Iraq
Introduction
The period between 2003 and 2011 is a duration that will remain in the history of Iraq for decades to come. It was a period characterized by unprecedented levels of violence and political disorder whereby there was a strong influence exerted on Iraqi politics by foreign powers. The same period witnessed the American-led military troop invasion of Iraq, in an exercise that overthrew Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party governance. The year 2011 marked the end of nearly decade-long fight when the US troops left the country. After the invasion, there were efforts to reconstruct Iraq. However, the reconstruction efforts met stronger opposition when Iraq insurgency engaged the coalition and allied Iraqi forces in a fierce fight. The outcome of the uprising would be the inception of severe living conditions for the Iraqi citizens throughout the period. Based on this significant period of changes in Iraq, this paper therefore about the point of view taken by the writers of Future of Iraq and Iraq from War to New Authoritarianism seeks to evaluate the two arguments from these two books and then make a particular point of view that seems more convincing. The paper will then analyze what each of these arguments implies about the prospects for democracy in Iraq. The major issues that should be addressed for Iraq to realize a stable, consolidated democracy will also be discussed before taking an incisive look into the roles that US can play to help address the issues that hinder Iraq from attaining stable, consolidated democracy.
Implication for democracy
The invasion of Iraq by US army and its allies in 2003 triggered various ideas around the globe. It is clear that different individuals have had different ideas concerning the notion behind the decisions that were made by US government to invade Iraq. According to the then US president G. Bush, the invasion was meant to democratize Iraq. However, on the contrary, a section of the world believes that the aim of the US operation was connected to the war on terror by eliminating the leader of Iraq government at the time, Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein’s government majorly practiced authoritative leadership and was linked to several terror attacks in other parts of the world (Anderson and Gareth 17). Despite the USA’s main aim to restore Iraq’s democracy, the state still experienced authoritative governance which was employed and practiced by the Prime Minister Maliki, immediately after the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq back in 2011 (Dodge 157). Based on the continued practice of authoritative leadership, it can be right to argue that the decisions that were made by the US together with other allies to rescue Iraq from dictatorship were not all right and that this is what escalated the insurgency in the period between 2003 and 2011. The Iraqis were trying to fight the foreign forces, and this led to the rebirth of authoritarianism system in Iraq. The revival was based on the escalated anti-governmental insurgency in Iraq post-US troops’ withdrawal. It might also be right to argue that Iraq as a state would have gone wrong regardless of the post-war decisions.
It is imperative to note that even though the decisions made by the US government and allies did not work in Iraq to bring democracy intended, that does not, however, imply that their decisions weren’t totally right. Better decisions would have been put in place in the aftermath of the war to save Iraq from authoritarianism system of leadership that they currently are experiencing. The Coalition Provisional Authority steered by the US government that ruled Iraq for more than a year after the invasion between 2003 and 2004 laid down the political systems that are currently in use in Iraq. It implemented governance infrastructures that were majorly designed to limit the powers of the country and established rules that encouraged a polyarchic democracy to prosper (Dodge 83). Clearly, this was a good intention by the foreign powers to implement democracy system in Iraq government, but it only operated in the few sets of national elections in Iraq between the period of 2005 and 2010. In 2011 after the withdrawal of US forces, the Iraq government led by the Prime Minister Maliki adopted the competitive authoritarianism system of politics. In the system, the opposing parties were oppressed. If the US government could have made the decision to continue operating in the Iraq territory until democracy was fully realized, things would have been better for citizens of Iraq today. Therefore, it holds more water to argue that things could have gone well in Iraq if the right decisions had been made.
Achieving democracy in Iraq is not an impossible task, but the reality is that it will take more than the single handed effort of people of Iraq to realize what now, remains as a dream. For people of Iraq to be able to achieve democracy, it will call upon the intervention of the foreign forces to supplement the capacity of the civil society activists of Iraq. These civil societies would be able to conduct widespread protests against the inefficient and corrupt ruling Shia-centric political elite. The Iraq Prime Minister, Maliki, since his appointment in 2006, has been busy luring the most vital and key functionaries of Iraq government under his powers rendering the opposition parties, people of Iraq and the civil society activists voiceless. It is difficult therefore for Iraq as a nation to achieve democracy. Attempts by the civil society activists to protest against government inefficiency across the whole country in February 2011 failed to yield any positive result. The failure was attributed to the government, which easily employed both overt and covert coercion to overpower the widespread protests (Saikal, Amin, and Schnabel 123).
