Epicenter 2.0

by Joel C. Rosenberg

  Sada described for me the scene as he returned to Baghdad on May 8, 2003, and entered Saddam’s main palace a few days later. The multimillion-dollar gold-and-marble compound no longer had any doors or windows. Everything was covered in dust. These hallways had been ground zero of the republic of fear only weeks before. But now here he was, a free man, walking around in a free country.

  Slowly, cautiously, Sada entered Saddam’s throne room. It took a few moments to grasp the enormity of what he was seeing, or rather not seeing. Saddam was not there. Saddam’s sons were not there. Saddam’s henchmen were not there. They ruled no longer. They could issue their evil, murderous decrees no longer. Iraq was free. Yes, troubles and trials lay ahead. Yes, life would be very hard for some time to come. But the Butcher of Baghdad was gone. And Sada told me that when that truth sunk in, he began to weep.

  Before long, at Sada’s urging, Saddam’s throne room was being used for evangelical church services. In the very room where just a few months earlier Saddam had ordered Iraqis to their deaths, Christians were now gathering to worship the name of Jesus. What could be more fitting, Sada thought, than to turn Saddam’s house of evil into a house of God?

  “Did you ever imagine when you were in a meeting with Saddam Hussein that one day you would actually be worshipping Jesus in that very room?” I asked him.

  “No, no,” he said, laughing like a man from whom a great burden has been lifted. “I would never have dreamt that.”

  And yet it happened.

  Religious freedom has come to Iraq for the first time in centuries. New churches are opening. Bibles are being printed. Muslims are converting to Christianity in record numbers. And nominal Christians are experiencing a spiritual revival, becoming excited about their faith in a way that Sada and other evangelical leaders I have spoken with have never seen before.

  I will describe this in more detail in chapter 14 and put it in the context of the evangelical revolution that is sweeping through the post-9/11 Middle East. But for now it is important to note that this newfound religious freedom is a significant part of why Sada and many of his colleagues are hopeful about their country’s prospects. They have come so far so fast from the dark days of Saddam that, unlike the naysayers in the West, they have no doubt even more dramatic and positive changes are coming.

  A NATIONAL CONVERSATION

  “I am a man who is very, very optimistic about the future of Iraq,” Sada says with a sense of passion that is at once believable and contagious.

  Newfound religious freedom is part of the answer. So, too, is the new political freedom Iraqis are experiencing for the first time in their lives. Despite the violence of the insurgency, each new round of elections has drawn more Iraqis to the polls than the one before. In January 2005, 8.5 million citizens voted—58 percent of all those eligible to do so. By October of that year, turnout had climbed to 9.8 million Iraqis—63 percent of all eligible voters. And by December, more than 12 million Iraqis came out to the polls, a stunning 77 percent of all those eligible.260

  What’s more, turnout has increased dramatically even in provinces racked by violence and those where large numbers of Sunni Muslims live, many of whom have been either wary of participating in the political process or outright hostile to doing so.

  Does this mean that voters in these provinces are satisfied with the results of the elections? Not necessarily. But it does mean that they are beginning to see the electoral process as a way to achieve their personal and political objectives, and this is a very hopeful sign.

  The fact is, a national conversation is under way inside the country. Iraqis now have the freedom to think, to speak their minds, and to discuss and debate ideas unlike ever before. And despite the severe violence in the streets of some provinces, the conversation has not stopped. It has only intensified.

  “There is a great, dramatic change if we compare it with the Saddam Hussein regime,” Sada told me. “Whatever happens now, it will still be much, much better than that. Because now if you have fifty people killed, you have tremendous reaction of newspapers, TV channels. Everybody will speak [about their deaths]. But in the time of Saddam, if he will kill 5,000 people, nobody will know. They will be killed and they will be taken to a mass grave. This will not happen in Iraq anymore. . . . We have many newspapers, many radios, many TVs, everybody has got a [satellite] dish, everybody is watching everything, and this was impossible at the time of Saddam.”

