Roadblocks to Democracy in Iraq - Essay Example

Three years after bringing down the dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein, establishing democracy in Iraq still appears hard to attain. The road to democracy in Iraq is fraught with obstacles. The country has been drawn into a spiral of violence, chaos, and a general atmosphere of scepticism. The situation is not favourable to the emergence of a democratic state. Recently, sectarian divide has been triggering various acts of violence. Nevertheless, the American plan to install democracy is already taking place. The general elections in past January produced the first democratic government after Saddam regime. They represent a turning point in democracy building in Iraq, and therefore, bring some light to the rather bleak picture. The future of democracy in Iraq is shrouded with doubt because there is a feeling that things go slowly. Three years have passed since the US military overthrew the thirty-five years old dictatorship in Iraq but violence has not slowed down and the state of anarchy is still prevalent. The amount of violence is incredible and it has reached a point where it spares neither the military nor civilians and neither coalition soldiers nor Iraqis. A state of rebellion has been going against the foreign soldiers since they first came to Iraq. Then violence was quickly veered towards Iraqi nationals who were suspected of cooperating with the US forces, and lately the Sunni-Shiite lashes and back-lashes have been making the news. The first waves of rebellion are suspected to be orchestrated by the followers of Saddam Hussein and more precisely former security agents in order to circumvent the US military superiority (Davies, 2004). An average of fifty-five attacks on coalition and Iraqi military has been reported last year (Clark, 2005). It is clear that as long as the country remains instable, it would be hard to conduct any projects of nation-building. In such context, various observers and scholars started criticizing the very attempt of the US at democratizing Iraq putting forward the argument that democracy cannot be transplanted into a foreign soil but it rather should be home-grown. Indeed, a lot of talk has been going on whether it is proper to "export" democracies to nations in lack of. The US deems it a responsibility to expand the culture of democracy in the authoritarian states, notably Iraq. However, the fact is that there is Iraqi resistance to the American project. Surely, the resistance does not necessarily represent the majority of opinions but it has been particularly fierce. This nurtured a debate on whether there should be a transfer of democracy from one nation to another in the first place. One of the arguments that emerged from such debates is that each country has its own pace of democracy-building. In this respect, the violence and state of insurgency are understandable responses to imposition of a foreign concept or form of democracy. Whether the state of insurgency is a response to the imposition of democracy or not, there is one thing sure which is that Iraq has to restore order if it wants to grow into a democratic nation. A scholar, Bradley Cook, pertinently investigates the very implications of the process of democratization concluding that the difficulty experienced in Iraq is predictable (Cook, 2005). He first of all puts the issue into its historical context. Iraqis have not experienced democracy as a concrete reality for a long time. Four decades under the rule of the Ba'ath party had alienated Iraqis from the concept of democracy rendering it an abstraction, argues Cook. It does makes, according to him, all the difference to be growing in environment which is based on democracy, like American society, as opposed to a culture where there is none. This could be an explanation for why there is a national resistance to the US project of democracy in Iraq. He further assures that the democratization process as such is often violent, chaotic, and requires time. Read from this lens, the current situation Iraq is quite predictable. Bradley sees that the transitional experience towards democracy goes through a first stage whereby conflict and another one characterized by a power vacuum and greater deal of violence. Therefore, it is not an Iraqi problem but a problem inherent to the nature of democratization. Ibrahim al-Marashi, in an article he wrote in Strategic Insight (Marashi, 2003), examined a study that was conducted among Iraqis to see how much they believe in democracy and some interesting conclusions came out of them. First of all, Sunni Iraqis expressed their concern about their future after the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Aware that the Shiite Iraqis were oppressed by the regime of Saddam Hussein, Sunni civilians expressed fear from Shiite retaliation. Such fear would always keep them pro-Saddam, not because they liked his regime but because they would feel safer with him in power. Shiite people also expressed scepticism because according to their logic being a majority group, a leader of post-Saddam Iraq should be Shiite but this would never be allowed because the US would apprehend the creation of an Iranian-Iraqi Shiite alliance. This fear at least has been proved false for just recently, three years after the conduction of the