WWII guidebook to Iraq still applies today.

[odannyboy]

WWII guidebook to Iraq contains lessons that are relevant today



By Rick Hampson
USA TODAY



Since invading Iraq, Americans have discovered that the country is a military, political and cultural minefield. But it's a lesson they could have learned from a pocket-sized booklet published six decades ago by the U.S. government.



A Short Guide to Iraq was written to educate World War II servicemen about a place most of them had never heard of. It describes an Iraq familiar to soldiers there today: the heat, the oil, the religious and political factions, the talent for guerrilla war, the taboos against everything from making a pass at a woman to eating with your left hand.

The guide anticipates virtually every problem encountered by U.S. forces in the past 15 months, from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal to the increase in casualties since the fall of Baghdad.

In 1942, Hitler, not Osama bin Laden, was America's No. 1 enemy. The Nazis were driving south through the Caucasus Mountains, desperate for oil; if they reached Iraq, they'd have all they needed. The booklet says that to foil the Germans (who had sympathizers in Iraq), Americans must win over the Iraqi people:

''American success or failure in Iraq may well depend on whether the Iraqis . . . like American soldiers or not. . . . One of your jobs is to prevent Hitler's agents from getting in their dirty work. The best way you can do this is by getting along with the Iraqis and making them your friends. . . . Every American soldier is an . . . ambassador of good will.''

Two things about the guide strike the contemporary reader: How naïve Americans were at the time about the power of goodwill to influence foreign affairs, and how much Americans knew even then about the pitfalls of operating in Iraq. The topics include:

Taboos: ''Moslems do not let other people see them naked. . . . Dogs are unclean to Moslems. . . . (Except to shake hands) do not touch or handle an Iraqi. Do not wrestle with him in fun, and don't slap him on the back. . . . Above all, never strike an Iraqi.''

At Abu Ghraib, these cultural rules were deliberately broken by U.S. jailers determined to extract information from Iraqi prisoners by stripping them, threatening them with guard dogs and beating them. Images of that abuse have spread across the Middle East in the past 2 1/2 months, with disastrous results for U.S. prestige.

''Americans look as if they're violating all the major cultural taboos,'' says Juan Cole, professor of modern Middle Eastern history at the University of Michigan. ''We've squandered the goodwill we enjoyed at first. Hundreds of small, positive interactions with Iraqis have been overshadowed by things like Abu Ghraib.''

Ironically, U.S. troops in Iraq today are probably the most informed ever about a local culture. They're issued a 300-page Transitional Handbook that dwarfs the 44-page Short Guide, and some soldiers participate in role-playing exercises at U.S. military bases to familiarize them with Iraq's people before they go overseas.

American officials repeatedly have said the vast majority of U.S. troops treat Iraqis with sensitivity and restraint. But the burden of occupying and policing an unsettled foreign nation keeps producing cultural clashes, Cole says.

Women: ''Moslem women do not mingle freely with men. . . . Any advance on your part will mean trouble and plenty of it. Even when speaking to Iraqi men, no mention should be made of their female relatives.''

In October, there were protest demonstrations in Baghdad after soldiers detained a female Oil Ministry employee who refused to allow her handbag, which contained a copy of the Koran, to be searched by a bomb-sniffing dog.

Some troops looking for weapons or fugitives have gone into the women's quarters of homes. Such incidents help explain why, in a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll in March and April, 60% of Iraqis said troops were not showing proper respect in house searches.

Forbidden cities: ''Kerbela (and) Nejef . . . are particularly sacred to the Iraqi Moslems. . . . It is advisable to stay away from them.''

Karbala and Najaf (the new, preferred spellings) have seen some of the most intense fighting since the fall of Baghdad. Images of battles near the cities' holiest shrines have flooded Arab media.

Mosques: ''(Iraqis) are very devout in their religion and do not like to have 'unbelievers' (to them you are an 'unbeliever') come anywhere near their mosques. You can usually tell a mosque by its high tower. Keep away from mosques.''

The guide is obsessive about mosques; Americans are not to urinate, walk a dog, spit, smoke or take photographs near one. Yet this year, Iraqi mosques have been the sites of heavy fighting.

