A DEMOCRATIC IRAQ? YES,
A DEMOCRATIC IRAQ? NO, por Shlomo Avineri.
en “Los Angeles Times” del 15.04.2003
A DEMOCRATIC IRAQ? YES,
YES:
Other nations have overcome equally tough challenges. So can a long-suffering
people of great education, ambition and energy.
With the liberation of the Iraqi
people virtually complete, opponents of war are shifting their sights. They now
claim that democracy will not work in Iraq. Iraq's political history, they say,
is one of a succession of military coups and dictatorships. The country simply
has no democratic tradition. Furthermore, Iraq's ethnic and sectarian rivalries
are more likely to produce violence and social chaos than political pluralism.
Finally, they say democracy cannot be imposed by military power. Thus, coalition
forces are not liberators but foreign occupiers.
There should be no illusions. Building a democratic Iraq will be difficult. It
will take time. It will be imperfect. And the outcome is not guaranteed. The
effort will lead to more "instability" -- to the extent that Hussein's "stable"
order is gone forever. Nevertheless, democracy in Iraq is possible, and this
possibility is both morally and strategically necessary to pursue.
Democracy has flourished in countries with a wide variety of ethnic, religious
and historical experiences. In 1945, Japan had virtually no democratic
tradition. Its recent history was one of fanatical militarism and airborne
suicide bombers. At the end of World War II, Germans remembered the Weimar
Republic as a time of hyperinflation, desperate poverty and national insecurity,
which fueled the Nazi rise to power. Yet, Allied military occupation of West
Germany and Japan in the postwar years gave birth to democracy in both countries
-- despite the advice of regional "experts" who maintained it couldn't be done.
Are the challenges facing liberated Iraqis today more daunting than those
confronting Albanians in 1991, after four decades of a xenophobic tyranny that
broke with Josef Stalin and Mao Tse-tung because they were too moderate? In the
1980s, did El Salvadorans battling both a vicious old guard and a brutal
communist insurgency have a better chance of establishing democracy than the
Iraqis today? Were the hurdles overcome by South Koreans and Taiwanese to
transform their poor, agrarian societies into dynamic democracies, while fending
off implacably hostile neighbors, that much higher?
The democracy skeptics use the specter of ethnic and sectarian violence to claim
that a free and open Iraq is impossible. But recall the predictions that
majority rule in South Africa would lead to tribal warfare. For decades,
violence in Iraq was political, carried out in the name of a totalitarian
ideology descended from 1930s national socialism. Hussein gassed Kurds, executed
tribal Sunnis and slaughtered Iraqi Shiites to stifle dissent against his Baath
Party dictatorship. It is the remnants of the Baath Party cancer, not Iraq's
ethnic and sectarian diversity, that pose the greatest obstacle to democracy.
As for Iraq's lack of a democratic tradition, it may not be as complete as some
claim. In the 1950s, Iraq's government was a constitutional monarchy, with a
parliament that exercised independent political power. More significant, a major
portion of Iraq has adopted political pluralism in the last 10 years. Under the
protection of U.S. and British air power in the northern no-fly zone, the Kurds
have developed self-governing institutions there. What Iraq's Kurds have
achieved, Iraq's Sunnis, Shiites, Turkmens, Assyrians and Chaldeans -- with
their Kurdish countrymen -- can also achieve, now that Hussein's regime is on
the ash heap of history.
Iraq's greatest resource is not oil; it is its people. Iraq is not a failed
nation like Afghanistan or Somalia. Iraqis are well educated, energetic and
ambitious. Although the majority of the greater Middle East disenfranchises 50%
of its population, women in Iraq are educated and in the workplace. Iraqi exiles
can also help restore Iraq to its former luster. A perverse idea has taken hold
that Iraqis able to flee Hussein's tyranny should be automatically disqualified
from playing any role in the new Iraq, even if they spent years fighting for
their country's liberation. Judging from their reactions so far, Iraqis don't
accept such an absurdity.
There is an insidious subtext in the debate over whether democracy can grow and
flourish in Iraq. Even though a democratic Iraq may be feasible, goes the
argument, it is not desirable. This view has adherents in the U.S. State
Department and among some foreign-policy elites, in Middle Eastern studies
departments of major universities and in Arab capitals. For Arab rulers, the
reason is obvious: Democracy in Cairo, Damascus or Riyadh would mean statues
tumbling there.
