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| Iraq | |
| IraqÂ’s Democratic Prospects | |
| 2006-06-11 | |
Kanan Makiya, who was born in Iraq, is the Sylvia K. Hassenfeld Professor of Islamic and Middle East Studies at Brandeis University, author of The Republic of Fear (1989, rev. 1998), and founder of the Iraq Memory Foundation. In the run-up to the Iraq war, many of us reasoned that if a successful democracy took root, then this just might establish a model that would replicate itself throughout the region, forever altering the currently highly negative image that the Arab and Muslim world has of the U.S. After all, Iraq is an overwhelmingly Muslim country, and one in which the U.S. government has invested a great deal of human and material resources. This thesis, however, has taken some hard knocks, as democratization in Iraq has so far translated only into elections, not the rule of law. Meanwhile, levels of violence have been rising, not falling in Iraq since 2003, reinforcing the false idea held by some Iraqis that democracy is in the end a form of anarchy. The escalation of violence has been particularly significant since the Askariya shrine in Samarra was blown up in late February 2006, an action that marks the success of efforts to undermine the enthusiasm that lay behind the historic vote of December 2005. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |