Iraq Essay

George Orwell's Burma and America's Iraq

From 1926 to 1927, George Orwell was a policeman with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. He was there during the time of the British Raj, which ruled over India and its territories for over a century, and led to the rise of Mahatma Gandhi. While he was there, he shot and killed a rampaging elephant that was terrorizing the village where he was stationed. These events are described in an essay Orwell wrote nine years later entitled "Shooting an Elephant". While the death of the elephant was the central event in the essay, Orwell describes, in vivid detail, the strained relations between the natives of the village and himself, an outsider representing a ruling force.
In the November 24th, 2003 issue of the New Yorker Magazine, there is an article by George Packer which describes how the planners and troops of the Iraqi occupation view their situation. This article, "War after the War", describes how occupation forces are having a difficult time getting the local Iraqis to cooperate in securing peace in the region and rebuilding its infrastructure. The article implies that there is an underlying resentment towards the American occupying forces and gives examples of these resentments. Perhaps the most notable of these examples occurs when Packer follows Captain John Prior, a twenty-nine year old company commander from Indiana, on his rounds around the streets of Zafaniya, Iraq. The attitudes of the locals in Iraq and the local Burmese in Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant" have similarities. It is the purpose of this essay to point out these similarities by citing examples from both texts.
In the opening paragraph of "Shooting an Elephant" Orwell states that the feeling towards Europeans by locals was bitter in an "aimless, petty kind of way".(Orwell, pg.167) He states that the feeling was not enough to cause a riot, but he and others were continually baited by being spit at or tripped during soccer games. When he was at a distance from a crowd, he would hear taunts and see sneers on the faces of the crowd. All of this derision, he confesses, got badly on his nerves. He was already becoming disillusioned with the British Government and its ruling system, but these personal attacks led him to hate the locals as well. This hatred, he states, is a "normal by-product of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you catch him off duty."(Orwell, pg.169)
In Packer's article, he describes Captain Prior as brisk and practical in his dealings with the Iraqis, and even states that it seemed that the Iraqis respected him. The Iraqis seemed to always be talking or trying to argue their case to the captain, who was all business. The mission his unit was on that day was to visit nine sewage pumping stations in Zafaraniya, a southern suburb of Baghdad. The stations were pumping untreated sewage into the Tigris and Diala rivers. Packer quotes Prior as saying the Iraqis are "capable, competent, intelligent people. We're just giving them a different way to solve certain problems."(Packer, pg. 70) At this part of the article the situation seemed manageable from Prior's point of view.
Prior's mission became more complicated, however, when he was trying to settle a price dispute between neighborhood council members and local gas-station managers. The arguing grew intense. Prior was a representative of the wealthiest country on earth, and the Iraqis looked to him to settle the dispute. Packer states that the attitude of the American forces is not to judiciously settle all of the disputes in Iraq, but to help the Iraqis rebuild Iraq themselves. Soon a commotion erupted outside the council hall, and Prior put on his helmet and flak jacket and went outside. His men were trying to intervene with the crowd that had quickly formed. An oil ministry representative was being accused of stealing fuel. Prior told the crowd to follow him. As he was inspecting gas cans, he received a full spray of hot diesel fuel in his face. The crowd fell silent for a moment and then started to shout again. Prior did his best to control his professional demeanor, but the situation had forced him to lose control. He singled out the accuser and brow-beat him, finally showing his frustration.
In Packer’s article, he demonstrates that while the main goal of the American soldiers is to help to rebuild infra-structure in Iraq, many instances require the men to act as settlers of petty disputes. In many ways, the U.S. forces are acting as policemen, just as Orwell was in Burma. The dispute between the council members and the oil ministry representative required Prior to intervene, just as the rampaging elephant required Orwell to do the same. This demonstrates two events, separated by almost eighty years, which show the enormous responsibility foreign occupying forces have in keeping the peace.
Orwell calls the events of the elephant shooting “enlightening”.(Orwell pg 168) He claims that it gave him a “better glimpse than I had before of the real nature of imperialism.”(Orwell pg.168) He was directed to a very poor quarter of town where the elephant had been spotted. He began questioning people and was given contradictory and indefinite information. He claims that this is invariably how it is in the East; the story is clear at the beginning but the closer one gets to the scene, the more grey the facts become. He was about to get discouraged when he was led to the body of a man who the elephant had trampled to death.
When he decided to take action, the whole population seemed to be following him. Before, when he was just gathering information, the population seemed slightly interested, but now, with the prospect of the elephant’s death, the crowd was considerably more interested. Orwell claims that this made him “vaguely uneasy.”(Orwell pg.170) He had not yet decided to shoot the elephant. Finally, he saw the elephant and felt he should not shoot it, but he glanced back at the crowd of two thousand and saw the excited faces who were all expecting him to shoot it. He knew he had to. It is here that Orwell realized that it was not the British Government that is in control, but the will of the natives of Burma. He calls himself an “absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind.”(Orwell pg. 171)
In George Packer’s article, he recounts a similar situation involving Captain Prior and his men. Prior was sent to find a suspected fedayeen militiaman. He had received a tip from an operative, nick-named Chunky Love, who had supplied helpful intelligence in the past. Like Orwell, Prior and his men are sent to a poor area with sketchy information and have to deal with a local population that is not one hundred percent loyal to the American cause. The soldiers began a search of the suspect’s house, but were unable to find him. At one point in the search, an Iraqi woman stated, “We were happy when you Americans came to get rid of the dictator--and now here you are searching our house.”(Packer pg. 71) Two young Iraqi boys watched the proceedings, and Packer realized that this would be an event that they would never forget, big, fully armed soldiers of an occupying army, breaking down doors in their house. Later, when the soldiers had left the house, the Iraqi translator turned to Packer and said, “Like Vietnam”.(Packer pg.72) Packer claims that at that moment Iraq did feel like Vietnam. He states, “The Americans were moving half blind in an alien landscape, missing their quarry and leaving behind frightened women and boys with memories.”(Packer pg.72)
There are many points of similarities in these two incidences. Both Orwell and Prior have to trust inaccurate information to reach their objectives, therefore trusting the population that they are there to police. This takes the control out of the hands of the occupying forces and puts it directly into the hands of the population. The population is, at best, suspicious of both Orwell and Prior. When it looks as if Orwell is going to shoot the elephant, the population is behind him, but only because he is an instrument to provide excitement and food in the shooting of the elephant. In the same sense, the Iraqi woman is glad that the Americans came to depose the dictator, Saddam Hussein, but resents the searching of her house. The Americans can also be seen as a tool to free the Iraqis from oppression but, in turn, may be seen as oppressors themselves.
Finally, Orwell grasps “the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East.”(Orwell pg. 171) And while Captain Prior may not demonstrate similar feelings, Packer reflects on them in his thoughts on Vietnam and how that war was lost to an overwhelming resentment of the native people of the country.
George Orwell’s essay, “Shooting an Elephant”, was a demonstration of the problems that occur when one powerful nation exercises dominion over a less powerful nation. The remarkable point of his essay is that Orwell demonstrates these problems, not by distant facts and figures, but by giving us a personal example of the forces at work. In much the same way, George Packer in “War after the War” gives us a similar scenario of the perils that befall a country who uses force, and arrogance, to invade and occupy another country.        
 
  
    
Works Cited
 
Orwell, George. “Shooting an Elephant.” Autobiography A Reader For Writers. Ed. Robert Lyons New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. 167-174.
Packer, George. “War after the War” The New Yorker   24 Nov. 2003:  59.