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http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=18405
Is Iraq a Mideastern Yugoslavia?
By Amir Taheri, Arab News Staff
As the debate on the Bush administration’s plans for Iraq gathers momentum, one question needs to be answered: do the Americans know enough about Iraq to devise a credible policy toward it?
Part of what the administration thinks it knows about Iraq comes from the various Iraqi exiles with an interest in saying what they believe the Americans like to hear. These people are mostly motivated by hatred of Saddam Hussein, or personal ambition or a thirst for money, or all three at the same time. President George W. Bush would be naïve to build his policy on such shaky foundations.
Another part comes from sweeping assertions made by self-styled experts. These assertions, too, could mislead the Bush administration.
The latest example of these comes in a column by the New York Times’ columnist Thomas Friedman. Writing in his usual style, Friedman says that if the US invades and conquers Iraq it will “own it” and thus must be prepared for a long “nation-building” commitment.
Friedman questions the basis of Iraqi nationhood by describing Iraq as an artificial state created by the British. The idea is that Iraq, being a recent creation, has had no time to develop a sense of nationhood.
But couldn’t the same be said of many other nations?
Let us see. The United Nations now has 200 members. Of these, only 53 were in existence (Iraq among them) when the UN was founded in 1945. Does this mean that almost two-thirds of the UN members deserve to be ruled by psychopaths like Saddam Hussein?
The United States itself is a relatively new creation when compared to older nation-states such France, Britain and Iran. And what about Israel, created 27 years after Iraq?
Even in Europe, few states have the centuries’ old existence that Friedman regards as essential for civilized life in any country. The German state was created in 1866, the Italian one in 1870, and Norway in 1905. Seventeen European states came into being after World War I, at the same time as Iraq, and six more after 1990 when the Soviet empire collapsed.
Friedman, who has never visited the country, sees Iraq’s religious, ethnic and linguistic diversity as a Middle Eastern version of Yugoslavia. But if diversity makes a country another Yugoslavia then we have scores of Yugoslavias of all sizes around the globe, starting with India and passing by Russia and Switzerland to the United States.
The fact that what is now Iraq was part of successive empires and did not have its own independent existence does not mean that it is some dark and savage territory, as Friedman implies. For centuries, in fact, that territory was the very heart of great civilizations, including the Sumerian, the Babylonian, the Assyrian, and the Persian. During much of the Abbasid rule, Baghdad was one of the three capitals of the Islamic world.
Friedman’s claim that Iraq has not lived under the rule of law since Hammurabi is too much of a cheap rhetorical gimmick to merit further comment.
The sense of belonging to any nation is an essentially subjective one that cannot be fully assessed in purely scientific terms.
The question is: do a majority of the Iraqis, regardless of their ethnic and religious backgrounds, feel that they are Iraqis?
Anyone familiar with the realities of Iraq would know that this is the case.
To be sure, Iraqis are divided into several ethnic and religious groups. There are Arabs and Kurds to start with but also Turcomans, Izadis, Assyrians and Chaldeans. There are Shiites and Sunnis along with Christians and a variety of heterodox communities. But these are all like streams flowing into one river, not out of it. All share that certain, indescribable, something that denotes national identity. An Iraqi Shiite, for example, can never be mistaken for his Iranian, Lebanese or Indian brother. The Iran-Iraq war, which lasted eight years, clearly showed that for most Iraqi Shiites it was the national, rather than the religious, identity that counted most. Nor can an Iraqi Kurd assume the identity of an Iranian, Turkish or Syrian Kurd. This is why the Pan-Kurdist discourse has never found a large audience in Iraq. Even the most Pan-Arabist of Arab Sunnis in Iraq are easily distinguishable from their Egyptian or even Jordanian or Kuwaiti counterparts.
A good part of national identity is made of common experiences and memories, both happy and tragic. The Iraqis have their own versions of Arabic and Kurdish, their own family secrets, and their own hidden hopes and fears that no outsider can fully appreciate.
National identity is not determined by personal feelings alone. How others look at you also count. On that score, there is no doubt that all Arabs instantly recognize an Iraqi for an Iraqi as soon as they meet him.
Thus the first fact that the Bush administration needs to recognize is that a distinct Iraqi nation does exist and can and must assume control of its destiny. The many schemes for carving Iraq into three or five ministates must be consigned to the ashcan where they belong.
The second fact is that Iraq, perhaps more than any other Arab state, has the intellectual elite, the educated urban middle class, and the professional cadres needed for a modern pluralistic society.
The third fact is that, contrary to Friedman’s claim the future Iraqi regime need not be a military one. In fact, the current regime is not a military one either. Neither Saddam Hussein nor any of his senior aides ever did their national service. The fact that Saddam Hussein declared himself field marshal in 1977 does not make him or his regime military.
In fact, the only time the Iraqi Army made a solo bid for power was in 1958 when one unit, led by Abdel-Karim Qassem, overthrew the monarchy and triggered a chain of tragedies hat have continued to this day. But even the regime that emerged from the 1958 coup quickly marginalized the military in the context of an alliance with the Communists. In the subsequent coups, in 1965 and 1969, rival groups within the Baath Party used sections of the military as an instrument for seizing power.
Thus the Iraqi Army is not necessarily the mainstay of the Saddamist regime. Nor should Washington regard it as an enemy of civil society.
Contrary to what Friedman and other macho American commentators seem to believe, war is not the only, or the best, means of achieving regime change in Baghdad. There are other more efficient and less costly ways.
But that is another story.
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Arab News
Saudi Arabia's First English Language Daily
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