Rumored to be Iraq's next ambassador to the
United States, Dr Kanan Makiya, a formerly exiled Iraqi
intellectual best known as the author of Republic of
Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq, was one of the
strongest proponents of ousting Saddam Hussein through
invasion and still feels removing Saddam's tyrannical
regime was clearly the right thing to do. But while his
critics cite his close links to neo-conservatives in the
George W Bush administration as the reasoning behind
these sentiments, Makiya is by no means adverse to
dishing out some of his own criticism of the US's
handling of postwar Iraq.
Last Monday, at a
lecture hosted by the World Affairs Council of
Washington, DC, in Maryland, Makiya acknowledged the
precarious security situation in Iraq and the
insurgency's stubborn resilience. But he asserted that
the insurgency's threat is significantly limited by the
fact that it offers no political alternative to Iraqi
citizens. Fueled primarily by economic hardship and
anger at the foreign occupation, the insurgency cannot
win the support of Iraqis who wish to fight for
something, not merely against something.
While Makiya is confident that as material
conditions slowly but steadily improve for ordinary
Iraqis, and as the American occupation's profile
diminishes, the insurgency will collapse from its lack
of a constructive program, even if it takes several
years, he still insists that stabilizing Iraq is an
Iraqi matter, and it was a mistake on Washington's part
to not grant sovereignty to Iraqi leaders in the
immediate aftermath of the invasion. By establishing a
formal occupation authority, the Coalition Provisional
Authority (CPA), to dominate Iraqi affairs, the US gave
an unmistakable impression of naked self-interest that
would color Iraqi perceptions of its policies. Moreover,
by bungling an entire year's effort to establish
indigenous security forces, the CPA set the stage for
the sharp escalation of guerilla violence that engulfed
Iraq last spring.
But Makiya's CPA bashing,
given his close links to Bush administration neo-cons,
is viewed by some as a means to deflect blame from the
hawks, whose plan of handing sovereignty to Iraqis was
essentially to install Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi
National Congress (INC) to lead the country. More
realistic postwar planning, critics allege, was
deliberately tossed aside by the vehemently anti-Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), anti-State Department
neo-cons led by Vice President Dick Cheney and top
Pentagon civilians, Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith. But
while the INC was indeed a centerpiece of the hawks'
vision for the new Iraq, it is overly simplistic to lay
the blame for the postwar troubles squarely at its feet.
In a lengthy interview with PBS Frontline in
October 2003, Makiya drew attention to the fact that
owing largely to the State Department's tepid support
for liberal democracy in Iraq and the CIA's cynicism,
Iraqi exiles were not given a major role in liberating
the country. In fact, so strongly did he feel about this
that less than two weeks into the invasion itself,
Makiya had published an article in the Washington Post
decrying the lack of Iraqi opposition involvement in the
war.
What plagued both the invasion and
occupation from the beginning was the lack of
coordination between the neo-con and "realist" camps:
neither could accomplish much in isolation from the
other, yet the two had sharply contrasting priorities in
their planning. With the strategy for occupation
stovepiped high up, US commanders on the ground were
compelled to improvise in a fashion that typically could
not be tailored to boost Iraqis' responsibility for
their own security. As time passed, alienation between
US troops and Iraqi civilians rose, leading many
previously grateful Iraqis to view Americans as
occupiers.
Thus, as checkered as Prime Minister
Iyad Allawi's four-month interim authority has been, it
still represents the first small step toward empowering
Iraqis to take charge of their own destiny. And whether
or not one supported the decision to invade Iraq, making
the best of present realities should be of infinitely
greater concern.
In discussing the greatest
challenges to the new Iraq, Makiya singled out the rise
of sectarian identity and its potentially divisive role
in politics. The invasion, he stresses, opened a
Pandora's box of possibilities, the most unsettling of
which is the fragmentation of Iraq along its ethnic and
religious lines. A member of Iraq's Shi'ite Arab
majority, Makiya recognizes that a viable democratic
state will depend heavily on reassuring minorities,
particularly the once-dominant Sunni Arabs, that their
rights will be respected. Even if sectarian tensions do
not lead to civil war, they can greatly damage Iraq's
national integrity. A particularly disturbing scenario
cited by Makiya is that of Iraq's oil-rich southern
provinces demanding the lion's share of the
petro-dollars earned from their land: given that these
very provinces have already floated the idea of forming
an autonomous region modeled on that of the Kurds, the
concern is well-founded.
Only time will
vindicate Makiya's cautious optimism that the various
extremist elements in Iraq will ultimately be tamed.
Success depends on three factors. First, Iraqi security
forces must assume ever-greater duties in containing the
insurgency. Second, active support for the rebels must
remain on the fringes beyond the handful of flashpoint
cities in the Sunni triangle. Third, deals must be
struck with moderate resistance factions to co-opt them
into joining the political process, thereby robbing the
more implacable insurgents of a wider base of support.
Nowhere is the tightrope that the interim regime
now walks clearer than in the epicenter of the Sunni
insurgency, Fallujah. When asked what should be done
about Fallujah, Makiya bluntly replied that it was a
huge mistake to allow the city to fester as a haven for
violent religious fanatics. He blasted the decision to
form the Fallujah brigade headed by former Ba'ath
officers, a move which most now see as a desperate
stopgap measure that created more problems than it
solved. While insisting that the Fallujah rebels must be
dealt with very firmly, Makiya realizes that negotiation
must also figure prominently in resolving the crisis.
Asked about the openly pro-insurgent Association of
Muslim Scholars, he stated that it should be allowed to
express its views in a legitimate manner and flatly
denied the suggestion that the organization serves as a
political front for the rebels. This is consistent with
Allawi's ongoing engagement of nationalist insurgents
driven primarily by anger at the US occupation - most US
bombings of Fallujah have instead targeted Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi's heavily foreign fundamentalist network -
but the big question is whether or not the deals that
may be reached with homegrown rebels will be acceptable
to Washington. On no other issue is the potential clash
between Iraqi pragmatism and American prestige so acute.
Makiya admits that the successful
democratization of Iraq is not assured. He does,
however, offer an undogmatic defense of the
neo-conservative position on the war. For all the
blunders and disastrously wishful thinking that have
characterized the last 19 months, he says few would
argue that either Iraq or the world at large would be
better off with Saddam still in power, and that Iraq's
long-term prospects are not so bleak.
The Iraqi
experiment may yet fail, but a compelling argument can
nonetheless be made for any nation grappling with the
combined promise and peril of democratization: freedom
in itself may mean little, but without it a society
simply cannot achieve its potential. Regardless of
success or failure, nations need the liberty to try.
Pan Hu is an information-technology
analyst living in northern Virginia.
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