For
nearly 15 months, opponents of the invasion of Iraq have
pilloried the US-led coalition's clumsy nation-building
efforts - a comedy of errors pointedly lampooned in a
skit on Comedy Central's Daily Show entitled
"Mess-O-Potamia". But this season of refined
schadenfreude should not obscure the fact that the
removal of Saddam Hussein still promises a strategic
victory of sorts for the US.
Iraq may not become
a beacon of democracy any time soon - Larry Diamond, who
worked on democracy issues for the now defunct Coalition
Provisional Authority, said recently a "semi-democratic
outcome" was realistic - but that the goal was always
the icing on the cake.
Members of the Bush
administration have consistently stressed the importance
of removing Iraq as "a source ... of instability from
the Middle East", as Bush reiterated to an audience in
February. That mission is still on course. Newly
"sovereign" Iraq has been transformed from "rogue state"
to a failed state at worst, and a future US ally at
best.
The political and strategic future of Iraq
will be mapped by the US-installed interim government,
backed by a conspicuous US military and economic
presence. Together they will prepare the political
landscape in advance of January 2005 elections, and
begin to shape Iraq's new role in the international
arena. To that end, Iraq's appointed interim leaders
have predicted a future alliance with the US. Interim
President Ghazi Yawar spoke of a "strategic friendship"
on June 6, language that suggests Iraq will join the
club of US Arab allies like Egypt and Jordan, and lend
its weight to the pro-US Gulf Cooperation Council block.
Thus Iraq's life as a state with the potential to
project military or economic resources in opposition to
US regional goals appears to be over.
Turning
Iraq outside-in For much of its modern history,
especially after the 1958 revolution, Iraq has been a
paradigmatic nonaligned state, leveraging its resources
and strategic location to become a regional power.
Republican Iraq brimmed with a sense of regional
entitlement, and the oil boom of the late 1970s allowed
Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath regime to make a bid for
hegemony in the Gulf. Though debilitated by war with
Iran in the 1980s, Iraq emerged from the end of the Cold
War more powerful than its immediate Arab neighbors, an
uncomfortable state of affairs for Iraq's Western
patrons. In the end, however, the dictator's egomaniacal
invasion of Kuwait led his country first into the
captivity of sanctions and finally into conquest. The
unpredictable rogue has today been turned inside-out. An
Iraq convulsed by insurgency has little time for
regional scheming, and its political discourse emits a
scant echo of the defiant past.
While the United
Nations has granted interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi
"full sovereignty" over Iraq's external affairs,
constitutional limits and American influence limit his
exercise of that purview. His successor in the
transitional government will have fuller authority on
paper. But even so, it is an open question as to how
independent Iraq can or will be on the international
stage. Can Iraq's leaders play a role in the Arab League
or the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
that clashes with US priorities? Will Iraq ally with
France, Russia or China? Could Iraq lead a rejectionist
front against Israel as it has in the past if it wished
to? The likely answers are that Iraq's leaders will have
neither the capacity nor the will to assert themselves
in opposition to US regional goals.
The main
reason for this is the inertia of the current political
process. A new, externally-supported Iraqi elite has
been ensconced, one whose ideology was shaped by
opposition to Saddam and long sojourns in the West. Five
of the interim government's six top posts - including
former Central Intelligence Agency asset Allawi - are
former exiles. Some, including the national security
advisor and national intelligence chief, were handed
five-year terms in office through last-minute edicts
from departed US proconsul L Paul Bremer, meaning that
they will serve in the elected government as well, even
though they they will not have been chosen by the
people. The now-defunct 25-member Iraqi Governing
Council also granted itself seats on Iraq's Interim
National Council, the 100-member legislative body that
will be chosen in July.
Bremer's nearly 100
last-minute edicts, combined with previous legislation,
set Iraq's course. The interim constitution (or
Transitional Administrative Law - TAL) bans former
Ba'ath Party members from running for office and seeks
to circumscribe the military's traditional influence on
politics. In addition, Bremer signed a sweeping election
law on June 15, creating an election commission with the
power to disqualify candidates and political parties.
Militia members have also been banned from running for
office for three years, a provision apparently aimed at
anti-US Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. There is, as of
yet, no indication that Iraq's new leaders have either
the political will or desire to undo these restrictions.
Crucially for the conduct of foreign policy,
Iraq's new elite govern a highly fractured polity in
which even fundamental issues like the nation's
territorial integrity and national identity are up for
grabs. The empowerment of the Kurds, for instance, has
resulted in Iraq being constitutionally decentralized.
The sea change is such that Iraq has gone from a
doctrinal Arab nationalist state to one in which "the
Arab people in Iraq" as opposed to the territorial
state, "are an inseparable part of the Arab nation",
according to the TAL. Constructing a unified,
independent foreign policy around the newly exposed
ethnic and sectarian fissures will be challenging.
Recent reports of Israeli support for the Kurds are an
early example of possible worst-case scenarios.
Iraq's rulers no longer have the military
capacity to put down a potent insurgency, much less play
a regional role. They assume office relying on US
military power to stay alive, yet de-legitimized by
doing so. In desperation, Allawi's government is
contemplating martial law, though it is not clear what
force would impose it. That move may include a ban on
demonstrations, further narrowing the political space of
the government's opponents.
A symbiotic
relationship thus exists between with the new government
and the "multinational" force, which still controls
Iraq's air and seaports. Acknowledging this, Deputy US
Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz told the US Congress
on June 22 that US forces could be in Iraq for years.
Though Ghazi Yawar calls this arrangement a "joint
venture", it is not an equal partnership. With 160,000
troops, all immune from prosecution in Iraqi courts by
Bremer decree, the US is easily the senior member.
Iraq's nascent army will comprise, at most, 40,000 men
(from a pre-war force of 400,000) and, with the help of
Iraq's other fledgling security forces, concentrate not
on protecting Iraq's borders, but battling Iraq's
rebels.
As the Iraqi forces begin their perilous
journey to self-sufficiency, the UN Security Council has
given their US-led counterparts the authority to "take
all necessary measures" to maintain security. Iraq has
no veto on ongoing US military operations, like the
recent air strikes on Fallujah, which, in any event,
Allawi welcomed with alacrity. Indeed, Allawi has
branded the insurgents the "enemies of God", thus
outdoing President George W Bush, who told Paris Match
that not all of them are "terrorists". Some just "don't
like to be occupied", he said.
There have been
reports that the new Iraqi government is chafing at the
military constraints. Patrick Seale reported in al-Hayat
that Allawi wants to build Iraq's army back to "a force
of 250,000, with heavy armor and an air force", a plan
that resulted in a "heated" disagreement between Allawi
and Wolfowitz. To forestall Iraqi rearmament, he
reports, the coalition signed Iraq up to an exclusive
two-year contract with American arms supplier Anham
Joint Venture. With America as its chief arms broker,
Iraq will enter the same dependency circle that binds
once-powerful US allies like Egypt. It should also be
noted that military sanctions on Iraq were never lifted,
and are unlikely to be if Iraq's foreign policy doesn't
comport to US prerogatives.
In addition to
confining Iraq's conventional capabilities, Iraq's
commitment to the non-proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) has been enshrined in the TAL. Though
reasonable in theory, this constriction takes place in
an arena in which Israel, Iraq's archenemy, now has
overwhelming conventional superiority, and an impressive
WMD stockpile of its own. Iran, Iraq's old nemesis, may
also be on the verge of going nuclear.
Oil is,
of course, at the crucible of Iraq's reorientation.
Iraq's oil industry is a shambles, but the oil will
eventually flow at full tilt, giving a boost to depleted
world markets, which reacted well to the new
government's inauguration. And it will be a pro-US
regime, not the capricious Saddam with his finger on the
tap - as recently as April 2002 Saddam committed the
heresy of halting production to protest Israel's
oppression of the Palestinians.
Iraq's interim
oil minister has hinted at a reinvigoration of the Iraqi
National Oil Company, indicating that fears of a
privatization and sell-off are premature. But even if
the oil industry remains in Iraqi hands, it is likely to
empower a new oligarchy under the patronage of the
US-friendly regime. One example of how patronage
networks have already sprouted is the recent,
clandestine sale of Iraq's air industry to a single
Iraqi family in a non-competitive bidding process.
Iraq's economic reliance on the US to rebuild
its shattered infrastructure will limit its room for
maneuvering. As Rajiv Chandrasekaran wrote in the
Washington Post on June 20, Iraqis still "endure
blackouts, lengthy gas lines, [and] rampant
unemployment". Newly sworn in US ambassador John
Negroponte, his pockets brimming with some US$15 billion
in aid, will be an indispensable powerbroker. Bremer
also left his stamp on the interim period by allocating
nearly $2.5 billion of the government's 2005 oil budget
just prior to the handover.
Though Iraq has not
become the model free-market economy the Bush
administration dreamt of, it has begun to shed Saddam's
Ba'ath socialism. Even as Iraqis struggle to find clean
water, Bremer has trumpeted lower tax rates, liberalized
foreign investment laws, regulation of private
corporations, and the reduction of import duties he
introduced. Privatization may have slowed, but a new
economy is being created. Iraq is being inexorably
globalized, and its sovereignty will ebb as
transnational capital flows in.
Taming of the
rogue Iraq's regional role has had tragic
consequences for Iraqis and their neighbors under
Saddam. His regime cannibalized its citizens for the
sake of external ambition, and many of them would simply
want to focus on making their daily bread. But
widespread passive, if not active, support for the
insurgency bespeaks a collective cynicism in the motives
of the "liberators" and the exiles that rode in with
them. Most Iraqis assume the US came for the oil, and to
weaken Iraq vis-a-vis Israel, and they don't necessarily
see a harmony of interests with America when it comes to
foreign policy.
Given Iraqis' nationalist
sentiment, America's potential success in adding their
country to its collection of Arab allies is impressive.
But it's hardly surprising. The neo-conservatives are
grand strategists at heart, after all - they are most at
ease when huddled over maps, pushing plastic armies. But
even this grand portion of their grandiose design may
yet fail. The insurgents could win. Allawi's elected
successors could shrug off dependency and chaos to
reassert Iraq's historic role. Either way, long-term
instability will likely spread at the substrata, with
increased militancy particularly acute in the
US-dominated Gulf. For now, however, it's mission
accomplished.
Ashraf Fahim is a
freelance writer on Middle Eastern affairs based in New
York and London.
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The taming of the
rogue
