Iraq As It Stands: There is good news, and bad news, and a country given a chance

National Review, Oct 13, 2003 by Amir Taheri

As millions of Iraqi children start a new school year, they face two uncertainties. The first: Will enough of their teachers show up in the classrooms? The Ministry of Education has appealed to all teachers to be present at their posts -- but many, associated with the Ba'ath, the former ruling party, have gone into hiding for fear of being taken to task by people who suffered under the fallen regime. The second: What kind of textbooks will be used? Under Saddam Hussein the principal goal of all education was to worship the despot. A phrase that adorned most textbooks simply stated: Learn the instructions of the Leader and all science shall be yours!

Nevertheless, there is also one certainty: The thick fog of fear that hung over all schools, indeed all Iraq, under Saddam has been lifted. This year there will be no mysterious disappearances from the classroom. No teachers and pupils will be found dead in the school doorways. There will be no suspicious characters dropping in during lectures to sit in the back row as the eyes and the ears of the Mukhaberat (secret police). Teenage schoolgirls will not be abducted and taken to one of the many harems maintained by Uday, Saddam's sadistic elder son, and other apparatchiki of the regime.

Anyone who knew Iraq before liberation and who visits the country now is immediately struck by the impact that the feeling of freedom has had on almost everyone. A society where people hardly spoke to one another, let alone to strangers, is bustling with talk, debates, disputes, and demonstrations for every cause under the sun. Thousands of banned books are on sale in the streets, and over 200 new newspapers and magazines have started publication. People are no longer afraid to turn on their radios and TVs as loud as they wish; there is no Mukhaberat to eavesdrop on what they are hearing or watching.

And yet, Iraq still faces a number of major challenges. The liberation phase was completed with remarkable ease and minimal human and material loss, largely because few Iraqis wanted to fight for their oppressor. The regular army almost never entered the war. The various parallel armies set up by Saddam Hussein also proved unreliable. "We had enough men and arms to put up a decent fight," says Gen. Toumah Abbas, a former chief of staff of the Iraqi army. "But no one wanted to fight; there was nothing worth fighting for." Iraq is now passing through the phase of pacification. That phase, too, is nearing completion in many parts of the country. In some areas, pacification efforts are threatened by criminal elements linked to the fallen regime. In a dozen or so towns, well-organized bands of thieves, smugglers, black- marketeers, and racketeers are taking advantage of the lack of adequate police coverage to rob and loot not only public buildings but also private homes and shops. Since the mid 1990s, bandits, backed by local tribes, have been active in some segments of the western Iraqi desert. The dissolution of the army, and the disappearance of all police presence, means that these bandits are now able to operate with almost total impunity.

Another threat to pacification comes from diverse elements opposed to liberation. Some remnants of the Ba'ath have regrouped and are engaged in a campaign of murder and sabotage in parts of the Sunni Triangle to the north of Baghdad. But there are also disgruntled elements in some former garrison towns such as Fallujah, Ba'qubah, and Ramadi that had benefited from the largesse of the Ba'athist regime. To these must be added some elements of the 20 or so Arab and Islamist terrorist organizations that had been sheltered by Saddam Hussein since the mid 1970s. The capture of some of their leaders by the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq has not deterred these groups; it has persuaded them, rather, that their best chance is to help the remnants of the Ba'ath in making life difficult for "the occupiers." Several hundred Islamist militants who have infiltrated Iraq from Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia also contribute to the current level of violence in Iraq.

But the threat of all those elements should not be exaggerated. Since early May, Iraq has witnessed 29 attacks that could be described as terrorist. Of those, 22 took place in just five localities. Some, such as the blowing up of the Jordanian embassy and the U.N. office in Baghdad, were spectacular. That said, Iraq -- judged by Middle Eastern standards -- is still way down the Richter scale of terrorism. More important, the various groups that threaten pacification are not growing in number or resources. Although the coalition lacks enough forces to devote to search-and-destroy operations, many terrorists and saboteurs are tracked down and neutralized each day. Almost 90 percent of the acts that threaten pacification have taken place in less than 5 percent of Iraqi territory.

If all goes relatively well, pacification will be completed by the end of the year. The coalition then will face two other crucial tasks: reconstruction and democratization. Physical reconstruction efforts so far have been modest, limited mostly to private citizens rebuilding their homes, workshops, and stores. Hundreds of contracts, big and small, worth billions of dollars have been granted or negotiated. But five months after liberation there is still no agreement even on the basic economic rules of reconstruction. On democratization, too, a start has been made, with the establishment of a Governing Council and a Council of Ministers. A new constitution is being drafted. Over 40 political parties, old and new, are getting organized. The first free trade unions, professional associations, and guilds are taking shape.