[Senate Hearing 108-282]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 108-282
IRAQ: NEXT STEPS--HOW CAN DEMOCRATIC
INSTITUTIONS SUCCEED IN IRAQ AND
THE MIDDLE EAST?
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 24, 2003
__________
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana, Chairman
CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware
LINCOLN CHAFEE, Rhode Island PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland
GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts
MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio BARBARA BOXER, California
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee BILL NELSON, Florida
NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West
JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire Virginia
JON S. CORZINE, New Jersey
Kenneth A. Myers, Jr., Staff Director
Antony J. Blinken, Democratic Staff Director
(ii)
?
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Feldman, Dr. Noah, assistant professor of law, New York
University School of Law, New York, NY......................... 4
Prepared statement........................................... 7
al-Khafaji, Dr. Isam, professor, University of Amsterdam,
Amsterdam, The Netherlands..................................... 12
Prepared statement........................................... 15
Khouri, Mr. Rami G., executive director, The Daily Star
newspaper, Beirut, Lebanon..................................... 18
Prepared statement........................................... 23
Lugar, Hon. Richard G., U.S. Senator from Indiana, opening
statement...................................................... 3
Marr, Dr. Phebe, former senior fellow, National Defense
University; author and consultant, Washington, DC.............. 26
Prepared statement........................................... 33
(iii)
IRAQ: NEXT STEPS--
HOW CAN DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS SUCCEED IN IRAQ AND THE MIDDLE EAST?
----------
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2003
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:36 p.m. in Room
SH-216, Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Richard G. Lugar
(chairman of the committee), presiding.
Present: Senators Lugar, Hagel, Brownback, Alexander,
Biden, and Feingold.
The Chairman. This hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee is called to order. One of the most difficult
challenges that we face in working to rebuild Iraq is
establishing a new Iraqi Government with a constitution
developed and approved by the Iraqi people. In United Nations
Security Council Resolution 1483, adopted unanimously on May
22, 2003, the international community called for the
establishment in Iraq, ``of a representative government based
on the rule of law that affords equal rights and justice to all
Iraqi citizens without regard to ethnicity, religion, or
gender.''
The United States is committed to this goal. A number of
nations want to accelerate this self-governance process and are
calling for the transfer of full power to Iraqis within months.
Yet United States officials estimate that preparing Iraq for
democracy will take much longer. Ultimately, all agree that
Iraqi citizens must take full responsibility for Iraq's
governance as soon as possible.
According to Ambassador Bremer, who testified before the
committee this morning, the process to establish full Iraqi
sovereignty is well underway. A critical first step was taken
with the naming of the 25-member Iraqi interim Governing
Council in July 2003. The Council's decision to set up a
constitutional development committee is another important
advancement, but the recent attempt to assassinate Dr. Al-
Hashemi, one of the few women on the Iraqi Governing Council,
is reflective of the dangerous obstacles this process must
still overcome.
Although 95 percent of all Iraqis are Muslim, Iraq has been
split for centuries along sectarian, ethnic, and tribal lines.
Distrust among Shi'ites, Sunnis, Kurds, and other groups has
been fueled by generations of political repression. Women have
not participated significantly in governance in Iraq. In
addition, until a vehicle for ``truth and reconciliation'' is
found, deep divisions will continue to exist in Iraqi society
between victims of the Hussein regime and the Ba'athist
supporters.
The dilemma of allowing Iraqis to freely choose their own
form of government is that elections may produce an Iranian-
style theocracy or some other type of government that is
inimical to the stable development of Iraq, to efforts against
terrorism, or to other United States interests. Yet the
legitimacy of any new government requires some degree of
electoral involvement, clearly by the Iraqi people.
The Coalition Provisional Authority cannot simply dictate
the results, and Ambassador Bremer said as much today in
another hearing in response to questions from Senators. The
more control the CPA asserts, the less legitimate the process
will be viewed by the Iraqis and perhaps by other Arab nations.
We have asked our witnesses today to consider this challenge
and to give us their guidance on how democratic institutions
can succeed in Iraq, and more broadly, in the Middle East. We
intend to explore what kind of democracy is possible in Iraq
and what constitutional ideas are likely to be the most
relevant. If democracy succeeds in Iraq, what effect will this
success have on Iraq's neighbors and the prospects for
democratic liberalization throughout the region?
Our committee is pleased to welcome Dr. Noah Feldman, an
assistant professor at New York University School of Law; and
Dr. Phebe Marr, former senior fellow of the National Defense
University and author of the recently published book, ``The
History of Iraq.'' We are grateful for copies of the book. I've
read the reviews and look forward to reading this volume. Dr.
Rami Khouri, executive editor of The Daily Star in Beirut,
Lebanon, is with us, as is Dr. Isam al-Khafaji, a professor at
the University of Amsterdam, and former member of the State
Department's Future of Iraq Project and Iraq Reconstruction and
Development Council. These experts have a broad range of
experience to draw on to assess prospects for the development
of democracy in Iraq and the Middle East. We deeply appreciate
their joining with us today.
This hearing is the third in a series of hearings in the
last 2 days that are designed to frame the issues that Congress
must address as it considers President Bush's $87 billion
supplemental funding request for Iraq. This request, as we
heard from Ambassador Bremer this morning, includes assistance
to reach out to the grassroots in Iraq and educate Iraqis on
their historic opportunity to develop a new constitution and
governance system.
The stakes are clearly high. Ensuring that democratic
institutions succeed in Iraq must be one of the highest
priorities of United States policy in Iraq reconstruction. We
look forward to discussing these issues with each one of you. I
would like to call upon the witnesses in this order. First of
all, Dr. Feldman, then Dr. al-Khafaji, then Mr. Khouri, and
finally Dr. Marr, and I will ask you to proceed for a
reasonable time. We will not have stringent time limits because
our purpose is to hear you today to get the full benefit of
your ideas.
I will be joined in due course by colleagues, who may still
be occupied at lunch or in the debate on the Appropriations
bill, and when Senator Biden appears, he will be recognized to
give an opening statement as the distinguished ranking member
of our committee.
[The opening statement of Senator Lugar follows:]
Opening Statement of Senator Richard G. Lugar
One of the most difficult challenges that we face in rebuilding
Iraq is establishing a new Iraqi government with a constitution
developed and approved by the Iraqi people.
In United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483, adopted
unanimously on May 22, 2003, the international community called for
establishment in Iraq of ``a representative government based on the
rule of law that affords equal rights and justice to all Iraqi
citizens, without regard to ethnicity, religion or gender.'' The United
States is committed to this goal.
A number of nations want to accelerate this self-governance process
and are calling for the transfer of full power to the Iraqi's within
months. Yet, U.S. officials estimate that preparing Iraq for democracy
will take much longer. Ultimately, all agree that Iraqi citizens must
take full responsibility for Iraq's governance as quickly as possible.
According to Ambassador Bremer, who testified before the Committee
earlier today, the process to establish full Iraqi sovereignty is well
under way. A critical first step was taken with the naming of the 25-
member Iraqi Interim Governing Council in July, 2003. The Councils'
decision to set up a constitutional development committee is another
important advancement. But the recent attempt to assassinate Dr. Al-
Hashemi, one of the few women on the Iraqi Governing Council, is
reflective of the dangerous obstacles this process must still overcome.
Although 95 percent of all Iraqis are Muslim, Iraq has been split
for centuries along sectarian, ethnic, and tribal lines. Distrust
between Shi'ites, Sunnis, Kurds, and other groups has been fueled by
generations of political repression. Women have not participated
significantly in governance in Iraq. In addition, until a vehicle is
found for ``truth and reconciliation,'' deep divisions will continue to
exist in Iraqi society between victims of the Hussein regime and
Ba'athist supporters.
The dilemma of allowing Iraqis to freely choose their own form of
government is that elections may produce an Iranian-style theocracy or
some other type of government that is inimical to the stable
development of Iraq, to efforts against terrorism, or to other U.S.
interests. But the legitimacy of any new government requires some
degree of electoral involvement of the Iraqi people. The Coalition
Provisional Authority cannot simply dictate results. The more control
the CPA asserts, the less legitimate the process will be viewed by the
Iraqis and by other Arab nations.
We have asked our witnesses today to consider this challenge and
give us their guidance on how democratic institutions can succeed in
Iraq, and more broadly, in the Middle East. We intend to explore what
kind of democracy is possible in Iraq and what constitutional ideas are
likely to be the most relevant. If democracy succeeds in Iraq, what
effect will this success have on Iraq's neighbors and the prospects for
democratic liberalization throughout the region?
The committee is pleased to welcome Dr. Noah Feldman, an assistant
professor at the New York University School of Law; Dr. Phebe Marr,
former senior fellow at the National Defense University and author of
the recently published book, The History of Iraq; Mr. Rami Khouri,
executive editor of The Daily Star in Beirut, Lebanon; and Dr. Isam al-
Khafaji, a professor at the University of Amsterdam and former member
of the State Department's Future of Iraq Project and Iraq
Reconstruction and Development Council.
These experts have a broad range of experience to draw on to assess
prospects for the development of democracy in Iraq and the Middle East.
We appreciate their joining us today.
This hearing is the third in a series of hearings designed to frame
the issues that Congress must address as it considers President Bush's
$87 billion supplemental funding request for Iraq. This request, as we
heard from Ambassador Bremer this morning, includes assistance to reach
out to the grassroots in Iraq and educate Iraqis on their historic
opportunity to develop a new constitution and governance system.
The stakes in Iraq are high. Ensuring that democratic institutions
succeed in Iraq must be one of the highest priorities of U.S. policy in
Iraq reconstruction. We look forward to discussing these issues with
you.
The Chairman. But for the moment, I would like to recognize you,
Dr. Feldman, and ask you to proceed with your testimony.
STATEMENT OF DR. NOAH FELDMAN, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF LAW, NEW
YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW, NEW YORK, NY
Dr. Feldman. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. May I begin
just by saying how honored I am to be asked to appear before
this committee and to discuss this important subject of
developing democratic institutions in Iraq. I speak on the
basis of recent experience in Baghdad, where I served as senior
adviser for constitutional law to the Coalition Provisional
Authority, and on the basis of continuing experience in
consulting with the Iraqis themselves, who are participating in
creating a constitutional process for the new Iraq.
Mr. Chairman, there's a general question that looms over
any discussion of democratizing Iraq or the region, and that
question is whether Islam and democracy are compatible. I
believe the answer to that general and enormously important
question is a resounding yes, and elsewhere at some length in a
book I wrote called ``After Jihad'' I tried to explain why I
think this is the case.
But my answer matters much, much less than the fact that
the United States of America, by leading the coalition into
Iraq, has now also answered this question in the affirmative.
By removing Saddam Hussein and declaring our commitment to
ensuring freedom and self-government for Iraqis, the government
of the United States has now committed itself to the viability
of democracy in Iraq, a country which is predominantly Arab and
overwhelmingly Muslim.
As a consequence, it is now in our vital self-interest to
make certain that democracy in Iraq succeeds. If democracy does
not succeed in Iraq, our presence will increasingly be
perceived as imperial occupation throughout the region, and the
deep skepticism about American motives, which already exists in
the Arab and Muslim worlds, will turn increasingly and
explicitly into condemnation, not merely of our presence, but
of our long-term intentions in the region.
We also, I believe, have a pressing moral duty to enable
Iraqis to create a life for themselves that is better than the
one that they suffered under for the last 35 years and under
which they were living when we first entered the country.
I believe that the basic state of affairs in Iraq today can
be summed up relatively straightforwardly. There are two
tracks, one political and one security-based. The security
track is facing enormous setbacks and challenges. The political
track, on the other hand, is going remarkably well, indeed much
better than many would have predicted prior to the war.
The main features of success on the political track are
these: First, the Kurdish parties, specifically the PUK and the
KDP, that had long been at odds with each other, are actually
working extremely well together and are often offering a kind
of leadership to the rest of the Governing Council that is
reflected in the stance of unity that they've taken. Rather
than calling for the independence of a Kurdish state, as some
in the region feared, the Kurds are instead sticking to the
vision of a federal Iraq.
And although there are those people within Kurdistan who
are very impatient for independence, the Kurdish leadership is
telling its impatient followers not to rock the boat and to
continue to participate in the project of a federal Iraq, as
Kurdistan is now much closer to achieving a kind of provincial
autonomy, if I can use that word, than it has ever been in the
past. So the Kurds are continuing to participate in the process
very, very well.
Another important path of success in the political track
relates to the Shi'i Islamic leadership in Iraq, which some
feared might adopt a position of pro-Iranian declarations that
what they really need in Iraq is an Islamic State governed by
mullahs. That has not happened. The senior Shi'i religious
leadership has made it very clear that they are committed to a
country that is legitimately democratic with equal rights for
men and women, for Muslims and non-Muslims, but that also has
room for the expression of Islamic values, and they have
emphatically rejected the failed Iranian model, in large part
because they know it well themselves. Many of them have
traveled to Iran and they understand that religion is less
well-respected in Iran than it has ever been in the history of
that country.
That leads us to the question of, first, how security can
be restored, and second and more importantly, how the
constitutional process can go forward if security is restored.
In my view, restoration of security in Iraq turns heavily on
bringing into being a powerful Iraqi security force with the
local knowledge and intelligence that would enable it to
suppress terrorist attacks, whether they are coming from Sunni
insurgents or coming from Iranian interlopers or al-Qaeda
supporters. No matter who the source of these terrorist attacks
and ongoing sabotage might turn out to be, Iraqis will be
better placed to find that out than will anyone else who
attempts to police the region, the country. So I believe that
creating an Iraqi security force is absolutely necessary to
bring that about.
In the absence of law and order being restored in Iraq, as
the chairman mentioned, the political process can collapse,
because if enough Governing Council members are either
assassinated or suffer attempted assassinations or are
intimidated, nobody will want to participate in the political
process. On the other hand, if the political process does go
forward and if security does improve, here are the main issues
that I believe will come before the constitutional body that
comes into being.
The first and most pressing is simply the question of how a
constitutional convention should in fact be selected, how
should the members be selected, and that's the job of the
constitutional preparatory committee to answer right now. They
are canvassing the country, they're having internal
discussions. A full-blown election for the members of the
constitutional convention would be a mistake. There isn't time
to put together the basis for such an election, and in any
event, basic preparatory questions like districting, the
census, and so forth, which have to be answered by a
constitution would already be serious problems in the run-up to
any such constitutional process. So there's no reason to put
the cart before the horse and insist on a national election at
this stage.
On the other hand, the greater the legitimacy of the
constitutional convention selection process, the greater the
likelihood of success for the eventual constitution, and there
is real reason to make certain that the constitutional
convention does not appear to be a body hand-picked by the
coalition. To that end, it's absolutely essential that the
coalition be open to whatever suggestions are put forward by
the constitutional preparatory committee, including, for
example, the possibility of a national referendum, as opposed
to an election, to approve or disapprove an entire slate of
nominated members to the convention, or alternatively, some
combination of selection and election relying upon local
councils throughout Iraq.
The reason to be open to those suggestions is simply that,
in their entire absence there is a significant chance that the
constitutional convention could be seen as illegitimate the
very moment that it came into place. I'm confident, however,
that the members of the preparatory committee will come up with
a suggestion that is plausible and acceptable to the coalition,
and when that happens, we end up turning to the core question
of what a constitution for a new federal Iraq will look like. I
will address that question extremely briefly and then would be
very happy to talk about it further should anyone wish to.
First, federalism. The Iraqi constitution will be federal.
On that much nearly everybody in Iraq at this point agrees, but
as we know in the United States, to call something federalism
tells you very little about what the actual content will be.
Federalism conceals a thousand sins and there are many
different possibilities.
Many in Iraq would prefer to see a country composed of 18
different governorates corresponding roughly to the
governorates that presently exist, all federated as states in a
federal union, but it is very difficult to find anyone in the
Kurdish regions who will agree with that proposition. The
position of almost all Kurds whom I've spoken to and whom
anyone else I know has spoken to is that Kurdistan must be a
unified region, and as for the other regions it is up to them,
the Kurds will often tell you. They can choose for themselves
how many regions they want to have or how many provinces they
want to have.
And the Kurds are in a position to enforce this demand to
some degree simply because they have an operating regional
government in the area that they controlled prior to the most
recent war in Iraq. And in a worst-case scenario, the Kurds
have the capacity simply to retreat back to their area, say
they're participating in the constitutional process while
actually vetoing any deal, and essentially continue with the
state of affairs that they already had, and that's a very, very
powerful stick for them to use. It would be drastic for them to
use that, and I don't think the leadership has any intention of
doing so, but that of course is something that exists in the
background.
So as a consequence I think it's increasingly likely that
we're going to see a Kurdish region as its own region in a
federal Iraq with the other regions divided accordingly. And if
one Kurdish region is large, it is unlikely that others will
want to have smaller states. That increases the likelihood of
us seeing an Iraq that's divided into three or four or five
parts, not an Iraq divided into 18 parts.
The next issue that will be contentious and important will
be the question of religion and government in Iraq and I will
close with this issue. The overwhelming majority of Iraqis with
whom I have spoken, and this is especially true of Shi'i
Iraqis, want the constitution of Iraq to mention Islam as the
official religion of the state, but they immediately add to
that that the constitution of Iraq ought to be one that
guarantees explicitly full religious liberty for all citizens,
equality for all citizens, regardless of religion and
regardless of sex, and furthermore that they believe those
values to be in keeping with having Islam be the official
religion of the state.
That does not mean that they've thought through in any very
complicated way how these two propositions will interact with
each other, but they feel strongly that there are many states
in the world that unlike the United States have established
religions, and that at the same time can show the capability of
respecting individual liberty and of equality. Now that's a
tremendous challenge for Iraqis to accomplish, but this is a
value that one sees again and again.
And in Bahrain just last week I had the opportunity to meet
with about 40 Iraqis from the southern part of the country who
were themselves hand-picked by the coalition to come and
participate in a seminar on democratic values along with
several very distinguished judges from the federal district
courts and the federal courts of appeal, and I had the
privilege to conduct there a session on church and state, as it
were, on religion and government in Iraq. And there was strong
insistence from all of the Iraqis present, and they ranged from
deans of law schools in Iraq to high school biology teachers,
that Islam must be the official religion of the state, but that
that was compatible with equality, with liberty, and with
religious freedom for all.
I think that's a vision that the United States should be
eager to accommodate if in fact it has practical meaning. The
hard part on this point in Iraq as on all the other points will
be making certain that a constitution, no matter how well
written it is, actually turns out to be enforceable in
practice, and I'll close on that note. The best written
constitution in the world will do no good at all absent
institutions capable of implementing its principles. That means
a strong and independent judiciary, it means a legislature and
an executive branch that are accustomed to listening to the
judiciary and are forced to do so by a strong separation of
powers, and last but not least, it means a very strong civil
society, which in my view we in the United States should be
very eager to support and to fund, that exists independently of
the government, and that can act as a watchdog and warn both
other Iraqis and the world should circumstances arise where the
democratic values of the constitution, which I'm confident the
constitution will include, are actually put into practice. And
with that I will thank you very much for your attention.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Feldman follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Noah Feldman, Assistant Professor of Law, New
York University School of Law, New York, NY
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee,
May I begin by saying how honored I am to be asked to appear before
this Committee to discuss the important subject of the development of
democratic institutions in the Arab and Muslim worlds, and particularly
in Iraq. I have in recent months had the opportunity to participate
firsthand in our early efforts to establish democracy in Iraq. I served
as senior constitutional adviser to the Office of Reconstruction and
Humanitarian Assistance, later renamed the Coalition Provisional
Authority, between April and July 2003, and spent some five weeks in
Baghdad in that position. I returned this past Friday from Bahrain,
where I met with senior Iraqi officials including the Minister of
Justice, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and Judge Dara Nur al-
Din of the Governing Council, and discussed the progress of the
constitutional process with them. I also addressed the question of
promoting democracy in the Muslim world at some length in my recently
published book, After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic
Democracy. My testimony today reflects the views I developed in the
course of researching and writing that book, revised in the light of
our experiences thus far in Iraq.
There is a general question that looms over any discussion of
democracy in the Muslim or Arab world, namely the question whether
Islam and democracy are compatible. I believe that the answer to this
general question is yes, and in my book I explain why this is so. But
my answer matters much less than the fact that the United States of
America, by leading the Coalition for the liberation of Iraq, has now
also answered this question in the affirmative. By removing Saddam
Hussein and declaring our commitment to ensuring freedom and self-
government for Iraqis, the government of the United States has
committed itself to the viability of democracy in Iraq, a country which
is predominantly Arab and overwhelmingly Muslim.
It is now in the vital national self-interest of the United States
to prove that democracy can succeed in Iraq. If democracy does not
succeed there, our liberation will come to be perceived as imperial
occupation, and the deep skepticism throughout the Arab and Muslim
worlds about our motives will turn into increasingly explicit
condemnation of our intervention in the region. We also have a pressing
moral duty to enable Iraqis to create a life for themselves that is
better than the one they suffered under thirty-five years of oppression
and tyranny. By taking the reins of government in Baghdad, we also took
on the responsibility for leaving the Iraqi people better off than we
found them.
