27
September 2002
2. "Iraqi Kurds warn they will fight Turkey", Kurdish insurgents have warned that they will fight Turkish troops who try to help the United States in any war against Iraq. The Kurdish Workers Party has warned that it will establish defenses in northern Iraq to stop invading Turkish troops.
3. "Kurds draw rebuke over their post-Hussein ambitions", Turkey's prime minister, Bulent Ecevit, has issued a warning to Iraqi Kurdish groups who on Wednesday approved a constitution that envisions replacing the dictatorship of President Saddam Hussein with a ''federal Iraq.'' The prospect alarms Turkish leaders, who fear a US military campaign in Iraq will unleash ethnic Kurds' ambitions to create an independent state.
4. "Papandreou: Greece Will Cooperate With Turkey About E.U. Membership", Foreign Minister George Papendreou of Greece said on Thursday, ''we want to see Turkey in the European Union (EU). Greece will cooperate with Turkey in its EU full membership process.''
5. "Turkey: Moderate Islamic Party's Victory In Polls Looks Inevitable, Despite Ban", six days ago, Turkey's chief election body barred the country's most popular politician and three other candidates from standing in November's early legislative polls. Liberals in Turkey fear the move could create additional obstacles to Ankara's membership bid into the European Union.
6. "Nothing to lose but their chains", a war against Iraq might destabilise the Middle East, says David Pryce-Jones, but that is precisely what the region needs
1. - The Washington Tímes - "Turkey steps up threats of action":
NICOSIA / September 27, 2002
by Andrew Borowiec
Turkey is stepping up its threats against Cyprus as well as warnings
to the European Union of conflict in the area if it admits the Greek-speaking
part of the Mediterranean island.
The Turkish saber-rattling — including the threat of military
action — comes amid continued jitters in the eastern Mediterranean
about the consequences of a possible invasion of Iraq.
Greek Cypriots and their Greek mainland backers fear that the two
British bases on Cyprus might be targeted by Iraqi missiles, affecting
the rest of the island. The bases served as a transit and supply point
during the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
During the past few months the bases have been upgraded in expectation
of more action against Iraq.
Turkey, which is expected to allow the use of its own mainland bases
in a planned U.S.-led strike on Iraq, appears more preoccupied with
what seems to be the imminent approval for Cyprus to join the European
Union — without the runaway Turkish Cypriot state in the north
of the island.
"Granting the Greek Cypriots EU membership would disrupt peace
and stability in Cyprus and the eastern Mediterranean," said
Gen. Aytac Yalman, commander of the Turkish land forces, on a recent
visit to Cyprus.
"It would drag the eastern Mediterranean into a permanent security
crisis," he added. Gen. Yalman is a member of the Turkish National
Security Council, the country's ultimate decision-making body.
In a stronger statement, former Turkish foreign minister Mumtaz Soysal
warned that war would break out if the European Union admitted Cyprus.
Mr. Soysal is one of the authors of the constitution of the self-styled
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, recognized only by Turkey.
Mr. Soysal made his comment at a top-level meeting held behind closed
doors in Istanbul. Diplomatic reports quoted him further as saying
that if the Greek side of Cyprus joined the European Union and the
Turkish side is ignored, "the direct talks will be ended and
Northern Cyprus will strengthen its ties with Ankara."
However, Mr. Soysal's statement appears to have fallen short of previous
Turkish threats that Ankara would simply annex Northern Cyprus.
The Northern Cypriot regime, led by Rauf Denktash, has refused to
join in an application for EU membership as long as the Greek side
does not recognize it as an equal partner. The Greek side has so far
insisted on a federal solution, which the Turkish Cypriots oppose.
Recent talks between Mr. Denktash and Greek Cypriot leader Glafcos
Clerides on how to reconcile the views of the Cypriot protagonists
have made no progress, despite some hints of "cautious optimism"
by U.N. officials.
