March 12, 2003

HORSEFEATHERS’ WAR GLOSSARY

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW TO MAKE THE IRAQI WAR EASY TO UNDERSTAND

DON’T LEAVE HOME WITHOUT IT

ARAB

(Much of the essay below is condensed and abridged from The Original Arab, The Bedouin, by Philip Hitti.

Originally “Arab” referred to the largely nomadic inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula. In modern usage, it embraces any of the Arabic-speaking peoples living in the vast area made up of North Africa, Egypt, The Sudan, the Arabian Peninsula, Syria, and Iraq.

The early Arabs of the Arabian Peninsula were predominantly pastoral nomads who herded their sheep, goats, and camels through the harsh desert environment looking for pasture. Settled Arabs practiced agriculture in the oases, which also served as trade centres for the caravans transporting the spices, ivory, and gold of the Horn of Africa to the civilizations farther north. The distinction between the desert nomads, on the one hand, and town dwellers and agriculturists, on the other, still pervades much of the Arab world.

Islam, which developed in the west-central Arabian Peninsula in the early 7th century AD, was the religious force that unified the desert subsistence nomads—the Bedouins—with the town dwellers of the oases. Although most Arabs of today are Muslim, a small number are not; approximately 5 percent of the native speakers of Arabic are Christians, Druzes, Jews, or animists.
The majority of Arabs continue to live in small, isolated farming villages, where traditional values and occupations prevail, including the subservience and home seclusion of women. Even though the pastoral desert nomad—the Bedouin—makes up barely 5 percent of the modern Arab population, village farmers venerate the pastoral nomad's way of life and claim kinship ties with the great desert tribes of the past and present.

The Bedouin still lives, as his forebears did, in tents of goats' or camels' hair and grazes his sheep and goats on the same ancient pastures. Sheep-and-camel- raising, hunting and raiding, are his regular occupations, and are to his mind the only occupations worthy of a man. It is his conviction that agriculture-as well as all varieties of trade and craft-are beneath his dignity.

In the fertile valleys of Iraq empires have come and gone, but in the barren wastes of Arabia the life and ways of the Bedouin has remained forever the same. The Bedouin, the camel and the palm rule supreme over the desert. And together with the sand they constitute the four great actors in its drama.
Tenacity and endurance enable the nomad to survive where almost everything else perishes. Individualism is so deeply ingrained that he has never become a socially conscious being. His ideals of devotion to the common good have not gone beyond that which pertains to his tribe. Discipline, respect for order and authority are not among his ideals.

The rudiments of Semitic religion developed in the oases, but religion sits very lightly in the heart of the Bedouin. In the judgment of the Koran, "the desert Arabians are most confirmed in unbelief and hypocrisy." Even in our present day they pay little more than lip homage to the Prophet.

The monotony and aridity of his desert habitat are faithfully reflected in the nomad's physical and mental make-up. Dates and milk are the chief items on his menu; and dates and camel flesh are his only solid foods. Fermented, the date gives him his favorite beverage. Its crushed stones furnish the cakes which are the everyday meal of his camel. To possess "the two black ones," water and dates, is the dream of every Bedouin.

Of the animals of Arabia, two are preeminent: the camel and the horse. Without the camel the desert could not be conceived of as a habitable place. It is the nomad's nourisher, his vehicle of transportation and his medium of exchange. The dowry of the bride, the price of blood, the profit of gambling, the wealth of a sheikh-all are computed in terms of camels. It is the Bedouin's constant companion, his alter ego. his foster parent. He drinks its milk instead of water, which he spares for the cattle; he feasts on its flesh; he covers himself with its skin; he makes his tent of its hair. Its dung he uses as fuel, and its urine as a hair tonic and medicine (as shampoo it leaves on the hair an odor corresponding to perfume and on the face a layer of oil serviceable as a protection against insect bites). To him the camel is more than "the ship of the desert"; it is the special gift of Allah.

As Arabia is the chief camel-breeding center of the world, the camel industry is one of its great sources of income. The part which the camel has played in the economy of Arabian life is indicated by the fact that the Arabic language is said to include about a thousand names for the camel in its numerous varieties, breeds, conditions and stages of growth, a number rivaled only by the number of synonyms used for the sword.

