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Iraq: Progress, Not Civil War
While today’s headlines scream about the “lack of progress” in Iraq, Fouad Ajami, who teaches at Johns Hopkins University, writes today that Iraqis of all sects report progress, not civil war.
Mr. Ajami also points out that despite the caterwalling, Prime Minister Maliki is keenly aware of the debt Iraqis owe to America:
Mr. Maliki is not “America’s man in Iraq.” He had not been part of the American-sponsored opposition groups prior to the war of liberation. He is a man of the Shiite heartland; his peers in the Shiite political class are men of Baghdad, familiar with Western languages and ways. He is through and through a man of his culture, his Arabic exquisite and melodic. He takes in stride the sorts of things said about him by American officials and legislators. He is keenly aware of the debt owed America by his country–and by his own community, to be exact.
“We may differ with our American friends about tactics, I might not see eye to eye with them on all matters. But my message to them is one of appreciation and gratitude,” he said. ” To them I say, you have liberated a people, brought them into the modern world. They used to live in fear and now they live in liberty. Iraqis were cut off from the modern world, and thanks to American intervention we now belong to the world around us. We used to be decimated and killed like locusts in Saddam’s endless wars, and we have now come into the light. A teacher used to work for $2 a month, now there is a living wage, and indeed in some sectors of our economy, we are suffering from labor shortages.”
“I don’t believe that there is a military solution for our conflicts; we have to rehabilitate the troublemakers. We don’t arrest Baathists solely because they are Baathists, and the same must hold for those who belong to the Mahdi Army,” Mr. Maliki said.
He had courted the notables of the Anbar, he didn’t say, but I had been told that heavy subsidies had been made by his government to the Anbar tribal leaders; he had gone to the Anbar with substantial sums that had been paid to the sheikhs. But he looks with a jaundiced eye on arming Sunni “volunteers.” He dreads this, and says that this would be a disaster: “We will have come out of a hole only to descend into a deep well.” National reconciliation–the sword of Damocles held over his head by his American detractors–is not easy in a country “without a history of dialogue and give-and-take. This may require two or three years. Grant us time, and you will be proud of what you have helped bring forth here.”
The historical dilemma of his country was there for everyone to see: “For the Kurds, this is the time of taking, for the Shiite, this is the time of restitution, for the Sunnis this is the time of loss. But ours is one country, and it will have to be shared.”
Mr. Maliki recoils from the charge that his is a sectarian government; he notes with satisfaction that Gen. David Petraeus had exonerated the government of that charge. The Mahdi Army had won the war for Baghdad. This has had the paradoxical and beneficial outcome of making that militia unneeded and parasitical. It has given this government a measure of independence from the Sadrists.
Mr. Ajami then moves to the comments and thoughts of Vice President Mahdi:
“Historically we are winning.” The words were those of Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi. This is a scion of Baghdad Shiite aristocracy, at ease with French and English, a man whose odyssey had taken him from Marxism to the Baath, then finally to the Islamism of the Supreme Islamic Council.
“We came from under the ashes, and now the new order, this new Iraq, is taking hold. If we were losing, why would the insurgents be joining us?” He had nothing but praise for the effort that had secured the peace of Baghdad: “Petraeus can defend the surge,” he said. “He can show the ‘red zones’ of conflict receding, and the spread of the ‘blue zones’ of peace. Six months ago, you could not venture into the Anbar, now you can walk its streets in peace. There is a Sunni problem in the country which requires a Shiite initiative. The Sunni problem is power, plain and simple. Sunni society grew addicted to power, and now it has to make this painful adjustment.”
Mr. Mahdi was not apologetic about what Iraq offers the United States by way of justification for the blood and treasure and the sacrifice: “Little more than two decades ago, in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution and the Lebanon War of 1982, the American position in this region was exposed and endangered. Look around you today: Everyone seeks American protection and patronage. The line was held in Iraq; perhaps America was overly sanguine about the course of things in Iraq. But that initial optimism now behind us, the war has been an American victory. All in the region are romancing the Americans, even Syria and Iran in their own way.”
For the Sunni-ruled states in the region, he counseled an acceptance of the new Iraq. He looked with pride on his country, and on his city. He saw beyond Baghdad’s daily grief. “Baghdad is the heart of the Arab world, this was the hothouse of Arab philosophy and science and literature.”
Peace has not come to Iraq, the feuds have not fully burned out, but the center holds. The best of Iraq’s technocrats, deputy prime minister Barham Saleh, spoke of the new economic vitality of the provinces, of the recovery of regions once lost to darkness and terror. I brought back with me from Iraq a reminder that life renews in that land.
I attended the judicial tribunal that is investigating the crimes of Saddam Hussein’s cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, better know as Chemical Ali, and 14 other defendants being tried for deeds they committed back in 1991, in the aftermath of the first American war against Saddam Hussein. Chemical Ali had been one of the most dreaded “roosters” of the regime, a haughty killer. His attire was either Western suits or military uniforms. On the afternoon I went to watch his trial, he had shuffled in, leaning on a cane, all dressed in the traditional Arab way. The courtroom setting was one of immense decorum: a five-member panel of judges in their robes, the defense team on one side, the prosecutors on the other.
A lone witness, his face hidden from view behind a simple curtain, told of the cruelty he had seen a generation ago. He told of Chemical Ali executing people point-blank, after three Baathist women singled them out; he told of the burial of the victims on the grounds of a vocational school. He stood firm, the simple witness, when Chemical Ali tried to bully and ridicule him. He had no doubt about the memory of that day. He recalled Chemical Ali, he said, in his olive military uniform, and he correctly identified the rank of Chemical Ali. A policeman distributed bottled water to the defendants who once literally owned and disposed of the fate of this country. They were now being given the justice denied their victims . . . .