Iraq a harsh climate to try to grow democracy

By Barbara Slavin, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Other Arabs say Iraqis have "heavy blood." Even by the violent standards of the Middle East, the Iraqis are a people apart, more prone to settle internal political fights with bloodshed or to start wars with their neighbors.

Though it was the site of one of the world's earliest civilizations and perhaps the biblical Garden of Eden, in modern times Iraq has come to be known for having one of the most brutally repressive dictatorships since Josef Stalin ruled the Soviet Union. So there's little wonder that as the United Nations prepares to resume weapons inspections in Iraq and the United States gears up for war if those inspections are thwarted, Middle East experts and Iraq's neighbors are pessimistic about the prospects of planting the fragile flower of democracy there.

"Iraq presents as unpromising a breeding ground for democracy as any in the world," says Alina Romanowski, who heads the Near East-South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington. 

Despite U.S. pledges to remain committed to Iraq after Saddam Hussein is overthrown, many Iraq experts doubt the Bush administration or its successors would stay the course. Many also worry that a pre-emptive U.S. strike could make life even harder for already embattled pro-Western reformers throughout the Arab and Muslim world.

"The notion that Iraq will suddenly emerge as a stable democracy and will change the rest of the Arab world crosses the line between neo-conservative and neo-crazy," says Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Even before Saddam became the country's absolute ruler in 1979, Iraqi politics were vicious. Iraq's last monarch, King Faisal, was assassinated in 1958. The king's successor was assassinated five years later. Three more coups preceded Saddam's rise to power. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died under Saddam's rule, in two wars he started and in campaigns against internal dissent. 

Divided opposition

The surviving opposition to Saddam, both inside and outside the country, is fragmented. Exiled opposition groups are feuding about plans to hold a conference in Belgium later this month. Supporters of Ahmed Chalabi, leader of an umbrella group called the Iraqi National Congress, contend that the State Department is blocking efforts to create a government in exile and favoring former Iraqi military officers who have little interest in democracy. U.S. officials say that the State Department is not financing or organizing the conference and that they hope the Iraqis can unite around a vision for the country's future. 

"There were 98 opposition groups the last time I counted," retired general Anthony Zinni, former commander of U.S. forces in the region, told the Middle East Institute, a think tank in Washington, last month. "If you believe they will rush to the palace, hold hands and sing Kumbaya (after Saddam is ousted), I doubt it." 

Recognizing the difficulties ahead, the Bush administration has softened promises for a post-Saddam transformation. At the United Nations two months ago, President Bush argued that if Iraqis are liberated, "they can one day join a democratic Afghanistan and a democratic Palestine, inspiring reforms throughout the Muslim world." In more recent remarks, Bush has spoken only of trying to help Iraqis create "institutions of liberty in a unified Iraq at peace with its neighbors."

Secretary of State Colin Powell was even more circumspect last week. He told foreign reporters said that if the United States removed Saddam, "we would have an obligation to help the people of Iraq... put in place a better government... in a way that does not destabilize the region."

The Jordanian example

To get a measure of the scope of the problem, consider the reality next door in Jordan, a much more liberal country with a long tradition of close ties with the United States. There, the prospect of war with Iraq — on top of a 2-year-old uprising by Palestinians across another Jordanian border in the West Bank — has persuaded Jordan's monarchy to repeatedly postpone parliamentary elections. Islamic fundamentalists who hate the country's friendship with the United States and its peace treaty with Israel would have been certain to win a majority, Jordanian officials say, and that would have only set back the nation's long-term prospects for economic and political reform.

Jordan is a democratic paradise compared with Iraq. Under Saddam, Iraq has been dominated by one party, the Baath party, which espouses a half-century-old philosophy calling for Arab nations to unify into one political bloc. 

"What we have are ossified ideologies," says Rend Rahim Francke, an Iraqi exile who heads the Iraq Foundation, a non-profit organization promoting democracy and human rights in Iraq. Homegrown alternatives to Baath include Islamic fundamentalists and communists, she says.

Francke urges the Bush administration to empower Iraqi exiles who have experience in Western democratic societies. "You need to provide an operational and a political framework for the day U.S. troops go in," she says. "Otherwise the only institutional structure you can fall back on is the Iraqi army." 

