personal touching sides which I had been exposed, it became difficult to talk about its people, friendships, relationships, incidents which actually showed in the end there are common beliefs that bind people together, and we have common anguishes and fears.
Many in the Arab popular street today are saying that the occupation just proves their worst fears that Britain had always harbored imperialistic designs and policies of divide-and-rule and have underscored their notions of fair play which their media and culture like to portray the Britons to be. The pertinent feeling that Britain is still widely responsible for allowing the Jews to create their homeland in Palestine back in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s was becoming strong once again.
These are the issues I have to equate and live with. My personal relationship, the British scenery, its long lawns, playing fields, its woods, old houses, manor houses and castles, its streets, shopping centers and hills, its mists, fogs and cold mornings, its stuffed turkeys, and Yorkshire puddings have to take a backseat.
In actual fact they are slowly disappearing from my collective memory and in the memory of many others who do not quite see the world in terms of black and white or how George W. Bush and British establishment politicians see it. It is quite a pity really because such actions—war, occupations, sanctions—puts aside the idea of interfaith speak and dialogue between civilizations, major developments that were being forged in the 1980s and 1990s on the international levels.
After 11 September, the vast negative reactions to it in the way of the invasions of such countries as Afghanistan and Iraq have created set backs in cross-cultural dialogues between the West and the East and replaced them by rigid thinking that every bit went against everything that intellectuals like Prince Hassan in Jordan were trying to do to bring people of different races, ethnicities and background to talk to each other.
Today, the world continues to be at a political stalemate, losing direction as seemingly blundered politicians step down. Blair for instance, has stepped down last May, and he will be followed by George Bush next year to give way for others who are likely to be left to pick up the pieces. They may continue with the previous policies and they may not, but they will certainly be dealing with military and power structures that have been firmly placed and difficult to undo.
Politicians are “makers” of history, they make decisions that affect the lives of many, if they are the wrong decisions people have to live with that and the world has to accommodate!
* The author is a writer based in Amman
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