Kanan Makiya–author of “Republic of Fear” and “Cruelty and Silence”–spoke about the future of Iraq on a panel organized by NYU’s Cultural Reporting and Criticism Program and the Center for War, Peace and the News Media on November 22, 2002. Arguing against other speakers at the forum, Makiya made a moral case for American intervention in the course of explaining recent developments in the relationship between the Bush administration and Iraqi dissidents. An edited version of his remarks follows along with an exchange between Makiya and Mansour Farhang (who was Iranian ambassador to the UN until he was forced to flee Iran after the fall of the Bani-Sadir government in 1981).
I’m going to strike a discordant note here by arguing that when you look at the coming war from the point of view of those who are going to pay the greatest price – namely the people of Iraq, my compatriots – these people want this war.
Let me begin by giving an account of recent developments within the Iraqi opposition because this has not gotten all that much coverage. I’d urge you to consider that the US Administration – whatever its deeper motives – is a very active player in this opposition. And it certainly at this time does NOT have a unified position about what it wants to happen after a regime change.
The military planning is far more advanced than the political planning. And that means there is room for directing the debate in one direction not the other. So let’s begin by talking about the Iraqi opposition.
A row has broken out among Iraqis about a Conference that is expected to take place in December. And that row pits democrats and independents on the one hand – loosely organized or represented by the Iraqi National Congress, an organization that was established in 1992 – against the traditional organized parties of Iraqi politics. The row has broken out over the two most important components of any conference (1) the agenda (2) who will attend. I’m going to begin with the latter issue.
The origins of the problems here go back to the August 9 meeting between representatives of various Iraqi groups and the Vice President – a meeting that represented a kind of anointing of the Iraqi opposition. All sides agreed they were envisioning a democratic future and everyone pledged then that they would hold a Conference that would carry that vision forward.
Following that meeting, the process agreed upon by the six parties to organize that Conference became blocked over the issue of who should attend. The four traditional parties wanted a small number of attendees – some eighty people – distributed among the parties according to a formula of percentages. For instance, the Supreme Council For Islamic Revolution – an organization that is based in Iran and is really an extension of the Iranian intelligence services – was to be given 40% of the delegates. The Kurds would have 25% and so on. There was no room left for democrats and independents outside of a very small percentage of seats allocated to the Iraqi National Congress. When the democrats raised objections – the four traditional parties eschewed attempts to reach a consensus and pressed ahead in an effort hold the Conference on their own terms on November 22. But we blocked it. It’s now going to take place on December 10. And it will be an open Conference – the attendees will not be determined by the old formulas/ percentages.
So how did we come to this state of affairs? Here, the US administration is very much implicated. All of the four parties were once upon a time inside the Iraqi National Congress (INC), which has long had the best program – it has called for democracy, rule of law, human rights and supports the Kurdish demand for a federal state in Iraq. But through the efforts of the State Department and the CIA, in particular, these parties were prised out of the INC. Their various activities were supported and they were given to believe that the future would fall to them since the INC was no longer a functional organization. (Which had the effect of allowing democrats and independents to claim the INC in recent years, though it had lost much of its clout).
We now face the very strange paradoxical fact, which people like myself have to deal with – the strongest support that Iraqi independents and democrats get today comes from precisely those circles that have been the most attacked here – namely Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and the VP’s office. The strongest supporters of the traditional parties – whose program is (at best) a reformed military dictatorship or a system where the parties entirely dominate any kind of semi-parliamentary structure that might be set up – comes from the most “reasonable” people in the Administration who assume or imagine this is all that Arabs are capable of. Above all the traditional parties are championed by the CIA, actively with funds and with their units, which are functioning right now in Northern Iraq encouraging the parties to keep out of the INC.
The other key pre-Conference issue was the Agenda. Here, democrats and independents succeeded in hoisting the State Department on its own petard. Let’s go back to the time before the word democracy crept into the discourse of the American administration; before Condoleezza Rice gave her important interview to Financial Times where she talked about the reconstruction of Iraq, nation-building and democracy not stopping at the borders of the Arab and Muslim world; before the VP gave an important speech in August talking about democracy in Iraq for the first time; and, obviously, before Bush’s speech on September 12 (welcomed enormously by Iraqis because it was one of the very few occasions in which they featured prominently in the formulation of American policy). Before all these things occurred, the State Department started something they called their “Future of Iraq” project. Now, as this project was initially conceived, it had to do with everything but the future of the state of Iraq. They were, for example, interested in questions of public health and environment on the day after a war. (Which, incidentally they have been assuming will take place for a very long time now. I think the decision to go to war was made in some form or another back in December, but that’s a moot point.) The position of the State Department was rather smart. They jumped on the bandwagon and initiated this “Future of Iraq” project to focus on very technical matters. They asked me to participate. I refused because they weren’t addressing the structural political questions. I don’t know anything about collecting the garbage the day after a big war. I could say something about the kind of political system I think is workable. I have views on that.