In fact, the administration appears to have ruled out creation of a transitional government in exile in part for fear of alienating Iraqi officers. The military, the administration hopes, might get rid of Saddam in a coup and save the United States and Iraq the costs of a long war and occupation. Some call that option "Saddam lite."

Instead of anointing a successor government, the State Department has organized groups of Iraqi exiles to discuss aspects of better governance. U.S. officials say their ideas should be of use to whatever government replaces Saddam's regime. But it is not clear to whom they will report or whether their recommendations will ever be implemented, especially in the event of a coup.

Some U.S. officials say a period of U.S. military government may be needed to disarm Iraq, deliver humanitarian aid and prevent Iraq's ethnic and political groups from turning on one another.

"A lot depends on how it unfolds," one senior U.S. official says. "You could have temporary rule led by a U.S. general and a non-Iraqi civilian figure on the economic side who might not be an American. We've done quite a lot of planning but we don't yet have a package."

Some reasons for hope

Despite their unpromising history, Iraqis have several advantages that could lay the groundwork for more enlightened politics:

Nearly 60% of the population is literate, although rates have been dropping because of economic hardships since the 1991 Gulf War. 
Women play more important roles in Iraq's secular society than in many parts of the Muslim world. 
Iraq can afford to pay for its own reconstruction. It possess the second-largest oil reserves in the world after Saudi Arabia and could boost its oil output from the current 2.5 million barrels a day to 8 million a day in 10 years, according to Patrick Clawson, an Iraq expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. 
Iraqi Kurds, who represent a fifth of the population, have been free of Saddam's control for the past 11 years under the protection of U.S. and British pilots patrolling northern Iraq. The Kurds have built representative institutions that they argue could be a model for the rest of the country. "If democracy can be introduced in Iraqi Kurdistan, traditionally the least politically developed part of Iraq, the prognosis for the rest of Iraq is good," says Barham Salih, prime minister of the regional government of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two main Kurdish parties. 
But others worry that there would be a struggle for power and oil revenue among Iraq's ethnic Kurds, Turks, Arab Sunni and Shiite Muslims. And there are fears of revenge killings, particularly in the south, where the Iraqi regime brutally put down a Shiite uprising after the 1991 war.

A truly democratic government would give more power to Iraqi Shiites, who are a majority in 10 of Iraq's 18 administrative districts and make up 60% of Iraq's 23 million population. But that would arouse opposition in the overwhelmingly Sunni Arab world.

"I haven't yet seen a plan for the day after that is halfway credible," says Jordan's foreign minister, Marwan Muasher. "It's much easier to do regime change in Iraq than to come up with a government that can hold the country together. No one knows what Pandora's box will be opened."

Not a regional model

U.S. democracy advocates working in the Arab world say that even if Iraq becomes more democratic, it is not likely to be a model for the region, especially if change is seen as dictated by the United States.

"Egypt or Saudi Arabia would have much more influence," says Les Campbell, regional director for the Middle East and North Africa at the National Democratic Institute.

Egypt is the Arab world's most populous nation. Saudi Arabia is the site of the most important Muslim holy sites. Neither is democratic. Campbell, who has worked to promote democracy in the region for six years, says there has been recent progress for reformers in several small Arab countries, including Morocco, Algeria and the Persian Gulf states of Kuwait and Bahrain. But a U.S. attack on Iraq could set back the forces of reform. "Any small-D democrat seen as promoting Western ideals would have to go underground," he says.

Reform trends could actually reverse as Arab governments take harsh security measures to crack down on public protests against a war and the lack of progress toward creating a Palestinian state.

Any U.S.-sanctioned regime in Iraq is likely to be regarded with distrust even by Arabs hoping for more democratic freedoms. 

There are two words in Arabic for change, says Abdel Ilah Khatib, a former Jordanian foreign minister.

Taghir,which means change by force, and taghier,which means change from within. We need sustained change that comes from within."

Ultimately, Arabs say, their political systems will evolve as their societies become better educated and more aware of democratic values in the wider world.

"We are looking to reform before we are pushed to reform," Sheik Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabr Al-Thani, foreign minister of the emirate of Qatar, told a Washington audience recently. "Do you think Saddam is the only obstacle to reform in our region?"