President Bush has said that the 2,000 U.S. troops who have died
in Iraq did so in pursuit of a worthy cause ““ to bring
democracy to the Iraqi people.
From halfway around the globe, Iraqi students at UCLA have had
mixed feelings about this cause as they watched the coverage of the
war, the mounting number of casualties and the beginning of a
democratic government with the writing and passing of the Iraqi
constitution earlier this month.
Though they expressed doubts about the underlying goals of the
constitution and the means by which democracy is being achieved
““ namely through war and by the action of an outside power
““ students described the writing of the constitution as a
milestone, something solid to show after more than two years of war
and thousands of deaths, both Iraqi and American.
“It’s definitely a landmark … Me and my friends
here are very excited about this,” said Inas Ali, a
fourth-year biological chemistry student who was born in Iraq.
The last two and a half years of fighting in Iraq may have hit
closer to home for Ali than for most other students. She was in
Iraq during the Gulf War and remembers what it was like to be in a
war-torn city.
“For the Gulf War, I saw the bombings. I was there, I was
hiding, I was trying to escape, trying to survive with my
family,” she said.
She also saw the impact Saddam Hussein had on the Iraqi people,
and along with some other Iraqi students, supported his
removal.
At the same time, her firsthand experiences in Iraq give her a
better idea of the realities of the situation that exists
today.
“I’m torn because I saw what the Saddam regime did
for the people and the way it mistreated the country,” she
said. “It wasn’t good, but this war isn’t good
either.”
Some believe that the U.S. will need to stay in Iraq for some
time, perhaps months or even years past the marker of the 2,000th
American casualty, for democratization to be complete,
Fadi Kandarian, a fifth-year molecular, cellular and
developmental biology student, was born in Abu Dhabi and identifies
himself as Iraqi. He expects that the situation would revert to
chaos if the United States were to withdraw from Iraq before a
solid democracy is in place.
“It’s not a war I support … (but) I don’t
think that America should leave before establishing a
government,” he said.
There is much left to smooth out before the United States
establishes a stable government to leave behind in Iraq. Mohammad
Tajsar, a second-year English student, pointed to issues such as
security and the broader divisions between different groups of
people in Iraq as problems that must be solved before stability
will be possible.
“The constitution is not … going to pull everyone
together,” he said.
Tajsar looks at the war in Iraq and the move toward setting up a
democracy in the country from two cultural positions ““ born
in Iran to Iraqi parents and now a U.S. citizen, Tajsar said he is
as connected to Iraq as he is to the United States.
Even after the passing of the constitution, he said there is
still much more to do.
“(The Iraqi constitution) is just one of the many things
that need to happen before this country can call itself a sovereign
democratic nation,” he said.
Some Iraqi students at UCLA question whether the benefit of the
Iraqi people was the primary goal of the institution of democracy
and if the problems with Hussein’s regime could have been
approached by other means than war.
Kandarian said his primary concern about the new Iraqi
constitution was that it was not written for Iraq.
“My main worry is that … there was pressure on the Iraqi
people to write a constitution to gear to the needs of others, not
necessarily the Iraqi people,” he said.