The failure of these protest to yield any results towards achieving democracy in Iraq, clearly indicate that the citizens of Iraq need to source for support from the rest of the world. The support would facilitate getting rid of the ruling elite who continue to practice authoritarianism system of leadership. Sourcing for foreign powers may mean similar incidents of overthrowing the ruling government just like it was with the government of Saddam Hussein. As much as the government of US is blamed to some extent for the escalation of the insurgency in Iraq due to their radical approach to disbanding Iraq army to end the military influence in politics, this still stands the best way for Iraq to follow to achieve democracy.
Despite the efforts by US government to bring democracy in Iraq, some people still argue that achieving democracy in Iraq does not necessarily require the support of US or any other foreign force. Rather, democracy in Iraq requires the full approval of the governed. That school of thought believes that democracy cannot be imposed on the unwilling people. The biggest problem as to why it is not easy with the even support of foreign forces to achieve democracy in Iraq is that democracy in Iraq will bring to an end the dominance of state organs by the Shi’a’s.
It is possible that power-sharing agreements can be reached to protect the marginal Sunni Arabs and also to guarantee them participate in the governance of the nation. However, to achieve democracy in Iraq the Sunnis who were sacked during the De’ baathification process to be reinstated to the central government. The reinstatement would enable the Sunnis to retain a considerable degree of the power and influence they enjoyed in the pre-2003 regime. Moreover, the Prime Minister ought to engage Kurdish and the Sunni communities in an inclusive political dialogue to and come up with a comprehensive power-sharing deal. The political dialogue can ease the tension between the Iraqi communities at loggerheads with one another. This way, Iraq will resolve the political tensions and be able to slowly but surely come out of the deeply entrenched sectarian and ethnic divisions since every party will have a voice in the decision-making affairs of the country as the constitution of Iraq requires. Another side of the story is that the dominant community in Iraq will not accept to lose its political dominance to one of subservience, and this is why it is not easy for foreign forces to intervene and succeed in bringing democracy to people of Iraq (Evans and Daniel 125).
The Iraq war that commenced in 2003 was a landmark occurrence did not create new sectarianism in the Iraqi society. Rather, it amplified how the Sunni and Shi’a sectarian relationships are structured. The Iraqi society has had to contend with deeply rooted societal divisions. The country under the dictatorship regimes of the past leaders had to endure the “violent ethnic, economic, and sectarian divisions” (Anderson, and Gareth 6). These have persisted to date. The leaders that ascended to the government positions failed to forge a transparent and inclusive national framework to promote the emergence of Iraqi national identity. As the authors note, Saddam Hussein’s rule was “a disaster for the Iraqi citizens measured by political, economic, social and social criteria” (8).
The political change that ensued after the 2003 war in Iraq unearthed the deeply rooted sectarian relations that had persisted in the society for several decades and turned unfathomable into a political reality. The political reality that emerged was the empowerment of the sectarian and ethnic out-groups, namely the Kurdish and Shi’a political forces (Haddad 2). For the first time in the nation’s history, the war allowed the unrestrained assertion of the subnational identities that were suppressed by the previous dictatorial regimes. It is clear that Iraq has had a stunted political history that dates back to the time Saddam Hussein ascended into the helm of power courtesy of the Ba’ath Party.
The argument that democracy cannot be imposed on a willing population may be right to some extent, but it is not necessarily true. The Iraqis have on several occasions protested against their government leadership and the rising levels of corruption in their country which is clear evidence that they are ready and willing to have democracy. It is rather argued that the war on Iraq by the US was not the war to bring democracy but the war to have access to oil point in Iraq, this could be right, but the arguments seems to take a political point of view. The invasion of Iraq was in good faith to ensure that Iraq achieved democracy if President G. Bush's speech in February 2003 is anything to believe. Anderson and Gareth (186) reports a section of President George W. Bush’s speech which in part reads: “The world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder. A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other countries in the region.” Bush’s view was politicked and the US government good intentions to free people of Iraq from dictatorship was rather considered by Iraqi people as well as the Middle East citizens as a war to access oil in Iraq.
