Sullivan disagrees with you over on
TNR
Bright Side
by Andrew Sullivan
Something very strange is happening in the news from Iraq: It's not all bad. Don't get me wrong. It's not all good, either--not by any means. Chances for a successful election on January 30 are decidedly iffy. The insurgency is still wreaking barbarism across the country. But in the past few weeks, the case for despair has unmistakably weakened a notch.
Take the little-heralded breakthrough the week before Thanksgiving, when Iraq's major Western creditors agreed to forgive 80 percent of Iraq's debt. Yes, that includes those prickly states in "Old Europe," like France and Germany. Imagine if a president-elect Kerry had announced such a breakthrough. It would have made headlines across the globe. But Bush consigliere James Baker pulled it off--and who wants to celebrate him?
And there was an even less-noticed development this past month: the relative silence across Iraq after the devastating coalition assault on Falluja. The military campaign led to the deaths of thousands, including civilians caught in the crossfire, and left much of the city in rubble. It included the awful imagery of a scared U.S. Marine blowing a wounded Iraqi's head off, a scene replayed endlessly on Arab television. Did the rest of Iraq rise up in protest, as happened in the spring during a similar aborted attack on Falluja? Not even close. The Kurds and the Shia understand that their interest today lies in a successful election. They're not unhappy to see Sunni and Baathist rebels get pummeled by American arms. In that, you see the beginning of the new Iraqi reality: a place where 80 percent of the country wants the democratic transition to succeed.
The coalition has learned a critical tactic in neo-imperial governance: divide and rule. From the Romans to the Brits, it has long been a useful strategy. By working with the grain of Iraqi ethnic tension, specifically the pent-up hostility of Kurds and Shia toward the Sunnis, who for decades ran the country, the United States has been able to gain leverage against the largely Sunni insurgency. So as Sunni Falluja was pummeled, the Shia were quiet and Kurdish troops actually took part in the operation. Yes, it's a potentially dangerous ploy. Pushing the division too far could lead to civil war. But there's some good news here as well: In a recent poll of 2,210 Iraqis, a full two-thirds of those surveyed said the prospect of a civil war was "not realistic."
Then came the real prize: a desperate and angry tape from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, fugitive leader of what he now calls Al Qaeda in Iraq, lashing out at Muslim clerics for not supporting the jihad. "You have let us down in the darkest circumstances and handed us over to the enemy," Zarqawi vented. "You have stopped supporting the holy warriors. Hundreds of thousands of the nation's sons are being slaughtered at the hands of the infidels because of your silence." Those are not confident words.
It may well be that greater numbers of trained Iraqi soldiers and police, relentless military pressure on the insurgents, and the prospect of a real election have begun to turn the tide on terrorism in Iraq. Last week saw more hopeful signs. The Bush administration is increasing coalition troop strength to 150,000 before the election, several Kurdish and Sunni parties backtracked on their threat to boycott the election, and the Sunni president of the country, Ghazi al-Yawer, backed the January 30 election date. There's a sliver of democratic momentum here.
Reconstruction money is finally finding a way to make a difference in the country, after the process was stymied by endless bureaucratic logjams. Unemployment is slowly declining, and electricity production is at a postwar high. Per capita income for this year is now $780, up from around $500 in 2003. The Shia insurgent Muqtada al Sadr has joined the political system. The Iraqi government has even agreed to meet with some Sunni dissidents in Jordan to discuss how to bring them into the electoral process. Yes, the Sunnis are still dangerously alienated. But check out the enthusiasm of some for their new-found freedom. Take the intrepid bloggers at Iraq the Model, Omar and Ali. They set up their own party, the "Iraqi Pro-Democracy Party," and went to get it registered, convinced they might suffer for it:
We contacted some friends and people who believed in the same principles we believe in and we told them about our plan. Some people didn't like it but we still managed to gather more than 800 people who stated that they are not afraid of saying in public that they want to overthrow the government and do whatever it takes. We heard about other groups trying to do the same and we decide to unite our efforts with theirs but first we had to make the first step alone. The group chose me, my brother Mohammed and a friend of ours to go to the authorities and talk to them, as we were still hoping to do this peacefully without unnecessary bloodshed unless they refused. We knew of course that it might well lead to our death but then the rest of us would carry on using the hard way.
We reached the government main headquarter and entered without much difficulty. We went to one of these offices as we didn't know were to go as this was our first time there. One of the government employees asked us what was our need. We said our prayers and told him that we want to change the regime. He asked us to wait until he call for the man in charge and I said to myself, "that's it, they're calling the Mukhabarat" the guy came back with another man who, after greeting us asked about our group. We handed him a file that contained our goals and a list of the people who supported us. He took it and told us to come back in 3 days after they study it.
"Study it!?" I said to myself "they're not going to hang us? Maybe they are letting the small fish to capture the large one?" anyway we went back and spent 3 difficult nights full of worries and nightmares.
The party is now one of 156 registered for the elections. Yes, we can worry about the dangers of Sunni estrangement, the small signs of civil war, the unsecular aspirations of the Shia party slate, and so on. But then you read a story like Ali's, and you tell yourself to buck up. We saw in Afghanistan and Ukraine what an actual election process can do to awaken a democratic spirit, to convince people they truly can control their own destiny. Why should we discount the same from occurring in Iraq?
Sure, the odds for success are still long. There will never be an excuse for the Bush administration's undermanning of the occupation, or its reckless disbandment of the Iraqi army, or its being blindsided by a highly predictable insurgency. Many Sunni political parties may still boycott the election. And violence may spike as the election nears. But we are seeing signs that Bush's error-strewn perseverance is starting to pay off. The election itself will perhaps tell us more, providing the crucible in which a new Iraq can either be born or die a long and painful death. We can and should hope. The polls, after all, show that a vast majority of Iraqis intend to vote. Why discount the chances of an Afghanistan-like experience in which the silent majority finally finds a way to tell the theocrats, terrorists, and propagandists whose country Iraq truly is? Why bet against democracy? Sixty-five percent of Iraqis surveyed tell us they are optimistic about their future. Maybe it's time we joined their ranks.
