.Iraq Needs US Shield for Democracy to Work
BAGHDAD: Over the past five years, Iraq has tasted and rejected three distinctive doctrines, each violently imposed by outside forces. Iraqis now try to establish what type of nation they want to live in while under the protective shield of American power. The ultimate success of democracy in Iraq depends though on pragmatic and sustained support from the US.
Proponents of these three ideologies set out to create a post-Saddam Iraq in their own images: The brutal nihilism of Al Qaeda, forged in the mosques of Saudi Arabia and the caves of Afghanistan, tried to become patron to Iraq’s suddenly disenfranchised Sunni community. The neoconservative mission of instant privatization and elections, hatched inside the Washington beltway was left foundering on the edges of Iraq’s civil war.
Inflexible Shia conservatism, imported from Iran, has become marginalized because, given a choice, many Iraqi prefer dressing as they wish and celebrating with laughter and music.
While each largely failed, nothing has yet emerged unequivocally strong enough to take their place. Therefore, the three keep jostling for influence as Iraq goes through the next stage of transition that begins January 1st, 2009, and ends with withdrawal of US troops three years later. They key question, of course, is which model will have the most influence on Iraq’s long-term future when the Americans leave.
Part of the answer lies in the November 2008 vote that put a legislative seal on the US-Iraq bilateral deadline for US troop withdrawal, known as the Security Pact.
Most interestingly, the behind-the-scenes powerbroker in guiding the pact through the legislature was Shia cleric Grand Ayotallah Ali al-Sistani who holds enormous power. From his modest office in the holy city of Najaf, he insisted on national consensus and, therefore, would only support the pact if Sunni parliamentarians were on board.
This was a master-stroke of political nation-building as these were the very Sunni leaders who once boycotted elections while flirting with the Al Qaeda–inspired insurgency.
Before agreeing to support the Shia-led government, the Sunnis won a key concession in that the Security Pact will be the subject of national referendum in July 2009. The pact has become representative of how future power will be shared, andcentral to a transparent and vibrant democratic debate for months to come. The agreement of the Sunni leaders to adopt the Security Pact marks a significant defeat for Al Qaeda. It lost grassroots support within Sunni communities, has no sponsors within the political process and none, in any substantive way, from a foreign government. Militarily, it’s been routed mainly to pockets around the northern city of Mosul.
The prospect of Iraq being partitioned or collapsing to become a Taliban-esque society has vanished. But that doesn’t mean Al Qaeda’s ability for violence is gone. It still routinely explodes vehicles and deploys suicide bombers, but with less capability than before.
The Security Pact vote also dealt a critical blow to inflexible Shia conservatism represented by radical cleric Moqtada Al Sadr, with Sadrist legislators who hold 30 of the 275 seats in the legislature marginalized.
The Sadrist militia, the Mehdi army that once held a sway of terror, suffered military defeat in April in an Iraqi government-initiated offensive known as the Charge of the Knights. The Mehdi Army and Sadrist legislators are loyal to Al Sadr, a protégé of Iran, whose flip-flopping of whether he wants to work inside or outside the democratic process has lost him much ground.
His political wing represents a rump legislative minority, and the older, more experienced Al Sistani demonstrates far greater influence over Iraq’s mainstream Shia thinking.
But as with Al Qaeda, that does not mean that Al Sadr or other extreme pro-Iranian Shia elements do not remain a threat.
US intelligence officials say that after the April military offensive, many Mehdi army militia fled to Iran. They receive training in special camps set up around Qom, Tehran, Ahvaz and Masshad, as well as in Lebanon’s Bekkah Valley under the tutelage of Hezbollah. These insurgents are believed to filter back into Iraq to operate in sophisticated and secretive four- or five-member cells. One tactic for destabilizing the government is occasionally to fire Iranian-made rockets into the Green Zone with lethal results.
Many in the intelligence community believe, however, that Iran will not use this militia with the symbolic cruelty of Al Qaeda, but rather deploy it as a “soft power” weapon with a constant underlying threat of violence that may become an unpalatable reality in Iran’s long-term relationship with both Iraq and the United States – much like Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The clear winner from the Security Pact vote are the democratic institutions – a legacy of the original neoconservative vision leading to the Iraq invasion, but one with too much bloodshed attached to permit any note of triumphalism.