Since June, Turkey has beefed up its military forces in Northern Cyprus
by an estimated 5,000 men.
Diplomats point out that most of the time the Greek side has underestimated
Turkish intentions and Turkish threats, including the 1974 invasion
of Cyprus. Now the Greeks feel that Turkey must be careful in view
of its own hope to join the European Union.
The two Cypriot leaders — Mr. Clerides and Mr. Denktash —
are expected to meet again in New York in October.
2. - Middle East Newsline - "Iraqi Kurds warn they will fight Turkey":
ANKARA / 27 September 2002
Kurdish insurgents have warned that they will fight Turkish troops
who try to help the United States in any war against Iraq.
The Kurdish Workers Party has warned that it will establish defenses
in northern Iraq to stop invading Turkish troops. The party, known
as the PKK, fought a 15-year insurgency war until it declared a ceasefire
in 1999.
"During any attack on the region some forces, particularly Turkey,
may want to liquidate the People's Defense Forces," a statement
by the Kurdistan Freedom and Democracy Congress said. "If either
today or tomorrow there is an attack on our defense zones our defense
units will immediately respond and will defend themselves to the end."
The congress, known as Kadek, is the new name for the PKK. The statement
was broadcast by the German-based Mesopotamia news agency, which relays
PKK statements
3. - The Boston Globe - "Kurds draw rebuke over their post-Hussein ambitions":
ISTANBUL / 27 September 2002
By Karl Vick
Turkey's prime minister, Bulent Ecevit, has issued a warning to Iraqi Kurdish groups who on Wednesday approved a constitution that envisions replacing the dictatorship of President Saddam Hussein with a ''federal Iraq.'' The prospect alarms Turkish leaders, who fear a US military campaign in Iraq will unleash ethnic Kurds' ambitions to create an independent state.
Turkey, which is home to 13 million ethnic Kurds, has spent much of the last two decades fighting Turkish Kurd separatists.
''Even though they say, `We are against founding a Kurdish state,' a de facto state is already on the way to being formed,'' Ecevit said hours after the draft constitution was approved. ''If this becomes official, there will be serious problems.''
Iraqi Kurdish officials said Ecevit overreacted to what they characterized as a tentative move in an open process intended to avoid chaos in the aftermath of Hussein's ouster. The constitution, agreed to by the two rival Kurdish political parties that have controlled an autonomous section of northern Iraq since 1991, still must be submitted to other Iraqi opposition groups that the United States is trying to mobilize against the Iraqi leader.
The flap illustrated the fragile nature of the coalition the Bush administration aims to bring together to remove a despot it accuses of producing chemical and biological weapons. In recent weeks, Turkish officials have obliquely threatened to send troops into northern Iraq to thwart Kurdish ambitions there; a Kurdish leader replied that northern Iraq would then become a ''graveyard'' for Turkish troops.
Administration officials say no decision has been made on what action to take against Hussein, and the UN Security Council is mulling proposals that might sanction the use of force.
Turkey, as a longtime strategic US ally that borders northern Iraq, would be a crucial base for US ground troops and warplanes in almost any military scenario. But its leadership is wary of the Iraqi Kurds, whom the Pentagon is preparing to train to work alongside US forces inside Iraq.
The draft constitution, which calls for a ''federated zone'' encompassing Kurdish areas inside Iraq, was viewed as an expression of Kurdish ambitions for full independence, an outcome Turkey has repeatedly said it would move to prevent with the use of troops.
''It only becomes official when all Iraqi people make it official,'' said Safeen Dizayee of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which approved the document along with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. ''Until such a day, I don't think there's any need for rhetoric from any side.''
Especially touchy was the proposed selection of the oil-rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk as capital of the Kurdish zone. Analysts say Kirkuk's petroleum wealth would be essential to Kurdish independence, and for historical reasons Kurds regard the city as ''sacred,'' said Jalal Talabani, leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
But Kirkuk was also part of the Ottoman Empire from which modern Turkey emerged after World War I, and ultranationalists in Turkey continue to claim the area as historically Turkish. Under pressure from Turkey, the Bush administration recently invited members of Iraq's Turkish-speaking minority, known as Turkomen, to join the ranks of US-sponsored opposition.
