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 Iraq:
Democracy, Civil War, or Chaos?
Success is still within reach...
[Michael
Rubin] 10/10/05
Pessimism
regarding Iraq's future is unwarranted. Iraq faces many challenges,
but success is still within reach. After 35 years of dictatorship,
Iraqis have embraced a political process emphasizing compromise
and coalition. They have successfully held elections and
drawn up a constitution. Political brinkmanship is not necessarily
a precursor to civil war. That said, Iraqi democracy faces
many challenges. First and foremost is the insurgency. Premature
reconciliation and concessions offered in the face of violence,
however, will backfire. Neighboring states also may undermine
Iraq's security, necessitating a long-term U.S. military
presence.
More than
eight million Iraqis braved bombs and bullets to vote on January
30, 2005, in Iraq's first free elections in a half-century.
President George W. Bush praised the Iraqi people from the
White House, declaring, "In great numbers, and under great
risk, Iraqis have shown their commitment to democracy. By participating
in free elections, the Iraqi people have firmly rejected the
anti-democratic ideology of terrorists."[1] But in subsequent
weeks, talks bogged down, first over the formation of the government
and more recently over the constitution.
While internal
tensions will not dissipate anytime soon, Iraqis have shown
a resiliency which suggests that while the path to democracy
might be arduous and marred by violence, that they are nevertheless
dedicated to making the political process work. As Iraqis move
toward their constitutional referendum and national elections
for a full-term government, the greatest threat they face will
be from outside powers seeking to destabilize Iraq by proxy.
The key for success will be to abide by, without exception,
a timeline for specific political milestones. Washington and
the United Nations should not bend to pressure, be it from
factions within Iraq or from interests outside, to alter the
agreed framework. Milestones matter.
IS IRAQ
READY FOR DEMOCRACY?
U.S. officials
and public commentators have consistently underestimated Iraqis.
Two months before Iraqis went to the polls, Leslie H. Gelb,
former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and Peter
Galbraith, a former American ambassador to Croatia and a lobbyist
for the Kurdistan Regional Government, penned a commentary
in the Los Angeles Times entitled, "Why Jan. 30 Won't
Work" in which they argued that Iraq was not ready for elections.[2]
In his weblog, Juan Cole, the president-elect of the Middle
East Studies Association, argued that "The 1997 elections in
Iran," in which the Guardian Council disqualified 234 out of
238 candidates, "were much more democratic." [3]
Like Cole,
his fellow bloggers, and commentators, many of the fiercest
critics of Bush Administration policy have never visited Iraq.
They treat Iraq as a template upon which to impose a political
agenda often shaped more by partisan disdain for the Bush Administration
policy rather than by the situation in Iraq. Rashid Khalidi,
an Arab studies professor at Columbia University, for example,
authored a critique of U.S. policy in Iraq relying upon secondary
sources.[4] Council on Foreign Relations scholar David Phillips
pilloried the failure of the post-war reconstruction in Losing
Iraq.[5] In its review of his work, The Wall Street
Journal revealed that Phillips did not visit Iraq in the
course of his research, and lifted descriptions of Iraqi cities
directly from secondary newspaper accounts.[6] Others seek
credibility by visiting Coalition forward operating bases or
the high-security International Zone, but do not venture outside
the security bubble to meet ordinary Iraqis.[7]
Despite the
pessimism emanating from Washington and the academy, the January
2005 Iraqi election campaign demonstrated just how far Iraqis
had come. Political advertisements on ash-Sharqiya,
Iraq's most popular television channel, were slick and, but
for language, would not be out of place in an American political
campaign. Amid pictures of flags, ballots, and Iraqi children,
Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi promised "a bright
future and a strong and competent Iraq."
U.S. allies
Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen hold presidential elections, but
restrict opposition campaigns to the point where incumbency
is guaranteed.[8] In Iraq, Allawi found the benefits of incumbency
limited. The U.S. military and private security contractors
helped transport Allawi to campaign rallies across the country,
and the interim prime minister used the bully pulpit of his
office to grant interviews to al-Iraqiya television and the
al-Arabiya satellite channel. But, he could impose no restrictions
on his competitors, many of whom adopted a grassroots campaign.
Shi'a politicians broadcast their messages by radio so as to
reach ordinary Iraqis who had no generators with which to run
television during the frequent power outages, but could operate
radios by battery.
In Sadr City,
mosques run by firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr urged their
flocks to embrace the ballot. Many Shi'a politicians adopted
a grassroots campaign. On January 9, 2005, tribal shaykhs from
the outskirts of Najaf hosted a rally in the town of Mushkhab.
