Facing the Enemy on the Ground

The battle for Iraq's sovereign future is a battle for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. As things currently stand, it appears that victory will go to the side most in tune with the reality of the Iraqi society of today: the leaders of the anti-U.S. resistance.

Iyad Allawi's government was recently installed by the United States-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to counter a Ba'athist nationalism that ceased to exist nearly a decade ago. In the aftermath of the first Gulf War, Saddam Hussein's regime shifted toward an amalgam of Islamic fundamentalism, tribalism and nationalism that more accurately reflected the political reality of Iraq. Thanks to his meticulous planning and foresight, Saddam's lieutenants are now running the Iraqi resistance, including the Islamist groups.

Not only has the United States failed to put into place a viable government to replace the CPA in the aftermath of the so-called "transfer of sovereignty," but more importantly, it continues to misidentify the true nature of the Iraqi insurgency. As a consequence, the resistance will inevitably continue to flourish and grow until no force can defeat it, Iraqi or American.

Ba'athism is Dead, Long Live Saddam

In August 1995, Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, defected to Jordan. In the lead up to the war, much of the attention paid to this event has centered on Kamal's various debriefings with the CIA, British Intelligence, and UN weapons inspectors concerning Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Fourteen months into the U.S. occupation of Iraq, Hussein Kamal's testimony that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction had been destroyed in the summer of 1991 has taken on new relevance, given the fact that to date no WMD have been found.

But more important than the WMD information (which has become abundantly clear through other sources) is Kamal's self-described reason for defecting: Saddam Hussein's order that all senior Ba'ath Party officials undergo mandatory Koranic studies. A staunch Ba'athist like Hussein Kamal, schooled in the doctrine of secular Arab nationalism, viewed the command as tantamount to heresy. But for Saddam Hussein, this radical shift in strategy was necessary to his survival given the new realities of post-Gulf War Iraq.

Confronted with the postwar turmoil created by military defeat and economic devastation (prolonged by UN-imposed sanctions), Saddam had to re-engineer his domestic constituency to maintain his power. The traditional Ba'athist ideology, based on Iraq-centric Arab nationalism, was no longer the driving force it had been a decade prior. Creating a new power base required bringing into the fold not only the Shi'ite majority – which had revolted against him in the spring of 1991 – but also accommodating the growing religious fundamentalism of traditional allies such as key Sunni tribes in western Iraq.

The most visible symbol of Saddam's decision to embrace Islam was his order to add the words "God is Great" to the Iraqi flag. He also simultaneously embraced traditional Iraqi tribal culture, de-emphasizing the importance of the Ba'ath Party in 1996 by noting that it was but "one of the tribes of Iraq" – a move that erased decades of Ba'athist anti-tribal policies.

Getting It Wrong, Again

The transformation of the political dynamics inside Iraq, however, has gone largely unnoticed in the West. It certainly seems to have escaped the attention of the Bush Administration. And the recent "transfer of sovereignty" from the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to the new Iraqi government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi reflects this lack of understanding.

For many in the Bush Administration, the greatest and indisputable success of the invasion of Iraq was ridding the world of a dangerous ideology, Ba'athism. Indeed, one of the first directives issued by Paul Bremer, the former head of the CPA, was to pass a "de-Ba'athification" law, effectively blacklisting all former members of that party from meaningful involvement in the day-to-day affairs of post-Saddam Iraq. The law underscored the mindset of those in charge of Iraq: Ba'athist holdouts loyal to Saddam were the primary threat to the U.S.-led occupation.