The US is repeating the mistakes Britain made in the 1920s
Martin Woollacott Friday October 17, 2003 The Guardian
General Anthony Zinni, who used to coordinate American military activities in the region that includes Iraq, said of the proposed democratisation of that country: "God help us if we think that this transition will occur easily." His prescience is now easy to commend, but the intersection of the large difficulties on the ground in Iraq, wavering American will and less than responsible European manoeuvring on the sidelines is perhaps even messier than he imagined.
Iraq's democratic chances are being squeezed by a combination of divided counsel in the US and the rigid conditions laid down by the countries who were against the war. The compromise at the UN, with France, Germany and Russia voting for a new resolution on Iraq but refusing to offer new aid, whether military or financial, to that country until sovereignty is fully transferred, is a cold compact. It avoids what would have been damaging abstentions at the UN, but still expresses disapproval of US plans, and thus still adds to the pressure on Bush to advance the handover of power.
It is not so much that the American government takes serious note of the objections of the French, German and Russian leaders. What it does take note of is the growing disillusionment of the American public at the human and monetary costs of Iraq. The administration is still unlikely to be able to counter that mood by pointing to substantial new financial and military support from abroad. The meeting of donor nations in Madrid next week could produce somewhat larger sums than the risible amounts which the Americans earlier feared, and a successful UN resolution might just unlock one or two serious military contributions. But on the whole, as one American commentator put it: "There is no cavalry coming over the hill to bail out the United States in Iraq."
The Bush administration is working out its own not very logical compromises. It has settled on the position that it will not allow itself to be bumped out of Iraq in the short term, whatever the attitude of former opponents of the war like France, of the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, and of its own proteges on the Iraqi governing council, who have also pressed for an early transfer of sovereignty. Behind the scenes, the argument between supporters of deep reform and a long stay and advocates of a relatively early retreat is not over, although it is slipping towards the latter's position.
Deep reformers and early leavers can come together, to some extent, in agreeing on the desirability of maintaining substantial American political influence after a formal transfer. But what they cannot truly agree on is the nature of the Iraqi polity America is trying to bring into being. The strains this disagreement is producing have undermined the alliance between the administration's handful of authentic neo-conservatives, such as Paul Wolfowitz, and its more old-fashioned nationalists, such as Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, pushing the latter closer to Colin Powell. All this is happening, of course, in the context of a campaign already begun for Bush's second term, in which the question of what is best for the US, let alone what is best for Iraq, is ever more likely to be obscured by the search for electoral advantage.
The parallels between America's enterprise in Iraq today and Britain's similar undertaking in the 1920s are in some ways very close. In an illuminating new book, Inventing Iraq, Toby Dodge describes the initial tension in British-controlled Iraq between those British officials who saw their work in purely colonial terms and those who took seriously the League of Nations mandate to help the Iraqis create a liberal state, although one which they of course expected to be a close ally of Britain.
Driven by a combination of prejudice, cultural ignorance, and the demands of a government back in Britain desperate to reduce and eventually discard the highly unpopular burden of Iraq, they then did, he argues, the opposite of creating a liberal state or, for that matter, a dependable ally.
In their use of bombing as a means of political control, the British prefigured the habitual use of extreme state violence which Saddam intensified but did not innovate. In their employment of patronage and subsidy, they laid the foundation for a style of government in which loyalty was purchased rather than earned. And, in their emphasis on communal, ethnic and rural-urban differences, they similarly set a pattern of rule through division. An increasingly large income from oil later completed a process through which Iraqi governments were relieved of the necessity of consulting and convincing their people, ruling instead largely through coercion, bribery and manipulation. The US today, Dodge argues, must grasp that it is both facing the consequences of that British failure and is "in danger of repeating it".
As the British became more desperate, they colluded with any figures or forces in Iraq that seemed likely to make the job easier, regardless of what that might mean for Iraq's future. Signs of a similar process are not lacking today, with reports of the recruitment as helpers and allies of some of the former regime's intelligence people and senior army officers. Deals with religious militias, however convenient now, could have dangerous political consequences later. Dependence on tribal leaders, whether they were close to Saddam or not, recalls Britain's preference for rule in rural areas through complaisant sheikhs. And, although unavoidable, the elevation to the governing council of some political figures and parties who have, so far, little or no body of support in the country is equally worrying.
Pressure on the US to shorten the timetable for the transfer of full power to the Iraqis remains strong. Some of it is theatrical and may not be seriously intended, but that does not mean it has no impact. Some of it rests on the certainly arguable proposition that the occupation must be scaled down or violent opposition to it in Iraq, Muslim anger in the region, and terrorist activity generally, will increase. Some of it just counts the American political cost too high. Yet it seems obvious that a rapid transfer of power by the US would be disastrous.
For many who know Iraq well, 18 months to two years is the minimum requirement, and some argue for a much longer period. If power was handed to politicians who had yet to establish either a real base among the population or a balance between themselves, there would simply be a breakdown of the new Iraq. If withdrawal was eased by handing over power to what Dodge calls the Saddamist "shadow state", the surviving network of his allies and enforcers, as well as to others in Iraq inclined to a brutal style of politics, the result would be an even worse betrayal of the Iraqi people.
· Inventing Iraq by Toby Dodge is published by Hurst.
m.woollacott at guardian.co.uk