Ghaith Mahmood had a childhood not unlike that of a typical
middle-income American.
He lived in a modernized city with cars and shopping malls.
There was always plenty of food to eat, and he remembers wiling
away the hours playing computer games.
But Mahmood did not grow up in American suburbia. He was born
and raised in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, a city that has found
itself in America’s crosshairs time and time again since the
Gulf War in ’91.
People like Mahmood are members of an underrepresented, yet
concerned part of the UCLA community who have a vested interest in
a possible U.S.-led war with Iraq, especially because they still
have family living in that area.
“You have to ask yourself: “˜Why does this country
that I’m a part of claim to be liberating family members
while at the same time they’re bombing them?” he
said.
Mahmood graduated from UCLA last year in business economics and
international development studies; he now works as a coordinator
with the student retention center.
He immigrated to Los Angeles in 1988 with his parents to build a
better life and help the rest of his family back home, just as
countless other immigrants do every year.
“Coming to UCLA, I knew that I wasn’t just coming
here on behalf of myself; I was coming on behalf of my whole
family,” he said.
Seeder Saba, a fifth-year Near Eastern studies student who was
born and raised in Los Angeles, said when her parents immigrated to
the United States, they left behind a fairly developed country.
“It was real modern. Iraq was always No. 1 in education
within the Arab countries,” she said.
And then the Gulf War struck.
While many Americans remember the Gulf War as a series of video
game images on CNN, for Iraqi immigrants, the experience was very
different.
Mahmood, who lost some family members when American bombs struck
an Iraqi community center, remembers being teased by classmates who
called him “Saddam Jr.” and told him: “Go
home.”
Saba has equally powerful memories of the war.
“I remember my mom and friends would be crying just
watching the television. One of my aunts was screaming,” she
said.
When Saba visited Baghdad in 1995, she was struck not only by
the extensive destruction wrought by the war, but also by how
tightly the Iraqi government monitors the people.
“If you say one thing negative about Saddam, not only will
you be tortured or killed, your family members, your coworkers,
they will go harass them,” she said.
The Iraqi government plasters Saddam Hussein posters all around
Baghdad and has infiltrated the populous so thoroughly that when
asked about politics or the situation, some people hang up the
phone out of sheer terror, Saba said.
Mahmood, who has close family who visited Baghdad two years ago,
said “99.9 percent” of the Iraqi people are against
Hussein, but their daily struggle to survive against an oppressive
regime and U.N.-imposed sanctions supercedes any attempt at
revolt.
Ultimately, however, Mahmood blames the sanctions more than
Hussein.
“Those sanctions are more debilitating than any war could
be,” he asserted.
Saba agreed that the sanctions are preventing people from
revolting, and added that Americans usually misconceive the
conflict when thinking the war ended in 1991.
“For me, I feel like the war has been going on since
’91. It never ended. People were dying during the war, and
they’re dying during the bombings (now),” she said.
In regard to the coming conflict with Iraq, Mahmood says he
feels Americans generalize the issues too much by being
“selectively informed.”
“People know a lot about Saddam and his weapons, but not
enough about Iraq or the people or the history,” he said.
Mahmood believes the best solution is not to bomb Iraq’s
infrastructure, but to supply the people with human rights
monitors, food, medicine and peace keepers to run new
elections.
As an Iraqi, Mahmood says he has an obligation to educate
Americans on the Iraqi perspective.
“I have that responsibility to come out against those who
say, “˜We do this to liberate the Iraqi people’ and
saying, “˜Thank you for being concerned about our people, but
no thank you for the bombs you will be dropping,'” he
said.