Iraq and Afghanistan

In yesterday's paper, William Powers writes that the failure of the Liberian state offers an opportunity for the international community to mount a long-term assistance program for Liberia at the same time that it permanently preserves the country's unique biological heritage. Most of the world has not realized it, but because of the lack of development, and in spite of the continual fighting among a collection of armed groups, governmental or otherwise, Liberia has managed to preserve a valuable stretch of West African rain forest.

Under his "Peace for Nature" solution (based on the more modest "debt for nature" approach that has been used in several countries), Liberia would agree to convert a large part of the country into a United Nations biosphere reserve, zoned for both strict preservation and multiple use. This would mean a commitment of the international community to at least a 20-year stabilization program that would preserve the peace and educate the people in peace-loving ways. The idea is attractive, but seems naive as presented. If only it was this easy to bring peace to an area.

Yet, perhaps the idea can be built on. The world is facing a crisis of "failed states" that includes Haiti, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly "Congo", then Zaire). There are a number of other possible candidates for this appellation, particularly in Africa. Taking an "environmental imperatives" approach to "failed states" or states with apparently intractable economic or political problems offers opportunities for long-term coordinated international assistance that might otherwise be lacking. The problems that would be addressed by the international guarantors are of two quite different kinds. First, in states such as Liberia and Congo, the program would be based on establishing large, internationally protected conservation areas, with high-return development activities concentrated in relatively small areas (what in the suburbs we refer to as "clustering" or "conservation zoning"). Second, the whole of states such as Haiti and Nauru would be defined as "environmental reclamation areas". Here the international community as well as many international private agencies would undertake to rebuild the country environmentally, socially, and politically.

The interviews with the two French journalists who were held for several months by the Islamic Army of Iraq is enlightening. They seem to have beeen a mixed group of Baathists, former army and Jihadists with some training in Afghanistan. They claimed they were not the same group as Zarqawi's, but that they worked with them at times. The reporters noted that their captors seem well supplied with both money and weapons. They were amazed at how easily their captors were able to move through the countryside and towns both north and south of Baghdad. They were not all bin Ladenists, but some were. And their objectives are similar to his, except for the particular Iraqi aspects. They saw bin Laden as wanting to overthrow the Egyptian and Saudi regimes, defeat the Americans in Iraq, drive a wedge between the United States and Europe, recreate an Arab Caliphate (remember the last Caliphate was actually Turkish), and carry out a long-term war with the West, but a war seen as essentially defensive.

Two pieces on today’s Op-Ed page continue to hammer away at what the authors assume to be the foolishness of holding the election this month. The general argument believed by many in the American opposition (including unfortunately Brezezinski) see our policy misguided partly because they assume that it will inevitably lead to a theological state, possibly one dominated by Iran. For regular readers here, I do not need to argue this issue again: a Shiite controlled state is not necessarily a theocracy. I do, however, believe that the Kurds will not allow this to happen in any event. Their leaders are quite secularist and would find such a state cramping, even if not theological.

A more serious argument against moving doggedly ahead is put forward to Larry Diamond, an old friend who had a part in the early arrangements for a democracy program in Iraq. Larry believes that an essential mistake was the idea to have only one district with proportional voting. He claims that he and many fellow experts on democracy opposed this. The decision came in part from the UN, but perhaps Bremer had a part in it. It was argued at the time that trying to divide the country into districts would be too time consuming and lead to too many political squabbles (which noticing what happens in the U.S. does not seem unlikely). There also was a desire by the Shi'a leadership to have many overseas voters, a desire hard to fulfill in a the country newly divided into geographical election districts.

What Diamond brings to the discussion that is new is the fact that many Sunni groups have been meeting regularly to develop a common strategy for getting the election postponed. One of their planks is to try to get the single district approach rescinded so that geographical representation based on districts might be instituted. They feel that if the election planners could do this, then after several months districts would have been created and voting could proceed district by district. In this case, the Sunni districts would receive the representation that the government records would show that they should get and not the representation given by a light vote. (That is, if Baghdad had 20% of the population but only 10% of the vote, it would still receive representation as though it had 20% of the vote with the geographical district approach.) He claims that the main Sunni leaders have agreed that if the voting is postponed for a few months and the districts established, then they will rescind their call for a boycott of the election. If all this is true, he makes a good case. Now we have to see if Allawi or the Americans currently calling the shots (pardon the expression) in Iraq will listen.