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Bowing to the Mighty Ayatollah
With both its authority and its transition plans in jeopardy, the administration has decided the United Nations has some legitimacy after all
By Fareed Zakaria
Newsweek

Jan. 26 issue - There really should be no contest. On one side is history's most important superpower, victorious in war, ruling Iraq with 150,000 troops and funding its reconstruction to the tune of $20 billion this year. On the other side is an aging cleric with no formal authority, no troops, little money, who is unwilling to even speak in public. Yet last June, when Ayatollah Sistani made it known that he didn't like the American plan to transfer power to Iraqis, the plan collapsed. And last week, when Sistani announced that he is still unhappy with the new American proposal, Paul Bremer rushed to Washington for consultations. What does this man have that the United States doesn't?

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Legitimacy. Sistani is regarded by Iraqi Shiites as the most learned cleric in the country. He is also seen as having been uncorrupted by Saddam Hussein's reign. "During the Iran-Iraq War, Sistani managed to demonstrate that he could be controlled neither by Saddam nor by his fellow ayatollahs in Iran, which has given him enormous credibility," says Yitzhak Nakash, the leading authority on Iraqi Shiites.

The United States fears that he will brand them as colonialists and the new transition government as a puppet regime. American officials know these few words could well derail their plans. The occupation can survive an insurgency, but it cannot survive 10 countrywide protest marches with thousands chanting "Colonialists go home!"
  The Mullah Behind the Curtain

From the start, the Pentagon planners (or nonplanners) believed the United States would have no legitimacy problems in Iraq. "We will be greeted as liberators," Vice President Cheney famously predicted. When urged after the war to transfer some authority to the United Nations to gain legitimacy, administration officials were dismissive in public and scathing in private. "We have far more legitimacy than the U.N.," one senior official told me last June. To discredit the idea of internationalization, Defense Department officials kept insisting that their goal was to transfer power not to the United Nations but to the Iraqis. "No foreigners can be in charge of [determining how elections will be held]," said Paul Wolfowitz.

NEWSWEEK RADIO | 1/18/04
Iraq: Al-Sistani & Elections

Fareed Zakaria, Editor, NEWSWEEK International Edition

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Well, the Iraqis heard these speeches, too. The Governing Council, many of whose members have little chance of winning an election, said, "Transfer power to us now!" The Shiite leaders said, "Hold elections now!" knowing that they were the only politically organized force in the country. So the administration has decided that the United Nations has legitimacy after all. Along with its allies on the Governing Council, Washington is now asking Kofi Annan to give the United Nations' blessings to its plan, explain that elections cannot be held precipitously and get involved in the entire political process. The columnist William Safire, who has long ridiculed the need for a U.N. role, is now sheepishly asking if Annan could do us a favor, please. The foreigners are being invited in. It might be too little, too late.

A power struggle has begun in Iraq, as could have been predicted—indeed was predicted. Sistani is becoming more vocal and political because he faces a challenge to his leadership from the more activist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. "Al-Sadr does not have Sistani's reputation or training as a scholar and thus presents himself as a populist leader who will look after Shia political interests," says Nakash. It's turning into a contest to see who can stand up to the Americans more vociferously and appeal to Shiite fears. The Iraqi Shiites are deeply suspicious that the United States will betray them, as it did in 1992 after the gulf war, or that it will foist favored exiles like Ahmad Chalabi upon them. Sistani recently told Iraq's tribal leaders that they should take power, not "those who came from abroad."

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The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad by Fareed Zakaria
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The tragedy is that while Sistani's fears are understandable, Washington's phased transition makes great sense. It allows for time to build institutions, form political parties and reform the agencies of government. An immediate transfer will ensure that the political contest will overwhelm all this institutional reform. But Washington lacks the basic tool it needs to negotiate with the locals: legitimacy. Belatedly it now recognizes that the United Nations can arbitrate political problems without being accused of being a colonizer.

American policymakers made two grave mistakes after the war. The first was to occupy the country with too few troops, creating a security vacuum. This image of weakness was reinforced when Washington caved in to Sistani's objections last June, junked its original transition plan and sped things up to coincide with the American elections. The second mistake was to dismiss from the start the need for allies and international institutions. As a result, Washington is now governing Iraq with neither power nor legitimacy.

Write the author at comments@fareedzakaria.com.

© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
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