Tariq Ali
(Published in In Madrid)
The charismatic and eloquent polemicist, Tariq Ali, came to Madrid as
part of the Travesias Festival, to promote the publication of his latest
book, “Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq” by the
Alianza Press. The book is as much a study of Iraq’s past as it
is a diatribe against western imperialism. He says: “I wrote it to explain
the history of Iraq and why a resistance was inevitable regardless of
what Iraqis thought of Saddam Hussein.” And the explanation is all
encompassing, including profiles of individuals, personal anecdotes, as
well as an objectively portrayed catalogue of political and historical
events in Iraq.
When asked about the title of the book, he replied dryly, “The
aim of the title was a very simple one. We have a president in the United
States who, to put it in the nicest possible way, is intellectually challenged.
He might not have understood where Mesopotamia was, but Babylon he would
understand because it’s from the Old Testament. So the title was
really designed for him in case he should see it. But of course it also
makes a historical point: this has been a region which goes back many
centuries and was a region in which writing was actually invented.”
The importance of the written word is also vividly depicted in his book.
He includes numerous accounts of Iraqi poets and a selection of poetry.
On the power of language, he says, “It’s the poets who at
crucial times in some parts of the world become the conscience of the
nation. Iraq is an excellent example of this fact: during the British
occupation, the Saddam years and now the US occupation, poetry speaks to
and for the people. This is something that has been lost in the West of
today.”
Inevitably, because of the continuing situation in Iraq, and in the aftermath
of 11th March, his talk in Madrid swayed away from the book and towards
his opinion of the current state of affairs.
From the beginning, he has spoken out against the Anglo-American treatment
of Iraq. In “Throttling Iraq,” an article for the New Left
Review, he argued that as a result of the blockades, economic sanctions
and a decade of sustained bombardment from the air, “a land that
once had high levels of literacy and an advanced system of healthcare
has been devastated by the West.” In the same article he renounced
the Clinton and Blair administrations, saying, “These contemptible
regimes need to be fought, not wistfully propitiated.” In response
to the September 11th attacks he wrote The Clash of Fundamentalisms, an
analysis of Western and Islamic extremism, in which he claims, “my
argument is that the mother of all fundamentalism is American imperialism.” Now, appalled by the American-British led invasion of Iraq, he has written Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq.
He began his talk as he meant to go on, vehemently condemning the occupation
and the decisions the American, British, Italian and Spanish governments
made: “It was very foolish of Western coalitions to imagine that
the citizens of the independent Arab state, regardless of their leader,
were happily waiting to be occupied by the West. Especially when large
numbers of Iraqis felt and knew that Saddam Hussein had been sustained
in power for most of his political life by the West.”
When asked how he thinks the situation could be resolved, he spoke highly
of the PSOE’s decision, saying: “the Spanish withdrawal of
troops has gained the Socialist Party more respect than anything else
it ever did, and not just in Spain,” and suggested that other countries
should follow suit. He urges the people of Europe to follow the Spanish
example, damning Bush, Blair and Berlusconi for lying to their people,
and advising “the people of these countries [to] punish their leaders,”
which he proposes should be done “ not through acts of violence
but by voting them out.”
More recently I asked him his opinion of the images of torture in the press. He replied, “If there had been no resistance in Iraq there would have been no exposure of the systematic use of torture by the Americans and the British. The torture photographs were published because of the resistance in Fallujah and Najaf and Kerbela and Baghdad. But despite that the media coverage in the US and British and Italian press and TV networks has been carefully managed to support the war. In Spain and Germany it was different.” My next question was about the gulf between reality and media coverage of it, to which he responded, “Only the tip of the iceberg has been uncovered.”
Ali was born in Lahore (now Pakistan) in 1944. An atheist and young radical,
he went to Government College, part of Punjab University, where he became
president of the Young Students’ Union. He organised demonstrations
against Pakistan’s military dictatorship and was soon banned from
participating in student politics. Upon graduating his uncle, head of
Pakistani military intelligence, advised that he should be sent abroad,
since his radicalism was beyond constraint and he was at risk of being
put in prison. Taking the advice, Ali left the country and enrolled at
Exeter College in Oxford to study Politics, Philosophy and Economics.
But this was a man who was not going to pipe down: he immediately joined
the University Labour Club and the Socialist group, and in 1965 was elected
president of the Oxford Union. This time his complaint was against the
American invasion of Vietnam: he led anti-war protests and developed a
national reputation by entering into debates with such figures as Henry
Kissinger and Michael Stewart (the then British Foreign Secretary.)
This marked his beginning as the internationally renowned political commentator
that he has become. Since then he has written numerous newspaper articles,
social and political commentaries and over a dozen books on world politics.
He now lives in London and is the editor of the New Left Review. Although
his talents are not confined to polemics – he has also written five
novels and has collaborated on stage and screen plays – he is primarily
known as a dissenter.
When asked about his own future, Ali said, “I thought that I would
never write non-fiction again. And then 9/11 happened and I wrote Clash
of Fundamentalisms, and then the Americans decided to occupy Iraq so I
wrote Bush in Babylon. So my career as a novelist has been very
rudely disrupted by Bush. I am working on a new novel at the moment, which
I hope to finish by the end of the year. But if Bush decided to invade
another country, that would be interrupted.”