More than a year has passed since the war, yet the security situation in Iraq now appears worse than in the weeks after the fall of Baghdad. Events in Falluja, the fighting with the Mahdi militia of Moqtada Sadr in Baghdad and the south, continuing guerrilla attacks on coalition forces or their allies, more suicide bombings, and a recent spate of kidnappings of foreigners, have all combined to cast a very gloomy picture of the situation in the country.

April’s violence in Iraq in fact stems from some extrem- ists’ increasingly successful attempts to stall the Coalition Provisional Authority and coalition efforts to stabilize and rebuild Iraq, and to draw them into a counterinsurgency campaign that would alienate them from average Iraqis. The bulk of the insurgents are not ”œresistance fighters,” as some media like al-Jazeera call them, but radicals who do not want stability and do not want to wait until the sched- uled June 30 transfer of sovereignty. In a more stable, pro- gressing Iraq, these elements may well lose freely contested, fair elections. Instead, the current violence improves their position. Every coalition-inflicted civilian casualty in Falluja, Baghdad or the south of Iraq that flashes across al- Jazeera‘s news programs improves the extremists’ standing, and every NGO worker and rebuilding contractor who packs up and flees Iraq takes another piece of the promised fruit of liberation.

Recently, I spoke to several con- tractors working on projects including water treatment facilities, electrical grids, an Iraqi banking system connect- ed to the rest of the world, and military bases for the new Iraqi army. While a few continue to stay on and do their work, most have their projects on hold as a result of fear of kidnappings and attacks. NGO workers that I spoke to, from organizations such as CARE and Save the Children, had left their offices in the center and south of Iraq and were heading for Turkey, Kuwait or Jordan. Several organizations and busi- nesses have also been unable to pay their employees, since with no interna- tionally functioning banks in Iraq, their funds must travel by the roads from Kuwait and Jordan, roads that for the moment have become too dangerous to travel. The United Nations, of course, also left after the August 19 bombings of their Baghdad offices. Closer to home, even my father, whose business recently sent a shipment of counterfeit money detec- tors to an Iraqi associate in Baghdad, told me yesterday that the shipment had been returned to him ”” two weeks ago his associate was murdered along with two of his employees, and their downtown Baghdad store looted. If their murderers also took a few shots at coalition forces or Iraqi police on their way back from the store, some media outlets from neighbouring countries would no doubt include them as part of ”œthe resistance.”

Unfortunately, the coalition forces, and particularly the CPA, have also made mistakes and share some of the responsibility for the cur- rent situation. Apart from not having adequately planned for the post-war scenario from the beginning, prob- lems of corruption have sprung up, such as Halliburton’s overcharging for petrol. One contractor that we spoke to informed us that he was told to double the prices on the receipts he submitted to the CPA. Some military officers are also being investigated on corruption charges. Allegations of corruption easily feed into much of the Iraqi population’s long-held sus- picion that instead of coming to lib- erate them, American and British forces came to enrich themselves. When such allegations are combined with the extremely slow pace at which the occupying bureaucracy seems to get anything done, many people here conclude that the world’s only superpower does not really want to help Iraq and its population. They reason that surely if the United States wanted to, it could have had the elec- tricity and municipal services run- ning adequately by now.

Perhaps most damaging, however, has been the CPA’s distance from the Iraqi population and its perceived aloofness. Respected com- munity members and Iraqi professionals are simply unable to show up at coali- tion or CPA buildings and speak with their temporary rulers without an appoint- ment or invitation. Even with an appointment, they are subjected to what they consider humiliating searches and questions before they are permitted in. Abdul-Rezaq, a minister of the Iraqi Kurdish regional government in the north, told me last week how after being invited to a meeting by the CPA, the search they subjected him to when he arrived at their northern headquar- ters insulted him enough to make him turn around and return home immedi- ately. Those of us sitting in the meeting room awaiting his arrival were told by the CPA that ”œunexpected difficulties” had prevented one of the ministers from being able to attend.

