Ahmad AgainChalabi's return and other good news from the Iraqi campaign.
Posted Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2005, at 9:38 PM ET
A time is approaching when those who speak so glibly about Muslim grievances and Muslim feelings are going to have to make up their minds. In Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has now issued two statements denouncing the very concept of "democracy" as a blasphemous Greek term alien to the Arab and Muslim world and inviting anathema and murder on all those who even rehearse for it. For good measure, he denounces Shiite Islam as a detestable heresy in itself. And for convenience, he names his organization "Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia," with what seems like the endorsement of Osama Bin Laden.
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StumbleUponOn the other side of this battle, senior Shiite clergy have described voting as a religious duty, have foresworn personal revenge on Sunni and Baathist elements, and have made public assurances that they do not wish for a Khomeini-style theocratic regime in their country. I don't think that voting is at all a religious duty, but in this context I see what they mean.
More and more, meanwhile, the media mantra about Iraq being divided among Sunni, Shiite, and Kurd is looking illogical and asymmetrical. It reminds me of that other misleading shorthand about Bosnia a decade or so ago, where the contending forces were identified as Serb, Croat, and Muslim. Obviously, one of these three categories is not congruent with the other two. In the Bosnian case, the "Muslims" were not ethnically or confessionally fundamentalist, whereas the Catholics and Orthodox Christians, or at least their leaderships, were. In the case of Iraq, it is scarcely ever pointed out that the majority of Kurds—20 percent of the population—are formally Sunni, while the "insurgents" are based on a minority of a minority—the Tikriti and other clan groups who were the clientele of the Baathist regime. No "insurgency" based on a minority of a minority has ever succeeded militarily, even if regularly resupplied from a friendly neighboring state. And this group has further isolated itself by making an alliance with imported Bin Ladenists: an alliance that (however often it is denied) was in fact the signature of the declining days of the Saddam dictatorship.
While the fascists and the fundamentalists make common cause in opting to ruin the society rather than let it breathe, the advance of semi-secular concepts among the Shiite majority and the Kurds is rather better than one might have dared to hope. In a rather bewildered tone, the New York Times has been reporting on the political renaissance of Ahmad Chalabi, now increasingly the public spokesman of the mainstream Shiite coalition and No. 10 on its electoral list. (Chalabi? But surely he is a discredited con man, tool of the neocons, stranded without a popular base and exposed as a trickster?) The Times having taken this view, it must seem odd when it discovers and reports that Chalabi has been sent by the Shiite leadership to tell Tehran to stay out of the process or that when he returned from Iran to defy the trumped-up CIA charges against him, he was given a Kurdish peshmerga escort all the way to Najaf. (For my previous pieces defending Chalabi, click here, here, and here.)
A photograph of Chalabi, addressing a large Shiite meeting in the south of Iraq, appeared in the Times of the Sunday before last. What the story did not say, in the words of one of his close aides to me recently, was that "Dr. C brought a group of Sunni leaders to the Shi'a heartland in order to show both sides that our list is not sectarian. We then took the Sunnis to Najaf to let them see the Imam Ali shrine for the first time in their lives. It was a great moment." This contrasts rather boldly with the pathetic liberal default position that violence, and ethnic and religious difference, demand that the elections be "postponed." To do so would be an open surrender to violence and, if sincerely meant, would further mean that no elections could ever be held, lest they inflame sectarian differences. These divisions arose, before we forget, as the consequence of a divide-and-rule fascist regime that engaged only in rigged plebiscites.
The best rumor of the week, maybe slightly too good to be true, is that after the vote the Shiites will support a leading Sunni Kurd for the presidency, with the prime ministership going to Adel Abdul-Mahdi, Chalabi, or another prominent secular Shiite. Remaining senior posts would go to men like Ghazi al Yawer, or other prominent Sunni social and tribal elements, who can help extend a hand to those many Sunni Iraqis who do not feel themselves represented by religious gangsterism and who see that the "Party of the Return" and other ex-Baathists offer only a dead end. (In this category, by the way, would belong the so-called "Association of Muslim Scholars," oft-quoted as authoritative but well-known to Iraqi Sunni bloggers as a clerical front group set up by Saddam himself.)
All this may seem optimistic in a week's time, but it is the way in which brave Iraqi democrats are actually talking. It's also mixed news for the Bush administration, which has identified itself far too closely with Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and his group. Not only has the CIA's hand-picked candidate been caught exporting vast quantities of cash in U.S. dollars, he has also been spreading no-bid contracts around the place and has used Iraqi media as if they were his own personal property. The recent boast of Allawi's defense minister—that he will arrest Chalabi if he goes on making a fuss about this—is likely to prove an empty one.
The extraordinary and undeniable thing is that, in a country that was dying on its feet and poisoning the region a couple of years ago, there is now a real political process that has serious implications for adjacent countries. The way back to Baathism and personal despotism is blocked, and the task of the clerical fanatics is in the long run an impossible one. (Ask yourself: When was the last time you read about Muqtada Sadr's supposedly unstoppable "Mahdi Army"?) Crudely but firmly, the coalition forces are meanwhile acting as the militia for those who have no militia. Whatever happens next week, this is some cause for pride.
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Remarks from the Fray:
…The key struggle within Iraq the past few months has been over the question of whether the Sistani government will hold to this promise to end the occupation peacefully. Such a result would kill the al Qaeda's goose that has been laying such golden eggs for them since March 2003. US out of Iraq means no insurgency, means the end of both this continuing military disaster for the US, and, much worse, the end of the prospect for reforming Iraq in the crucible of a guerrilla struggle against the US into a reborn Caliphate of primitive Islamic virtue. The US would be shown to be reasonable and responsive to moderate Arab and Muslim opinion. Can't have that! So al Qaeda has embarked on a campaign to so terrorize the Sistani faction that they will renege on their promise to boot out the US, and instead ask the US to stay on as their enforcers after the election. It may be working, as there are signs that Sistani is indeed softening on booting out the US.
Al Qaeda, and probably Sadr, would like to see Sistani become dependent on the US. They would like to see the Iraqi center not hold, but instead sell out to foreign, infidel imperialist crusaders. The better to crush this moderate solution of cooperating with the West, which they see as a cheat and an illusion anyway. I can't imagine a better way for al Qaeda to carry the point with the center of gravity of Iraqi opinion that cooperating with the US is indeed merely a front for stooging for them, than this vision that Hitchens endorses, of the US Army becoming Sistani's militia in Iraq's ongoing civil war. Get ready for the return of the (politically) unstoppable Mahdi Army, if this should transpire.
--gtomkins1
(To reply, click here)
…though I understand that Chris takes a smug joy in calling liberals "pathetic", it is a big stretch to say that the liberal "default position" on elections is to delay them. The "default position" of liberals is certainly that the country is a mess and the war has been handled badly and elections will be difficult (that should, really, be the "default position" of any thinking person), but many see that a delay would be fruitless, myself included. A long, hard slog, it will be indeed.
…Lest Chris forgets, the divisions in Iraq didn't start with Saddam. They started, in earnest, when British cartographers got together to draw arbitrary lines in the sand around their Middle East holdings, ensconcing tribes together in a nation-state that otherwise wouldn't have been eager to work with each other. So, when Chris blames Saddam's "divide and rule" strategy for the strife (another big stretch), he glazes over a chicken and egg question us "pathetic" liberals had at the onset of this war: did Saddam make Iraq into what it is, or did Iraq make Saddam into what he is?
--Plechazunga
(To reply, click here)
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