The road to America's new Iraq is fraught with uncertainties. Omayma Abdel-Latif reports on the formidable challenges facing post-Saddam Iraq As Iraqi political and civil society forces struggle to come to terms with the whirlwind unleashed after the fall of Saddam Hussein, there is still growing concern whether those forces will be able to generate a real political dynamic to bring about a democratic rule. According to some observers, despite the dislodging of Saddam from power, many key obstacles still remain -- making the task of the Iraqi opposition all the more difficult. All indications are that a US occupying force is here to stay -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's refusal to set a timetable for a military withdrawal and the lack of viable political institutions are just a few examples. But one key obstacle which will further complicate the situation for the Iraqi opposition is a population sceptical of most Iraqi exile groups and their ability to put forward a political formula which would reflect the Iraqi national will both independently and positively. It was against this backdrop that the first meeting of the Iraqi political opposition was held on Tuesday in the southern Iraqi town of Nasseriya. The meeting was the culmination of several US sponsored gatherings beginning in London in December 2002, followed by another in February 2003 in the city of Salahuddin. According to most Western observers, the Nasseriya meeting was a significant step on the long road to transferring power to Iraqi hands. One Iraqi analyst agreed to this view. "This was the first time the US commits itself to addressing the issue of political rebuilding of Iraq and the conference was significant in this respect," Leith Kubba, director at the National Endowment for Democracy, a democracy- promoting organisation based in Washington, told Al-Ahram Weekly on Monday. In Kubba's view, the meeting was a consultative rather than a conclusive one. It is the first of a series of meetings which will be held across Iraq to help "identify" who are the most influential players amongst opposition groups and who has the biggest grass-root support on the ground. "In the past, knowing who is who in the Iraqi opposition politics was a big mystery to the United States but when such meetings become routine, the picture will be clearer," said Kubba who has been involved with different Iraqi groups in exile. Others, however, disagree. Salah Al-Sheikhli, the spokesperson for the Iraqi National Accord (Al-Wifaq) and a prominent member of the exile opposition thinks that such meetings will be nothing more than "a PR exercise". "Such gatherings will be pointless," says Al-Sheikhli, "because it is not likely that a leadership will emerge out of it if they will continue to be snubbed by the major Iraqi opposition groups." In some regards, Al-Sheikhli's views exposed the moral dilemma in which the Iraqi opposition now finds itself. On the one hand some important factions, namely the SCIRI, the Al- Dawaa Party and the Iraqi Communist Party believe that their credibility will be undermined in the eyes of their constituency if they position themselves too closely with any US sponsored administration. This thinking explains why all three factions continue to boycott US supervised meetings. But there are also fears that their absence might render them obsolete and incapable of bringing about the kind of political change they have been struggling to achieve for decades. Despite this fear some insist on a strong stand against any US-controlled political process. "Our line has always been that after the fall of Saddam there should be a transitional government and not an interim authority," Mohamed Al-Asadi, the spokesperson of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) told the Weekly in a telephone interview from Teheran. Such an authority, Al- Asadi pointed out, will mean that Iraq will be under a mandate and this is what will be rejected. "We want an interim government which could represent the aspirations of the Iraqi people," Al-Asadi said. This will, however, raise the stakes for such movements which, according to Fakheri Karim, an independent Iraqi politician based in Syria, will have to address the key question of how it will be able to develop a political formula to rule Iraq in the shadow of an occupying force. While Fakheri believes that the opposition should not miss "a historic opportunity" to engage the Iraqi people in a process of political participation, he nonetheless thinks that such an undertaking will be difficult under the occupation. "The Iraqi opposition does not have many options but it should work on developing grass- root support and formulate a national political movement that engages the people," Karim told the Weekly. One of the priorities of such a movement, according to Karim, is to launch a process of resistance against the occupation which should begin peacefully. "The Iraqi national movement should not tarnish its reputation by allying itself with