Today, then, it would be academic in the worst sense of the word to
ask whether democracy can succeed in the Arab world. Democracy must
succeed in Iraq, and eventually elsewhere. Whether we supported going
to war in Iraq or not--and there were reasonable arguments to be made
on both sides of the question--we now must recognize the necessity of
finishing the job that we started. I would like therefore to address my
comments to the particularities of our efforts thus far to create
lasting, stable, democratic institutions in Iraq, and to recommend the
course of action most likely to succeed there.
The basic state of affairs in Iraq today, I believe, can be summed
up relatively straightforwardly. The Coalition is operating along two
equally important tracks in Iraq: the security track and the political
track. The security track is facing major challenges, while the
political track is going to remarkably well. The setbacks we have faced
on the security track have the capacity to undercut our progress on the
political track. It is therefore of the utmost importance to achieve
stability and security in Iraq: the future of democracy in that country
depends upon it. The overwhelming majority of Iraqis have already begun
to show themselves to be interested in democracy. But a small number of
insurgents are capable of spoiling the possibility of law and order by
disrupting the peace.
Daily reports of shootings and bombings in Iraq reflect the hard
reality that the Coalition led by the United States does not yet
exercise a monopoly on the use of force there. Assassination attempts,
like the one against Governing Council member Dr. Aqila al-Hashemi last
week, threaten the democratic project itself. Life for ordinary Iraqis
cannot return to normal so long as sabotage impedes reconstruction.
But the Coalition's lack of progress on the security front in the
last four months must not obscure the successes of the political
process in that same time. The establishment of an Iraqi Governing
Council; its takeover of the government ministries that deliver basic
services; and its commencement of the constitutional process have
proceeded apace despite significant security setbacks. Only by looking
at the surprisingly smooth political track alongside the problematic
security track can we shape a policy that will allow rapid transfer of
sovereignty to an Iraqi government that can actually rule the country.
An accurate assessment of the security situation must begin with
the fact that essentially all Iraq's 60% Shi`is and 20% Kurds were
happy to see Saddam go, and want the Coalition to remain long enough to
prevent the Ba`Ba'ath party from re-emerging. The Sunni Arabs, on the
other hand, who comprise another 15% or so of the population (the rest
are Turkomans and miscellaneous Christian and other religious
minorities), are the inevitable losers in any even quasi-democratic
reallocation of power, since they took a grossly disproportionate share
of the country's resources under Saddam. Of these Sunnis, many want the
U.S. out, but only a few are presently willing to take up arms--
otherwise we would be seeing thousands, not dozens of incidents each
week. Sunnis do not necessarily want Saddam back, but many think they
can only benefit from the failure of democracy and the rebirth of some
kind of autocratic Sunni state that would restore their privileges.
Some have begun to frame their opposition in terms shaped by Islamic
radicalism.
It is also possible that some of the bombing attacks on targets
like the United Nations headquarters have come not from disaffected
Sunnis but from terrorists who have infiltrated easily over Iraq's long
and unguarded borders. Iran has an interest in keeping the U.S.
presence costly to discourage it from trying to replicate regime change
next door. Al Qaeda, for its part, needs no excuse to attack the West,
and would like nothing better than to make Iraq into the site of a new,
Afghan-style jihad against foreign occupation of Muslim lands.
The realities of anti-Coalition violence, both known and unknown,
suggest a strategy for reducing the violence to a level compatible with
exercising ordinary government in Iraq. Only Iraqi police and soldiers,
knowledgeable about local conditions and populations, and with access
to high-quality local intelligence, stand a chance of breaking Sunni
resistance cells and identifying out-of-towners who might be Iranian or
Al Qaeda agents. The call to internationalize the Coalition forces is
an excellent idea for reasons of American foreign policy and cost-
reduction. International help could speed up reconstruction and take
some of the security load off hard-pressed U.S. troops. But Indian
troops would likely have no better luck than U.S. troops in combating
terrorism. Broadening the Coalition will have no measurable effect on
violence in Iraq, be it local or foreign-bred.
French and German suggestions to speed up the process of
transferring sovereignty to an Iraqi interim government would be just
as unlikely to produce security gains. The tenor and resistance is not
coming from Iraqis who would be sympathetic to such an interim
government. Worse, without a re-constituted police force and military
at its disposal, an interim body would be a travesty of a sovereign
government. Actual control is the indispensable hallmark of
sovereignty. Nothing could be worse for the future of democracy in Iraq
than the creation of a puppet government unable to keep the peace and
susceptible to the charge that it was sovereign in name only.
The easily overlooked progress of the political process thus far
points the way to a legitimate, elected Iraqi government that can
actually rule. Since the fall of Saddam's regime in May, those Iraqis
participating in organized politics have shown a maturity and unity of
purpose that pre-war critics would scarcely have credited. The two most
important Kurdish parties, the KDP and the PUK, have subordinated their
historical rivalry and have acted in concert, casting a steadying light
over the rest of the political scene and often taking the lead in
coordinating policy among the members of the Governing Council. Far
from insisting on secession and Kurdish independence, as some in the
region feared, the Kurdish leaders are sticking to the vision of a
federal Iraq, and urging their sometimes impatient community not to
falter so close to achieving long-awaited freedom from autocratic Arab
rule.
More importantly for Iraq's democratic future, the Shi`i religious
elites, and the political parties loosely associated with them, have
consistently eschewed divisive rhetoric in favor of calls for Sunni-
Shi`i unity. Emerging as Islamic democrats, they have repeatedly
asserted their desire for democratic government respectful of Islamic
values, rather than government by mullahs on the failed Iranian model.
As a result, they have been largely successful in marginalizing younger
radicals like the rejectionist Muqtada Sadr, whose late-spring play for
leadership of the national Shi`i community seems to have faded over the
course of the summer. When Sadr wanted to organize an anti-Coalition
protest in the holy city of Najaf, he was forced to bus in supporters
from Baghdad, three dusty hours away. The Coalition has wisely declined
to arrest Sack, and, his hopes for a living martyrdom denied, he
increasingly looks more like a small-time annoyance than the catalyst
of a popular movement of Shi`i anti-Americanism.
The emergence of democratic attitudes among religiously committed
Shi`is was underscored on Saturday in Detroit, where Da`wa Party leader
Dr. Ibrahim Ja`fari, the immediate past Governing Council president,
addressed the second annual Iraqi-American Conference. The largely
Christian audience of Iraqi-Americans spent the morning fretting about
the dangers of a constitution declaring Islam the official religion of
Iraq, but treated Ja`fari to a standing ovation after he argued for a
pluralistic, tolerant Iraq, in which full rights of citizenship would
be exercised by Muslims and non-Muslims, men and women. The same proud
insistence on the compatibility of a democratic, pluralist Iraq with
Islamic values was sounded by forty Sh`is from southern Iraqi cities at
a session on religious liberty I conducted last week in Bahrain as part
of an ABA-sponsored program on constitutional values. Skeptical of
arguments for strong separation of religion and state, they nonetheless
took as a given that a country as religiously diverse as Iraq must
ensure religious freedom--mandated, they said, by the Qur`an--and
equality for all citizens regardless of religion.
The next step in the constitutional process is for the
Constitutional Preparatory Committee, named by the Governing Council,
to complete its canvass of the country and propose a mechanism for
naming the members of an Iraqi constitutional convention. The Committee
needs to find a workable solution, short of a general election, to
choose a legitimate and representative body. It is considering
proposals such as a mixed election/selection procedure or a national
referendum to approve or disapprove a complete slate nominated by the
Governing Council.
The Coalition is right to be wary of a national election to select
the delegates to a constitutional convention. Iraq is not yet ready for
such a national election. Political parties have not yet had enough
time to develop. Organizing voter rolls would take time. To make
matters even more complicated, voting districts would require deciding
even before the election what districting would be fair. This would be
very difficult to accomplish in the absence of a recent census. What is
more, one of the main issues for a constitutional convention to discuss
will be the creation of just rules for drawing districts, so it would
be putting the cart before the horse to use existing districts,
gerrymandered by Saddam to disenfranchise the Kurds, to select a
constitutional convention.
On the other hand, the Coalition should not automatically reject
suggestions for a national referendum to approve or vote down a slate
of candidates selected by the Governing Council. Without some component
of public affirmation, there is the risk that the constitutional
convention would be seen as illegitimate from day one. A widely
distributed fatwa, authored by moderate Shi`i cleric `Ali Sistani,
demanded some sort of public participation in the process of selecting
the convention, and asserted that a convention handpicked by the
Coalition would not represent the values of the Iraqi people. Although
it is not certain that Sistani would actively condemn a convention
selected by the Iraqi members of the Governing Council, a general sense
among Iraqi elites is that some sort of public affirmation process
would do much to enhance the legitimacy of the constitutional process.
I am confident that a solution can be reached, and that the
constitutional convention, once named, can begin its work of drafting a
constitution for ratification by the Iraqi people.
It is difficult to imagine elections being held under a new
constitution before next autumn at the very soonest--and perhaps later
still. The constitution will have to resolve complex questions of the
boundaries of the provinces in a new, federal Iraq, not to mention
ensuring religious liberty and equality and finding the right form of
government to manage Iraq's distinctive ethno-religious mix. Getting
the wrong answers to these questions quickly would be much worse than
taking some time to get the right answers. But rushing would be a
mistake in any event, because an elected Iraqi government would come
too soon if it predated effective control of the country.
Let me speak briefly to the constitutional structure and the
difficulties it must resolve to establish stable and democratic
institutions. Iraqis are coming to the realization that their
government will have to be federal in order to accommodate the various
regional ethnic and religious differences in their country. Many Iraqis
would like to see eighteen federal states, corresponding to the
currently existing eighteen governorates. It is difficult, however, to
find even a single Kurd who is prepared to accept the division of the
Kurdish region into several distinct states or provinces. Kurds are
more likely to say that the Kurdish region must be a unified province.
As for the rest of Iraq, the Kurds are prepared to leave it to Arab
Iraqis to decide whether they want to have a single Arab region,
separate central and southern regions, or a dozen different provinces.
It will be extremely difficult to convince Kurds to accept the division
of the Kurdish region. At present, the Kurdish region is governed by a
centralized Kurdish Regional Government, and the Kurds can
realistically boast at least 40,000 men at arms. It is therefore
increasingly likely that constitutional negotiations will yield a
unified Kurdish federal region. In any event, the shape of Iraq's
federalism will be the single greatest and most complicated issue to be
addressed in constitutional negotiations. It will take time to reach a
workable consensus, and all parties will have to compromise. But the
federal arrangement is far and away the most important for achieving
the long-term goal of keeping Iraq is a single, unified country.
It will be relatively easy for Iraqis to agree that their
constitution should guarantee basic rights of liberty and equality for
all citizens, regardless of religion or sex. The Islamic democrats who
increasingly represent the Shi`i community believe that Islam
guarantees such liberty and equality. The constitution will certainly
guarantee religious liberty for everyone in Iraq. At the same time, it
is unlikely that the majority of Iraqis would agree to the omission
from their constitution of a provision describing Islam as the official
religion of the state. Every Arab constitution has such a provision.
The hundreds of Iraqis I have spoken to about this issue in Iraq, both
Sunnis and Shi'is, balk at the idea that their constitution would
declare the formal separation of religion and state. To ensure long-
term democratic stability in Iraq, we need to focus on making certain
that the constitution guarantees effective liberty and equality
regardless of religion or sex. If these provisions are firmly ensconced
in the constitution and broadly accepted by the public, there is no
reason that Iraq cannot be poor list and democratic even as it treats
Islam as an official religion.
The best written constitution in the world would be useless without
effective institutions to guarantee its enforcement. The new Iraqi
constitution must and will guarantee the separation of powers and must
vest the spending power in the legislature, not the executive. It must
guarantee an independent judiciary with the strength to stand up to the
other branches. We must devote significant resources to encouraging the
development of independent, nongovernmental civil society organizations
that will take up the all-important task of monitoring the government
to make sure the constitution is followed, and telling the world if it
is being violated. Islamic groups have a natural head start in forming
such organizations, so secular alternatives need to be encouraged.
Right now, Iraq has what might be called the empty shell of secular
civil society. Organizations like the National Lawyers Association or
the National Physicians Association were highly organized under Saddam,
but were in effect organs of the state. New elections have brought new
leaders into power, but these organizations are still far from
beginning to function as advocates for basic rights and democracy. They
need to be assisted and trained in fulfilling this crucial role.
In oil-rich states, government has long had the capacity to
dominate society by paying off potential critics and suppressing
others. To help save Iraq from reentering this destructive pattern, it
is possible that the constitution should guarantee per capita
distribution of oil revenues to individual Iraqi citizens. If this
course is chosen, however, the constitution should also make it clear
that the state can tax citizens on their income, including income
derived from the government itself. The government of Iraq will have
huge revenue needs in the years ahead, both for reconstruction and
security. It would be a serious mistake to hamstring a future Iraqi
government by depriving it of its most steady source of revenue.
Let me emphasize that solving the security problems by rebuilding
the Iraqi police and army must be the Coalition's highest priority in
the months ahead. This will cost a great deal of money, and create the
long-term risk that reconstituted Iraqi armed forces might some day
make their own grab for power, as the army has done repeatedly in
Iraq's history. But this risk must be taken, because if the security
situation is not brought under control, it has the capacity to destroy
the political track. Leaders like the assassinated Ayatollah Muhammad
Baqer al-Hakim, willing to work with the Coalition despite initial
reservations, are not easily replaced. The enemies of the democratic
process, whether Sunni-Iraqi or foreign, know that by violence they can
deny the Coalition the stability that is prerequisite to law and order.
With progress on the security track, democracy in Iraq remains
achievable. Without it, America's pragmatic and moral duty to help
Iraqis to democracy will be almost impossible to fulfill. Iraqis are
already on the track to self-government--but we need Iraqi security
forces, not just international help, so we can establish the rule of
law and restore sovereignty to Iraqi hands.
Once security is restored, however, there is reason for cautious
optimism about the capacity of the constitutional process to bring
about a democratic, federal settlement in Iraq, one that will ensure
individual liberties and equality for all Iraqis regardless of religion
or sex. By devoting our resources not only to the governmental process
but also to the development of a vigorous civil society, we can help
create conditions for democracy to flourish. With almost no outside
help, there are well over one hundred newspapers being published in
Iraq today. Much of what they publish is unreliable or worse, but that
is, in its very nature, the free marketplace of ideas. Democratic ideas
will win the day in Iraq so long as security exists on the ground
there--not because anybody puts a thumb on the scale, but because in
today's world, democracy is the only form of government that has shown
the capacity to give its citizens liberty, equality, and a decent way
of life. Iraqis already understand this fact, and they want democracy.
They need our assistance to let democracy take hold and make it stick.
The Chairman. Well, thank you very much, Dr. Feldman, for
that testimony. At this juncture, I'd like to recognize my
colleague and distinguished ranking member, Senator Biden, for
his opening statement and then we'll proceed with the testimony
of the witnesses. Senator Biden.
Senator Biden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have had the
opportunity to spend some time with the witnesses in the past.
It's great to have them back here. I will save my comments to
the questioning period because I'm anxious to hear what they
all have to say and give everyone a chance to speak.
The Chairman. Thank you very much. Dr. al-Khafaji.
STATEMENT OF DR. ISAM AL-KHAFAJI, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF
AMSTERDAM, AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS
Dr. al-Khafaji. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, distinguished
members of the committee. I'm very much honored by this
invitation of yours for me to testify before this distinguished
place and I would like to express my admiration, my deep
admiration of the sharp, timely, and frank questions and
comments that all of you have raised in the morning session
with Ambassador Bremer. I'm sure that if the Iraqi people were
allowed to have access to these comments, they would be much
more appreciative of the role that the U.S. Congress, the U.S.
institutions, and the U.S. public are playing in favor of the
Iraqi people and of our joint interests.
Mr. Chairman and distinguished members, I have my written
comments available to you. I hope you've had the chance to look
at them so I will not dwell on the opening statements about why
I see that despite the huge obstacles, democracy is possible,
is compatible with the so-called absence of prior democratic
institutions, Islam and mainly the much talked-about
heterogeneity of the Iraqi people, which I do not see as
heterogeneity, I see as an advantageous point because we do not
have in Iraq, unlike any other Middle Eastern country, Arab or
non-Arab, any bloc or community that can claim to have a
dominating majority, and thus imposing this dominating majority
as a kind of a tyranny of the majority and suppressing the
rest.
I can see that there is much to learn from the United
States and so much from the U.S. experience and the fact that
actually democracy is built upon an existence and recognition
by all communities that they cannot live without each other.
In the history of Iraq, and I'm not trying to draw any rosy
picture, unlike many other Middle Eastern countries, there is
no--and I'm talking from modest knowledge of the 18th, 19th,
and 20th centuries--there is no episodes of civil, not state-
sponsored violence between Shi'is and Sunnis, Arabs and Kurds.
There are some unfortunate incidents between other communities,
but certainly not between Shi'is and Sunnis or between Arabs
and Kurds in general.
So that being said, I'm not trying, once again, to draw a
rosy picture. I'm trying to show that what I feel and many
Iraqis feel that the sources of the lack of consensus among
Iraqis does not lie in the heritage of Iraq, the cultural
heritage, rather it is in the heritage that was left to us from
an ugly tyranny of 35 years, which atomized the population,
made them reliant on the state, a state that has aggravated the
perception, the disillusion that the people owe the state,
rather than the state owes them, their welfare and their well-
being through handing over largess of the oil money.
And it's here that I think that we have so much to learn
from the U.S. experience, from the U.S. presence in Iraq, and I
come here to what I feel as the bitter lessons, the bitter
lessons in the sense that while, as you very promptly said,
that time is slipping from our hands, while time is not in our
hands, still we have a window of opportunity that's still
closing but there is a slight ajar.
I think that, as my colleague Dr. Feldman, whom I had the
privilege of being together with in Baghdad, I stayed behind
him, but I had to resign after noting that there was no role
for Iraqis to play under the Coalition Provisional Authority,
and I kept in touch with the situation, in intensive touch with
the situation in Baghdad, and I feel that giving me the
privilege of testifying before you may allow me some
opportunity to convey some of the stories that Iraqis would
like the world, and especially the U.S. Congress to hear about
them.
I feel that the basic issue about the presence of the
coalition authority and the future of Iraqi/American relations
lies exactly in the message that you and all of the free world
would like to send to the Iraqi people, and that is that we are
changing from a system of tyranny to a diametrically opposed
system based on the rule of law, on democracy, on putting the
fate of Iraq into the hands of the Iraqi people, to use
President Bush's words.
Up until now, I'm sad to say that Iraqis do not feel that
and today's testimony by Ambassador Bremer was saying basically
the same, that a constitutional committee is being appointed by
the Coalition Provisional Authority with the help of a
Governing Council that is appointed and not elected, that this
committee, appointed committee, with due respect to all and
each of its members, has not been elected by the people but
they will have the right to draw a constitution that will be
thrown to the people at a yes or no referendum. And I think
this is not the way to send a message that the United States is
building a fraternal, democratic nation in Iraq and the Middle
East and to send a message to the other Middle Eastern
countries.
The second one is the way that the social and economic
issues and decisions are being taken, and I'm very sad to say
that I have to disagree with what Ambassador Bremer said. I
just returned last night from the way to see many humiliating
scenes in the meetings between the IMF and the Iraqi newly
appointed governors and administrators, the way that our
colleagues, the senior advisers at the coalition interrupt
publicly any statement given by any Iraqi newly appointed
minister. I'm sorry to say that, but the facts must be known to
all of you because you are the representatives of the United
States people.
To say that is not just to repent or to complain but to say
that still we can, the Coalition Provisional Authority can
change track, and the first step, I think, is as my esteemed
colleague has said, is to Iraqize the security situation, not
in the sense that was said by a high-level official 10 days
ago, to let Iraqis give us the information or inform about the
remnants of Saddam's regime but by allowing them to draw
policies on security. That will save the United States blood
and much, much money, that by giving the United States, the
security officials the role of monitors, advisers, educators in
how the new security force can abide by the law, not be over
the law, but in the meantime can enforce security issues in
Iraq.
And this is quite a different thing from what we heard this
morning or we have been hearing all over in the past that
Iraqis must come and inform the coalition of the remnants of
Saddam's regime. This is a totally different issue by allowing
Iraqis to draw the security policy.
Second, we can move from that--and this is the main issue I
think--to creating a consensus that no social contract can be
built only upon diversity. Diversity should be unified, must be
unified, within some kind of a social contract, and that could
only be done through calling for a constituent assembly that
will draw the constitution, rather than appointing a committee,
no matter how prestigious, no matter how sound and solid the
knowledge of these colleagues, I think that the legitimacy of
that constitution and the promulgator of that constitution will
be in doubt among Iraqis. So I think the step is toward a
constituent assembly which still will be a temporary, a
transitional body whose sole mission would be to draw the
constitution, appoint a provisional government, and work with
the United States coalition authority gradually to hand over
power to the Iraqis.
