Farewell to Iraq, Remember Camp Ashraf

I suppose we should be celebrating. US troops have just about finished withdrawing from Iraq.  Mission accomplished.  Oh, but what was the mission again?  Oh yes, find and destroy the stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein had hidden away so slyly, those weapons that posed such a threat to the entire region’s security, indeed to the security of western civilization.  But they never were found, were they?  Oh well, mission not accomplished in that case. 
So what has been the cost?  In human terms: 4,500 American dead and thousands of Iraqi dead.  How many thousands of Iraqi?  Well, while we count every American causality, the best we can say regarding Iraqi causalities during this war is that lots were killed.  According to the conservative estimate of Iraq Bodycount, one of the few western organisations  that shows any interest in maintaining an account of the human damage inflicted by the Blair/Bush invasion, the number  of documented killings of Iraqi civilians since the joint US/UK invasion now stands at 113,755.

Otto Dix: The Flare

And what does the USA leave in its wake, beyond thousands of fresh graves and gutted buildings and a society torn by sectarian strife and violence? Well, the government of Nouri al-Maliki is not only Shi'ite Islamist, but becomes more pro-Iranian by the day.  Most appalling is the situation of Camp Ashraf, where 3,400 members of an Iranian mujahideen opposition group is facing a possible massacre as their protectors, the United States, walk out and leave them high and dry.  Their new “protectors” are the Iraqi government of al-Maliki, who earlier this year attacked the camp, killed 34 and injuring hundreds.  The camp has been in Iraq since the early 1980s and has been a thorn in the side of the Iranian leadership.  American troops disarmed the camp’s fighters in 2003 and in return promised the camp’s residents protection under the Geneva Conventions.  But the US turned control over to the Iraqi government.  Iran has been putting pressure on Iraq to close the camp and al-Maliki has promised that the camp will be closed by the end of this month.  The camp’s residents claim they will move, but only if they are collectively granted asylum in a third country, a demand supported by the United Nations.

The US has classified the leadership of  the camp as a terrorist organization.  How convenient.  Just like ‘weapons of mass destruction” was a convenient ploy.  The United Nations refutes the US designation, as does the European Union, just like the situation of WMDs back in 2003.  In fact the application of the terrorist tag by the United States is illegal under international law and has been condemned by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.  If Iraq moves against Camp Ashraf this will be a true act of terrorism. Yesterday the Vice-President of the European Parliament took the unusual step of placing a half-page advertisement in the New York Times and Washington Post calling for Hillary Clinton to demonstrate moral courage and for the US to assume responsibility for the protection of the 3,400 Ashraf residents who are facing a possible massacre. You can email President Obama via the Camp Ashraf website.

This morning I’ve been listening to the new album of Tom Waits, Bad as Me.  I’ve always found that there is something Weimaresque about Waits’ music. It always puts me in the mood of the great anti-war paintings and drawings of Dix and Grosz.  The work of these brave Weimar artists says all there is to be said about the futility and vulgarity of war.  They dared to hold up truth to counter jingoist myths. And now Waits, has summed up my feelings towards the war in Iraq:

“ how is it that the only ones responsible for making this mess

got their sorry asses stapled to a goddamn desk”.

Georg Grosz: The War Veteran

And Waits finishes his song "Hell Broke Luce" with the words
"now i'm home and i'm blind
and i'm broke
what is next?"

Georg Büchner and Tom Waits in Zürich

By Paul Doolan

This article first appeared in Cream, January/February 2005

American jazz/blues singer Tom Waits released an album in 2002 called “Blood Money”. The origin of these 13 elegant, haunting songs stretches back in place and time to a little room in Zurich’s Spiegelgasse in the year 1837. Some readers will know that Vladimir Ilych Lenin lived in Zurich until the outbreak of revolution in Russia in 1917. Tourists inevitably trudge along in drovess to Spiegelgasse 14 to stare at the window of what was once the humble abode of the leader of the world’s first Communist state. But turn your head just a few meters to the right, to number 12, and your eyes will come to rest on a plaque that asks us to spare a thought for Georg Büchner who died here, next door to Lenin’s room, in 1837.

               The place where Büchner died, Spiegelgassee 12

Büchner’s is a tragic tale. An idealistic young German student during an age of conservative repression, he wrote a political pamphlet in 1834, “The Hessian Courier” that earned him exile from his native country. He came to Zurich where his intellectual gifts were rewarded with a PhD after he had enraptured the professors with a stunning lecture on the cranial nerves of fish. At the sprightly age of 22 he was given a lectureship in the Natural Sciences at Zurich University. He had completed the writing of two plays, the political inspired Danton’s Death and a romantic comedy called Leonce and Lena, when, in December 1836, he commenced writing what would become his masterpiece, a work that long after his death came to be considered the chief source of the modern European theatre movement. In early February 1837 he was taken ill while still working on his play. It was typhus. His young wife, Louise Wilhelmine Jaegle arrived in Zurich on February 17^th. He died in her arms two days later in the room on Spiegelgasse. He was just 23 years old.

Büchner’s papers, including the play that he had still been writing, were put in a box where they remained unread for nearly forty years. Only in the latter half of the 19^th century did his unfinished work, Woyzeck, again see the light of day. Three drafts were found, all unfinished, and the ink had faded but the writing was just legible. The deeply pessimistic play - a tale of alienation and paranoia, murder and suicide (after all, this is German expressionism!) - would have to wait until 1913 for its first performance. At last the genius of young Buchner was revealed to the German speaking world. Bertolt Brecht considered the play to be the birth of German Expressionism. Viennese modernist composer Alban Berg used Büchner’s play as the basis for his opera Wozzeck. It was first performed in 1925 in Berlin and quickly became a classic, some would say the masterpiece, of the 20^th century repertoire. 

A performance by the Zurich Opera in 1999 with Matthias Goerne singing the title role earned the highest international accolades. In 1979 the movie director Werner Herzog brought out a much criticised film version of the drama, staring Klaus Kinski in the eponymous role. In the 21^st century Büchner’s legacy continued to grow when American avant-garde opera and music theatre director Robert Wilson staged a version of Woyzeck in Copenhagen. It was performed in Danish but the songs were sung in English and had been written by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan. Now we can buy the album and hear how Waits’ Weimaresque tunes reflect Büchner’s dark inspiration.

Büchner was buried in a graveyard where the present day Kunsthaus stands. Later he was reburied, on the Zurichberg, just a few meters to the left of the Rigi Blick cogwheel station. He rests there in a lonely railed off grave far from Zurich’s other deceased.

                Büchner's grave, Germaniastrasse, Zürich

Today we feel almost safe paying homage to Lenin’s ghost, but let us consign him, together with the other great totalitarian fossils, to the Museum of Modern European Horrors. In the meantime, like any great work of literature, the words that Buchner once penned stretch outward in ever extending lines, their strangeness inspiring and provoking. Let us amend our guided tours to the Spiegelgasse and stop for a moment instead at number 12.

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