Turkey already has some 5,000 troops inside Iraq, purportedly to chase Turkish Kurd separatists who fled there. But some in Turkey's establishment have called for more ambitious military moves.
Defense Minister Sabahattin Cakmakoglu, a member of an ultranationalist party in Ecevit's coalition government, recently reminded reporters that northern Iraq was ''forcibly separated'' from Turkey in the 1920s.
''Turkey considers northern Iraq to be under its direct care,'' he said.
Following the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Turgut Ozal, then the Turkish president, pressed the military to capture Kirkuk and Mosul, another northern Iraqi city once considered part of Turkey, according to a recent book by Necip Torumtay, who was chief of the general staff at the time.
''It was a very tempting idea,'' said Sadi Erguven, another retired
general, who said he never heard Ozal call for a Turkish invasion
aloud. ''But the Turkish Army has never been tasked to such a thing
in the past, and I don't think it will be in the future.''
4. - Anadolu - "Papandreou: Greece Will Cooperate With Turkey About EU Membership":
ISTANBUL / 26 Sepember 2002
Foreign Minister George Papendreou of Greece said on Thursday, ''we
want to see Turkey in the European Union (EU). Greece will cooperate
with Turkey in its EU full membership process.''
Speaking at the Fifth Eurasia Economy Summit in Istanbul, Papendreou
said, ''although Greece does not take place in the geography of Eurasia,
it has very important historical ties with Eurasian countries. Therefore,
we attribute great importance to the equation of the EU and Eurasia.''
''Following the terrorist attacks in the United States on September
11, 2001, Central Asia and Eurasia region have moved to the center
of the international relations. This region has become focal point
of a new power balance. Concepts of democratization and security have
come to the forefront after the September 11 attacks. Increase of
democratic institutions is of great importance for a stable growth,''
he said.
Papendreou stressed that international communities should come together
to create a new vision, and to accelerate transition into market economy
and democratization.
Greek Foreign Minister Papendreou stressed that they would attribute
great importance to relations between the EU and Eurasia, and to technical
aid to Eurasia region during Greece's EU term precidency.
''September 11 events have also revealed the dark sides of globalization process. Consequently, human smuggling, proper use of natural resources and development of cooperation have taken their place on the world's agenda. During its term precidency, Greece will strengthen cooperation and partnership agreements with regional countries. Also, Greece will cooperate with Central Asia within the framework of the programme to prevent clashes. We should increase presence of the EU representation in Central Asia,'' he said.
Papendreou underlined importance of Turkey-Greece relations in regard
to relations between Europe and Eurasia.
''Despite problems like the Cyprus question which we could not resolved
yet, an important progress has been recorded in relations between
Turkey and Greece recently. These relations should be further improved,''
he said.
Papendreou thanked State Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Mesut
Yilmaz and former Minister of Foreign Affairs Ismail Cem for their
support to the process between the two countries.
Recalling that Greece would undertake term precidency of the EU soon,
Papendreou said, ''during our term precidency, we will further improve
our relations with Turkey. Also, we will do our utmost to settle stability
in the region.''
Noting that Turkey officially became a candidate to the EU in 1999,
Papendreou said, ''Greece took a very important decision then. Greece
thought that Turkey should become a full member of the EU. Now, we
continue to defend the same idea. We want to assist Turkey in taking
its place in the EU. We will support Turkey in its EU full membership
process. It is a philosophy to be a European. Because, the EU is a
community of values.''
Stressing that there were important cooperation opportunities in fields
of energy, transportation, telecommunications and tourism between
Turkey and Greece, Papandreou said, ''we hope that cooperation would
be developed in the region, and Turkey and Greece would launch joint
enterprises.''