The horse, on the contrary, is an animal of luxury whose feeding and care constitute a problem to the man of the desert. Its possession is a presumption of wealth. The horse's chief value to an Arabian lies in providing the speed necessary for the success of Bedouin raids. In an Arab camp today if there is a shortage of water the children may cry for a drink, but the master, unmoved, would pour the last drop into a pail to set before the horse.

The raid or ghazw (corrupted into "razzia"), in other cultures considered a form of brigandage, is raised by the economic and social conditions of desert life to the rank of a national institution. It lies at the base of the economic structure of Bedouin pastoral society. In desert land, where the fighting mood is a chronic mental condition, raiding is one of the few manly occupations. An early poet gave expression to the guiding principle of such life in two verses: "Our business is to make raids on the enemy, on our neighbor and on our own brother, in case we find none to raid but a brother!"

THE CLAN ORGANIZATION is the basis of Bedouin society. Every tent represents a family; members of one encampment constitute a clan. A number of kindred clans grouped together make a tribe. All members of the same clan consider each other as of one blood, submit to the authority of but one chief-the senior member of the clan-and use one battle-cry. Blood relationship-real or fictitious (clan kinship may be acquired by sucking a few drops of a member's blood) furnishes the cohesive element in tribal organization.

The tent and its humble household contents are individual property, but water, pasturage and tillable land are common property of the tribe.
Blood, according to the primitive law of the desert, calls for blood; no chastisement is recognized other than that of vengeance. The nearest of kin is supposed to assume primary responsibility. A blood feud may last forty years. In all those intertribal battles of pre-Islamic days, the chroniclers emphasize the blood-feud motif, though underlying economic reasons must have motivated many of the events.

No worse calamity could befall a Bedouin than the loss of his tribal affiliation, for a tribeless man is practically helpless. His status is that of an outlaw beyond the pale of protection and safety.

The spirit of the clan demands boundless and unconditional loyalty to fellow clansmen, a passionate chauvinism. His allegiance, which is individualism of the member magnified, assumes that his tribe is a unit by itself, self-sufficient and absolute, and regards every other tribe as its legitimate victim and object of plunder and murder. The unsocial features of individualism and the clan spirit were never outgrown by the Arab character as it developed and unfolded itself after the rise of Islam, and were among the determining factors that led to the disintegration and ultimate downfall of the various Islamic states.

The clan is represented by its titular head, the sheikh, who is the senior member of the tribe whose leadership asserts itself in sober counsel, in generosity and in courage. In judicial, military and other affairs of common concern the sheikh is not the absolute authority; he must consult with the tribal council composed of the heads of the component families. His tenure of office lasts during the good will of his constituency.

The Arabian in general and the Bedouin in particular looks upon himself as the embodiment of the consummate pattern of creation. To him the Arabian nation is the noblest of all nations. The civilized man, from the Bedouin's exalted point of view, is less happy and far inferior. In the purity of his blood, his eloquence and poetry, his sword and horse, and above all his noble ancestry, the Arabian takes infinite pride. He is fond of prodigious genealogies and often traces his lineage back to Adam.

BA’TH PARTY

The following is excerpted from the Encyclopedia Britannica.
The Arab Socialist Ba‘th Party, (also spelled Ba‘ath) advocates the formation of a single Arab socialist nation. It has branches in many Middle Eastern countries and is the ruling party in Syria and Iraq.

The Ba‘th Party was founded in 1943 in Damascus by Michel ‘Aflaq and Salah ad-Din al-Bi t ar and in 1953 merged with the Syrian Socialist Party to form the Arab Socialist Ba‘th (Renaissance) Party. The Ba‘th Party espoused nonalignment and opposition to imperialism and colonialism, took inspiration from what it considered the positive values of Islam, and attempted to ignore or transcend class divisions. Its structure was highly centralized and authoritarian much like the communist party, and quite different from political parties in western democracies which advocate political values but are not authoritarian and tightly centrally structured.

In Iraq the Ba‘thists took power briefly in 1963 and regained it in 1968, after which the party's power became concentrated under Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. In Iraq the main internal threat to Ba‘th hegemony stemmed from Kurdish and Shi‘ite opposition.

IRAN

A worried neighbor of Iraq. In 1980 Saddam Hussein started a war with Iran because it wanted the latter’s oil fields. The war went on for eight years until a truce was called in 1988.

