IRAQI STUDENTS SHARE THEIR VIEWS
By Noreen O’Donnell
THE JOURNAL NEWS;
Original publication: March 27, 2005

When Meghana Nayak spoke with Rafiq
Al-Nashi at the United Nations yesterday,
the assistant professor from Pace University wanted to know what he thought about the media’s portrayal of Iraq today. The professor feels the American media is biased.

The religion student from Iraq, however, emphasized what he felt was distorted coverage by the Arab media. It showed only the negative side of life in Iraq, he said.

The Iraqi view is that we are very thankful to the Americans – the government and the American people – for the liberation from the Saddam Hussein dictatorship,” Al-Nashi said through a translator. “And (we) are very glad for the elections that occurred.”

And when the United States urged an uprising against Saddam Hussein in 1991, only to turn its back when the Iraqi leader retaliated against the Shiites? asked Nayak, who teaches political science.

“The United States did make a few mistakes,” Al-Nashi agreed. “That’s what politics is.”

That kind of exchange was what the organizers had hoped for.

“Young people can communicate with other young people very well, even across cultures,” said Joseph H. Melrose, Jr., a retired ambassador and professor of international relations at Ursinus College in Collegeville, PA.

Four students from the University of Hilla about 50 miles south of Baghdad joined some 3,300 others attending the National Model United Nations, where students take the roles of UN delegates and simulate the work of its various bodies.

The Iraqi delegation – 26-year-old Ali Emad and Al-Nashi, Zahed Elayan and Ghassan M. Adnan, all 30 – had first visited Philadelphia, then traveled to New York.

Pace University, which had teams from both its Manhattan and Pleasantville campuses at the United Nations, was hosting them yesterday and today.

Pace’s involvement is part of the school’s larger effort to foster improved international relations, said Gregory Julian, an adviser to the Model United Nations who teaches political science at Pace.

“The more interdependence that we can develop, the more we understand cultures, the less we have to resort to violence.” he said.

Listening to the Iraqis was a former Pace student, 23-year-old Davis John Abraham of Yonkers, who now works at Junior Achievement in Tarrytown. He was glad to hear first-hand about day-to-day life in Iraq,
he said.

“They said they’re happy about the freedoms that they have now but at the same time they feel the country’s been misrepresented in the media,” he said. ‘It’s been so distorted. I’m sure when we hang out with them we’ll get a little bit more insight.”

Today the group was planning to visit some of New York City’s attractions, Federal Hall and the Statue of Liberty among them. The Iraqis had already acquired small souvenirs of the Liberty Bell and wanted something from the Statue of Liberty as well.

Translating for the afternoon were two 20-year-old Pace students, Sarnia Saky from Scarsdale and Raymond Kisswany of New York City, both of whom noted the Iraqis’ support for the U.S.-led invasion. By contrast, Zaky said, she had heard different accounts from Iraqi-American friends who had relatives in Iraq.

“Most people have mixed feelings about it from what I gather,” said Zaky, whose family is Palestinian.
They feel that there’s a good and a bad. They want to have more control, more say in the government. They have not as much as a pro-American view.

“Those weren’t the responses that I would usually hear from Arabs not in politics in Iraq or other Iraqis that I have met,” he said. “It didn’t really seem to represent that.”

Added Nayak: “It seems to resonate more with what Iraqi expatriates have been saying who have been more in line with looking at it from the U.S. point of view.”