No Vietcong in Iraq

Speaking to the Indian press Sher Singh, one hostage's father said, "With great hopes we had sent our son abroad in April this year by selling a piece of land. Little did we know that we will have to face this." His wife Jaspal Kaur added, "What can we do? We are very poor people." It is desperate poverty like this that forces millions of Indians, Pakistanis, and Bangladeshis to work in sub-human conditions in the Middle East and Gulf region, and it is that same cycle that has trapped these seven men in this terrifying ordeal.

When I read about the Indian hostages, I was reminded of my old barber in Bangladesh, Himangshu Datta. One day, in the middle of cutting my hair, he calmly informed me that he was changing his religion to Islam, at least on paper. Apparently, in the tremendous outflow of Bangladeshi migrant workers to Dubai, being Muslim sometimes gave an advantage in unspoken quotas. In the hopes of getting a job as a sweeper in one of the government offices, he was going to get a certificate with a Muslim name. I asked him what he would do about his nether regions, and he sadly answered, "Listen, I need to make some money to send back to my family in the village. I will do anything."

For a man to abandon his religion for migrant-level work in the Middle East, with its nightmarish work standards, speaks volumes about the desperate poverty people are escaping. A recent Human Rights Watch report even described the condition of Indian and Bangladeshi workers in Saudi Arabia as "near slavery" -- and yet, the flow of migration continues unabated. Commentators talk about fanatical hordes in the Third World, willing to die for religion. But the experience of migrant workers shows that poverty trumps ideology and religion as a driving force for the vast, working class population of these nations. In this aspect, they share a commonality with the GIs who are mostly from the American underclass, and joined the army not for ideology, but to escape poverty.

By kidnapping poor migrants, and using them as pawns to punish the US occupation, the insurgents of "Holders of the Black Banner" show their brutal streak of inhumanity. I view with similar distrust groups such as the Al-Mahdi Army, Ansar al-Islam, Jamaat al-Tawhid wa'l-Jihad, and Jaysh Mohammed. During the Vietnam War, anti-war activists saw the Vietcong as a people's liberation army because they stood up to the US army. But in the present crisis, there are no good sides, reflective of our tangled global politics.

Many of us in the modern anti-war movement opposed the US invasion, and true to our predictions, the occupation has turned into a bloody mess and a recruiting ground for fanatics and terrorists. But in opposing the occupation, we also cannot find anything to support among the insurgents. Especially for those of us from majority-Muslim nations, Muqtada al-Sadr or Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi are no latter-day Che Guevaras.

The only way out of this global crisis is the United Nations. Defanged by the US and haemorrhaging credibility, this institution still offers the best hope for peace in Iraq. Only a UN-led multinational force can bring stability to the region, replacing the US as the primary player in the region, and at the same time, removing the most effective recruiting tool for the fanatical insurgents.

Naeem Mohaiemen is Editor of Shobak.Org.