It’s a truism of counter-insurgency warfare that political and military strategies must be coordinated and reinforce one another. Traditionally, this meant that military operations should minimize harm and humiliation of civilians who could otherwise support the insurgency. It also meant that civilians who supported the regime needed to be protected from insurgents, who would otherwise compel them to support the insurgency either by cultivating their good will or through pure terror. Finally, it meant that political goods such as schools, hospitals, roads, and the like needed to be delivered to fence-sitters so that they would realize the benefits of loyalty to the government. This amounted to the classic combination of “carrot and stick.”
The military and political strategy of the allies’ counter-insurgency in Iraq has been unique. The usual provision of security, protection, and other essential government services by the US occupiers, and now the nascent Iraqi regime, has been far from adequate, consistently hampered by the security meltdown following the fall of Saddam’s regime. US troops are described as visiting certain locales every few months. Even in towns where US troops maintain a substantial presence, government supporters are routinely gunned down and terrorized in their unsecured urban neighborhoods. While US troops occasionally rebuild schools and engage in other laudable civil affairs efforts, the most important thing people expect from government, basic security, has been lacking since the fall of Saddam and remains lacking.
US troops, instead of clearing and holding certain terrain, are engaging in what amounts to attrition warfare against the insurgents, likely a necessity due to inadequate forces necessary for occupying large swaths of the country.
Allied efforts, however, have featured a unique and unprecedented political strategy. The regime’s democratic legitimacy has been the new government’s chief selling point. That is, instead of delivering the substantive goods the Iraqi people expect from any government–security, infrastructure, a legal system–their loyalty to the government is supposed to be cemented through an election, through a procedure. This strategy likely flows from the ideology of the Bush administration, most of whom believe that democratic regimes are inevitable, with unique claims to justice, and are therefore unassailable once in place. Hence, Bush’s mocking of anyone that suggests Iraqis and the rest of the Middle East may not be ready for democracy. Thus, it’s not the case that our forces have neglected military operations against insurgents in order to pursue a democracy; rather, it’s the case that our political strategy reinforcing our military operations is highly unorthodox, neglecting the usual features of “good government,” in order to pursue a purely procedural claim to legitimacy.
Even politically moderate and disinterested people may find a democratic regime to be too weak, too corrupt, and too ineffective to command their loyalty. The history of military coups against democratic regimes is a long one. Such challengers base their claims to legitimacy on effectiveness and results, not fidelity to any procedures. Indeed, such procedural niceties are often mocked as invitations to corruption and impediments to an effective military campaign. These were the claims of the anti-democratic movements of the Algerian ultras, the Argentinian junta, and Augusto Pinochet. This is to say that the Iraqi elections have, at most, bought the Iraqi regime time. If it cannot deliver on basic government services, it will find itself in jeapordy from the current crop of insurgents or some energetic faction within its own military.
The Bush administration’s strategy is to be faulted; instead of handing over a functioning government to the Iraqis that would be strengthened by a democratic imprimatur, the Iraqis instead received a non-functioning government, whose democratic foundation does little to improve its effectiveness. By receiving a nonfunctioning government, the democratic Iraqi regime began several steps behind, saddled with the weaknesses and inefficiencies that traditionally plague democratic governments during times of war.
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Do you have any sense of how long it would have taken to create the Magical Land of Stability you prefer? If the answer is “a few years,” then to what extent would the American public have supported that ongoing work, and who would have won the 2004 election?
Increasingly I believe that if you strip the aspiration out of American foreign policy, you lose the American people.
You may be right, but it seems to me that Americans like, more than anything else, short wars. They didn’t seem to mind restoring the Kuwaiti monarchy, for instance, in part because the first gulf war was so quick. I also think post 9/11 most Americans who support the war are comfortable with pure retaliation and preventative efforts. It seems to me that many who supported the Iraq war and still do seem to believe it to be a kind of “rough justice” for 9/11, particularly in the run up to the conventional war in ’03.
A New Marshall Plan For Iraq
By Ibrahim al-Jaafari
LAST WEEK I was at Blair House in the centre of Washington DC. In this house is the table on which George Marshall in June 1947 signed the plan to pump todayââ¬â¢s equivalent of $500 billion into the impoverished economies of Europe as an investment against future conflict. The plan was controversial but nobody would now deny its far-sightedness. Nazism gave way to a lasting democracy, economic devastation was replaced by slow but sure progress towards economic regeneration. Consider Germany of 1945 and Germany of today: which would you rather have as your neighbour?
