History must not repeat itself
David Pryce-Jones on the danger to Iraq of the Arabist tradition at the Foreign Office The capture of Saddam Hussein clears the way to self-government in Iraq. due to be launched six months from now. This will work only if the country's constituent elements are fairly represented in the political process, and none is placed in a position to take unfair advantage of another. In other parts of the world, for instance in the Balkans and in Africa, the British government has argued, sometimes forcefully, for proper democratic representation for majorities and minorities alike. In the case of Iraq, this means devising some way to incorporate the Shia and the Sunni into a power-sharing agreement. It's the tallest of orders, going against the immemorial grain of that society. but nevertheless the whole allied enterprise depends upon it. And while the best brains in Washington are thinking how to do it. the Foreign Office has ideas of its own, 80 years old, and wrong as ever.
The present interim governing council consists of 25 elders (though two have been murdered) handpicked in an approximation of proportional representation between Shia, Sunnis and Kurds. The coalition plan is to dissolve this council, hold elections, and turn everything over to the Iraqis. Unexceptionable. Excellent. But how is it to be carried out? There isn't a constitution, there aren't voter rolls and censuses are unreliable. Are elections to be national or local, direct or, on the contrary, collegiate, to throw up a few hundred more handpicked elders to represent their province or communities? Law and order for the foreseeable future has to depend on the Americans. As things stand, what might begin as library work for experts in jurisprudence can easily end in the hands of gunmen on the streets.
In an analogy with Irish history, which comes from Bernard Lewis, there has always been a Sunni Ascendancy. Although perhaps not more than one in ten of the population, Sunni Arabs have for centuries taken their right to rule for granted; Sunni Kurds raise the overall proportion, but they aren't Arab. After the first world war, a handful of Sunni officers claimed a continuous right to rule on the grounds that they were Arab nationalists. The British chose to promote them, and they and long-suffering local populations have been paying for it ever since. Sir Arnold Wilson, at the time acting High Commissioner in Baghdad, warned that favouring Sunni nationalists at the expense of the Shia would lead to an explosion. He was recalled, and subsequently mocked as someone out of touch with the spirit of the age, but he was bang right.
In the 1920 uprising, thousands of Arabs were killed. London persisted in its policy, jobbing in Faisal, son of Sherif Hussein of Mecca, simply because he was a Sunni and proclaimed himself an Arab nationalist. In due order, a plebiscite was rigged to confirm him, and a coronation, an election to a legislature, and finally a treaty intended to maintain British influence. Here was Foreign Office fantasy at its wildest, As soon as they could, the Sunni nationalists scrapped the whole British-built edifice. A straight line of Sunni tyranny leads from the unscrupulous Faisal to the mass graves of Saddam Hussein and the Baath party. Sunni resistance today comes down to the simplest of statements: in case you're thinking of treating us the way we treated everyone else, here's a bomb. For these Sunnis, the current political process spells surrender of their Ascendancy.
American talk of democracy suits the Shia. About two thirds of the population, the Shia know that in a democracy pluralities win. The Shia ayatollahs are experienced politicians, and 'No to the occupation, no to resistance' is their very effective slogan. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has been quick to insist that elections must be direct and popular, not indirect or colle
giate. As he and his fellow ayatollahs see it, the ripe fruits of power must fall into their waiting hands. But just in case anyone should miss the point, the Shia are already forming killer bands who are singling out prominent Sunni thugs left over from the Saddam regime and murdering them. The Kurds, already enjoying in their provinces an autonomy and prosperity without precedent, show signs of following suit.
Like the British before them, the Americans at first scratched around for a Sunni. Their fear has long been that the Shia would make common cause with Shia Iran, multiplying hatred of the Great Satan. The few Sunnis who so far have made themselves available for promotion are elderly, without any national following, or discredited. Their figurehead is Adnan Pachachi, who as foreign minister in the old days had cosied up to the Soviet Union and rejoiced at the public hanging of Baghdadi Jews. More plausible Sunnis may emerge now that Saddam cannot intimidate them. Washington has meanwhile come to appreciate that Iraqi Shia are not a monolithic bloc of fanatics-in-waiting, but can see for themselves the oppression and corruption in Iran. and want none of it. Nor are they Arab nationalists. A good many of them are secular urban intellectuals.
One such is Ahmad Chalabi, founder of the Iraqi National Congress which led the opposition to Saddam, and now the most prominent member of the governing council. For purposes of identification and interrogation, he visited Saddam in his cell, and every Iraqi paper published a photograph of the two of them in a scene worthy of Shakespeare. Chalabi advocates a federal constitution, collegiate elections and the transformation of the governing council into an upper chamber. The state department has gone to extraordinary lengths to shut him out and blacken his reputation, but there seems now to be recognition that he may be the right man — possibly the only man — in the right place. In a rising mood of contrition, American officials are also lamenting the heedlessness with which they stood down the Iraqi army and police, and their insistence on rooting out the Baath party. Chalabi differs there, on the grounds that de-Baathification is an absolute moral necessity.
Our man in Baghdad, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, at this point has come out with a speech warning that the Sunnis are upsetting security, and therefore it is opportune to embrace them, in his words, 'drawing away supporters within Saddam's Sunni heartland'. Appeasement of violence is how they made a hash of it in 1920. Evidently the Foreign Office Arabist tradition is impervious to experience. The sacred dogma of Arab nationalism must be cherished, no matter what the circumstances or the personalities. American officials have begun to complain that the Foreign Office views democracy in Iraq as a pipe dream, and hopes to create a benign autocracy on the model of other Gulf states.
Were it feasible, the driving of a wedge between Saddam loyalists and other Sunnis would be politic, but there is little or no chance of any such thing; the Sunnis huddle for protection in tribal collectivity. Sir Jeremy goes much further, in favour of 'positive discrimination' in allocating aid to Sunnis, and also throwing a lifeline to the Baathists, whose residue could form a new political party 'to compete without violence in the new political arrangements'. How he proposes to deliver this non-violence on their part remains his secret.
Sir Jeremy is pushing the Iraqi National Accord, yet another opposition group. Its leader. kyad Alawi, is himself a Shia, though his associates are mostly Sunnis. Originally a Baathist, he defected and obtained the support of the CIA, whose main objective was to do down Chalabi (a cousin of his, as it happens). He managed to nominate his brother-in-law Nuni Badran to the position of interior minister on the governing council — politics at this level in Iraq is still something of a family business. Along with other ambitious Iraqis, Alawi is now making his bid to mobilise power however he can. The Americans are also suspicious of some of the Iraqi arrivistes and middlemen with influence among the British.
Today the Shia are educated, organised and armed very differently from 1920. Loose among them are also hundreds of Iranian agents, for the moment daubing anti-Western graffiti on walls but otherwise biding their time — the British appear to be taking no protective measures against these potentially subversive elements. Any attempt to discriminate against Iraqi Shia or in favour of Sunnis can only mobilise the killer bands in a competition in violence far more destructive than anything yet seen. Study of its own archives might prevent the Foreign Office from getting it wrong, like the young lady from Spain in that famous limerick, again and again and again.
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