TIME: Desert Storm - The War in the Persian Gulf/TIME: Desert Storm - The War in the Persian Gulf.iso/time2_04/cf040089.t10

Text File | 1991-06-27 | 14.6 KB | 314 lines

DATE: JAN. 24, 1991      14:37               REPORT:
TO: SPL
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BUREAU: MIDWEST
BY: S.C. GWYNNE
IN: DETROIT
SLUG: ARAB AMERICANS

 For the Bakal brothers, Eddie and Jake, the road to
American dream runs dead center through one of the most
dangerous neighborhoods in Detroit. The brothers, who
emigrated from Iraq in the mid-1970s, have for 12 years
owned what Detroiters call a ``party store'' at the
intersection of Seven Mile and Van Dyke roads, an easy
rifle shot from streets lined with abandoned houses,
where ``rollers'' deal drugs in the open, night and day.
To look at their neat and well-stocked store, with its
pervasive bulletproof glass, surveillance cameras,
monitors, and small arsenal in back, one would think
they'd have enough trouble just getting through an
average day.

 But the Bakals face an even thornier dilemma these days.
Though they are Iraqi-born, they are now American
citizens. Their children were born in this country and
speak neither aramaic nor Arabic, yet their grandfather
lives in Iraq. Eddie and Jake have two brothers in
Baghdad, who have been drafted into the army, and 12
first cousins still in that country, yet they also have
two American cousins serving in the U.S. armed forces.
They are Iraqis, but not muslims; they are instead part
of a 50,000-strong community of Catholics known as
Chaldeans.

 ``The hardest thing is when my 10 year old daughter asks
me whose side am I on,'' says Jake, 35. ``It's very
difficult, because she wants it to be black and white. I
tell her instead that it's not what I'm for, it's what
I'm against. I'm against the war. When I see pictures of
the bombs on television, I get sick to my stomach.''

 Adding to the Bakals' worries are what they describe as
``too many telephone threats.'' Eddie tells of a man who
entered the store wearing camouflage, and presented them
with a calendar bearing a photo of the tomb of the
unknown soldier, from which all dates but January 15 had
been conspicuously purged.

 ``We love this country,'' says Eddie, 38. ``We came here
because of freedom of speech, for a better life. We are
loyal 100 percent to this country. I want my children to
feel like Americans. I want them to be part of society
and to feel that whatever affects the society affects
us.''

 Both brothers say they are horrified by what might be
happening to their kin.

 ``Don't forget we have relatives there,'' says Eddie.
``We were raised there, and you cannot see your people
under thousands of pounds of bombs. I would lie to you if
I said I agreed with that. This is not the right way to
get rid of Saddam. They are not going to kill half of the
Iraqi people to get rid of one person. I don't think it's
right.''

 They also have sharp disagreements with U.S. policy
which they, like most Arabs in the Detroit area, see as
hypocritical, and self- serving. ``Maybe it was wrong to
take Kuwait,'' says Eddie. ``But 45 years ago it was part
of Iraq. Why are they making a big deal out of it? The
Iraq-Iran war lasted 10 years. One million people got
killed. Where was the USA, where were all these countries
in the alliance? All these countries were supplying both
sides, making money. Where was human rights then? Tell me
that. Where was the U.S. when Israel invaded Lebanon?
Twenty to thirty thousand civilians got killed and they
took Arab lands. Americans don't considr the psychology
of Arabs, what they think, their sense of dignity, their
religion.'' Says Professor Barbara Aswad of Wayne State
University: ``They see it as a double standard, and in
fact it is. We have done nothing, for example, to force
Israel to abide by U.N. resolutions.''

 Though the Bakal brothers are Chaldeans, their concern
for kinfolk, their criticism of U.S. policy, and their
sympathy for Iraqis and Palestinians make it
excruciatingly difficult for them to reconcile their
personal loyalties. The same dilemma is faced, to greater
or lesser degrees, by many of Detroit's 200,000 Arab-
Americans, who constitute the largest concentration of
Arabs outside of Arabia. (Michigan has some 250,000.)

 Their position is further complicated by the recent
spate of racial incidents. On January 22, a Dairy Queen
owned by a Palestinian American in the town of
Blissfield, south of Detroit, was burned to the ground by
an arsenist. The fire happened after 60 townspeople
helped clean paint off the Dairy Queen: vandals had
sprayed ``U.S.A. No. 1.'' Many residents believe that the
attacks were an attempt to scare owners Kareem and Tahani
Khoury, who oppose the war in the Gulf.

