In recent weeks the world’s attention has been grabbed by Swine Flu, economic turmoil, riots in China and human tragedy in Afghanistan, perhaps the best news recently has been the very lack of news to have come out of Iraq.
We are all aware of the bitter controversy over the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 and, of course, the country’s subsequent descent towards a bloody abyss of bombings, kidnappings and civil war. At times it seemed as if US troops would be stuck in Iraq for decades, or that even if they did pull out, the country would tear itself apart in a genocidal civil war.
I’m not interested in writing about the rights and wrongs of the invasion in this post; that is an issue that is well documented and has been even more extensively debated. However, I am interested in looking at what the future may hold for Iraq, if the country does indeed have a long-term future and, on that front, the recent signs are encouraging.
On 30 June, Iraqis of all religions and races celebrated as US combat troops were pulled off the streets of every town and city in Iraq. Just two years ago it seemed for many in Iraq, and across the world, that this moment might plausibly take decades to achieve. Importantly for Iraq it was the huge reduction in violence seen in Iraq since the end of 2007, and not the terror imposed by Al Qaeda in Iraq or the Mahdi Army, which finally allowed Iraqis to reclaim their streets.
Al Qaeda in Iraq (by all accounts largely made up of Iraqi rather than foreign Islamists) and the Mahdi Army both sought to overthrow the national Government and impose their own rule on the country. The Islamist way of life wasa often brutally imposed on the people of the Sunni Triangle and the story of its empathic rejectection by Iraqi Sunnis is a story waiting to be fully told. Likewise Moqtada al-Sadr saw his Mahdi Army militarily defeated by Iraqi and US Forces in 2008; while the subsequent withdrawal of American combat troops has neutered his populist anti-occupation cause and the Mahdi Army has largely been relegated to Hamas-inspired welfare projects.
That is not to say that Iraq faces a peaceful future. Whatever one thinks about the American presence, the idea that the violence visited on the country was caused exclusively by the US occupation was a misnomer. Indeed the bomings and shootings have continued since American troops left Iraqi streets. Yesterday four Iraqi policeman were killed in separate bomb attacks in Anbar and Mosul. The day before three policemen, one Iraqi soldier, and a tribal anti-insurgent leader were murdered. A handicapped man was also shot dead in Mosul. The week before, four Churches were bombed in Baghdad. Clearly there are still groups that wish to overthrow the elected Government or impose their violent ideology on Iraqi society. Senior Iraqi General Babaker Shawkat Zebarir recently stated that the insurgency had been whittled down to hard-core cells, but lethal terrorist attacks could cotinue to afflict the country for “a year or two or three". For most other countries this would represent a nightmare vision, but Iraq is gradually awakening from its nightmare and the reduction in violence has allowed its citizens to star dreaming about their futures again.
The Iraqi Army passed its first really big test last week, when around five million Shi’te pilgrims descended on Baghdad to commemorate the death of Imam Moussa Al-Kadhim. In the past years such gatherings have been targeted by Sunni suicide bombers, but this year’s festival passed off peacefully, albeit with massive security measures in place. The next big test for Iraq is the general election in January 2010. Major threats to peace and stability in Iraq remain and there are many unresolved problems, such as the increasingly separatist and assertive Kurdish political parties, the large-scale disillusionment amongst Sunnis and the lingering, and still lethal, insurgent groups. But whatever happens it is clear that Iraqis once stared into the abyss, during the dark days of 2007, and devided to take a collective step back from the precipice. Shia politician Haidar al-Obadi recently told BBC News:
"There is no going back to a dictatorship or a one-party system in the country now . . . people have tasted democracy, they have worked on democracy, it is an operation not only at the centre, but also in other areas, in the governorates and in the regions. Nobody can enforce dictatorship again on this country."
Whether the opportunity for Iraqis to dream about a peaceful future has been worth the price paid by so many over the last six years is not for me to say. Yet, with democratic protestors being brutally repressed in Iran, and the Saudi Government as authoritarian and theocratic as ever, Iraq may yet act as well of stability and democracy in a troubled region.
