SUNDAY,MAY 30, 2010
Flying Iraqi Airways, on a wing and (especially) a prayer
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By Ernesto Londoño
in cairo
e called it Inshallah Air- ways. God Willing Airways. Sometimes other jour- nalists and I said it light- heartedly, when Iraqi Air-
ways pilots were the only ones willing to take off from Baghdad during thick sand- storms.
Other times we said it with rage, when no one would tell us when or whether flights would depart as the sun set and we were stuck for yet another night at the smoky, sweltering Baghdad airport. The government-owned carrier, once among the best and largest in the region, chugged along through decades of wars and sanctions. In recent years, it was never known for punctuality, gourmet meals or customer service. But it was relatively functional — a testament to Iraqis’ resourcefulness and resilience. Last week, though, the airline’s luck appeared to run out. Having failed to set- tle a legal dispute with Kuwait over planes allegedly stolen from the oil-rich neighbor during Saddam Hussein’s rule, Iraqi officials announced that they would liquidate the airline and cease flights soon. “It was just like they called me and said, ‘One of your sons and daughters died,’ ” Naseer Nouri told me after he heard the news. He’s a former Iraqi Air- ways pilot who later worked from Bagh- dad as a journalist for The Washington Post.
I had a less visceral reaction, but the announcement did make me sad. Like many journalists, I’d grown fond of the
scrappy airline and its quirks. I flew on Iraqi Airways more than a dozen times, most recently last week en route to Cairo. Like so many things in Iraq, it often seemed to work just barely.
Boarding Baghdad-bound flights from Cairo or Amman always felt like entering an unruly twilight zone. You didn’t nec- essarily want to be going where you were going, and it wasn’t clear how soon you’d get there. Being wheels up out of Bagh- dad, on the other hand, was incredibly liberating, making the check-in process — really more luck of the draw, in most cases — all the more nerve-racking. The airline operated almost exclusive-
ly offline. Agents issued paper tickets, kept flight manifests on handwritten ledgers and accepted only cash. Tickets could be purchased only in person, and the scheduled departure times were an- nounced the morning of the flight. Sometimes the crews were Iraqi and the rules lax. Passengers talked on cell- phones as planes were taking off. After their cell signals died, passengers used their mobiles to play loud tunes. Buckled seat belts were optional. No-smoking rules were non-compulsory; one friend remembers seeing a flight attendant lighting a cigarette for a passenger. And my colleague Leila Fadel recalls sitting on the tarmac, waiting for a flight to leave as mechanics made last-minute re- pairs.
Some of the crews were Eastern Euro- pean, because the carrier leased air- planes and staff from small charter com- panies. Those flights were often a com- edy of errors. Flight attendants went apoplectic when Iraqis rose to their feet as planes taxied toward the gate — but the language barrier made it impossible
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Such discussions are fully consistent with the relevant law and ethical requirements.”
— White House counsel Bob Bauer on Bill Clinton’s attempts, at the White House’s request, to get Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) to abandon his primary run against Sen. Arlen Specter
ESSAM AL-SUDANI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Iraqi Airways passengers deplaned in Basra in 2005. The government-owned airline had resumed flying the year before, after halting most flights in 1990. A legal dispute with Kuwait over allegedly stolen airplanes may have grounded the airline for good.
to order anyone to remain seated. We heard “welcome to Baghdad Interna- tional Airport” in heavily accented Eng- lish from people who clearly couldn’t wait to be back in the air. The airline was founded in 1945. Dur- ing its heyday in the late 1970s and early ’80s, it offered flights to Rio de Janeiro and European and Asian hubs. Its planes were grounded when the United Nations restricted flights over most of Iraq’s air- space following the 1990 invasion of Ku- wait. The airline resumed flights in 2004 — mainly to Amman, Tehran and other nearby destinations — but relied heavily on charter companies because the legal dispute with Kuwait made it difficult to purchase new aircraft.
In the past few weeks, Iraqi Airways announced two major milestones. Soon, it would begin issuing electronic tickets. (An e-ticket out of Baghdad! Only in 2010.)
And it resumed flights to London, a
goal that was delayed for years. But the maiden flight was the last;minutes after the plane touched down, Kuwaiti offi- cials had a British court summon the air- line’s director general over the airplane dispute. Iraqi Airways flights were often over- sold, particularly when other carriers canceled flights because of sandstorms. One afternoon after a particularly ardu- ous 10 weeks in Baghdad, I arrived at the airport, ticket in hand, to find that my
name had been scratched off the mani- fest. There were a few dozen other pas- sengers in the same situation and only a couple of seats left. We swarmed around the lone agent at the check-in counter. The shrewdest Iraqis in the bunch dialed senior officials in the company and tossed their cellphones at the hap- less clerk. The two with the most “wasta” — or influence — got boarding passes. The rest of us were assured we’d be on the next flight. Inshallah that evening. Inshallah tomorrow.
londonoe@washpost.com
Ernesto Londoño is a foreign correspondent for The Washington Post. He started reporting from Iraq in 2007.
