[Mb-civic] What Iraq will look like after the elections - Roger Owen - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

What Iraq will look like after the elections

By Roger Owen  |  November 27, 2005  |  The Boston Globe

THE ANNOUNCEMENT that the Dec. 15 Iraqi elections will be largely a 
contest among parties representing the Shi'ites, the Sunnis, and the 
Kurds provides a clear demonstration of the way Iraq's politics are 
going to be dominated by the type of sectarian democracy to be found in 
Lebanon. This is a far cry from the kind of pluralist, interest-oriented 
democratic systems to be found in Europe and America and deserves to be 
understood in its own particular terms.

Lebanese sectarianism as it has developed since the days of the French 
mandate before World War II has three main features. First, the majority 
of the population vote for members of their own ethnic group or sect. 
Second, the fact that the leaders of each sect do not need to solicit 
the votes of their own members leaves them free to negotiate and to make 
political bargains with the leaders of the other sects more or less 
untrammeled by the individual or corporate interests of their own 
followers. Third, the primary business of politics becomes that of 
dividing the state's resources, including money and jobs, on a sectarian 
basis.

Certain key implications follow. Such systems can only exist in the 
context of a weak central government. All sides fear that one of the 
other sectarian groups might be able to seize control of a strong army 
backed by a strong police force with sufficient power to subdue the 
rest. Meanwhile, the power of each elite is further strengthened by the 
fact that their constituents look to them, not to the central 
government, to provide employment opportunities and access to health and 
education facilities.

It also follows that such systems are unable to generate either a sense 
of national citizenship or of a shared past --witness the fact that, in 
spite of tremendous efforts in the post-civil war period, Lebanese 
educators are still unable to produce an agreed history text for use in 
the country's schools. This is one of the ways the systems tend to 
perpetuate themselves by making it impossible for politics to be 
organized along other, more secular lines.

Recent Lebanese history also provides a number of examples which provide 
evidence of possible perils ahead. A weak central government finds it 
difficult to prevent armed groups or, in the case of Lebanon, foreign 
armies, from entering the country from outside. Furthermore, a system 
based simply on sectarian allegiance often produces serious gaps between 
the leadership and its followers due to the former's unwillingness or 
inability to address issues of corruption, inequality, and outright 
poverty within its own ranks. So it was in the south of Lebanon, where 
the Israeli invasion of 1982 provided the opportunity for a new and more 
radical Shi'ite movement, Hezbollah, to contest the established 
political leadership and its party, Amal.

Given the differences in geography, resources, and history between the 
two countries, Lebanon cannot provide an exact template for Iraq's 
political future. For one thing, the practice of federalism and of the 
devolution of powers to those in control of the three main centers of 
sectarian dominance is not only much more advanced in the Iraqi case but 
also enshrined in the new constitution. Hence, for example, while the 
present oil fields are supposed to remain under central government 
management, any new ones are to belong to those who control the province 
in which they are found. For another, is also likely that markedly 
different systems of law will be allowed to develop in the Kurdish, 
Shi'ite, and Sunni areas, a situation which Lebanon has so far just 
managed to avoid.

Nevertheless, there remain too many similarities not to believe that in 
large measure the Lebanese example cannot be used to shed significant 
light on Iraq's own political future. It has worked, in its own fashion, 
only so far as the sectarian elites see it in their interest to 
cooperate. It has worked only when the country has managed to insulate 
itself from regional tensions. And it has worked only so long as each 
leadership has been able to define the main lines of sectarian identity 
and to prevent itself from being outflanked by economically and socially 
discontented followers able to redefine identity in more radical and 
populist ways.

By the same token, the Lebanese version of sectarian democracy has not 
worked well at times like the 1970s and early 1990s when, encouraged by 
the lack of consensus among the sectarian elites, new social forces have 
pushed themselves on to the political scene. In Iraq, their most obvious 
equivalent is likely to be the movement led by Moqtada al-Sadr, whose 
Baghdad-based followers have significantly different interests and 
concerns from those of their more conservative co-religionists to the south.

It is also possible to imagine a major challenge mounted by Kurds 
dissatisfied with the shortcomings of a leadership whose monopoly of the 
local system makes them often able to ignore their followers' economic 
and political discontents. And this is to say nothing about the 
opposition mounted by angry Sunnis to a putative leadership which has a 
long way to go before it can legitimize itself in their eyes.

If the previous analysis is largely correct, there is little that either 
the United States or Britain can now do to control a process which they 
themselves had a considerable hand in setting in motion. And even in the 
case of the British -- who have largely devolved power in the south to 
the members of the Shi'ite parties which contested the 2004 elections -- 
this easy exit strategy is looking ever more tenuous now that the local 
police in Basra and elsewhere are falling more and more into Shi'ite 
sectarian hands.

Nevertheless, if the situation does not deteriorate into all-out civil 
war, the occupiers will still be able to comfort themselves that they 
have left some sort of democracy behind, albeit one in which voters have 
no real choice and all the major political decisions are made by 
unaccountable sectarian elites.

Roger Owen is the A.J.Meyer Professor of Middle East History at Harvard 
University. 

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/11/27/what_iraq_will_look_like_after_the_elections/
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