the US occupation and it should continue to engage in acts of peaceful resistance," Karim stressed. There are already realities on the ground which lend credence to Karim's argument. There have been wide protests against the Nasseriya meeting organised by the local population. Signs of a simmering discontent against the US presence in Iraq are becoming visible day by day. US conduct in the current Iraqi political process is so central that Kubba and others believe the future of Iraq will likely depend on how the US manages this process and how Iraqi political forces react to it. "The most important challenge facing Iraqi political forces in the coming period will be whether or not the Iraqi groups accept to operate under the framework the US is setting or unite to redefine this framework not just ideologically but politically as well." "Is the Iraqi opposition going to work along the lines of the state of Iraq, developing the Iraqi national identity or along other divisions? These divisions need not be just religious but there are also other social conditions which will affect the way in which the country is going to behave politically -- and geographically because part of the country has lived outside of the rule of the Iraqi government and developed their own political structures while other parts have been under an oppressive regime." Kubba explained. Most of the Iraqi analysts interviewed by the Weekly say there are growing signs of radical change that will likely occur in the political landscape. New political forces are emerging as others begin to decline. They cite examples of civil society groups quickly moving in to stop the looting. The mosques and the Husseiniya, a Shi'a madrassa, played a central role in bringing back a sense of order after the first days of regime breakdown. But there are also fears that identity politics might be given a boost. While Iraq is known to have a deeply-rooted tradition of secularism, observers say there are strong signs of an emerging political clout among the religious clergy. Many believe that the mosque will likely play a pivotal role in shaping the politics of a future Iraq. But introducing religion into politics in the Iraqi landscape is not welcomed by most Iraqi analysts and politicians interviewed by the Weekly. The killing last week of Abdel-Majeed Al-Khoei, a Shi'a cleric who lived in exile at Najaf has alarmed many Iraqis who feared that these might usher in a period of power struggles within the Shi'a ranks. To Kubba this incident "represented an extremely worrying situation". "Are we seeing the very signs of Algeria?" Kubba asked. "Those killings have been carried out in the name of religion and this is a new development to the Iraqi political scene," he said. Al-Asadi whose movement has been at the centre of this power struggle inside Najaf dismissed the idea that the killing of Al-Khoei reflected a "rift within the Shi'a ranks". "This was an extremist fringe movement that does not represent the realities on the ground and does not enjoy clout or a constituency among the Iraqis," he said. Similarly, Al-Sheikhli insisted that in Iraq there is no allegiance to sects as such. "The Iraqis have always been divided along political rather than racial or religious lines," Al-Sheikhli said. "There is no one single party or movement which represents the Shi'a of Iraq or the Sunni of Iraq as such. There are communists who are Shi'a, there are Islamists who are Shi'a. So it is not one solid monolithic structure and the media is responsible for the promotion of such stereotypes." Karim reads in those developments an attempt to turn the religious authority of Najaf into a political authority. He warned that "there will be those -- whether Iraq's neighbours or the foreign forces -- who will be using the ethnic or sectarian card to destroy the situation inside Iraq." Taking the argument a bit further, Faleh Abdel- Jabbar, an Iraqi academic who lives in London, is "stunned by the UK-US reports about Iraqi divisions". He referred to the ways in which the British troops in Basra have resorted to typical colonial methods when they appointed a tribal leader to run the affairs of the city. "There is a sense of overemphasising the tribal nature of the Iraqi society. Saddam retribalised the Iraqi society and the British are doing the same," Abdel- Jabbar said. Iraq has a very vibrant middle class which represents almost 54 per cent of the overall population. He said that statistical facts of being a Shi'a or a Sunni do not represent the real social structures. "Iraqi nationalism is a reality which is more vibrant than, for example, the Israeli one. It is not turned against its own nation state. It is a benign and cohesive force which will keep the country together," Abdel-Jabbar added. Abdel-Jabbar acknowledged, however, that whether the Iraqi political forces will be able to reactivate this nationalism and whether or not the US will see in this nationalism a threat to its existence in Iraq, is one question that remains unanswered.
