The post-al Zarqawi Iraq

Since Maliki’s most significant task will be to create security by using more troops in troubled cities like Baghdad and Basra, Iraq might begin to see an increase of tension between the emerging state army and the various Sunni and Shi‘i marshland tribal factions, once loyal to the Baathist regime.

But the tribal problem will be secondary to the problem of militias, who remain loyal to various Kurdish and Shi‘i political parties, and at various provinces make up much of Iraq’s police and security forces. Such military structure reaffirms the ethnic and sectarian split inherent in the new post-Baathist Iraqi state. The sectarian make-up of the army, in turn, continues to spur further sectarian tensions as Sunni Arabs experience greater sense of fear and insecurity as Mr Maliki will certainly face greater Shi‘i dissension as he moves to tackle not just SCIRI, but Moqtada Sadr and his millenarian militant organisation.

Building a nation is the art of fostering a sense of nationhood, backed by a strong (non-sectarian) state that can provide security and safety for its citizens. Nation building requires the shaping of an imagined community in which its members can feel that they belong to a political community, that all citizens feel incorporated into a collectivity.

At this stage, Iraq lacks both the nation and the state; it lacks that shared sense of national solidarity, which is increasingly being replaced by provincial tribalism and militant sectarianism, especially in the Shi‘i populated regions of southern Iraq.

What is also missing is an autonomous Iraqi state, independent of the US army and solely dependent on and transparent to the Iraqi people; a state that can govern beyond the green-zone bubble and operate without the “assistance” of US forces against the onslaught of insurgency. Rest assured, the big elephant in Iraq is the US occupation, causing the biggest problem for the legitimisation of Maliki’s unity government for years to come.

The next month or two are crucial. Maliki should now put forward a more aggressive policy to purge the army from militias loyal to various Shi‘i organisations, especially the SCIRI and the Sadrist factions, and put together a military establishment which is made up of various sectarian groups who are loyal only to the central state in Baghdad.

If successful, this will not only strengthen the Iraqi army, with the backing of a more centralised authority, but also alleviate the sectarian tensions that are appearing to grow not only because of the insurgency but also the absence of a more credible and a central government. Once a non-sectarian army is in place, then Iraq can see a decline in violence as Sunni Arabs reintegrate back to the army by abandoning the insurgency.

More importantly, the new Iraqi Government should also inaugurate new cultural and educational programs to propagate a post-Baathist Iraqi national identity. By “new cultural and educational programs” I refer to new cultural activities and national curriculums that promote an imagined community of new Iraqis who do not identify themselves with particular religious sects or political parties, but only would feel a belonging to a unified Iraqi nation, devoid of sectarian consciousness, ethnic and tribal rivalries.

Since a non-sectarian nationalism has been thriving in Iraq since the 1950s when Abdul Karim Qassim initiated the first systematic attempt to structure an Iraqi national identity, the transition to a post-Baathist Iraqi nationhood should not be very difficult. What is central though is that this new form of nationalism should place greater emphasis on democratic values of accountability and pluralism, on civic participation and public discourse, than the revolutionary populist conception of a unitary Iraqi society, led by an authoritarian vanguard party or a charismatic person-figure who claims to represent the collective memory of the nation. The greatest challenge of a new Iraq will be the formation of a new national soul.

A post-Baathist nationalism can provide an alternative to the vacuum created by the US occupation, which in itself is encouraging a portion of the Sunni Iraqi and non-Iraqi insurgency groups to continue their anti-Shi‘i campaign to set off a sectarian warfare.

Now while the Iraqi Government secures more legitimacy among Iraqis (hopefully specially among the Sunni Arabs), it will also gain more courage to demand a US withdrawal from Iraq. At that moment, when the inevitable occurs, the US should lead the way and prepare to pull out its troops from Iraq. This is only reasonable since for an Iraqi Government to become a legitimate state it should first and foremost become autonomous.

If the US does not dramatically reduce its troop size after Maliki Government calls for its withdrawal from Iraq, then the new permanent Iraqi Government will undergo its most daunting experience, that is, a crisis of legitimacy. It is at that time that new al-Zarqawis and Moqtada Sadrs will be born, as the popularity of the older ones, both dead and alive, will continue to grow based on an anti-occupation agenda. It is at that time that Iraq will no longer live under the ghostly remains of al-Zarqawi, but the spectre of a permanent US occupation.