U.S. needs to think about Saddam's successor

Martin Woollacott, Guardian News Service, London

The decisions crowding in on us about the future of Iraq are not only military and diplomatic but also political. Some of these political decisions will be made in the next few weeks by Iraqi opposition groups outside the country and in the protected zone of northern Iraq, influenced by an American administration with a considerable capacity to tip the balance between rival groups and competing ideas of what kind of society post-Saddam Iraq should be.

The debate over this Iraqi future, relatively well mannered at one end of the spectrum and contentious and even abusive at the other, is naturally intensifying as war comes closer.

Following this debate is not something that should be shunned by those opposed to an Iraq war. The argument about the nature of Iraqi politics after a war is, in principle, quite separate from the argument about the wisdom of military action.

Most opponents of war, nevertheless, tag on to their concerns about military action a cynical picture of its aftermath. Some see chaos and fragmentation. Others dwell on the dangers of a long American occupation, or, if that is avoided, on the prospect of an authoritarian U.S. client state, better than Saddam, but not that much better.

Their position seems to be that the kind of people foolish enough to start a war over Iraq are the kind of people who will mismanage it afterwards. There are supporters of war, equally, who seem to take the transition to democracy for granted, assuming or pretending that all will come out for the best. Their position seems to be that since war against Saddam is justified then a happy future for Iraq is guaranteed.

It is customary to describe the Iraqi opposition in exile as quarrelsome, without much reflection on what they may be quarreling about. The implication is that the differences either reflect divisions in Iraqi society, between Kurds, Sunni Arabs and Shia Arabs, for instance, or clashes between leaders struggling for power.

Naturally, there is truth in this description, but it is also true that Iraqis in opposition are dealing with an especially difficult problem. This is well defined in a draft report on the transition to democracy in Iraq produced by the Democratic Principles Workshop, which grew out of the program on the Future of Iraq set up by the U.S. State Department.

The report states simply that "the practice of politics in Iraq has been dead for 35 years". Under the Ba'ath, other parties were at first constrained and then banned, nor did the regime ever permit the sort of dissident activity that eastern European states half tolerated.

Those parties or movements that have survived in exile, or been created in exile, are either shadows of organizations that have disappeared in Iraq itself, save perhaps some underground remnants, or new bodies, claiming to represent elements in Iraqi society with which their connections may be less than solid.

The fact that most have foreign patrons also raises a question about the degree of their legitimacy and autonomy. The Islamists, the monarchists, the ex-military and Ba'athist opposition are all open to such criticism.

Even the big Kurdish parties, which do have a full-blooded existence, have been affected by the end of politics in Arab Iraq. The constant emergency situation in northern Iraq has made them less parties than organizations that offer security, patronage, and employment and over-emphasize the power and prestige of their leaders.

There is another base for Iraqi politics outside Iraq -- the large part of the Iraqi diaspora that are not strong followers of the exile parties but are politically aware or active, consisting of academics and other professionals, usually middle class and liberal.

Some of these "independents" support the Iraqi National Congress. The INC, helped into existence by the CIA in 1992 as an umbrella organization, has since lost CIA support and has only distant relations with some parties that were once under the "umbrella" but with Ahmed Chalabi as its leader, it remains a force and a vehicle for liberal opponents of Saddam.

The differences between the INC and the independents, together with some small parties, on the one hand, and the leading parties, on the other, now shape increasingly sharp exchanges within the Iraqi opposition.

Kanan Makiya, an independent who is also close to Chalabi, has warned that the "old fossilized parties" are trying to dominate the discussions about Iraq's future, shutting out other parties, minority ethnic groups like the Assyrians and the Turkomans, and Iraqi "independents and democrats".

Makiya and others who have worked on the draft on transition are particularly angered because the opposition conference on Iraq in Brussels next week apparently intended to devote little or no time to a document they regard as "a road map" for the democratic future.

Power in a post-Saddam Iraq is obviously at issue here, but so is the question of how radically Iraqi society will be changed. The parties tend to accept existing divisions in Iraqi society rather than try to transcend them because what legitimacy they have is partly based on such divisions, and their alliance with each other is based on trading off objectives.

They tend, too, in the view of critics, to be readier for compromise with authoritarian forces in Iraq like the army or even the Ba'ath party. That contrasts with ideas like those in the draft democracy document, which suggest that a future Iraq should only have limited self-defense forces, like those of Japan, that the de-Ba'athization of Iraqi society be thoroughgoing rather than perfunctory, and that the federal units of Iraq should be geographical rather than ethnic.

Mahmoud Osman, an independent Kurdish politician, who is a shrewd observer of developments within the opposition, also condemns what he calls the hegemony of the big parties". He sees the INC as equally motivated by a desire for a bigger share in decision-making, but says its demands for more inclusive discussion and for consideration of the democracy document are justified, and could have beneficial results.

Principle and interest are no doubt intermingled here, but the thinking of the independents and of the parties represent two different directions for Iraq and there can be no question as to which is most desirable.

Part of the problem is that different parts of the Bush administration favor different tendencies within the opposition, with the civilian hawks at the Pentagon favoring the more radical approach that Makiya and others urge and the doves at the State Department ironically taking the conservative line. Sooner rather than later the Americans will have to make a choice, and it is an important one.