The Middle East, including Iraq, is as much of a neighbour to Europe as Germany is to Britain. The Middle East has as much strategic significance as Europe in 1945, and has potential both for exporting violence and terror to the West or, alternatively, developing its human and natural resources to the point where it can imitate Europeââ¬â¢s economic success.
Last week I went to Brussels with an Iraqi delegation for a conference with foreign ministers of more than 80 countries. All have agreed to help Iraq towards a better future. On Friday I met President Bush; today I will meet Tony Blair. Both have decisively chosen to back freedom and democracy in Iraq. They are right to have done so. It is not just a matter of principle, but of the security of their own countries. Terrorism knows no boundaries; it strikes all over the world. Democracy, transparency and justice in the Middle East will dry up the wellsprings of hatred and terrorism and bring security to Europe and America.
Terrorists are criminals and must be tried as such. But dealing with the spread of terrorism in the Middle East is more complex ââ¬â as it thrives on ignorance, hate ideologies and political failures of modern states.
Arabs are better educated in technical sciences, engineering and languages, than in contemporary political and social sciences. Political education in the Middle East is usually indoctrination. By contrast, Iraqââ¬â¢s recent electoral experience enlightened millions. It showed that education is to vote a government into power and then watch it grapple with the issues that confront people in their daily lives, and see whether it succeeds or fails, and listen to it explain its policies honestly and frankly. A free press leaves people able to discriminate between propaganda, rumours and lies and the unvarnished reporting of facts.
Perhaps those elections can be an education also for peoples of Western democracies. They can see that, like them, Iraqis want to choose their own leaders, and are entirely capable of running fair elections and respecting the result. They can also see that there is nothing to fear if those peoples choose to vote for an Islamic party.
I am not only the first democratically elected leader of an Arab country. I am also the first prime minister in the Middle East to come from a religious, Islamic opposition movement ââ¬â at the head of a diverse ethnic and political alliance. Embracing diversity within human society is not just a political necessity, it is rooted in my faith. Islam teaches that there is no compulsion in religion and that freedom of choice is divinely granted; it is dictators who need to cater to fanatics in order to stay in power.
Saddam Hussein is a case in point. He passed laws to limit religious freedom and degraded womenââ¬â¢s lives. I will reverse Saddamââ¬â¢s legacy and welcome Iraqââ¬â¢s diversity. I welcome the strong contribution that women can make in its workplace and political life, where they make up one third of our National Assembly ââ¬â more than most Western democracies.
Marshall said: ââ¬ÅOur policy is not directed against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.ââ¬Â Today is the time for a new international Marshall plan towards Iraq and the broader Middle East ââ¬â directed not for or against any policy but against ignorance, tyranny, hatred and anarchy.
Marshall repaired the decaying infrastructure of Germany after six years of war and 12 years of Nazi rule. In Iraq we have had nearly 40 years of fascist rule and have been in practice at war for half that time. I have seen throughout Iraq the marks of economic collapse and depredation this has left. Iraq today has few English speakers, it has hundreds of thousands of ex-soldiers trained for nothing but war, and its universities ââ¬â which once enjoyed a worldwide reputation ââ¬â now lag behind those in the rest of the region. It has debts totalling hundreds of billions of dollars and there has been no investment in its infrastructure for more than 20 years.
Three generations of Iraqis have grown up under a dictatorship, learning to take orders but not take initiatives or responsibility, and educated in religious and political hatred and isolationism. My people are a strong people: their will survived. The marks of Saddamââ¬â¢s brutal and divisive rule, however, will take time to heal. Many of my people, as well as soldiers from the multinational force, are still being killed by terrorism.
The way will not always be easy. I am confident, though, that the prosperous democracies of the world will be as far-sighted today as Marshall was in 1947. Much blood had to be shed, and money spent, before peace was achieved in Europe. In Iraq the fight for democracy has cost hundreds of thousands of lives. In the long run, however, it can secure centuries of peace and prosperity. Iraqââ¬â¢s fight against terrorist networks and training camps, and the poverty and ignorance that supply them, has become the worldââ¬â¢s fight for the security of humanity.
The author is the Prime Minister of Iraq.