Iraq's political reconstruction - Volume 9 - Issue 3 - May 2003

 

The pressing and immediate needs of the Iraqi people in the aftermath of the war and the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime make the task of administrative reconstruction relatively straightforward. Although massive undertakings, restoring the public utilities and the ration system, rehabilitating the health service and maintaining public order are clear and uncontroversial tasks for the coalition forces. However, much less straightforward and more contested, both within Iraq and among the allies, is the question of Iraq's political reconstruction. Moreover, the relationship between these two tasks is complex and not necessarily complementary: many inside Iraq and outside the country fear that the process of rapidly reconstructing the state administration may, if mishandled, foreclose the possibility of a genuine departure in Iraqi politics.

 

The issues of security and development assistance are presently pre-occupying the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), headed by retired US general Jay Garner, as it seeks to rebuild the machinery of the Iraqi state. Efforts to rehabilitate burned-out ministries and police stations, recall bureaucrats to state service, re-establish the branches of a once formidable administrative apparatus and supply it with the means to carry out its tasks are already underway. These efforts make sense in the light of the ruptures caused by the war and of the political importance attached by the occupying forces to the visible involvement of Iraqis in reconstruction tasks. The skills of the civil servants and other administrators, regardless of whether they had belonged to the former ruling Ba'ath party or not, are needed to restore order and the public services. The fact that this is happening under foreign military occupation means that the project has its Iraqi detractors, but it can also rely on a substantial body of support within Iraq. For the administrative cadres, the process recognises their skills, re-establishes their jobs and also reconstructs a recognisable and approved form of state.

 

At the same time, this process unavoidably re-establishes many of the personal networks which have always flourished throughout the Iraqi administrative state and which, under Saddam Hussein, sustained the formidable 'shadow state' which stood behind all public institutions. Though deprived for the moment of their source of patronage, the people in these networks still retain the habits of mind that could make them serviceable to another patron.

 

Whether they find this in the occupying forces or in the Iraqi leaders who will eventually emerge from the current political flux, the ever-present danger is that these networks will form the basis of another 'shadow state'. These networks offer service and efficiency in exchange for privilege, but the price would be a lack of transparency and accountability. This price might be all the greater in view of the fact that not just the bureaucracy but also the armed forces will need to be reconstructed.

 

For these reasons, many in Iraq and in ORHA want to create space for the emergence of democratic institutions which could control the administration and inspire public confidence in them, rather than in networks of informal influence. However, there are concerns about whether ORHA can successfully manage this process.

 

An emerging democracy is particularly vulnerable because of disappointed expectations and because there will be many who regard it as a threat to their own positions. This raises the question of who should guard the general framework and enforce the rules under which it must operate. Foreign forces would either be mistrusted or opposed in this role, as would those under UN authority, given the increasingly adverse public perception of the UN's role in Iraq over the past thirteen years. Still, it is highly likely that any Iraqi force that set itself up as the 'guardian of the constitution' would also be looked upon with grave suspicion by a population that has grown deeply cynical.

 

The question of the democratic framework also raises the contentious issue of the values which different parties – Western and Iraqi – believe to be intrinsic to the establishment of democratic order in Iraq. In particular, it poses the question of the role of Islam and Islamic values in the new political order. Powerful figures in Washington think these should be excluded; authoritative figures in Iraq believe they should be the very foundation of the new polity. In between, there are many in the US and in Iraq who hold a variety of positions and who may be equally influential on the eventual outcome.

 

Possibly because of the problems of national government, attention is being paid simultaneously to the question of the future of local government in Iraq. Some observers have seen a decentralised state – whether it is a system based on local government or a fully-fledged federal system – as a way of pre-empting a return to domination from the centre. Local government, however, is acutely vulnerable to capture by well-entrenched social elites: sheikhs, landowners, merchants and religious leaders who will seek to dominate local patronage networks. Notoriously in Iraqi history, they have become clients of the centre – delivering their constituencies in return for favours and revenues. However, this pattern may be disrupted by two possible developments, one in the hands of the Iraqi Interim Authority (IIA) and one the outcome of possible changes in political society in Iraq.

 

The first will stem from the distribution of state revenue and raises the question of how independent local government will be from the centre. The tax base in Iraq is small and so the formula for the disbursement of oil revenues will be the key. A mechanism to guarantee provincial revenues and to ensure that their disbursement could not be captured by local elites would be a revolutionary change in Iraqi statecraft and could be highly contentious.

 

Another unsettling factor could be the challenge to the authority of local elites by new populist figures and movements. The 'sheikhs' created by Saddam Hussein will not necessarily command any authority, and even more established clans are racked by personal rivalries. As in the previous case, such populist challenges would be contested. The danger is that they might lead to precisely the kind of turmoil that reinforces the logic of the 'security state' at the centre and provokes central intervention in the name of general order and stability.

 

Local needs have already produced individuals and informal organisations which have begun to cooperate with the occupying forces. As the British encouragement of Sheikh Muzahim al-Tamimi in Basra or American support for Mashaan al-Juburi in Mosul have shown, these moves conform with allied ideas about the most pressing questions facing them in Iraq. However, as hostile demonstrations in both Basra and Mosul have also shown, this is the beginning of a local form of politics. Inserting oneself and one's allies into the local administration is increasingly seen as the first step to political power. In the short term, it is a way of winning an invitation to the series of national meetings, initiated in Nasiriya on 15 April, out of which it is hoped the personnel of the IIA will emerge. It is also about building up a local power base which will eventually invite cultivation both by ORHA and the IIA.

