A rchive Date
[ 24-04-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Iraq ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/mansur_toronto.html
A new phase of history dawns in Iraq
By SALIM MANSUR - For the Toronto Sun
April 24, 2003
LONDON, Ont. - The critics of U.S. President George Bush observe that winning the peace in Iraq will be far more difficult than winning the war.
The critics are predictable.
Their opposition during the conflict, particularly in the Arab-Muslim world, morphed into an almost desperate prayer for some unexpected setback to derail the American military.
Or for some callous blunder of such terrible proportion to occur that would turn the Iraq venture into a political disaster for the Bush administration, irrespective of the military outcome.
None of that happened.
Instead, Iraqis embraced freedom with as much unbidden joy as they were unsettled by the cathartic release of long-repressed emotions that engulfed them for a few days after the fall of Baghdad.
The effort of critics, in particular those from the Arab-Muslim world, to pin the blame for looting - and the grotesque pillaging of museums - entirely on the Americans, reflects once again the sad mindset of a failed political culture that holds outsiders responsible for all the ills of its world.
However, the critics are right, for the wrong reason, to suggest winning the peace in Iraq could prove to be difficult for America.
The Iraq venture brings America, for the first time in its history and that of the Middle East, into the core of the Arab-Muslim world with an agenda of nation-building.
Nothing of this magnitude has been tried before and nothing similar may be attempted again in the region should American resolve to help Iraqis realize a democratic future weaken, or be abandoned, due to the inevitable difficulties that lie ahead.
The big question is, can America commit itself to Iraq without the trappings of an imperial power, as Britain did in India?
India was far less of a nation than Iraq is today, far more diverse and quarrelsome, and without Britain's role of providing an imperial unity, India could have been a far more fragmented subcontinent than is the Arab Middle East.
Americans have demonstrated their capacity to remain committed for grand purposes - despite all the various trends of domestic and foreign opposition - as in protecting Western Europe during the Cold War years. It is the same sort of bipartisan fortitude in American politics that will be required in staying the course on Iraq for a period as brief as five years, or perhaps twice as long.
Iraqis also need to make such a commitment and not impetuously doubt Americans, as they will be encouraged to do by the surrounding hostility and resentment of the Arab-Muslim world toward America.
Iraq is a place - irrespective of its antiquity, or being celebrated as a cradle of civilizations - that has not known freedom as it is understood in modern history.
Baghdad has been a centre of authoritarian power, however enlightened such power may have been occasionally, since the Abbasid rulers made it the capital of the Arab-Islamic empire in the mid-8th century.
Here, in the ancient Mesopotamian soil, it will take time and effort to nurture the rudiments of a democratic culture.
The early signs of open politics in the streets of Iraqi cities, of people expressing themselves without fear, of engaging in forbidden religious rituals, and even of anti-Americanism, are all full of promise.
Once the excitement of new-found freedom subsides, sober thoughts will remind Iraqis of what the alternatives to democracy in their neighbourhood represent.
Then Iraqis will ponder the words of their most senior religious cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, instructing them to greet American liberators as friends bringing freedom.
Such words spoken in Najaf - the holiest city of the Shiites, where Imam Ali, cousin and son-in-law of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, is buried - and then broadcast from the heartland of the Arab world, have not been heard in living memory.
The promise of a democratic future in Iraq may be the foundation of a new friendship among Arabs, Kurds and Americans, opening a phase in history that gradually dissolves old enmities and bitter dogmas that for so long have retarded progress in the Middle East.
Salim Mansur is a professor of political science at the University of Western Ontario. His column appears alternate Thursdays. He can be reached at smansurca@yahoo.ca
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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