 Meanwhile, store windows were smashed in Dearborn, where
some 18,000 Arab Americans live, and car windows in Arab
neighborhoods were smashed. According to the chief of
police in Dearborn, residents are reporting 4-5 bomb
threats per day. At the home of a Lebanese family,
vandals burned an Iraqi flag on the front lawn. Two men
in camouflage suits opened fire on a Chaldean-owned party
store in Detroit. At the local chapter of the
American-Arab Anti- Discrimination committee, regional
coordinator Jessica Daher recieved threatening calls,
saying ``You're animals and you have no reason to live.''
On talk-radio station WXYT, a caller who termed Iraqis
``camel jockeys'' elicited this reponse from talk show
host Mark Scott. ``That's why they say, I'd fly a
thousand miles to smoke a Camel,'' quoting a t-shirt that
shows an Arab and his camel in the crosshairs of a gun.

 The most vocally anti-war Arab-Americans have suffered
some of the worst taunts. Mike Maatouk, a 19 year old
sophomore at the University of Michigan - Dearborn, has
taken part in several peace demonstrations, including a
sit-in at the student center on Wednesday. ``When this
semester began, my main concern was getting home, and
what I was going to do on the weekends,'' says Maatouk.
``Since this began two weeks ago, my main concern is why
am I being called a traitor? Why am I being told to leave
the country? I think these comments are racist, because I
am dark-haired and look Arabic. I'm very saddened by it.
I get so upset, but I tell myself it's just ignorance. I
can't blame them, they just don't know what the heck is
going on.'' On most counts Maatouk is the classic
immigrant beneficiary of the American Dream. His father
came to this country from Lebanon when he was 18, worked
in a meat factory, and now owns two bakeries. The family
is comfortable and can afford to send Mike to college to
study mechanical engineering.

 Though most Arab Americans here will tell you that they
feel their concerns are largely ignored in American
society, they are in spite of that one of the country's
most successful minority groups. According to a recent
study by the John Zogby Group International of Utica, NY,
the 2.5 million Arab-Americans in the U.S. are generally
better educated and better off than other immigrant
groups. They study found, among other things, that 27.5
percent of the adults in the group have college degrees,
second only to the Asian community with 32.9 percent. The
study also found that Arabs tend to move into managerial
and professional careers or small businesses, and that
their household income of $22,973 is above the U.S. mean
of $20,973. On a national scale, Lebanese constitute 45
percent of the Arab population, Syrians 16.2, Egyptians
6.2, Palestinians 3.2, and Iraqis 2.2.

 Detroit is home to all these nationalities. Of the
200,000 Arab- americans in the metropolitan area, by far
the two largest communities are the Lebanese (100,000)
and Chaldean Iraqis (60,000). Since some 60,000 Lebanese
are either Maronite (Catholic) or Greek Orthodox, the
large majority of Arabs in the Detroit area are
Christians. (The remainder of the Lebanese are Shiite.)

 The first arrivals in the Detroit area were Lebanese and
Chaldeans around the turn of the century. That was
followed by several waves of Arab immigrants from many
countries, lured by Henry Ford's high wages in the 1920s
and 1930s. Muslims tend to live on the west side of town,
particularly in Dearborn, which is the city with the
largest percentage of Arabs in the United States. These
tend to be Lebanese, Palestinians, and Yemenis. Christian
Lebanese still favor the east side of the city, while the
Chaldeans cut a path northward along Woodward AVenue
toward the city's northern suburbs such as Southfield,
and Bloomfield Township. Though there is still a strong
Chaldean enclave at 7-mile road and Woodward, the most
successful Chaldeans -- a disproportionate number of whom
made money owning small grocery stores, which they still
monopolize -- followed Jewish urban migration patterns,
dispersing into the wealthier suburbs. There is a small
Egyptian enclave in the northern suburb of Warren.

 Though many Arab families who arrived earlier in the
century have been thoroughly assimilated, the constant
waves of new immigrants have kept the culture remarkably
strong. It is estimated, for example, that fully 100,000
new immigrants reached Michigan in the 1980s, mainly
Lebanese fleeing civil war, and Chaldeans fleeing Saddam
Hussein and the war against Iran. The rate of
in-migration now stands between 3,000 and 5,000.

