Iraq's occupation-vetted government has catapulted the country centuries into the past leading it to collapse, writes Amr Elchobaki* Opponents of deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would never have imagined that his execution would arouse such sympathy and anger in Iraq, the rest of the Arab world and abroad. Even to many Arab rulers, foreigners and Arab and international human rights agencies, the very timing of the execution cast a shadow over the integrity of the trial, and broad sectors of Arab and international public opinion were shocked by the vindictiveness and the sectarian slogans that accompanied both trial and execution. Perhaps history will never present again as unique an opportunity to put "Arab despotism" on trial as that squandered by the current Iraqi government. Saddam had a lengthy record of murder and destruction, carried out against his Arab and non-Arab neighbours and against his own people. He meted out the most brutal forms of tyranny and vengeance against his opponents at home, of all political and religious stripes, and it was only natural that these would have supported or, at least, not opposed, his prosecution and, perhaps too, his execution. So when most of these, along with Arab and other campaigners against despotism, feel repulsed by the rhetoric of the Iraqi government and by the sectarian order that is emerging in Iraq, there must be something terribly wrong with the so-called democratisation project in Iraq. Of course, problems of the current Iraqi government did not start with the execution of Saddam or even with the way it handled his trial. They began with the structural flaws of the new regime, flaws that were ultimately destined to reproduce disaster and intensify sectarian tensions. And no amount of inveighing against opponents inside Iraq and out as "Saddamists" and threatening to cut off relations with Arab governments for "tampering with the will of the Iraqi people" can conceal this fact. Apparently, the Iraqi government has forgotten that it suffers a crisis of legitimacy and that it only attained power thanks to US- led occupation forces. It should, therefore, comport itself with a little modesty and refrain from lashing out at the millions of Arabs who have always loved Iraq, with its Shias and Sunnis alike, and many of whom had even looked forward to the birth of a new and free Arab Iraq, even if that necessitated, at first, some American support, but not at the cost of the integrity of Iraq, the security of the Iraqi people, internecine warfare across sectarian divides and a mounting death toll that has begun to exceed the victims of the old regime. The structural flaws in the current Iraqi regime have their origin in the way the US handled Iraq following the downfall and dismantlement of the Saddam regime. To the Americans, Iraq was virgin territory without a long and complex history. In their political naiveté, all they thought they had to do was press a button (setting into motion remote-controlled high-tech military technology) for the old order to vanish and the gleaming new democratic one to take its place. They had imagined that it would be a piece of cake to reorder the whole of Iraqi society, from positions at the top to social, sectarian and ethnic balances below. What a surprise they were in for. The tearing down of the old was, indeed, a breeze. It was building anew where the problems began to set the country on the precipitous slope to a civil war that will be bloodier and more destructive than the protracted Lebanese civil war. The hostilities between the parties pitted against each other in this war result of many causes, not among which are the regional maps that Israel and the US drew up decades ago, or any number of "conspiracies", the theorising on which only tends to blind our vision and impede our action. Rather, the source is to be found in the gross incompetence of the American administration of Iraq following the beginning of the occupation. Perhaps the gravest of America's mistakes in Iraq was its dismantlement of Iraq's governing institutions and army, creating an enormous power vacuum. Such a strategy of teardown and replace could not work in a country as complex as Iraq. From the outside, this targeting of the old was seen as an attack on a particular segment of the Iraqi populace. Although the Saddam regime had dispensed its terror against all sectors of the population, the Shia had undoubtedly received more than their share of tyranny and persecution. This was not because the old regime, unlike the new one, was organised on sectarian lines, but rather because the Shia had staged the boldest and most tenacious rebellions against the former regime. They paid for this, but not on the basis of their sectarian affiliation, as is the case with the attacks against Sunnis today. The American war in Iraq was not a purely military and political operation; it had a clear social thrust, as it also aimed to overthrow the social, cultural and political foundations of the old regime. However, this could not take place overnight without causing deep rifts in the fabric of Iraqi society, all the more so when it was commonly perceived that the new social project rested on a Shia majority. Sunni-Shia tensions thus began when it was construed that the destruction of the old meant the destruction of "Sunni power" in favour of the rise of "Shia power". In this regard, many Shias were reluctant to join the resistance, which from their point of view was aimed at