By Larry Diamond
June 10, 2004, Los Angeles Times,
When I went to Baghdad in early January as a senior advisor to the Coalition
Provisional Authority, I believed that a democracy of sorts could gradually be
constructed in Iraq, despite the formidable obstacles. Although I had opposed
the war, I accepted the invitation because I believed that the United States
could not allow postwar Iraq to sink into chaos and that the Iraqi people
deserved an opportunity to live in freedom. This did not seem to me to be an
unrealistic goal.
But I returned three months later sorely disappointed. Because of a long
catalog of strategic and tactical blunders, the United States has failed to
come anywhere near meeting the postwar expectations of Iraqis. It now seems
clear that the occupation will leave a mixed, and on balance negative, record
when the Americans hand over power June 30. Though we leave behind a framework
for political transition, it is hobbled by two huge deficits: security and
legitimacy.
Previous international efforts to build democracy after violent conflict
counsel one clear, overriding lesson: "It's security, stupid." If a
decimated country doesn't restore enough security to rebuild its
infrastructure, revive commercial life, employ workers and enable civic
organizations to mobilize, political parties to campaign and voters to register
and vote, it can't craft a decent political order — certainly not a democratic
one.
The aftermath of tyranny and war is never going to be perfectly tranquil. But
to build a democratic state, a country must first build a state, and the
transcendent imperative for that is to establish a monopoly over the means of
violence. In Iraq, this meant moving quickly to prevent a resurgence of
violence on the part of the defeated Baathists, radical Islamists, external
jihadists and others threatened by the new political order. But despite
warnings from the Rand Corp. and others, the Pentagon plunged blithely ahead
with only half the necessary force (less than 150,000 troops). Our inability to
control the savage looting that swept Baghdad in April 2003 signaled the
hollowness of the U.S. posture and emboldened the die-hard Baathists to regroup
for the insurgency that has devastated postwar reconstruction.
By the time I arrived, the signs of insecurity were pervasive. Iraqi
translators and drivers at the palace where the CPA has its headquarters told
me of the threats to their lives and the murders of their co-workers, while our
soldiers confessed frankly that they could do nothing to protect those Iraqis
outside the Green Zone. Repeatedly I had to cancel trips to meet Iraqis outside
of the compound because we could not obtain the armored cars or helicopters
that would enable me to travel with some measure of safety.
Today, in place of security, Iraq has a welter of heavily armed militias
serving not the new Iraq but political parties, incipient regional warlords and
religious leaders.
To the security deficit was added a yawning legitimacy deficit. The CPA delayed
local elections and imposed one unwieldy transition plan after another while
leaning too heavily on Iraqi exiles, especially the widely distrusted Ahmad
Chalabi. Crippled by a severe shortage of American officials fluent in Arabic (as
well as the steady loss of Iraqi translators to intimidation and
assassination), and distanced from Iraqi society by formidable walls of
security, the CPA never adequately grasped Iraqi preferences, hopes and
frustrations.
While I was there, the CPA repeatedly misjudged and underestimated the most
important Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, and finalized in early
March an interim constitution that most Iraqis (including Sistani) felt gave
too sweeping a veto to minorities and too little participation to the people.
When I traveled the country speaking about this new document, I was stunned by
the anger and frustration of Iraqis who felt excluded from the process. But by
then, the CPA was interested only in "selling" the document (for
which we hired an expensive advertising agency). Too often, our engagement with
ordinary Iraqis was a one-way conversation from above.
Today, as the U.S. continues to battle the radical Shiite insurgency led by
cleric Muqtada Sadr while trying to sell Iraqis on its post-occupation plans,
the challenges are as tough as ever. The new interim government includes a
number of politically shrewd Iraqis, some with roots in Iraq's crucially
important tribes, who may yet prove capable of mobilizing support for the
political transition. But the new government will not be viable and the
elections for a transitional parliament will drown in bloodshed and fraud
unless the new Iraqi state can defeat the former regime loyalists, the
terrorists, the organized criminals and the militias. To do that, a
recommitment from the United States — and a smarter American strategy — will be
needed.
Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.