The new Iraqi government that was sworn in last week, after the first democratic elections in the country?s history, took three months to create. It is due to expire, according to a timetable set by the United Nations, by December (after the writing of a constitution, a referendum, and another election), which means that almost a third of its life has been spent being born. During this prolonged delivery, the Iraqis, who risked so much by going to vote on January 30th, and gained so much by showing themselves that they could, have steadily lost faith in the leaders they elected. While the politicians have been arguing over jobs?some key positions are still unfilled?the post-election lull in violence has come to an end, and the daily deaths of scores of Iraqis have again become numbingly familiar.
One conclusion to draw from the unlovely spectacle of democratic governance in Iraq is that the two dominant American views of the war were both wrong. Iraq is a far less modern, less united, and less friendly place than the fondest hopes of the war?s architects would have had the American public believe. At the same time, the ability of those architects to control the outcome for their own purposes is close to zero. Some war boosters, in and out of the Administration, have nonetheless been quietly declaring mission accomplished redux, with a shrug: they never thought Iraq would be perfect, and everything from here on out is just footnotes. In public, they seem to want Americans to forget all about Iraq.
The group of men who have emerged as Iraq?s rulers is dominated by aging former opposition politicians?heavyset power brokers with thick jowls and armed militias. Their backing comes from narrow ethnic and sectarian bases; since the elections, though, the sound of Shiite triumphalism has been growing louder. Shiite leaders have begun to insist on a wholesale purge of the overwhelmingly Sunni Baathists recently brought back into government. The new Prime Minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, of the Shiite Islamic Dawa Party, is a man of mediocre talents but with an oratorical gift admired by Iraqis. During his time on the now defunct Governing Council, he used to harass secretaries for coming to work unveiled. According to one leading Shiite cleric, Jaafari was Tehran?s choice.The Deputy Prime Minister is the Lazarus-like Ahmad Chalabi, who has converted his poll-tested unpopularity into power through sheer backroom political genius. Washington neoconservatives once claimed that Chalabi was the only real liberal among Iraqi leaders, but he owes his comeback from last year?s disgrace to a tactical alliance with the least liberal man in Iraqi politics: the radical (and unstable) cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Chalabi, a secularist without facial hair, now occupies the seat of hard-line Shiism at the table. A consummate dealmaker, he is holding the oil portfolio until the government selects a minister. That person will come, in all likelihood, from the small party that calls itself the true heir of Sadr?s martyred father, who advocated the rule of the clerics. Moqtada?s own followers have been given the health ministry; having intimidated doctors by sending armed militiamen to take over hospitals, they will now be able to practice their theocratic medicine with the blessing of the minister.
In a country emerging from dictatorship, a secular, nonsectarian brand of nationalism seldom fares well. In Iraq, it is represented by the party of Iyad Allawi, the former interim Prime Minister, which came in a distant third in the elections, after the Shiite coalition and the Kurds. Allawi?s party is not included in the new government, and the more moderate Shiites and Sunnis, who don?t want to be governed by clerics of either sect, worry that a conservative and divisive vision of Islam will dominate the constitution. ?They have the right to be worried,? said the newly appointed Vice-President, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, who, as the second-in-command of the largest Shiite party, was essentially warning against his own side. ?I hope they will stay worried. Victory is the most dangerous moment.?
For the moment, the Kurds represent the greatest hope of the more secular and liberal Iraqis. In the surest sign that the virulent Arab nationalism of the Baathist regime has been repudiated, Jalal Talabani has made history by becoming Iraq?s first Kurdish president. But the Kurds are playing a two-track game?to secure a powerful place in Baghdad, and to consolidate their autonomous region in the north?and if, as seems likely, the roads ever diverge, the Kurds will pursue their separate destiny. The Sunnis, for their part, seem to be balanced on the edge of total rejection. Long in power, they never learned to think of themselves as one group among several, and now no one is able to speak for them. Jaafari?s attempts, in the spirit of inclusiveness, to put Sunnis in half a dozen ministerial posts?most important, defense?keep crumbling, owing to both Sunni disunity and Shiite obstruction. At the swearing-in ceremony, the chair of the Sunni Vice-President, Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawar, was ominously empty?a gesture of protest.
The stakes would be lower if Iraq were not fighting a desperate insurgency that looks more and more like a civil war. Every banal decision, every job offered or withheld, carries the risk of driving more Sunnis to take up weapons, and of forcing Shiites and Kurds to cling tighter to power. Iraq has never had a unifying visionary politician?a Mandela, a Havel, or a Gandhi. The man who comes nearest, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, isn?t a politician, and, as a Shiite cleric, he has a limited ability to unify; his electoral intervention on behalf of the Shiite coalition tarnished his lustre as a truly national figure. ?The Hour is great,? Carlyle wrote, ?and the Honorable Gentlemen, I must say, are small.? But you create a democracy with the talent you have, and Iraq?s politicians are confronting the most vexing existential questions.
Two years ago, there was a moment when the Americans might have molded Iraq after their own desire, for better or worse. Their incompetence surprised no one more than the Iraqis. The country has long since hardened into its own shape, and whether it holds together or breaks into pieces is largely up to the Iraqis who now have it in their hands. But the least debt that Americans now owe Iraq is to realize that the footnotes will control the lives of Iraqis for years to come, with plenty of time left for great improvement or great damage.
? George Packer
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