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19 June 2003 by Till Mayer in Mosul Beautiful Sheherzad offers a smile to King Shehryar. Red roses are in bloom. Doves fly towards the clouds. Everything is like an Arabian Nights fairytale. Colourful paintings depicting romantic tales decorate the hall of this building on the edge of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Normally, weddings take place here - people dancing to celebrate the start of new and hopeful futures for newlyweds which the local band plays traditional love ballads. Today, the hall is gripped by a thoughtful silence. Some 150 people sit in orderly rows on white plastic chairs facing the stage. This too is the start of a new future, but the event now under way is very different from the wedding proceedings that normally grace this room. Today is a historic day for the Red Crescent volunteers have gathered to elect their new branch executive board. The Secretary General of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS), Dahir K. Al Zoubai, and the special representative of the Federation, Ibrahim Osman, formally launch the Mosul branch general assembly, and it soon becomes clear that this gathering is a very serious one. “This is a very important day for us,” begins Azza Yheh Mohammed, one of the branch’s active volunteers. “The time has finally arrived when we can decide for ourselves who will lead us. This is a fundamental exercise when you aspire to be a true member of the Red Cross Red Crescent movement, and not to be just another relief organization.” "After all these years living in a totalitarian system, it is time for discussion”, explains another one. This is the first time that everyone can say whatever he or she is thinking. Critics are welcome, even when the words they speak are painful. “Unfortunately some people took advantage of their position in the state system,” declares Ayham Omar, another local volunteer, to which secretary general Al Zoubi responds; “The Red Crescent and Red Cross movement is a neutral organization. If a child is undernourished, then we help it. We don’t care to which political party its parents belong.” But Al Zoubi does not deny that it has been difficult to defend the IRCS’s independence. “As we have always been part of the public health system, we had to cooperate with the government,” he explains to the assembly. And the power of the ruling party and its leaders was enormous. Portraits of Saddam Hussein were everywhere in the country. Even Red Crescent volunteers carried his placards in parades, whether willingly or not. Now these symbols of his absolute rule are riddled with bullet holes. The breakdown of the government has affected the Red Crescent branch in Mosul. Its president resigned because of his local leadership role in the former ruling party. The Iraq Red Crescent has been the first independent nationwide organization to conduct free and democratic elections in this post-war Iraq. An interim leadership for the national society is already elected and functioning. To date, new boards have been elected in 10 of the IRCS’s 18 branches. “When we today elect a new head of this branch,” states one volunteer in his 50s, “I think it is necessary to record that our old branch president was an honest person and did a good job”. A female volunteer raises her arm: “I think our branch has a very good reputation. We did a good job with limited financial resources. IRCS first-aid providers did their work with very few supplies. Adequate quantities of bandages still do not exist”. A woman next to her now asks for the sub-branches to be built up to work more effectively. “It is time for us to sweep away the bitterness from our hearts and to look forward,” she adds. For several hours, the volunteers discuss problems and possible solutions in an engaged yet disciplined way. Then the time finally arrives for a new chapter in the history of the branch to be written: the election of five board members. Ten candidates, men and women, are applying. One after another, each candidate takes the stage to introduce about themselves. The volunteers listen carefully to each of them, but silence descends again on the hall when they receive their ballots. With the supervision of the IRCS Secretary-General and the Federation representative, each ballot is submitted and recorded, and the resulting tally is announced. The new branch president, Abdullah Hazem, is a trusted administrator from the previous branch staff, and will now lead the branch during the agreed six-month interim period. There is a round of applause for Hazem and the other newly-elected board members: Abdullah Nashat, Mrs. Marhab Garbi, Nazar Mahmoud and Nazar Jassim. The will of the branch has been clearly expressed. With the official part of the meeting over, the volunteers queue up to shake hands with the new branch governance. Above the hall, the sound of a patrolling helicopter can be heard. It offers a timely reminder to the IRCS volunteers that their country is far from stability, and that the democracy they have just exercised is still a rare and precious thing in the new Iraq. Related links: Iraq: humanitarian crisis make a donation |
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