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| Kathmandu, Monday January 06, 2003 Paush 22, 2059. |
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What if there’s no Iraq war ?
For some time now, the American debate over
Iraq has focused on a potential war and what should
follow it. What is striking is how little thought appears to have been given to the other
possible outcome, the one the rest of the world continues to push and the Bush
administration itself professes to favour: a nonmilitary settlement.
In short, all the talk has been about the day
after a war. But what about the day after a non-war?
An invasion still seems likely. But we may
witness an Iraqi turnabout - last-minute compliance with the UN Security Council terms in
hope of salvaging Saddam Hussein’s regime.
There may be a preemptive coup by Iraqi
security officials determined to get rid of Saddam before the United States gets rid of
them.
Or we may have to live with an ambiguous
situation that drags on for a long time, with neither a smoking gun nor a clean bill of
health, because inspections are inconclusive, American allies deem Iraq’s threat
insufficient to justify a war, and Washington concludes that it would be wiser not to go
at all than to go it alone.
In any case, avoiding war with Iraq does not
mean resolving the problem of Iraq.
For the past decade, Iraq policy has been
caught between those who believed that sanctions and covert action would make the regime
go away, and those who believed that time would make the whole issue go away. Thus Iraq
today suffers under harsh international sanctions and harsher domestic repression, with
intrusive inspections and disturbing uncertainty about its weapons capability.
Sanctions leak, to the benefit of their
intended target, the Iraqi regime, and they hurt their unintended victims, the Iraqi
people.
The regime’s totalitarian power is
intact, but the country’s sovereignty is in shambles, with no-flight zones north and
south, a quasi-independent Kurdish area and meddling by its neighbors.
Indeed, the message conveyed by the Iraqi
citizens interviewed in recent weeks by the International Crisis Group is that the
situation is so desperate that many now appear ready to accept a war whose destructive
impact they risk being the first to
suffer.
Even if Saddam were ousted, the Iraq problem
would be unlikely to disappear. Iraq would still have a volatile domestic situation,
long-standing border disputes with neighbors, a rivalry with Iran and
a drive to acquire non-conventional weapons.
The responsibility today, especially for
those who wish to oppose a conflict, is to think about what will happen if war is avoided.
The central pillar of any plan needs to be
deterrence, with commitments from American allies - possibly backed by a Security Council
resolution - for a crushing military response so credible that the regime would understand
that any use of weapons of mass destruction, or indeed any threat to its neighbors, would
bring its immediate demise.
A second pillar would be to induce political
change in Iraq. The United Nations resolutions adopted after the Gulf War demanded that it
cease its repression of its citizens. Needless to say, this call has not been heeded. But
Iraq is in dire straits. The oil industry operates at nowhere near capacity, roads and
water facilities are a shambles, and Iraq’s isolation from most of the industrialised
world makes paying for improvements impossible.
The quid pro quo for Iraq’s economic
reintegration, including international aid, loans for reconstruction projects and the
lifting of sanctions, ought to be key domestic reforms: real elections, political
pluralism, ethnic rights.
Ultimately, so long as any concerns remain
about the country’s intentions regarding weapons of mass destruction, the ban on
military goods and the oil-for-food program should be maintained. Other sanctions, like
the one banning technology that has both civilian and military uses, could gradually be
lifted to encourage domestic reform. In the longer term, a third pillar would be a
regional security system. Elements of this would include commitments from all Gulf states
(including Iran) to respect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of their neighbors
and to give up programs for weapons of mass destruction. These commitments could be
monitored by an international presence on the ground.
The truth is that while Iraq and Iran may
have some very bad reasons to want to develop their non-conventional arsenals, they feel
that they have some pretty good reasons as well - not least of all their fear of each
other. Unless these fears are addressed, any solution is liable to be short-lived.
Failure to offer practical ideas for what
should happen if war does not occur makes war more likely - either now or when the next
crisis is upon us.
(The writer, Middle East programme director at the
International Crisis Group, was special assistant to President Bill Clinton for
Arab-Israeli affairs from 1998 to 2001)
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