ADVANCE COPY Not for Publication IRAQ: SETBACKS, ADVANCES, PROSPECTS Adeed Dawisha Adeed Dawisha, who was born and raised in Iraq, is professor of politi- cal science at Miami University, Ohio. His most recent book is Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: From Triumph to Despair (2003). He is now working on a research project on the possibilities for a demo- cratic transition in Iraq. Whatever their views regarding the wisdom of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, friends of democracy cannot help but wish that the new regime which emerges in that country will be a reasonably democratic one. This is a matter of the gravest concern to the long-suffering Iraqi people, and to many others besides. For the success or failure of the effort to build and maintain a law-governed and democratic Iraq is bound to have major implications for the fate of democracy in the Middle East and beyond. The outcome of the attempt at democratization in Iraq is not likely to become clear for a number of years. Although many serious obstacles have already been encountered, the most difficult institutional challenges, in- cluding holding elections for a representative government and drafting and adopting a new permanent constitution, still lie ahead. Moreover, this essay is going to press just after the capture of Saddam Hussein, and other significant changes are sure to take place as well. Nonetheless, given the importance of the Iraqi case, it seems worth the risk to offer an analysis of the early efforts to begin laying the foundations of democracy there, as well as some thoughts about what the future might hold. The threefold goal of this essay should be stated at the outset: It begins by analyzing the serious setbacks that have dogged U.S.-led efforts to reconstruct Iraq into an at least relatively functional law- governed and democratic society. The essay then takes stock of the many successes and achievements that these efforts had nonetheless realized by the time of this writing, eight months after the armed forces of the United States, Britain, and some smaller allies toppled Saddam Hussein’s 35-year-old dictatorship in three weeks of mobile, high-speed Journal of Democracy Volume 15, Number 1 January 2004 6 Journal of Democracy warfare. And finally, it suggests various modalities for the building of democratic institutions, and analyzes the prospects for a sustainable democracy in Iraq. The coalition forces have faced serious difficulties in Iraq, and these were apparently intensifying as the end of the year approached. But to portray these difficulties as definitively signifying the failure of the reconstruction or Iraqis’ rejection of the U.S.- and British-led coalition’s plans for their country would be a mistake, since it would mean unreal- istically discounting many positive developments that augur well for Iraq’s future as a free, democratic, peaceful, and law-governed country. Iraq is obviously not out of the woods, but to pronounce the coalition’s effort a failure after just a few months of reconstruction following de- cades of dictatorship would be premature, to say the least. With that proviso noted, let us turn to the setbacks. These fall into two categories: Some represent the appearance of difficulties inherent in the knotty circumstances of Iraq after decades of Saddam’s depreda- tions, distortions, and neglect, while others have been the bitter fruit of unforced errors. Coping with the former and learning to recognize and rectify the latter have demanded considerable flexibility and improvi- sation from veteran U.S. diplomat L. Paul Bremer and the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) that he heads. U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell relayed a sense of the challenge when he confided in a Septem- ber 2003 interview that “one unanticipated aspect of the postwar occupation was the extent to which the entire structure of Iraqi military and civil society collapsed so completely as the war ended, leaving a vast problem for American troops to handle.”1 Indeed, the problem of which Secretary Powell spoke has been vast. A seemingly endless array of challenges has confronted the CPA, at best delaying and at worst threatening to undermine the economic and po- litical reconstruction of Iraq. The intrinsic difficulties can readily be listed: They include the political power vacuum created by the swift collapse of Saddam’s regime; the chaotic and sometimes violent mani- festations of political demands by people suddenly freed from tyranny; and the damage visited upon the country’s economy and basic-services infrastructure by Saddam’s abuses plus more than a decade of international sanctions. Yet other troubles can be traced to blunders committed by the CPA itself, some of whose policies and political decisions, particularly in the important early period after the