Along like that, I think transitional justice is where our
friends in the United States can help us, by drawing a system
of transitional justice that we worked upon that many Iraqis,
with the help of our colleagues at the State Department, worked
upon last year. I would be very much willing to talk about it,
but I can see that my time is coming to a close.
The Chairman. Go ahead.
Dr. al-Khafaji. The last thing then and then I will close
is the economic affairs of Iraq, the running of the economic
affairs of Iraq. Today I have nothing to add to your sharp
remarks today in the morning. I can not agree more with what
has been said, not in the sense that there are bad intentions
behind the way the bidding and contracting is being taken or
the decisions have been taken, but I think that if once again,
if we are talking about steering Iraq toward democracy first,
only an elected government can say that we have signed laws.
Even in the 1920s, the British High Commissioner used to sign
decrees, and today we've heard several times Ambassador Bremer
signing laws, and these are not laws to direct the day-to-day
affairs of Iraq. These are laws that will have grave
consequences to the better or worse of Iraq and the Iraqis must
know who is taking these decisions and how.
And unfortunately I can say that the cabinet, the Iraqi
cabinet, all the Governing Council, have very little to say
about how these decisions are being made. There is some
consultation, no formal consultation, no sitting on committees
by Iraqis, who just until a few months ago the world, the
media, and the U.S. administration was talking about the
educated, the talented, the nation that was threatening the
world with weapons of mass destruction. So this is not a matter
of nation-building.
We have experts, and it's here that I think that the
allocation of the budgets, and I totally agree with Ambassador
Bremer that we might be reticent in handing the monitoring of
these $20 billion or other allocations, but I would be very
happy to see a standing committee, subcommittee, from the
Congress sitting in the headquarters of the Coalition Authority
in Baghdad monitoring and approving the contracts that are
being given.
There are some details that show that the value of these
contracts that are being awarded and given, the value that's
reaching the Iraqi population is a trickle of what's being
reached. I'm not alluding to the integrity of the appropriation
of that, but simply because giving it in a time of war to an
Iraqi is one thing, and giving it to a foreign company, who
would add so much premium on working in our zone with a
different waste structure and salary structure would add so
much to the tax bill on the American taxpayer without in the
meantime yielding even an equivalent amount of the benefits to
the Iraqi people.
I think that this, the appropriation and allocation of the
U.S. taxpayers' money and the coming international authority
monitoring board, this should be an issue that others would be,
must be, involved, and by others we shouldn't have in mind only
the U.S. or the U.N. There are many others. The Iraqization,
the involvement, and empowerment of Iraqis, I think, is not
only a cheaper way but it's the way that will give the Iraqis a
totally different message of what the United States wants from
Iraq and that will propagate to the entire region and I think
to the rest of the world. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. al-Khafaji follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Isam al-Khafaji, Professor, University of
Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Mr. Chairman, Distinguished Members of the Committee:
CASE DESCRIPTION:
Skeptics of Iraq's ability to affect a transition to a stable and
democratic country have raised several arguments that most of you are
familiar with by now: the country's lack of prior democratic
institutions or experience, Muslim religion as an obstacle to
democratization, and Iraq's so-called ``heterogeneity'', i.e. being a
multi-ethnic and multi-sectarian society.
While many of these arguments may seem to be empirically validated,
it is the conviction of the present speaker that none of them stands to
rigorous test. Over the past three decades, countries with no prior
democratic experience, such as Russia, Spain, Portugal, and much of
Eastern Europe, have shown that while having past democratic principles
should be very helpful, it is neither a necessary, nor a sufficient
condition: More recently, some skeptics about Iraq's ability at
democratization raised the interwar democratic experience of Germany,
the Weimar Republic, as a legacy from which Post-WWII Germany could
draw to establish its modem democratic system. If this heritage is of
any relevance in the context, then it may be worthwhile mentioning that
Iraq had a longer period of parliamentary under the constitutional
monarchy between 1921 and 1958.
To the argument that Islam is an obstacle to democratization, I
would only remind the esteemed audience that five decades ago, standard
political theory texts used to ascribe Latin America's (as well as
Portugal's and Spain's) resistance to democratization to Catholicism.
Orthodox Christianity and Confucianism were viewed similarly in the
cases of Eastern Europe and East Asia respectively. The fact is that
religious authority everywhere seems fiercely resistant to
relinquishing power to secular power. Viewed as sets of powerful
philosophical teachings, most world religions contain elements that can
be used or manipulated to legitimate tolerance or tyranny, and peace or
war.
The US' experience can provide the Iraqi people, and many other
societies, with invaluable lessons on how to build a tolerant and
democratic system that firmly separates state from Church without in
the meantime rejecting the latter as the French model does or treating
the system of belief of the majority as a ``state religion''.
Finally, Iraq's multi-ethnic and multi-sectarian composition can
play a powerful role in laying the foundations of a democratic system,
rather than being an obstacle to it. For unlike any other country in
the Middle East (with the exception of Lebanon), Iraq has no single
ethnicity/sect can claim a dominating majority over all others, with
Arab Shi'ites composing around 50-52 percent of the population, Sunni
Kurds 20-22 percent, Arab Sunnis around 20 percent, Turkoman Shi'ites
and Sunnis some 5 percent and Christian Chaldeans, Assyrians, Armenians
and Arabs around 3 percent.
To this must be added the fact that unlike the religiously
polarized Lebanon, no single religious or secular ethnic/sectarian
authority can claim to be the representative of the majority of the
members of ``their'' respective communities, because besides ethnicity
and religion, loyalties in a complex and highly urbanized society like
Iraq are formed along regional, professional and ideological lines.
Rather than viewing this situation as disruptive, this state of
affairs means that unlike Iran or Saudi Arabia, no single community or
ideology in Iraq can impose its tyranny in the name of representing the
majority.
DESCRIBING THE PROBLEM
The above description is not intended to draw a rosy picture of a
situation that is far from ideal. It is rather intended to direct your
attention to what I think is the sources of the lack of a consensus
among Iraqis. And once again, it is from the US experience, as well as
from those of others, that we learn that before or alongside the
establishment of diversity and pluralism, no democracy can survive
without a social contract which stipulates what unites the diversity
and from which common rules and laws can be drawn.
The Ba'athist regime has forcibly imposed a destructive concept of
unity among Iraqis which sought, and succeeded to a certain extent to
atomize the population and linking the individuals directly to the
state. During the rising days of that regime, until circa the mid
1980s, this concept tried to impose homogeneity on the population by
marginalizing and suppressing entire communities and regions. This
could not have been made possible without the tremendous resources that
accrued to the Iraqi state thanks to the oil extraction sector whose
revenue yielding potential had very little to do with the productive
capacity of the people. A welfare state made of huge numbers of civil
and military and paramilitary servants and a large stratum of wealthy
businessmen living on state contracts that was handed according to
political, family and clannish cronyism deprived Iraqis from any
autonomy and enhanced a perception among them that the state does not
owe anything to the people. Rather it was they who owed their living to
the state. Only after the Ba'athist state drained Iraq's resources and
had to withdraw from providing the basic social and economic services
did atomized individuals turn back to revive their sub-national
loyalties in search of protection and basic services.
REMEDYING THE PROBLEM
Iraqis cannot hope to reach a modern social contract without a
long-term modernizing project aimed at engaging them in rebuilding
their devastated economy and society. With the huge demands on the oil-
revenue, the days of the parasitic welfare state are over, and it is
would be very misleading and dangerous to revive any illusions among
them on ``oil funds'' that would bring them toast and honey without
hard work.
But before this reconstruction project can effectively roll on,
security and the rule of law must be firmly established. And the
Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) is in a unique position to help
us in establishing this complicated project by seriously revising some
of its policies that sent a wrong message to the Iraqis and left them
to question the sincerity of the claims to liberate them and putting
their fates into their own hands.
A quick and systematic, but not hasty, process to ``Iraqize'' the
functions that the CPA is performing now must begin by admitting that
not only implementation of security policy should be handed to the
Iraqis themselves, but also thawing and designing that policy, with the
intensive help and advise of the Coalition forces. Foreign armed
forces, no matter how technologically advanced, can never bring
security. Rather, their wellbeing and safety will become a security
problem and a huge drain on the US budget which can only escalate with
time.
The justifiable fears among US policymakers as well as among Iraqis
that relying on militias and tribal chiefs in building and reorganizing
a modern police and security force can lead to disruptive results can
be overcome by empowering the already functioning provincial councils.
These councils can draw from a huge pool of unemployed ex-soldiers and
policemen by announcing a crash plan to recruit members of a national
police force proportionate to the rough population of each governorate
as a first step to merge these provincial police forces into one
national police force. The names of the new applicants must be made
public and citizens must be encouraged to object any of the applicants
if they have sufficient evidence that he had been implicated in past
violations of human rights.
Within a month time, the role of US forces can be transformed from
confronting the population to monitoring the newly formed police force,
training, educating and imposing discipline on them. The Coalition
troops can be redeployed to safeguard Iraq's borders, until an Iraqi
army can stand on its feet.
Only when palpable achievements on the security front can be made,
would the civil administration and economic enterprises be able to
resume their normal functions, and a political process that would
enable Iraq to regain its sovereignty, as a country in transition to
democracy can be launched.
How long would this process take? A timetable of less than one year
can ensure achieving the following functions:
THE POLITICAL PROCESS
1. Relying on the food for oil rationing cards, where all
resident Iraqis were registered, a process for the election of
a constituent assembly can be initiated and called for by the
end of this timetable.
2. A national committee composed of official and non-
governmental bodies can call on Iraqis in the Diaspora, to
register in the Iraqi embassies and other centers to be
established in the major centers where they cluster.
3. A constituent assembly would be elected in 6-7 months
after the establishment of basic security. The role of this
assembly is to approve a draft of a permanent constitution and
to appoint a transitional government.
4. The legal basis along which Iraq is run until approving a
permanent constitution is the interim constitution that was
adopted following the 1958 revolution.
5. The US, while recognizing the outcome of these elections
and the ensuing government, will declare that it will keep a
reduced military presence until a fully constitutional system
is in place to negotiate and establish the future relationship
between the US and Iraq.
TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE
1. Alongside the political process, a transitional justice
system made up of reformed and reeducated Iraqi judges,
Coalition advisors, and representatives of political parties
and NGOs would be set up in each of Iraq's governorates. All US
prisoners of war would eventually be turned to these courts in
order to try them.
2. An interim law on trying crimes committed by the Ba'athist
regime can be worked out by representatives from the entities
mentioned in the previous paragraph. As a starting point, the
reports produced by the workshops on transitional justice in
2002 can be used.
3. The law must clearly state the nature of punishable crimes
and the levels of punishment.
4. Prosecuted members would be declared ineligible for
running to the election of the Constituent Assembly.
5. Citizens would be called upon to hand whatever information
they may have on past crimes, and the acquisition by non
judicial bodies of files and documents pertaining to the
Ba'athist regime would be declared illegal.
CIVIL SERVICE AND ECONOMIC DECISION MAKING
1. The US must clearly and explicitly make its vision,
objectives and goals regarding its economic relations with Iraq
known to the Iraqi people.
2. To fill their promises of radically departing from past
tyrannical practices, the US and any interim Iraqi body must
refrain from approving laws or regulations that have long-term
effects on the structure of Iraqi society and economy without a
transparent and accountable mechanism.
3. Iraqi business community and the relevant ministries and
public bodies must be fully empowered to supervise, monitor and
approve all reconstruction tenders.
4. The CPA should cede more authority to the proposed
International Advisory and Monitoring Board, which is composed
of representatives from the World Bank, the IMF, the UN and the
Arab development fund. In the meantime, an extremely positive
message can be made if the US, through the CPA, champions the
cause of involving Iraqis as full and observer members of this
board.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, doctor. Let me mention
that all of the four statements of the witnesses will be made a
part of the record. Therefore you may either deliver the
statements orally in full or you may summarize them in your own
words as you hear each other testify. But we want the prepared
statements that you have given to us, and which are very
important, to be printed in full in the permanent record. I'd
like to call now Dr. Khouri.
STATEMENT OF MR. RAMI G. KHOURI, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, THE DAILY
STAR NEWSPAPER, BEIRUT, LEBANON
Mr. Khouri. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Senators,
ladies and gentlemen. I also am deeply honored to be part of
this process and I'm awed by the power of the American
democratic ideal, and to watch it in practice this morning was
quite an impressive experience for me. I've never attended a
congressional hearing before. I've only watched them on TV and
they're much more interesting in person.
But I would make a point which would summarize maybe
everything I want to say. I've spent my whole life between the
United States and the Arab world. I'm a Christian Palestinian
Jordanian. I'm about as Christian as you can get. I'm a Greek
Orthodox from Nazareth and you don't get more Christian than
that. That's where it all started and our family has lived in
Nazareth for 400 or 500 years. I'm a Jordanian national, I'm an
American citizen by being born here, and my whole life has been
between the United States and the Middle East and I can tell
you that as impressive as this hearing is and the democratic
ideal that it represents where you hold accountable and
question your own public officials and at the same time bring
in independent experts from other countries, from the United
States, to gain the best knowledge and viewpoints that you can
get, this is a highly institutionalized formal and public
process.
In the Arab countries exactly the same thing happens, but
it's not institutionalized and it's not formal and it's never
public. But I would make the point to you that if you are
trying to spread democracy in the Middle East, as I have been
and my colleagues and millions of us in the Arab world have
been trying to do for my lifetime and for many lifetimes before
mine the key issue to keep in mind is the difference in the
cultural traditions and values between American society and
Arab and Middle Eastern society as a whole.
I'm going to speak mainly about the Arab world because
that's the area I know best, but what I'm saying also applies
to Turkey and Iran and parts of Israel and other non-Arab
Middle Eastern countries, but this difference between the
manner in which people manifest democratic ideals is, I think,
the linchpin to a successful promotion of democracy in Iraq and
throughout the Middle East.
I think the objective is noble and it is appropriate and it
is achievable. The demand among the people of our region in the
Middle East for democratic institutions is tremendous and it
has been going on for years and years and years, though it has
not been widely reported in the American media particularly.
The men and women in the Middle East and the United States
who seek to achieve this worthy goal of a democratic Middle
East face a landscape that is littered with obstacles, and
these obstacles can be traced to two primary sources. The main
source is the political regimes and dynamics within the Middle
East, but the other source is the external support for these
autocratic, non-democratic, non-accountable, non-participatory
political regimes, and that includes the long-term support from
the United States but also from the Soviet Union and from other
countries.
Most of the constraints of democracy in the Middle East are
man-made and they can be removed if we forge appropriate
policies and we work diligently and consistently. None of the
constraints are due to our genes, to our religion, to our
water, or to our environment. All of the constraints are man-
made. They are a product of modern history and I would add to
the history lesson that Ambassador Bremer gave you this morning
by going much further back to remind you in a rather cruel
irony--cruel irony in the sense that the operation of the war
in Iraq to liberate Iraq was called Operation Iraqi Freedom--I
would remind you that the first documented use of the word
freedom, according to scholars, is from the Mesopotamian city-
State of Lagash in southern Iraq today, around 1250 B.C. It's
the first time in recorded human history that the word freedom
was ever used, and this was in Lagash.
Most of the values that underpin Western republicanism,
whether you're talking about representative assemblies such as
yours, contractual obligations under the rule of law, naming
the rights of individuals and the rights of sovereigns and the
rights of monarchs and the relationships between them, judicial
systems to adjudicate disputes between people, most of these
values can be traced historically back to the ancient Orient,
to the Hammourabi code, to Mesopotamia, to Assyria, to Babylon,
to the Biblical kingdoms.
Now I say this only to show that there has been a
tremendous history of exchange between our region in the Middle
East and the United States and the Western world, in Europe
initially and then in the United States and North America. This
long tradition is one that allows us to identify certain values
and certain principles that underlie the formal processes of
sovereignty and statehood and the institutions of democracy,
such as Parliaments and elections and political parties and
judicial systems.
I would say that if the United States really wants to
promote democracy in the Middle East, and I'm not certain that
this is a clear national objective, this is something that
history will show most of the people in our region are
skeptical, but if the United States really is serious about
promoting democracy as a long-term goal, I would suggest that
it would do well to start by correctly analyzing three critical
factors: Why has democracy not spread throughout the Middle
East? What has been the United States' role in this lack of
spread of democracy in the Middle East in the modern history?
And what do the people of the region themselves feel about
democracy and what are they doing to achieve it?
There are tens of millions of people in the Middle East who
have been working for democracy in civil society and human
rights and equality and other values that we all cherish, but
these people have been mostly silenced by their own governments
and they have been mostly ignored by the American Government
and other governments around the world. The struggle for
democracy in the Middle East in the last half a century has
been almost totally neglected, if not implicitly subdued, by
the foreign policies of Western powers and Eastern powers, when
those Eastern powers existed.
I would say there are five main reasons why we haven't had
very democratic institutions in the Middle East. The first one
is the legacy of autocratic, sometimes authoritarian rule, in
our region, and these governments have been sustained, as I
said, by foreign aid and foreign governments. Arab democrats
have never had a chance, they never had a chance, and they are
understandably skeptical today when they hear the United States
saying that it wants to promote democracy. Washington's
credibility on the promotion of democracy in the Middle East,
like its track record, is very thin. Despite this, there are
tens of millions of people in the Middle East who want you to
succeed and who are keen and anxious to work with you to
achieve this goal.
Second reason is the long years of the cold war reinforced
the status quo and the frozen political system in the Middle
East. The Arab/Israeli conflict is a third reason. It gave many
countries the excuse to focus on militarism security rather
than on promoting domestic democracy.
The fourth reason is the post-World War I colonial legacy
which created most of these countries, installed leaderships
that were hand-picked by the Europeans, and basically put all
the resources, military, economic, political, in the hands of
small elites who were hand-picked by the Europeans in a process
that is frighteningly similar to what many people see happening
in Iraq today, Western powers coming in on the back of their
armies, choosing local people, and having them set up
institutions and then giving them money and letting them run
the show. This is frighteningly similar to what the British and
the French did in the eyes of many people in the region and
that is why people are raising these issues of concern.
And the fifth reason that we haven't had democracy is that
most governments and people in the region have said, well,
given these other four obstacles, let's just get on with our
lives, feed our children, educate our kids, build a house, get
a job, and let's get on with the daily business of taking care
of our families or the government saying security issues are
paramount and then we'll deal with democracy later.
The net result of these and other trends has been that
security-minded governments have completely dominated the
Middle Eastern societies and most aspects of life. Middle
Eastern democrats have struggled unsuccessfully against these
odds for many decades, just as their counterparts had done for
many years in the Soviet Union. But some improvements have
occurred since the mid-1980s. Economic pressures have forced
many Arab and Middle Eastern governments to loosen their grips
on society just as in fact happened in the Soviet Union. Fiscal
pressures were the key to opening up the political systems.
The result has been since the late 1980s an appreciable
liberalization of political life in many countries, including
legalization of new political parties, holding parliamentary
elections, providing greater opportunities to oppose the
government in public and more robust media, a larger role for
the private sector, and an expansion in the number and the
nature of non-governmental institutions that form civil
society.
There has been great enthusiasm throughout the region for
people to try to forge credible, effective, useful civil
society institutions, non-governmental organizations, PVO's,
private voluntary organizations. You've had tens of thousands
of new, non-governmental organizations established in the Arab
world in the last 15 years. The number went up from around
30,000 to around 80,000 in the last 15 years. Societies for the
care of handicapped children to teach people literacy, to help
provide educational facilities, promote democracy, human
rights, women's rights, children's rights, any kind of
organization you can think of, there's been an explosion of
these societies, showing you the enthusiasm and thirst for
democracy in the region.
We've also seen in the elections that have taken place and
the liberalizations that have taken place since the late 1980s
dozens and dozens of political parties, new press publications
created, so there is a tremendous thirst in the region to
participate in democratic institutions. And what's happened
since the late 1980s has diffused some of the tensions and the
frustrations and the pressures that had been building up in
Arab society.
But in no cases did this political liberalization lead to
fully democratization. The small elites that ruled most of
these countries since independence continued to dominate
decisionmaking and continued to dominate the political,
military, fiscal, and even the intellectual resources of the
country.
The forces that drive people in the Middle East to try to
create better societies are the forces that I think are
important for you to address if you want to connect with the
people who are already working for democracy in that region.
And I would say that the single most important driving force
for political activism and change in the Middle East has been
domestic indignity. It's not Israel, it's not the United
States, it's not British colonialism, it's not historical
anxiety, it's domestic indignities hoisted on the people by
their own regimes and societies. People are angry about not
having a sufficient voice in their countries, about corruption,
about exploitation of power, about lack of equality, about
mediocrity in public service, and this goes on for decade after
decade, and people fight against this but they can't get very
far.