Papandreou added, ''we want to see Turkey in the EU. Greece will cooperate
with Turkey in its EU full membership process. We are aware of Turkey's
strategical importance in the region.''
5. - Radio Free Europe - "Turkey: Moderate Islamic Party's Victory In Polls Looks Inevitable, Despite Ban":
PRAGUE / 26 September 2002
By Jean-Christophe Peuch
Six days ago, Turkey's chief election body barred the country's most popular politician and three other candidates from standing in November's early legislative polls. Liberals in Turkey fear the move could create additional obstacles to Ankara's membership bid into the European Union. But, more significantly, it may miss its intended aim and boost the chances of Turkey's leading Islamic group.
Less than 45 days before early legislative polls, Turkey's election officials have made a controversial decision, which many in that country believe is fraught with political consequences.
Turkey's Higher Election Board on 20 September barred Recep Tayyip Erdogan, leader of the moderate Islamic Justice and Progress Party, or AKP, and a front-runner in the 3 November poll, from standing as a candidate.
Also ineligible, the board ruled, were three other stated candidates: former Islamic Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan; pro-Kurdish party leader Murat Bozlak; and Akin Birdal, a prominent human rights activist who has been repeatedly convicted for advocating a peaceful solution to the Kurdish separatist conflict.
In its ruling, the seven-member board said it voted unanimously to
bar Bozlak and Birdal from running as chief candidates of the Democratic
People's Party, or DEHAP, on charges that they have advocated separatism
in the past. The decision to disqualify Erdogan and Erbakan for past
antisecular activities was approved by a vote of four to three.
On 24 September, election officials rejected an appeal filed by all four candidates.
Many in Turkey's liberal circles have denounced the board's ruling as undemocratic and warned it could further dampen Ankara's chances of joining the European Union anytime soon.
Turkey's leading business association, TUSIAD, and former Justice Minister Sami Hikmet Turk, among others, have criticized the ban imposed on the four politicians, saying it contradicts recent efforts to harmonize Turkey's legislation with EU democratic standards.
"This is a wrong step before the Copenhagen summit," commented the liberal "Radikal" daily newspaper on 21 September, referring to the EU enlargement meeting due to be held in December in the Danish capital.
A tailender among 13 candidates for entry into the EU, Turkey will not be included among the first enlargement wave. Ankara, however, hopes to join the 15-member bloc by 2010 and expects the Copenhagen summit to set a date for accession talks.
In a bid to show its commitment to democratic standards, Ankara eased restrictions contained in some of the most controversial provisions of its legislation on 6 February. Parliament notably amended Article 312 of Turkey's Penal Code under which Erdogan was convicted in 1998 for Islamic sedition.
In a further attempt to boost Ankara's chances of joining the EU, the Turkish parliament, or Grand National Assembly, hastily voted on a package of human rights reforms on 3 August that includes the abolition of the death penalty in peacetime and greater cultural rights for the country's 12 million-strong Kurdish minority.
Yet, Brussels has said that it will wait to see how these legal changes are implemented before deciding on a date for accession talks with Turkey.
Although two of the four candidates barred from running in the upcoming poll are prominent Kurdish supporters, most Turkish analysts believe the Higher Election Board's decision is aimed first at preventing Islamic leaders Erbakan and Erdogan from entering parliament.
A former leader of the now banned Refah (Welfare) Party, Erbakan was prime minister from mid-1996 through mid-1997, when relentless pressure from the military forced him out of office. Citing alleged antisecular activities, Turkey's Constitutional Court four years ago outlawed Refah and banned Erbakan from politics until 2003.
The 76-year-old leader, who is generally viewed as the mentor of Turkish Islamism, has, despite the ban, presided over the destiny of two other Islamic groups: the Fazilet (Virtue) Party and, after the latter was banned last year by the Constitutional Court, the Felicity (Saadet) Party.
