From "Freedom, American Style"
Roger Morris
Commentary, April 23, 2003

Washington has rarely been adept, or candid, in fostering authentic democracy. Almost nowhere in half a century--from 1950s' CIA coups in Iran, Guatemala and Congo, among other places, to expeditions into the Caribbean, Africa and elsewhere in the 1980s and 1990s--has regime change left a nation freer. Not even Germany and Japan. The CIA colluded with ex-Nazis in Bonn to fix the rule of a Cold War ally, and covert manipulation entrenched a corporate oligarchy in Tokyo. In the latest case in point, Afghanistan, politics have reverted to the old warlord feudalism. U.S. forces barely venture beyond bases still rocketed by Al Qaeda.

"The United States has no interest, absolutely no interest, in ruling Iraq," said Zalmay Khalizad, a White House aide who was also Bush's envoy to post-Taliban Afghanistan. But history says different: U.S. arms and aid for propping up an Iraqi monarchy in the 1950s. CIA-backed coups in 1963 and 1968, one bringing in the Baathists and the second bringing in Hussein himself. The Gulf War. Now its sequel. Five times in a generation, Washington intervened to ensure that Iraq did not defy U.S. interests.

In one of the most fiercely anti-colonial, Arab nationalist states--hatred of foreign domination the sole cause uniting Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds--Iraqi democracy will be at odds with U.S. policy at every turn. What if Iraq chooses a more independent oil policy, as a past regime did until overthrown by the U.S.? Or a Shiite majority rule takes Baghdad into an anti-U.S. alliance with Iran or other Islamic forces? Or Iraqis continue financing the Palestinian resistance, or adopt a more anti-Israeli policy? Or Iraq, among the most dynamic Arab societies with its own popular socialism, flouts the global capitalist canon? Or a freely elected Iraqi regime decides to rearm, or even rival a nuclear-armed Israel?

From "Militants at the Crossroads"
Ari Z. Weisbard
April 24, 2003

Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim's organization, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), claims some 10,000 trained members in its military arm, the Badr Brigade, and has a history of launching violent attacks against Saddam Hussein's regime. Fawaz Gerges, a professor of International Affairs and Middle Eastern Studies at Sarah Lawrence, says the militant group could potentially become "the Hezbollah of Iraq." Whether that potential is realized may depend on how the United States treats SCIRI during the next critical stages of forming an interim government.

Hakim says that he is poised to return to Iraq--and that it is time for the United States to leave. His group has already displayed its militancy by boycotting the Iraqi opposition conference that began on April 15, a stance some SCIRI officials took within hours of Saddam's statue falling, charging that the meeting was "part of General [Jay] Garner's rule of Iraq and we are not going to be part of that project at all."

It's worth noting, in the wake of these recent protests, that SCIRI was one of only six opposition groups--and one of just two Shiite groups--that the Bush Administration made eligible for $92 million in US military assistance last year. The other primarily Shiite group was the ethically challenged Ahmad Chalabi's umbrella organization, the Iraqi National Congress.

For a group that has enjoyed US support, SCIRI has an uncomfortable amount in common with anti-Western Islamic fundamentalists: Iran provides much of the group's financial backing and for more than twenty years provided refuge for Hakim. During a visit to Lebanon shortly after Israel withdrew its troops, according to the Hezbollah radio station Radio of Islam, Hakim used the occasion to congratulate "Hezbollah, the Islamic Resistance, and its mujahedeen for the great victory against the Zionist enemy."

SCIRI has not only endorsed violent attacks carried out by Hezbollah; the organization has carried out its own violent resistance, from attacking political party headquarters and government buildings with hand grenades, automatic weapons, and hand-held missile launchers to planting a "high powered remotely controlled bomb" in an Iraqi security base, all according to its own website. Although such attacks may have been justified by the nature of Saddam's regime, they also provide a precedent for how SCIRI might choose to oppose a prolonged American occupation.

From "U.S. Planners Surprised by Strength of Iraqi Shiites"
Glenn Kessler and Dana Priest
April 23, 2003

As Iraqi Shiite demands for a dominant role in Iraq's future mount, Bush administration officials say they underestimated the Shiites' organizational strength and are unprepared to prevent the rise of an anti-American, Islamic fundamentalist government in the country.

The burst of Shiite power -- as demonstrated by the hundreds of thousands who made a long-banned pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala yesterday -- has U.S. officials looking for allies in the struggle to fill the power vacuum left by the downfall of Saddam Hussein.

As the administration plotted to overthrow Hussein's government, U.S. officials said this week, it failed to fully appreciate the force of Shiite aspirations and is now concerned that those sentiments could coalesce into a fundamentalist government. Some administration officials were dazzled by Ahmed Chalabi, the prominent Iraqi exile who is a Shiite and an advocate of a secular democracy. Others were more focused on the overriding goal of defeating Hussein and paid little attention to the dynamics of religion and politics in the region.

Since the Iranian revolution in 1979, a major strategic goal of the United States has been to contain radical Shiite fundamentalism. In the 1980s, the United States backed Hussein as a bulwark against Iran. But by this year, the drive to topple Hussein -- who had suppressed Iraq's Shiite majority for decades -- loomed as a much more important objective for the administration.

Some U.S. intelligence analysts and Iraq experts said they warned the Bush administration before the war about vanquishing Hussein's government without having anything to replace it. But officials said the concerns were either not heard or fell too low on the priority list of postwar planning.