Gone with the Desert Storm Winds

The first U.S. war against Iraq began twenty years ago on Jan. 17, 1991. The wish for more democracy in the region has yet to be fulfilled.

After meeting the autocrats of the Middle East, Barack Obama appears to be following a realpolitik strategy. Instead of pushing for more freedom and democracy in the region, Obama, who had been the great hope for change, became the one to dampen that wish.

Now that has changed. When thousands in Algeria and Tunisia took to the streets protesting social emergencies, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took a public slap at Arab rulers in the Gulf, saying that with no regard for human rights or political reforms, their countries threatened to sink beneath the sands of history. And on the same day, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden declared, in Baghdad, that a democratic and prosperous Iraq would be the best thing that could happen for the United States in that part of the world.

For those democracies in the region that feel themselves thus far left by the Obama administration to fend for themselves, that was a good sign. What Washington can actually do to move Arab regimes to reform is a different story altogether. But one thing is certain: whether democracy finally kicks in for Iraq will decide how future generations assess the wars the United States fought there.

The mother of all defeats

In reality, this war didn’t start in March 2003; it started 20 years ago. In August 1990, Iraq invaded its neighbor, Kuwait. When the U.N. deadline for Iraq’s withdrawal came and went, the United States embarked on “Operation Desert Storm” on Jan. 17, 1991.

Although Saddam Hussein lost the war he described as the mother of all battles, he remained in power. Then, shortly after the end of hostilities, the Shiites in the south and the Kurds in the north began an insurrection against the Iraqi government. The Americans and their allies could only watch helplessly as the despot brutally put the rebellion down.

Later, a protective zone for the Kurds and no-fly zones were set up in the north and south of the country. But effective measures to bring down Saddam’s regime were still missing. The sanctions meant to lead to the discovery of weapons of mass destruction resulted only in impoverishing large parts of the population. They did nothing to end the cat-and-mouse game between Saddam and the U.N. inspectors.

The Americans didn’t go all the way to Baghdad in 1991, not least because they feared the Shiites might seize power and the Kurds might secede from Iraq. Dick Cheney, then the Secretary of Defense, went on record saying they would have been faced with deciding whether a new government would be Shiite, Sunni or Kurdish. Now, one war further down the road, Iraq has a government that includes all those ethnic and religious groups. But it cost tens of thousands of Iraqi lives and over 4,400 American lives to get to that point.

Bush Jr.’s numerous mistakes after invading are only partly to blame. Iraq was already a failed state before the invasion, held together solely by brutal repression. Today we know that America’s reason for invading was based on false premises – Saddam had actually already abandoned his weapons of mass destruction. Now Washington should be measured by whether it is capable of resolving its other conflicts by peaceful means.

A country still unformed

The question is still open as to what shape Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds want the new Iraq to take. The Kurds have toned down their nationalistic rhetoric for now, but their desire for an independent state is still on the table. President of the Kurdish regional government Masud Barzani recently reiterated that the region’s alliance with Iraq is voluntary. U.S. troops have so far been able to prevent an escalation of hostilities around the oil-rich region of Kirkuk, but a permanent solution has not yet been reached.

In Baghdad, meanwhile, there are devout Shiites engaged in forming the core of a government Bush Sr. had feared in 1991. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki vacillates between the fundamentalist tendencies of his Dawa Party and the more moderate interpretations of Islam held by other Shiites.

Pluralism in the clergy

In Baghdad and other provinces controlled by al-Maliki’s party, Islamic hardliners are trying to forbid the consumption of alcohol, close bars and even forbid co-educational schools. They receive strong support from radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who recently returned to Iraq after his four-year voluntary exile in Iran.

The fact that the hardliners can’t easily install a Taliban-like Shiite regime lies mainly in the opposition put up by the clerics in the holy city of Najaf. It will likely be the pluralism of these clerics that may someday lead to the democratization of Iraq. Above all, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani rejects an Islamic “state of legal scholars,” as they have in Iran. With his support for elections and open list candidates, he has accomplished much already in the country’s democratization. But Sistani is certainly no liberal and the elderly cleric doesn’t want to do anything that would cause the Shiites to lose their supremacy.

Not an export model

George W. Bush had intended to export the democracy he brought to Iraq to neighboring nations as well. For now, however, Iran has emerged as the victor in the regional power struggle. Whether that remains so depends not only on the conflict over Iran’s nuclear program but also on the direction in which the Shiites choose to take Iraq. Concerned about maintaining their supremacy, they find it difficult to make concessions to the Iraqi Sunnis.

Like Lebanon, Iraq faces the question of ethnic and religious proportion. In that regard, current Prime Minister al-Maliki let certain authoritarian tendencies be seen last year. Iraq is still a long way from becoming a country of mature citizens where individual ability is the decisive factor over ethnicity, religion or political affiliation.

The last of the U.S. troops are scheduled to depart Iraq at the end of this year. Twenty years after the start of the first Gulf War, America still has a considerable wait before the roots of freedom and democracy really take hold in Iraq, not to mention in the entire region.