The second reason is the humiliations and the dangers that
people have suffered in the Arab world particularly as a result
of the Arab/Israeli conflict. This has huge impact throughout
the region, so solving the Arab/Israeli conflict fairly will
have a significant impact on domestic trends in the Arab
countries, but by itself will not completely solve the problems
of the region.
And the third problem that people suffer from is the legacy
of foreign intervention in the area. People still remember what
the Europeans did, we still talk about it, it still impacts on
the mediocrity of many of our institutions, and in some cases
the incoherence of some of our states. So if you look around
the Middle East, we have a series of rather incoherent states
in some cases that have fallen apart from civil wars or
occupations or whatever, and many people still remember the
colonial role of the Europeans and people are asking whether
we're witnessing a new colonial American experience now.
The vast majority of people in the Arab world are stunned
and angry that we in my generation are still addressing the
same issues that my grandparents addressed 80 and 90 years ago:
the rights of the citizen; the relationship of the individual
citizen to the state; relationships between the individual and
the society around him or her; the relationship between Arabism
and Zionism, Israel and the Arab countries; the relationship
between us and the Western great powers; the rights of
individuals in society in relation to other people in society.
These fundamental issues of citizenship and statehood and
sovereignty have not been addressed in any coherent way in the
last three generations and this angers people.
And all of these issues and others have caused people to
work hard to try to bring about a better order in the region
and many of them have expressed this desire in the language of
religion. It's not an accident that this is a majority Muslim
region and people have turned to their religion to express
their indignities when they found no other opportunities open
to them in civil society. The parallel that I draw, and it's
not exactly the same but it's very similar, is how the American
African-American experience, when all routes for political
change through these institutions of society in United States
were closed to African-Americans by and large in the 1940s and
1950s, they turned to the church.
The civil rights movement was led by the church and the
African-Americans and all Americans were lucky to have such
enlightened leaderships leading the civil rights movement, and
it was one of the finest moments in American modern history.
And you had the church leading the anti-apartheid movement in
South Africa and it's no accident that the people turned to the
religious leaderships in their countries in the Middle East.
So we have this very rich and vibrant landscape and dynamic
landscape of people trying to improve societies in the Middle
East but unable to do so, and now there is an opening to make
change, an opening because of the economic stress in the region
that has forced countries to liberalize their political grip
and perhaps an opening because of external interventions. We'll
have to see what the American intervention in Iraq actually
does in terms of promoting democracy. I think the record is
still open on this, but giving the U.S. Government the benefit
of the doubt. If it wants to really promote democracy, I think
it will find millions and millions of people anxious to work
with it.
The keys to success will be to achieve a legitimate
democratic order in the Middle East, I think the key is going
to have to be to understand these cultural differences that
separate us, but that are anchored in the common values that we
share. People in the United States value freedom above all
other attributes, I would say. Freedom is not a high priority
for most people in the Middle East. Human dignity, justice are
the issues that people talk about, and you need to relate to
them in those terms if you want them to work with you
coherently for democratic progress.
Americans organize their society on the basis of the rights
of the individual. Middle Eastern societies are based on the
rights of the individual is subsumed under the group, the
family, the tribe, the religion, the ethnic group, whatever it
may be. Individual rights in the Middle East are not as
important as they are in the West.
The United States is a secular society. Religion deeply
permeates all aspects of life in the Middle East and this is
something that you need to come to grips with. And the United
States is predominantly an immigrant society with a very short
collective history, while most countries in the Middle East are
not immigrant societies, they're people who have lived there
for hundreds or even thousands of years and they have strong
historical memories.
These four points I think are crucial to formulating any
kind of effective democratic program in the Middle East, and I
would urge that there be a serious effort to study these issues
much more carefully to find those commonalities between the
people of the United States and the people of the Middle East
where we do agree. And I'm making these differences but also
pointing out that there is a massive underlayer of agreement on
the principles, the consent of the governed, the rule of law,
equal justice for all, accountability of public officials.
These are issues, values that are deeply ingrained in our
religions and in our culture, and I would finish by saying
again that the dynamic that we witnessed here in this committee
is a dynamic that we witness all the time in the Middle East,
but it's not done like this, it's not on television, it's not
in the paper, it's not open to the public. It's done quietly,
it's done in people's rooms, it's done in people's homes,
offices, government officials. I've been in situations with
kings and the people sitting down together and having a chat,
people holding the leaderships accountable, but it's done in a
different way.
If you try to impose a Western American tradition of doing
things in a democratic way on a culture that is completely
different in the way it manifests its ideals, you are going to
have the same failures that the British and the French did 80
years ago. And I would urge you as somebody who is deeply
rooted in both American and Arab culture and who loves them
both and appreciates their values both to make a much more
rigorous and strenuous effort than the executive branch of your
government has done to understand these differences but also
understand the commonalities, identify those forces in the
Middle East who are working for exactly what you're working
for, and to push that process forward with much more coherence
than we have seen today.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Khouri follows:]
Prepared Statement of Mr. Rami G. Khouri, Executive Editor, The Daily
Star Newspaper, Beirut, Lebanon
Mr. Chairman, Committee Members, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Thank you for this opportunity to share some thoughts with you on
an issue of immense and urgent importance to Americans and Middle
Easterners alike--promoting democracy throughout the Middle East. I
have spent all my adult life in the region working towards this goal,
and am personally delighted that democratization in the Middle East
should now be raised as a potential American foreign policy objective.
The objective is noble, appropriate, and achievable. The demand among
the people of our region is great. Yet men and women in the Middle East
and the United States who seek to achieve this worthy goal face a
landscape littered with obstacles that can be traced back to indigenous
Arab and Middle Eastern causes but also to the conduct of the USA and
other foreign powers. Most of these constraints are man-made, and they
can be removed if we forge appropriate policies and work diligently and
consistently. I would like to offer some observations and suggestions
based on my analysis of sentiments throughout the Arab World, the
region I know best, though some of these thoughts are also relevant to
Turkey, Iran, Israel, and other non-Arab parts of the Middle East.
This is a critical time in the Middle East, when its own citizens
and many friends around the world are exploring why this region remains
the least democratic part of the globe. If the United States in
particular truly seeks to promote democracy in Iraq and the wider
region, it would do well to start by correctly analyzing three critical
factors: Why has democracy not spread throughout this region? What has
been the United States' role in this matter in modern history? And what
do the people of the region feel about democracy, and what are they
doing to achieve it?
There are tens of millions of people for you to work with on this
goal throughout the Middle East, but they have mostly been silenced by
their own governments, and ignored by the American government and
others around the world. I would suggest the following main reasons why
the Middle East remains a region largely devoid of democratic
governments:
1. The legacy of autocratic, sometimes authoritarian, rule in
our region, almost always with the explicit, sustained support
of foreign governments, including the US government. Arab
democrats have never had a chance, and they are understandably
skeptical to hear the USA suddenly promoting a policy of rapid
democratization in the Middle East. Washington's credibility on
this, like its track record, is very thin.
2. The many years of the Cold War reinforced the static, non-
democratic nature of the Middle Eastern political order, as the
two superpowers provided economic, political, and military
support for their clients in the area.
3. The Arab-Israeli conflict provided a means for autocratic
rulers to avoid democratic transformations and instead to
promote security-minded regimes, by arguing that the regional
conflict made defense a greater priority than democracy.
4. The post-WWI colonial legacy made it virtually impossible
for Arab public opinion to manifest itself for democratic
governance, given that colonial authorities usually transferred
political and military power in most countries to hand-picked
local elites, who quickly consolidated their grip on power or
were overthrown by military coups whose leaders consolidated
their power.
5. State-building issues, security, and taking care of one's
own family usually were seen by most people and governments as
more urgent priorities than promoting democracy.
The net result of these and other trends has been that security-
minded governments and states dominated most aspects of life in Middle
Eastern countries, external powers usually helped to perpetuate this
autocracy and lack of democracy, and civil society and the private
sector were largely contained and controlled by the state. Middle
Eastern democrats have struggled unsuccessfully against these odds for
many decades, just as their counterparts had done in the former Soviet
bloc. But some improvements have occurred since the mid-1980s, when
fiscal pressures forces most Arab regimes to loosen their grip on
society; this trend continued in the early 1990s, after the collapse of
communism impacted on the region.
The result has been an appreciable liberalization of political life
in many countries, including legalization of new political parties,
holding parliamentary elections, providing greater opportunities to
oppose government positions, a more robust press, a larger role for the
private sector, and expansion in the number and nature of non-
governmental organizations and other civil society actors. The
enthusiasm with which ordinary people throughout the region embraced
the opportunities provided by the recent political liberalization
indicates the strong thirst for more democratic and participatory
governance systems in the region. Tens of thousands of new non-
governmental organizations have been established in the region in the
past two decades, along with hundreds of political parties and
publications.
This has defused some of the tensions, frustrations, and pressures
that had been building up within Arab countries, but in no case did it
move any society towards a truly democratic system. The Arab region
since the late-1980s has experienced a measurable improvement in
freedom of expression and association, but political liberalization has
not continued on the path towards full democratization. The ruling
elites that have dominated Middle Eastern political life for the past
half century continue to do so, with only superficial changes to their
control of political, security, intellectual, cultural, and economic
assets.
The tensions and concerns that drive the sentiments and actions of
ordinary people throughout the Middle East have not changed very
significantly in the past few decades. I would define these, in their
order of importance, as:
1. Domestic indignities, reflecting political, economic,
cultural and environmental pressures on the ordinary citizen,
who feels that his or her voice is not heard in a society where
power is unjustly exploited by a small, non-accountable elite.
2. The humiliations and dangers suffered as a result of the
Arab-Israeli conflict, which are widely felt emotionally and
politically throughout the region.
3. The legacy of foreign interventions in the area, whether
by Europeans a century ago or by the USA today.
All three of these issues have caused tens of millions of people
throughout the region to agitate for a better, more responsive and more
equitable order. Ordinary men and women have had few if any
opportunities to express themselves, let alone to work for better
governance. Most people have expressed their wishes in the language of
religion or culture, speaking of their right to justice and dignity,
rather than in the language of democratic republicanism. Dissatisfied
Arabs whose citizenship rights have been routinely degraded have most
often found refuge and hope in their religion or in their collective
tribal and family identities, which have provided the sense of identity
and the security and services that the modern state has not been able
to provide.
The election results throughout the Middle East since the late
1980s, along with public opinion polls and the media, indicate clearly
a strong desire for change among the publics of the region. The
landscape for change and democracy in the Middle East is deep, rich and
fertile, but it has never been cultivated by indigenous authorities or
foreign powers.
Any effort to promote democracy in the Arab and wider Middle
Eastern region must take these facts into consideration, acknowledge
the mistakes of the past, understand the grievances and aspirations of
the people of the region, and respond to indigenous concerns and hopes,
rather than transplant foreign notions of what is right or what is
needed. The US' policy in Iraq today unfortunately dampens indigenous
Arab activism for democracy in the short run, given the strong anti-
American sentiments in much of the Middle East. Local activists who
seek to promote democracy face the new obstacle of being seen by some
of their peers as unwitting agents of the United States. This is a
terrible and bitter irony, given that Middle Eastern democracy
activists have long wished to work with like-minded partners from the
US and the West as a whole.
To achieve legitimate democratic orders in the Middle East, we must
acknowledge several key realities and act accordingly, rather than
forge policies that are driven either by extreme ideology or naive
romanticism. The single most important point that we must acknowledge
is that the people of the United States and the Middle East share very
common values and goals on issues such as a just society and good
governance--but they express them very differently. Four key
differences should be kept in mind as we collectively seek to promote
democracy in our region:
1. Americans probably value freedom above all other
attributes, while most Arab societies stress the dignity of the
individual more than his or her liberty. Dignity is defined and
perceived as comprising the same range of values and rights
that define democracy in the US and the Western world--
participation in political life and decision-making, a sense of
social and economic justice, initial equal opportunities for
all young people in their education and careers, and the rule
of law applied equally and fairly to all in society.
2. Americans organize their society and governance primarily
on the basis of the rights of the individual, while Arabs
define themselves and their societies primarily through
collective identities, such as family, tribe, ethnic group, or
religion. Americans tend to stress society's obligation to
ensure the individual's rights to do as he or she pleases,
within the limits of the law; Arabs tend to focus more on the
obligation of the individual to fulfill his or her
responsibilities to the family and wider community.
3. The USA is a secular society, while religion plays an
important public role in most Arab and Middle Eastern
societies.
4. The United States is predominantly an immigrant society
with a short collective historical memory, while Middle Eastern
cultures are deeply defined by their historical memories and
past experiences.
These four key differences between American and Arab culture have a
major impact on how democracy could spread throughout our region. The
term ``democracy'' itself needs to be defined carefully, given its
largely Western tradition, though I believe we are all talking about
the same broad concepts and values. We can speak of democracy,
constitutionalism, republicanism, good governance, the rule of law,
representative and accountable governance, participatory governance, or
any other combination of words that reflect values we admire and seek
to enjoy. One of the continuing mistakes of the past century--and the
United States is now repeating the mistakes that Great Britain made in
Iraq nearly a century ago--is that Western powers that enter the Middle
East on the back of their military might tend to recreate Middle
Eastern societies in their own Western image. Most of the parliaments,
presidential systems, and even, in some cases, the very sovereign
states that the British and French created in our region nearly a
century ago have limped into this new century in poor shape, with
limited credibility, relevance, or impact with their own people. One
reason for this is that the people of the Middle East were rarely
seriously consulted about the formation of their new countries after
World War One. Another reason is that Western powers tried to copy
their own institutions and mirror their own values in the Middle East,
without sufficiently taking into account local realities such as those
included in the four points I mentioned above. We may be witnessing
this mistake once again in US policies in Iraq, whose good intentions
are not always matched by effective implementation.
Rather than trying to replicate Western institutions in the Middle
East or graft American institutions into Iraq, it would be much more
effective and culturally acceptable to identify those shared values
that define Middle Eastern and Western cultures, and work together to
give those values life and institutional meaning in new governance
systems. I know from my own life experience in the United States and
the Arab World that Arabs and Americans broadly see eye-to-eye on the
core principles and values that concern us--such as the consent of the
governed, majority rule and the protection of minority rights,
accountability of those who hold public power, participation and
consultation in the decision-making process, a sense of justice and
equity for all, and pluralism in the social, religious and political
order. We can all identify some quarters in the Middle East that do not
share these views, but these are the exceptions that prove the rule.
I would urge the USA and any other foreign party that seeks to
promote democracy in the Middle East to focus on promoting these kinds
of principles and working to ensure that the peoples of the region have
the opportunity to manifest these values in political structures and
norms that are culturally comfortable and credible for them. The sad
fact is, never in my generation have I witnessed an American government
that worked hard for the principle of the consent of the governed in
Arab lands. If this is to change, and the USA now plans to spearhead a
democratic age in the Middle East, it would do well to start by
consulting more closely with the people of the region, and forming
partnerships for goals that are defined primarily by the citizens of
those societies you wish to democratize. In other words, the best way
to promote democracy in the Middle East is to be democratic in the way
you go about trying to do this: consult, and don't dictate; achieve
consensus, and don't issue ultimatums.
Perhaps the most common obstacle in the way of American hopes to
promote democracy in the Middle East is the perception in the region of
American double standards, on issues such as the Arab-Israeli conflict,
implementation of UN resolutions, promoting democracy, and weapons non-
proliferation. This suggests that the fastest way for the US to be
accepted as a credible purveyor of democracy in the Middle East is to
be much more consistent in its practical policies in the region. Simply
stated, the US should apply the same standards in its policies abroad
as it does at home. This will require greater sensitivity to local
Middle Eastern cultural and religious values, and more consistency in
promoting democratic values among all the countries of the region,
including the ones that the US has long viewed as strategic allies that
it has exempted from promoting democracy.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Khouri.
Dr. Marr.
STATEMENT OF DR. PHEBE MARR, FORMER SENIOR FELLOW, NATIONAL
DEFENSE UNIVERSITY; AUTHOR AND CONSULTANT, WASHINGTON, DC
Dr. Marr. Mr. Chairman and Senators, I'd like to thank you
very much for inviting me to testify once again before you, and
it is indeed a privilege. I want to expand in my testimony a
little bit beyond the constitutional system and address some of
the problems I see the Iraqis facing today, but I would also
like to touch on the constitutional process as well.
It seems to me that even before the occupation of Iraq
there was considerable debate in policy circles here on what
regime change in Iraq would mean. Without oversimplifying, some
envisioned a modest change, removal of the head, Saddam, and
some of his support system, but leaving much of the apparatus
intact. In retrospect, that would have made a smoother
transition if it could have been accomplished. It probably
would have been less costly, but the difficulty with it, of
course, is that you wouldn't have gotten much change, and we
all worried about the emergence a new authoritarian leader
later on.
The second choice, the one that we've ultimately followed,
was to opt for more radical change, a rather thorough
dismantling of the system, the better to create something new
in its place. This obviously has the virtue of clearing the
field for new construction, but it does come with a high price
tag. This radical change has created a political, military, and
psychological vacuum, that now has to be filled by us or by
others that we can hastily assemble from abroad or from inside
Iraq.
I would like to focus on a couple of unintended
consequences that have resulted from this. I see two of these
as the most important, and would like to focus on them today.
One is the destruction of the central government in a country
that was previously overwhelmingly dependent on it. As a
counterbalance, and this is a very welcome one, there has been
a very significant decentralization of administration in Iraq;
the establishment of municipal councils, provincial-level
appointments, and so on.
But this cannot substitute for the role of a central
government, and if there is too much decentralization left
unchecked, we could get a lot more unintended consequences we
don't want, such as renewed factionalism, the development of
party militias, which we see, and increased control by local
potentates. I believe that a balance has to be re-established
and soon for several reasons. I've gone into in more detail on
this in the paper than I will here.
First is demographics in Iraq. I don't think this is widely
appreciated, but because of internal migration in Iraq over the
past couple of decades, there has been a considerable shift in
population from the northern and southern provinces into the
central provinces and particularly Baghdad. One should always
distrust statistics in Iraq, but the trends I think are clear.
By my calculation today, about half of Iraq's population
lives in its five central provinces, and something like a third
live in Baghdad, the capital. Only about 13 percent live in the
three northern Kurdish provinces, and in all those southern
provinces we lump together as Shi'ah, only about 32 percent
live there. The north and the south up to this point have been
relatively quiet, but I would point out that it's the center
with the bulk of Iraq's population that is giving us the most
trouble, including a persistent guerrilla insurgency.
A second point, and you are probably familiar with this:
Under Saddam, a large percentage of the population, especially
its educated middle class, worked for the government directly
or indirectly. It was a classic socialist command economy. They
worked in the military, the police, security, education, the
media, even large-scale industry. There are a lot of
statistics, but according to one, perhaps a quarter of the
population or more was supported by the central government
including their families. I would point out here that most of
this group is now out of work while the government doesn't
function very well without them.
Third, let me mention in passing, it's not surprising to
find that this situation reinforced a culture of dependency on
the government in Iraq and starved individual initiative and
incentive. Mr. Khouri has talked about cultural differences and
this is one I think we have to pay attention to. The United
States is built on initiative. We expect people to rise up and
seize the initiative. Iraq, because of the horrendous
experience it's had in the last four decades, expects the
government to perform services, give them orders, and to follow
the government's lead. We have to deal with that situation.
The U.S. occupation up to this point, it seems to me, has
entirely reversed this situation. First, it has empowered local
communities for the first time in Iraq's modern history. This
is obviously very good. As I've indicated, it's worked well in
the north, which has been governing itself for over a decade,
and in the south, where the population is eager to exercise
self-government. It has not worked well in the center.
Second, as I've indicated, the United States has demolished
much of the central government and its pillars, thereby
weakening the center. Chief among these, of course, was the
Armed Forces. While it's true the army collapsed, obviously
there was no attempt made to reconstitute this force at any
level. On the contrary, the CPA and others made clear that the
old army would not be reassembled. Instead, a new one would be
built from the ground up.
Third, Iraq's notorious security services were disbanded.
Obviously, no one is weeping over that or suggesting that they
be revived. Nevertheless, the absence of these forces, as we
saw during the looting and we see today, has left a huge
security void that the coalition has not been able to fill.
Fourth, the Ba'ath party was outlawed and members in the
top three levels of the party were banned from public
employment. That may involve 25,000, 30,000 members who had
manned key positions in the public bureaucracy. While most
members at the lower level, many of them middle class, were in
the party for career reasons, for opportunism, without
commitment, this group subsequently felt uncertain about their
future. In any event, the bureaucracy at lower levels has not
come back to work to any considerable degree to take charge of
the administration as anticipated. Once again, the gap has been
difficult to fill.
So the question we have to ask, I think, about this
educated middle class, the group that we need to run the
bureaucracy, to fill the security gap, to propel its education
system in new directions is this: Is this large and important
class of Iraqis, what I consider to be the moderate, silent
majority, going to cooperate with the United States in building
a better foundation, or is it going to become alienated,
passively resist cooperation, or worse yet, turn against us as
the militant minority is urging?
