The Foreigner’s Gift
by Fouad Ajami
Free Press, copyright © 2006
Reviewed by Richard Nadler
In “The Foreigner’s Gift,” Professor Fouad Ajami has produced less a history of Operation Iraqi Freedom than a psychological portrait of the cultures involved. America’s attempt to “defy gravity” – to establish a functioning democracy in the heart of the Arab world – has encountered three hard cultural facts: Sunni rejection, Kurdish acceptance, and Shi’ite reticence. Ajami clarifies each attitude through interviews, biographical portraits, and historical review.
Sunni Islam has dominated the Moslem world since Ali, Mohammed’s cousin and son-in-law, was killed in battle in 661. Today, globally, 85% of Moslems are Sunnis. But in Iraq, Shi’ites are 60% of the population.
The history of Sunni dominance in Iraq relates less to the early struggles of the Caliphate than to the real-politic of the colonial powers in the early 20th Century. The Turks conquered Baghdad in 1535 from the Safavid Persians. Sunnis themselves, the Turks preferred to govern through the Sunni minority. The native compradors of the Ottoman bureaucracy continued in power when the British assumed control of the area after World War I. During the 1920s, the Shi’a of Iraq resisted the constitutional Hashemite monarchy the Brits left in their wake. In a mirror-reversal of contemporary history, the Grand Ayatollahs of Shi’ism boycotted elections, sealing their powerlessness in acts of futile revolt.
In the early history of the “pan-Arab nationalist” Ba’athist party, Shi’ites were well represented. They occupied ministries in the first Ba’ath government of 1963. But several coups later, the situation changed. When Gen. Ahman Hassan al-Bakr seized power in 1968, his “muscle” was a Takriti Sunni faction led by a young Saddam Hussein. Under the new regime, Shi’ites were gradually purged from the Party. And after 1979, when Saddam assumed dictatorial control over all organs of the state, the circle of power shrunk noticeably. “Pan-Arab Nationalism” was reduced to Sunni clan gangsterism.
The Ba’athist state under Saddam was essentially a network of competing police and military institutions, all subsidized by oil revenues. The function of this apparatus – both the terror and the cash – was to protect and enrich Saddam. Every other power center was systematically co-opted. And what couldn’t be co-opted was wrecked. Agriculture was destroyed, as was commerce and the literary life of Baghdad. The scholarship of the Hawza – Shi’ite religious schools – was destroyed. Tourism at the major Shi’ite shrines – all four are in Iraq – was destroyed.
Not every Sunni was part of Saddam’s tyranny. But most Sunnis felt disinherited by his overthrow. Through numerous interviews, Ajami demonstrates that even Sunnis victimized by the Ba’ath – men persecuted, forced into exile, incarcerated, or even tortured – share the basic assumption of Sunni superiority. The result is a culture in which ordinary Sunnis shield insurgents with whose ends they fundamentally agree, even when they personally reject the means.
Inheritors of their own proud tradition – a Kurdish dynasty once held the caliphate in thrall – the Kurds in modern times have been serially victimized by the great powers of Europe and by the major nations of the Middle East. Oppressed by the Turks, the Syrians, the Iranians, and above all, the Iraqis, Kurdish nationalism followed a trajectory similar to that of Palestinian nationalism – i.e., state-sponsorship by false friends, internecine strife, terrorist tactics, and consistent failure.
The Kurds, like the Shi’a, rose in revolt after Operation Desert Storm, and like them, were brutally suppressed. But under the Northern no-fly zone, imposed by the coalition as part of the cease-fire, Kurdish life in northern Iraq began to revive. The Kurds, after all, had an advantage the Palestinians lacked: no one gave a damn about their fate. This enabled them to accommodate smoothly to the possibilities of their predicament. The factions reconciled; democracy flourished, and so did the economy of their domain. When Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched, the Peshmurga militiamen were enthusiastic participants. Their desire to be part of a “new Iraq” – or any Iraq – was minimal. But the war of 2003 gave the Kurds an opportunity to overthrow their tormentor, to reverse decades of Baathist “resettlement” in the North, and to negotiate an autonomous future for themselves within the new order.
A federal Iraq is not what most Kurds want. But it is the best they can get if they are to escape their tragic past. Their support for the democratic regime in Baghdad is a linchpin of the whole enterprise.