Among those attending was Abd al-Karim Muhammadawi, known as
the "Robin Hood of the Marshes" for his resistance against
Saddam's army prior to the American occupation. Former Governing
Council members Ahmad Barak and Ahmad Chalabi drove down from
Baghdad for the event. On the streets of Baghdad, campaign
posters jockeyed for wall space. Significantly, though, rival
parties did not obstruct or deface their opponents' posters.
Iraqis embraced political pluralism.
Because The
New York Times forbids its reporters to travel outside
daylight hours[9] and other journalists rely on stringers,[10]
and the U.S. embassy's security officers restrict the ability
of diplomats to exit the heavily-fortified security zone,[11]
much of the campaign occurred outside the notice of the Western
audience.
AN ELECTORAL
MILESTONE
Many commentators
were therefore surprised by the high turn-out in the January
30, 2005 elections. The polls marked a watershed in Middle
Eastern politics for two reasons:
First, they
marked the first time in Iraq's history that that country's
Shi'a community achieved a political voice proportional to
their majority status. For more than eighty years, successive
Iraqi governments had worked to marginalize and disenfranchise
the Shi'a. The rise of the community to real political power
after more than eight decades of systematic oppression is no
less momentous than the 1994 victory of Nelson Mandela in South
Africa's first multiracial presidential elections.
Second, and
just as important, no party won a strong, working majority.
The United Iraqi Alliance won a bare majority with 140 seats
in the 275-member National Assembly; the Kurdish Alliance took
75 seats; and Allawi's Iraqi List won 40. Nine small parties
divided the remaining 20 seats.[12] Iraqi political powerbrokers
had to administer by coalition. While a king or strong president
rules every other Arab country, no single ruler or party can
dictate in Iraq. Parliamentarians have been forced to negotiate
and compromise rather than impose. Corruption and abuse of
power may remain rife, but power-sharing created checks and
balances. Within the administration, ministers, deputy ministers,
and directors-general might all derive from different parties
or factions. Their mutual distrust has obstructed ministerial
power and created mechanisms for various constituencies to
voice dissent to power. The central government in Baghdad may
not be as efficient, but it is more democratic than the one-party
regions of Iraqi Kurdistan which are ruled from Erbil and Sulaymaniyah.
After several
weeks of negotiations, Ibrahim Jaafari, leader of the Da`wa
party, emerged as the United Iraqi Alliance's nominee for prime
minister. The slate's caucus was an indication of a growing
acceptance of democratic norms. Within the slate, four candidates
put forward their names. While many United Iraqi Alliance members
expressed reservations about Jaafari and his pro-Islamic law
positions, he outlasted his three competitors to emerge as
the nominee.
True to Iraq's
new political realities, other parties and interests issued
demands in return for political support. The Kurdish Alliance,
for example, insisted that their support for Jaafari would
be contingent upon his support for federalism. Engaging in
political brinkmanship, they threatened to cobble together
an opposition slate to the United Iraqi Alliance with minority
parties and defectors from the United Iraqi Alliance itself
unless Jaafari acceded to their demands. Trading of support
for different issues is likewise a backbone of politics. It
implies a leader's accountability to interests other than his
own.
Whereas Iraqi
politicians once served only to rubberstamp their leader's
decisions, a decade of opposition conferences and the 15-month
American interregnum encouraged political tolerance. After
sunset, in Baghdad and across governorate capitals and rural
tribal diwans, generators hum and reception rooms are
abuzz with local notables. In back rooms, politicians from
across Iraq make deals and exchange gossip. In the run-up to
the August 15 constitutional deadline--and the August 22 extension--they
debated whether religious or civil courts should judge family
law, the division of national wealth under federalism, and
political restrictions upon members of the Ba'th party.
THE CONSTITUTIONAL
MILESTONE
The Iraqi
National Assembly greeted with applause the August 22, 2005
announcement by its speaker Hachim al-Hasani that the constitutional
commission had submitted a draft constitution. While the National
Assembly agreed to discuss the draft and possibly offer amendments,
the successful submission of a constitution undercut outside
pundits who argued that the Iraqis should delay the constitutional
process.[13] The hurdles overcome by Iraqi politicians were
significant. Debates over federalism and the role of Islam
in the constitution polarized Iraq. While militiamen loyal
to Muqtada al-Sadr attacked University of Basra students for
socializing at a mixed-sex picnic,[14] students flirt and socialize
in the University of Salahuddin cafeteria in Erbil . Likewise,
while vigilantes have firebombed liquor stores in Basra and
Salam Maliki, the minister of transportation, has forbidden
liquor sales at the once-popular Baghdad International Airport
duty-free shop,[15] middle-class families in the Mansour district
of Baghdad and academics and professionals in Sulaymaniyah
gather in clubs and enjoy whisky, beer, and the local ouzo-like arak.
