This week's election is a great chance for Iraq, if the Shia and Kurdish victors are willing to be generous

How to deal with Iraq's insurgents

Iraq's general election - How to deal with Iraq's insurgents | Leaders | The Economist

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IRAQ is a bloody mess, and will stay that way for quite some time. It is nothing like George Bush—or, for that matter, The Economist—hoped it would become when he sent in his troops nearly three years ago to get rid of Saddam Hussein. This week's general election will not turn things round overnight. But the election of a representative government offers Iraqis a chance to start slowly to stem the tide of mayhem and murder. For some time to come, America and its dwindling band of allies will have to underpin the new order's fragile security with military forces. But it will take more than American staying power to give Iraqis a decent, secure state. Almost everything now depends on their own desire for internal reconciliation, and their willingness to make sacrifices in order to achieve it.

IRAQ is a bloody mess, and will stay that way for quite some time. It is nothing like George Bush—or, for that matter, The Economist—hoped it would become when he sent in his troops nearly three years ago to get rid of Saddam Hussein. This week's general election will not turn things round overnight. But the election of a representative government offers Iraqis a chance to start slowly to stem the tide of mayhem and murder. For some time to come, America and its dwindling band of allies will have to underpin the new order's fragile security with military forces. But it will take more than American staying power to give Iraqis a decent, secure state. Almost everything now depends on their own desire for internal reconciliation, and their willingness to make sacrifices in order to achieve it.

To be sure, there has already been a string of hopeful political events in the past year. Last January, Iraqis stunned the world by turning out in remarkable numbers to vote for an interim government. In October, they endorsed a new constitution. And this week they will vote for a four-year parliament that will embrace a much wider range of Iraqis, including a fair number of Sunni Arabs (20% or so of the population) as well as the already dominant Shia Arabs (60%) and the doggedly autonomous Kurds (20%). Last time, in January, the Sunni Arabs abstained en masse. This time many more seem set to vote, and are sure to win much fairer representation under a new electoral system. That inspires hope too. But hope has been dampened by the failure of genuine advances in democracy to make Iraq any safer for its hapless people. 

The insurgency has refused to abate, even if it has not actually got stronger. This suits the insurgents fine. The longer the mayhem continues, the likelier the new order is to disintegrate, whatever the merits of the new constitution and however representative the new parliament. And the longer the insurgency grinds on, the likelier it is that the Americans, even under a stubborn Mr Bush, will lose their nerve and depart. Guerrillas the world over win merely by not losing. It is plain, despite improvements in American counter-insurgency techniques (see article), that military power cannot alone defeat the insurgents. Iraq will never function as a secure state until a critical mass of Sunni Arabs are persuaded that it is in their interest to help put down the insurgents. 

The insurgency has refused to abate, even if it has not actually got stronger. This suits the insurgents fine. The longer the mayhem continues, the likelier the new order is to disintegrate, whatever the merits of the new constitution and however representative the new parliament. And the longer the insurgency grinds on, the likelier it is that the Americans, even under a stubborn Mr Bush, will lose their nerve and depart. Guerrillas the world over win merely by not losing. It is plain, despite improvements in American counter-insurgency techniques (see <a href="https://www.economist.com/special-report/2005/12/14/how-to-do-better">article</a>), that military power cannot alone defeat the insurgents. Iraq will never function as a secure state until a critical mass of Sunni Arabs are persuaded that it is in their interest to help put down the insurgents.

But how? American military power, gradually replaced by Iraqi forces, may be able to keep the insurgency at bay; but it can be defeated, or at least isolated, only by political means. 

 Official Washington has stuck for too long to the line that the insurgents are mostly jihadists linked to al-Qaeda and “regime remnants” intent only on reclaiming their former privileges. It has been convenient for both the Bush administration and for Iraq's interim government to portray things that way; but, if it was ever true, it no longer is. The insurgency now has a broad base within the Sunni population, much of which was traumatised by the sweeping away of the Baathist state and the erasure of its key institutions, notably the army. In many Sunni minds, Mr Hussein's dictatorship is being replaced by a Shia dictatorship. The Shias may be the majority but are held to be carving a proud Arab nation into one oil-rich Shia state under the influence of Iran, and a separate breakaway region, also rich in oil, for the Kurds. If the post-Saddam dispensation is to be winner-takes-all, Sunnis seem determined to make sure that there will be no winner at all.

The new parliament's first job must therefore be to create a coalition government broad enough to persuade the Sunnis that they will have a central, if no longer dominant, place in the new Iraq. The United Iraqi Alliance, a predominantly Shia Islamist collection implicitly blessed by the hugely influential Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, looks set to win the most votes. An alliance of the two main Kurdish parties is even surer to sweep the Kurdish north. Together, these two blocks have the numbers to run the show, as they have done for the past year. But it is crucial that they now embrace at least one of the Sunni-led alliances that have emerged since January. 

This will not be an easy thing for Shias and Kurds to do. Many feel that they owe the Sunnis nothing after years of oppression at their hands. But taking Sunni parties into a governing coalition is only the first of several difficult steps the former underdogs need to take if they are to draw the sting of the insurgency. They will also have to make real concessions, even if this means tweaking the new constitution. Though the document has many merits, and was negotiated painstakingly, its formula for sharing Iraq's oil revenues is divisive, making Sunnis fear they will not get a fair whack. And parliament should limit a provision that enables the Shia Arabs to create a “super-region” of perhaps eight or nine provinces. As it stands, this lets Sunnis believe that federalism means breaking up the country. Parliament should also soften the deBaathification rules, so that many more Iraqis who served Mr Hussein's dictatorship should be drawn back into the machinery of state, unless they are senior figures with blood on their hands. 

The chances of a broad, tolerant, multi-sectarian coalition government emerging are not brilliant. The best organised of the Islamist parties in the United Iraqi Alliance is the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, better known as SCIRI. Some of its militias are sectarian, murderous and close to Iran. Too many of them are being incorporated whole, with their sectarian allegiances intact, in the new army and police. While Sunni suicide-bombers kill Shias in mosques and buses, SCIRI's friends assassinate and torture Sunnis. As the gulf widens, compromise becomes harder. 

The new Shia ascendancy must realise that Iraq will become stable only if its new top dogs are generous. If the Shias do not recognise this for themselves, America should use its influence as the new government's protector to squeeze some generosity from them. Otherwise the country will not hold together, and the blood of too many Iraqis—and too many Americans—will have been spilt in vain. 

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How to deal with Iraq's insurgents

This week's election is a great chance for Iraq, if the Shia and Kurdish victors are willing to be generous

Leaders December 17th 2005

From the December 17th 2005 edition

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