There are a lot of problems that if not resolved, then achieving a unified democracy in Iraq will remain a distant dream. A stable Iraq will require even the US government to consider it power ruling in the Middle East, for a stable Iraq there will also be a need to the political system in Iraq to change among other factors. Before addressing the factors that would promote Iraq’s stability, it would help to know the ethnic division that has existed in the country and still exists which is plaguing the country. It would help to know how the rise of authoritarianism came into being because it is attributed to the ethnic divide that is evident in Iraq.
According to Anderson, and Gareth (6) the sectarian and racial divisions have characterized the Iraqi nation since time immemorial, and it is not as a result of the US military invasion in 2003. The authors note that the since the date of the Ottoman Empire, the Sunni Arabs have centralized political and military power. The individual control of mechanisms of power by a single minority community, i.e., the Sunni group, has not augured well with other communities which feel they are excluded from running the affairs of the nation particularly the Shi’a and the Kurds. This has always led to a seething resentment on the part of the Shi’a and consequent violent rebellions against the ruling government (Dodge 41). This kind of sectarian strife is not the making of the US military, rather is a phenomenon that has existed in the Iraqi society for several decades. Moreover, Iraq is inherently fractured among ethnic lines whereby the Arabs form a greater percentage of eighty percent of the total population while the remaining twenty percent, is comprised of the Kurds. The decision to incorporate Mosul province into Iraq in the year 1925 was made to neutralize the numerical dominance of the Shi’a (Anderson and Gareth 6). This decision had fateful practical implications in the affairs of the Iraqi nation. The Kurds, for example, have never acknowledged the central leadership that is dominated by the Arabian authorities. In most circumstances, the Kurds stage resistance to the Arab central government based in Baghdad and the opposition always takes the nature of violence. The government has also retaliated with brutality to suppress the rebellions. The government’s retaliation has only intensified with time.
The 2003 war facilitated the airing of numerous grievances and enabled the suppressed identities to express their many concerns on matters of equality and social justice that had been thrown to the dogs in the pre-2003 regime. Sectarian identity dominated Iraq more than other frames of references such as ideology, class, and region. The reasons that suggest sectarian dominance in the Iraqi society can be traced to the inherent suspicion with which the Sunni Arabs regard the Shi’a mobilizations or identities as well as the backgrounds and propensity of Iraq’s new political leaders. Before the war, the Arab Sunnis viewed Shi’a political activism with suspicion. The Sunnis perceptions were ambivalent with regards to the national, Islamic, and Arab lineages of the Shias. This bred a degree of sectarian entrenchment before the war as reflected by the depth of the Shi’a feelings of collective victimhood. Moreover, the political elites that have assumed leadership of the Iraqi nation have further propagated the centrality of sectarian identity in the post-2003 Iraq. This is because most of the political actors in the post-2003 war were more akin to the ethnic and sectarian lobbyist throughout their careers rather than national politicians.
(Un) fortunately, these politicians who happen to be Shias’ retained their roles as advocates for sectarianism and Shia’ interests and identity have been intrinsic to their political outlook. They have failed to transcend the ethnic cocoons into national politicians. This has validated the longstanding Sunnis’ prejudices and fears about the Shias’. The Sunnis contempt has been exacerbated by the fact that most of the politicians at the helm of power were previously based in Iraq and allegedly have close links to Iran (Haddad 2). The Shia-centric politicians have done little to alleviate the fears and suspicions of the Sunnis stemming from their empowerment. A violent sectarian backlash has ensued following the fall of the Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial regime as Shias and Sunnis have constantly lived in fear of the other. Therefore, sectarian polarization and the dynamic between the Shi’a-centric state building and the rejection by Sunnis are cumulative issues with roots that have evolved over the past centuries into the twenty-first century. The problems are mainly the product of a history of authoritarianism, mishandling of collective plurality, and failed nation building, a situation that persists into the present.