Iraqis compromised
on questions of the exclusivity of Islam as a source of legislation.
While many Islamists argued that Islam should be considered "the
source" of legislation rather than the less exclusive "a source," Islamists
and liberal compromised upon a non-exclusive treatment of Islam "as
a main source." While this is ideal to no group within the
Iraqi political and religious spectrum, such is the nature
of compromise. Similar compromises may allow Iraqis to opt
to adjudicate matters of family law in civil rather than religious
courts. Many women's groups fear the latter because of the
inherent inequality of women in matters of divorce and inheritance
under prevalent interpretations of Islamic law.[16]
Disagreements
over federalism have become a more serious stumbling block
across Iraq. But Kurdish political organization--and the morality
of their cause--will undercut any attempts to roll back de
facto federalism. Federalism is not a new concept for Iraq.
Prior to the Ottoman Empire's defeat in World War I, what became
Iraq was three separate Ottoman provinces: Basra in the south,
Baghdad in the center, and Mosul in the north. Even after the
1921 establishment of monarchy, the final shape of Iraq remained
in dispute as the nascent Turkish Republic laid claim to Mosul.
The 1920 Treaty of Sevres promised Kurds an independent state,
but the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne rescinded this commitment three
years later. In 1925, a League of Nations commission arrived
to adjudicate the dispute; they found in favor of Iraq, awarding
the predominantly Kurdish province to the new government in
Baghdad, on condition that, "Regard must be paid to the desires
expressed by the Kurds that officials of Kurdish race should
be appointed for the administration of their country, the dispensation
of justice, and teaching in the schools, and that Kurdish should
be the official language of all these services."[17] Such conditions
were never fulfilled.
Successive
governments in Baghdad failed to implement autonomy. While
there were sporadic outbreaks of ethnic violence, throughout
Iraqi history, a full-scale Kurdish revolt erupted in 1961.
Years of low-intensity guerilla warfare led to a March 11,
1970 autonomy accord between the Iraqi government and its Kurdish
opposition, but Baghdad never fully implemented the agreement.
Disputes over the extent of Kurdistan (namely whether Kirkuk
should be included) and Saddam's own effort to undermine the
accords as the Ba'th party consolidated control, caused the
collapse of Arab-Kurdish federalism and the resumption of low-intensity
civil war. Nevertheless, the willingness of the Iraqi government
to embrace federalism has had lasting impact in Iraq's collective
memory.
Iraqi Kurdish
history subsequent to the collapse of the autonomy accords
is well known. During the late 1980s, Kurdish-populated northern
Iraq was the scene of near total destruction, the Iraqi government
having devastated more than 4,000 of the 4,655 Kurdish villages.[18]
Following
Saddam's 1991 defeat in Operation Desert Storm and President
George H.W. Bush's February 15, 1991 call that "The Iraqi military
and the Iraqi people [should] take matters into their own hands
and force Saddam Hussein the dictator to step aside," [19]
the Kurds and Shi'a rose up against Saddam's authoritarian
rule. Within a matter of days, the central government lost
control of 14 out of Iraq's 18 governorates. But the Iraqi
government fought back, and neither the United States nor other
outside powers intervened. The Iraqi government used helicopter
gun ships and armor to suppress the revolt. As more than a
million Kurdish refugees streamed toward the Turkish border,
President Turgat Özal of Turkey, urged the creation of a "safe
haven" in northern Iraq. While the safe haven was initially
quite small--only 36 square miles centered on the northern
Iraqi town of Zakho--it soon expanded to incorporate Dahuk
and encompassed 3,600 square miles. When, in October 1991,
Saddam Hussein withdrew his government's administration from
Iraqi Kurdistan in an attempt to blockade and starve the restive
Kurds into submission, the area of de facto Kurdish
control grew to almost 15,500 square miles.
The Kurds
scrambled to create a political authority. They did so largely
by democratic means, despite interludes of factional and tribal
squabbles. Following elections in May 1992, the region's major
political parties formed the Kurdistan Regional Government.
Split by civil war in 1996--and still not integrated despite
the symbolic unification of a powerless parliament in June
2005--the region has been effectively independent of Baghdad's
control for almost 15 years. Iraqi Kurdistan has its own ministries,
budget, taxes, and army. It functions primarily in Kurdish;
college age students in Sulaymaniyah and, increasingly in Erbil,
can no longer speak Arabic. The region flies its own flag,
runs its own television stations, and conducts its own foreign
policy. While some Sunni politicians may oppose Kurdish federalism,[20]
any debate is undercut by the reality on the ground. The central
government has little sway in Iraqi Kurdistan, and little ability
to impose its will through force, all the more so because the
Shi'a also favor federalism in southern Iraq.[21]
While federalism
may be a fait accompli in Iraq despite the threats of
some Arab nationalist and Islamist interests,[22] it is not
without its dangers. Regional political leaders may be tempted
to cheat in the sharing of resources. As occurred under Saddam
Hussein's government, corrupt officials may siphon off oil
to sell separately. The sharing of water may be more complicated
than allocation of oil proceeds. Should the Kurdistan Regional
Government fail to release water from the Dokan and Darbandikan
dams, crops in the Iraqi Arab heartland could whither; the
newly-restored southern marshes could again evaporate. In Iraqi
Kurdistan, the failure of the Kurdistan Democratic Party to
share revenue from the lucrative Ibrahim Khalil customs post
sparked the outbreak of the three-year Kurdish civil war. Nevertheless,
careful auditing can alleviate the danger until trust can build.
DOES U.S.
STRATEGY UNDERCUT SECURITY?
While Iraqis
have made significant political and economic progress, the
security situation in central Iraq remains poor. As the insurgent
violence has spiked, senior military officials and diplomats
have urged Iraqis to embrace and engage former Ba'thists and
Arab Sunni rejectionists. If the Sunnis can be brought into
the fold, the conventional wisdom goes, peace and reconciliation
will prevail.
Evidence
does not support such an assertion. Many of the insurgents
are rejectionists with no desire to be a part of a new political
process. They have neither voiced a political vision nor contributed
to the well-being or safety of ordinary Iraqis. Their chief
victims are not U.S. soldiers, but rather other Iraqis. A case
in point was the August 19, 2005 murder of three Sunni Arab
election workers in Mosul who were kidnapped as they put up
election posters.[23]
While terrorists
alone bare responsibility for their actions, flawed U.S. policy
has undermined stability and undercut Iraqi attempts to rectify
security. Many Iraqi politicians, be they Arab Shi'a, Arab
Sunni, or Kurdish, correlate the upsurge in insurgent attacks
to the April 2004 decision by Coalition Provisional Authority
administrator L. Paul Bremer to reverse de-Ba'thification.
In effect, Bremer traded the good will of Iraq's 14 million
Shi'a and six million Kurds for the sake of perhaps 40,000
Ba'thists. Since the transfer of sovereignty, diplomatic pressure
upon Iraqis to reintegrate former Ba'thists has become even
greater. One senior embassy official confided in an April 2005
e-mail that re-integration of former Ba'thists had become a
mantra among U.S. diplomats.
The American
strategy has backfired for several reasons: First, by trumpeting
a Sunni strategy, the Coalition Provisional Authority deepened
sectarianism and furthered the false perception that de-Ba'thification
targeted large numbers of individual Sunnis on the basis of
their religious beliefs rather than because of their past complicity
in terror as government and party officials. Many Ba'thists
were Shiites and Kurds; many Sunni Arabs also ended up in Saddam's
mass graves.
Second, the
reconciliation policy has enabled Ba'thists to infiltrate into
sensitive positions where they can work to undermine security.[24]
No place has this occurred as starkly as in Mosul. Shortly
after the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, the 101st Airborne
took charge of Mosul and its environs. The division's commander,
General David Petraeus, pursued a policy of reconciliation
with both Ba'thists and Islamists. "The coalition must reconcile
with a number of the thousands of former Ba'th officials...giving
them a direct stake in the success of the new Iraq," he argued.[25]
But his strategy failed. He appointed Colonel Ya'rob, the supervisor
of checkpoints in the Nineweh governorate under the previous
regime, to head the police guarding the Mosul governor's office.
On July 14, 2004, assassins--likely with the benefit of inside
information regarding schedules and movements--ambushed the
governor's car. A more extreme example involved the appointment
of another former Ba'thist, General Muhammad Kha'iri Barhawi
to be Mosul's police chief. Barhawi kept a low-profile but
used the space created by Petraeus and his successors to organize
insurgent cells and lead a November 2004 uprising which briefly
handed Iraq's second largest city over to insurgents.[26] Many
Iraqi Shi'a remain upset that the U.S. officials appointed
Major-General Muhammad Abdullah al-Shahwani, a former Ba'thist,
to lead the interim Iraqi intelligence service. Shahwani has
employed proportionately fewer Shi'a in the new Iraq's intelligence
service than during the time of Saddam Hussein.
