There is a popular Arab saying: The rope of lies is very short. It means that the consequences of lies do not take long to catch up with their perpetrators, and may be enough to hang them. Neo-conservatives in the United States are clearly unfamiliar with this proverb, and must now learn the hard way.
US neo-conservatives were already lobbying for a war against Iraq in the early nineties, during the Clinton administration. The terrible attacks of 11 September 2001 provided them with a long awaited opportunity. But it is now clear, in particular after Richard Clarkes book, that the war on Iraq not only had nothing to do with the war against terror, but that it undermined that campaign.
The neo-cons were in a hurry, and when you are rushing, you become oblivious to the obstacles standing in your way. All you are concerned with is getting there. So instead of looking at the sociological and historical reality of Iraqi society, subjected for more than thirty years to brutal totalitarian rule, they developed a simplistic theory based on the duality of Power and People. The Power was bad and the ugly; the People were good and the great. When the Power is destroyed, the Peoples greatness will emerge.
This concept has anarchistic origins, but also drew eclectically and crudely on the Japanese and German experiences after the second world war and the end of Soviet rule more than thirty-five years later.
To make matters worse, Washington policy makers also believed they could sweep away all aspects of the former regime with a brush of the hand. They called this visionary plan de-Baathification. It was one of the worst of many mistakes made by the Americans on the advice of a few Iraqi exiles.
The US dismantled Iraqs army and froze the countrys administrative apparatus. The consequences of these actions were highly destabilising.
First, they exacerbated an already acute economic crisis which worsened when hundreds of thousands of families suddenly lost their income as their sons, husbands and fathers lost their jobs. This came at a time when the whole country was suffering shortages of electricity, water and other basic necessities. The crisis was acutely felt after years of sanctions that had rendered the population totally dependant on State resources and centralised management.
Second, it created a political vacuum too big for the moderates in the Governing Council to fill: a perfect setting for the radicals to flourish in.
All mouth and no trousers
Apart from the lack of preparation for the post-Saddam era, the concept of war as such started to burst out of its inherent contradictions. The three justifications given for the war weapons of mass destruction, the supposed link to al-Qaida and the establishment of democracy were reduced to one, democracy, after the failure to produce any evidence for the first two.
But how can the Americans justify the democratic goal, the only one with a tangible justification, when they manifestly refuse to respond to the wishes of the majority of the Iraqi people?
Washington now finds itself trapped between two dates that leave no space for taking account of the concerns of the great majority of Iraqis. On 30 June 2004 the transfer of power is to be implemented and in November George W. Bush is supposed to win the US presidential election.
All these factors were active in a society that a fierce totalitarian regime had succeeded in demobilising and in reverting to its rudimentary elements while modernity had hardly achieved its project of unification.
Fragmentation and radicalisation
Following the war, the Sunni community a minority in Iraq, but traditionally the base of the countrys elite went through many moods, chief among them fear. The Sunnis perceived the situation as an alliance between the Americans, the Shia and the Kurds aimed at denying them their traditional hegemony.
Clashes in Kirkuk, and the overwhelming presence of the Shias, who form around 60% of the countrys population, gave credence to this perception and to their fear. Add to the sympathy felt with the suffering of the Palestinians at the hand of the Israelis prominently shown on Arab satellite channels (always accompanied with the confirmation of American support for Israel) the combined efforts of the Baathists and a variety of Arab Nationalists and the remains of Saddams state apparatus converged to create the nucleus of a obstinate resistance.
But the most efficient nucleus of resistance seems to have been built by the religious fundamentalists who have occupied the ideological vacuum created by the fall of the Baathist regime. The claim that the American war was aiming at severing the link between al-Qaida and the Baath, has, paradoxically, succeeded in creating such a link.
On Shia terrain, the efforts of the moderates and of Ayatollah Sistani, the main religious authority, did not gain much ground. In a context of political and economic depression, the agenda has been dictated by the most radical elements.
The most radical here appeared in the person of the 31-year-old Muqtada al-Sadr, who symbolised an organic phenomenon embracing four dimensions; descent from an important religious authority (the Sadr family); speaking in the name of the dispossessed; heading a significant youth militia the Mehdis Army; and relations with Iran, Hizbullah and possibly with Syria and Hamas.
I have no doubt that al-Sadr represents something dangerous within Iraqi society, and that he is likely to have a negative influence on the future of the religious sect and community he claims to represent. His capacity, as well as that of the Sunni resistance, to gravely damage Iraqs future is great.
But his uprising is unlikely to go very far. Apart from very temporary expressions of unity like the cooperation of Sunnis and Shias in sending food and blood to besieged Falluja, it is nonetheless the case that out of two sectarian resistances no national resistance can emerge. What is more likely to emerge is a bigger fragmentation of Iraq, opening the doors opened to interference by neighbouring states. It is not a secret that these states will seize every opportunity to weaken the presence of the United States in Iraq and to weaken Iraq as such. But the US, having launched an illegal war, will not have a convincing argument against interference by other countries in Iraq.
The way forward
We face an appalling dilemma. If the American forces remain in Iraq, the situation will get worse. If they are withdrawn, we shall face more conflicts of the kind that even the United Nations will not be able to resolve. Let us not forget 1993, when after less than two years in Somalia, the UN withdrew their troops.
The truth is that we are facing two approaches that appear to be opposed on the surface but that are actually very similar. One speaks of the Iraqi people and the need to liberate them from Saddams rule. The other also speaks of the Iraqi people but wants to liberate them from American occupation.
Both are misleading caricatures. The Iraqi people, like most peoples in the developing countries and in the Arab world, is still a project in the making. For this project to succeed, grossly simplistic revolutionary scenarios be they American, anti-American, neo-conservative or Arabo-Islamist should be shelved.