  THE NEW IRAQI ECONOMY

  Yet another reason for optimism is the fact that Iraq’s new economy has nearly doubled since liberation and is already beginning to attract some of the largest companies in the world that increasingly believe the country has a very prosperous future.

  In April of 2006 I had the privilege of having lunch with Ali Abdul Ameer Allawi, Iraq’s finance minister, and Dr. Sinan Al-Shabibi, the governor of Iraq’s Central Bank. They had come to Washington to explain to journalists and policy makers the impressive untold story of Iraq’s rapidly expanding economy.

  “We are talking about the restructuring of an entire country,” Minister Allawi told me. “We’re doing it in an atmosphere of violence. . . . But Iraq is moving. It’s growing. And once the security situation settles down, it is poised to have enormous economic growth. There are a lot of pent-up energies ready to be released.”261

  Dr. Al-Shabibi heartily agreed. “We are making a transition from a war economy to a peace economy. We’re making a transition from a dictatorship to a democracy, and from a centrally planned economy to a market economy. It will take time. But we are already making real progress.”262

  Sure enough, after declining by two-thirds after the invasion of Kuwait, the country’s economy surged from $18.9 billion in 2002 to $33.1 billion in 2005. In 2006, growth has been expected to hit 10.4 percent. It has been projected to surge by 15.5 percent in 2007. The new Iraqi dinar is stable, and annual inflation has dropped from 32 percent to around 10 percent today.263

  Such a trajectory is catching the eye of corporate executives around the globe. Visa proved it really is “everywhere you want to be” when it opened for business in Iraq in June 2003. The credit-card company was the first to process payments in Iraq since economic sanctions were imposed.264

  FedEx began door-to-door pickup and delivery in Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul in August of 2003. A press release noted that “the company’s role as one of the world’s leading drivers of international trade and growth will be a significant asset to Iraq and its business community as the country works towards rebuilding its infrastructure and economy. Access to the FedEx Express international network also helps facilitate the transportation of humanitarian aid into the country, including working with Water Missions International and International Aid.”265

  Hamdi Osman, FedEx’s regional vice president, said, “Iraq has the potential to be one of the fastest growing economies. There is no question that the country faces a tough business climate, but nothing that can’t be overcome.”

  Coca-Cola began joint venture talks with several Iraqi bottling companies in November 2003, eventually striking a deal and launching a new front in the cola wars against Pepsi, their biggest rival. Coke had been exiled from Iraq for thirty-seven years for choosing to do business in Israel and thus facing Saddam’s anti-Zionist wrath.266

  In December 2003, Iraq’s previous finance minister, Kamel al-Gailani, wrote an essay for the Wall Street Journal entitled “Iraq: Open for Business!” He noted that foreign companies operating in Iraq are now finally permitted to have “direct ownership, joint ventures, or branches as they see fit. We will guarantee equality of legal standing for all foreign firms as well as full and immediate remittance of profits, dividends, interest, and royalties. The investment process will be quick and clear with no bureaucratic hurdles to get in the way.”267

  Since then, hundreds of foreign companies, including General Electric, General Motors, Nokia, Lucent Technologies, Motorola, and Canon, have entered Iraq.

  What’s more, some
33,000 new Iraqi businesses have been registered, and about 1.5 million Iraqis have been employed to build or rebuild schools, health clinics, police stations, roads, bridges, and numerous other infrastructure projects.268 A U.S. government report to Congress in the spring of 2006 noted that “over 20,000 microfinance loans with a value of $44 million have been disbursed to small entrepreneurs creating an estimated 30,000 jobs” and “over 2,400 businessmen and women have taken advantage of training programs for small and medium sized enterprises.”269 The report also noted that “countries other than the U.S. have pledged some $13.5 billion worth of support to Iraq.”