Third, insurgents
interpret premature reconciliation as rewarding violence. On
March 31, 2004, following the murder and mutilation of four
American security contractors in Fallujah, Bush declared, "America
will never be intimidated by thugs and assassins."[27] After
a month-long siege, though, the U.S. officials struck a deal
with the insurgents whereby U.S. officials empowered the insurgents
to form a Fallujah Brigade. Not only did the decision fail
to co-opt insurgents, but it also allowed them safe-haven.
Car bombing increased 600 percent in the following month. The
insurgents absorbed the message that they could win through
violence what they could not through the political process.
The insurgency quickly spread to cities like Samarra and Mosul.
Diplomatic pressure throughout April 2005 to increase Sunni
representation on the Constitutional Drafting Committee resulted
in an additional 15 Sunni members, but rather than placate
the community, it only increased its demands. Violence, now
perceived as the way to win concessions, increased.
The U.S.
embassy nevertheless repeated its mistake in June 2005, when
word leaked that both U.S. diplomats and military officials
had approached Iraqi insurgents in order to encourage them
to renounce violence and join the political process.[28] A
National Security Council senior director rationalized the
approach by differentiating between talking to and negotiating
with insurgents. The Arab world drew no such distinction. A
June 28, 2005 Al-Sharq al-Awsat cartoon depicted Uncle
Sam, surrounded by barbed wire, with an insurgent leader blocking
the only path to escape. The perception was one of weakness,
not magnanimity. Violence again spiked.
If the West
wants Iraq to continue on the path to stability, security,
and democracy, they should listen to the Iraqis. U.S. officials
should not interfere with Iraqi politicians who aim for sweeping
de-Ba'thification. Iraqis understand the nuances of their history,
security, and politics better than any diplomat serving a six-month
tour, or serviceman without personal connection to their country.
Several Iraqi
politicians have suggested that they may consider a policy
under which former party members might still work in government,
but be prohibited from assuming any position of command authority;
i.e., colonel or above in the Iraqi military, or director-general
or above in civil service. American diplomats and intelligence
officers may not want to see their contacts lose their jobs
or suffer demotion, but such may be the price not only of security,
but also of sovereignty and democracy. Reversing the insurgency--and
enabling Iraq's fragile democracy to take root--will require
listening to Iraqis. While the Multinational Forces, the European
Union, and the Jordanian government may run training programs
for the Iraqi recruits, Iraqi officials--not foreigners--should
decide who should take part. Iraqis are capable of building
a better life, should they not be hampered by American naďveté,
however well-meaning it may be.
THE THREAT
FROM OUTSIDE POWERS
The positive
evolution of Iraqi politics and economy may not be enough to
ensure Iraq's security. Iraq's military is too weak to defend
itself against threats from its neighbors, and it retains poor
control over its borders. The intentions of countries like
Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria remain far from uncertain.
The Turkish military is increasingly agitated about the presence
of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) terrorists in Iraqi Kurdistan[29]
and Iraqi Kurdish intentions toward the disputed city of Kirkuk.
While all of Iraq's neighbors wanted the United States to succeed
militarily in Iraq, none want liberated Iraq to be successful
or democratic. The Turkish government fears any precedent which
benefits Iraqi Kurds. The Iranian leadership suspects any independent
Shi'a voice it cannot control. Iraq's other neighbors fear
the empowerment of a Shi'a majority.[30] Furthermore, a stable
Iraq is in the interest of neither Saudi Arabia nor Iran, neither
of whom can afford to lose the supplemental oil production
they undertook following the 1990 United Nation's sanctioning
of Iraq.
As a result,
with the possible exception of Kuwait, Iraq's neighbors have
sought to undermine the country's stability. For instance,
the Turkish government has bankrolled the Iraqi Turkmen Front.