I would remind everyone that there is a very strong strand
of nationalism and anti-colonialism in Iraq, not without some
justification, stretching right back to the British mandate.
This often creates a lot of peer pressure to avoid cooperation
with the United States. But in my view, and a recent poll by
John Zogby reinforces this, most of this middle class knows it
needs the help and support of the U.S. and others and it wants
this support until it has a government that can stand on its
feet and meet the challenge of extremists. We must address this
problem.
The second radical change that's taking place, in my view,
is in the distribution of power. This gets us to a problem that
I think is critical. We've talked about it before. The second
consequence has been a radical distribution, radical change in
the distribution of power, and again, there's much that's
beneficial about that. The new Governing Council and the
ministers are now representative of the ethnic and sectarian
distribution of the population. They also represent a wide
diversity of political parties and they have brought into power
a substantial group of exiled Iraqis, whom I see as a benefit.
They bring fresh ideas and a spirit of initiative that may not
be there right away in Iraq. This is all a very new phenomenon
in Iraq.
I think it is generally known, that most of the governments
in Iraq, and none worse than Saddam's last government, have
been dominated by the Arab Sunni community, and in his case a
very narrow spectrum of this community. They come from the
smaller towns and cities of the Sunni triangle. This completely
underrepresented the Shi'i, who constitute 60 percent of the
population, and the Kurds as well.
The new Governing Council has reversed this. Of the 25
members, 13, or about 52 percent, a slight majority, are
Shi'ah, 5 each, about 20 percent, are Arab Sunnis, and Kurds.
There's one Christian, one Turkman, and three women. At least
half, perhaps more, are exiles, not including the Kurdish
parties. While the makeup of this council is representative, it
has also caused a little trouble, mainly from those who were
left out. First the supporters and beneficiaries of Saddam's
regime, the Sunni triangle, are the most disaffected and this
is the source of our problem.
Let us leave them aside because they are probably
irredeemable, but the Baghdad middle class, many of whom were
nominal party members, are also unhappy and I think we have to
turn our attention to these as well.
Second, the heavy emphasis on the religious and ethnic
background in the Governing Council also points to another
change from past regimes--that is an open emphasis on ethnic
and sectarian politics. This has always been a subtext in Iraq.
One can't deny its presence but it's more pronounced today than
it has been at any time that I can remember in Iraqi history.
This is worrisome to me. These appointments point to cleavages
and tensions in the society that we have to be aware of and
unless these are reconciled and we make efforts to reconcile
them and we get people to cooperate across ethnic and sectarian
lines, it could spell trouble ahead.
The Arab Sunni community is not the only one to watch. Let
me just mention the Shi'ah and the Kurds. The Shi'ah as a whole
have accepted the new order because they understand that they
have a chance to be a political majority for the first time in
Iraq's modern history. However, the Shi'ah community is hardly
homogenous, and even the minority of the Shi'ah, who want to
see a more religious state, are divided among themselves on
what role religion should play.
Much of the Shi'ah community is uncomfortable with the U.S.
occupation and wants an earlier rather than a later departure.
The Shi'ah, however, risk a political split over this issue,
particularly from militants like Muqtada-l-Sadr, the radical
young cleric who has mobilized a lot of people in the poor
district of Baghdad, Sadr City. A further decline in the
security situation, more killing of Shi'ah clerics, could split
the community, erode support for the Governing Council, and
exacerbate community tensions. These eventualities should be
avoided at all costs.
The Kurds also represent another future fault line in the
system, and I take on board to a considerable extent what Dr.
Feldman has said. Though the north has been very quiet and the
Kurds are very supportive of the coalition, one reason for this
is that the Kurdish parties have made substantial gains in
achieving their future goals. They are obviously very anxious
to preserve these in the new constitution, and I agree that
they're likely to drive a very hard bargain for self-government
in the north.
As the constitutional process proceeds, I think there will
be two issues that have to be resolved. These will require very
difficult bargaining among the Iraqis; they are not going to be
technical constitutional questions, although that will be
involved. These are political questions. I have actually
identified the same issues that Dr. Feldman did, although my
take on them may be slightly different. These issues
incidentally are very real, and in my view we can opine on
them, but the Iraqis are the ones that have to resolve them. If
the Iraqis in any way can resolve them, that should be
acceptable to us.
The first is the role of the Shi'ah in the state. This is a
key issue for several important Shi'ah parties and for
secularists as well. There is little doubt that these Shi'ah
politicans and not only the Shi'ah but the Sunnis as well will
want a greater role for religion. The folks who do want a
greater role for religion are going to face a number of
secularists in Iraq as well as moderately religious people who
want a limited role. In my view, we're going to see more
religion in Iraq than we have in the past, but the question is
how to draw the boundaries, how much religion, what kind of
religion, and so on. This is going to be one of the key
questions in the constitutional discussion.
The second issue is the role of the Kurds in the state and
how much self-government for the Kurds under the constitution.
There is little doubt that the Kurds want federalism. This
issue boils down into a discussion between those who are
talking about ethnic federalism and those who are talking about
administrative federalism, based on 18 provinces.
Administrative federalism would not be a bad idea, because
those provinces which are distinctly Kurdish or Shi'ah or Arab
Sunni would of course have Kurdish, Shi'ah, and Arab Sunni
governments, and those which are mixed, like Kirkuk, Mosul,
Baghdad, even Basra, Diyala, and so on, would have mixed
governments.
A word of caution here about federalism that divides Iraq
into two or three big areas. Disentangling these areas is going
to be no small task if that's what people have in mind with
this federalism. It may be easy in Dahuk. It may be easy or not
too easy even in Najaf, but when you get to these mixed areas
where the bulk of the population in Iraq lives, it's going to
be extremely difficult.
I agree that the Kurdish parties, who are in control of the
north of Iraq, are pretty determined to have federalism on an
ethnic basis. As I've heard it defined wherever a province has
50 percent Kurdish speakers it is going to be a Kurdish
province. This really has to be looked at carefully, although
it is an issue for the Iraqis to decide, because if there is an
ethnically defined Kurdistan, does that not open the door to
self-governing units in other area, such as the Shi'ah south or
the Sunni triangle? What happens to Baghdad and other mixed
areas in the center? And what happens to the cohesion of Iraq
as a country?
Constitutional deliberations, however they come about, and
the drawing up of an electoral law on which representation will
be based, will open all of these issues. I believe they're
going to be difficult to resolve and that the Iraqis need a
reasonable time period in a relatively secure environment to
resolve them. They do need some deadlines, however, to work
toward the process so that they'll be able to move to a
conclusion. I recognize the difficulties of holding an
election, which would produce a huge group of people to sit
down and look at the constitution. Actually dozens of Iraqi
exiles, including my colleague, Dr. al-Khafaji, have looked at
constitutions and drawn up models. I would be a little uneasy
myself to have a constitution promulgated in Iraq without some
kind of an electoral body to ratify it, because that would
raise the whole issue of legitimacy. The constitution, after
all, is going to determine much of the future of Iraq.
I'd like to conclude with a few suggestions on what the
United States needs to do in a broad sense, where we need to go
from here to address a couple of these issues. The first I'm
sure you've heard over and over. We must reduce and neutralize
the insurgency. Everything else depends on getting a degree of
stability and quiet. That of course is going to be easier said
than done.
I would certainly second the suggestions that have been
made here to turn that task over as rapidly as possible to
Iraqis. Iraqis know the environment, they know the people,
they're much better equipped to deal with security than we are.
And incidentally, there have been a number of suggestions for
security, some of which are short-term but not, I think, too
good for the long-term, such as using local militias placed
under the authority of the central government. It is better to
rapidly develop new forces for the Iraqis. I would be very
careful about decentralizing security and putting it in the
hands of these militias, because we need to strengthen the
central government while we're making it democratic.
The second point that I would make here is that it is time
to strengthen the central government and the center. This may
be somewhat controversial, but the gap left by the collapse of
the central government and the decline and weakening of Baghdad
and the center as a whole is part of this problem of restoring
law and order. While decentralization is necessary, I think the
process needs a little re-balancing at this point, particularly
in a country that's used to taking orders from the central
government.
A restored and healthy center and a functioning central
government will help prevent unraveling in the provinces.
Staffing shortages need to be filled. There should be better
linkages between the provinces and the central government, not
simply the extension of the central government into the
provinces. The Baghdadis need to get out in the provinces and
understand their demands. We should try to get some of these
very dynamic, very interesting municipal and provincial
councils that have developed in better contact with the central
government as well.
The last point I would make here, and it is the main one
that I want to make, is that in looking at how to spend this
money, in looking at programs, looking at where we want to go,
we need to aim at strengthening the middle class. The United
States should use its construction money to strengthen this
class. It can do so in several ways, developing an independent
business class, which is free of government control, and
strengthening an educated professional class, both of which are
the backbone of any democratic state.
In Iraq, this class has generally cut across ethnic and
sectarian lines. When you strengthen the middle class, you're
reducing these divisive, ethnic, and sectarian differences in
general--the middle class has been the glue which has held the
country together--as well as encouraging a common and more
progressive Iraqi vision. That class and the progressive vision
are still present in Iraq, but as we know, the middle class has
been weakened through Saddam's oppression and by sanctions.
I think we should be spurring economic activity in small-
and medium-sized business, which will help employment and help
develop an independent economic sector. And I would add my
voice to Dr. Khafaji's in saying we've got to be very careful
to keep a level playing field in the economy, to make sure it's
Iraqis we're empowering and hiring, not foreign companies, and
preventing the development of a small economic mafia, the sort
of thing that developed in the Soviet Union and which Saddam
developed prior to his overthrow.
We should also open the country to outside influences.
There are dozens of good ideas on how to do this in education,
through think tanks, through professional exchanges which will
help the educated class, which is the backbone of government
and civic society. The stronger this class becomes, the less
will be heard of these ethnic and sectarian differences. And
accompanying this transformation must be an attractive,
practical vision of the future for young Iraqis to develop new
careers and new opportunities. If this takes place and Iraq
becomes a dynamic economic and social place, some of these
divisive tendencies will dissipate.
This vision and these opportunities, I think, must come
soon, especially in Baghdad and the center, or ethnic and
sectarian tensions, rising opposition to the occupation, and a
deepening and spreading insurgency will end any hope for a
stable, much less a democratic, Iraq. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Marr follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Phebe Marr, Former Senior Fellow, National
Defense University; Author and Consultant, Washington, DC
Even before the occupation of Iraq there was considerable debate in
policy circles on what ``regime change'' in Iraq should mean. Some
advocated modest change--removing the head of the regime--the Saddam
family and its support system--but leaving the rest more or less intact
to run the government. This would have meant a smoother transition at
less cost to the US. But it would have left much of the Ba'th and
military apparatus in tact and, in the end, brought only minimal change
to Iraq.
A second choice, the one ultimately followed, opted for more
radical change--a thorough dismantling of the system, the better to
create something new in its place. This had the virtue of clearing the
field for new construction, but, as is now apparent, it has come with a
high price tag. Radical change has created a political, military and
psychological vacuum that has to be filled--by us--or by others we can
hastily assemble from abroad or inside Iraq. This policy has had
several unintended consequences. I would like to address two of the
most important of these.
1. Destruction of the Central Government: The first is the
destruction of the central government in a country overwhelmingly
dependent on it. As a counterbalance--and a welcome one--there has been
significant decentralization of administration, with the development of
municipal councils and governance at provincial levels. This is a
positive development, but it cannot substitute for the role of a
central government in a relatively advanced country like Iraq, and too
much decentralization, if left unchecked, can be counterproductive. It
can lead to renewed factionalism; the development of party militias and
increased control by local potentates. A balance has to be
reestablished--and soon. There are several reasons for this, which can
be demonstrated by a few statistics.
First, demographics in Iraq show that over the last several decades
much of the population has shifted to the central region. The Kurdish
population in the north has undergone drastic uprooting and
resettlement as well as gassing. The shi'ah population in the south has
been oppressed, neglected and pushed out of the country. This has left
the ``center'' top heavy. (See Annex 1) By 2003 half of Iraq's
population lived in its five central provinces. (Baghdad, Ninewah,
Anber, Salah-al-Din and Diyala). Almost a third of these live in
Baghdad. Only 13 percent of Iraq's population lives in the three
northern provinces of Dahuk, Irbil and Sulaymaniyyah; and only 32
percent in the nine southern (mainly shi'ah) provinces, including
Basra. In part because of decentralization, the northern and southern
provinces have, for the most part been quiet. With the exception of
violence against shi'ah clerics in Najaf--emanating from outside--there
has been minimal violence in these two sections of the country. By
contrast, it is the ``center'', with the bulk of Iraq's population,
that is giving us trouble, including a persistence guerrilla
insurgency. While Baghdad is not the center of the insurgency, it is
not yet under control and its governance, is a problem.
Second, under Saddam, a large percentage of the population--
especially its educated middle class--worked for the central government
directly or indirectly. They were employed in the military, the police
and the security services; they worked in the civil service,
educational institutions and the media. Much of the industrial sector
was also under government control. (See Annex 2) According to one set
of statistics, almost 17 percent of the entire work force, some 826,000
was working for the government in 1990, exclusive of the military. If
the military is added, (over 400,000) over a quarter of the population
was supported by the central government. This group is now out of work
while the government cannot function without them.
Third, not surprisingly this situation reinforced a culture of
dependency on government and starved individual incentive and
initiative. The political culture, as well as the reality on the
ground, fostered the notion that the government was the provider of
benefits, services and ``perks''. The role of the population,
especially those employed by government, was to ``obey the law'' and
follow the government's lead. These principles are clearly spelled out
in fifth and sixth grade ``civics'' textbooks, written simply so
children can understand them. One or two quotes may illustrate the
point:
``The revolution provides services to citizens-housing . . . land .
. . buildings and modern villages, . . . and services such as water and
electricity. . . . We provide books and magazines . . . television
broadcasting and cultural programs . . . and also guidance to the
public . . . .
``All loyal citizens should] protect the revolution and maintain
stability, prevent crimes, uphold the sovereignty of the law . . . and
cooperate with the internal security forces and help them perform their
duties . . .'' (N.Y. Times, April 20, 2003)
The US occupation has entirely reversed this situation. First, it
has empowered local communities for the first time in Iraq's history.
Municipalities, provincial capitals and local regions are now under
local authority, often through a rough and ready election process. This
has worked well in the north, which has been governing itself for over
a decade, and in the south, eager to exercise some self government. It
has not worked well in the center.
Second, the US has demolished much of the central government and
its pillars, thereby weakening the center. Chief among these actions
was abolishing the Iraqi anned forces. While it is true that the
occupying powers found an army already dispersed and disbanded, it made
no attempt to reconstitute this force at any level. On the contrary, it
made it clear that the ``old'' army would not be reassembled. Instead,
a new one would be built from the ground up.
Third, Iraq's notorious security services were disbanded, including
special forces and various units of the Republican Guard. These
presumably included the police. While no one would suggest reviving or
maintaining Saddam's intelligence and security forces, the absence of
these forces, as we saw during the looting, left a huge security void
the coalition was not able to fill.
Fourth, the Ba'th Party was outlawed and all members in the top
three levels of the party were banned from public employment. This may
have involved 25,000 to 30,000 members who had manned the key positions
in the massive public bureaucracy. While most party members at lower
levels, including much of the educated middle class--possibly over a
million--were in the party for career reasons and not for commitment,
many may have felt uncertain about their future. They may also have
been intimidated by the Ba'thists who were fired but threatened to
return. In any event, the bureaucracy at lower levels did not come back
to work or take charge of a new administration as apparently
anticipated. Once again, the gap has been difficult to fill.
Much of Iraq's educated middle class, the group that we need to run
the bureaucracy, to fill the security gap and to direct its education
system, is located in these central provinces, especially Baghdad. Much
of this population is now unemployed and sees little prospects of
future employment in its previous profession. Its expectations of a
better future (like our own expectations for a smooth transition, far
too high to be realistic) now are badly damaged. Will this large and
important class of Iraqis--its ``moderate, silent majority'' cooperate
with the US in building a better foundation? Or will it become
alienated, passively resist cooperation or worse, turn against us as
the militant minority is urging? There is a strong strand of
nationalism and a long tradition of anti-colonialism in Iraq stretching
back to the British mandate. This often creates strong peer pressure to
demand immediate self government. Such demands, from militants, will be
increasingly difficult to resist. But most of this middle class in the
center knows that it needs the help and support of the US--and wants
it--until it has a government that can stand on its feet and meet the
challenge of the extremists. It is the center--not the north nor the
south--yet--which is giving us trouble. We must address this problem
2. A Radical Change in the Distribution of Power. The second
consequence of the occupation has been a radical change in the
distribution of power. Again, there is much that is beneficial about
this change. The new Governing Council--and the ministers--are now
representative of the ethnic and sectarian distribution of the
population. They represent a wide diversity of political parties
ranging from religious, to nationalist to leftist. And they have
brought to power a number of exiled Iraqis with political experience
gained outside Iraq, a new phenomenon in Iraq. The most important
shift, however, is in the ethnic and sectarian balance on the Council.
By contrast, a snap shot of the Ba'athist government in 1998 showed
that at upper levels (RCC and Regional Command of the Party) at least
61 percent were Arab sunnis; only 28 percent Arab shi'ah and 6 percent
Kurds or Turkman. (See Annex 3). This imbalance has characterized most
periods in Iraq's history which has substantially underrepresented the
shi'ah, who constitute about 60 percent of the population, and the
Kurds who constitute about 17 percent. Arab sunnis are a minority of
only 15 to 20 percent, yet they have always had twice their number in
political posts and a hugely disproportionate number at the top.
The new Governing Council has reversed this distribution of power.
Of the 25 members, 13 or 52 percent--a slight majority--are shi'ah; and
five each--about 20 percent are Arab sunnis and Kurds. There is one
Christian, one Turkman and three women. At least half are exiles, not
including the Kurdish parties which had been functioning in the north;
only a minority had been living in Iraq under Saddam's rule, giving
them a smaller voice. While this change will bring fresh air from
outside and experience in dealing with more open political systems, it
may cause some resentment from insiders.
While the make-up of the council is representative, it has also
caused some trouble--mainly from those left out or whose fortunes have
been reversed. Some of this is obvious. The supporters and
beneficiaries of Saddam's regime in the sunni triangle are the most
disaffected and this area is the source of much of the continuing
insurgency. The regular army which probably expected to play some role
in the new regime is also unemployed and reportedly disaffected. The
Baghdad middle class, many of whom were nominal party members and are
used to entitlements are also unhappy with their reversal of fortune as
well. While some of these individuals are irredeemable, most need to be
given a stake in the new regime and not left out in the cold.
The heavy emphasis on religious and ethnic background in the
Governing Council also points to another change from past regimes--the
open emphasis on ethnic and sectarian politics. While always a subtext,
these affiliations are now front and center, pointing to cleavages in
society which are more pronounced today than at any previous time.
Unless they are reconciled--and reduced in importance--they could spell
trouble ahead. In any ensuing struggle for power--and there
unquestionably will be one--these factors will now be more important.
The Arab sunni community is not the only one to watch.
The shi'ah, as a whole, have accepted the new order because they
understand that they have a chance to become a political majority for
the first time in Iraq's modern history. In the past, rejectionist
policies from the shi'ah have resulted in a permanent reduction in
their political influence, an outcome most shi'ah leaders do not want
to risk again. But the shi'ah community is hardly homogeneous; even the
minority of shi'ah who want to see a more religious state are divided
among moderates, conservatives and radicals. Much of the shi'ah
community is uncomfortable with occupation and wants an earlier, rather
than a later, end to it. The shi'ah risk a political split over this
issue, particularly from militants like Muqtada-l-Sadr, a radical young
shi'ah cleric who has mobilize thousands of poor, unemployed followers
from 11Sadr City'' in Baghdad. The killing of shi'ah clerics (Abd al-
Majid al-Khu'i; Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim) has increased tensions within
the community and turned the attention of some to the ``sunni''
opposition. A further decline in the security situation--and more
killing of shi'ah luminaries--could split the community, erode support
for the Governing Council and exacerbate communal tensions. These
eventualities must be avoided at all cost.
The Kurds also represent another future fault line in the system.
Though the north has been very quiet and the Kurds are supportive of
the coalition, one reason is that the Kurdish parties have made
substantial gains in achieving their future goals. They have the
dominant voice in Kirku's municipal council, and they have also
expanded their influence--though it is not a controlling one--in Mosul.
They, of course, are anxious to preserve their gains in the new
constitution and can be expected to drive a hard bargain on self-
government in the north.
As the constitutional process proceeds, there are likely to be two
key issues that have to be resolved, and will require difficult
bargaining among Iraqis. The issues are real, and only Iraqis can
resolve them. The first is the role of the shi'ah in the state. Even if
shi'ah representatives maintain a majority of seats on any governing
body, the role of religion in state and society remains to be
determined. This is a key issue for several important shi'ah parties--
especially SCIRI and the Da'wah. Those shi'ah politicians who want a
greater role for religion will have to face many shi'ah secularists;
who do not; even more significant, they will have to face a large sunni
community, Kurd and Arab, that views religious precepts differently.
