Preaching the Rule of Law in a Tribal Land
An Iraqi Governor's Challenge: Making Democracy Work
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 16, 2005; Page A01
BASRA, Iraq -- Mohammed Musabah arrives at work at a different hour every day. Security precautions, the new governor of Basra explained. The political parties in the city that oppose him, some little more than armed gangs, are determined to see him fail. As many as four out of five of his policemen are loyal to his opponents. And in a land blighted by corruption, he wants to be an honest politician.
"In the beginning, for sure, it was too much pressure," he admitted.
Musabah smiled, as is his habit. After a month on the job, he said, he's learning to cope.
As Iraq negotiates the high drama of politics on a national stage, with a parliament preparing to tackle the fundamental questions of a future state -- the role of religion, federalism and women's rights -- Musabah is the point man on the more mundane task of making government actually work. His success in Iraq's second-largest city, scarred by three wars in 25 years and neglected for nearly as long, may go far in ensuring that institutionalized democracy becomes more than a promise in Iraq. His failure could suggest that Iraq's problems are simply greater than his good intentions.
Across a day spent in his office, a tidy room with a fountain in the corner, plush leather furniture and air conditioners on each wall that never stop, Musabah articulated the principles that he envisioned as his legacy: transparency, credibility in the eyes of his constituency and the rule of law in a region of southern Iraq where the word of tribal sheiks and religious clerics holds sway.
With an occasional grimace, he would turn to the job at hand. There were the minor problems: demands for compensation for a clinic seized a decade ago. The intractable: a raging tribal dispute over a death at a wedding party, and disenchanted municipal workers who predict there will be less electricity this summer than last. And the ominous: adversaries who always seem to be plotting.
"There are a lot of difficulties, and we will not hide them from our people," Musabah said, sitting behind his desk.
But, he worried, his opponents "are waiting for me to make mistakes."
The Compromise Choice
At 43, Musabah, a rotund man with a gentle face, is a political novice. Before taking office, he was a businessman and the spokesman for a prominent Islamic group known as the Virtue Party, which fared well in the Jan. 30 local elections in southern Iraq. His party captured 12 of the 41 seats on Basra's provincial council, coming in second behind a coalition of rival Islamic parties that won 20 seats. When that coalition couldn't agree on a candidate for governor, Musabah became the compromise choice.
He fits the image of a technocrat. Two stacks of folders stand a foot high to the side of his desk. His office is bereft of religious symbolism, save for a gold plaque on his desk that reads, "In the name of God, the merciful and compassionate." With a budget of just $23,000 for a city of about 1.5 million, he has few staff. Two of his six brothers are unpaid aides.
In a country where power often translates into bombast, Musabah is quiet, earnest, almost shy. He has no business card, no e-mail. He listens more than he speaks during workdays that last 12 hours, and he punctuates his language with hospitable formalities. "God reward you" is his favorite. Often he says, "At your service" -- the words he delivered to his first guests, a delegation of local journalists.
"We'd like to be the tongue that gives voice to the people," declared Hatim Bajari, the head of the Journalists Union in Basra. "We should not hide anything. We will be the eyes watching over what is good and bad."
Musabah nodded, smiling. "We promised the people we would hide nothing from them," he answered.
Tea was brought in. (By day's end, more than 100 cups would be served.) And in time, the journalists made their requests: money for a new headquarters and an office for a reporter in the provincial headquarters.
"It's only been 25 days," Musabah answered. "Just give me a chance."
An Open Door
Of the seismic changes in Iraq since Saddam Hussein's fall in 2003, one of the most remarkable is perhaps the people's relationship to power. No longer remote, fortified behind layers of fear and intimidation, power has been demystified. The language in the 20-minute meeting was casual, without the sycophantic overtures once obligatory in even low-level meetings during Hussein's rule.
"Our door is open anytime," Musabah told the journalists. "We need the media involved in all issues, large and small."
Another delegation followed from the Ministry of Irrigation. Its members had a complaint about holdovers from Hussein's Baath Party still working as colleagues. They showed the governor a petition that they had also sent to the offices of Islamic parties in Basra, many of which operate shadowy, underground enforcement arms that intimidate, kidnap and sometimes execute perceived enemies.
"Don't do this," the governor told them in a rare flash of anger. "It's a mistake to go outside the law."
The men looked sheepish. "God willing," one answered.
In the streets of Basra and Baghdad, jokes are sometimes made about words that sound as though they were imported with the U.S. invasion -- "pluralism" and "transparency," for instance. Musabah seems to take them seriously.
"The rule of law will reign," he told the delegation, "not the rule of tribes."
In Musabah's office, as in much of Iraq, authority remains an ambiguous concept. What is it based on, the question goes -- God, guns, money or traditions? Musabah has his answer, even while he says he understands his nation's legacy of capricious power and realizes his administration lacks the institutional force needed to back up its authority.