But after the August anointing of the Iraqi opposition, as I’ve said, democracy became the word. And a workshop was assembled called the “Democratic Political Principles Workshop.” It was originally called the “Political Principles Workshop,” but after pressure from Congress, the VP’s office and people like Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld – it was changed to underscore “Democratic Political Principles.” I’ve found that these are the kind of games that go on all the time since I’ve been heavily involved in this business over the last 5 months. This workshop was originally intended by the State Department to merely collect together 32 Iraqis of their choosing, representing what they considered to be a spectrum of opinion. Democrats were in a minority – there were 6 or 7 of us very strongly committed to a radical transformation of Iraq in a democratic direction. The rest were representatives of the traditional parties – not the top echelon but the intellectuals and, ah, hacks – along with independent Islamists and some others. At the beginning, the idea was that people would go around the table and say what they thought on federalism, on human rights or various other questions. And somebody would make a checklist of issues that had been raised. But we succeeded in accomplishing something more. And I have to say that the way we succeeded is very revealing. It had everything to do with the lack of trust – the foundational political disagreement – that exists between State and the VP’s office. They no longer trust each other. What happened was that the VP’s office and the Department of Defense sent representatives to the workshop even though the initiative was hosted by the State Department. What we managed to do, with the help of these Vice Presidential and DOD aides, was force into existence a coordinating committee that has written a massive report on the “Transition to Democracy in Iraq.” When we showed up with this report at the second of these affairs, which go on for two or three days, it stimulated a real discussion. Everyone realized that something important was afoot and they came back with comments. We integrated their responses into the document and now we have something that really matters.
This document represents quite a wide spectrum of Iraqi views, but it’s driven and edited by democrats. And this document has emerged out of a process initiated by the State Department, though they never intended to produce anything like it. When all the parties fully understood what had occurred – and given that we had secured a promise that the document could become the working papers for the future Iraqi Conference – some people suddenly got very worried and began denying the validity of the document. It was now something over the top that had been produced by people out of touch with the Arab world because we were calling for things like a demilitarized state, democracy understood as protection of minorities and the rule of law – not simply majority rule, which is the usual understanding of democracy. Plus we were willing to postpone elections – until protections of the individual and minority rights were cemented – and establish a federal system, insisting that it is necessary to give up on the Arab nature of the state.
Now they’re right – this is radical stuff if you’re in Arab politics. This document argues that if the Kurds are to be a key pillar and component of the country – and not just the Kurds but the Turkmens and the Assyrians and all the other national groups – the Arab character of the Iraqi state as it has been conceived should be done away with. This is dynamite!
So the document was ruled to be unsuitable for the upcoming Conference. Whereupon democrats made one hell of a fuss. They directed a letter-writing campaign amongst Iraqis that’s been going on for two or three weeks. And they flooded the State Department with protests. Delegations were showing up at the Department. Iraqis were coming from England wanting to speak on behalf of democrats – asking why is the report not being accepted as the working document for the conference? Why are democrats being excluded? Why are these ridiculous proportions still in force? How could anyone imagine that the Shia in Iraq could be represented by the Iranians? Etc. Etc. The pressure had the following consequences. From 70 plus delegates, we’re now well over 350 and we got this damn document to be the central focus of the conference. And throughout, we had the support of those arch-warmongers – Paul Wolfowitz, Secretary Rumsfeld, and the VP’s office. These are the facts. This is simply what happened. They are the people who are interested in the document. Colin Powell is utterly uninterested and wants nothing to do with us. We are making his life difficult.
I wanted to say what happens when you view regime change from this kind of point of view. Notice first of all that there is absolutely no discussion inside the Iraqi opposition – among Iraqis generally – about whether or not regime change is a good thing. It is simply taken for granted that it is. Remember that after all, it is a war that is being waged in their name, on their turf and they are the ones who are going to pay the price for it more than anyone else in this room, right?
