The problem that arises when developing countries try to convert to western-style democracy is that many of these countries aren't "nations" in the sense that we understand nationhood. They are sets of wildly different cultures, often ones violently disliking each other, with their borders defined not by their own relations, but by the collisions of colonial powers generations ago. In many cases they have only been held together by force. In most cases individual loyalty is not to the abstract concept of a nation but to the individual clan or ethnic group.
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Unfortunately, in this case bloodshed and chaos will inevitably be exploited by the Islamists, and we can't afford to let that happen.
Gosh, I forgot that the serious numbers of literate Iraqis, the democracy practising Kurds, the non Islamist muslims, etc, are just going to roll over, and go with the no singing, no dancing, no fornication folk so they can spend thirty years in misery like the Iranians, or seventy years in ignorance like the Saudis.
And that the Iraqis are stupid, haven't learned anything, and aren't capable of learning. That the example of the Tikrit mafia isn't a cautionary story even though nearly everyone in the country is related to or knows someone who was murdered or exiled by it.
Careless of me. I'll try and do better. And I won't look at India....with a zillion languages and cultures and tribes, and religions, most of which aren't that keen on the others but somehow or another manage to get by even though much of the place is corrupt as hell.
And I'll sincerely try not to notice that thirty years of stalinist regime has smushed the various Iraqi ethnicities and clans cheek by jowel in various cities and towns and that they have no idea of what their commnon interests are.
And I'll believe that the Iraqis are incapable of negotiating a new dispensation which might even include hiving off the medieval nutbars to stew in their own misery.
And I'll believe they don't have enough Nous to avoid a new civil war. Or. When Saddam goes, stop the one they have presently.
Phooey! This is a country carrying many aspects of modernity all of which seem to be discounted by outsiders in favour of what it looked like fifty years ago.
There's no natural law requiring the Iraqis to repeat every tribalist monstrosity of the last 500 years. I think it's no accident the northerners and others are in favour of some kind of confederal government system which could follow reasonable ethnic boundaries. Given the unfriendly environment surrounding the country there is motivation to make it work.
They don't have to look to Iran and Saudi, they can look to Turkey and Europe and the US.
The French tried to eliminate ethnic and religious variety.
The Swiss preserved them.
The US amalgamated them.
The Europeans worked up the start of a reasonable arrangement 350 years ago at Westphalia dealing with hideously complex problems of ethnicity and religion and which eventually culminated in such things as the Swiss confederation and the US constitution. There's no reason to think the Iraqis aren't capable of working up something during an interregnum of peace and untyranny.
I said it is going to be messy. When the US arrives the Iraqis will have quite a few options. Tribalist and/or ideological conflict are only two of them. |