study, an Iraqi government has been formed with the Shiite leader Mr Maliki at the top. The other point that came out of the study showed that the Iraqis were questioning the good will of the US intervention in Iraq. The scepticism has roots in the 1991 US Gulf rebellion whereby Iraqis felt betrayed by George Bush father. They believed that while the US administration encouraged them to rebel against Saddam Hussein and he counter-attacked them, the US made no move to protect them from Hussein's oppression. This led them believe that the real motive of the US was not uprooting the Ba'ath regime but rather toppling Saddam Hussein. Yet another point was evoked which goes hand in hand with the scepticism about the intentions of the US was that the US would establish a "government from above". The concern has echoes in the Iraqi experience with the previous colonial power Britain. Indeed, the 1920's saw the rise of insurgency against the government that Britain had set up for Iraqis. Most of these points seem to be still at stake now. On TV news, civilian comments always reflect a distrust of on the part of Iraqis about the democratization of Iraq. Al-Marashi commented with a pinch of optimism on the conclusions yielded by the study. He drew the attention, like Bradley Cook discussed above, to the fact that the notion of democracy is new to the region and that here are examples of other dictator states that could develop into democracies. He gives the example of Romania which in 1989 witnessed an alliance among the military and the civilians who rebelled against the regime of Nicolae Ceausescu and manage to set up democratic governance that is still functioning until now. He ends his comment by reminding that Iraq had experienced a short period of democracy under the monarchical regime of 1922-1958. There are however scholars who argue that the US would never be able to make of Iraq a democratic State. Patrick Basham wrote an article in Policy Analysis (Basham 2004) where he argues that democracy is simply incompatible with Islamic Arab states. He acknowledges that there is a will among the population to live in a free state but the will is incommensurate with the predisposition of Islamic Arab states. According to him, there is a problem with the cultural values of such nations as Iraq. The values necessary to the emergence of a democratic state would be political trust, social tolerance, shared agreement on the importance of basic principles of democracy, and popular support for gender equality. With political trust he means the degree to which a society is unsupportive of authoritarian regimes, social tolerance refers to the attitude towards minorities, the third has to do with such notions as freedom of speech, and the last refers to the attitude towards women. Iraq has failed to live up to the standard of the four parameters, so goes the argument. He further argues that the nature of politics which he describes as "identity politics" puts the stress on ethnic and religious affiliations which create a defined group of heroes to which the people identify. He moves on then to another level of analysis in which he examines the link between the economic development and democracy. At this level, he demonstrates how tight the economy is linked with the political so that the more liberal a country is in terms of economy, the more it is democratic. Moreover, rich countries are more prone to democracy than poor ones. The claim is supported by the findings of such political scientists as Ross E. Burkhart and Michael S. Lewis Beck. Basham seems not to be alone in criticizing the very disposition of Iraq to be democratized. Tony Smith, a professor at Tufts University (US), also questions the ability of such nation as Iraq to move towards democracy in an article that appeared in American Diplomacy (Smith, 2004) and claims that the academe largely agree that Iraq is not ready for such process. The observation that Basham makes on the stake of ethnicity in forming politics in Iraq deserves being examined thoroughly. With the rise of sectarian violence recently, it has become clear that the ethnic and religious dimension would be decisive in determining the future of Iraq. The country could not be pulled up if the problem of ethnic division is not solved. It has been months that hostilities between the Shiite and Sunni make the headlines. Extremists of both communities have been engaged in acts of violence against the counter group, causing human and material loss. Already on February 23rd the Washington Post reported the death of one hundred Iraqis amidst Shiite-Sunni violence. Shrines and mosques of both grouped have been damaged. The international community fears now that Iraq's sectarian violence grows into a civil war. On March 7th, the Washington Post announced that a survey conducted in the US showed that eighty percent believed that the situation in Iraq would amount to a civil war, and that seven Republicans out of ten and eight Democrats out shared this opinion. Actually, as time goes and ethnic strife does not abrade, the scenario of civil war grows real. To understand the current religious strife between Sunni and Shiite are to be found in Iraqi history. The International Crisis Group (ICG) made a report in October 2002 that gives some insight into Sunni-Shiite confessionalism. Historically