Give Iraq's Voters The Nobel Prize For Peace
Yasser Arafat never did so much for peace in the Middle East.
BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, February 11, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
The Nobel Peace Prize Committee will announce its 2005 winner in October. I think that this year the voters of Iraq should receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
They have already won the world's peace prize by demonstrating in a single day a commitment not seen in our lifetime to peace, self-determination and human rights--the goals for which the Nobel Peace Prize began in 1901. Formal recognition by the Nobel Committee of what the Iraqi people did on Jan. 30 would do more to ensure the furtherance of these goals, in concrete ways, than any other imaginable recipient this year. Who did more?
The history of the Peace Prize shows as well that Iraq's voters placed themselves squarely at the center of one of the Nobel Committee's enduring, seemingly quixotic, goals--peace in the Middle East.
On at least three occasions, the Prize has been awarded to individuals attempting Middle East peace. Ralph Bunche received the Prize in 1950 for work as mediator in Palestine a few years before. Then Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin won in 1976 and in 1994 it went to Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat. Cynics would argue that Arafat deserves another Peace Prize for dying. The way to trump the region's well-earned reputation for lost causes would be to reward the eight million Iraqi idealists who rejected the cynics who offered death and subjugation over the difficulties of negotiating a democracy.
It might be said that the Nobel Committee prefers to pick individuals so as to personify the courage and persistence necessary to put peace before chaos and repression--Wangari Maathi of Kenya last year, Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991 or Andrei Sakharov in 1975. Here is a story of courage and persistence for peace as reported by the correspondents for Radio Dijla in Baghdad:
"Abdul Karim Abboud, 54 years old, lives close to the Abu Hanifa mosque in the district of Azamiya, an area of Baghdad inhabited by a Sunni majority. Early in the morning, the man left his home accompanied by his wife to cast their votes. On their way to the polling center and not far from their home, gunmen started to shoot randomly to scare people and prevent them from voting. The wife received a bullet in her shoulder. Abdul Karim carried his wife back to their home and left her with their daughter. He left his home again, heading for the polling center. After casting his vote, Abdul Karim went back to his wife. He said: 'This is for Iraq and its freedom.'"
Make no mistake; the designers of Iraq's car bombs had gotten their candidacy onto the ballot that day as certainly as any of the thousands of candidates' names. Just as they have been on the "ballot" in all the places the Nobel Committee has singled out for hope--Northern Ireland, East Timor, Tibet. Informed world opinion held before the election that peace would fail and terror would win, again. That day, peace won.
On at least seven occasions, the Prize has been awarded to agencies or officials of the United Nations. This reflects an attempt to animate the ideals and goals of the U.N., no matter its manifest failures, missteps and hypocrisies. Here is the world sought in the Preamble to the U.N.'s Charter signed in 1945:
" . . . to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war . . . to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women . . . ." These words, almost exactly, poured from the mouths of Iraq's men and women as they walked from voting stations, ink-stained fingers in the air.
Especially women. Has any one event done more to gain ground for the rights of women, in places where history and culture have rendered their rights minimal, than the spectacle of black-robed voters standing for hours to exercise the franchise?
The Nobel Prize for Peace has gone to the brave--to Nelson Mandela in 1993, Lech Walesa in 1983, Martin Luther King Jr. in 1964. Their courage consisted of laying public claim to fundamental freedoms and human rights, knowing that the making of this claim could get them killed, and one did die. Hardly any of Iraq's eight million voters could have known for sure that he or she would survive that Sunday's insistence on the same claim, and some have not. In Baghdad this week gunmen fired on the car of Mithal al-Alousi, the general-secretary of the Iraqi Nation Democratic Party, who has made peace overtures to Israel. He lived but two of his sons died.
There are sufficient practical reasons to elevate Iraq's voters in the eyes of the world. While eight million Iraqis stood against bombs to vote, millions sat in front of televisions in other nations, wishing for this opportunity. If it can happen in what was Saddam Hussein's Iraq, it may happen too in Yemen, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan or Iran. Imagine the effect on the Arab street if its inhabitants saw that Arabs can win a Nobel Peace Prize, and the world's admiration, by casting votes as free men and free women.
Not least, terrorism--its arguments and its methods--was rebuked. This is the peace "process" rightly understood.
The Nobel Committee has never given the Prize to a nation. No matter. This is the new model for a new century: a whole nation choosing peace. Legitimize Iraq; others will want to follow. The Committee has another rule: Its deadline for nominees was Feb. 1. That makes this nomination a smidgen late. The Iraqi vote, however, was Jan. 30. The people of Iraq nominated themselves for the Nobel Peace Prize. There may be someone or something more deserving, but not in the world we live in.
Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.
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