With the above information in mind, it is evident that for Iraq to be stable and have a consolidated democracy, there is a need to overthrow the competitive authoritarianism political system. This system of leadership adopted and practiced by the Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been one of the major dividing factor in Iraq and one of the main reasons Iraq has not been able to achieve democracy. Under this system of leadership, the state’s power is vested solely on the Office of the Prime Minister, leaving the Executive and Legislature with limited influence in the formulation and implementation of policies. He ensured that the key positions in his government were controlled majorly by members of his family and close allies from his party. The system of leadership has denied the people of Iraq an opportunity to express their dissatisfaction with the leadership of Maliki. Those who attempted protest were subjected to both overt and covert oppressions by the government. Authoritarian system denies the opposition forces the opportunity to legally and openly participate in state governance and the ruling states tend to shape electoral contest to its advantage this denies the citizens and most importantly other contestants to enjoy democratic rights (Dodge 84). Therefore, for Iraq to one day enjoy a stable and consolidated democracy then there is need to eradicate the authoritarian political system that suppresses the opponents denying them their democratic rights.
Secondly, there is also need to ensure that the military and other security forces are not involved in the political affairs. This has also been one of the issues that have been deployed in Iraq where the ruling government has full control of the military and the security forces of the country. For instance, Maliki since his appointment as the prime minister of Iraq in 2006, he worked so hard to gain control of the Iraq security so that he could gain the power to get coercion needed to achieve competitive authoritarianism (Dodge 184). This move rendered the opponents of Maliki powerless as they could think of overthrowing his government neither by a military coup nor by a vote of no confidence as he had the control of both the parliament and the security force in Iraq. This is an issue that needs to be resolved to ensure that the military is an independent body. The military should not be under control or be manipulated by any political party or a figure in the government of Iraq. If this is not achieved, then the dream of Iraq to gain democracy will still be a distant but reachable destination.
There is also need to strengthen the state institutions in Iraq. Some people attribute the weakness of the state institutions to the invasion by US forces in 2003 to overthrow Ba’athist regime. The invasion was accompanied by explosion and looting of state properties. This could be just one of the several factors that lead to weak public institutions, but the weak state institutions have further been escalated and made even worse by the heightened widespread corruption among the elites holding the government positions. If the level of rising corruption in Iraq is not put to control then, the civil institutions will continue to be weakened hence their inability to provide the services the citizenry greatly needs to mobilize support for democracy (Dodge 187). For example, due to weak civil institutions, the attempt of the civil society activists to protest against the authoritarian system failed. The failure of the state institutions was attributed to the overpowering by the ruling government. For there to be a successful protest against dictatorship, there is need to strengthen the civil institutions of Iraq so that they have the capacity to mobilize in support of democracy for people of Iraq.
As much as there are issues that need to be resolved within the Iraq government to realize a stable and consolidated democracy in Iraq, the foreign governments also need to address some issues to make it easy for people of Iraq to attain democracy. The people of Iraq should not have a feeling that democracy is being imposed on them, but they should be left to be at the core center of the change they are willing to experience. As argued by Anderson and Gareth (189) they mention that democracy cannot be enforced onto an unwilling population. In their argument, they feel that the government of US invading Iraq in 2003 was trying to impose democracy on people of Iraq. They term this war as the war to access oil and not the war for freedom of people of Iraq as it was intended. The invasion of Iraq by the US forces brought up divided opinion. Some even believe that they had good intentions to free Iraq from dictatorship but in the Middle East and especially the Arabs they believe that the war was targeted at the accessing the oil in Iraq (189). For these particular reasons of doubt of the US intentions, there is a need for US government to state clear the intentions of their invasion. If it was to bring democracy to Iraq, then why did they have to withdraw from Iraq before their mission to free people of Iraq was achieved. This will put the US at a fix and might result to rejections by people of Iraq if they attempt to invade Iraq again with similar intentions of fighting for democracy. The government of US other than clarifying their intentions to the Middle East on their mission to invade Iraq in 2003, they did not have to withdraw their troops from Iraq before the freedom of the people of Iraq was achieved. This has put the image of US at stake in the Middle East. The US is portrayed as the enemy of the Middle East because they should have persisted in Iraq to ensure that the people of Iraq attained the democracy which they needed the most after elimination of the Ba’athist regime. The withdrawal of the US forces put the people of Iraq into even a worse dictatorship leadership of the Maliki, who employ the same tactic employed by the brutal Saddam Hussein.