Before the war, the Iraqi Turkmen Front consistently took a
rejectionist position. It demanded inclusion in the Iraqi opposition
leadership, but refused to recognize the legitimacy of any
other group. While the Iraqi Turkmen Front claims to represent
Iraq's nearly two million ethnic Turkmen, only a small number
of Turkmen give the party their allegiance. When the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan subsidized the distribution of Kurdish flags
to mixed communities south of Kirkuk, most Turkmen responded
by raising Shi'a banners rather than the Turkmen Front's white
crescent on pale blue flag. As Kurds, long displaced from Kirkuk
migrated back to the city, the Turkish military, egged on by
the Iraqi Turkmen Front, threatened violence. Many Kurds point
to the July 2003 infiltration of a Turkish Special Forces team,
allegedly on a mission to assassinate Kurdish politicians in
Kirkuk, as a sign of malicious Turkish intentions. Likewise,
many Iraqis interpreted the Turkish Foreign Ministry's decision
to approach directly the 101st Airborne with a request
to construct a second border crossing as a deliberate attempt
to bypass the Iraqi interior and foreign ministries.
Continuing
suspicion and disunity between the Kurdistan Democratic Party
and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, meanwhile, provides an opening
for neighboring powers to fight by proxy, much as they did
during the 1994-1997 Kurdish civil war. With so many militias
now operating throughout the whole of Iraq, the country may
be even more susceptible to the ill-will of outside powers.
Both the
Iranian and Syrian governments have facilitated infiltration
of men and materiel to aid the insurgency. The Iranian security
apparatus challenged the United States almost immediately in
Iraq. As Coalition forces advanced on Najaf in March 2003,
Badr Corps units poured into northern Iraq from Iran, provoking
a strong warning to Tehran by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.[31]
Well-connected Iranian journalist Ali Reza Nurizadeh reported
elite Iranian Revolutionary Guards "brought in radio transmission
equipment, posters, pamphlets printed in (the Iranian holy
city of) Qom, and huge amounts of money, some of which was
used to buy weapons for the Badr Corps."[32]
While the
Iranian government often seeks plausible deniability by acting
through proxy, Tehran has made no secret of its intentions
in Iraq. Iran's charge d'affaires in Baghdad, Hassan Kazemi
Qomi, was not actually a diplomat but rather a member of the
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, whose job has been to export
jihad; Qomi previously served as a liaison to Hizballah.[33]
Meanwhile, Italian intelligence reports show that many members
of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard moved into southern Iraq
in early 2004 to organize and train firebrand cleric Muqtada
al-Sadr's militia.[34]
By January
2004, the Badr Corps, trained and financed by Iran's Revolutionary
Guards, had painted murals commemorating Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini, the leader of Iran's Islamic Revolution, and displayed
a banner declaring, "No to America, no to Israel, no to occupation." The
Iranian government has not limited its support to a single
faction or party. Rather, Tehran's strategy appears to be to
support both the radicals seeking immediate confrontation with
the U.S. occupation and Islamist political parties like the
Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and
Ibrahim Jaafari's Da'wa Party. During the February 2005 United
Iraqi Alliance negotiations to nominate a prime minister, the
Iranian government exposed its strategy when it ordered SCIRI's
Adel Mehdi to step aside so that Jaafari could win, thereby
implicating both SCIRI and Da'wa as Iranian clients. The August
2, 2005 abduction and murder of independent journalist Steven
Vincent highlighted the growing problem of Shi'a militias and
death squads in southern Iraq.
While the
Iranian government may wish to subvert Iraq's democracy to
prevent a free Shi'a state from undercutting Iran's social
and religious foundations, the Syrian government has sought
to undercut Iraqi security in order to amplify its own political
importance and bog down American forces which it feels might
otherwise threaten the Syrian regime. After months of internal
U.S. debate about the degree of Syrian complicity in the insurgency,
General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
said, "We know for a fact that a lot of them [foreign fighters]
find their way into Iraq through Syria for sure."[35]
As the elected,
Shi'a majority government assumes power, the political conflict
between Baghdad and Amman will likely grow. Iraqi antipathy
toward Jordan is already high, because of a widespread belief
that the Jordanian government colluded with Saddam Hussein's
regime in order to receive discounted oil. Clumsy Jordanian
interference in Iraqi politics also backfired. King Abdullah
II has spun his theories at the White House, letting his personal
animus to Ahmad Chalabi color Jordanian policy toward Iraq.
The King's attempts to subsidize Arab nationalist politicians
led Iraq's interim governing council to revoke the license
of Jordan's Arab Bank to operate in Iraq. In December 2004,
he raised hackles in Iraq when he spoke of the danger of a "Shi'a
crescent," and, in a Spring 2005 Middle East Quarterly interview,
he again spoke out against the de-Ba'thification which so many
Iraqis demand. Jordan may be a key U.S. ally, but Amman has
its own regional interests which do not necessarily correlate
with the interests of either Washington or Baghdad. If Iraq
is to succeed, American policymakers should compartmentalize
their diplomacy, and give greater weight to Iraqi input rather
that of Iraq's neighbors. To do otherwise would both create
a perpetually weak Iraq and encourage external interference
in the country.
