Amidst the solemn situation in Iraq, some are beginning to speak of the possibility of an international conference. It would also seem that the US-UK led UN Security Council resolution, adopted on August 7, 2007, to expand the UN mandate in Iraq is not convincing and has no means to achieve any substantial change in this war-torn state.
However, one must remember that the American President, George W. Bush, has not ceased to repeat that we have to stay on course in Iraq, while the country perpetuates and embeds itself even more in this complex ongoing crisis.
The new UN Security Council resolution only enumerates counseling tasks and assistance to the Iraqi government for matters pertaining to the constitution, politics, elections, the judiciary, humanitarian issues, human rights, and refugees. These are tasks that the UN has been contributing to since 2004 without any concrete effect or tangible results, which has altered its credibility and that of multilateral action in an already fragile region.
This resolution also comes in a pre-electoral climate in the US that is increasingly tense and relentless. Unfortunately, the crisis in Iraq is merely seen as an internal issue that is only advantageous for electoral purposes. Perhaps the only new element is that the UN can now lead the debate on how to best tackle strategies on national reconciliation and peace building initiatives. However, these efforts must be coordinated with the Maliki government. Given the various factional differences and conflict of interests within the Maliki administration, it would be highly improbable to coordinate with it.
For over a year now the Maliki government, which wanted to become a government of national unity and reconciliation, has unfortunately not seen its agenda, nor its activities, convince Iraqis, who unanimously rejected all political participation while their country found itself increasingly fragile and fragmented under foreign occupancy. Worse yet, in the process, Maliki has lost many of his allies and has proven himself incompetent, indeed unfit to accomplish any meaningful achievements. One can see how difficult it will be for the UN mission to mediation talks with Iraqis from all sides of the conflict, since it needs to introduce and coordinate all its activities with the prime minister, whose leadership remains disputed by not only the armed groups, but equally by half of those who originally helped establish this government in the first place.
Thus, this new UN mandate will evoke questions relating to its relevancy, its efficacy, and undeniably, its feasibility. The prominent question thus remains: Should the UN see helping the Iraqi people to reestablish and rebuilt their shattered lives after this long and painful agony as an ultimate objective to its mandate of the enforcement of international peace & security, which is defined in the charter? Or should the mission help the current American administration manage the consequences of its errors of a war that, since its inception, went against one of the foundations of international order, multilateralism?
What aggravates the situation even more are the new international and regional realities in Iraq. This renewal of the UN’s role in Iraq comes four years after the war’s early beginnings in 2003 and the chaos that quickly followed, which led to the continued fragmentation of the Iraqi society. Its breakdown and the emphasis of the emergence of obscurantist forces and ethno-centrists are by definition anti-democratic and exclusionary to say the least.
On the Human Level:
1. A third of Iraqis are now refugees, whereby half are internally displaced persons as a consequence of sectarian violence or ethnic and religious cleansing. The dimensions are quite alarming and are favorable for a civil war, which has already taken place by all social and security dimensions. However, it is not one civil war, but a series of civil wars on account of the mosaic that characterizes the country and the region as a whole
2. The most reliable statistics are reporting that up to half a million civilians have perished thus far.
On the Political and International Administration Level:
1. Political or religious extremism is stronger than ever in Iraq and the region. The Al-Qaeda ideology has become similar to a franchise, whereby groups continue to account for demands without having organizational ties between them. (Recall in 2003, when the war began, one of the reasons to go ahead with the military buildup in Iraq was the wrongful assumption that Al-Qaeda cells were operating in Iraq and the alleged dealing between former President Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda officials. Today, after four years of costly mistakes, the cells have now entrenched themselves in Iraq, giving themselves the luxury to run villages as was the case for a few months in the Diala and Ninevah governorates.)
2. The institutional blockade in Iraq is reaching its last straw with no possible way out. The three projects declared in the constitution: the law on oil, the federal system, and Kirkouk are proven to be unattainable and unrealistic. In a reality of distrust and suspicion between all parties at play, all propositions to remedy these projects seem to have created new problems instead of solving any. Iraqis are unanimous only in their thoughts of escape; however, these thoughts are inverse and diverse.
3. Alliances in the political arena are no longer being created and are discouragingly being dismantled:
a. The Sadrists have left the government and also the Shiite allianceb. The Concordance has left the governmentc. Al-Fadila has left the Shiite allianced. Murderous confrontations between resistance groups and Al-Qaeda, etc.
4. The most realistic studies approximate that close to 20 billion dollars of public funds have been misappropriated, since 2003. And many of those responsible, who are now accustomed to spending more time abroad than in Iraq, are only familiar with the infamous Green Zone of Iraq. The Zone, where the very high concrete blocks not only physically isolates them from the bruised country, but equally isolates the Iraqi population socially, economically, and politically. 5. The emphasis of sectarianism and forced displacement of the Iraqi people.
On the regional and international levels, the American administration is beginning to show signs that it has finally understood that it is impossible to have an exclusively American solution to the Iraq dilemma. What is needed is much more than the last Security Council resolution; but rather the realization that the American administration ought to acknowledge that its actions only put greater stress on the fractures in a region that was already so fragile and complex. This can be followed by a rereading of the entire situation and all solutions proposed to date, which were each inadequate or came too late. This would facilitate an arrival of the final conviction that only a new radical departure is able to send a clear message to the Iraqi people, to all its political forces, its neighbors in the region, and the international community that a new era can begin. The starting point would be the break from everything that was falsely created in Iraq up until now. Perhaps the ray of hope would be this old idea of an international conference where all the Iraqi parties involved in the conflict would be invited, as would neighboring countries, and the international parties concerned.
The Iraqi people could never reconcile without the full support of regional and international actors. The war option will always be received as humiliation and indeed an additional injustice, added to the other injustices already bitterly experienced by the people in the region.
For this, everyone must be convinced, particularly all the stakeholders in the country. Foremost the Iraqi people; they must understand that their reconciliation is in the best interest of their people who have deeply suffered and have the right to aspire for a better future. Next, the region: adjacent countrie
s must equally understand that it is in their best interests to have a stable and secure Iraq. Lastly, the international community must put out the Iraqi fire before it sets the entire region ablaze: a region that is important not only for its history, but equally for its stability and utility to the international economy.
To this end, on the assumption that local, regional and international goodwill would unite, nobody would know how much this will require in time and sacrifice. The wounds will remain deep and the agenda of the countries that were implicated in the conflict will be contradictory. However, at least one would know that in Iraq, we have potentially come to an end by finally attaining the bottom of the well. The collision course of the different actors will have ceased and these actors will have understood that they must learn again how to live with one another. Otherwise, the term ‘Iraq’ will no longer exist, with the exception of its mention in history books, similar to the significance of Mesopotamia.
Mokhtar Lamani,IDRC Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, Former Special Representative of the Arab League in 1996 and Former Ambassador of the Islamic Conference to the United Nations from 1998-2004.
