June 16, 2014
Of all
the Arab countries today that suffer violence or enjoy a superficial calm on
the surface, Iraq is the saddest in my view, because of what it has not become
in the last decade since the downfall of the hard and vicious Baathist regime.
But first some context, because the agony of Iraq mirrors a wider Arab pattern
of state mismanagement and mediocrity. Recent decades leave no doubt that the
major modern Arab political problem is that entire countries are managed like
private clubs by individual families; such privatized and personalized states
do not function efficiently or serve their people well, which ultimately leads
to their fragmentation or total collapse.
This frightening, decades-old pattern continues to this day. Syria, Libya,
Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, Algeria, Palestine, Sudan, Egypt, Somalia, and Bahrain
have all suffered debilitating civil conflicts, often coupled with
fragmentation or collapse. The oil-rich Gulf states have avoided major
political violence mainly because they have avoided anything that looks like
political rights and activity among their citizens.
The situation in Iraq is the most agonizing because it captures the tragic and
combined failures of successive regimes that transformed what should have been
a showcase of modern Arab development into a poster child for dictatorship,
corruption, sectarianism, violence, mismanagement, and likely break-up, as the
Kurdish northern region steadily spins off to de facto independence. Iraq
particularly mishandled the opportunity after the Anglo-American invasion of
2003 to start to redefine itself on the basis of a home-grown national
consensus, especially after 2008-09 when a semblance of stability reigned and
the foreign invaders were on their way home.
It is painful but necessary to read about the failures of contemporary Iraq if
we are ever to come to grips with the reasons why we have watched one Arab
country after another self-destruct into self-inflicted national incoherence
and chaos. The latest miserable consequence of this pattern is the opening it
provides for radical Islamist thugs and killers to move in, as they have done
in Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and other hapless lands.
I recommend highly for anyone interested in grasping this painful modern Arab
state narrative a new book by a talented young Iraqi lawyer and constitutional
expert, Zaid al-Ali, entitled The Struggle for Iraq’a Future: How
corruption, incompetence and sectarianism have undermined democracy (Yale
University Press, 2014). The title encapsulates the main indigenous forces that
have left Iraq in such disarray today, even though Iraqis should have taken
charge of their own destiny, as foreign troops departed in recent years and
several local and national elections have been held. The seeds of failure, however,
were largely planted during the American-led transition in 2003-2007.
The author, who lives in Cairo and works on Arab constitutional and electoral
issues for an international NGO, spent five years in Baghdad as of 2005 as a UN
adviser during the period when the nascent institutions of governance should
have been taking root. He documents why constitutional democracy has not
happened in Iraq, with plenty of detailed examples as well as concise
historical reviews, showing that Iraq’s current lack of citizen-based equitable
and participatory governance replays similar deficiencies during the previous
Baathist and monarchist decades, and the brief American-managed occupation.
The most damning accounts of recent deficiencies are those of the incompetence
of the combined work of the American-dominated transitional authority that
ruled Iraq for a few years from 2003 along with the exiled Iraqi elite — both
pro-Western and pro-Iranian — who returned to the country then and assumed
political power. Al-Ali describes in a very readable manner the major
deficiencies in the new Iraqi constitution, which set the stage for the last
decade of sectarian-anchored incompetence in governance, and in turn, promoted
violence, corruption and widespread misery for tens of millions of ordinary
Iraqis.
He touches on still chaotic issues that matter to all Iraqis, like employment,
security, basic services, and environmental degradation. His nifty summary
suggests what must happen for Iraq to transition from its current state of distressed
failure to a semblance of stability, democracy and development.
His five points apply universally to all Arab countries that suffer national
degeneration, disappointment and decay. The are:
• a defined and acceptable role for the armed forces;
• the growth of credible political parties;
• applying an effective anti-corruption framework;
• using income from natural resources to fund pro-poor development policies;
• and applying an effective system of decentralized governance.
The newly “elected” leaders in Egypt, Syria and Algeria, among other Arab
rulers, would do well to read this book when they have a break from fighting
off the millions of their citizens who now agitate for the dignity, democracy
and basic decency in the exercise of power that they have never enjoyed—whether
at the hands of indigenous or foreign rulers.
Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares
Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American
University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon. On Twitter: @ramikhouri.
Copyright © 2014 Rami G. Khouri—distributed by
Agence Global