Student speaks: 'The people of Iraq have suffered enough'

BY ZOE KENNY

MELBOURNE — Maryan al-Talebi is a seemingly average 17-year-old high school student living in Footscray. She has a part-time job and is undertaking her final year of the Victorian Certificate of Education. But behind al-Talebi’s enthusiasm for life and determination, is a hard and often tragic life. She was born in a country that has suffered the terrible consequences of the US’ brutal foreign policy: Iraq.

Al-Talebi, a member of the socialist youth organisation Resistance, is just one of thousands of young people organising a student strike against the war on March 5. She knows well from personal experience what the war will mean.

From the 1963 CIA-assisted coup that toppled a left-wing government, and paved the way for Saddam Hussein’s rise to power, to the 1991 Gulf War and years of UN economic sanctions, life for ordinary people in Iraq has grown progressively more intolerable.

Al-Talebi’s father was assassinated because of his outspoken dissent to Hussein’s oppressive government. Her uncle was killed for the same reasons. Her mother died from the cancer that has become so much more common since the US military used depleted uranium weapons in the 1991 Gulf War.

“It would be hard for me to live in Iraq”, al-Talebi told Green Left Weekly. “Education is not supported, it’s hard to get books and you have to agree with whatever the government says. You are under government [control] ... I like to be independent. [In Iraq] everything was messed up, upside down and everything was hard. I could see only one solution and that was to leave”.

As her hopes for a normal life faded, and with the ever-present danger of political persecution hanging over them, al-Talebi, her two sisters, brother and aunt prepared to flee Iraq. Afraid of rousing suspicion by selling any significant assets, they sold Maryan’s mother’s gold jewellery and got help from relatives to raise the US$40,000 needed to leave Iraq and come to Australia.

Al-Talebi’s journey to Australia was typical refugee experience: several weeks in Jordan, a week in Malaysia, three weeks in Indonesia and then a perilous 36-hour boat ride to Christmas Island. “It was a small fishing boat, with 159 people aboard. Everyone was squashed in. There were no proper toilets, the toilet was just a hole in the boat. People were vomiting all night. We could see whales or dolphins, and we were scared of the tail flipping the boat — then everyone would have drowned.”

Then al-Talebi and her family were sent to Curtin detention centre in Western Australia. Life was “uncomfortable and very hard. It’s in the middle of nowhere, no buildings or nothing, just caravans. No schools, no qualified teachers ... all the kids had to go to the one place for all different levels.”

“The most common medicine was Panadol and water. We heard that some of the medicine was outdated and it was hard to get tablets for period pain. There was one caravan that had two showers and some taps. We didn’t have shampoo, only detergent”.

After nine months there, the al-Talebi family were granted temporary protection visas and allowed to live in the community. Despite the tenuousness of life on a TPV, they have managed to put down roots and settle into a normal life.

However, US President George Bush, British PM Tony Blair and Australian PM John Howard’s warmongering is sending waves of fear through the Iraqi asylum-seeker community. “If war happens and Saddam is [no longer in power], then we will be expected to return because our main problem was with the government”, al-Talebi explained. “That’s what happened to the Afghan TPV holders and that is what will happen to us.”

Al-Talebi also fears for the people of Iraq, and the soldiers sent there to fight. She said, “it is unfair, because the people of Iraq have suffered enough”. When asked what she thought the war was about, she replied, “Oil and petrol. I don’t know about these weapons ... doesn’t every country have weapons to defend themselves?”.

Al-Talebi wants to inspire people to get involved in the anti-war movement. She will be speaking at the student strike on March 5 in Melbourne, as well as the International Women’s Day rally on March 8.

From Green Left Weekly, February 26, 2003.
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