The 11th-hour dealmaking between rival politicians, whose previous intellectual comfort zone was a warning of violence, underlines a truth that Iraq’s fractious communal-based parties believe they are now part of a non-violent mechanism that can deliver results. America must build on this for the Iraq mission to succeed, and it also offers broader lessons for other foreign-policy challenges.
The way forward for the Obama administration is to bring about a subtle shift of how the US deals with the developing world, mainly acknowledging that the recent success in Iraq was built not on dogma and personalities, but pragmatism and institutions.
Obama, who campaigned on opposing the war, may have to persuade supporters that the Iraq mission can work if given patience and resources lasting up to three more decades. They must allow decisions to be made on the basis of what’s actually happening in Iraq. Resources should be allocated by possible progress, not by the level of threat to US interests.
Success will be determined by how much Iraqis’ own loyalty shifts from tribal and religious consideration to national interest. In essence, the regeneration of cities with infrastructure and commerce must become more visible than protection through checkpoints and concrete bomb-blast walls.
America has achieved this before, although not under the glare of 24-hour television news. It restructured Japan and Europe after the Second World War with durable institutions. It mentored South Korea and Taiwan from being broken, violent societies to flourishing new democracies. While losing Vietnam, America went on to guide East and South East Asia to create an engine of economic growth and relative stability in the developing world – albeit not in the neoconservative vision.
US political leaders could perhaps take a lead from counterparts they trained in Iraq. When debating Iraq’s future, Iraqi and US leaders must not make comparisons to Vietnam or Palestine, but to Taiwan and South Korea.
Voters in both countries have to be persuaded to stay the course. In the US, they may be tempted to abandon Iraq because of the difficulties; in Iraq, they may be lured back to the AK-47 or a dictator’s certainty because democracy’s lack of clarity does not deliver what they want.
America must not do what it’s done before in the post–Cold War arena. In 1989, the US failed to build institutions in Pakistan, now one of the gravest threats to global security. In 2003, it took its eye off Afghanistan to concentrate on Iraq, and the Taliban once again encircle Kabul.
If the US retains focus on Iraq, a beacon of democracy might eventually be established. Otherwise, other doctrines that filled the post-invasion vacuum may get a second wind to wage war and instability.
YaleGlogal
Proponents of these three ideologies set out to create a post-Saddam Iraq in their own images: The brutal nihilism of Al Qaeda, forged in the mosques of Saudi Arabia and the caves of Afghanistan, tried to become patron to Iraq’s suddenly disenfranchised Sunni community. The neoconservative mission of instant privatization and elections, hatched inside the Washington beltway was left foundering on the edges of Iraq’s civil war.
Inflexible Shia conservatism, imported from Iran, has become marginalized because, given a choice, many Iraqi prefer dressing as they wish and celebrating with laughter and music.
While each largely failed, nothing has yet emerged unequivocally strong enough to take their place. Therefore, the three keep jostling for influence as Iraq goes through the next stage of transition that begins January 1st, 2009, and ends with withdrawal of US troops three years later. They key question, of course, is which model will have the most influence on Iraq’s long-term future when the Americans leave.
Part of the answer lies in the November 2008 vote that put a legislative seal on the US-Iraq bilateral deadline for US troop withdrawal, known as the Security Pact.
Most interestingly, the behind-the-scenes powerbroker in guiding the pact through the legislature was Shia cleric Grand Ayotallah Ali al-Sistani who holds enormous power. From his modest office in the holy city of Najaf, he insisted on national consensus and, therefore, would only support the pact if Sunni parliamentarians were on board.
This was a master-stroke of political nation-building as these were the very Sunni leaders who once boycotted elections while flirting with the Al Qaeda–inspired insurgency.
Before agreeing to support the Shia-led government, the Sunnis won a key concession in that the Security Pact will be the subject of national referendum in July 2009. The pact has become representative of how future power will be shared, andcentral to a transparent and vibrant democratic debate for months to come. The agreement of the Sunni leaders to adopt the Security Pact marks a significant defeat for Al Qaeda. It lost grassroots support within Sunni communities, has no sponsors within the political process and none, in any substantive way, from a foreign government. Militarily, it’s been routed mainly to pockets around the northern city of Mosul.