Roles of US in resolving issues affecting Iraq democracy
As the superpower, the government of the US has a significant role to play in addressing matters that hinder Iraq from gaining stable, consolidated democracy. Firstly, US government just like it did in the 2003 Iraqi invasion by overthrowing the regime of Baathist, it should apply the same formula to reverse the competitive authoritarianism system that was adopted and practiced by Maliki. It is within the sphere influence of the superpower government to champion for the democratic rights more so in the countries which are still in nascent stages of democracy (Huntington and Samuel 26). However, since the government of Iraq is oppressing its people and denying them their democratic freedoms, then it is appropriate that the US government intervenes and rescue the people of Iraq from the dictatorial leadership of al-Maliki.
The US government also needs to ensure that the Iraq military and security officers are neither involved in state politics nor are used to oppress both the opposition and the innocent civilians of Iraq as proposed by Ghanim and David (148). Maliki after being appointed as the prime minister in 2006, used all his powers to gain control of the military and the Iraq security. He has used them to dictate his oppositions and the protestors against his bad governance of the Iraqis (Dodge 157). The US government, through its superpower status, should ensure that at no cost should members of the Iraq military are involved in state politics. In the 2003 invasion by the US, army ensured that the Iraqi army was completely dislodged from state politics. Years later after their withdrawal from Iraq, the same system was employed by the Iraq Prime Minister Maliki in his leadership.
The US-led occupation force inherited the fragile Iraq state institutions which were weakened by the Iran-Iraq wars between 1980 and 1988. The invasion of US government, however, further promoted the collapse of the state institutions. The US government between 2003 and 2011 spent a projected amount of 61.11 billion dollars for rebuilding the civic and military institutes in Iraq (Dodge 183). After 2011 the support declined and with the Iraq government having the capacity to support its development it still needs the help of the US government to support its civil institutions to ensure that the civil society gains the ability to mobilize for the support of democracy in Iraq.
Finally, the US government also needs to mention clearly what its role and intention in the Iraq war for freedom was. This would help with the perception of the US’s role given that the people of the Middle East perceive that the US is taking advantage of the instability in the region to gain access to the oil in Iraq.
In conclusion, many people might believe that regardless of the decisions that were made post-war Iraq would have still gone wrong, but this is not true. If the decisions that were made post-war were maintained until the intended purpose was achieved, then Iraq would be better placed now than it is at the moment. The US government decision to withdraw its troops from Iraq in 2011 escalated the insurgency in Iraq as many now perceived it as a war for the questionable access to the oil in Iraq rather than war to ensure freedom for the people of Iraq as it was initially intended. Nevertheless, the US government should get credit for making the people of Iraq realize that they have democratic rights and that they should fight for their rights. It is not easy for an external intervener to deliver a sustainable political transformation to the countries in which they arbitrate. Therefore, after a fight of intent to free people of Iraq from dictatorship by the assistance of the US government; it is upon the people of Iraq to finally fight for their right before external forces intervene to assist.
Works Cited
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Ghanim, David. Iraq's Dysfunctional Democracy. Santa Barbara, Calif: Praeger, 2011. Print.
Haddad, Fanar. Sunni-Shia Relations After the Iraq War. United States Institute of Peace, 2013. Retrieved from https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/PB160.pdf
Huntington, Samuel P. The Julian J. Rothbaum Distinguished Lecture Series: Vol. 4. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991. Internet resource.
Saikal, Amin, and Albrecht Schnabel. Democratization in the Middle East: Experiences, Struggles, Challenges. New York: United Nations University Press, 2003. Print.