 

In both north and south, neighbourhood committees, town administrations and provincial councils are based on pre-existing networks of clan, family and other associations. Some will be familiar from the local power structures under the Ba'athist regime. In other areas, particularly in the Shi'i cities of southern Iraq, the reassertion of local politics has been dominated by the return of clerics to public life, bringing with them doctrinal, political and personal differences as they compete with one another. In the Kurdish north, the KDP and the PUK have consolidated control over their territories, eyeing each other, but also maintaining an active role in influencing the moves that will produce the IIA.

 

Baghdad, as a vast city of very different neighbourhoods and as the site of the reconstruction of the central state, constitutes something of a special problem. The struggles of the 'Sadriyun' (followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, scion of a respected Shi'i clerical family) with the followers of Ayatollah Baqir al-Hakim for control of the 2 million inhabitants of the housing projects in 'Sadr City' (formerly Saddam City); the efforts by the followers of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in the more traditional neighbourhoods of Al-Kadhimiyya; the assertion of a revived Sunni religious leadership in al-A'dhamiyya; the committees for self-defence that have formed in Mansur, Mutanabbi, Karada and other areas; the attempt by Muhammad Muhsen al-Zubaidi to assert his shaky 'administrative leadership' in Baghdad – all of this testifies not only to the diversity of the city, but also to the fact that popular mobilisation here, at the heart of the state, can have a disproportionate influence on the outcome of the national political struggle.

 

It is too soon to say how these trends will develop. However, for those hoping for the emergence of a secular, liberal democracy there are a number of dilemmas. These will not necessarily be insuperable, but they do indicate future perils.

 

The first is the thorny question of centralisation versus decentralisation and the related issue of whether Iraq should become a federal or remain a unitary state. There is fear of the reconstitution of an authoritarian centre, but there is also anxiety about provincial and local power. The concern is that ORHA will encourage two countervailing trends, without having the authority to reconcile them: building up the machinery of the central state for administrative purposes, whilst at the same time encouraging local power formations to emerge as representative of the Iraqi people in all their variety.

 

This raises the second dilemma: namely, whether the US should remain in Iraq as mentor and guardian of the emerging democratic framework, or withdraw its forces as soon as possible. The longer the US remains, and the more anti-American sentiment becomes the focus of political mobilisation in Iraq, the more likely it is that those associated with the ORHA-guided IIA will lose authority and be unable to implement larger plans for the country. Yet there is also a fear among some of those who hope to use this opportunity to refound Iraqi politics on a liberal, democratic basis that they and their plans would be overwhelmed should US forces depart in the immediate future. It could lead either to the reassertion of the authoritarian 'security state' or to an attempt to capture the state by those determined to refound it on Islamic principles.

 

It would be tempting for those who want to prevent such a development to advocate centralisation under US protection, with a possible relegation of those labelled enemies of the 'democratic project' because of their beliefs. Such a policy might be rationalised with reference to the need to establish the institutions of a functioning democratic state in its early years, but it would store up trouble for the future. There is not only profound mistrust and, in some quarters, active hatred of the US in Iraq; there is also the danger that if US military power is seen as the key support for the emerging political order, this may well suggest to its opponents the target of resistance.

 

The US has arranged a series of national meetings, out of which it is hoped the personnel of the IIA will emerge. The first was held in Nasiriya on 15 April, the second in Baghdad on 28 April, with another meeting scheduled within the next four weeks. On 6 May, former State Department official Paul Bremer was appopinted to oversee the transition to democracy.

 

Iraqi National Accord: led by Iyad Alawi, this group has good connections with Ba‘athist exiles and military officers who have defected. It is an unknown quantity inside Iraq, but makes its presence known. It is secular, nationalist and statist.

Iraqi National Congress: led by Ahmad Chalabi. His actual support in Iraq is unknown and though he sometimes acts as the natural inheritor of power he has many enemies. Patronage from the Pentagon allowed him to build a small militia. He is secular, liberal and democratic.

KDP: led by Masoud Barzani, the KDP is a Kurdish nationalist party, well connected to the old establishment of Saddam’s state, with substantial armed forces at its disposal. It is nationalist, but federalist and democratic.

PUK: led by Jalal Talabani, the PUK is a Kurdish nationalist party, deeply hostile to old centralised state and to its return. It is nationalist, but federalist and democratic.

Turkoman national parties: variety of organisations, representing the Turkoman population of the north.

Iraqi Communist Party: an active organisation of unknown influence, more national, secular and leftist in its appeal than doctrinaire Marxist.

Kurdish Islamists: comprise a variety of parties, the most notable being the Kurdish Islamic Movement (Sunni) and the Movement for Kurdish Shi‘a (Shi‘i under Shaikh Assad al-Faeli).

Al-Da‘wa: Shi‘i, Islamist group wary of Iranian model of clerical rule and split into a number of different factions for ideological and tactical reasons. Senior cleric Sheikh Mohammad Nasseri has returned to rally Iraqi branches.

SCIRI: led by Ayatollah Baqir al-Hakim, an Islamist group with influence in the south of Iraq; the extent of its support is unknown. Has the 5,000-man Badr Brigade militia, though its movements are largely controlled by Iran. SCIRI professes admiration for the Iranian model of clerical rule, but faces hostility to the idea among Iraqi Shi‘a, and has tempered its enthusiasm.

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani: most respected of Iraq’s clerics and deferred to by many; doctrinally conservative and disapproving of Iranian model and the rule of the clerics.

‘Al-Sadriyun’: led by Muqtada al-Sadr, has considerable influence in Sadr City and in the south among young, poor and unemployed. It is hostile to Iranian influence and to the traditional Shi`i clerical establishment and has a Shi`i Islamist, sectarian view of national identity.

Muslim Brotherhood: led by Ahmad al-Qubaisi. An influential Sunni Islamist movement in Baghdad and Mosul that is wary of clerical influence among the Shi‘i and is willing to appeal to the Shi‘a over their leaders’ heads in the name of Islamic Iraqi unity.