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- The murderous explosion this week in the holy Shiia city
of Najaf said with brutal clarity that it is time to examine the utility
of Iraqi occupation > and the American role in it. With at least 95
people killed and more than 150 wounded, this is the worst killing spree
in a violence prone post-war Iraq. It most likely was, as some commentators
say, an act of Iraqi Shiia extremists against Shiia moderates willing to
work with the occupying forces. It could about equally well have been a
Sunni Baathist scheme to frighten Shiites away from the coalition. But
it should also have been a > loud and clear message to the US coalition
leaders that as a rejection of the occupation, at least some Iraqis feel
strongly enough to kill their own people. The Shiites are the most diverse
cluster of Islamic opinion, but the root cause of the bombings was not
about doctrinal differences within Shia Islam; it was about Shiia support
for the occupation.
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- Mohamed Bakir al Hakim was a leading Shiia cleric and
probably the only one who could have led the majority Shiia community into
at least a moderately secular Iraqi government. Because of the importance
of Najaf in Shiia Islam, Hakim's decision to support a cooperative process
with the coalition would have carried weight both within and outside Iraq.
Whoever replaces him must contemplate the horrifying lessons of the bombings
and decide in light of them how far he can push the center of Shiia opinion
about and tolerance of the occupation.
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- The most obvious prospect is that Shiia tolerance of
the occupation will diminish. If it occurs, that shift will be a disaster
for occupation designers of a new government. There is already resistance
to coalition, really US insistence on an American style democracy that,
if created, would minimize clerical influences on Iraqi governance. That
resistance appears to be shared by the Sunnis who appreciate outsider lectures
about the role of Islam in government no more than the Shiia. The coolness
to an American style democracy would also extend to the Kurds many of whom
are Sunnis and many are Shiites.
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- A clear and unmistakable message emerges: The move to
install an American style democracy in Iraq should not only be dropped;
it should be obviously and publicly abandoned. The critical question is
what should be put in its place. The most workable answer is whatever
the Iraqis themselves can agree upon.
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- Where in the evolution of its political system is Iraq
at this time? From the era of the Ottoman Turks, close to four hundred
years, until after the expulsion of the British after World War II, Iraqis
were ruled by outsiders. Their experience since then has been determined
by strong men, the most enduring of them being Saddam Hussein. In short,
while among the peoples of the world's oldest seats of civilization, the
Iraqi people have virtually no experience with self-government. While
the emergence of the Baath party and expulsion of the British showed some
promise of political maturing, that promise was suppressed by Saddam and
his immediate predecessors. Because their operations remain almost wholly
military, the American and British occupiers are contributing nothing to
Iraqi political enlightenment.
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- The message of Najaf is that the American/British role
in designing Iraq's political future must be redefined and reduced. That
is critical because Iraqi's who ally with the coalition are being treated
by other Iraqis as outsiders. The other meaning of Najaf for Iraqis, not
necessarily only Shiia, is that cooperating with the coalition is dangerous
to one's health. The suggestion, expressed by several observers, that the
bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad was really an attack on the coalition
is another indicator that major changes in the occupation must occur and
occur quickly.
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- Both the needs of the Iraqis and the need of the United
States to rehabilitate itself internationally can be met by turning the
entire task over to the United Nations. That is no simple matter, because
the UN has been badly burned in Iraq by the attack on its headquarters
and the loss of one of the world's greatest nation builders, Sergio Vieira
de Mello. Change will not be easy for the United States because the neo-conservative
advocates of the US presence in Iraq have an inordinate ego attachment
to going it alone. But much good could come of the change.
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- Because the Bush team has not leveled with the public,
nor are team members agreed on the facts, the costs of Iraq have become
major political liabilities. The dollar cost, which administration leaders
have refused to estimate, are obviously ballooning and, in the estimate
of Iraq program administrator, L. Paul Bremer, will be in his words "tens
and tens and tens of billions" more than the $4 billion monthly now
being spent. Daily death and wounding of American troops are generating
a wave of public dismay and worry with the occupation. Iraqi refusal to
take the American presence with good will increases pressure for early
departure. Lack of major foreign participation presages mounting US costs
and prolonged exposure of US forces to violence. The two ways out are
to attract others in and to end the occupation as soon as possible.
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- While the Bush team has struggled to avoid it, turning
the problem over to the United Nations is the only reasonable answer. As
former Ambassador Richard Holbrooke observed in the September 2 issue of
Newsweek, there are command arrangements that could make that shift a reality.
The shift first requires US recognition that nation building and peacekeeping
are global missions for which the United States has shown itself ill prepared
and desperately needs help. It next requires abandonment of obvious biases
such as Rumsfeld's objection to UN blue helmets in the forefront of the
task. It then requires US recognition that the weaknesses US hardliners
object to in the UN are in reality mirror images of the lack of US support
for UN operations. It also requires that the United States define and
carry out its purposes for being in Iraq in ways that are acceptable to
the international community.
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- Finally, giving the task to the United Nations requires
the US to move back to the position of respectable world leader, a position
it recklessly abandoned in the post-9-11 rush to Iraq. It is hard to see
any losses for the United States in this move.
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- The writer is a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer
of the US Department of State. He will welcome comments at wecanstopit@hotmail.com
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