 ``You'll get a lot of different points of view here,''
says Barbara Aswad, a professor of anthrolpolgy at Wayne
State University, who has done extensive field research
on the Arab culture both here and in the middle east.
``You'll find Lebanese muslims, for example, who are very
sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and sympathetic to
Saddam Hussein. But the Lebanese Shia group tended to
support Iran in the war against Iraq, and so tends to be
against Saddam. What they share is a common history of
conflict in the middle east. Many of them have been
bombed themselves and know what that feels like. Many
also came from humble backgrounds, so it's not surprising
that many of them were glad when the Sabahs got knocked
out of Kuwait.''

 But according to all sources, an overwhelming majority
are not in favor of the war. Says Ismail Ahmed, director
of the Arab Community Center For Economic and Social
Services in Dearborn: ``If you took a survey of Arab
Americans in Detroit, the majority would say they opposed
the war and were not particularly supportive of Saddam.
But there are are people who say we should be more
reasonable to folks who say that at least he stands up
for the Arab world.''

 Says Mike Maatouk: ``Yes, I agree that Saddam is a
ruthless dictator. But the end result of all this killing
is that my Arab race, my people are being pulled back 100
years. And all of a sudden every Arab person is your
enemy.''

 Maatouk also says that one of the war's worst effects is
to create a climate of fear among the Arab population.
``A large amount of people are scared, especially the
older peopl,'' he says. ``They're very scared of a
backlash. They think if they come out and say something,
there will be consequences. They've been labeled a long
time ago.''

 To counter the impression that Arabs support Saddam
Hussein, several groups have issued ringing expressions
of patriotism in press releases. ``It's one of those
issues that tears at you,'' says Swan Atty, 25, a
Chaldean-American who works for an Arab-American
community group. ``In my 25 years I have never had to
state that I was patriotic. I've never heard of a group
so blatantly asked which side they were on. A lot of
people in the Chaldean community feel as if they're being
called upon to staet their loyalties. So a lot of them
just stay quiet because they're afraid for their
families.''

 Says Barbara Aswad: ``They're wrapping themselves in the
flag, which is unfortunate.'' Says Ismail Ahmed: ``A
major Arab group in Detroit -- I won't say which one --
told me they're going to support the president, that
that's the only way they can be safe. I said ``But you
don't blieve what you're saying.' They said, that's the
only way we can be safe.''

 Not only do many Arab Americans feel threatened by
racism and discrimination at home, but Irais have also to
worry about harassment from the native country. ``We
started our group in 1980,'' says Kamal Kory, 49, one of
the founders of the Iraqi Democratic Union, and a
wholesale grocer, '' in response to the policies of
Saddam and his agents in the U.S. against my community.
The agents bribed and intimidated people, and if you
criticized what Saddam was doing, you might be scared
off, or beaten up. We started to expose his practices in
our newspaper ``Sawt al Itihad.'' (Voice of the Union.)
Kory says his group is still small, largely because, as
he says, ``people are afraid of what might happen to
their families.'' A number of people interviewd for this
article declined to be identified because of fears of
retaliation.

 On top of all this concern, there is the fear that a
terrorist incident may make conditions worse than they
already are for Arab Americans in Detroit. Only hours
before the war began, agents from the U.S, Bureau of
Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms raided four homes in Detroit
in the Chaldean enclave at 7-mile and Woodward, seizing
19 firearms, a sawed off shot guns, and flash powder,
apparently part of a plot to build and set off pipe
bombs. ``They were building pipe bombs to use in the Arab
Community to blame on the Anglo Community,'' said one of
the agents.

 Meanwhile, FBI agents have conducted more than 100
interviews with Arab residents, seeking information about
terrorists or subversive plots. ``The effect is
obvious,'' says Ahmed. ``It makes Arabs a suspect
class.'' The FBI's policy came under fire Wednesday in
Washington, as Michigan lawmakers warned the government
they would not tolerate what Rep. John Conyers called ``a
hunting season on Arab Americans.''

  Local fears wer abetted by a report on CBS's ``60
Minutes,'' in which Vincent Cannistraro, former head of
CIA counter-terrorism, said that authorities have
identified and watched members of the Abu Nial
organization network in Detroit for about four years.

 Citing fears of terrorism and fears of increased
harassment of Arabs, Mayor Coleman Young last week
requested the help of the National Guard, later refused
by Gov. John Engler.

 Local analysts point out that all this is happening in
advance of what may be a brutal ground war.

 Says Jessica Daher: ``The context here is 20 years of
misunderstanding of the Arab world. Now you put a war on
top of that. This is all happening before we've seen
Americans coming home in body bags. This is going to get
a whole lot worse before it gets better. You're going to
see it explode there and explode here.''