a Shiite land, Sunnis have been growing in power from the Ottomans' era until now. Although they always remained a minority in terms of number, Sunnis have been monopolizing the political sphere since the independence. The Shiite Iraqis have been harbouring feelings of injustice deeming the status ascribed to them is inappropriate. Although they formed a numerical majority, the scope of their contribution to the governance of the country is rather limited. Under the Ba'ath regime, they have been denied the freedom of religious practice. The 1970's culminated in the emergence of a militant Shiite movement which reflected the awareness of Shiite about their identity and their marginalized status. Hence, the Shiite-Sunni violence runs deep into the traditional confessional divide. Overcoming it is a real challenge for Iraqis, notably the newly elected government. The election of a parliamentary government is a milestone in post-Saddam Iraqi history but it would have to reconcile factional divide before it can operate effectively. On last January 30th, Iraq made its first step towards the establishment of a parliamentary government. The new government, with the elected Prime Minister Mr. Maliki at the head, is aware of the challenges ahead of them that have mainly to do with satisfying the various factions, and bringing the sectarian violence to an end. Upon his nomination, Mr. Maliki, who is also the leader of the Shiite party al Daawa, made it clear that the situation in Iraq could be overcome only if everybody put of some of his own (Muir, 2006). Indeed, unity among various factions, Sunni, Shiite, and Kurds, is a prerequisite for the establishment of a democratic state. The current atmosphere of violence and dire competition not only creates instability but it also nurtures the growing scepticism and disillusionment that civilians experience. The elections reflect the will to embrace the values of democracy, they were held while the major cities of Iraq were boiling with violence. Moreover, it marks a historical turn for the Shiite community. It is about the first time that a Shiite member accedes to a high rank in government. During Saddam era, elitist positions were strictly confined to Sunni people. A constitution has been drafted, but in order for it or any other proposal for a constitution to be ratified, it must satisfy all the major religious and ethnic factions: Shiite, Sunnis, Kurds, and Arabs. Satisfying the Sunnis would be particularly difficult because they have been used to privileges under Saddam regime. Adding to the traditional division among the various groups, the factors that used assure a minimal cohesion are gone. Marina Ottaway, a senior associate in Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, remarks that under the centralized rule of Saddam Hussein there was a great sense of nationalism so that even when Iraq entered into war with Iran, the Iraqi Shiite did not show any opposition (Ottaway, 2005). The lack of a common enemy, further argues Ottaway, diminishes all the more national cohesion; Iran is a potential enemy for the Sunnis but not the Shiite. The same can be said about Turkey which perceived by the Kurdish element but not the others. Having drawn the attention to these facts, Ottaway (2005) stresses the necessity to reach a common ground because she deems that " unless Iraqis succeed in building up a new state on the basis of consensus rather than coercion, there is no point in talking about democracy" (p.7). It is a good point if the dissent among the various groups is not overcome, then there is no guarantee that the new Iraq would manage to stabilize the country. There would always be the fear of rebellion and insurgency. If the population or part of does not believe in the legitimacy of the government a logical result would be civil disobedience. The lesson can be drawn from the US intervention itself. Since the US-led coalition troops landed on Iraq, insurgency against them has been going on relentlessly. Conclusion There are several roadblocks to democracy in Iraq. The country has to restore its stability and put an end to the state of anarchy, bringing the civilians to respect the central government. This largely depends on reconciling the various ethnic and religious groups and consolidating unity among the Iraqis. Although, the situation in Iraq has been stagnating for a long time, there is still room for hope. The election of the first parliamentary parliament after the toppling of Saddam Hussein is a good sign that proves that slowly yet surely Iraq is making its transition towards democracy. WORKS CITED Al-Marashi, Ibrahim Democracy in Iraq, Strategic Insights, February 2003. Clark, Edmond Observations on local insurgents and foreign fighters in Iraq: An interview with Mark Edmond Clark", Columbia International Affairs Online, May 2005. Cook, Bradley Establishing democracy in Iraq: Challenges and Opportunities, 2005, Utah Valley State College. Davies, Eric Democratic prospects with Iraq, American Diplomacy, Volume IX, Number 3, 2004. International Crisis Group Iraq's backgrounder: What lies beneath, Report of October 2002. Muir, Jim Can a Government Rescue Iraq. 23rd April, 2006. BBC news. Ottaway, Marina Iraq: Without consensus, democracy is not the Answer, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005. Read More