Iraq’s Future
It is still too early for many to realize what an earthquake in the Middle East the American takeover of Iraq represents. Every major Arab country is ruled by the same elite that have dominated their politics for 30 years or more. The Assads in Syria, the royal monarchies of Jordan and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, the Nasserite regime of Egypt, Qaddafi in Libya, and the FSLN regime in Algeria. Even the Palestinians have been dominated by Yasser Arafat for over 30 years. The end of the Baathist party and Saddam’s terror republic after 35 years in power represents the first break in the Middle East political system. The goal and hope of the neo-conservatives who launched this war is that it will not be the last.
For the first time, a major Arab country has had its political system up for grabs. Is the time right for a democracy to take roots? Can the Americans actually pull it off? And what will be the consequences for the Middle East? What will it mean for the Arab world when Baghdad is the focus of open political thought and debate, and every dissident in any Arab country will go there instead of London? What happens when average Arabs visit a Baghdad where issues are discussed freely by the people? What affect will that have when they take those experiences home with them?
The Arab world has a huge task in front of it. If it wasn¹t for oil wealth that has artificially boosted living standards, the Arab world would have been a failure of the first rank. It is shocking to realize that OPEC oil producers have earned over 5 trillion dollars in the last 30 years by selling crude oil to the West. What have they done with that money? Who benefited in the end? What kind of just and productive societies did they build? After all that wealth, did even one Arab state create a real functioning economy? Pakistan alone exports more industrial products than all 22 Arab countries combined! It also exports more agricultural products than all 22 Arab countries combined. Who is to blame for this failure? If Pakistan were to receive 5 trillion dollars over 30 years, I would hope we would have much more to show for it. Is there even one single decent research university in the Arab world? How many Arabs have won a Nobel Prize for science for work done in their own countries?
Instead of that, we have Shaykh Tantawi of Al-Azhar issuing an insipid fatwa in favor of suicide if carried out to kill American soldiers in Iraq. I wonder if the good Shaykh is going to be the first to carry out his ruling.
In the Arab media, the US occupation of Iraq is just a larger version of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. There are though several critical differences. The US is not making any claim to own Iraq or annex it into the US. The United States does not intend to build settlements on confiscated land, nor is it trying to deny Iraqis the right to live in their own country. The differences with the Israeli situation are quite large, and the fact that the standard of living of the average Iraqi will surge over the next 18 months, and probably double, will go a long way toward preventing the growth of illwill toward the US.
The United States may be in Iraq for a long time. And it may be there with the blessing of the Iraqi people. If the US handles its occupation of Iraq with the generosity and fair-mindedness that it displayed in West Germany, Italy, and Japan after World War II, it may create in Iraq and the Iraqi people an alliance that is as deep as the one that knitted those former enemies of the US into critical allies.
The immediate US plans are for American forces to establish basic security in the entire country and to restart the institutions of the state. These include police, justice, tax, education, transport, and healthcare. This phase of direct American rule may last 6-12 months. The US will then transfer authority to an un-elected Iraqi authority that will be selected through some process like the Afghan Loya Jirga in which major elements of Iraqi society are consulted, but no actual election. This government will then have partial control under American supervision, similar to the current situation in Afghanistan. Iraq will then write a new Constitution, and national elections will then take place in perhaps two or three years from now. At that point a sovereign elected government will assume full power. The role of the US will diminish, and depending on the US-Iraqi relationship and to what extent the US has created goodwill with the Iraqis, the US will substantially if not completely, withdraw from Iraq.