Unfortunately, current security conditions and limited points of con- tact with the population also cause coalition authorities to rely mainly on a few elites that they speak to often, while large sectors of an initial- ly friendly Iraqi population are ignored. CPA authorities where I have been living, for instance, decided to set up a regional ”œstudents’ confer- ence” to encourage inter-university student contacts and to determine the needs of Iraqi students, their views and their desires. I have no doubt that they decided to organize such a con- ference with the best of intentions, and the participatory democracy that such gatherings promote is undoubt- edly sorely needed in the country. Short on time, manpower, and con- tact with everyday Iraqis, however, CPA personnel simply asked a local professor they were on a good terms with to nominate student partici- pants. The group of students he nom- inated, of course, were closely tied to him and his political party. Students from outside the favoured group were in turn furious that the selection could be conducted this way. When I contacted the CPA to suggest that there was a problem and that they needed to give other students a chance as well, they were genuinely surprised, insisting that while they did not have time to interview 8,000 university students, they did get a good recommendation for the ones they selected. They decided to meet with the disgruntled ”œout-group” stu- dents, however, and hopefully adjust their selection process for future con- ferences. Although this example only deals with a fairly mundane students’ conference, the dynamic remains the same all the way up to the interim Governing Council.

Given what I believe is a sincere wish on the part of the vast majority of coalition and CPA person- nel to do a good job in Iraq, however, they just need some time to become more familiar with their jobs and how things work in this country. Unfortunately, most CPA and coalition personnel get rotated out of the coun- try just as their learning curve begins to rise to the task. Time is a sorely lacking commodity here for other reasons as well: Every governing mistake increases the Iraqi people’s alienation, to the point that although most people still do not support attacks on coalition author- ities, very few in the centre and south of the country will risk their own safety by informing on insurgents. The extrem- ists in the country also have a habit of killing those in their communities who express opinions favourable toward the coalition forces or critical of ”œthe resist- ance,” while it takes months of public incitement to violence for the likes of Moqtada Sadr to have his newspaper closed and an arrest warrant put out for him. Likewise, while the CPA tries to pursue an even-handed policy of not helping its supporters much more than others, radical forces in several neigh- bouring countries funnel all the arms and cash they can to any firebrand or insurgent who will accept them.

If the security situation fails to improve soon, these areas of the coun- try risk being left only with poverty, weapon-toting gangs and militias, heavily armed coalition troops, and frightened, recently-trained Iraqi police and soldiers. In this kind of vicious circle, brutal dictatorship or theocratic authoritarianism will seem preferable to a beastly Hobbesian state of nature. Hence freedom-loving people throughout the world, including the harshest critics of George Bush and American policies in the Middle East, should fervently wish the coalition forces and liberal Iraqis success in this struggle now playing itself out in Iraq. The failure of the coalition would be the great success of reac- tionary, authoritarian, reli- giously conservative, and fundamentally illiberal forces in Iraq and the region as a whole.

The news is not all bad, however. Although virtually every Iraqi wants occupation troops to eventually leave Iraq, the vast majority do not want them to leave so quickly that the extremists ”” the likes of Moqtada Sadr, ex-Baathists, armed opportunists, and a motley crew of Jihad-minded Islamist radicals ”” take their place. Iraqis are a very diverse people, how- ever, and it remains extremely difficult to gauge the various currents of Iraqi public opinion. I therefore went to what some Westerners might consider an unlikely source to get another view on the situation in the country – the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) local headquarters. The ICP was once, and is now again, the largest non-religious party in the center and south of Iraq. They are also no friends of the Americans, who in 1963 and 1968 gave Saddam’s new Ba’ath Party lists of Iraqi Communists, who were then rounded up and executed. The party politburo member that I spoke to, with framed photos of Marx, Engles and Lenin on the wall above his head, told me that although the ICP would have much preferred a people’s revolution to the recent war, anything is better than Saddam. Of course, he also thinks that the Americans and British are greedy capitalists who came to Iraq to pursue their own selfish ends. Then, with a smile, he added: ”œBut if the people of Iraq wanted to expel the USA and British forces they would in ten days.” The violence occurring in Iraq is no mass insurrection, he assured me: ”œThe ones responsible for this violence do not want stability in Iraq. There are many remnants of the Ba’athist regime and other extremists, and undoubted- ly some spies from neighbouring coun- tries with a hand in the trouble. They fear stability in Iraq. When there will be stability, democracy and sovereign- ty, it will have great effects on the pub- lic in neighbouring countries who are also against their regimes.” Of course, this was also one of the stated hopes of the Bush and Blair administrations when they worked to justify the war a bit over a year ago, but I did not have time to ask my ICP politburo friend about the intricacies of capitalists, con- tradictions and dialectics…