With the
exception of Turkey, none of Iraq's neighbors are democratic.
Strength matters in the Middle East. Autocrats prey on weak
neighbors. If Iraq is to succeed, it must be allowed to develop
an independent policy that, at times, may put it at odds with
its neighbors. This requires strength. While the newly-trained
Iraqi security forces can increasingly patrol the streets of
Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul, U.S. forces remain in the country,
albeit in the background. A long-term U.S. military commitment,
albeit one that is non-intrusive to most Iraqis, will enable
Iraq the space to develop its own identity and better immunize
Iraqi society from the interference of its neighbors. For a
continued U.S. presence to be palatable to Iraqis, U.S. officials
should formalize a Status of Forces Agreement governing the
presence of foreign troops. Many Iraqis would be amenable to
such a presence. In contrast, calls for a commitment to withdraw
completely from Iraq undercut stability and security on one
hand by encouraging insurgents that they can outlast the United
States in Iraq, and also by reinforcing the Iraqi psychosis
of abandonment that has remained ever since President George
H.W. Bush's decision not to support the 1991 Iraqi uprising
which he helped spark.
CONCLUSION
The future
of Iraq is anything but bleak. Newspapers carry headlines of
devastating suicide bombings. But as tragic as these events
are, Iraq has demonstrated a great deal of stability. Concerted
efforts to launch popular rebellions have fallen flat. The
insurgents still must enforce discipline through intimidation
rather than win converts through ideology. While Iraq's road
to democracy is anything but assured, Iraqis from a wide range
of backgrounds appear determined not to revert back to dictatorship.
The fracturing of Saddam Hussein's security system may have
made returning to dictatorship impossible. Many Iraqi political
leaders recognize the futility of civil war to impose one ethnic
or sectarian group's will upon other Iraqi regions, especially
since Kurds and Shi'a both increasingly favor regional federalism
and many Arab Sunnis, even if they say they oppose the idea,
nevertheless endorse its principles when they insist they do
not want Kurds or Shi'a to govern their daily lives.
Iraq has
come far in the two and a half years since the fall of Saddam
Hussein. There has been considerable political progress in
Iraq, evident not only in the electoral and constitutional
milestones, but also in the Iraqi willingness to compromise
and complain. The political process may not be efficient, but
most democracies are not. Rhetoric may be shrill. The politics
of brinkmanship often invites such positions. Brinkmanship
in and of itself is not a threat to Iraq's stability, so long
as Iraqis political factions ultimately respect the primacy
of the rule of law. For Iraqi political factions--especially
the predominantly Sunni Arab parties which may feel themselves
the losers in the new Iraq--to uphold the rule of law, it is
essential that U.S. policymakers do not pressure Iraqis to
compromise or reach consensus. In politics and democracy, some
factions win, others lose. So long as each has a chance to
reverse their political fortunes through the ballot box, there
should be no need to threaten, let alone resort to violence.
By responding to threats and seeking to impose a political
solution to Iraq's insurgency, U.S. policymakers encourage
violence, enable factions to augment their demands, and generally
undercut Iraq's political development.
Democracy
need not be forever a foreign concept in the Arab (and Kurdish)
world. Culturally, Arabs are as capable of democracy as were
Germans, Japanese, and Koreans. If Bush holds true to democracy
as a goal in Iraq, though, his administration should accept
that Iraqis may pursue some policies which contradict the desires
of the U.S. foreign policy elite. Washington should not seek
to impose re-Ba'thification or interfere in internal Iraqi
purges of insurgents and their sympathizers. The complaints
of outside parties like King Abdullah II are irrelevant; he
is not Iraqi. Defeating the insurgency can be tough; it may
require a decade. But if U.S. policymakers listen to the Iraqis,
the future can be bright.
*Michael
Rubin, resident scholar at the American Enterprise
Institute, is editor of the Middle East Quarterly.
NOTES
[1] "President
Congratulates Iraqis on Election," January 30, 2005. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/01/20050130-2.html.
[2] Leslie Gelb and Peter Galbraith, "Why January 30 Won't Work," The Los
Angeles Times, December 3, 2004.
[3] Juan Cole "Informed Comment" weblog, www.juancole.com/2005_01_01_juancole_archive.html.
[4] See Michael Rubin, "Academic Standards, RIP," Frontpage Magazine,
June 14, 2005 http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID-18419 (Review
of Rashid Khalidi's Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's
Perilous Path in the Middle East (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004).