But for some Americans, fear of a democratic Iraq may reflect a larger
worldview. Last week, former national security advisor Brent Scowcroft summed it
up. Holding up the possibility of anti-American religious radicals winning an
election in Iraq, he said, "We're surely not going to let them take over." It is
this apparent distrust of the people, this implicit preference for order over
freedom, that led Scowcroft to urge that the U.S. stand aside at the end of the
1991 Persian Gulf War, when Hussein slaughtered rebellious Iraqi Shiites.
Apparently, Scowcroft had greater faith in the Chinese leaders, whom he toasted
in Beijing shortly after they murdered protesters in Tiananmen Square who were
carrying a model of the Statue of Liberty.
There is no evidence that elections in Iraq would empower anti-American
radicals. Yes, elections would increase the political representation of Iraq's
long-repressed Shiite majority -- and that would surely make life uncomfortable
for Saudi despots who have good reason to fear democracy with a Shiite accent.
But Shiism is not reflexively anti-American. Witness the fatwa issued by Grand
Ayatollah Ali Sistani calling on Iraqis not to interfere with coalition forces
in southern Iraq.
It is the Scowcrofts of the world who have led many Arab reformers to question
the U.S. commitment to a democratic Iraq, not because of the challenge it poses
but because America prefers the "stability" of authoritarians. Yet, it is the
status quo in the Middle East that is unstable. As long as the U.S. is allied
with Arab authoritarians who deflect popular anger toward external enemies to
preserve their corrupt rule, as long as young Arabs have no peaceful channels to
express dissent, the status quo will breed Islamo- fascist terrorism,
anti-Americanism and instability.
America has supported regime change and democratic movements in Latin America,
Asia, Europe and Africa, and the world is a better place -- not one in which we
always get our way. The democratic Philippines closed U.S. military bases.
Democratic Turkey refused to be a staging base for U.S. ground forces in the war
against Iraq. Democratic Chile didn't support us in the U.N. Security Council
debate over the use of force against Hussein. Democracy doesn't guarantee an
outcome. But that is no reason to go back to Ferdinand Marcos or Gen. Augusto
Pinochet.
In liberating the Iraqi people, America and its allies have made it clear to the
world that we no longer prefer dictators and their pseudo- stability. We have
demonstrated that the liberation of Iraq was indeed a noble mission. We can
proudly say the Middle East exemption from democratic change has ended.
A DEMOCRATIC IRAQ? NO
NO: History, culture and politics
militate against the blossoming of an enlightened political system.
Artículo de Shlomo Avineri.
Shlomo Avineri, professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has been involved in numerous democracy-building projects in Eastern Europe since 1989.
JERUSALEM -- The belief that after
Saddam Hussein, Iraq may become a more-or-less democratic society -- let alone a
democratic beacon for other Arab nations -- is a dangerous illusion.
As experience in Eastern Europe has shown, democracy doesn't mean simply holding
elections. First, you need a democratic culture, or what is usually called a
civil society -- a tradition of voluntary associations, a tolerance for
nonconformism and pluralism, a shared belief in the dignity of the individual,
an autonomous sphere of economic activity, separation of political power from
religious authority and a belief in the legitimacy of dissent. These values,
norms and institutions are not easily exportable. It took Western societies
centuries to develop them, with many notable lapses -- slavery and racial
discrimination in the United States, and fascism in continental Europe, are just
two -- along the way.
In countries where democracy established itself -- Poland, Hungary, the Czech
Republic -- civil society existed in one form or another, even during communism.
In countries where it didn't exist, the transition to a truly free, open,
democratic society has been, to say the least, bumpy. Russia is a prime example.
After the tumultuous years of President Boris Yeltsin, Russia under Vladimir
Putin has experienced some stabilization and consolidation. But it is the
stability of an authoritarianism "with a friendly face." Ukraine, Belarus and
the Central Asian republics are still years away from even a semblance of
democracy.
