Why Isn't It Working?

While I was never one to believe the "candy and flowers" scenario, to praise Ahmed Chalabi, or to purport that because Saddam Hussein was so bad anything that followed his removal would inevitably be better, there is some evidence in the region that suggests the possibility of successful nation-building in Iraq - specifically, the Kurdish region in the north, which has moved toward democracy and capitalism during the decade-long "no fly zone" when they were shielded from Hussein's regime and allowed to develop autonamous rule. So it seems fair to ask, why aren't other Iraqis inspired by that example? Why don't they trust our motives after seeing how much freedom and independence the Kurds now possess?

The answers to that are likely far more complex than I can fathom, with my limited knowledge of the region and its culture - if you want to review culturally attuned and timely analysis of developments in Iraq I recommend Juan Cole's weblog. However, some of the differences seem self-evident.

First, the Kurds were not offered autonomy as a result of an invasion and occupation of their lands, "secured" by large numbers of foreign troops on the ground, but received it as a result of their being protected by the "no fly zone", and further by local militias that developed during that period. They knew that there were limits on the sovereignty they could assert - they knew that they were not free to declare their own state - but beyond that were given great latitude in building their own national institutions, infrastructure and economy. They knew and obviously considered the preferences of their protectors, but chose their own path toward democratization.

Second, as I just suggested, the Kurds were given the right to rebuild their institutions and infrastructure in the manner of their choosing. Foreign contractors were not dropped into their midst to do the work for them, while they were kept at a distance by razor wire and armed guards.

Third, their economic position was significantly improved. Whereas previously they had been all but shut out of Iraq's economy, they received a share of the revenues raised through the sale of Iraqi oil under the UN sanctions. While far from rich, between that revenue and an improved climate for trade, they saw an overall improvement in their standard of living.

Contrast that with what happened in the rest of Iraq. We came in by force, and after dissolving the Iraqi military and attempting to disarm the militias, we left an enormous security void which still exists, and which still leaves many Iraqis afraid to leave their homes and parts of the country at the mercy of bandits. We have refused to let the Iraqi people have any say in the structure of the government which will replace Hussein's regime, and we selected a "council" to represent them from people whom we believed would accede to our wishes for the country. We did not permit them to rebuild their own country, instead bringing in outside contractors at extraordinary cost, and excluding many Iraqis from participating in reconstruction (while permitting some others to participate, but at best as subcontractors to the outside companies). Meanwhile, the Shia majority is told that it will have to accede to a form of government which "protects" the rest of the country from what it might do following truly popular elections, and the Sunni minority is marginalized with many people who could otherwise be active in reconstruction or the new government completely excluded from the process as a result of de-Baathification. While the Kurds gained both politically and economically from their democratization, both the Sunnis and Kurds are being asked to permanently surrender economic and political power.

In The New York Review of Books, Peter Gailbraith suggests that the best path toward a stable Iraq, from which we could safely withdraw our troops, would likely be the "loose federation" - essentially, three relatively autonomous regions with a limited federal government. He recognizes that this would create an Iraq that was more a nation in name than in reality, which in turn implicates the concerns raised by Juan Cole about a possible "three state solution".

It still bothers me that, beyond endorsing the band-aid of the day (presently, the hope that a UN negotiator can somehow achieve a consensus which moves Iraq toward a stable government) nobody in the Bush Administration seems to be doing any long-term planning or analysis about Iraq. We hear tired cliches about "getting the job done" and how bad it would be to "cut and run", but the pro-war factions have done an atrocious job of telling us how we will achieve the desired goals - well, really, they have been pretty much silent on the issue. The most sensible analysis seems to come from the people who were anti-war, not out of any desire that Hussein remain in power but out of fear of a difficult and perhaps catastrophic post-war occupation - people who, unfortunately, were intentionally marginalized by pro-war factions prior to the war, and whose opinions remain at the margins in no small part because the leaders of the U.S. and U.K. are too vain to admit their mistakes.

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