People and health personnel wearing a protective face masks in Erbil following the coronavirus outbreak, Iraqi Kurdistan, March 7, 2020. Photo: Rudaw
Muhammed Abdulla | Exclusive to Ekurd.net
The novel Coronavirus outbreak (which causes Covid-19) has dominated news headlines not only in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) but across the world. The virus has spread to over 90 countries around the world and killed several thousand people, mostly in China’s Wuhan city where the epidemic first emerged.
The death toll from the virus is rising day by day as scientists have yet to find a vaccine or treatment against it. Nearly 30 cases of the coronavirus have been confirmed in the KRI so far, including one death. Many governments, including the local Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) have quickly responded to limit the spread of the growing outbreak. But how the locals abide by government responses is still a matter of question.
The KRG has banned travel to and from several countries affected by the pandemic, including the neighboring Iran, and closed all public and private schools and universities. The ban was later expanded and included all “public gatherings” and even religious “Friday sermons.” From there, the government restrictions led to more controversies as the move is seen by many as political.
In the region, in spite of the health threat the infectious disease poses, politics has been already injected into this “new crisis”. The scope and complexity of the KRI’s political, social, and economic challenges have made locals to be polarized about this “new crisis” as well. The polarization among locals on most matters in the region is not something new but has historical roots.
What led to more polarization was that the “new crisis” has emerged amid several current and prolonged crises, including the political and economic crises the region is suffering from. The region has faced a severe economic crisis, especially since 2014 when the Islamic State (IS) attacked the region and Baghdad cut of the region’s federal share over crude oil disputes. The government had to reduce salaries of the public employees and is still three months behind to pay the salaries.
Recently, locals are polarized over the government restrictions against the coronavirus outbreak as the public does not trust the government and even suspects the government regulations and responses to the virus. There is no doubt that the public’s mistrust in government and injecting politics into the matter could undermine any precautionary measures against the virus. But this is the way the public perceives the matter due to having horrific experience with their government.
In the KRI, the public opinion about the coronavirus is mainly divided into four categories.
The first category is consisted of social media commentators. This group mostly acknowledges the “conspiracy theory” and perceives the epidemic as a “biological warfare” or a “trade warfare” between two superpowers; the US and China. This group is also divided into two sub-groups; one accuses the US of making the virus as a bio-weapon against China, and the other says the opposite.
Anti-US commentators or analysts publish their opinion mostly on Facebook, the most popular social media platform in Iraq, saying that the US sees the ever growing China as a threat and competitor in the near future. Therefore, it does anything it can to contain China. They believe that since China has nuclear weapons and a massive population, the US cannot militarily invade the country, rather it has to find “new tactics” to contain China. They also question why the virus first appeared in Wuhan, China’s “economic backbone” if it was not intentionally picked by the US to financially damage the country.
Some locals go even deeper and say that the US wants to contain China’s economic hegemony in the world. They speculate that the US created this virus to obstruct China-led most strategic modern silk road, the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI), intending to connect nearly 70 countries in Asia, Europe, and Africa. They also talk about China’s growth, especially in the steel industry and developing the Fifth-generation wireless (5G), which has made the US worried.
Meanwhile, the anti-China commentators believe that the virus is made by the Chinese government for some reasons. They perceive that the virus was either unintentionally leaked at China’s laboratories, or China has intentionally spread it to take over US manufacturing corporations operating in China. They theorize that China uses state-owned financing companies and its sovereign wealth funds to buy stocks from US and other foreign companies as the price of their stocks are dramatically undervalued due to the coronavirus panic.
These different perceptions have made many locals to perceive the pandemic as a political issue on an international level, rather than seeing it as a health issue. Therefore, they do not trust or believe in government preventative measures.
The second category is consisted of religious leaders. This group mostly includes Islamic imams, preachers, fundamental religious adherents, and Salafis. This group perceives the coronavirus as a “God-sent soldier” against the persecutors of the Muslims. They claim that China has persecuted and slaughtered the Muslim population in the country; therefore, God has spoken up and sent China an “invisible divine soldier” to take revenge. Some fundamentalists even describe the virus as an “invisible Salahaddin Ayoubi,” a historical Muslim legend known for liberating the holy city of Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187.
The group also spreads prejudice against Chinese traditional cuisine, saying the virus emerged as the result of eating “forbidden” meat of wild animals like bats. Eating meat of many wild animals, including pork, is haram/forbidden in Islam.
At the beginning of the outbreak, they perceived that the virus will not reach Muslim countries. However, when the disease is spread in the Muslim countries, they claimed that any Muslim who will be died of the disease is accepted by God as a “martyr” and will get into Paradise.
In spite of considering the matter as a divine issue, this group also perceives the virus as a political issue as well. Advocates of this group claim that the government has closed mosques and Friday sermons, prior to closing bars, to “secularize” the society upon Western influences. They see government restrictions, especially closing down mosques and banning weekly sermons, as “anti-religion” moves by the secular government. Therefore, some of them continued their weekly sermons last week at public parks and outside the mosques. Some local journalists and outlets have been fueling this group by intensely covering their reactions and thoughts.
The third group is consisted of the majority of population, workers, and low-income public employees. This group does not believe in such as communicable disease. Locals in this category believe that the government wants to create “crisis after crisis” to make the people forget about government corruption, reforms, and salaries. This month, the KRG paid salaries of the public employees for November 2019 and it distributed salaries one week late compared to other months. Since the KRG is already three months behind to pay the public workers, this group believes that the government announces new restrictions every day to make the people busy and stop thinking about their unpaid salaries.
This group is indirectly supported by the opposition factions and activists, especially as they accuse the government of having enough oil funds to pay public worker salaries but not spending them in a transparent way due to large-scale corruption. Therefore, as they do not trust their government, they do not follow the government preventive measures to limit the spread of the virus. The above three groups have indeed undermined the government’s responses and played a negative role by downplayed the infectious coronavirus to a “conspiracy theory.”
The fourth and last category is consisted of medics, intellectuals, and top government officials. This group tries to recognize the virus as a real threat and view it through a scientific lens, rather than a political lens. Locals in this category, including doctors and health officials, regularly publish advice and safety tips. They want to make locals that the pandemic is “true” and is “fatal” in certain cases. They also publish photos of doctors wearing special masks and cloths while dealing with patients affected by the virus to persuade the public that the outbreak is “serious and dangerous.” However, few people trust them and follow restrictions in reality. For example, while the government has announced a public holiday in most government institutions, locals take advantage from this and see this as an opportunity to go on vacation in groups, visit each other as frequent guests, and gather more often than before as they have more free time now.
In a nut shell, the public in the KRI has been historically polarized over almost every political matter, but this time even on a non-political issue; coronavirus pandemic. The majority of the public injects politics into it and appeals to conspiracy theories to explain the disease. The general public does not seem to trust the government and see government responses as influenced by political considerations.
This makes it harder to fight against this common enemy. Therefore, the government should take all opportunities, especially this one, to restore trust. It should improve communication between the locals and government institutions because the locals are tired of any additional crisis. The locals should also work hand in hand with the public institutions and not lose confidence in official information because this affects our personal lives and those of our families. As one of my friends said, “since politics is metaphorically a virus here, we should not jeopardize our lives by politicizing an actual type of virus too”.
Muhammed Abdulla is a freelance journalist based in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq KRI. He holds a master’s degree in Politics and International Relations at the University of Kurdistan – Hawler (UKH) and a bachelor’s degree in the same field at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani (AUIS).
The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not necessarily represent the views of Ekurd.net or its editors.
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