Let's assume that the United States and its allies have overthrown Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein. What types of issues and problems will follow?
Looking ahead like this is not merely an exercise in prophecy. It is an
attempt to think through probable and possible developments as a guide to what
policies should be adopted, how they should be implemented, and how to plan for
dealing with future contingencies.
Here are some ideas, and their implications:
• Once the regime is overthrown it will not make a comeback. The Ba'ath party
is a relic of the past, kept in place by its control over the state. No one is
going to rebuild the current regime, if for no other reason than that people
seek power for themselves and want to avoid the stigma of the past. Iraq may
again be a dictatorship but who needs Saddam to recreate that?
• After the regime's downfall, U.S. forces will be able to take journalists
on tours of hidden Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) facilities, hidden arms
arsenals, torture chambers and prisons. They will be able to show them documents
and interviews about Iraq's secret backing for terrorists and a connection with
Osama bin Laden if one existed. Iraqis will speak out on how much they hated the
regime and how much it oppressed them. If the war does not go on too long and
casualties aren't too high, there will probably be an outpouring of
retrospective feeling that the attack on Saddam was a good thing to do.
• Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction would then be easily discovered and
removed or destroyed.
• A key issue from the start will be whom the United States backs to rule
Iraq. Clearly, the democratic-minded exiles led by Ahmad Chelabi are in a
favorable position, but how will they be mixed with "insider" groups including
high-ranking military officers? Will the returning exiles be able to maintain
unity? How will they be received by those who never left Iraq, how much power
will the U.S. government give the new regime, how competent would they be at
ruling, and how long will the honeymoon last?
• Timing is critical and it might be the factor which trips up the American
effort. The United States must stay long enough to establish a stable regime but
not too long to wear out its welcome. Indications are that U.S. leaders envision
a long stay, and this decision might prove far more dangerous than the choice of
going to war in the first place. The longer U.S. forces stay in control and in
large numbers, the more likely there will be antagonisms of Iraqi nationalism,
Arab sentiment, and Islam. Equally, a prolonged stay would undercut the
legitimacy of a successor regime.
Just one example of how this would work: Let's say there are 20 applicants
for a cabinet-minister position. The U.S. authorities could pick the most
competent and honest candidate, but the other 19, along with all their families
and supporters, would still hate them for it. They'd have every interest in
labeling their successful rival an American puppet and mobilizing all sorts of
lies and nationalist and Islamist appeals, even trying to find foreign sponsors
on behalf of their own ambitions.
• How will the three key communities - Sunni, Shi'ite, and Kurdish - get
along? Will a federal solution, with more autonomy for the regional provinces,
be acceptable and workable? The Sunnis will have to accept that they no longer
rule the country. The Kurds will have to deal with their own unity - they are
now split into two rival regimes in the north - and accept a more limited
territory than they want. The Shi'ites will have to create a new leadership
altogether, somehow balancing secularist and Islamist factions.
None of these tasks will be easy.
• In terms of economic reconstruction, Iraq will probably be able to pay for
itself fairly quickly with expanded oil exports, but there is a massive and
long-term series of projects necessary to rebuild this sector and other damage
to infrastructure.
Then there are all the international factors involved.
• European states would quickly seek lucrative contracts with the new Iraq
and want everyone to forget they were opposed to the war in the first place.
• Turkey does not want a Kurdish state or anything approaching one. It is
interested in protecting the ethnic Turks in northern Iran and ensuring that
neither Kurdish refugees nor guerrillas cross into its territory. On the
positive side, Saddam's overthrow could signal an economic bonanza large enough
to pull Turkey out of its recession. The Iraq-Turkey oil pipeline would run full
every day, thousands of trucks would cross the border with Turkish exports, and
Turkish manufacturers and construction companies would provide a lot of the
equipment and labor to rebuild Iraq. Ironically, the Islamist government in
Turkey could gain huge support for its "success" in improving its country's
economy.
• Iran will be happy to see its enemy, Saddam and his regime, thrown out of
office, but less happy to find large numbers of U.S. troops and a pro-U.S.
government on its border. The problem is not so much whether Iran can control
the Iraqi Shi'ites - it cannot - but the extent to which Tehran will try to
subvert the new regime by backing terrorist groups among Kurds and Shi'ites. In
the parallel case of Afghanistan, Iran liked the downfall of the Taliban but
then made problems for the new government. But the Iranian opposition might see
the Iraq outcome as an inspiration to heighten its own struggle against the
hardliners.
• The Arab world will no doubt quickly recognize a new government in Iraq
once U.S. control recedes a bit. The Saudis will want to assure its friendship,
Jordan will want to deal with it economically, Egypt will want to explain why
Baghdad should follow Cairo's lead, and Syria will want to make sure the new
regime is not hostile to it.
• The effect on Arab-Israel issues and Palestinian politics? That requires
another article.
• Toward the United States there will probably be a curious mixed response in
the Arab world. Arab regimes concluding that the United States was too powerful
to challenge will seek to avoid confrontation. At the same time these rulers
will be determined to show their peoples that what happened in Iraq was bad, to
mobilize support lest America comes after them, and to deter their citizens from
seeking democracy or other types of things the Iraqi exiles and United States
hope to institute in Iraq.
• Finally, there is the question that might come to dominate Middle East
history for the first half of the 21st century: Will Iraq be a model for
moderation and democracy in the same way Egypt has been for Arab nationalists
and Iran has been for Islamists? We will be spending many years discussing that
point.
* * *
©1995-2003, The Jerusalem
Post - All rights reserved, used bypermission - http://www.jpost.com.
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs
(GLORIA) Center at the Interdisciplinary University.