Wooing pink elephants and mama grizzlies
palin from B1
feminist arguments. But, of course, Palin isn’t a feminist — not in the slightest. What she calls “the emerging conservative feminist identi- ty” isn’t the product of a political move- ment or a fight for social justice. It isn’t a structural analysis of patri- archal norms, power dynamics or sys- temic inequities. It’s an empty rallying call to women who are disdainful of or apathetic to women’s rights, who want to make abortion and emergency con- traception illegal, who would cut fund- ing to the Violence Against Women Act and who fight same-sex marriage rights. As Kate Harding wrote on Jeze-
bel.com: “What comes next? ‘Phyllis Schlafly feminism?’ ‘Patriarchal femi- nism?’ ‘He-Man Woman Hater Femi- nism?’ ”
Given that so-called conservative feminists don’t support women’s rights, how can they paint their movement as pro-woman? Why are they not being laughed out of the room? Easy: They preempt criticism of their lack of bona fides by aligning them- selves with a history that most women are proud of — the fight for suffrage. They claim they’re the real feminists, as Palin did in her speech lauding the Su- san B. Anthony List for “returning the women’s movement back to its original roots.” (She wasn’t talking about voting rights; she was referring to the debated notion that first-wave feminists were antiabortion.) It may seem odd to argue that for women to make progress, they should ground their movement in the past — but it’s appropriate, given the beliefs of conservative “feminists.” They don’t want to move forward; instead they knock 1960s-era feminism as hooey while claiming to support equality. In her book “Going Rogue,” for example, Palin writes that she doesn’t agree with “the radical mantras of that early femi- nist era, but reasoned arguments for equal opportunity definitely resonated with me.”
Of course, by dismissing the past 40 years of feminism, women such as Palin disparage the very movement that made it possible for them to be public figures. After all, would Palin be ad- dressing tea party rallies if Betty Frie- dan had never talked about the “prob- lem that has no name?” By tying their “feminism” to the suf-
fragists, whose goal was realized nearly 100 years ago, they’re not-so-subtly say- ing that women in America have achieved equality. In fact, they don’t be- lieve that systemic sexism exists. The conservative writer Christina Hoff
So Palin’s “feminism” isn’t just co- opting the language of the feminist movement, it’s deliberately misrepre- senting real feminism to distract from the fact that she supports policies that limit women’s rights.
Of course, deciding who gets to call themselves feminists is a tricky busi- ness. Even some people who seem to generally disagree with Palin have found it difficult to bar her from the feminist ranks. Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Connie Schultz wrote that she won’t “quibble with her” over the la- bel, and Meghan Daum said in the Los Angeles Times that if Palin “has the guts to call herself a feminist, then she’s entitled to be accepted as one.” Now, there’s no grand arbiter of the
label, and the tremendous range of thought in the movement means there isn’t a singular platform one can look to as a reference point. And the sad reality is that there are plenty of self-identified liberal feminists who exhibit not-so- egalitarian ideals, such as racism or ho- mophobia. So is it possible to exclude women such as Palin from feminism if we don’t have a conclusive definition? Absolutely. If anyone — even some- one who actively fights against women’s rights — can call herself a feminist, the word and the movement lose all mean- ing. And while part of the power of feminism is its intellectual diversity, certain things are inarguable. Femi- nism is a social justice movement with values and goals that benefit women. It’s a structural analysis of a world that oppresses women, an ideology based on the notion that patriarchy exists and that it needs to end. What Palin is peddling isn’t feminism
ALEX BRANDON/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Traditional feminists “send this message, that . . . ‘You’re not strong enough; you’re not capable.’ So it’s very hypocritical.”
Sommers, for example, says that wom- en aren’t oppressed and that “it is no longer reasonable to say that as a group, women are worse off than men.” If you believe women have made it,
— Sarah Palin, above, speaking this month to the Susan B. Anthony List
you’re not going to fight very hard on their behalf. But it’s difficult to rally women’s support behind a message of inaction, so Palin is doing her best to frame this nonmovement as proactive and, of course, “empowering.” “More young women agree with these feminist foremothers [on abortion] than ever before,” Palin said in her Su- san B. Anthony List speech. “And be- lieve in that culture of life, empowering women by offering them a real choice.” (Exactly what said choice would be once abortion is illegal went unmen- tioned.) A related strategy for Palin and fellow
conservatives is to paint actual femi- nists as condescending hypocrites who simply don’t believe in young women: “[They] send this message, that ‘Nope, you’re not capable of doing both. You can’t give your child life and still pursue career and education. You’re not strong enough; you’re not capable.’ So it’s very hypocritical,” she told the anti-abor- tion-rights crowd. Palin’s “pro-woman sisterhood,” however, “is telling these young women that they’re strong enough and smart enough, they are ca- pable to be able to handle an unin- tended pregnancy and still be able to . . . handle that [and] give that child life.” (Unless of course, these young women were unlucky enough to live in Alaska when then-Gov. Palin cut fund- ing for an Anchorage shelter for teen- age moms.)
— it’s a manipulated buzzword being used to garner support for a party that time and time again votes against wom- en’s rights. Palin isn’t trying to further a movement for justice or equality; she’s shilling for women’s votes — a “stam- pede of pink elephants,” she says — for the midterm elections. And it’s working. The conservative
“sisterhood” responded passionately to Palin’s
call. Blogger Lori Ziganto
swooned over Palin and the other “true feminist” candidates she’s supporting. “They are the new faces of feminism,” she wrote. And Kathryn Jean Lopez at the National Review criticized those who would doubt Palin’s feminist cre- dentials.
But feminists — or anyone who cares about women’s progress — need to stop Palin from turning feminism into yet another empty slogan. Because “sis- terhood” and meaningless rallying cries aside, American women need real femi- nism in their lives, not just the f-bomb.
Outlook’s editors welcome your comments and suggestions. Write to us at
outlook@washpost.com.
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