The prevailing political culture of the Arab Middle East offers another reason
to be pessimistic about democracy in Iraq. Despite enormous differences in size,
wealth, population density and history, no Arab country is a democracy, is on
the road to democracy or has a viable democratic opposition similar to Poland's
Solidarity or the Czech movement Charter 77. Nor has there appeared an Arab
Gorbachev. Reasons for the lack of democracy in any Arab country are complex but
have little to do with Islam. Political progress in Turkey, Indonesia, even
Pakistan and Iran, suggest Islam is not a hindrance to democratic development.
It is quixotic, then, to imagine that Iraq, after more than two decades of a
brutal, repressive dictatorship and having been militarily defeated and occupied
by the United States, will be the first Arab society to develop the means to
become a democracy. In the 1990s, similar hopes were voiced for the
Palestinians, then emerging from Israeli occupation. What developed instead was
the politics of suicide bombing, an act that enjoys near-universal acceptance in
Palestinian society.
Believers in Iraq's potential as a democracy frequently cite its large, educated
middle class as a reason for hope. But this too is misguided. Pre-Nazi Germany
prided itself on possessing one of the most educated and sophisticated middle
classes in Europe. It is not the existence of a middle class that counts but its
values, norms and conduct. The absence of any meaningful dissent in Iraq in the
last 24 years, even under Hussein's torturous regime, doesn't inspire faith in
the Iraqi middle class as a fount of democrats. Nor does Iraq possess a
pre-Hussein democratic tradition that would help legitimize democracy. The
contending groups of Iraqi exiles do not have impressive democratic credentials.
Last, and not least, demographics conspire against the birth of democracy in
Iraq. The wars in the former Yugoslavia showed how difficult it is to institute
a post-totalitarian pluralistic democracy in a country riven by ethnic and
religious divides.
Iraq is a patchwork of a country, weaved by British imperialists from remnants
of the Ottoman Empire. Not only is there a sizable Kurdish minority in the
north, but Iraqi Arabs are also split between the Shiite majority and the Sunni
minority. It is fine -- and right -- to condemn Hussein's regime as a Sunni
dictatorship over Shiites and Kurds. But democracy in Iraq would mean that the
Shiite majority would be entitled to considerable political power. With Shiite
Iran next door, this would raise the possibility of a Tehran-type Shiite
fundamentalism in Iraq.
Furthermore, a sudden move toward majority rule, without checks and balances,
might produce a clash, as in Algeria, between fundamentalist Islamists and
secularists.
The antidote for Iraq's ethnic and religious schisms is often said to be
"federalism." But federalism works best in societies where democratic values are
deeply ingrained, as in the United States, Canada and Switzerland; even
post-1945 Germany could build on pre-Nazi democratic traditions, feeble as they
were. Federalist ideas haven't solved religious and ethnic problems in societies
struggling to become democracies. The Dayton accords tried to create a viable
multiethnic Bosnia-Herzegovina based on federal principles, but the result has
been an utter failure. Similarly, a recent U.N.-backed proposal to solve the
Cyprus problem through federalism is stillborn. The bloody breakup of Yugoslavia
is further evidence that federalism is not an answer for societies like Iraq's.
So, for what can we hope? For one, that the Pentagon's Office for Reconstruction
and Humanitarian Assistance doesn't set its sights too high. Its immediate tasks
are obvious and relatively easy to accomplish: humanitarian aid; rebuilding the
infrastructure; modernizing Iraq's oil industry so its oil revenue can partly
offset the cost of reconstruction.
But when it comes to the longer-term goal of political reform, postwar West
Germany or Japan are not relevant examples. In both cases, democratization would
not have occurred without a long military occupation, something coalition forces
want to avoid. Furthermore, fear of communism in postwar West Germany and Japan
certainly helped cast the West as an ally, a perception totally absent in Iraq.
On the other hand, if the people working to rebuild Iraq look around, they might
see other, more realistic political alternatives. Iraqis would be lucky if
something like Egypt's mild authoritarianism were established in their country;
they would be less lucky if they had to settle for something like Syria's
not-so-mild, though pragmatic, authoritarian government -- but that's far
preferable to the one they have suffered through for 24 years.
Disappointing? Perhaps. Sobering? Yes. But anything else would be a dangerous
utopian illusion, bound to backfire.