What he told me during my visit coincided with my own conversations and observations in the north and cen- ter of Iraq, however. Although con- cerns for their own safety may make it difficult to have them say so on cam- era, most Iraqis do not want this ”œresistance,” with all its violence and destruction. Of course, they don’t want the CPA and coalition tanks either. But they are willing to wait until the June 30 transfer of sovereign- ty, and a bit longer than that for a cen- sus, elections, and a referendum on a permanent constitution.

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In the meantime, the single most popular figure in the country is Sistani, a reclusive Shiite cleric who could end the occupation almost overnight by issuing the appropriate fatwa. For the time being, however, it suits Sistani just fine if the Americans want to attack his competitors, such as the Sunni insurgents in Falluja or Shiite rival Moqtada Sadr’s Mahdi Army (Sistani commands the Badr Brigades). Besides con- demnation of coalition heavy- handedness and a mild call for ”œcalm,” Sistani quietly waits for elections, elections that his Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolu- tion in Iraq (SCIRI) should do well in.

Iraq’s interim Constitution, how- ever, provides for civil, religious and political freedoms that should place much needed limits on any newly elected Iraqi government. It also allows for a minority veto of any pro- posed permanent Constitution, if two- thirds of the population of three Iraqi governorates vote against it. Sistani therefore initially instructed Shiite members of the interim Governing Council not to sign the interim Con- stitution, and remarked that he could not understand how a minority should be able to subvert the will of the majority. Many conservative Iraqis also had other complaints regarding the document. A Shiite Turkmen offi- cial we spoke to in Kirkuk on March 25 expressed two of the most common complaints being heard in many parts of Iraq, regarding minority and women’s rights. He told us:

There are no differences between Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs ”” we are all Muslims and Iraqis. And now the new constitution is the prequel for the future divi- sion of Iraq. It is the beginning of the breakup of Iraq. How can you have a country where peo- ple can hold two citizenships? An Iraqi one and a foreign one. Its not acceptable. The new Iraqi law allows that. The Israeli Jew can now hold Iraqi citizenship although they left Iraq 100 years ago! So in the future an Israeli can govern Iraq. This we refuse and reject totally! [The interviewee was referring to a provision in the new Constitution that provides for the restoration of citizenship to people expelled from the country for reasons of ethnicity or religion, including Iraqi Jews expelled in the 1940s and ”˜50s.] It is true that the new Constitution guarantees the rights of citizens, but this con- stitution is based on western models. Iraq is an Islamic country. This constitution will plant the seeds of rebellion between the different ethnic groups. Also they are using the example of women’s rights to impose western ideas on us. How can the Iraqi man be a prisoner of the women! Islam has guaranteed many rights for women. They are planting the seeds of conflict between men and women.

Luckily, the CPA and the council members eventually convinced Sistani and other conservatives to back down and sign the new Constitution. As a result, Iraq can now boast what is prob- ably the most democratic Constitution in the region, a text that may, with a little luck and a lot of work, set the stage for a freer, more democratic future in the country and the region.