The second issue is the role of the Kurds in the state and how much
self-government Kurds will have under the constitution. While Kurds
themselves want ``federalism'', they define this as an ethnic Kurdish
area--Kurdistan--in the north, other Iraqis prefer a federalism defined
on administrative terms, e.g. based on provinces. If the former is
adopted, where and how will the boundaries of ``Kurdistan'' be
determined, particularly in mixed districts like Kirkuk? And if there
is an ethnically defined Kurdistan, does that open the door to self-
governing units in other areas, such as the shi'ah south or the ``sunni
triangle''? What happens to Baghdad and the center? What happens to the
cohesion of Iraq as a country?
Constitutional deliberations, however they come about, and the
drawing up of an electoral law on which representation will be based,
will open these issues. I believe that they will be difficult to
resolve and that the Iraqis need a reasonable time period, in a
relatively secure environment, to resolve them. They also need some
deadlines, however, to work toward without which the process will not
move to a conclusion. Since various committees of Iraqi exiles have
already examined these issues, six months ought to be ample time to
come up with a draft. If the constitution is to be discussed, modified
and ratified by an elected assembly--and to be legitimate it should
be--that could take some time. (The British ran into difficulty when
they went through this process in the 1920s and it took two years).
Once this task is accomplished, a new election and the establishment of
an assembly--and a government--should not take too much longer. About
eighteen months seems a reasonable time frame to me to accomplish these
processes. But any new government will need support, especially in the
security area, for a longer period of time, while Iraq's new army and
police take shape. Any foreign role after the new Iraqi government is
set up, however, should be low profile and subsidiary, and would be
helped by the umbrella of international support.
WHAT DOES THE US NEED TO DO?
What does the US need to do, both to address the consequences of
the changes that have taken place in Iraq since the fall of the regime,
and to facilitate a sound and effective constitutional process?
(1) Reduce and Neutralize the Insurgency. First, as all have noted,
it needs to reduce and neutralize the insurgency, easier said than
done. It seems likely, even under optimal conditions, that some level
of armed opposition will continue for some time, and if other problems
are not addressed (jobs, crime, electricity) it could grow and spread.
Dealing with the insurgency should be turned over to Iraqis as soon as
a capability can be developed, with due supervision exercised to make
certain vengeance is not enacted and old scores settled. The units of
the army that were disbanded, including some of its officer corps, can
be hired back, with proper vetting. They should be put under civilian
control. Local tribal leaders can also be used, judiciously, not only
to provide intelligence but to keep order in their regions in return
for benefits. Iraqis are far more likely to know how to identify
insurgents, to vet reliable Iraqis, and to deal with their own region
than are Americans who do not know Iraq or speak the language. Even the
idea of using local militias, under central government supervision
could be tried. However, these should be regarded as short term
solutions, to deal with a problem that is seriously threatening Iraq's
reconstruction and its conslitutional future. They should not be
allowed to derail the development of a national army, a national
intelligence service and a police force, all under civilian control.
Care must be taken that these solution do not empower tribal leaders
once again; legitimize party and private militias; empower the
``outsiders'' in the Governing Council at the expense of the insiders
and, in short, leave the new central government weak and ineffective.
(2) Strengthen the Central Government and the ``Center''. The gap
left by the collapse of the central government and the decline and
weakening of Baghdad and the center as a whole is part of the problem
of restoring law and order. While decentralization is necessary, the
process needs rebalancing, particularly in a country used to ``taking
orders'' from a central government. A restored, and healthy center,
will help prevent unraveling in the provinces. Staffing shortages need
to be filled. The new government needs to rehire Iraqis, including the
military and the bureaucracy faster, and to streamline the vetting
process. (This will also help put the population back to work). If some
unregenerated Ba'thists slip through the net, they can be weeded out in
the course of time and replaced by a new generation.
Better and closer links need to be established between the new
provincial administrations, and the central government, which should,
once again, begin to knit the country together by providing services.
However, these links should not simply function from the top down, but
the bottom up. While central government representatives need to get out
of Baghdad to the provinces, the reverse is also true. Mechanisms must
be found to bring the new provincial administrators into contact with
the central government, making certain the central government
understands their priorities.
(3) Strengthen the Middle Class. The US should use its
reconstruction money to strengthen the middle class--both an
independent business class free of government control and an educated
professional class--both of which are the backbone of any democratic
state. In Iraq, this class generally cuts across all ethnic and
sectarian boundaries and has, in the past, been the glue which has held
Iraq together and encouraged a common and more progressive Iraqi
vision. That class and that vision are still present in Iraq, but the
middle class has been weakened through Saddam's oppression and
sanctions. Spurring economic activity and small and medium business
will help employment and develop an independent economic sector. We
should keep a level playing field while we privatize and prevent the
emergence of a new economic mafia. Opening the country to outside
influences--in education, through think tanks; through professional
exchanges--will help the educated class which is the backbone of
government and civic society. The stronger this class becomes, the less
will be heard of ethnic and sectarian differences. Accompanying the
transformation must be an attractive, practical vision of the future
for young Iraqis--in new careers and new opportunities.
This vision and these opportunities must come soon--especially in
Baghdad and the center--or ethnic and sectarian tensions; rising
opposition to occupation; and a deepening and spreading insurgency will
end any hope for a stable, much less a democratic Iraq.
ANNEX 1
Distribution of Iraq's Population by Region--1977-2002
(In Percentages)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Governorate 1977 1987 2002
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Central Governorates:
Total 47.5 48.8 50.8
Baghdad 26.5 23.5 32.0
Ninawa, Salah al-Din, Anbar, Diyala 21.0 24.4 18.8
Southern Governorates:
Total 35.8 36.0 31.8
Basra 8.4 5.3 8.1
Babil, Wasit, Karbala, Najaf, 27.4 30.7 23.7
Qadisiyya, Maysan, Muthanna, Dhi-
Qar
Northern Governorates:
Total 16.5 16.0 17.4
Ta`mim 4.1 3.7 3.9
Dahuk, Arbil, Sulaimaniyya 12.4 12.3 13.5
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sources: Republic of Iraq, Ministry of Planning, AAS 1978, p. 26; AAS
1992, p. 43. London Economist, Economic Intelligence Unit, Country
Profile, Iraq, 2002-2003. (London) p. 18.
Taken from Phebe Marr, The Modern Histroy of Iraq (2nd edition)
(Boulder, Colo.; Westview, 2003), p. 309.
ANNEX 2
Civilian Government Employment
(Selected Years)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1952 1968 1972 1977 1987 1990
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Work Force (1000s) n.a. 2324 2776 3010 4500 4900
Gov't Employees (1000s) 85 277 386 666 828 826
Percent of Work Force n.a. 12% 14% 21% 18.4% 16.8%
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Faleh Abdul Jabbar, ``The State, Society, Clan, Party and Army in Iraq,'' From Storm to Thunder (Tokyo:
Institute of Developing Economies) March, 1998, p. 12.
Taken from Phebe Marr, The Modern Histroy of Iraq (2nd edition) (Boulder, Colo.; Westview, 2003), p. 309.
ANNEX 3
Ethnic and Sectarian Background of Political Leaders, 1948-1998
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arab Kurd/ \1\ Other/
Sunnis Arab Shi'a Turkmen Unknown Total
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Old Regime 1948-
58:
Upper level \2\ 24 (61%) 8 (21%) 6 (15% 1 ( 3%) 39
)
Lower level \3\ 17 (31%) 23 (43%) 12 (22% 2 ( 4%) 54
)
Both levels 41 (44%) 31 (33%) 18 (19% 3 ( 3%) 93
)
Military Regimes
1958-68:
Upper level \4\ 30 (79%) 6 (16%) 2 ( 5% .......... 38
)
Lower level \5\ 57 (46%) 43 (35%) 16 (13% 8 ( 6%) 124
)
Both levels 87 (54%) 49 (30%) 18 (11% 8 ( 5%) 162
)
The Ba'th Regime
1977-78:
Upper level \5\ 10 (48%) 6 (29%) ....... 5 (24%) 21
Lower level \6\ 13 (52%) 4 (16%) 6 (24% 2 ( 8%) 25
)
Both levels 26 (57%) 10 (22%) 6 (13% 7 (15%) 46
)
1986-1987:
Upper level 9 (53%) 6 (35%) 1 ( 6% 1 ( 6%) 17
)
Lower level 8 (38%) 4 (19%) 6 (29% 3 (14%) 21
)
Both levels 17 (45%) 10 (26%) 7 (18% 4 (11%) 38
)
1998:
Upper level 11 (61%) 5 (28%) 1 ( 6% 1 ( 6%) 18
)
Lower level 7 (26%) 8 (30%) 3 (11% 9 (33%) 27
)
Both levels 18 (40%) 13 (29%) 4 ( 9% 10 (22%) 45
)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Includes Christians.
\2\ Includes the regent, prime ministers, deputy prime ministers, and
the ministers of interior, defense, finance and foreign affairs.
\3\ Includes all other miniosters.
\4\ Includes the president in place of the regent.
\5\ Includes the RCC and the Regional Command of the Party, (RL).
\6\ All ministers not on the RCC and the RL.
Sources: Phebe Marr, ``Iraq's Leadership Dilemma,'' Middle East Journal
24 (1970), p. 288; Amatzia Baram, ``The Ruling Political Elite in
Ba'thi Iraq, 1968-1986,'' IJMES, 21 (1989), appendix 1; unpublished
data collected by the author.
Taken from Phebe Marr, The Modern Histroy of Iraq (2nd edition)
(Boulder, Colo.; Westview, 2003), p. 309.
The Chairman. Thank you again, Dr. Marr, for your
testimony. We've appreciated it at each stage along the way as
we've been visiting as a committee.
Let me commence the questioning and suggest we have a 10-
minute round for Senators. I'll begin by indicating that as I
heard you, Mr. Khouri, you mentioned, probably accurately, that
for 90 years many people in Iraq, and perhaps in other
countries as well, have been raising issues as to how life
might change for the better. As a matter of fact, they have not
been able to make much of a breakthrough in 90 years. Some of
it may have been due to imposition by Europeans, some due to
home-grown Iraqis, but nevertheless it is a rather dismal
prospect.
As Dr. Marr has pointed out, it could be argued that the
United States came along without going into the rationale for
whether war should have occurred in Iraq or not in the first
place. Nevertheless, one did. One of the two alternatives that
you suggested was a rather limited outcome: namely the top
leadership is removed, somebody else continues on, and
therefore this yields a fair degree of stability. We don't have
occupation, insurgency, because essentially somebody's left to
handle that. However, that probably would not have met the
point of the 90 years. It is not clear that that would lead to
many resolutions of those same questions.
What we decided to do was, as Dr. Marr said, more radical.
Central government is gone, civil servants are gone, a lot of
things are gone, including the army, so it's an open terrain.
Now in the midst of that, you say quite correctly that perhaps
Americans don't understand the cultural things. We need to
understand these better. We keep talking about liberty and
freedom, talking about individual rights and privileges. You
make the point that well, after all, Iraqis think more of
family, of tribes, of collective situations. This may be true,
but nevertheless it is sort of daunting if you are an American
looking at this question today trying to think through human
rights, democracy, freedom of religion, all these terms that
were used this morning and probably will be used this
afternoon, in addition to religion itself.
We had Senator Brownback, our colleague, pointing out or
asking, almost pressing, as you recall, Ambassador Bremer to
guarantee that there was not going to be an Islamic
constitution, and that there was not going to be a tyranny to
begin with in this whole process. For many of us that would
make democracy rather suspect. Although people can say
democracy is democracy, many have said that one of the problems
of democracy in the Middle East may be thwe possibility of a
``one time through.'' You have one vote, the new rulers are
installed, and that's it, school's out, no more chitchat
afterwards. That would be a great disappointment.
So in the midst of all of this, the constitutional group
has been appointed. Some of you have questioned how they got
there and the legitimacy of the product if there is not more of
an election or selection of these people, and that's important.
Ambassador Bremer, if he were here, might say that one of the
problems is first of all the need to conduct a valid census to
determine who is eligible to vote in Iraq. How do you do it? By
districts or by tribe or by sector? How is the constituent of
this constitution formed? These are important questions.
Clearly there would be some differences and technically it's
not clear how you get there.
In the midst of this, as Dr. Marr points out, and as all of
us have been saying, time is going by rapidly. Occupation is
resented and the pressures therefore upon Americans or whoever
is there--if we get other countries and so forth--appears to
increase as Iraqis become impatient with these people hanging
around while they want to get on with life. And yet, at the
same time, most of you counsel that we should take it a little
bit slower, and make sure that the product of the constitution
is done well, that the legitimacy of the elections that follow
is assured and so forth, that the constitution at least
literally geographically is done well, not made into something
that can be tangled or disentangled and what have you.
To say the least, this is a daunting task as you pile one
stipulation on top of another. In the midst of this Congress is
being asked to vote for $87 billion with these hearings as a
background. Now, in part, $64 or $65 billion, as pointed out,
is to support American troops for another year. If they're
going to leave we wouldn't need to spend the money. The other
$20-some billion is literally a gift to the people of Iraq. It
is no more or less than that.
Some of our group are talking about lending the money,
getting stipulations, using collateral and so forth. Yet
essentially you heard Ambassador Bremer rejecting this because
he says Iraqis already are plagued by these debts of Saddam,
$150 billion or $200 billion or whatever it may be, and some of
the claimants, other countries, still want their money. In
other words, the only protection Iraqis have right now is us.
We'll have to talk seriously about how we approach the
Russians, French, Germans, Kuwaitis, a whole lot of people,
about forgiving a whole lot of debt.
Otherwise, whatever we're discussing here is overhung by a
huge amount of debt. Countries that want their hooks into the
country to get their money and are not going to be all that
fastidious about the rudiments of democracy that we're talking
about right now, might be willing to settle for a regime that
fits their national interests, whatever they may be. So this,
without putting too fine a point on it, is sort of a one-time
opportunity for Iraq. No country has ever had such an
opportunity before, in which literally a lot of dead wood has
been cleared away. The question is, in a short period of time,
while American money is coming in, in essence to provide lights
that never were there, well beyond anything Saddam had to light
up the country, as well as sewers and water and roads and all
the rest of it, so that there will be some semblance of
possibility for economic improvement, and so that Iraqis can
focus on a constitution, on elections, and on something that is
tangible.
I would just say finally that Senator Hagel, Senator Biden
and I participated in the world economic forum panels. We were
all on different panels. There were always members of the Arab
League on the panels aswell as other people who were very
interesting. We anticipated that a lot of these people at the
forum might gang up on us as the representatives of the United
States. Europeans, U.N. types, Arabs, all might be after us.
Surprisingly, what we found was that most Arabs came to the
conclusion that there aren't Arab democracies. Democracy just
hasn't made it in the Arab world. They criticized themselves
for their lack of any example of this whatsoever.
I make that point because of the glib thought that somehow
people have been yearning for democracy all these years, it's
just under the covers and all you need to do is finally give it
a chance. That's the reason for this hearing. There is
skepticism in the Senate as to whether democracy can occur at
all in Iraq or if what arises has any bearing on democracy.
There would be some form of governance, as there has been for
90 years. There have been monarchs and then dictators. Maybe
there will be theocracies next; we don't know.
Is democracy possible? Is there at this point in the life
blood of the country a yearning for compromise, for listening
to others, a sense of individual rights and liberty or at least
something pretty close to that, as well as some reverence for
the role of women in all of this? Very tough questions, I
think, given the 90 years that we've been discussing it.
I want any of you to, give me an optimistic view. What is
there going to be at the end of the trail of this, after all
the money is spent and all the difficulty has been sustained?
Probably throughout all of this, despite our best hopes,
insurgency will continue. We don't know from where. Iraqis
killing Iraqis, quite apart from Americans, totally irrational,
except in the minds of the killers, who presumably know what
they are doing and who they want to kill. Who can give a ray of
optimism to this situation? Yes, Mr. Khafaji.
Dr. al-Khafaji. Mr. Chairman, I know that anyone who
ventures to say that he will give the response is a very tall
order, so I don't--they are very, very----
Senator Biden. We Americans are easy. Just tell us you love
us and we're OK.
Dr. al-Khafaji [continuing]. And the story might not be
pleasant. In 1958, sir, the first Arab woman minister was
appointed in Iraq, and for the first time in the history of any
Arab and Middle Eastern country, there was in the so-called law
of personal status for the first time the equality of women and
men, which is contrary, an explicit contradiction to the text
of the Koran, was stated in Iraqi law. The United States
opposed that regime and fiercely fought it as pro-Soviet and it
was not a pro-Soviet regime, certainly it wasn't a pro-Soviet
regime.
I'm saying this not in order to scratch the wounds. The
United States is a leading country, therefore you might not
remember that, and if I were an American, I wouldn't remember
that, that's a little detail. But for the Iraqis themselves,
for the collective memory, the skeptics have points to score.
Now I know, as many of you know, that many will use it to
manipulate it in order to steer some kind of anti-Americanism,
and I, as thousands upon thousands Iraqis have, in our
conscience have always distinguished firmly between a
repugnant, even some kind of racist anti-Americanism and what I
call a healthy critique, a friendly critique of U.S. policy.
In that sense, please have patience with us. When in April
and May, during the euphoria of the fall of Saddam, a cab
driver, many actually, cab drivers in Baghdad, and I'm quoting
literal examples, would tell you, as much as this might look
naive, that this whole war is a conspiracy between Saddam
Hussein and the United States. And when you ask why, they tell
you because all the Ba'athists are in place that was under
retired General Garner and his team, all the Ba'athists are in
place. They will do to us what they had done to us in 1991 when
they encouraged us to revolt, now they are encouraging us to
oppose, and eventually the Americans will withdraw and Saddam
would come back.
Now, this is something that goes deep into the conscience
and the hearts of people is that in 1974, sir, a question could
be very justifiably asked, how can Portugal go into democracy,
they have never had traditions of democracy before. That was
Salazar, and the same could be said about Franco's Spain, the
same could be said about Eastern Asia, the same could be said
about Eastern Europe. And duly so 50 years ago a standard
textbook in political theory would ascribe that to Catholicism,
that was what we read in the 1950s, Catholicism is resistant to
democracy, that's why Latin America, France, and Portugal are
not democratic. Then orthodox Christianity, that's why Eastern
Europe and Russia, and then we read about Confucianism, that's
why Eastern Asia, simply because if you are democratic, you
only plunge into democracy when you had no prior democracy.
Once you are democratic there is no likelihood of a democratic
nation turning into tyranny, so it's quite understandable that
countries who go into democracy have no prior institutions
about democracy.
We have to deal with this. Times have changed and many in
the U.S. Congress and the administration have realized that.
The stability that my esteemed colleague, Dr. Marr, with whom I
have so much agreements and also disagreements, with due
respect, the stability is the residue of the cold war era when
the idea was to reduce this region into a supplier of oil. Oil
requires stability. Stability requires non-empowerment of the
people because this might fall into the hands of our arch
enemy, the Soviet Union. Let's keep tyrannies in place rather
than open up the Pandora's box that might bring us the enemies,
and even and I am proud that I was involved in the workshops of
2002 and in the IRDC, the Iraq Reconstruction and Development
Council.
And we saw that with our own eyes, and you saw it in the
front page of the New York Times when a Ba'athist minister was
imposed by the Coalition Authority to be the new Minister of
Health and Ambassador Bodine, who was the No. 2 under retired
General Garner, was telling me, well, the doctors have imposed
their nominee, a non-Ba'athist, and my reply was simple, yes,
they will impose that, but do you want the Iraqis to come out
and say, we imposed our nominee despite the United States or
with the help of our allies. They forced the Coalition
Authority to take their Ba'athist nominee.
The point is this, once you go into ideological debates,
either from a total blanket resolution to keep each and
everybody in place, or to remove each and every brick from the
old regime out, then we are the victims of it, because how can
you steer a mid-way, you steer it by empowering the people, by
going into the ministries, trusting the people, and asking
them, who was corrupt or criminal and who was not, and not by
decreeing from the Presidential palace that any member belong
to this or that rank or above will be removed or anyone in that
or this place would be removed. By trusting the people we can
go into that.
But I can tell you that Iraqis who in the first month
produced 100, and now we have 120 dailies in Baghdad, despite
the insecurity, this is chaos but it's a beautiful chaos, it
tells you how much are Iraqis yearning for free expression.
When people have no single authority religious within the
communities, when many people tell you that, with due respect,
I have nothing to do with them, when the supreme and I'm not a
strong believer when the supreme musted of the Shi'i says that
all we want is to say that the constitution will respect the
enlightened teachings of the religions of God and according to
Islam, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are the recognized
religions of God.
