AFTER THE WARS
The Iraq Paradox
Why has it been so much harder than Afghanistan?
BAGHDAD--"How was Afghanistan?" asks an aide to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. "Dusty," I reply, pointing at my shoes, which show every evidence of having been in Kandahar hours earlier. "And remarkably stable," I add: The press corps following Donald Rumsfeld drove from Kabul airport to the U.S. Embassy compound with no significant security, a sharp contrast to the helicopter ride that prudence dictated we take into Baghdad's Green Zone. "We'd sure like to have that kind of situation," my interlocutor says. So why does he think the U.S. mission here has been so much harder? Maybe, he says, because the Taliban didn't have 35 years to create the infrastructure of a totalitarian state, with millions of party apparatchiks and a KGB-trained intelligence service--"the same people who are still killing us today."
It's the best answer I heard to a question that nagged me on a recent visit to two of the hottest battlefronts in the war on terror. Iraq, a cosmopolitan civilization, actually knew something of representative democracy before the Baath rose to power in the 1960s. It has an educated middle class, and at least 80% of its population hated the regime when we liberated it. It seemed as fertile ground as any to test the idea that the force of U.S. arms could help improve political evolution in the Muslim world. Iraqis have vindicated that idea by bravely turning out for two elections and a constitutional referendum; but the security situation in Baghdad continues to deteriorate. And the middle class--upon whom so much depends--is fleeing Iraq in numbers.
By contrast, Afghanistan seemed to pose more daunting challenges. It is larger, more populous and largely illiterate, with a history of being the "graveyard of empires." It was the actual home of an Islamist regime. And across the border in Pakistan, madrassas turn out a seemingly endless supply of holy warriors. Yet Afghanistan was liberated with only a token U.S. ground force and stabilized with barely more than 20,000. It still has decades to go before basic education levels will allow it to be anything approaching modern democracy. But don't believe the reports of a significant Taliban resurgence; they're greatly exaggerated.
In Qalat, Zabul province, a 35-minute chopper ride from Kandahar, Governor Del Bar Jan Arman tells me of infrastructure and education projects under way. This progress, he assures, wouldn't be possible if the Taliban posed a significant threat. There have been more confrontations with its remnants lately, but that has a lot to do with the fact we're actively searching them out as part of Operation Mountain Thrust.
Afghanistan's relative stability is partly due to the U.S. having told President Karzai from the get-go that American forces wouldn't operate as his militia, and that he would have to compromise with regional leaders. This is in sharp contrast with our attempts to delay and micromanage political development in Iraq, and it's also something observers who think more troops are always the answer ought to ponder.
But in Baghdad the situation is very different. I see streets strangely empty of traffic as we chopper in from Balad, with rubbish everywhere. I hear that the driver I employed on an earlier visit is now, like many Iraqis, afraid to go into many neighborhoods--his name, Omar, being an invitation to violence should he encounter a Shiite militia.
In a one-on-one meeting, I find the usually irrepressible Barham Salih, deputy prime minister, somewhat somber. It's a "grave situation," he admits. "The more I look at the polarization of Iraq's polity I cannot help but be very concerned." While Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may be dead, the sectarian strife he tried so hard to create continues, and its ferocity suggests the majority of Sunni violence was always Baathist, not al Qaeda, in any case. An Iraqi friend tells me he hears the "resistance" has compiled a dossier on him running 30 pages; he stays safe these days inside the Green Zone.
How good is our intelligence on the insurgency? Not good enough. The CIA has turned the Iraqi Intelligence Ministry into an unaccountable black-box operation that doesn't even show up in the Iraqi budget. And whatever Defense Intelligence is doing under the leadership of Undersecretary Stephen Cambone doesn't seem to be producing great results. One thing Saddam's regime was notorious for is record-keeping, so I can't understand why we're not doing a better job of identifying and suffocating the former regime elements most likely responsible for the current terror.
Everyone I talk to emphasizes the importance of the political dimension in solving the troubles. And surely courageous leadership will be necessary to rein in the militias that grew in response to the initial Baathist/al Qaeda terror. But there's also a danger that overemphasis on a political solution will effectively legitimize violence as a tactic. Mr. Salih concedes that not everyone in government and in parliament has Iraq's best interests at heart. He also thinks a big part of the solution will have to be changing attitudes in the international community, particularly neighboring Arab states. Thus far they have encouraged the Sunni minority's intransigent belief that they are still Iraq's rightful rulers.
The news isn't all doom and gloom. The Iraqi army has developed into a credible security force; the day after my visit the southern Al-Muthanna Province was handed over to full Iraqi control. Large swaths of Iraq are relatively peaceful. And despite sectarian violence in the streets, the unity government is holding together, meaning there is no "civil war" by any reasonable definition of that term. Mr. Salih tells me how he wanted to "pinch" himself recently as Iraq's elected leaders debated a new oil law, something that seemed unimaginable five years ago.
But there is also no question that the situation in Baghdad is headed in the wrong direction, probably too fast to hope that the solution will be the incremental improvement of Iraq security forces. Some creative thinking is needed in the Iraqi government and the White House. A revamped intelligence initiative aimed at Baathist elements of the insurgency would help a lot. So too would an end to the foreign encouragement of violence. Iraq must be turned "from a point of controversy into a point of international consensus," Mr. Salih tells me. The myriad risks if Iraq becomes a failed state are so obviously huge that it's hard to imagine how anybody could think otherwise.
Mr. Pollock is a member of the Journal's editorial board.
