Salon: Enter the Ayatollahs (Democracy in Iraq)

[kskiska]

Will Iraq turn into an Iranian-style theocracy or a more tolerant Muslim state? As zero hour for America's grand experiment approaches, Shiite leaders hold the key.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The other day, on a trip to the Ministry of Public Works, I sat in an unmoving car with my driver and translator. A mysterious but typical snarl up ahead had turned the road into a parking lot. Frustrated drivers U-turned over a median, edged their cars into wrong-way traffic, jumped sidewalks in misguided attempts to escape the mess. "Look at this," said Amjad, my translator. "They think democracy means you can do whatever you want." Inevitably, a fender scraped a door panel. Men jumped from their cars and began shouting and shoving in the ribbons of space between vehicles. One guy went for his tire iron and waved it like a sword over his head. Before things got truly ugly, Iraqi traffic cops came running from somewhere nearby and calmed the situation by directing the cars, gesturing with their Kalashnikovs. Eventually, the mass untangled and the cars continued to edge toward their destination.

Amjad's take on the Iraqi definition of democracy is certainly simplistic, but it's not completely out of line. Iraqis tell me all the time that they don't understand what democracy means. So far, they associate the word with chaos and the freedom to do whatever the hell you want. That's not democracy as Americans understand it, but the confusion is understandable. Since before the war, the United States had been promising the Iraqi people that Saddam's ouster would be followed by a wee bit of occupation and a whopping portion of democratic nation building. So far, the opposite has been true.

(snip)

I began by asking Abu Saduk what he thought about the American presence in Iraq. He shrugged and focused on the ceiling above my head. "Before we were ruled by the student," he said. "Now the teacher is ruling." Abu Saduk went on to explain that the United States was responsible for Saddam (backing him in his early days and providing support during the Iran-Iraq war). "The Americans came to Iraq for strategic and economic interests -- to secure the region for themselves. They cannot be trusted, nor can any election conducted during the occupation."

Before the war, Saddam persecuted -- often brutally -- the Shiites in Iraq. This is the reason that U.S. neoconservative strategists, whose starry-eyed optimism was not shared by scholars who actually knew something about Iraq and its people, assumed that the Shiite population would cheerlead the U.S. invasion and at least tolerate the occupation. Sistani's demands caught the United States off guard.

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http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/01/30/ayatollahs/index.html