I don't think, sir--I know that I've taken much of your
time--but in my closing, I don't think that democracy is
democracy because and I wrote that several years ago that we do
not expect Jeffersonian democracy to flourish in the day after,
but even in Jeffersonian democracy, the African-Americans did
not get the vote in the 1700s, the women did not get the right
to vote at that time. It's when tomorrow when a Christian,
respectable Iraqi would run for the Presidency, then we will go
into the fight to amend a constitution that might now have
reference to Islam.
The point is this: Can we force the inviolable rights of
the individual in a new constitution? I think millions of
Iraqis will fight for that. Can we then move from that, use
that as a basis in 3 years to fight for the right that, yes,
you said we take the teachings of Islam, but this is a
Christian who wants to run for our President, would that do?
And I think this is how we will build it. Europe didn't go into
democracy on the first day that they established democracy.
Women got the rights in the 1920s, 1930s, and some countries in
the 1950s, and I think we are now, I wouldn't say in a better
place, but at least in an equal place, so just give us the
chance.
The Chairman. I'll return to my question later on, but I
want to recognize my colleague, Senator Biden.
Senator Biden. Thank you. These are among the best hearings
that we have. We have hearings for two purposes, one for
oversight and one to learn. In one sense, we're learning from
oversight hearings but we're demanding answers to determine
whether or not commitments made or requests being made makes
sense and are consistent with what the Congress wants to do and
the American people. These hearings are--I find them the most
interesting because I learn the most with such competent and
prominent people with diverging views.
I'm going to resist what at least two of you know because
you've been kind enough to come to my office repeatedly and let
me question you and seek your input and knowledge. I'm going to
refrain from doing what I would intellectually enjoy the most,
pursuing some of these broader questions, and try to be a
little bit pedantic, maybe my constituents might say a little
more practical for a moment, and I want to raise with you what
the flashpoints of the moment are, the decisions that the
President of the United States has to make now, the decisions
that the Congress has to make now, and get your input. And in
the interest of time I'd like you all to be neither
professorial or senatorial, and that is, try to give me a yes/
no answer or as close as you can get to it. I realize there is
no real clear yes or no, and I would, if we have time, come
back and have you fill in, back-fill, your rationale for why
you would reach the conclusion that you stated.
There are many of us who have been talking about
internationalizing this effort. Now, none of that goes to any
of the points that any of you raised here. But right now we
have a Secretary of State at the United Nations trying to get a
consensus from the Security Council that may be totally
irrelevant to what the people in Iraq are concerned about. It
may be relevant, it may impact positively, it may impact
negatively, but the point is, at this moment, the first
flashpoint, if you will, is whether or not the schools of
thought and they're divergent but I'm going to just broadly
categorize them in two camps. As Samuel Clemens once said,
``all generalizations are false, including this one.''
There are those who suggest that if the international
community via the United Nations were brought in in a
meaningful way, they would only be an impediment in moving
toward self-rule for Iraqis, getting the lights on, getting the
wells dug, getting the canals cleaned, getting the
infrastructure up and running, and they would be an impediment.
There are others who argue that whether or not they may slow it
up is debatable but there's a need to take the U.S. stamp off
of Iraq, and that is that right now there's a need to change
the complexion, if you will, literally and figuratively, of the
occupying force so it's not a U.S. occupying force alone, and
further, that there is a need in order to establish legitimacy
and get help from the rest of the world to bring the rest of
the world into the deal in making decisions.
Some of the people we're talking about bringing in have not
been particularly friendly to the Iraqi people over the last 90
years. The French, for example, who are our antagonists at the
moment at the United Nations on the details here, are folks who
have had experience or that the Iraqi people have had
experience with. The United Nations has not been particularly
popular with the Iraqi people or in Iraq for various reasons.
And so the irony is the very people that some of us are saying
we need to participate in this process to get a world consensus
are folks who are not particularly popular on the streets,
whether it's in Mosul or Baghdad or anywhere else in Iraq.
So here are the things I'd like you to respond to if you
can. Is there any advantage for the Iraqi people or in a very
way selfish sense, from my perspective as a U.S. Senator, for
the United States of America to change the complexion of the
occupying force while we are attempting to Iraqize--the phrase
one of you used--the military force and the police forces of
Iraq. That is not able to be well, I'm assuming none of you
think that's able to be done immediately, that this very day to
turn over to the Iraqi people, whomever that would be, say you
take care of the military, you take care of the police, we're
leaving.
I don't know many arguing that, so everybody's
acknowledging there's some transition here, there's some
transition time to get this as rapidly as we can to an Iraqi-
elected government, an Iraqi-run police department, an Iraq-run
military, Iraq-run security forces, right? Is that what we're
saying? So it is an advantage or disadvantage or is it
irrelevant that while that process is moving, how quickly or
slowly is debatable, that it's good to have other forces, other
uniforms, French, German, Portugese, Russian, Pakistani,
Indian, forces standing on street corners or standing in
barracks in Iraq? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Anyone?
Yes.
Dr. Feldman. Senator Biden, that will help us in Brussels;
it will help us in Berlin; it will not help us in Baghdad. The
bottom line is that international troops will be no better able
to control the insurgence that exists or the foreign terrorist
who are there than are our troops, because the key to
controlling them is local intelligence and international troops
won't have any advantage over our troops in doing that.
Similarly, in terms of getting the lights back on, there
will be some time transferring power to the U.N. Their help is
valuable but there is no reason to think they can do it better
than our troops can do it. On the other hand, it will help
repair some of the breaches in our international relationships
that have come about over the course of the last year and it
will eventually in the long run help the price tag for the
American taxpayers.
So there are definite advantages to proceeding with that
course but they are not going to be felt on the ground
primarily in Iraq.
Senator Biden. Does anyone disagree with that?
Mr. Khouri. I would agree generally, but I would say there
is a significant advantage to internationalizing it because it
would completely change the climate and the perception of the
United States' role in Iraq and I think if you were to do this,
which I would urge you to do, I would urge the U.S. Government,
is I think it must be coupled with a more clear American
explicit explanation of what it is that the United States would
like to see happen on the democratization issue, not only in
Iraq but in the whole region, because one of your problems is
not just that you're an occupying force in Iraq militarily
occupying Iraq, but people suspect and are concerned about
American motives in the region, and remember Colin Powell last
year, at the U.N. I think, said that the United States wants
to--I don't remember the word he used--reshape the Middle East
I think was the word he used, or redraw the region or something
like that.
You know, we've been through this film before. We've been
through this film several times, not only in the 20th century,
we've been through it with Napoleon, we've been through it with
Alexander the Great in the third century B.C., so this is
nothing new to us. So I think it's critically important to get
the United States out of this situation it's in right now as
being an occupying power that has motives to change the values
and systems of people in the region. That's how the United
States is perceived and internationalizing it would help that.
Senator Biden. There's a lot to discuss and let me go to
the next question because my time is going to be up. A debate
at the United Nations now I'm oversimplifying again, but to
make the larger point. We're saying constitution first, vote
second. Others are saying vote first, constitution second. The
French position is right now get an elected government, even
though I don't know how you do that since there's no voter
rolls, there's no way to make that judgment initially, but
vote, then write a constitution, vote for constituent assembly,
then write a constitution.
We're saying write a constitution, then have a vote, not
only on the constitution but on the constituent assembly. I
realize there's permeations of each of those things, but
generically we understand what we're talking about, rapidly go
to a vote--whether rapidly means weeks, months, 2 months, 3
months--then draft a constitution, or do the reverse? Yes, sir.
Dr. al-Khafaji. Sir, I think that, and it's in my written
comments, when we say, I think many Iraqis say in 6 months we
can have a constituent assembly. The constituent assembly by
definition would not be the permanent elected government of
Iraq, but it will give a semblance of legitimacy. Do we have--
--
Senator Biden. How would you do that constituent assembly?
Would you have just a nationwide vote, not based on provinces
or anything, putting people up in slates for each of the
offices? How do you get that?
Dr. al-Khafaji. Yes, sir. The one non-interim constitution
that we have in our history as a modern state is the one that
was adopted in 1926 after a constituent assembly was elected in
that tribal, at the time, peasant society. Now we have a
country which is 70 percent, 72 percent, to be precise, urban.
I do not claim that the population censuses are precise, but at
least from the rations of the Food for Oil program each and
every family has a register with the Ba'athist government order
to receive the cards, so we can do that on a national level.
There will be distortions, yes, but it will at least have the
claim to legitimacy much more than a body that's not elected.
My point is this: Does the United States have to cede
sovereignty to that constituent assembly? No. That will be a
transitional government. The United States will state what it
does not, the red lines that it does not want Iraq to cross
beyond, aggressiveness, weapons of mass destruction, the type
of authoritarian government, and through that, it can reduce
its military presence without eliminating it altogether, and I
think as the poll that you mentioned, Senator, and many of the
distinguished speakers today, I think that through that Iraqis
no Iraqi, with a few exceptions want the Americans to leave
now. The point is that to internationalize the economic
decisionmaking----
Senator Biden. No, look, I understand that. I'm a plain old
politician and I'm trying to figure out, I'm sitting in my
state that's in chaos, forget Iraq, and I'm trying to figure
out how I hold an election, just the mechanics, unless you take
the existing constitution in 1928. Wasn't there a constitution
in 1953?
Dr. al-Khafaji. In 1958.
Senator Biden. In 1958. Unless you take one of those, it's
a very practical thing. We went through 200 years of debating
about whether it was one man, one vote, in Baker versus Carr to
determine whether or not it's based on geography, based on
population. So there's a very practical question: Who makes the
judgment as to how you break up the country? Is everyone
elected at large? Do you elect 200 people at large? Do you
elect people by district? If you elect them by district, what
districts do you choose?
Dr. Marr. Senator, you choose the districts that are there.
We have to remember that Iraq is an organized country----
Senator Biden. So take it exactly as that. That's the
easy----
Dr. Marr [continuing]. There are districts. The Kurds did
this. It may have been messy----
Senator Biden. No, I got it. I'm taking too long. So what
you're saying is, take the existing political structure, not as
it relates to values and laws, but as it relates to divisions
of constituent assemblies, how you would choose it, and start
from there. Is that what you're saying?
Dr. al-Khafaji. Yes, sir.
Senator Biden. OK, that's important.
Dr. al-Khafaji. As for the internationalization of
security----
Senator Biden. No, no, no. I'm going to be just a very
simple, plain old local county councilman here. I'm trying to
figure out how you do this because I've learned from my
experience in Kosovo, which is different, in Bosnia,
Afghanistan, this is one house at a time, one neighborhood at a
time, all these grand schemes don't mean a damn thing if there
is not some very practical ability to be able to implement
whatever it is you say you're attempting to do.
Noah, excuse me for using first names. You're all doctors,
so if I say doctor, you'll all answer.
Dr. Feldman. Please, Senator. Bottom line, talking basic
politics.
Senator Biden. Yes.
Dr. Feldman. An election held quickly gives a huge
advantage to the two people, the two groups that can organize
the fastest.
Senator Biden. Absolutely, you got it.
Dr. Feldman. They are the Ba'athists, who can easily
reorganize, and Islamists, especially more extreme Islamists.
So a fast election prior to a constitution is a very high-risk
proposition. It's not one that I would entertain lightly.
Senator Biden. But obviously there's disagreement on that.
Dr. al-Khafaji. Well I have been opposing the Islamists and
the Ba'athists much longer than I think many others have been,
so it would be more terrifying to me than many others about
spending the rest of my life in exile, sir. First, we are
talking about at least what is suggested to you is something
like 6 months, 6 months with improvements, slight improvements
in the everyday life of Iraqis would not bring that likelihood.
This is what we have been terrified by all kinds of
tyrannies from Syria to Iraq, et cetera, that a regime creates
a void and then terrifies you, if you do not vote for me, then
the Muslim brothers or et cetera will come in. I think that
this is not the case. If the majority of the population were
pro-Ba'athist now we wouldn't have two dead Americans per day,
and I really feel sad for each and every drop of blood. We
would have seen hundreds in a country the size of Iraq the way
you described it.
Senator Biden. I understand your point.
Dr. al-Khafaji. What I think is this, that in the 6 months
if you have some kind of slight improvement, at least in the
expectations of Iraqis, then we would not have will there be
Islamists? Yes, there will be Islamists, and it's not good that
we just shut our eyes and pretend they are not, but we have
seen the Islamists that have been working with the Coalition
Authority and we have seen Islamists----
Senator Biden. I don't have a problem with this. I'm just
trying to figure out practically how you'd go about it. Last
question I have: My latent fear here is, to use an overused
metaphor that everybody's been using in the last year and a
half, that a perfect storm is brewing here, and the perfect
storm is the neoconservatives who are going to want to get the
hell out of here as quick as they can, the liberals in the
Democratic Party are going to want to get out as quick as they
can, and the American people generically are going to want to
get out as quick as they can. And the irony of all ironies is
all those folks in the Middle East who think we don't want you
to have sovereignty are absolutely dead wrong.
There is going to be, I predict to you, if something
doesn't change quickly, a desire to confer sovereignty on
whoever will stand up and say, I'm Iraqi, because the pull to
get out of Iraq is going to be so strong. And Iraqis are going
to get what they wish for. This ain't an imperial nation. This
ain't one who is going to want to hang around there, and the
American people understand oil isn't enough. This was never
about oil. There ain't that much money there. It's costing us
more money than all the money we can possibly get if we took
every damn oil well and every bit of the oil revenue for the
next 5 years.
And so you're going to get what you asked for. You're going
to get, my concern is you're going to get the American public
from left and right saying, get out. OK, Saddam's gone, done,
we're leaving, on our way. You're going to watch American
troops leave here more rapidly than you can possibly imagine.
That is my prediction to you and I'm not a bad politician. I
may not be as good as I think I am on foreign policy but I'm
pretty good at American politics. I'm telling you what's coming
if we don't get this straight.
Now here's what you all are saying. You're saying three
things. Look, you need Iraqi intelligence to be able to figure
out how to deal with this. More foreign troops aren't going to
matter, and by the way, you're stating the obvious truth.
Iraqis know the neighborhood better than we know the
neighborhood.
Now how do you get that Iraqi army, that Iraqi police
force, and that Iraqi business establishment? The business
establishment of the Iraqis that existed before existed
essentially at the sufferance of Saddam Hussein. You wanted an
export license, you went to Saddam Hussein. You wanted to be in
business, you went to Saddam Hussein. So now we're saying,
look, here's what we're going to do, we're going to go out
there and make sure that the Iraqis are able to contract, the
Iraqis can bid on building the road, building, importing this
or that or whatever and not foreign business. I think that's a
very good thing, but who are the ones ready, as Noah said,
relative to the parties?
What I'm looking for from you guys, and I know you can't do
it right now and I've gone way over my time and the chairman,
because he's so nice to me has allowed me to do it, but I'm
getting Mr. Brownback upset, I suspect, because he's got some
even better questions than I have. But what I'm looking for,
and you may not be able to do it now, but I'm looking for
practically, you are sitting in Iraq today, Rami, you tell me,
not this moment, you tell me who you put in charge of the
police force. Who is it? Don't generically tell me let's move
it quickly. I went and visited those guys. They're the
Katzenjammer Kids. They could not arrest their grandmother.
This is an absolutely dysfunctional police force and it
always was dysfunctional. You never had a police force. Look,
the reason why there was peace and security for people walking
the street in Iraq, if there was a murder in an apartment
complex everyone was told to come down to the police station,
no one went to the complex. And if they didn't show up, Saddam
shot them. I can maintain order that way no problem, but the
idea there was a police force with investigative capability,
with an intelligence component, it didn't exist, it didn't
exist.
And so I have a very practical concern here. I'm on Noah's
team. I've been scarred by Kosovo and Bosnia. I learned one
thing: early elections in Bosnia, guess what? All the factions
won, the most radical of each of the factions, the Bosniaks,
the Serbs, and the Croats, the most extreme elements of each of
those took power and that was it. We did a little better in
Kosovo. We kicked the can down the road. It didn't quite happen
that way. We gave other democratic institutions a little more
time to move along, not perfect, better, better.
So we're sitting here now and we're saying, let's turn over
the army, let's turn over the police, let's turn over the
business, and I'm sitting here thinking to myself, well, I tell
you what, if we're going to do that that quickly, and we may
have to practically, if we do that that quickly, and I'm not
sure I'm going to vote $87 billion for that, because I think
the chances of that succeeding are about as likely as this cup
of coffee levitating and coming down and sitting on your table.
I pray I'm wrong, I pray I'm wrong, but listening to the advice
you all gave me before we went in and by the way, I want to say
for the record, Dr. Marr, what you said today, you said a month
before we went in, and you were right then and you're right
now. Rami, you said 2 months before we went in that these
things were going to happen, and you were right then and I
think you're right now.
But I'm not even going to let you respond until after my
friend from Kansas gets to speak, but I'm looking personally,
just Joe Biden, I'm looking for practical ways in which, if
you're sitting there in Baghdad in Bremer's spot, how do you
turn over the power. Whether Bremer wants to or not, let me
tell you, the American people want to get the hell out. They
want out.
Everyone in the rest of the world thinks we like being a
superpower. No one where I live, no one where I represent likes
being a superpower. Superpower to them is like being the big
brother in a family of 12 where the father holds you
responsible for every single mistake the 11 kids make when he's
away. They don't like it. They don't want one of their kids
over there. They don't give a damn about it. They want their
kids home.
So we better be really careful here about how we do this
because we're going to end up with having created chaos in the
region, Iran in the driver's seat, and a Turkish Islamic
republic reconsidering their options, and the Pakistanis
deciding, whoa, wait a minute, we have a better deal another
way. Anyway, I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Well, thank you very much, Senator Biden. Let
me just say that the Senator has voiced many of the
frustrations that many committee members feel about all of
this. I think in fairness, the Senator from Delaware, the
Senator from Kansas, who is still with us, and myself will
probably still be here trying to think through how the Iraqi
people might come to a better conclusion as opposed to
colleagues maybe from the left, right, wherever, who are ready
to bail out.
We are sort of a solid center of the situation who believe
that we really must work constructively. We therefore
appreciate your hearing us even as we hear you, because the
injustice of all of this seems to be overwhelming. Having
argued with people all morning as to why America should give
$20 billion to Iraqis and to listen to what it seems to be
consummate ingratitude for the whole business is difficult, but
nevertheless life goes on. And so we will continue with the
hearing, and Senator Brownback.
Senator Brownback. You couldn't put it any better.
Senator Biden. Just one piece of humor here. Dr. Marr, when
you and I were--I'm older than you, but when we were a little
younger and you were a young female professor, they used to
talk about women having to vent a little bit. Well, you know,
men do it too sometimes. That's what you're witnessing here,
OK?
Senator Brownback. I thank you, Mr. Chairman, it's a good
hearing and it's a good discussion here and I particularly
appreciate Senator Biden's thoughts on this too. It is
interesting, I was in the hearing this morning, and I'm on
Appropriations so I'm going through that set of hearings, and
it is, as Joe says, on the one hand, people saying $87 billion
to do this and then you're saying, yeah, and we hate you for it
or we don't like you for it or we think you've got illicit
motives for it and it does represent a confusing set of stimuli
involved in the process that you're presenting to us.
Nevertheless, as the good Senator from Indiana says, this is
where we are, and he's right.
And I would point out to those of you here and I've had Dr.
Marr testify in front of me on the subcommittee, we had it in
the region before this committee had considered it--for a long
period of time--the issue of Iraq. We had the Iraq Liberation
Act before that period of time. We were stewing and churning,
how do we deal with Saddam, we had all these defense forces
positioned in Saudi Arabia, maintaining no-fly zones, we had
issues going on in the north. We've been churning on this for a
goodly period of time and if any of you in going back to the
region could communicate to people that we have nothing but the
most altruistic of motives involved here, I hope you could
convey that to people in your own personal experiences and in
the places that you speak of.
We don't want Iraq. That is I don't. You could poll a
million Kansans if you want to and I don't know if you'll find
one that says that we want that. That is not our desire, but we
do desire to move forward a set of ideals because that's been
the nature of us as a country. And at the root of it is our
notion of liberty and that we stand for liberty and it's a
foundational principle for us and it's one that we stand for
for our people and we've stood for around the world for other
people and when we see others that don't have it we desire it
for them. We abhor chains, for us or for anybody else. And
that's really what motivates us more than anything else.
I want to go at a narrow issue and appeal to you. I heard
your testimony, I've read portions of it, I've read some of
your writings, and that's on the issue of religious freedom,
religious liberty. I think this is a central issue in the
founding of a constitution in this country. And I want to back
up just a minute on this. I mentioned this this morning,
Senator Lugar mentioned it in is comments as well, but I think
this really deserves us looking at this ``y'' in the road and
determining which way we as the United States want to proceed
forward in pressing this issue. We go into Iraq on the issue of
terrorism. We pass the Iraq Liberation Act on dealing with
Saddam Hussein, we call for regime change in that, 1998, passed
by Congress. This is really an issue started by Congress,
signed into law by President Clinton.
