The Foreign Service Journal, March 2004

high-sticking, as parties and individuals try to position themselves advantageously by appeals to Iraqi national- ism. I can foresee the “Green Zone,” Baghdad’s four square miles of heavily guarded real estate that house the CPA headquarters and other facilities, becoming the irri- tation to Iraqis that the “Canal Zone” was to the Egyptians. Egyptian demagogues used the “Zone” issue to silence their moderate opponents, and eventually, the Egyptians nationalized the canal. The interval between the transfer of sovereignty to the Transitional Assembly and the establishment of the new, permanent Iraqi government could be a time of risk and instability. The Governing Council will be gone, and the TA, an untried body, must run the country, draft a constitu- tion, conduct a referendum, and then make way for nation- al elections and a legitimate, elected new Iraqi government. This process has many, many moving parts. It can easily go wrong. Prominent moderates on the council, such as Dr. Mowaffak al-Rubaei, Iyyad Allawi, Ghazi al-Yaqir and Adnan Pachachi, will have their hands full. The assassina- tion of Dr. Aqila al-Hashimi — a brilliant woman scholar diplomat, a Shiite, and a descendant of the Prophet, was a loss to peace. She has not yet been replaced. Iraq is short on homegrown leaders. Saddam saw to that. One nonetheless hopes that the former exiles now on the GC may fuse their acumen and international expe- rience with the legitimacy of domestic religious leaders — and thereby create a more workable basis for governance than that of most Middle Eastern nations. Iraq’s Shiites should ignore their extremists and seize the “pretty good deal” that we have offered them. They should remember the tragedy that befell their community after the early 1920s, when they shunned participation in the British- controlled administration of Mesopotamia. Reasons for Optimism I believe the near future for Iraq looks good. As long as Saddam Hussein, a sort of human trapdoor spider, eluded capture, Sunnis could continue to hope to return to power. And the Shia — despite all our assurances — could not really believe that “He whose name must not be mentioned” might not somehow re-emerge. But now that he has been apprehended, there is no chance at all for a Ba’thi restoration. Saddam’s capture shows the success of our strategy toward the Sunni terrorists. We have correctly begun from the premise that there is little we can do to reconcile their community to the loss of power and privilege they enjoyed for four hundred years. Many Sunnis did not like Saddam—but even to them, he was a bulwark against the Shiites and the Kurds. Our policies of firmness are mak- ing the point to Sunni leaders that fruitless resistance is more costly than grudging compliance. As this message is comprehended, it will be time to offer “nation-building” inducements. As for the argument that our policies stim- ulate Sunni humiliation and anger, Iraqi Shia, at least, would point to the nearest mass grave. The Iraqi and foreign terrorists, meanwhile, lack strategic advantages: They have no foreign refuge, and the cities from which they operate are scattered across a flat, open tableland. There are no jungles in Iraq. Iraqi Sunnis are surrounded by 20 million hostile or indifferent Shiites or Kurds. Meanwhile, as we painstakingly process lots of information, and develop valuable, actionable intelli- gence, our superior training and weaponry will grind down the opposition, and discourage its supporters. Wars are never won by periodic suicide bombings. Responsible Sunni leaders should urge their commu- nity to come to terms soon with the new reality (although threats from radical elements won’t make such a policy easy). The opportunity for a “smoother merge” with the rest of Iraq’s population is surely greater while the CPA and the U.S. Army can act as referees, than it will be after July 1. Thereafter, Iraq’s Shia, who have been astonish- ingly non-vengeful up to now, might be prompted to make their superiority in number more emphatically felt. The Longer Term Is Up to the Iraqis The Iraqis will not be ready for the challenge of inde- pendence. Saddam left a deep psychological imprint upon his subjects. It would take almost a generation of mandate-style colonialism to detoxify their politics and their psychology. But alas! There are no political dialysis machines. And the U.N.’s mandate commission is out of order. A body that can barely handle the former West Irian could not deal with a challenge so many times greater. After July 1, though, we’ll honestly be able to say to ourselves, and to the world, that we left Iraq freer than we found it, that we showed an altruism that may be incomprehensible to the peoples of the Middle East, and that we gave the Iraqis a new chance to plot their destiny and make their own mistakes. After July 1, there will be much that we and the Iraqis must work at together. Our continued military presence F O C U S 34 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A R C H 2 0 0 4