Several Fallujah mosques were damaged after U.S. forces moved in to find the killers of four civilian contractors, and the al-Sahleh mosque in the holy city of Kufa also was damaged in a U.S. raid. In Najaf, the Imam Ali Shrine was damaged in fighting between U.S. troops and the forces of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. In Karbala, U.S. forces damaged a mosque that had been used to store weapons.

Omitted from most Arab news media reports are the facts that U.S. troops have steered clear of some of the most important mosques; have rebuilt or repaired others; have been fired on from some mosques; and have found weapons stored in some mosques. But, ''whatever the provocation for the raids,'' says Cole, the Michigan historian, ''it doesn't hold much water with the Muslim faithful.''

Warfare: ''That tall man in the flowing robe you are going to see soon, with the whiskers and the long hair, is a first class fighting man, highly skilled in guerrilla warfare. Few fighters in any country, in fact, excel him in that kind of situation. If he is your friend, he can be a staunch and valuable ally. If he should happen to be your enemy -- look out!''

In the 14 1/2 months since President Bush declared an end to major combat, some Iraqis' skill at guerrilla warfare has become manifest. More Americans have been killed since that day, May 1, than before; it has become a war of ambush, kidnapping and suicide attacks.

Factions: ''It's a good idea in any foreign country to avoid any religious or political discussions. This is even truer in Iraq, because here the Moslems themselves are divided into two factions. . . . There are also political differences in Iraq that have puzzled diplomats and statesmen. You won't help matters any by getting mixed up in them.''

Now, the United States has been very much mixed up in Iraq's political and religious divisions, which involve the quasi-separatist Kurds in the north and the Shiites and the Sunnis in the south, and which threaten prospects for order even now that U.S. forces turned over political authority to an interim Iraqi government in Baghdad.

The ultimate U.S. role in Iraq during World War II was at most a cameo one. The Germans bogged down in the Caucasus, Iraq was never seriously threatened, and any U.S soldiers stationed there merely protected Allied supply lines from the Persian Gulf to the Soviet Union, according to Magus Bernhardsson, a modern Middle East historian at Williams College.

But the need to prepare for an invasion that never came produced a period piece that exudes a simple confidence in the power of ''common horse sense'' and ''good old American horse trading'' to prevail over almost any obstacle.

For novice travelers, Iraq was daunting: ''Most Americans and Europeans who have gone to Iraq didn't like it at first. . . . They thought it a harsh, hot, parched, dusty and inhospitable land. ''

It's so hot by day that you can't sit on a train's leather seats, yet it's uncomfortably cool at night. There are smells ''the movies didn't warn you about.'' Plus malaria, typhoid fever, sand fly fever, dysentery, tapeworms, lice, scabies and trachoma. But the guide says the Iraq experience is redeemed by one thing: its people.

''The Iraqi is one of the most cheerful and friendly people in the world. Few people you have seen get so much out of work and everyday living. If you are willing to go just a little out of your way to understand him, everything will be OK.''

Though it lavishes praise on the Iraqis, the guide tacitly acknowledges that relations with them are fraught with peril. The Iraqis must be treated very carefully.

The damage from a wrong move could be more than diplomatic. The booklet describes ''dog,'' ''devil'' and ''native'' as ''deadly insults'' to an Iraqi. So are photographs: ''You will make enemies by taking close-up snapshots, and possibly wind up with a knife in your back.''

Don't stare at women, don't stare at children, don't stare at anyone -- many Iraqis believe in the ''evil eye.'' Mealtime is a special trial. Don't eat too much of the first course, don't eat with your left hand (even if you're left-handed), don't refuse a first, second or third cup of tea, but always refuse a fourth. Don't drop scraps of bread on the ground. Share your cigarettes.

If you survive, Iraq will be a memorable experience, the guide predicts. ''Years from now you'll be telling your children, and maybe your grandchildren, stories beginning, 'Now when I was in Baghdad . . . ' ''

http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/2...6/6371900s.htm

[JohnRN]

*Whilst puffing on his pipe*

Well gee! I share a lot of them similarities. All those who talk about a "conservative" America ought to take a trip East sometime You think Europe is old world? Think again!

But I'm harmless, really!