Democracy in Iraq - what are the odds?
An impassioned and moving plea from Barham A. Salih, co-prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq:

Those are excellent reasons for overthrowing Saddam Hussein. As we all know, there are other powerful reasons, too — most notably the desire of my people to be free from repression and to plant the seeds of democracy in soil that has for too long been given over to tyranny.

Meanwhile, the Saudis warn that postwar Iraqi factions will spell trouble.
Says the Arab News:

Saudi Arabia said yesterday that it feared a US-led war on Baghdad would set out a turmoil in the volatile region and transform Iraq into another Afghanistan with rival ethnic and religious factions fighting for power.

“If things fall apart, who will come back and bring it all back together?” Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal asked while addressing a news conference.

“All the factions inside Iraq will present their visions for a new government like they did in Afghanistan. These are the consequences of a conflict, and if that happens, it will result in the division of Iraq,” he said.

This is exactly my greatest concern about the coming Iraq campaign. The conduct of the actual military phase will be brief. It won't be bloodless or painless for either side, but I don't think it will be a prolonged abattoir, either. But what happens then?

Not all of even the most rabid Iraqi opponents of Saddam Hussein are friends of America or wish for American-style democracy. The organizing principle inside Iraq has always been the tribe. Political idealism as we know it has no history there. In fact, citizenship as we know it has no history there. The boundaries of Iraq were drawn up by the British after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. In the West, citizenship is by definition territorial; it was the shared territorial identity among different people, unified by language and religion, that gave rise to the modern nation state. This territorial loyalty did not arise from nationhood, it was a precondition of nationhood. But the tribes of Iraq have never thought of themselves as common citizens of the entire territory bounded by the British-drawn lines on the map. Tribal territorial loyalties are far more limited than that. Hence, whatever loyalty Iraqis have for "Iraq" as a nation has been imposed from above, not grown from below.

It does not help that the Iraqi people have never known a government that was staffed from the top down with public servants; what they have known is imperial rule and dictatorship. So any democratic-type government that might be instituted is handicapped at the outset: the people will not invest their full trust and confidence in it right away because all their governments have proven to be untrustworthy and oppressive. And the people elected to the actual offices will not take them understanding what it means to be a democratically elected office holder.

So will there be Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq? I don't think so. Maybe the best we can hope for is a confederation of tribal regions, united only in their desire to share in oil profits. I don't see a successful federal system being emplaced there. The boundary lines of "Iraq" on the map will be merely the limits of centripetal expansion of tribal regions. They will define the limits outside of which tribal frictions and conflicts may not spill. But inside the external boundary of Iraq there is real danger of violence as competing claims are settled. And American troops will be caught in the middle.

For once, the Saudis most likely have it right - on this issue. The rest of their position as explained in the link is highly suspect.

My bottom line analysis: Something close enough to democracy as we understand it is a reality now in the Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq. I think that the various factions among Iraqi exile groups and populations will try to set up a federal-type Iraqi government under the aegis of the American occupiers, but the attempt will ultimately fail.


by Donald Sensing, 2/6/2003 08:37:16 AM. Permalink |