IRAQ

Iraq became a sovereign nation only 70 years ago. It was cobbled together at the end of World War I out of parts of the defeated Ottoman Empire by a team of British and French bureaucrats none of whom had ever been to the region. The political boundaries that were drawn up in 1920 to create a British mandate make little or no sense geographically, culturally, linguistically, or with regard to religious practices. The country is fragmented between Kurds in the north, Sunni Muslims in the center, and Shiite Muslims in the South.

ISLAM

Although great forests of trees have been cut down in order to describe, explain, advocate, interpret, criticize, and celebrate Islam, our discussion will be brief.

It is a major world religion belonging to the Semitic family; it was promulgated by the Prophet Muhammad in Arabia in the 7th century AD. The Arabic term islam, literally “surrender,” illuminates the fundamental religious idea of Islam—that the believer (called a Muslim) accepts “surrender to the will of Allah (Arabic: God).” Allah is viewed as the sole God—creator, sustainer, and restorer of the world. The will of Allah, to which man must submit, is made known through the sacred scriptures, the Koran, which Allah revealed to his messenger, Muhammad. In Islam Muhammad is considered the last of a series of prophets (including Adam, Noah, Jesus, and others), and his message simultaneously consummates and abrogates the “revelations” attributed to earlier prophets.

Retaining its emphasis on an uncompromisng monotheism and a strict adherence to certain essential religious practices, the religion taught by Muhammad to a small group of followers spread rapidly through the Middle East to Africa, Europe, the Indian subcontinent, the Malay Peninsula, and China. Although many sectarian movements have arisen within Islam, all Muslims are bound by a common faith and a sense of belonging to a single community.

It is important to distinguish between Arab and Muslim. Although Islam was originated by Arabs in Arabia, in modern times Arab Muslims represent only a part of the world of Islam. Many other ethnic groups—Indonesians, Iranians, Turks—have adopted it, and each one gives rise to variant beliefs and practices. Some people believe that the Koran explicitly says that it is the duty of all Muslims to destroy or convert all infidels. Some people believe that only the most radically fundamental Muslims believe that Islam advocates such ideas.

KURD

(The following material is abridged from the Encyclopedia Britannica)

A Kurd is a member of a non-Arab ethnic and linguistic group. Most of the Kurds live in contiguous areas of Iran, Iraq, and Turkey, a region generally referred to as Kurdistan (“Land of the Kurds”).

The Kurdish language is a West Iranian language related to Farsi and Pashto. The Kurds are thought to number more than 15 million, but sources for this information differ widely because of differing criteria of ethnicity, religion, and language; statistics may also be manipulated for political purposes.

The traditional Kurdish way of life was nomadic, revolving around sheep and goat herding throughout the Mesopotamian plains and the highlands of Turkey and Iran. Most Kurds practiced only marginal agriculture. The enforcement of national boundaries beginning after World War I impeded the seasonal migrations of the flocks, forcing most of the Kurds to abandon their traditional ways for village life and settled farming.

The prehistory of the Kurds is poorly known, but their ancestors seem to have inhabited the same mountainous region for millennia. The name Kurd can be dated with certainty to the time of the tribes' conversion to Islam in the 7th century AD. Most Kurds are Sunnite Muslims, but among them there are also many Sufis and other mystical and heretical sects.

The principal unit in traditional Kurdish society was the tribe, typically led by a sheikh, or an aga, whose rule was firm. Tribal identification and the sheikh's authority are still felt, though to a lesser degree, in the villages.

The Treaty of Sevres, drawn up in 1920, provided for an autonomous Kurdistan but was never ratified; the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), which replaced the Treaty of Sèvres, made no mention of Kurdistan or of the Kurds. Thus the opportunity to unify the Kurds in a nation of their own was lost. Indeed, Kurdistan after the war was more fragmented than before, and various separatist movements arose among Kurdish groups. Short-lived armed rebellions occurred, and in 1931–32 and 1944–45 there were serious conflicts in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Kurdish nationalism, a recent phenomenon, came about through the conjunction of a variety of factors, including British introduction of the concept of private property, the partition of traditional Kurdistan by modern neighbouring states—Iraq, Turkey, and Iran—and the influence of British, U.S., and Soviet interests in the Persian Gulf region. These factors and others combined with the flowering of a nationalist movement among a very small minority of urban, intellectual Kurds.

The Kurds of Turkey received particularly unsympathetic treatment at the hands of the government, which tried to deprive them of their Kurdish identity by designating them “Mountain Turks,” by outlawing the Kurdish language (or representing it as a dialect of Turkish), and by forbidding them to wear distinctive Kurdish costume in or near the important administrative cities. The Turkish government suppressed Kurdish political agitation in the eastern provinces and encouraged the migration of Kurds to the urbanized western portion of Turkey, thus diluting the concentration of Kurdish population in the uplands.

