Gunpoint Democracy in Iraq

The United States is now a formal colonial power in Iraq, and the combination of the Administration's deceptions and the mounting American casualties have dimmed the shine on the colonialists' boots. In March and April, public support for the war was in the neighborhood of 75 percent; by the end of July, it had fallen below 60 percent.

It might have fallen further but for the notion -- peddled by Bush, as well as by Thomas Friedman of The New York Times -- that the reason for the war didn't matter because the United States liberated the Iraqi people and is now building democracy in Iraq.

It is certainly true that the Iraqis are free from the extreme authoritarian brutality of Saddam Hussein's regime; unfortunately, it doesn't exactly follow that the Administration intends to create democracy in Iraq. An Administration that will play fast and loose with the truth on Iraq's putative weapons of mass destruction is entirely capable of doing the same regarding its true intentions for the future Iraqi government.

The question of what sort of society the United States is building in Iraq takes on tremendous significance, since Iraq may be just one of many. "We're going to get better over time," Lawrence Di Rita, a special assistant to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, told the Los Angeles Times. "We'll get better as we do it more often."

To get a hint of what the Bush Administration has in mind, it's instructive to take a quick look at its previous effort in democracy building: Afghanistan. Since routing the Taliban, Washington has been propping up some of the most undemocratic forces in Afghanistan, including the various regional warlords, like Ismail Khan of Herat and Abdul Rashid Dostum of Mazar-i-Sharif. A study by the Center for Economic and Social Rights found that one of the most common complaints from ordinary Afghans was about U.S. support for the warlords. Many Afghans, the report noted, "named U.S. policy as the prime obstacle to disarming warlords."

A recent report from Human Rights Watch charges that U.S. support for these warlords could jeopardize attempts to adopt a new constitution and to hold elections in 2004. "Gunmen and warlords who were propelled into power by the United States and its coalition partners" have "essentially hijacked the country outside of Kabul," says Brad Adams, executive director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch.

To convey the appearance of democracy, the United States called together a loya jirga, or grand council. Washington essentially deputized the warlords to manipulate it in order to attain U.S. aims. "We delegates were denied anything more than a symbolic role in the selection process," wrote loya jirga delegates Omar Zakhilwal and Adeena Niazi in The New York Times. "A small group of Northern Alliance chieftains decided everything behind closed doors." Early on, more than 800 of the 1,500 delegates had called for the election of Zahir Shah as interim president, but he was unsuitable to U.S. interests. "The entire loya jirga was postponed for almost two days while the former king was strong-armed into renouncing any meaningful role in the government," the delegates wrote.

After Zahir Shah stepped down, the delegates were presented with a fait accompli. Hamid Karzai, handpicked by the United States, was the only viable candidate (there were two "protest" candidates who were largely unknown). There was no meaningful decision for them to make. In the end, the whole thing was scarcely more democratic than the loya jirga conducted by the Soviet Union in 1987 in order to legitimize its client government.

In Afghanistan, the United States had no particular desire to run the country. Its primary objective, a permanent or semi-permanent military presence throughout Central Asia, was easily achieved. The creation of a pro-American central government helped give a veneer of international legitimacy to its continuing military operations there. But, aside from some economically minor plans for oil and gas pipelines, there are no compelling interests for the United States in Afghanistan -- at least none so compelling that it wishes to risk a significant commitment.