By Roger Owen
The Boston Globe, 27 November 2005
THE ANNOUNCEMENT that the Dec. 15 Iraqi elections will be largely a contest among parties representing the Shi'ites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds provides a clear demonstration of the way Iraq's politics are going to be dominated by the type of sectarian democracy to be found in Lebanon. This is a far cry from the kind of pluralist, interest-oriented democratic systems to be found in Europe and America and deserves to be understood in its own particular terms.
Lebanese sectarianism as it has developed since the days of the French mandate before World War II has three main features. First, the majority of the population vote for members of their own ethnic group or sect. Second, the fact that the leaders of each sect do not need to solicit the votes of their own members leaves them free to negotiate and to make political bargains with the leaders of the other sects more or less untrammeled by the individual or corporate interests of their own followers. Third, the primary business of politics becomes that of dividing the state's resources, including money and jobs, on a sectarian basis.
Certain key implications follow. Such systems can only exist in the context of a weak central government. All sides fear that one of the other sectarian groups might be able to seize control of a strong army backed by a strong police force with sufficient power to subdue the rest. Meanwhile, the power of each elite is further strengthened by the fact that their constituents look to them, not to the central government, to provide employment opportunities and access to health and education facilities.
It also follows that such systems are unable to generate either a sense of national citizenship or of a shared past --witness the fact that, in spite of tremendous efforts in the post-civil war period, Lebanese educators are still unable to produce an agreed history text for use in the country's schools. This is one of the ways the systems tend to perpetuate themselves by making it impossible for politics to be organized along other, more secular lines.
Recent Lebanese history also provides a number of examples which provide evidence of possible perils ahead. A weak central government finds it difficult to prevent armed groups or, in the case of Lebanon, foreign armies, from entering the country from outside. Furthermore, a system based simply on sectarian allegiance often produces serious gaps between the leadership and its followers due to the former's unwillingness or inability to address issues of corruption, inequality, and outright poverty within its own ranks. So it was in the south of Lebanon, where the Israeli invasion of 1982 provided the opportunity for a new and more radical Shi'ite movement, Hezbollah, to contest the established political leadership and its party, Amal.
Given the differences in geography, resources, and history between the two countries, Lebanon cannot provide an exact template for Iraq's political future. For one thing, the practice of federalism and of the devolution of powers to those in control of the three main centers of sectarian dominance is not only much more advanced in the Iraqi case but also enshrined in the new constitution. Hence, for example, while the present oil fields are supposed to remain under central government management, any new ones are to belong to those who control the province in which they are found. For another, is also likely that markedly different systems of law will be allowed to develop in the Kurdish, Shi'ite, and Sunni areas, a situation which Lebanon has so far just managed to avoid.
Nevertheless, there remain too many similarities not to believe that in large measure the Lebanese example cannot be used to shed significant light on Iraq's own political future. It has worked, in its own fashion, only so far as the sectarian elites see it in their interest to cooperate. It has worked only when the country has managed to insulate itself from regional tensions. And it has worked only so long as each leadership has been able to define the main lines of sectarian identity and to prevent itself from being outflanked by economically and socially discontented followers able to redefine identity in more radical and populist ways.
By the same token, the Lebanese version of sectarian democracy has not worked well at times like the 1970s and early 1990s when, encouraged by the lack of consensus among the sectarian elites, new social forces have pushed themselves on to the political scene. In Iraq, their most obvious equivalent is likely to be the movement led by Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Baghdad-based followers have significantly different interests and concerns from those of their more conservative co-religionists to the south.
It is also possible to imagine a major challenge mounted by Kurds dissatisfied with the shortcomings of a leadership whose monopoly of the local system makes them often able to ignore their followers' economic and political discontents. And this is to say nothing about the opposition mounted by angry Sunnis to a putative leadership which has a long way to go before it can legitimize itself in their eyes.
If the previous analysis is largely correct, there is little that either the United States or Britain can now do to control a process which they themselves had a considerable hand in setting in motion. And even in the case of the British -- who have largely devolved power in the south to the members of the Shi'ite parties which contested the 2004 elections -- this easy exit strategy is looking ever more tenuous now that the local police in Basra and elsewhere are falling more and more into Shi'ite sectarian hands.
Nevertheless, if the situation does not deteriorate into all-out civil war, the occupiers will still be able to comfort themselves that they have left some sort of democracy behind, albeit one in which voters have no real choice and all the major political decisions are made by unaccountable sectarian elites.
Roger Owen is the A.J.Meyer Professor of Middle East History at Harvard University.
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Citation: Roger Owen. "What Iraq will look like after the elections," The Boston Globe, 27 November 2005.
Original URL: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/11/27/what_iraq_will_look_like_after_the_elections/
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