restoring the old regime rather than ousting the occupation. The vacuum that resulted from the dismantlement of the Baathist edifices of government was quickly filled with sectarian militias that embarked on the worst spree of ethnic cleansing crimes in the modern history of Iraq. Iraq, now without effective centralised security apparatuses, was not equipped to deal with this kind of "revolutionary change". The Americans could have taken the opportunity that had been presented to them early on to rein in what some have termed "Sunni arrogance" in monopolising the affairs of state. They could have, for example, established a temporary power sharing system in which the Sunnis, Shias and Kurds would have been represented equally, thereby eliminating any suspicion that in the new Iraq no sectarian or ethnic grouping would gain at the expense of another. Such an interim phase of "sectarian equilibrium" would have worked to generate a common legacy and to promote a democratic culture in which all Iraqis would feel included. In other words, the result would have been miles apart from the "ratio system" that the current government alliance vaunts and that has propelled Iraqi society towards catastrophe. Denominational demographics were not the key to resolving the Lebanese civil war; the Taif Agreement was founded upon a formula for denominational power sharing, even if it allowed for some compromise between the old denominational census figures and current realities. Under this agreement, parliamentary seats became equally divided between Muslims and Christians, even though Muslims made up about 60 per cent of the country. The Maronites thus ceded effective monopoly over government, even if they retained the right to the presidency. The compromise may not have entirely overturned the old order, but it halted its excesses and set the country on the path to a new order that would eliminate the logic and practice of sectarian monopoly and institute a truly democratic reality. Perhaps Iraq needed a tougher formula than the Lebanese one in order to put the past behind it. However, the Iraqis should have realised that the American way of bulldozing the past entirely was not just a tactical error but a crime against Iraq and its people, for the practical effect was to impede the rise of democratic values and culture and to nurture sectarian rancour, the rampage of sectarian militias and the sway of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq over the new government. What a grotesque irony it is that the dominant party in Iraq, the "victor" over the old order, is now exacting its revenge in more atrocious ways than Iraq has seen for centuries and that the government and security agencies are now a playground for Shia militias, whose raison d'être might have been understood had they emerged on the other side of the new official order, as was the case with the Sunni militias. If there is no possibility of reviving the old order in Iraq, it is just as certain that the democratic alternative that many Iraqis had prayed for was stillborn. In view of the prevailing chaos, what is needed now is a way to save Iraq from almost certain disaster. The solution is not to be found in a new security plan or by abolishing the law to uproot the Baath Party. Rather, it resides in a new interim form of power sharing that strikes a more impartial sectarian balance and the elimination of sectarian militias and terrorist groups. It simultaneously requires the phased withdrawal of American troops within a set timeframe, as opposed to another of Bush's imperious decisions to increase the presence of American forces, which will only play into the hands of terrorist groups operating inside Iraq. The current order in Iraq has contributed to opening sectarian wounds throughout the region that most of us had thought had been consigned to the past. This being the case, what are we to think of that system of government and those who run it? When Iraq's new rulers are so insensitive to Arab public opinion and regard themselves as a "model of democracy" that is the envy of all in the region, we can only conclude that they fell prey to a form of delirium. No rational person could possibly want to see the Iraqi "democratic" experience visited upon his own country or to see even non-democratic governments give way to sectarian militias that kill their fellow citizens at whim. Certainly, any Arab who believes in democracy and equality will feel greatly dismayed to find that, in a country such as Egypt -- a predominantly Sunni nation with such a veneration for the descendants of the Prophet Mohamed that it could practically be Shia, where pictures of Nasrallah proliferated through the streets and people's homes and stores as plentifully as those of Gamal Abdel-Nasser had once been, which doesn't oppose the Iranian nuclear programme because of the danger posed by the Israeli one, and which admires the acumen and tenacity of Iranian politicians in the face of the pressures their country is under -- televised images of the execution of Saddam Hussein has people, now, turning against the Shia and talking of the Iranian peril. This, alone, is indicative of the damage that has been inflicted upon the entire region as the result of a sectarian order that has been imposed on Iraq, that is catapulting that country centuries into the past, and that is setting back the cause of democracy in the Arab world by decades. * The writer is an analyst at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