In the north, Iraqi Kurdistan erupted into celebrations after the interim Constitution was signed. For the first time in the nation’s history, the Kurdish minority of the country has a tangible guaranteed voice in their own future, due to the two-thirds of three gover- norates veto. The three governorates of Dohuk, Erbil and Suleimaniya are over- whelmingly Kurdish, and could be expected to successfully wield the veto power if a proposed permanent Iraqi Constitution violated important Kurdish rights and aspirations. For instance, the majority of Iraq’s Kurds want nothing to do with a Sharia law legal system, and have already enacted progressive legislation in support of women’s rights. If Shiite leaders from the south try to impose it on them, they will vote it down in the referen- dum and enact the veto power. Iraqi Kurds also want federalism, insisting that contrary to the claims that this will divide Iraq, federalism is instead the only way to keep Iraq whole ”” by turn- ing it into a voluntary union of differ- ent nations (Arab and Kurdish) rather than an Arab or Shiite dictatorship.

Iraqi Kurdistan is in fact the only unambiguous success story of the war. Before 1991, Iraqi Kurdistan was the poorest part of Iraq and the most repressed, with a special division of Saddam’s police and secret service (Mukhabarat) solely dedicated to Kurdish issues. In 1987-88 alone, his Ba’athist regime massacred 180,000 Kurdish civilians. At the time of the 1991 Gulf War, the regime had already destroyed more than 4,000 of approxi- mately 5,000 Kurdish villages in the north. At the end of the Gulf War, how- ever, Coalition forces prevented Saddam from reasserting control over much of the rebellious northern Kurdish region, and the Kurds there autonomously ran their own affairs for the next 12 years. This autonomy (despite the international sanctions which equally applied to Iraqi Kurdistan) led to a steady improve- ment in the region’s economy and development. The recent fall of Saddam’s regime has now begun to fur- ther multiply the prosperity, as renewed confidence in the future brings more and more new investment, spending and foreign expertise into the area. Today, instead of the vicious circle of lack of security, lack of development, and more lack of security taking place to the south, the region now boasts an unprecedented economic and develop- mental boom. About an hour north of Kirkuk in Suleimaniya, where I have been living since October 2003, people watch the news about the rest of Iraq the same way people do in Canada ”” like it was happening in a different country. They shake their heads in dis- belief and repeat to me that they just can’t understand why people in the south don’t allow the coalition to do its rebuilding projects, stop the extremists in their midst, and wait until sover- eignty is transferred to them later on.

The Kurdish regional government has even invited more troops from Korea to come here, to establish as many reconstruction projects as they can handle. They call coalition troops ”œliberators” rather than ”œoccupiers” here, and contractors and NGO workers fleeing the rest of Iraq are likewise wel- comed with a hearty bekhirbe [welcome in Kurdish], and invited to conduct their projects from autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan. Since the end of the war and consequent elimination of the sanc- tions, the markets are bustling with shoppers and new products, and con- struction projects fill the skyline. In Iraqi Kurdistan my team of three Canadian researchers and I also go out in public unguarded, unarmed and without fear of kidnapping or violence (our biggest worry actually stems from a few too many atrocious drivers here).

Of course, if things continue to get worse in the rest of Iraq, the north will not remain immune to the degenerating situation there. Many poten- tial scenarios could then play themselves out, including a Kurdish attempt to secede from Iraq, which could in turn draw in Turkish, Iranian and Syrian interventions. Although many Iraqi Kurds feel little attachment to the rest of Iraq nowadays, most are content to be pragmatic and give a voluntary union with federalism a chance. The optimists in Iraq also hope that the upcoming transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government, and the increas- ing training of local personnel to take over from the CPA, coalition forces and expatriate staff, will set the rest of Iraq on a positive trajectory similar to that of Iraqi Kurdistan. Building a positive future will take time, of course, and a lot of assis- tance. The process will also be a very com- plicated one, as many different groups with widely varying values in the new Iraq compete to have their voices heard. If there’s anything I learned after living here during the last seven months, it is to be wary of statements that begin with ”œthe Iraqi people feel that…”

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