Ignoring the five-year ban imposed on him by secular authorities under the now-amended Penal Code, Erbakan last month announced plans to run in the November poll as an independent candidate from Konya, a central Anatolian city regarded as a stronghold of religious conservatism.
Sami Kohen is a columnist for the "Milliyet" daily newspaper.
He told RFE/RL that he shares the view that the ban imposed last week
on Islamic leaders might be part of electoral tactics on the part
of Turkey's traditional, secular parties. "The intention is quite
clear. The intention is not to let Erdogan and Erbakan run, to prevent
them from [gaining in] popularity, which they have started to enjoy
again, in particular in the case of Erdogan. [AKP] is emerging as
the strongest party in the election campaign, so there are chances,
of course, that [it] will get a majority in parliament," Kohen
said.
A former mayor of Greater Istanbul with no parliamentary experience, the 48-year-old Erdogan is a serious competitor to his more established political rivals, including Erbakan, most of whom have continuously occupied the political stage for the past 15 years or so.
With no clear-cut electoral agenda, but with a political discourse focusing essentially on social welfare for the needy, AKP has largely benefited from the ongoing economic crisis, which has made tens of thousands of workers redundant over the past 19 months. Erdogan's core constituency is said to be Anatolia's desolate heartland, which secured Refah's victory in the 1995 legislative poll.
With 59 legislators in the Turkish Grand National Assembly, AKP is only the fourth-largest group in parliament. But Erdogan's party has been consistently leading opinion polls since its creation 13 months ago.
A survey conducted in August by the Istanbul-based Konda polls institute on behalf of Germany's Deutsche Bank shows that nearly one-quarter of Turkish voters would rather cast their ballot for AKP in an election, thus making Erdogan a likely prime minister.
By comparison, that same survey suggests none of the mainstream political groups would overcome the 10 percent threshold required to win parliamentary seats, the only exception being the Republican People's Party, or CHP, a social democratic formation joined last month by former Economics Minister Kemal Dervis, the architect of Turkey's IMF-backed recovery program.
Dogu Ergil teaches political science at Ankara University. In an interview with our correspondent, he said Erdogan does not so much represent a threat to his rivals as he does to Turkey's ossified state apparatus. Asked whether the charismatic politician represents a threat to mainstream political parties, Ergil said: "No, it is not [so much] the mainstream political parties. It is the central powers, at the core of which lies the bureaucracy. Within these powers, there are the military and civilian bureaucracy and other groups [that] hold the central stage. They are very much scared [of] uncontrolled changes through which they may lose their privileged positions as operators of the state apparatus. These powerful groups are status quo-oriented, and what 'status quo' in Turkey means is to preserve the primacy of state over society, accept the laws and values of state-controlled political traditions, and control changes [with the help] of apparatchiks. These values are called 'values of the republic.' There, there is no place for diversity, there is no civic initiative, and there is a weak civic society vis-a-vis the powerful state apparatus."
Turkey's staunchest secularists, among them the military, have justified the successive bans imposed on Islamic parties over the past 30 years by the need to defend republican values. Not surprisingly, they consider AKP with suspicion and look at Erdogan's steady rise in opinion polls as a threat to the country's national security.
"Milliyet" columnist Kohen said: "There are quite
a number of people in Turkey -- among the [political] establishment,
the military, the judiciary, bureaucrats and, of course, nationalist
parties -- who are very suspicious about [Erdogan]. And not only suspicious,
but also quite concerned that, should he become prime minister, he
would be a great danger to Turkey."
In 1998, Erdogan was sentenced to 10 months in jail and forced out of office for publicly reciting a poem likening mosques to "barracks," minarets to "bayonets," and believers to "soldiers." Although the verse was a direct quotation from Ziya Gokalp, an ideologue of the Turkish nationalism professed by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, Erdogan was convicted of inciting religious hatred. He was released after serving only four months in prison.
