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Fulbright Scholar at Sweet Briar visits with President Bush
By Eleanor O'Connor ’07
STAFF WRITER

Unless you’ve been taking Arabic classes this year, you may not have met Maha Kareem. Maha came to Sweet Briar in August as a Fulbright Scholar and has been teaching Arabic to students. Born and raised in Baghdad, Maha previously taught at the College of Languages at the University of Baghdad.

On the occasion of the Iraqi elections in December, Maha had the opportunity to visit the White House and meet with President Bush. After the introductions and formal pictures, Maha stood alongside the President with 10 fellow Iraqi Fulbright Scholars while he expressed his joy for Iraq’s accomplishment on a live broadcast. The cameras disappeared, the chairs were brought out and the scholars talked to the President about not only the elections but also their personal experiences from living in Iraq. Maha also met the First Lady, Vice President Dick Cheney, and other White House staff members. At the end of the day she was presented with a Presidential pen.

Iraq’s December elections were for the first constitutional parliament, the Council of Representatives. The United Iraqi Alliance won 128 seats of 275 but not a clear majority. For Maha, the necessity of the Shiite party to form an alliance with other smaller parties is a positive situation. Maha believes to otherwise give the Shiites a clear majority “would be like the dictatorship under Saddam,” but with Shiites ruling over the Sunnis.
More Sunnis voted in this round of elections than in the temporary parliament elections in January 2005, another positive sign for Maha. “If the Sunnis had not voted, then Iraq would not have a real parliament,” she said. “The elections may not have been perfect, but they were better because the Sunnis had a part in some way.” There had been claims of voting fraud and intimidation by many Sunnis, but no evidence can be found that it had a significant impact on the election results. The number of seats held by Sunni officials increased from 17 to 44.

If given the opportunity to directly influence any change to life in Iraq, Maha would like to see greater security. “Every one is running away,” Maha said of the lack of security in Iraq. “If you don’t hear a bomb, you think something is wrong.” If the problem of creating great security for the citizens of Iraq is solved, then other things will fall into place.