WASHINGTON WAR WOBBLES:
NO TIME FOR DOUBT
By AMIR TAHERI
NY Post
May 18, 2004 -- <font size=4>HAD enough of bad news from Iraq? Here is some good news:
The nationwide anti-American insurrection promised by
media headlines just a week ago has not happened.
Muqtada al-Sadr, the self-styled warring mullah, is desperately shopping around for a way out of the tangle he has created for himself. He has proposed to dissolve his so-called Army of the Mahdi and says he is even ready to go into exile to prevent further bloodshed. All he is asking for is for the Shiite grand ayatollahs to intervene to get him off the hook of an arrest warrant on a charge of murder. The grand ayatollahs, however, insist that he should eat humble pie.
Fallujah, where Arab nationalism was supposed to be reborn in a sea of American blood, is calm, with the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps in control.
Attacks on the newly created Iraqi police force have dropped by 50 percent in the past four weeks.
In the past three months, the newly created Iraqi currency, the dinar, has increased by almost 15 percent against the U.S. dollar and the two most traded local currencies, the Kuwaiti dinar and the Iranian rial.
Thanks to rising oil prices, Iraq is now earning $75 million to $80 million a day, an all-time record. The effect is already felt in greater economic activity, including private reconstruction schemes.
The Iraqi national soccer squad, having defeated its Iranian and Saudi counterparts, has won a place in the final of the summer Olympics in Athens, for the first time in almost a quarter of a century.
And, of course, "the Arab street," which was once again supposed to explode in the wake of the Abu Ghraib atrocities, has failed to do so.
Talk to almost any Iraqi who is not nostalgic for Saddam Hussein and you shall hear the same analysis: The country has absorbed the shock of the Sadrist insurrection, Fallujah and the Abu Ghraib scandal.
And yet many Iraqis express concern about the short-term future of their country, that is to say, the way things will work out in the next few months.
One reason for this is a growing fear that Washington may
not be prepared to stay the course in the crucial period
of transition due to begin at the end of June. President
Bush's recent assurances that the United States is
determined to honor his promise of bringing democracy to
Iraq have been qualified by less committed pronouncements
from other members of the administration, not to speak of
the growing "let's get the hell out" chorus, led by people
like Sen. Edward Kennedy.
"Things are going well in Najaf," says an adviser to Grand Ayatollah Ali-Muhammad Sistani, the primus inter pares of Iraqi Shiite clerical leaders. "It is in Washington that things do not seem to be going well." The Shiite leadership in Najaf is worried that America and its allies might persuade themselves that a soft version of the Ba'athist regime is the only realistic course.
A similar sentiment was expressed by Ayatollah Sadreddin Qapanchi in a mosque sermon in Najaf the other day. "The people of Iraq are ready to exercise the [right of] self-determination," he said. "All they ask is to be given a chance to choose their government. Iraq should not be thrown to those who seek power through violence."
Even Ayatollah Kazem Ha'eri-Yazdi, Muqtada Sadr's spiritual mentor, has come out against the latter's forlorn bid for power. In a recent message, Haeri-Yazdi warned that the U.S.-led Coalition should not renege on its promise of allowing the people of Iraq to choose a new system of government through free and fair elections.
The second reason Iraqis worry about the months ahead is what one member of the Governing Council describes as "an attack of lethargy" at the Coalition Provisional Authority. He claims that Paul Bremer, the American head of the CPA, seems to have lost his initial dedication to the cause of building a democratic Iraq.
"We don't know what happened to Bremer during a visit to Washington a couple of months ago," he says. "Maybe they told him he would get a big job in a second Bush administration. And that may be the reason he is just biding his time until the end of June, when his mission in Baghdad ends."
That view is confirmed by other members of the Governing Council and some Iraqi ministers. They say Bremer, who had distinguished himself with speedy decision-making, is now sitting on a large number of issues that require urgent arbitration. "His heart is no longer in it," laments a senior Iraqi politician.
Worse still, many Iraqis now feel that a majority of Americans may no longer have their heart in it either.
For a country emerging from half a century of brutal dictatorship and four major wars in a generation, things in Iraq are going better than anyone might have expected. Iraq is not about to disintegrate. Nor is it on the verge of civil war. Despite becoming the focus of anti-American energies in the past year, it is one of the few places in the Middle East where the United States still enjoys goodwill.
Notwithstanding the forebodings of doom coming from "experts" who know nothing of Iraq, the newly liberated nation could, as President Bush has promised, become a model of democratization for other Arabs. Iraq will be won or lost not in Baghdad or Najaf or Fallujah, but in Washington. <font size=3>
NEW YORK POST |