Much of “The Foreigners Gift” describes that aspect of the Iraqi polity most puzzling to western observers: the vacillating behavior of Iraq’s Shi’ites.
Shi’ite fundamentalism, unlike its Sunni counterpart, has a strong tradition of mosque-state separation. An Ayaltollah, by this theory, should involve himself in public morals, but hold himself apart from the political realm to maintain his sanctity. (The Iranian regime, a Shi’ite theocracy, is thus suspect to many Shi’ites.) The umma – the people-as-a-whole — have legislative authority as disciples of the Prophet.
One of the two principal Shi’ite revolutionary parties – the Dawa – upheld this tradition explicitly. The first two Prime Ministers of the new Iraq – al Jafaari and al Maliki — are members of this party.
The cross-currents of Shi’ism were intense before the ascendancy of Saddam. The conversion of the Persians to Shi’ism created a rival center of learning – a tension exacerbated when the Sunni Ottomans conquered Baghdad.
True to form, Saddam systematically splintered Iraqi Shi’ism. The imams found themselves bitterly divided over their relationship to the monster in Baghdad. Did one uphold religious authority at the seminaries, and risk martyrdom – not only for oneself, but for one’s followers? Did one take the quiestist path, retreating from public life? Did one go into exile in Iran or Lebanon?
The Iran-Iraq war complicated matters further. Some Shi’ite clerics upheld Iraqi nationalism against the Iranian model. Others embraced “wilayat al-faqih” – the “Guardianship of the Jurisprudent” – the foundation of the theocracy championed by the Ayatollah Khomeini in Tehran.
These decisions meant life-or-death. Saddam spilled Shi’ite blood liberally at the slightest nuance of resistance.
When Operation Iraqi Freedom toppled the Ba’ath, there were four Grand Ayatollahs in Iraq, and another half dozen planning their return from exile. The decisions these leaders made under the previous regime, their land of origin, and the consequences of their behavior on fellow Shi’ites – all these factors created conflict within the Shi’ite community. The internal strife occasionally spilled over into high-profile assassinations.
It was America’s good fortune that the Grand Ayatollah Sistani, Iraq’s most revered Shi’ite cleric, was a quietist, eager to knit together a civil society, and willing to challenge the hotheads who were not.
Fouad Adjami accepts most of the Left’s critique of the war in Iraq, yet continues to support it. He believes, for instance, that the case for WMDs was weak. He believes that the Bush administration pre-planned this war, and used 9/11 as an excuse to launch it. And he believes that America was totally unprepared for its encounter with Iraqi culture.
Nonetheless he supports Operation Iraqi Freedom for two reasons: because it is morally good, and because it may succeed.
Ajami’s support reflects his profound knowledge of Arab culture – the murderous mix of oil wealth, tyranny and scapegoating that stains the governing elites; the poverty, oppression, and fantasy that emblemizes the Arab street. 9/11 was a wake-up call for a West grown complacent with cheap oil and the company of Oriental despots. It was proof that this rotted order would export terror commensurate to its expanding wealth.
The real politic of the Middle East status quo was always evil. But it was easy to maintain. After the fall of Baghdad, President George Bush could have taken the Baathist officer corps, the Baathist security apparatus, and used their “expertise” to support a new strongman in Baghdad — one beholden to the United States. This, indeed, was the advice of substantial parts of the Middle East bureaucracy at the C.I.A. and the State Department.
But in the wake of 9/11, the accommodation of tyrants lost its lustre. Bush chose instead to transform Arab culture. In so doing, he was defying gravity – but not history. The Arab street in Iraq might share the prejudices and fantasies of the rest of the Arab world. They might see an Israeli behind every tree, and a godless infidel in each American tank – but 80 percent of the Iraqi population had no use for another tyrant. The traditions of Shi’ite populism and Kurdish nationalism, Ajami maintains, might yet birth the Rights of Man in the cradle of civilization. And realism might in time prevail among the Sunnis, as it has the Kurds.
Fouad Ajami demonstrates that a patriotic liberal can accept the rote critiques of American war-making in Iraq while upholding President Bush’s strategic vision. The initiative for democracy in the greater Middle East is both Wilsonian and Reaganite.