So we're here where we are today. The President engages
this policy, engages it after September 11, it probably didn't
have the legs to move prior to September 11. After September
11, we changed as a country. We decided we're not going to let
the terrorists come to us, we're going to go to them, and we're
going to deal with regimes that allow terrorists to operate
freely on their soil. So we're involved and we're here.
We go into Iraq and one of the key issues of why we go into
Iraq is to say we want to spread democracy and open societies
in the region, saying that this region is the one--apparently I
haven't quantified this--but one of the most resistant to
democratization and open societies in the world
Rami I think you mentioned it, here we are in the, what,
third generation or 300 years talking about this, the same
questions you had 300 years ago. Why?
In Iraq, part of going in then was to say, OK, we're going
to work on really having a model democracy open society that we
hope will infect the region when they see how people operate so
well. We have a number of Iraqis in the United States. I think
Saddam ran out something like 17 percent of the Iraqi
population fled during his tenure. A lot of them came to the
United States, open society here, you know what, they did very
well here by and large. I wouldn't say that of all Iraqis but
the ones I've met they did very well in a nice, open society
here.
Now, the issue of religious freedom, I don't think any of
you could argue that is central to the background and the
history of the United States' development as an open and free
society, absolutely central religious freedom, just as
absolutely it was the first people coming to the shores were
seeking religious freedom. And then they offered and opened it
up to everybody. They didn't say this is a Christian nation in
the Constitution. As a matter of fact, there was a big--there
were discussions about that. We still have discussions about
this. My faith is very important to me. I don't want the
government to set that. It's too important for the government
to set that.
If we go to Iraq now and we're pressing and we're pushing
for an open society, and we say in their constitutional
convention, their constitutional drawing, you can go ahead and
declare that this is an Islamic country in the constitution and
we don't think that's very wise but we're not that adamant
about it, I don't think it's the right thing to do, but we're
not particularly adamant about that, I think we are leading
them fundamentally down a wrong track that will not lead to the
freedom that they need to have as an open, operating society.
And if we do it there it will be watched aggressively in
the region in our hopeful spread for democracy, and we'll see
other countries saying, well, OK, they can declare themselves
an Islamic society even though probably our best example in the
Islamic world, Muslim world, of a democratic country is Turkey,
has a secular constitution, Indonesia, secular constitution.
Then the Arab world, Lebanon, secular constitution. And by that
I mean, I don't mean they're secular countries, far be it, they
are not. But in their constitution, they do not establish this
is the religion of this country.
And if we as a country just say, OK, all right, we really
don't like this, but we think it's OK if you say that Iraq is
an Islamic country in the constitution. For us, a constitution
is about the rights of the individual, the responsibilities of
the government. I don't see really where this even fits even in
it at the outset of it under our thoughts of liberty, and you
give maximum liberties to the individual, and here you're
giving one and you're having it by the government. What spins
out of that eventually or where does that go? Why didn't Turkey
put that in their initial democratization efforts? And they
wanted to say, we want an open society.
I think you have a problem with blasphemy laws, which we
currently have a great deal of problem with, much of the
Islamic region of the world. I think you're going to get
persecution moving from one group of Muslims to another or
against Christians or Jews or Buddhist or Hindus. I question
how inviting it will be into the country of having other people
come in that really need to be in the country to help, banking
system, or other that want to travel there, how welcome or open
will they feel to this country. I really think this is a
fundamental issue that we need to stand and say, this isn't
about us saying we are against or for Islam. This is liberating
and good for Islam too to have that separation of the church
and state, and if we move away from something that's so
foundational for us in our experience in building an open
society and we didn't get it right at the outset for us I think
we got a lot of things, the basics, pretty good, but we've been
at this 200 years building an open society and we still
struggle with it.
I really, really question that, and a number of you have
worked on this issue and worked in the regions, have written on
this. I really think we lead them down a bad path that will
have extensive consequences for Iraq and for the rest of the
region as well.
You've allowed me to vent, Mr. Chairman. I'd be happy to
hear a response or two as well. Dr. Marr.
Dr. Marr. I would just say two things quickly speaking as
an American, obviously. I must raise the issue here of the
extent to which we as Americans and outsiders are going to be
able to, and should shape, a constitution, a set of political
arrangements in Iraq. I think we have to be very wary. As Isam
said, there are red lines and so on. We certainly don't want to
see clerical control over the state as in Iran and most of the
red lines, I think, should concern our national security
interest which is appropriate.
I understand the urge to remake and reshape Iraq, but
frankly, this is political and this is something Iraqis have to
do. I also make a distinction between liberalism and democracy,
one man, one vote, et cetera----
Senator Brownback. Let me break in on that and I'll let you
complete it, but how much did we shape Japan after World War
II?
Dr. Marr. Alot, but I think we're going to be in real
trouble in Iraq trying to do this. We're in trouble in Iraq now
and the whole religious issue is sensitive. Many states have
the word ``islamic'' in the constitution but they don't really
follow it very much. This is the point that I'm trying to get
at. There's a rising tide of Islamic sentiment in the Middle
East today. This is true in Iraq. The younger generation, both
Sunni and Shi'ah, is more religious than I can remember in a
long time. We're going to run up smack dab against a lot of
cultural opposition there if we deal with religion and this is
also true in the education system, which we're supposed to be
reshaping too. This is really going to be seen as imperialism.
So I just caution here that this is the kind of cultural
monkeying around that is really going to generate opposition.
However, I do think that the problem is not whether the word
``Islam'' is in the constitution. As we all know, you can have
a lot of words in the constitution that people are not
practicing, including tolerance and so on. It really doesn't
matter. We really need to work on supporting and nuturing more
liberal values--tolerance, compromise, all of those things that
make for the kind of society we want.
There are ways in which we can spend that $20 billion, for
example opening the country, encouraging exchanges because we
need to get the attitudes and values to change, admittedly more
slowly, to create tolerance. I don't want to say you don't have
to worry about the words in the constitution but you can put
words in a constitution, but if you've got a lot of people who
are not going to adhere to it, it's irrelevant.
Senator Brownback. What about Turkey and what about
Lebanon?
Dr. Marr. Turkey has had nothing but struggles all through
the years over this issue of how much religion----
Senator Brownback. But are they as open a society as in the
Islamic countries at this time and as successful probably,
economically, and I don't think there's a question economically
that they are.
Dr. Marr. It's now got an Islamic party in power. This is
one of the issues facing the state. It's going to be
interesting to see how they handle it.
Senator Brownback. But do you have a better model for me of
democratizing in the Islamic world?
Dr. Marr. Offhand I don't, but maybe my colleagues do.
Mr. Khouri. Well, one of the, if I may----
Senator Brownback. Does anybody have a better democratizing
model than Turkey for me in the Islamic world?
Mr. Khouri. Well, I think, if I may say, the question is
slightly unfair, because I think what we've had in the Islamic
world is a modern history in which the people in these largely
Islamic countries have rarely been given the opportunity to
form their own systems. In Turkey, you've had a system that's
operated because the army has stepped in every 12 years and
kept things on track, so----
Senator Brownback. I'll let you go on, but I want to--do
you have a better model for me of democratizing in the Islamic
world, a country?
Dr. al-Khafaji. Senator, with due respect, I don't see the
Turkish one, if we take out----
Senator Brownback. Then give me a better model.
Dr. al-Khafaji. We don't have any Turkish Christians or
Jews recognized today because----
Senator Brownback. Just give me a better country model.
Dr. al-Khafaji [continuing]. Because they homogenized by
blood and then defined what is a Turkish citizen.
Senator Brownback. OK, give me a better----
Dr. al-Khafaji. That's why----
Senator Brownback. Give me a better model.
Dr. al-Khafaji [continuing]. That's why they forced all
non-Muslims to go out and that I do not want. This is what I,
in my writing----
Senator Brownback. I'll let you go on, but if you don't
have a country I want to go to Noah and have him give me a
country.
Dr. al-Khafaji. I would like----
Senator Brownback. If you do have a country----
Dr. al-Khafaji. If you allow me to comment on your----
Senator Brownback. I will let you. I just want to get an
answer to this question.
Dr. al-Khafaji [continuing]. To show how and where I
totally agree with you.
Senator Brownback. And if you don't, that's fine. I'll let
you comment but I just want to get an answer to this question.
Noah, do you have a country that's a better model?
Dr. Feldman. Indonesia is a far better example than Turkey,
as is Malaysia, and in Malaysia, to take another----
Senator Brownback. Indonesia has a secular constitution?
Dr. Feldman. It does, but its democratic process relied
very heavily on the full participation of Islamic parties and
the first democratically chosen President of the country and
also the first President to leave office voluntarily in the
country, Abdurrahman Wahid, was himself a cleric, a Muslim
cleric, that's what he did for a living----
Senator Brownback. I have no problem with that.
Dr. Feldman [continuing]. And a member of the Islamic
party. So if I might, Senator----
Senator Brownback. Let me ask you on Malaysia now, and you
assert----
Dr. Feldman. An even better example.
Senator Brownback. Malaysia as a better, as a better----
Dr. Feldman. It's also a better example, and in Malaysia
one sees examples of the government very creatively drawing on
Islamic institutions to create democratic institutions. So for
example, the role of the traditional Islamic marketplace
supervisor under Islamic law has been used as a kind of
ombudsman for purposes of ensuring basic rights and economic
liberties.
There's creativity in the Malaysian example. It's not that
Malaysia is a perfect democracy by any stretch of the
imagination. But, of course, none of the governments in the
region are perfect examples. I think the serious concern is
that if we share--and I do share, Senator, very deeply your
commitment to creating religious liberty and spreading it
through the region in a region where it's terribly lacking, the
question is, what's the best strategy for producing that? And
it seems to me the best strategy is convincing people, the 1.2
billion Muslims in the world, that democracy is not something
that stands in opposition to their values, but that stands
consistently with their values.
And many people in the Muslim world have the misconception
that somehow in the United States we don't take our religion
seriously. They think we're a secular society, which I think is
inaccurate. I think we're a society in which people take their
religion and their faith deeply personally and which it matters
tremendously to all of their important life decisions, but that
our state doesn't dictate religious outcomes. And in order to
convince people in the Muslim world of that, we need to make
sure that symbolically we show them that democracy is
consistent with religion and we need to emphasize religious
liberty at all costs----
Senator Brownback. Let's take that point.
Dr. Feldman [continuing]. And insist on strong religious
liberty while simultaneously allowing people, if they want some
symbolic recognition of their religion in the constitution----
Senator Brownback. Now, wait a minute, now wait a minute.
When you build something into the constitution, it's more than
symbolic. I mean, if we're pressing this issue, if you build
something into the constitution, it's not symbolic. This is
critical in a constitution.
Dr. Feldman. Senator, I think the preamble to our
Constitution, which does more than any other part of our
Constitution to specify our values, is never invoked by the
Supreme Court as binding for important constitutional
decisions, and the reason for that is that----
Senator Brownback. Oh, but being symbolic, you cannot say
any part of the Constitution is just a symbolic. These words
are interpreted and have deep meaning, particularly when you're
talking about civil rights and liberties, and you're really
setting a key pattern here.
Dr. Feldman. Well, I agree with that. I agree with that,
Senator. It's important to get the values right, but if we
insist, if we--first of all, assuming we could insist--if we
insisted as a foreign power that the constitution not reflect
Islam as a religion, which is the religion of the vast majority
of Iraqis, we're opening the doors for opponents of democracy
in the region--and they are legion and many of them are in fact
serious Islamists--to say that the United States is engaged in
an anti-Muslim project in the world.
And Senator, let me guarantee you of just one thing. That's
a perception, which if shared by more of the world's 1.2
billion Muslims, guarantees that we won't succeed in spreading
democracy in the region. So the question is do we want to throw
out the baby with the bath water here.
Senator Brownback. I think it would probably be tough to
get more that would share it than now. I think it's pretty high
right now. And let me just predict to you all you're the expert
panel, Joe made a prediction earlier, I'll make a prediction to
you if we put in, allow in, we say, you know, it's not a red
line, I think somebody put a red line, if we put a red line,
you can't create a Kurdish state, that's a foreign power
intervention, we say, you've got to give equal rights Sunni,
Shi'ite, we say that's red line if we allow this, we say you
write in the constitution this is an Islamic country, you're
going to see significant problems with this on down the road.
It's going to be we've seen it consistently already.
Dr. Feldman. Senator, would you concede though that on the
other side of the----
Senator Brownback. I'm just predicting to you guys and then
you can come back in 5 years and it's in and you'll say, look,
I told you that wasn't true. And I'm telling you from my
experience I think you are going to be off and you will wish
that we would have identified this as a really critical issue.
Dr. Feldman. Senator, I think you're likely to be right
about that, but the question is, if we do draw a red line
there, what problems will we face down the road? It's entirely
possible that those might be much worse problems.
Dr. al-Khafaji. May I comment, sir, now?
Senator Brownback. Please, I told you I--unless the
chairman has to go.
The Chairman. Please go ahead.
Dr. al-Khafaji. I'm afraid that we are discussing a
hypothetical question and I'm sorry if that is disappointing.
Never in the history of Iraq, nowhere today, nobody including
the most extremist is talking about an article in the proposed
or an ex-constitution in Iraq that says Iraq is an Islamic
country. Let me just show where the delicate difference is, if
you allow me.
Senator Brownback. That nobody's saying that Iraq is an
Islamic country in the constitution?
Dr. al-Khafaji. In a constitution, no, sir, no serious
person. I'm sure there is one or some political leader. The
question is----
Senator Brownback. Let me just read from Dr. Feldman's
testimony to make sure I get it right. ``At the same time it is
unlikely that the majority of Iraqis would agree to the
omission from their constitution of a provision describing
Islam as the official religion of the state. Every Arab
constitution has such a provision.'' And then you go on to talk
about that.
Dr. al-Khafaji. Sir, there was about the national the
nature of Iraq as an ethnicity, there was a huge debate whether
it is an Arab country or not, and the democratic Iraqis, Arabs
and Kurds, naturally, as well as the Kurds, fought that,
whether Iraq is part of an Arab nation or not. About Islam, the
whole debate revolves around this: an article that used to be
in the constitutions, Islam is the source of legislation or
Islam as a source of legislation. Until now, we and by we, I
mean all generations naturally we fought that ``the'' that
cursed ``the'' because once you put ``the'' source of
legislation then you are putting all other sources as
blasphemous, as you said.
Senator Brownback. OK. So let me ask you on that, does that
not outlaw Shari'ah law then in Iraq?
Dr. al-Khafaji. Iraq has a penal code which is literally
taken from the Napoleonic code.
Senator Brownback. No, but I'm asking you in the
constitution to be written, does that outlaw Shari'ah law in
Iraq? Does that say it's not we are not going that's a red
line, not going to Shari'ah law?
Dr. al-Khafaji. That's where the fight between democrats
and tyrants should go in Iraq, and I totally agree with my
colleagues, and it might look ironical with you, too. We do
not, as human being, would not like others, as you said that
the government decides for us what my religion is. Please
imagine an Iraqi being told what he or she should think about
religion by the U.S. Government. You said quite rightly, sir,
that you would not like a government, your government to tell
you how your system of beliefs should be made, but the
implication is that the U.S. administration should tell Iraqis
how they should form their system of beliefs. I as a----
Senator Brownback. No, then I'm not declaring. I'm not
saying you declare any religion the state religion of Iraq.
Dr. al-Khafaji. Exactly. Until now, until now and this is
not drawing a rosy picture and modestly speaking I claim to
know our history, the region's history, there were bloody
clashes between Muslims and Christians in the 19th century,
Damascus and Lebanon. There were none in Iraq. There were no
clashes, civil clashes, between Shi'is and Sunnis in Iraq. Is
this an ideal solution? Not necessarily. Is there a sense of
difference? Yes, there is.
The idea is this, how to go from here to a better
situation, and I think that if we can put into the legislation
that no authority has the right to declare any other person or
group blasphemous, that would be a turning point in our
history.
Senator Brownback. That would be very helpful.
Dr. al-Khafaji. For us as Iraqis, Senator, for us tyranny
could take the form of secularism and Stalin and Saddam Hussein
are no different from an ayatollah for us, because it's tyranny
whether it's secular or fundamentalist.
Senator Brownback. Well, I want to declare as I close, Mr.
Chairman, I am not trying to impose any religion on Iraq.
Dr. al-Khafaji. I quite understand that.
Senator Brownback. You say that in our history this has
been a big, long struggle, and wisely the Founders started off
by saying no state-sponsored recognized, identified, religion.
It's good for the country, it's good for the religion.
Mr. Chairman, thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator Brownback. Let
me just conclude with a small question now. A constitutional
group has been appointed as I understand it. Correct me if I'm
wrong as to who is to form this constitution, but should the
group that is in place or in formation be the one? If not, who
should do the work on the constitution, which we all agree
should be happening in a timely way? Or do you take the
position that you do not try to do the constitution at this
point? Do you constitute some people either by election or by
appointment as the governing group and then work on the
constitution? What advice, if you were giving it to Ambassador
Bremer and CPA, would you give? Yes.
Dr. Marr. I'm just going to take a crack at it and I'm sure
you're going to get different answers. Those writing a
constitution should be a pretty representative group because
these issues have to be fought out. However, a smaller group is
better than a bigger one. I would feel comfortable if this
small group came up with a draft, and then it was published and
discussed, and so on. But if this constitution isn't ratified,
and discussed by a larger group, which perhaps has the ability
to amend it, its legitimacy is going to be in question.
The Chairman. OK. Mr. Khouri.
Mr. Khouri. I would just make the general point that these
decisions have to be made by the Iraqi people. If you want to
democratize Iraq you should democratize it democratically, in
other words consult with Iraqis a lot more and a much wider
range of Iraqis than has been the case to date. And the dilemma
that Senator Biden and all of you have mentioned is a very real
one. The United States is in what is known as a pickle. You're
in a very difficult situation and it's not easy to get out of
it.
The way to get out of it is to make clear that these major
decisions have to be made through a consensus of Iraqis and
this illustrates the point that I made in the beginning, which
is if you start getting into details about religion and the
constitution and who does the constitutions and these little
nitty-gritty details, you're never going to find a satisfactory
solution, you're always going to be accused of trying to impose
American values. I think it's much better to look at the
society there, what are the values that they have that you
share, and I would say in the case of say the religious issue
in the constitution, it's the principle of the consent of the
majority and the protection of the minority, the rights of the
minority and the will of the majority.
If you can make it clear to the Iraqis and other Arabs
that's what you're doing, they will be very eager to work with
you, and I think that would diffuse a lot of the tension.
The Chairman. Dr. Feldman.
Dr. Feldman. Senator, just for clarification, the
constitutional preparatory committee as presently constituted
doesn't plan to write the constitution. They plan to propose
just a mechanism for selecting a constitutional convention or a
constitutional drafting commission that will then produce the
draft of the constitution. And they're considering a range of
options including a constituent assembly option, including the
option of having a group nominated by the Governing Council and
ratified by a national referendum, up or down, including a
process of selection and election together.
So I would advise Ambassador Bremer, and did advise
Ambassador Bremer, that the process question is one best left
to the Iraqis at this stage to make a proposal on.
The Chairman. What was your recommendation in terms of the
timeframe of this group? I think Ambassador Bremer mentioned
that they were going around the countryside visiting with lots
of people. At what point will they bring their work to
conclusion?
Dr. Feldman. They need to complete that national canvass,
but I think this preparatory committee should conclude its
deliberations in the next 2 months in order for us to go
forward very rapidly with creating a convention.
The Chairman. Very well.
Dr. al-Khafaji.
Dr. al-Khafaji. I'm not very much in difference with my
colleagues, Mr. Chairman. I think that you have to give some
form of legitimacy. We would do injustice even to these
esteemed colleagues who are on this constitutional committee if
we show them as imposed by the coalition or even by the
Governing Council. Let a constituent assembly decide on them or
let it just choose a committee out of it, but give it some form
of legitimacy, sir.
The Chairman. Meanwhile, as we all would, I suppose,
recognize, the United States and other countries that work with
us have to keep a security situation in which all this can keep
going on. That is not easy. As all of you have pointed out,
even while we're trying to maintain the security situation, and
pass on responsibility to Iraqis to take more and more
responsibility as they're prepared to do that, both Americans
and Iraqis will be attacked. Some will lose their lives. This
is a process that is tortuous for everybody involved.
There is good reason for timeliness of movement. At the
same time there is, I think, a feeling on the part of most of
us in the Senate that the product of all of this needs to be a
good one or history will find all the parties sorely deficient,
and the Iraqi people will suffer the most because the
deficiencies will be visited and left with them. So we
appreciate very much your wisdom and your candor today and your
willingness to think along with us in what I think has been a
very productive hearing as far as our own understanding goes,
as well as, through the record, for the illumination of our
colleagues.
Do you have a further comment?
Senator Brownback. No thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Very well. We thank you and the hearing is
adjourned.
(Whereupon, at 5:07 p.m., the committee adjourned, to
reconvene subject to the call of the Chair.)