  Iraq’s oil industry, meanwhile, is slowly coming back on line and holds tremendous promise for the country’s future. Iraq is currently producing about 2.1 million barrels a day and is exporting an average of 1.5 million barrels a day, says Finance Minister Allawi.270 More than 350 pipelines have been repaired since the end of major combat operations, and U.S. officials report that Iraqi oil revenues have climbed from $5.1 billion in 2003 to an impressive $24.5 billion in 2005.271

  But, again, this is only the beginning. Minister Allawi notes that while Iraq currently has the second-largest reserves of oil in the region, behind the Saudis, the country still has not discovered all of its reserves and desperately needs new oil rigs and production facilities to maximize production. “Our technology is not much better than Soviet era,” Allawi told me. “We can do much better.”

  Allawi conservatively estimates that Iraq will be exporting 3 million barrels of oil a day within the next few years. But he and Central Bank governor Al-Shabibi also told me that a new internal Iraqi study found that by 2010, Iraq could be exporting 6 million barrels a day.

  Western oil executives and energy experts I consulted for this book concurred with this assessment. A Congressional Research Service study found that “only 17 of 80 [Iraqi] oil fields have been developed” and that “Iraq could potentially produce far more oil than has been realized in its history. Given a stable security situation, very large amounts of capital investment, and the involvement of one or more large oil companies, it would be realistic to suggest potential output ramping up to 5 or 6 million barrels per day over the period of several years.”272

  After a speech I delivered at an executive conference in 2005, the vice president of a large North American oil company told me that he had just finished reading The Last Days and wanted to tell me I was significantly understating the oil wealth that Iraq would soon find. While Iraq was currently believed to possess about 115 billion barrels of oil reserves, he said, Saddam’s reign of terror and more than a decade of UN economic sanctions meant that it had been years since anyone had done a serious survey of the country’s oil wealth using the latest geological mapping techniques and technology. Once the violence settles down and companies like his can safely rebuild Iraq’s wells and do more exploration, he and his colleagues are sure Iraq’s proven reserves will be found to be much higher.

  “We’re already sending in survey teams,” he told me. “We’re building alliances in the government and with local leaders. We’re ready to move in and make a major investment in Iraq, as soon as the violence settles down. And we’re not alone.”273

  INSIDE THE NEW IRAQI MILITARY

  The question is, how soon will things settle down in Iraq?

  General Sada hesitates to make a hard-and-fast prediction. He concedes that at times his country seems “close to civil war,” and he does not rule out the possibility of such a war erupting. But he is convinced that in ten years or less, Iraq will be quiet, stable, and immensely prosperous, and he personally believes it will be much sooner than that.

  The key, he says, is getting the new Iraqi military recruited, trained, equipped, and combat ready. It’s a project he has been working on from the moment he returned to his newly liberated country. “In May 2003, I told [American general] Garner, ‘Let us Iraqis start taking [charge of] the internal security. Because you have done a great job in battle. You have removed the regime of Saddam. Now let us take the responsibility of the security.”

  The U.S. originally envisioned only three Iraqi army divisions—one in the north, one in the center, and one in the south. Sada did not think this was nearly enough to crush the insurgency or to keep Iraq safe from Iran or other potentially hostile neighbors. He recommended nine divisions, with reserves of about 150,000 men. As the violence of the insurgency intensified, Sada increased his original recommendation to eleven divisions, and U.S. officials eventually realized that he and his Iraqi military colleagues were right. Later, it was decided to create a new counterterrorism division as well, bringing the total number to twelve Iraqi divisions. Each is now comprised of about 12,000 men, for a total of about 160,000 men in the Iraqi armed forces, separate from police and internal security forces.

  “Twelve divisions are already functioning,” Sada says. “Half of them are well-trained by the Americans. The Americans are doing a great job training the others, and I am sure that soon all the Iraqi army will be well-trained.”

  As this increasingly battle-hardened force matures, Sada says Iraqis will be able to take charge of their own security and allow American and coalition forces to go home. He also says the new Iraqi military is being trained solely for defense purposes and will have no territorial or ideological designs on neighboring countries as in the past, even vis-à-vis Israel.

  “From the early beginning when I was forming the forces,” Sada insists, “the principle was to build these forces on the basis of freedom and democracy, and [that] these forces should be not trained in a way to do violence in the region and for the world. . . . The nature of the forces will be defensive, not offensive.”