fall of Baghdad on 9 April 2003, smacked of poor preparation, scant knowledge of the country, and lack of sensitivity to certain salient social and cultural mores. It is undeniable that insecurity and at times chaos have reigned for a dismayingly long time in some parts of Iraq, particularly in sections of Baghdad (whose sprawling environs contain around a fifth of Iraq’s total population of about 25 million people) and in the “Sunni” zone. This area, which is often called the “Sunni triangle,” is actually more of Adeed Dawisha 7 a quadrilateral whose corners rest on Baghdad in the south, Saddam’s home city of Tikrit in the north, Ramadi in the west, and Baquba in the east. The Arabic-speaking, Sunni Muslim tribes who predominate in this area received ample largess and many privileges from Saddam, and in turn staffed much of his secret-police and military apparatus. It is in this area that the vast majority of U.S. casualties have occurred. Saddam loyalists, who stand to lose the most from the demise of his regime, have perpetrated almost-daily attacks on U.S. convoys and personnel in this zone. Well-equipped and seemingly generously financed by Saddamist remnants who raided Iraq’s treasury before fleeing Baghdad, these guer- rillas have been waging a low-intensity war that U.S. commanders have been hard-pressed to contain, let alone eliminate. It also appears that many (some say more than 2,000) violent Islamists from other Arab countries have infiltrated the porous borders of post- Saddam Iraq to strike at the U.S. “infidels.” It is hard to say precisely how extensive and sophisticated is the cooperation between Saddamists and Islamists, but some does seem to exist. Adding to the CPA’s woes are the vast numbers of convicts—some estimates run as high as 280,000—whom Saddam let out of jail in late 2002. Many of these are hardened murder- ers, kidnappers, robbers, and rapists who have terrorized certain cities, particularly Baghdad, and created a climate of lawlessness. Compounding all this is the veritable sea of easily accessible weaponry in which Iraq is awash. In the early days after Saddam’s fall it was reported that one could buy five hand grenades for a dollar in the main markets in broad daylight. Some improvement had occurred by August, when the price had reportedly risen to $3 per grenade, though a bulk rate of $20 for ten grenades was also said to be available.2 Most of the armaments come from looted government arsenals: The CPA estimates that Saddam stock- piled a staggering 600,000 tons of arms and munitions. After six months of occupation, coalition forces had been able to destroy or secure no more than about 75,000 tons—or 12.5 percent—of the deadly stuff. All these things have contributed to the precarious security situa- tion, which weighs heavily and directly on U.S. forces and the CPA, and which has led to a substantial erosion of the initial good will and popu- lar support that was in evidence just after Saddam and his regime were forcibly unseated last spring. Of course, any fair account of the deterioration in security must rec- ognize that many difficulties flow from the vacuum created by the collapse, under the guns of outside forces, of one of the twentieth century’s most Procrustean and barbaric authoritarian systems. Iraq has previously known military coups followed by swift clampdowns, but never a sustained power vacuum. The war that the coalition launched on March 19 aimed to defeat the Iraqi armed forces and neutralize the Ba’ath Party, the two institutions that for more than three decades had sus- tained Saddam Hussein’s grip on power. This meant that a yawning 8 Journal of Democracy political void would be left, with the well-nigh unavoidable conse- quence of an indefinite period of insecurity and instability. There were, however, things that the coalition authorities could have done differently to ease the security problem. Two major mistakes were the decision to dissolve immediately all regular Iraqi military forces and the decision to ban all Ba’ath Party members from taking part in public life. The point is not that these institutions should have been allowed to carry on “business as usual.” By any measure, Saddam’s conscript army of almost half a million troops was absurdly bloated and a mainstay of his coercive rule. The Ba’ath Party, too, functioned as an instrument of in- timidation designed to dragoon all sectors of society into line behind the “Great Leader.” Coalition authorities were correct to think that Iraqis would be better off without such predatory entities in their midst. The blunder lay in the timing. Evidently looking far over the horizon but not just down the road, CPA officials seem to have forgotten to ask themselves what it might mean to turn tens of thousands of military offic- ers loose on the streets without at first even the promise of monetary compensation.