Iraqi Kurds suffered relatively less cultural suppression. In 1958 the Iraqi monarchy was overthrown, but Kurdish hopes of a measure of administrative devolution, enhanced status for their language, and a fairer share of social services and development projects under the new government were not fulfilled. In 1970 a new Ba’thist government granted the Kurds of Iraq a limited autonomy that was nonetheless declared inadequate by Kurdish leaders. Unsuccessful, short-lived Kurdish rebellions continued into the late 20th century; slaughter, dislocation, and starvation were the usual consequences.

SHI’ITE

(The text below is abridged and condensed from the Encyclopedia Britannica)

Arabic Shi‘i, plural Shi‘ah, member of the smaller of the two major branches of Islam, distinguished from the majority Sunnites. In early Islamic history the Shi‘ites were a political faction that supported the power of ‘Ali, who was a son-in-law of Muhammad and the fourth caliph (temporal and spiritual ruler) of the Muslim community. ‘Ali was killed while trying to maintain his authority as caliph, and the Shi‘ites gradually developed a religious movement that asserted the legitimate authority of ‘Ali's lineal descendants, the ‘Alids. This stand contrasted with that of the more pragmatic Sunnite majority of Muslims, who were generally willing to accept the leadership of any caliph whose rule afforded the proper exercise of religion and the maintenance of order in the Muslim world.

Over the centuries the Shi'ite movement has deeply influenced all Sunnite Islam, and its adherents numbered about 60 to 80 million in the late 20th century, or one-tenth of all Islam. Shi‘ism is the majority faith in Iran, Iraq, and perhaps Yemen.

Over time the Shi‘ites became a distinct collection of sects who were alike in their recognition of ‘Ali and his descendants as the legitimate leaders of the Muslim community. The Shi‘ites' conviction that the ‘Alids should be the leaders of the Islamic world was never fulfilled over the centuries.

Despite occasional Shi‘ite rulers, the Shi‘ites remained almost everywhere an Islamic minority until the start of the 16th century, when the Iranians made it the sole legal faith of their empire, as did the Turks of Azerbaijan, and many of the Arabs of Iraq proper. In the late 20th century, notably in Iran, the Shi‘ites became the chief voice of militant Islamic fundamentalism.

SUNNI

(The text below is abridged and condensed from the Encyclopedia Britannica.)

Arabic Sunni, plural Sunni, member of one of the two major branches of Islam, the branch that consists of the majority of that religion's adherents. Sunnite Muslims regard their sect as the mainstream and traditionalist branch of Islam, as distinguished from the minority sect, the Shi’ites.

In contrast to the Shi‘ites, the Sunnites have long conceived of the theocratic state built by Muhammad as an earthly, temporal dominion and have thus regarded the leadership of Islam as being determined not by divine order or inspiration but by the prevailing political realities of the Muslim world. This led historically to Sunnite acceptance of the leadership of the foremost families of Mecca and to the acceptance of unexceptional and even foreign caliphs, so long as their rule afforded the proper exercise of religion and the maintenance of order.

The Sunnites' orthodoxy is marked by an emphasis on the views and customs of the majority of the community, as distinguished from the views of peripheral groups. The institution of consensus evolved by the Sunnites allowed them to incorporate various customs and usages that arose through ordinary historical development but that nevertheless had no roots in the Qur’an.

The Sunnites recognize the six “authentic” books of the Hadith, which contain the spoken tradition attributed to Muhammad. The Sunnites also accept as orthodox one of the four schools of Muslim law. In the 20th century the Sunnites constituted the majority of Muslims in all nations except Iran, Iraq, and perhaps Yemen. They numbered about 900 million in the late 20th century and constituted nine-tenths of all the adherents of Islam.

TURKEY

Another worried neighbor of Iraq. Worried primarily because of Iraq’s large Kurdish problem. Turkey has a large Kurdish population in Eastern Anatolia which has been trying for decades to separate from Turkey because of the latter’s policy of trying to get the Kurds to give up their Kurdish identity and assimilate into secular Turkey. It is afraid that if there is a war the Iraqi Kurds will foment a separatist movement amongst the Turkish Kurds to form an independent entity called Kurdistan.