Since AKP emerged as a leading political force, Erdogan and other party leaders have distanced themselves from Turkey's Islamic "old guard." Rejecting the Islamic label, they profess a pro-Western policy and claim their support for reforms required to qualify for entry in the EU.
But, as political scientist Ergil pointed out, whether this transformation is genuine remains questionable. "Nothing changes drastically, as you know. Many [AKP] members come from a tradition of mixing religion with politics. But they have [understood] that this is counterproductive. Religious politics in the world has lost momentum, [it] has lost its dynamism. These people have understood that democracy is more important than just religious freedom. [They have understood] that if they want freedom, which they have expressed as religious freedom, they have to accept the whole package of freedoms, [that is], democracy. So we have to believe [them when they say] that they have changed. Not changed, perhaps, but that their priorities, their prioritizing values have changed. I would [personally] accept this, but whether they have really accepted a secular sort of change model and whether they can really accomplish that is something to be seen," Ergil said.
In Ergil's opinion, that the AKP will emerge from the upcoming election as Turkey's leading political group is not in doubt -- if only for the large number of protest votes the party will attract. Therefore, he believes, the Higher Election Board's decision, which he says many in Turkey perceive as a "politically motivated injustice," will most likely backfire and profit Erdogan's formation, whose voting potential could rise further in the coming weeks. "By barring Erdogan, [the] central powers are not going to weaken [AKP] because [AKP] is not his party. [AKP] represents all these peripheral forces [that] oppose a system [that] excludes them, [that] impoverishes them, and [that] diminishes their political rights. In that sense, Erdogan is riding on the tide of the opposition," Ergil said.
Columnist Kohen agrees that the ban might be counterproductive. He also said that even if the Turkish judiciary forces Erdogan to relinquish his party leadership, the Islamic politician will continue to run AKP behind the scenes the way Erbakan has remained the driving force behind Fazilet and Saadet.
In defiant remarks, Erdogan vowed on 21 September to lead his party
to victory in the November polls, despite the ban imposed on him by
the Higher Election Board. "You can't stop a movement, it is
just impossible," he told CNN Turk.
6. - The Spectator - "Nothing to lose but their chains":
September 26, 2002
A war against Iraq might destabilise the Middle East, says David
Pryce-Jones, but that is precisely what the region needs
Iraq may soon be liberated. The Americans are building bases and runways
in the Middle East, airlifting men and supplies, and passing the resolutions
in Congress necessary to take military action. Regime change is what
President Bush has set his heart on. Condoleezza Rice goes further:
she calls for democracy, not only in Iraq but also in the wider Muslim
world. From the reaction all over Europe, you might think that Washington
was insisting on the sacrifice of the first-born.
In Britain, the Sir Andrew Aguecheeks and Sir Toby Belches, after long and calamitous careers in the Foreign Office, are bombarding the press with fictions about Arabs and a coming jihad against the West. The Left everywhere tries to set the moral tone with sniggers about cowboys. It’s an adventure, according to the Germans. Simplistic, according to the French. Mustn’t make Iraqis suffer; that would be wrong, according to Clare Short, as if all were otherwise milk and honey in their land. For people of their kind, it was never the right time to trouble Herr Hitler or Monsieur Stalin, and it is not the right time now to upset Saddam Hussein, destabilise the Middle East and see oil at $100 a barrel.
The expedients to which free people are reduced in order to avoid facing up to totalitarian tyranny are always a wonder. Any Iraqi in a position to utter his opinion without being tortured and killed has no doubt at all. Kanan Makiya, Iraq’s leading equivalent of the Soviet dissidents of old, asks America to ‘think big’. Iraq, he writes, is the best example of why the United States ‘should carefully excise the cancerous growth of extremism from the region’. Here’s a journalist, Hamid Ali Al-Kifai: ‘Saddam Hussein has destroyed my family and effectively sent me into exile.’ He goes on, ‘The West has always sought to befriend dictators and despots in the Middle East in the past; now it has an opportunity to gain the friendship of a whole people, for a change.’ There are tens of thousands of such people, but the Alice Mahons, George Galloways, Harold Pinters and other bishops of our cosy little world are not equipped morally or intellectually to hear them.