What this amounts to, what the whole phenomenon of the Iraqi opposition represents – inchoate, confused, anarchic, fractured upon itself as it certainly is – what it represents is something NEW in Arab politics. We have here for the first time in modern Arab political discourse – or at least since 1967 – a population that has emerged which is clear that the be-all and end-all of its political world is its own homemade dictatorship. It’s not the national question, not armed struggle, not anti-imperialism, not anti-Zionism – all the usual shibboleths of Arab politics for the past 35 years. This can be encouraged. Or it can be crushed. But think about what it means if you do that. What you’re killing is something that would have extraordinary transformative potential throughout the whole Middle Eastern region.
Consider for instance the fact that this opposition arises from a seminal event. We talk about the 1991 Gulf War, but we often forget to talk about the uprising that followed that war. Here you have a situation in which dozens of countries participate in an invasion and you have the bombing campaign – the like of which no country has seen since World War II. And nonetheless, the population of the country that is itself the target of those bombs rises up and calls upon the very people who have been bombing them to help finish the war. (Now of course that wasn’t what Bush Sr. wanted. People like me hope it’s what Bush Jr. wants, though that’s a separate question.) In that uprising lies the possibility of something truly new.
Now if you go out there now and write letters to your congressman – demanding that the war be made in the name of democracy in Iraq, demanding that it be for a larger purpose – you would be nourishing that possibility. I submit to you that if there is even a sliver of a chance – a 5% or 10% chance – you have a moral obligation to do that!
MANSOUR FARHANG: You’re really asking/expecting a revolutionary change in American foreign policy. I cannot imagine the US coming and trying to establish a democratic regime in Iraq – and maintaining Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan, United Arab Emirates and the rest of those states run by proprietors. The kind of commitment of resources and manpower such a project would require of the US over a period of 5 or even 10 years in Iraq – and you know how fragmented that society isÖWhat bothers me about the scenario you are developing is that the Iraqi opposition has had an opportunity to create a democratic organization during the last 20 or 30 years in open democratic societies – and they haven’t done that. (Now I could say the same thing about Iranians!) If they need Rumsfeld and Cheney to teach them the rules of democracy…The idea that suddenly all these people are going to be transformed into democratic agents. You think the Ayatollah sitting in Iran sending his representatives to engage in this negotiation is going to be committed to democracy. No – what you’re asking the US to do – any government, any governing system that is going to take that kind of responsibility would have a totally different attitude toward the underprivileged – the marginal populations in its own society. What you’re asking is romantic – it’s very desirable – but it doesn’t have anything to do with the reality of international politics.
KANAN MAKIYA: There’s another way of thinking about it. American policy-makers may have a more self-interested rationale. After 9/11, all the traditional pillars of US foreign policy in the Middle East have come down – starting with Oslo and working through to the key relationship with the Saudis. 9/11 demonstrated that it is an extremely unhappy and tenuous relationship. The political players that I’ve been speaking of are extremely hostile to the Saudis for that reason. You certainly couldn’t even think about democratizing Saudi Arabia. That would be a pipedream – if you were to hold elections there today, Saudis would overwhelmingly vote for bin Laden. But Iraq provides an alternative. Think for a moment, Mansour, of the two revolutions that happened in the Islamic world. One was very noisy – of which you were a part in Iran. The other was very quiet, insidious and infinitely more dangerous. I’m talking about the export (after the oil revolution of 73) of an austere little sect, which meant nothing to anybody and now today is Islam – substituting itself for a great religion and civilization, exporting hundreds and thousands of madrassas whose graduates become bin Ladens and al Qaeda. It’s Saudi money that did all this.
Now look I’m pretending to be an American strategist. These guys know 9/11 wasn’t about Afghanistan. That country was a poor fractured one that became a campground for Arabs. These are Arab problems exported to Afghanistan through Saudi money, which led to 9/11. The heart of the problem is in the Middle East. Something in this part of the world (since 1967 I’d argue) has gone terribly, horribly wrong.
To sum it up – what’s apparent is that the Middle East needs a success story. In the Clinton years that was thought to be Oslo. But that’s all finished for the time being. Iraq is being thought of by this of school of thinkers as an alternative. I’m just trying to say that they have a strategic design, a way of thinking about what they see as the root of the problem – namely a turn to democracy and an end to America’s support for regimes like Saddam Hussein, or regimes like Saudi Arabia, which has been the rule for as long as I’ve been active in politics. It could be that that formula has finally proven itself to be a failure. That’s what some of these people are thinking. (It’s not what Colin Powell is thinking!) From their point of view, Iraq could be an alternative to Saudi Arabia. Its oil reserves are second to none. Iraq also has things that Afghanistan doesn’t have – a developed infrastructure, a highly educated class. They have a sense that democracy could work in Iraq where it might not work elsewhere. I’ll leave it there.
From December, 2002