Iraq Has a Government

Last week, Iraq created a coalition government derived from open, multiparty elections; that doubles the club in the Middle East and is a huge step toward consensual government in the Arab world. We applaud the Iraqis for finding some give-and-take in a place notoriously hostile to compromise, and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad for keeping enough-but-not-too-much heat on the parties. But just as having an election doesn’t make a democracy, neither does forming a government.

Last week, Iraq created a coalition government derived from open, multiparty elections; that doubles the club in the Middle East and is a huge step toward consensual government in the Arab world. We applaud the Iraqis for finding some give-and-take in a place notoriously hostile to compromise, and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad for keeping enough-but-not-too-much heat on the parties. But just as having an election doesn’t make a democracy, neither does forming a government.

After the overthrow of Saddam, it was reasonable to expect the citizens of Iraq to turn first to the most local, most parochial sources of protection – and revenge. This gave Iraqi terrorists and foreign ones, including al Qaeda, room to advance disparate agendas: jihad, Ba’athist resurgence, Iranian influence, Kurdish independence and generalized anti-American/Westernism. Iraq in turmoil and close to civil war would provide fertile ground for all of this and more.

The purveyors of upheaval have tried hard – there are increasing reports of Iranian attacks against Kurds in the north, bombers have wreaked havoc in the mosques and market places of Baghdad, Baquba and Samarra, and the mutilated bodies of people executed overnight turn up every morning.

There is no shortage of people willing to kill, but there is no civil war. There is, rather, a government elected by a wide majority of the citizens, determined to halt the violence. “Under fire” is probably the worst condition under which to begin practicing consensual politics, but the new government very quickly has to convince the people that the government is the source of their protection and the address for the redress of legitimate grievances. Citizens have to be convinced to end their support for militias and terrorists by a combination of government strength in counter-terror, equality in application of the law, and the uncorrupt provision of security and services in the middle of a war.

It is a tall order. Can it fail? You bet. Will it fail? Hedge.

Thus far, punditry has considered it axiomatic that nothing political could go right in Iraq – a governing council could never be established; the election for the interim government would never be held; people wouldn’t vote; the constitution committee would never create a draft; the people wouldn’t vote a second time; Sunnis wouldn’t vote at all; the constitution wouldn’t pass; the people wouldn’t vote a third time for a permanent government; a coalition would never be created. And punditry has held it axiomatic that terrorists would indeed foment a civil war and any political progress that had happened to defy punditry would be for naught.

Punditry was wrong because it underestimated two things: the bravery of the Iraqi people and the willingness of stubborn American leadership and spectacular American soldiers to provide time and space for Iraqi political development. The first is self-protective and must persist. The second is based on the understanding that Iraq is a front in the larger war against terrorists and the states that harbor and support them, but the physical manifestation of that understanding cannot remain in Iraq forever.