South America, Russia and central and eastern Europe, and parts of
Africa have all democratised in recent years. Arabs and other Muslims
are almost alone in standing outside this profound historical transformation,
and as a result they are increasingly unable to deal with today’s
world. Islam in practice tends to absolutism but it has a vision of
justice and equality consonant with political democracy. What is missing
in their legacy is any mechanism for enlarging separate ethnic and
religious identities into a unitary nation-state.
Iraq is a case in point. It is a country in name alone, one of the many created out of the thinnest air in the aftermath of the first world war. The principal local elements are Sunni and Shia Arabs, and Kurds, a separate people who are Muslim but not Arab, with their own language. The Ottomans were Sunni, and the Sunni Arabs were therefore accustomed to seeing themselves as natural rulers of everyone else, although they comprised less than a fifth of the population. Three separate provinces corresponded more or less to these divisions, but there were numerous other minorities, including Turkmen, Jews, Chaldaeans and Assyrians. Driving out the Ottoman Turks and becoming the dominant power in the region, the British had no plans for the next step, but improvised a regime as they went along.
To look at portraits and photographs of the British officials who created Iraq is to see types no longer recognisable: tall angular men with weather-beaten faces and a military bearing. No doubt they thought they were acting in the best interests of the local people, but their imagination was limited by the imperial experience. The High Commissioner had as Oriental Secretary the improbable figure of Gertrude Bell, a lady with good social contacts and much sentimental illusion. In November 1918 she was writing, ‘It doesn’t happen very often that people are told that their future as a state is in their hands and asked what they would like.’ More than anyone else, T.E. Lawrence settled the issue. During the campaign against the Ottomans he had come to know Faisal, one of the sons of Sherif Hussein, the hereditary Hashemite ruler of Mecca. Lawrence persuaded everyone to make Faisal king of Iraq, and to the end of his life he boasted that he was a ‘foundation member’ of the kingdom, and ‘so proud of it’. This was the achievement, he believed, for which he would be remembered.
A few officials — for instance, the much-maligned Sir Arnold Wilson — warned that the Shia formed a majority of the population, and that the imposition of a foreign Sunni king over them was bound to lead to a revolt. In his writings, Lawrence does not pause for reflection on this stumbling block. Sure enough, Sir Arnold was right and the Shia rose. The British were not squeamish about suppressing them, pioneering the use of aircraft to kill desert tribesmen. A plebiscite was rigged to approve Faisal, who one hot August day in 1921 arrived for his coronation in Baghdad. ‘We swear allegiance to you,’ realistic tribal sheikhs declared, ‘because you are acceptable to the British’.
Faisal had to try to hold together the strange conglomeration that the British had bundled up for him. His main strategy was to become popular by intriguing against the British, who duly caved in and granted Iraq its independence in 1931, in effect leaving the Iraqis to make of it what they could. Shortly before his death in 1933, Faisal described with painful truth the people he had been jobbed in to rule over as ‘unimaginable masses of human beings, devoid of any patriotic idea, imbued with religious traditions and absurdities, connected by no common tie, giving ear to evil; prone to anarchy, and perpetually ready to rise against any government whatever’.
Here was a laboratory in which to grow a culture of tyranny. General Bakr Sidqi in 1937 staged the first of the coming series of military coups, and massacred the Assyrian minority. Rashid Ali Gailani seized power in 1941, and there was a massacre of Jews. In 1958 Abdul Karim Qassem butchered the Iraqi Hashemite dynasty, and was himself soon murdered. In due course Saddam Hussein consummated the chain of brutality. In one perspective he looks psychotic, but in another he is only doing what a tyrant has to do to retain his absolute hold on power in circumstances which at any moment might degenerate into anarchy. Pernicious and inhuman as all these tyrants have been, there is a sense in which they are the creatures of inherited ethnic and religious rivalries.