The prospect of Iraq being partitioned or collapsing to become a Taliban-esque society has vanished. But that doesn’t mean Al Qaeda’s ability for violence is gone. It still routinely explodes vehicles and deploys suicide bombers, but with less capability than before.
The Security Pact vote also dealt a critical blow to inflexible Shia conservatism represented by radical cleric Moqtada Al Sadr, with Sadrist legislators who hold 30 of the 275 seats in the legislature marginalized.
The Sadrist militia, the Mehdi army that once held a sway of terror, suffered military defeat in April in an Iraqi government-initiated offensive known as the Charge of the Knights. The Mehdi Army and Sadrist legislators are loyal to Al Sadr, a protégé of Iran, whose flip-flopping of whether he wants to work inside or outside the democratic process has lost him much ground.
His political wing represents a rump legislative minority, and the older, more experienced Al Sistani demonstrates far greater influence over Iraq’s mainstream Shia thinking.
But as with Al Qaeda, that does not mean that Al Sadr or other extreme pro-Iranian Shia elements do not remain a threat.
US intelligence officials say that after the April military offensive, many Mehdi army militia fled to Iran. They receive training in special camps set up around Qom, Tehran, Ahvaz and Masshad, as well as in Lebanon’s Bekkah Valley under the tutelage of Hezbollah. These insurgents are believed to filter back into Iraq to operate in sophisticated and secretive four- or five-member cells. One tactic for destabilizing the government is occasionally to fire Iranian-made rockets into the Green Zone with lethal results.
Many in the intelligence community believe, however, that Iran will not use this militia with the symbolic cruelty of Al Qaeda, but rather deploy it as a “soft power” weapon with a constant underlying threat of violence that may become an unpalatable reality in Iran’s long-term relationship with both Iraq and the United States – much like Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The clear winner from the Security Pact vote are the democratic institutions – a legacy of the original neoconservative vision leading to the Iraq invasion, but one with too much bloodshed attached to permit any note of triumphalism.
The 11th-hour dealmaking between rival politicians, whose previous intellectual comfort zone was a warning of violence, underlines a truth that Iraq’s fractious communal-based parties believe they are now part of a non-violent mechanism that can deliver results. America must build on this for the Iraq mission to succeed, and it also offers broader lessons for other foreign-policy challenges.
The way forward for the Obama administration is to bring about a subtle shift of how the US deals with the developing world, mainly acknowledging that the recent success in Iraq was built not on dogma and personalities, but pragmatism and institutions.
Obama, who campaigned on opposing the war, may have to persuade supporters that the Iraq mission can work if given patience and resources lasting up to three more decades. They must allow decisions to be made on the basis of what’s actually happening in Iraq. Resources should be allocated by possible progress, not by the level of threat to US interests.
Success will be determined by how much Iraqis’ own loyalty shifts from tribal and religious consideration to national interest. In essence, the regeneration of cities with infrastructure and commerce must become more visible than protection through checkpoints and concrete bomb-blast walls.
America has achieved this before, although not under the glare of 24-hour television news. It restructured Japan and Europe after the Second World War with durable institutions. It mentored South Korea and Taiwan from being broken, violent societies to flourishing new democracies. While losing Vietnam, America went on to guide East and South East Asia to create an engine of economic growth and relative stability in the developing world – albeit not in the neoconservative vision.
US political leaders could perhaps take a lead from counterparts they trained in Iraq. When debating Iraq’s future, Iraqi and US leaders must not make comparisons to Vietnam or Palestine, but to Taiwan and South Korea.
Voters in both countries have to be persuaded to stay the course. In the US, they may be tempted to abandon Iraq because of the difficulties; in Iraq, they may be lured back to the AK-47 or a dictator’s certainty because democracy’s lack of clarity does not deliver what they want.
America must not do what it’s done before in the post–Cold War arena. In 1989, the US failed to build institutions in Pakistan, now one of the gravest threats to global security. In 2003, it took its eye off Afghanistan to concentrate on Iraq, and the Taliban once again encircle Kabul.
If the US retains focus on Iraq, a beacon of democracy might eventually be established. Otherwise, other doctrines that filled the post-invasion vacuum may get a second wind to wage war and instability.
YaleGlogal
posted by madtom at 3:17 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home