Dilip Hiro: Wrong Mission Aaccomplished:
How Invading Iraq Has Set Back Democracy In the Middle East By Dilip Hiro June 1, 2006
Editor's note:
We've offered many critiques of the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq. But what we like about the case advanced by the author Dilip Hiro is that he takes the administration at its word that the real motive behind the invasion was to seed democracy in the volatile Middle East and thereby increase America's security.
It's on those grounds precisely, Hiro argues, that the plan has failed. The invasion interrupted a decade-long regional trend toward greater free expression and access to information. Now the sectarian tensions exacerbated by three years of violence in Iraq is proving to be a boon to authoritarian leaders in neighboring countries. Arabs who advocate for democracy in the Middle East face more daunting challenges than ever.
Dilip Hiro is the author of Secrets and Lies: Operation "Iraqi Freedom" and After, and also The Iranian Labyrinth: Journeys Through Theocratic Iran and Its Furies, both published by Nation Books.
Recent events in the Middle East have highlighted two vital facts, both of which are unpalatable to the Bush administration. The first is that, given a free choice, voters in the region have opted to bring in Islamist parties or individuals to govern them. Secondly, the evolution of the fragile Iraqi government elected on sectarian or ethnic loyalties under the tutelage of the Anglo-American occupiers has provided a powerful argument to authoritarian and semi-authoritarian Arab regimes to resist political liberalization.
In January, Washington and other Western capitals were shocked at the landslide victory of Hamas in elections to determine the makeup of the Palestinian parliament. They shouldn't have been surprised. The success of Hamas was just the latest manifestation of the rise of political Islam in the region's electoral politics.
But 2005 had started similarly, with Islamist candidates winning most of the seats in the first, and very limited, municipal polls in Saudi Arabia; the year ended with the religious parties—both Shiite and Sunni—performing handsomely in Iraq in the parliamentary elections held in December. The Shiite United Iraqi Alliance won almost four-fifths of the seats provided for the majority Shiites. Likewise, the Iraqi Accord Front, a Sunni religious coalition centered around the Iraqi Islamic Party, won 80 percent of the places allocated for the Sunni community.
In between last year's Saudi and Iraqi polls came other significant events. In Lebanon, Hizbollah emerged as the pre-eminent representative of the Shiites, the largest sectarian group, which had been grossly under-represented in Parliament, in the general election held in the summer. And in Egypt, in the first legislative assembly poll not flagrantly rigged by the regime there, the Muslim Brotherhood registered a nearly 60 percent success rate by winning 88 out of the 150 contested seats.
A DIVERSITY OF REASONS—The reasons for the Islamists' advance, in each case and each country, are different. Take Iraq, for example. History shows that when an ethnic, racial or social group is persecuted or exploited, it turns to religion to find solace. Once Iraq became part of the (Sunni) Ottoman Empire in 1638, Shiites there were discriminated against. This continued after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire when King Faisal, a Sunni, was installed by the British, and Sunnis were the leaders of the Baath Party, which seized power in 1968.
The mosque became the last resort for Iraq's Shiites. Their religious hierarchy quietly set up a clandestine network during the years of Baathist rule. Then came the U.S. invasion. By following up the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003 with the destruction of the state machinery—letting all the ministries, except oil, be looted and burned by mobs and, worse still, instantly disbanding the military, police and intelligence apparatus—the Pentagon created a massive political-administrative vacuum. It was immediately filled by the hitherto underground network of the Shiite religious establishment, backed up by the militias of the Shiite religious parties, including the Badr Brigade, which was established in Tehran during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.
As for the Sunnis, the dominant minority for three and a half centuries, the 13-year-long period of United Nations economic sanctions hurt them as much as it did non-Sunnis. Continued impoverishment had led the Sunni masses, predictably, to turn to Islam. So it was not surprising that once the Sunnis decided to participate in the electoral process, most of them favored the Iraqi Accord Front.
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Link Here
Editor's note:
We've offered many critiques of the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq. But what we like about the case advanced by the author Dilip Hiro is that he takes the administration at its word that the real motive behind the invasion was to seed democracy in the volatile Middle East and thereby increase America's security.
It's on those grounds precisely, Hiro argues, that the plan has failed. The invasion interrupted a decade-long regional trend toward greater free expression and access to information. Now the sectarian tensions exacerbated by three years of violence in Iraq is proving to be a boon to authoritarian leaders in neighboring countries. Arabs who advocate for democracy in the Middle East face more daunting challenges than ever.
Dilip Hiro is the author of Secrets and Lies: Operation "Iraqi Freedom" and After, and also The Iranian Labyrinth: Journeys Through Theocratic Iran and Its Furies, both published by Nation Books.
Recent events in the Middle East have highlighted two vital facts, both of which are unpalatable to the Bush administration. The first is that, given a free choice, voters in the region have opted to bring in Islamist parties or individuals to govern them. Secondly, the evolution of the fragile Iraqi government elected on sectarian or ethnic loyalties under the tutelage of the Anglo-American occupiers has provided a powerful argument to authoritarian and semi-authoritarian Arab regimes to resist political liberalization.
In January, Washington and other Western capitals were shocked at the landslide victory of Hamas in elections to determine the makeup of the Palestinian parliament. They shouldn't have been surprised. The success of Hamas was just the latest manifestation of the rise of political Islam in the region's electoral politics.
But 2005 had started similarly, with Islamist candidates winning most of the seats in the first, and very limited, municipal polls in Saudi Arabia; the year ended with the religious parties—both Shiite and Sunni—performing handsomely in Iraq in the parliamentary elections held in December. The Shiite United Iraqi Alliance won almost four-fifths of the seats provided for the majority Shiites. Likewise, the Iraqi Accord Front, a Sunni religious coalition centered around the Iraqi Islamic Party, won 80 percent of the places allocated for the Sunni community.
In between last year's Saudi and Iraqi polls came other significant events. In Lebanon, Hizbollah emerged as the pre-eminent representative of the Shiites, the largest sectarian group, which had been grossly under-represented in Parliament, in the general election held in the summer. And in Egypt, in the first legislative assembly poll not flagrantly rigged by the regime there, the Muslim Brotherhood registered a nearly 60 percent success rate by winning 88 out of the 150 contested seats.
A DIVERSITY OF REASONS—The reasons for the Islamists' advance, in each case and each country, are different. Take Iraq, for example. History shows that when an ethnic, racial or social group is persecuted or exploited, it turns to religion to find solace. Once Iraq became part of the (Sunni) Ottoman Empire in 1638, Shiites there were discriminated against. This continued after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire when King Faisal, a Sunni, was installed by the British, and Sunnis were the leaders of the Baath Party, which seized power in 1968.
The mosque became the last resort for Iraq's Shiites. Their religious hierarchy quietly set up a clandestine network during the years of Baathist rule. Then came the U.S. invasion. By following up the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003 with the destruction of the state machinery—letting all the ministries, except oil, be looted and burned by mobs and, worse still, instantly disbanding the military, police and intelligence apparatus—the Pentagon created a massive political-administrative vacuum. It was immediately filled by the hitherto underground network of the Shiite religious establishment, backed up by the militias of the Shiite religious parties, including the Badr Brigade, which was established in Tehran during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War.
As for the Sunnis, the dominant minority for three and a half centuries, the 13-year-long period of United Nations economic sanctions hurt them as much as it did non-Sunnis. Continued impoverishment had led the Sunni masses, predictably, to turn to Islam. So it was not surprising that once the Sunnis decided to participate in the electoral process, most of them favored the Iraqi Accord Front.
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Link Here
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