The war in Iraq has taught the United States the limitation of using its military superpower for social engineering around the world, a lesson clearly learnt by Barack Obama. Yet six years after the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Firdos Square, what has been learnt by the Iraqis and the Arabs? Little, if anything.
And who started the war anyway? Aside from September 11, some manipulative Iraqi leaders in exile and America’s appetite for controlling the world’s fourth-largest oil reservoir, an army of Arab intellectuals contributed to the American adventure.
Time and again since the end of the Second World War the proponents of pan-Arabism, nationalism, leftism and progressive ideologies peddled one main idea: western colonialism – French and British, then American – is responsible for Arab misery.
Unverifiable stories of Saddam Hussein’s connections to the CIA were plenty, and gave many Arabs little to worry about when Iraq’s strongman employed brutality against his own citizens, as long as they could easily blame it on America. Whenever a Palestinian militant blew himself up with a suicide bomb, many Arabs blamed the miserable socio-economic conditions in the Palestinian Territories under American-sponsored Israeli occupation.
For decades, with an increasing number of reports showing many Arab countries lagging behind in all aspects of development, intellectuals rarely blamed the dominant cultural trends in those countries. Instead they found it easier to pound America for supporting autocrats such as Saddam, and obstructing the natural tendency among Arab peoples towards development and self improvement.
Then, after nearly 60 years, America suddenly reversed its behaviour by sending its troops to topple Iraq’s dictator, an act that the US oddly judged to be in its own interests. Arabs took to the streets en masse to protest against the war, while intellectuals suddenly disregarded the links they often highlighted between Iraqi backwardness and the rule of an American-supported dictator.
Only a minority of Arabs – namely Kuwaitis who had felt Saddam’s wrath, and a majority of Iraqis – stood their ground in cheering for the toppling of the Iraqi autocrat. “Iraq is the country of one million engineers”, and “Cairo writes, Beirut publishes and Baghdad reads” were only a couple of the thoughts that many of us, supporters of the war, offered to argue that finally an opportunity had come to the Iraqi people.
I visited Iraq in 2003 shortly after the downfall of the Saddam Hussein regime, after 21 years in exile and for the first time as an adult. I was keen to take part in my country’s rebirth. But instead of the one million engineers we hoped for, we got two million thieves who looted their own nation.
Going to Iraq in 2003 was like going back decades in a time machine. At the time, Iraqis had not seen cell phones, and only a few knew about the internet. Satellite technology was alien too, and I vividly remember trying to explain to family and friends how an ATM machine works, the credit card system, GPS and many other technologies that were common knowledge in most other countries.
We proponents of change in Iraq were cheated: the state of Iraq was a mirage, and vacuum was inevitable. Saddam had missiles that he paraded along with what looked like a mighty army, but underneath that facade there were no institutions or civil society to keep anything running after him.
While many might argue that it was Saddam who destroyed Iraq, making it crumble in his absence, it is hard to believe that one man could kill one of the oldest civilisations in the world. Judging by other nations who saw their dictators collapse but still developed safely into relatively stable countries, such as in Eastern Europe after the Cold War and Japan after the Second Wold War, there is no reason to consider Iraq a classic case of transformation from autocracy to democracy.
Furthermore, there is no evidence indicating that a robust civil society ever existed in Iraq. The country never practised peaceful politics. Since its inception, Iraq’s history tells only stories of warring tribal alliances hiding under a fake garb called the state, and resulting in either brutal clashes or tyranny.
Saddam did not come from Mars. He came from the village of Awja. His character was shaped on the streets of Baghdad when, along with his clan, calling itself Baathist, he engaged in fist fights with other clans who called themselves communists, Nasserites and other unfitting titles borrowed from modern times.
In Iraq, Saddam was not the cause of Iraqi backwardness, but rather its product. And in his absence and the ensuing vacuum, intelligence operatives from neighbouring countries found an opportunity to settle scores with America on the one hand, and among themselves on the other. The result was five years of Iraqi bloodshed.
This is the sad story of Iraq and most of the Arab world, and the lesson should be clear: when looking at their misery, the Arabs should stop blaming the Mongols, the Persians, the Ottomans, the French, the British, the Russians, the Israelis or the Americans for their ills.
When feeling in distress over socioeconomic and political issues inside their countries, Arabs should start looking inward and keep in mind an Ancient Greek aphorism: Know Thyself.
Hussain Abdul Hussain is a Visiting Fellow with Chatham House, London
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