"We will succeed if we support the law," he said after meeting the delegation. "We are a government of law, and that's what I've promised everyone. No one can disobey the law, including me."
He repeated the words, as if to reassure himself: "We are a government of law."
Only a few minutes separated Musabah's meetings on this day. In the intervals, he hurriedly scribbled on the stack of memos before him. When another group entered, he got up from his chair and greeted the visitors warmly.
"Welcome! Welcome!" he said to a delegation of Sabeans, an ancient religious sect found in parts of southern Iraq that is considered protected under Islamic law. "How is your situation? God willing, it's good."
The Sabeans brought him a trunk-size bouquet of flowers and a copy of their holy book, the Treasure, which one of them kissed before handing it to Musabah. "I should visit you," Musabah told them, "you shouldn't have to visit me." They smiled, exchanged more greetings, then got to their point: They feared they would be marginalized under Iraq's new Islamic-oriented leaders.
"Our soil is the land of Iraq," said Haithem Rissan, the head of the delegation.
Because they usually share the same socially conservative goals, the Islamic parties that run Basra are often grouped together in a way that conceals divisions based on history and loyalties. Musabah's Virtue Party, for example, is an offshoot of the movement led by the father of Moqtada Sadr, a young, stridently anti-American cleric whose militia twice fought U.S. forces last year. While Sadr caters to the street, the Virtue Party appeals to professionals and intellectuals.
The contest between the religious parties is fierce, far more intense than their struggle with secular groups. Musabah views the other Islamic parties as the biggest threat to his success, even if he refrains from lambasting them, as he did during the campaign.
"There are many other parties and movements trying to inflame the situation," he said on this day.
As in other cities in southern Iraq, the contest is usually fought within the security forces established during the past two years. Musabah estimates that 75 to 80 percent of Basra's policemen are loyal not to him but to the rival Islamic parties. In his first month, he has already fired the two most powerful police officials, both disciples of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a leading Shiite party.
"We represent the law," he told a delegation of three police officers that came next in his string of meetings. "We are legal. We are elected."
They complained that other officers were loyal to parties; they worried that the tribes ignored their authority.
"Just tell them the governor is your tribe," Musabah said.
A delegation of tribesmen followed, wearing the black checkered head scarves and robes of village elders. On one side was the aggrieved brother of a man killed at a wedding party four months ago by stray gunfire. On the other were two tribal sheiks trying to get him to relent in his demand that 17 people from the groom's family should move to another town as punishment.
Fists crashed on the arms of chairs. Fingers pointed. Shouts were interrupted by an occasional "Permit me to speak!" Sheik Ali Almerian, the short, wiry brother of the slain man, turned to the governor. "If you don't solve the problem," he said in rough, rural Arabic, "there will be more bloodshed!" There were more pleas for the man to relent. "Never! There is no negotiation!"
Musabah sat at his desk, quiet. The quarrel went on for a half-hour before he made a suggestion: Invite all the parties to the governor's office next week, and they will find a compromise.
A 'Son of Basra'
To many in Basra, Musabah remains an unknown quantity. So far, those who have met him say he is a good listener, someone who is upright and kind. The complaints are those heard often about the new generation of religiously oriented leaders in Basra: He is inexperienced and not highly educated. (He has a two-year associate degree as a surveyor.) The vocal secular element in the city worries that his moderate veneer conceals a more draconian conservatism.
"The election was excellent, but the result was bad," said Saleh Najim, the dean of Basra University's engineering college.
Musabah speaks little of religion. He said he no longer considered himself a member of the Virtue Party, but rather a "son of Basra." As for faith, he said, that was best left to others. "We will deal with everyone in the same spirit," he said. "Religious issues don't have anything to do with government affairs. This is the purview of the clerics."
His day neared an end, as trays of tea kept arriving. He secured a weapons permit for a Catholic priest and dealt with contractors struggling with Basra's collapsing sewage system. The foremen of a state-owned ironworks pleaded for money to restart their factory. A local cleric asked whether funds were available to rebuild a neighborhood mosque. Musabah's secretary, Furat Salih, brought in a handwritten piece of paper that documented faltering electricity production in Basra, a report he receives daily.
A delegation of utility workers soon arrived. Its members were flustered and a little cynical. Hours-long blackouts are perhaps the biggest complaint among Basra residents, and the workers said they were at wit's end. Their equipment was 25 years old. Solutions, they said, remained merely ink on paper.
"We're suffering, and we'll suffer especially this summer. We have no spare parts and no generators," said Maytham Wasfi, the assistant general director for power distribution in southern Iraq. "Electricity is just worn out, especially in the south."
Musabah winced, then tried to reassure them.
"We're going to be very frank with the masses," he said. |
