Will a war really liberate these exhausted people?

Tony Blair must convince us that a war on Iraq would bring benefits to the Iraqi people and the region

Now that Tony Blair's campaign to win the British public over to war has begun in earnest, he knows that he must convince on two fronts. First, he must convince us that Saddam Hussein poses a direct threat to our safety. Second, he must convince us that a war on Iraq would bring benefits to the Iraqi people and the entire region.

This was the way that the war in Afghanistan was sold to us, too: not just as a war to protect our safety, but a war to help the Afghans. Those who were against war then were accused of wanting to abandon the Afghan people to the rule of the Taliban, and those who are against war now are accused of being prepared to abandon the Iraqi people to their fate under a terrible dictator.

Pro-war writers on the left as well as the right have therefore decided that this war is worth supporting because it could be a war to liberate the Iraqi people. Nick Cohen has asked: "How can the people of Iraq overthrow their tyrant without foreign help?" Christopher Hitchens has joined in: "Who would be the beneficiaries of an intervention? Only the Iraqi and Kurdish peoples."

Because it centres on humanitarian issues, this is the argument for war that tends to muffle the doves. Tony Blair knows it, and that is why at the TUC conference in Blackpool, he was careful to list Saddam Hussein's actions against his own people as the most egregious acts of this dictator.

There are, indeed, Iraqi dissenters who sincerely believe that a war would lead to a better future for the Iraqis and the Kurds. But there are also many Iraqi dissenters who do not believe that. And before we say that a war is in the interests of the Iraqi people, we should listen to them, too.

I have recently been speaking to Iraqis who live in exile in order to try to understand more of the spectrum of Arab opinion. One Iraqi woman to whom I spoke yesterday has visited Iraq more than once over the last couple of years. She has spoken in private to family and acquaintances and has gained some idea of how many Iraqis feel about the prospect of impending war.

"I can categorically say to you," she said, "that this is not right, to try to liberate the Iraqi people through war. They are so exhausted by war and by sanctions. Of course, they want this regime to change, but for them the most scary thing is war. They say they are coping now but they cannot cope with war. We talk about the fear of war. They do not forget the experience of 1991. The bomb damage is still there in the country, and it is still there in people's hearts and minds. Again and again, they ask me: 'Why are they interfering again with our affairs? Isn't it enough, the sanctions, the bombing?' Yes, even those people who are against Saddam Hussein, they say this."

After a brief explosion of interest in the aftermath of September 11, there is now little space in the Western media to explore the views of Arabs. That means it is easy to talk about regime change without thinking about the bodies caught in burning buildings, the grieving families, the widows, the orphans: such suffering only seems to be real to us if it occurs in Manhattan. But understandably the Iraqis I spoke to could not stop speaking of their fear of the deaths of ordinary people, their own families, their own friends. Who should decide if this is a price worth paying in order to put paid to Saddam Hussein?

If the Iraqis I spoke to felt that this was not a price worth paying, that is because they felt that no one can predict what Iraq's post-war future would be. Certainly, many Iraqis felt utterly betrayed when, despite grand promises, the US decided not to target and topple Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War; but that does not mean that they necessarily feel the way forward is another wave of attacks on their people. "The US is deeply mistaken if it thinks it will find gratitude in Iraq [after a war]," one Iraqi dissenter who was forced to leave Iraq told me. "The people of Iraq feel that they have been cruelly treated by the US and neglected by Europe."

The US now talks of promoting a democracy in Iraq, but its history of supporting tyrannical regimes throughout the world – including, in the past, Saddam Hussein – can make that promise sound a little thin. The current line from the pro-war camp is that the West now sees the error of its ways and wants to export democracy. Afghanistan is constantly held up by these pro-war writers as the great success story; but the situation there is still fragile and unpredictable, and if you go to Afghanistan you hear great bitterness voiced by ordinary people at the Americans' readiness to do business with the old warlords.

The Iraqis I spoke to were certainly unconvinced by the idea that war could provide a route to democracy in Iraq. They thought it was more likely that the result would be a puppet regime that would kowtow to the US and Saudi Arabia. Or they dreaded the disintegration of Iraq, and its fragmentation, in a deadly civil war. Mundher Adhami, an Iraqi who has signed a recently published statement against the war, said to me: "I think the US is underestimating the possibility of the disintegration that could result from such a war. It could result in a very fragile situation, in which any nasty weapons that exist in the region might be used. It is very shortsighted of the US not to see the possibility of civil war."

Instead of war, they spoke of wanting to see the promotion of democracy by other means, and talked about the lifting of sanctions; the promotion of peace throughout the region, including in Palestine; the opening of channels of communication with ordinary Iraqi people and the encouragement of opposition movements within Iraq.

If ordinary Iraqis do not believe that a war is the best way to find liberation from their tyrant, perhaps we should listen. After all, the two justifications for war – protecting the West and bringing benefits to the Middle East – are not separate. They are linked.

The liberal Iraqis I spoke to are sceptical that war can benefit Iraq, and if they are right, then even if Saddam Hussein is removed, we will be no safer. Although Bush and Blair present the greatest threat to our security as Saddam Hussein, in fact, if we have learnt anything from the unexpected terror of 11 September, it is that the immediate threat that faces us now does not come from nation states. A leader such as Saddam is viciously cruel to his own people and his neighbours, but he wants to survive. As military experts have been arguing, it is unlikely that such a survivor would now make a pre-emptive strike on the West and so write his own death warrant.

The great threat to the West now comes from tiny minorities in societies that have been damaged and fragmented. So if Iraqis feel that war will further harm their already damaged society, perhaps we should listen to them.

One Iraqi, who currently works as an academic in Britain, told me: "It may be unpleasant or uncouth to suggest that in some way the United States asked for 11 September, but if there is there is a war with Iraq, then they would be asking for a lot more terrorism."

n.walter@btinternet.com