  As much as I respect General Sada, I have to disagree with him on those last comments. I have no doubt he and others are training Iraq’s new military for defense-only operations. But the Scriptures are clear that Iraq will one day be the headquarters for the Antichrist, a dictator who will wield unprecedented global authority and will set up his power base in the city of Babylon. We know, therefore, that while Iraqi forces today are being trained by U.S. and NATO commanders—the best in the world—and outfitted with the latest state-of-the-art military gear, someday such forces will be drafted into a final showdown with Israel at Armageddon and ultimately with God himself.

  Some Christians I know have asked if the effort to liberate and rebuild Iraq is worth it, knowing the evil that lies ahead. In other words, are all our blood, toil, tears, and sweat making Iraq safe for democracy or safe for the Antichrist?

  The answer, honestly, is both. But yes, I believe it’s worth it. After all, the Iraqi people desperately need a time of religious, political, and economic freedom, even if it is only for a season. They deserve the opportunity to think and read and debate and travel. They should also have the opportunity to hear the good news of God’s love for them and the way of salvation offered to them through Jesus Christ. Followers of Christ outside of Iraq need the opportunity to get the gospel inside and to strengthen the faith of our brothers and sisters there—especially if a greater evil is rising.

  Think of it this way: Ronald Reagan believed that after the collapse of the Evil Empire, another evil dictator—Gog—would one day arise. But that did not stop Reagan from pursuing the collapse of the Soviet Union and the tearing down of the Berlin wall. Why? Because he saw the future of that part of the world through the third lens of Scripture. He knew what was coming, but he didn’t know when. So he wanted the Russian people to taste freedom, if only for a time. He wanted them to have an opportunity to hear the gospel and respond before prophetic events overwhelmed them.

  In Russia’s case, it has been a decade and a half since the demise of the USSR. We don’t know when the window of freedom in Russia will fully close, but it is certainly closing now. Likewise, we don’t know how long a window we will have in the new Iraq, but we should make the most of every opportunity while we can.

  BABYLON RISING

  Those who d
o not view world events through the third lens of Scripture will, understandably, have a difficult time imagining a season of peace and prosperity emerging in Iraq. They will also have a difficult time imagining the rebuilding of the ancient Iraqi city of Babylon, at least on the scale described in the Left Behind series or my novels.

  Former Republican strategist turned best-selling author Kevin Phillips is one such skeptic among many. “Evil Babylon, the antithesis of Jerusalem, the good city, prompted its own literature in the 1990s, and [Tim] LaHaye’s tens of millions of readers praised his series as making the Bible and its supposed predictions ‘come alive,’” sniped Phillips, citing like-minded authors mocking “prophecy believers” who accept the biblical view that Babylon will one day actually be rebuilt “on its ancient ruins.”274

  Historically, such cynicism has been understandable. For nearly two thousand years, the city of Babylon, located about sixty kilometers south of Baghdad, has been all but extinct. This has led to speculation that the Babylon described in the book of Revelation actually refers to New York or Washington or Rome or Moscow. How could it refer to an Iraqi city that doesn’t exist?

  Except that now it does.

  “More than 2,500 years ago, a fabulous city rose here on a bend in the Euphrates River,” wrote New York Times correspondent John Burns in the fall of 1990. “Under King Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon and its hanging gardens became as fabled, and as much a seat of imperial power, as Rome became later. Under President Saddam Hussein, one of the ancient world’s most legendary cities has begun to rise again.”275

  Burns explained that Saddam had invested millions of dollars to build replicas of Nebuchadnezzar’s buildings—including palaces and throne rooms—“on the original sites.” He described Saddam’s efforts to rebuild the city’s roads, lakes, canals, and bridges, and even to build new museums, souvenir shops, and fast-food restaurants. And he reported that Saddam had offered “a $1.5 million reward to anybody who can produce a satisfactory plan for rebuilding the Hanging Gardens.”