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Enter a unifier and a
healer
By Ehsan Ahrari
Ibrahim Jaafari is the United Iraqi
Alliance' (UIA's) unanimous choice for the
premiership of Iraq. He is not a novice, in the
sense that he was long in opposition to Saddam
Hussein's rule. He served as vice president in the
interim Iraqi government. His Da'wa (Islamic Call)
Party has long advocated an Islamic government;
however, that aspiration is either tempered or
even abandoned when faced with the awesome
responsibility of governing Iraq. Whatever the
reason, Jaafari has an enormous task ahead of him
if he emerges as the ultimate candidate. And the
chances of that are quite good as he should easily
see off a challenge from interim Prime Minister
Iyad Allawi.
The United States has been
clearly disappointed by the fact that its
hand-picked choice, Allawi, made a poor showing in
the elections. Then Washington went back to the
Pentagon's former golden boy, Ahmad Chalabi.
However, considering the baggage that Chalabi
carries with him, there was no chance that he was
going to be anyone else's choice for premier, save
the Bush administration's. Iraqis in general hated
him, and even in the Shi'ite community he was not
popular.
Jaafari has demonstrated his
sophistication as a candidate for the job for
several days, if not weeks. Indeed, if one had any
doubts regarding the potential emergence of the
UIA as a viable ruling party in Iraq, those doubts
should have been dispelled right after the
elections. The party has made it known its
readiness to be all-inclusive and shunned from all
manifestations of parochialism. The all-inclusive
aspect of its characteristic was clear by its
readiness to go out of its way in actively seeking
the cooperation of the Sunni minority, a group
that boycotted the election and then showed deep
resentment about the possibility of the emergence
of Shi'ite dominance in the next government.
The UIA acted as if the Sunni resentment
was not even there. It has made it clear that it
has every intention of making the Sunnis a real
partner in the next government. The UIA's spurning
of parochialism will be further demonstrated in
its refusal to entertain any ideas that would
jeopardize the unity of Iraq. The Kurdish groups
had better re-examine all their aspirations that
even remotely resemble the weakening the integrity
of Iraq.
The administration of US
President George W Bush has been besieged by a
number of questions related to Jaafari, his Da'wa
Party and the UIA. The question that is uppermost
in Washington now is whether the UIA's commitment
to avoid establishing an Islamic government in
Iraq is real. Jaafari has shown special
sensitivity to this issue. In fact, he recently
made quite a revealing comment in this regard. He
said, "Every country has its own character. Not
all Iraqis are Muslims. Not all Muslims are
Shi'ite. Not all Shi'ites are Islamic. We have to
have a system that is open to all components of
society."
The next significant question in
Washington is how close Iraq will get to Iran. In
the Pollyannaish world of the neo-conservatives
there is no room for any nuanced approach toward
Iran. Either a country can be a friend of the US
and enemy of Iran, or vice-versa. There is no way
any country can be a friend of Iran and remain
close to the US. It is a sort of rehashing of what
the world looked like when seen from inside
Washington during the early phase of the Cold War.
No country could be a friend of both the US and
the USSR. The Non-Aligned Movement was envisaged
as something immoral. John Foster Dulles, US
president Dwight Eisenhower's secretary of state,
was more blunt about that depiction than other
secretaries of state. However, that frame of
reference prevailed throughout the Cold War years.
Now the Bush administration is applying a similar
type of litmus test to any country that wishes to
befriend Iran.
To Jaafari, such a frame of
reference is not likely to be too pertinent,
germane or relevant. He has shown every desire to
maintain a distance with Iran, yet not becoming
unfriendly or hostile to it. After all, the
Shi'ite bondage between the two neighboring states
has centuries of history behind it. It is not
likely to be abandoned just to please the Bush
administration.
The third question that is
bothering the US administration is how cooperative
Jaafari is likely to be regarding approving the
military actions of US forces inside Iraq. It is a
well-known fact that on the issue of cooperating
with the Americans, Allawi never allowed any room
for second-guessing. In fact, his poor showing in
the elections had a lot to do with the fact that
he could never shed the public perception that he
was a US puppet. Jaafari has witnessed first-hand
what mistakes Allawi made in this regard, and he
will do everything to avoid them. What that means
is that US military actions in Iraq will not be
granted automatic approval a la Allawi.
The fourth question that is troubling
Washington is how soon the new government under
the premiership of Jaafari will demand an ouster
of Western forces. On this issue, the US might not
have to worry too much. Given the intense
activities of the Iraqi insurgents, no Iraqi
government in its right mind would want the
Western forces to leave. Besides, what forces are
going to replace them? No one expects the military
forces from Arab countries to play that role. In
the coming weeks and months, some new
understanding between the Jaafari government and
the Bush administration has to emerge, even some
sort of a timetable. However, one cannot
realistically talk about any such timetable unless
the Iraqi forces are militarily sophisticated
enough to defend themselves against the domestic
insurgency. That reality might not emerge for at
least next five years. Thus Jaafari has to decide
how realistically his potential demand for any
timetable for the ouster of Western forces is
likely to be.
In an ironic way, the Iraqi
insurgents might be the reason any new Iraqi
government would be forced to accept the presence
of Western forces in their country for quite a
while. But even by allowing the Western forces to
remain and defend Iraqi sovereignty, the next
government has to ensure that its own legitimacy
in the eyes of its citizens is not blemished. And
Jaafari might turn out to be the prime minister to
perform that balancing act in the coming months.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an
Alexandria, Virginia, US-based independent
strategic analyst.
(Copyright 2005
Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us for information on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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