[5] David Phillips, Losing Iraq (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press,
2005).
[6] Robert Pollock, "The Armchair Analyst," Wall Street Journal, May
10, 2005.
[7] See, for example, Jessica Mathews, "Iraqis Can do More," The Washington
Post, September 29, 2003; and Jessica Mathews, "Match Iraq Policy to Reality," The
Washington Post, September 23, 2004, both of which were based on a Defense
Department-sponsored trip subject to Defense Department security regulations.
[8] See, for example, Neila Charchour Hachicha, "Tunisia's Election was Undemocratic
at All Levels," The Middle East Quarterly (Summer 2005). www.meforum.org/article/732.
[9] Comments by a Baghdad-based New York Times correspondent in an interview
with an Iraqi political figure. Baghdad, January 8, 2005.
[10] Christine Chinlund, "Dateline: Baghdad," The Boston Globe, June
21, 2004.
[11] Michael Rubin, "Less is More in Iraq," The Washington Post, August
9, 2005. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/08/AR2005080801147.html.
[12] Paul Delgrado, "Shi'a Alliance Declared Winner of Iraq Election," The
Times, February 17, 2005.
[13] See, for example, Marina S. Ottaway, "Iraq Calls for Unhurried Negotiations,F" Financial
Times, July 20, 2005.
[14] Anthony Shadid, "Picnic is no Party in the New Basra," The Washington
Post, March 29, 2005.
[15] Ellen Knickmeyer and Omar Fekeiki, "Alcohol Banner in Baghdad Airport," The
Washington Post, July 30, 2005.
[16] See for example, the website of the multi-ethnic, multi-sectarian Women's
Alliance for a Democratic Iraq, www.wafdi.org.
[17] League of Nations, Report submitted to the Council by the Commission
instituted by the Council Resolution of September 30th, 1924.
Document C.400, M.147, vii (Geneva, 1925), as cited in David McDowall, A
Modern History of the Kurds. (London: I.B. Tauris, 1996), pp. 145-46.
[18] "Interview with Nasreen Mustafa Sideek, Kurdistan Regional Government
Minister of Reconstruction and Development," Middle East Intelligence Bulletin,
Vol. 3, No. 7 (July 2001). http://www.meib.org/articles/0107_iri.html.
[19] "Excerpts from Two Statements by Bush on Iraq's Proposal for Ending Conflict," The
New York Times, February 16, 1991.
[20] "Iraq Delays Vote on Draft Constitution," CNN.com, August 22, 2005.
[21] Bartle Breese Bull, "Islam, Federalism, and Oil," The Wall Street Journal,
August 17, 2005.
[22] Dan Murphy and Jill Carroll, "Why Iraq's Sunnis fear Constitution," Christian
Science Monitor, August 24, 2005.
[23] Dexter Filkins, "3 Sunni Election Workers Seized and Killed in Mosul," The
New York Times, August 20, 2005.
[24] Hannah Allam, "Saddam's Baath Party is Back in Business," Knight Ridder/Tribune
News Service, September 7, 2004.
[25] David Petraeus, "Lessons of the Iraq War and Its Aftermath" (Summary of
Remarks), Policywatch #855, April 9, 2004. The Washington Institute
for Near East Policy. www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=1733.
[26] Richard Oppel and James Glanz, "More Iraqi Army Dead Found in Mosul," The
New York Times, November 23, 2004.
[27] "Remarks by the President at National Republican Congressional Committee
Dinner," Office of the Press Secretary, April 1, 2004. www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040401-7.html
[28] "Many Say only Political Solution Possible in Iraq," Detroit Free
Press, June 13, 2005.
[29] "Ankara 'directionless' as US row over PKK deepens," Turkish Daily
News, August 24, 2005.
[30] See, for example, King Abdullah II, "Iraq is the Battleground: The West
against Iran," Middle East Quarterly (Spring 2005). www.meforum.org/article/688.
[31] "Rumsfeld tells Syria and Iran to stay out of Iraq war," Agence France
Presse, March 28, 2003.
[32] Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat, April 25, 2003.
[33] Al-Hayat, April 6, 2004.
[34] Candito Mimmo, "La Repubblica Islamica Muove le Sue Pedine Tentando di
non Scoprirsi con Washington I Lunghi fili dei burattinai di Teheran Un Confine
Senza Controlli e un Inviato Speciale di Khamenei," La Stampa, April
8, 2004.
[35] Robert Burns, "Marines said to have Tightened Iraqi Border with Syria,
but Taken More Casualties," Associated Press, April 16, 2004
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