The imagination of the British Foreign Office and the American State
Department is limited by the bureaucratic experience. These institutions
are staffed by office-bound paper-shufflers with much less experience
than the imperial military men who preceded them. So terrified are
they of the implications of destroying tyranny that they are leading
resistance to regime change, proposing instead to replace Saddam with
another Sunni strongman of the same type. Somebody must hold together
the Iraqi bundle of ethnicities, otherwise the country might break
up with dire consequences. They warn that the Shia might link up with
Iran, and separatist Kurds might threaten Turkey. Were the bureaucrats
to have their way, some future tyrant would hear his Iraqi subjects
swearing allegiance to him because he is acceptable to the Americans.
That is how to aid and abet the culture of tyranny to perpetuate itself.
What happens after the American invasion is a justified question. President Clinton passed the Iraq Liberation Act. A hundred million dollars was voted for the purpose, but only a small proportion of those funds has been made available to the main body of the Iraqi opposition, the Iraqi National Congress under Ahmad Chalabi. Secretary of State Colin Powell and his department see the INC as fragmented and lightweight, the vehicle for the personal advancement of its members. Yet it alone offers the one proper alternative to tyranny, namely democracy. Ahmad Chalabi comes from an influential Shia family (Gertrude Bell used to visit some Chalabis in the country near Baghdad). A banker by profession, he is a politician by vocation. He repudiates with indignation the idea that the Iraqis are not capable of democracy. They are sophisticated, well-educated; they know what they have suffered, and that there must be an end to it. He thinks that those on the Left who oppose war with Saddam are ignorant, prisoners of racist stereotypes about Arabs. Better policy bureaucrats are required, with a vision of the Arabs and the Middle East that allows scope for freedom and democracy.
Cornered, Saddam may use weapons of mass destruction, Chalabi fears, even though such weapons are likely to harm Iraqis as much as allied soldiers. The campaign will be short, he believes, as Iraqis will no longer even go through the motions of fighting for their oppressor. They will defect. Then the INC’s task begins. The Iraqi future must be in their own hands, this time without Gertrude Bell’s vapours and Lawrence of Arabia’s fantasies. The American presence will ensure that there is no blood-letting, no revenge of the Shias and Kurds on the persecuting Sunnis. Saddam and perhaps two dozen others have to be brought to account in the local equivalent of the Nuremberg trials. Chalibi likes to compare the reconstruction of Iraq to that of Germany and Japan in 1945.
A constitutional convention has to meet, and decide exactly what kind of regime to erect, whether a presidential or a parliamentary democracy, or perhaps a constitutional monarchy. At a recent assembly in London of some 200 members of the Iraqi opposition, Crown Prince Hassan, of the Jordanian branch of the Hashemites, arrived unexpectedly, signalling that he was willing to serve as a symbol of unity and reconciliation.
Iraq is not about to be broken up. The nation-state has its outlines by now, its boundaries. But if the Kurds and Shias wish for some form of autonomy, then a solution has to be reached on federal or confederal lines. That is the missing mechanism for converting all the different identities into a unitary nation-state, for finding that ‘common tie’ which escaped poor King Faisal and all his successors. No other way exists to eliminate violence from the system, and to keep the country from ending up with another thug choking everyone in the blood of yet more communal massacres.
Chalabi is a moderate and modest man, who disclaims any personal
ambition. Time will soon show whether or not his slightly nervy optimism
about the overthrow of Saddam is justified. He doesn’t draw up
visionary plans, but offers the only practical alternative to tyranny.
The objection to this campaign focuses on the probable ‘destabilisation
of the Middle East’; and yet that destabilisation is an essential
prerequisite for progress. Countries like Syria, Saudi Arabia and
Iran may have the good fortune to be similarly destabilised. This
could be the moment when the Arabs and Muslims take their place in
the modern world.