Standing against Iran
I asked Alusi why Iraqi Shias aren’t building an alliance with Iranian Shias to take over Iraq and drive out all Western influences, as so many have feared might happen.
“You have to understand, Joel, that Imam Ali [Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani]—the leader of the Shias in Iraq—is the father of liberal peace in Iraq. He is the head of the liberals. He’s a force of moderation and democracy in Iraq. He tells people, ‘Everybody has the right to think for themselves and come up with something new.’”
Alusi was absolutely right. Ayatollah al-Sistani has been a remarkable—and largely unexpected—voice of moderation and tolerance in Iraq. When U.S. forces were preparing to liberate his country in March 2003, Sistani told Shia Muslims—some 60 percent of the Iraqi population—to welcome, not oppose, them. When the time came to put together an interim government, Sistani encouraged full Shia participation. As the date approached for Iraqi elections, again Sistani encouraged full Shia participation. When sectarian violence by the Sunni-driven AQI was intensifying in the fall of 2004, Sistani called on Shia militias not to respond in kind. “Please be civilized,” he said. “We don’t want to start a civil war. This is the most important point.”493
Sistani has not always been successful at keeping the Shia peaceful—restraining Moqtada al-Sadr, the fanatical leader of the Shia-driven Mahdi Army, from 2005 through 2007 was particularly difficult—but he has continued to try. Moreover, he has curiously but thankfully not been a voice of anti-Americanism, unlike his contemporaries in Iran. He does not evoke chants of “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” as the Ayatollah Khamenei does in Tehran. He does not want to be seen as being too cozy with the Americans, but to his credit, he certainly has not stirred Shia sentiment against U.S. leaders or the military.
“Iraqi Shia theology is peaceful here,” Alusi noted. “They don’t teach in Iran what Imam Ali is teaching here.”
“But why is that?” I asked. “Isn’t that counterintuitive? Didn’t we all think that Iran would be able to leverage Sistani against us, and against the rising Reformers in Baghdad?”
Alusi readily conceded that the Iranians have been able to enlist many Iraqi Shias into their cause. But by the grace of God, they have not been able to co-opt the entire movement or its leaders.
“The Shia here are open-minded, and they are Iraqis, not Iranians,” he told me. “They are smart, and not stupid. They are human beings, and not killers. This is the space that we need to build on. The Shias are turning against Moqtada al Sadr. No one can control Moqtada if the Shia support him. But the Shia don’t support the extremist ways. This means there is great hope for my country.”
“Fair enough,” I agreed. “But overall, how serious is the Iranian threat to the region and the world?”
“Iran is an exceptional problem,” Alusi said categorically. “We are feeling that. The regime in Iran are fascists. They are trying to have crazy fascist propaganda to control the Shia people of Iraq. We believe they are trying to use Iraq as a tool to accomplish their goals. Iraq, Israel, and the United States have to stand against Iran. We have to work together. We are facing the same enemy, and we need each other. If Iran can destroy democracy here in Iraq, they will attack other countries—Turkey in the north, the Gulf states in the south, Jordan, and others. Iran is very smart to attack Iraq and not other countries. If they can win in Iraq, they will be able to control other countries too. Iran wants to build a Shia arc that starts with southern Iraq, goes into Syria, into Lebanon, and right to the borders of Israel. Iraq is the central player in stopping that.”
“Do you believe Iran is trying to acquire nuclear weapons?”
“Yes, of course. We know this. Can they get an atomic bomb soon? Yes, I believe they can. But they need to test it, otherwise they won’t be sure if it will work or not. But if they test it, the international community will wake up to the threat. So Iran is trying to use time to play games so they can build an atomic bomb. They will never test it until they have more that are ready to be used—five, six, seven, or eight. You have to realize, Joel, that all of the international intelligence agencies are worried that al Qaeda is trying to build an atomic bomb. The knowledge is out there. It’s not hard to get. The problem is to have the uranium to actually make the bomb. What if Iran gets that uranium? What if they help al Qaeda build atomic bombs? What then?”
“What should we do about Iran?” I asked.
“If we want to stop them, we have to attack them,” he replied without a pause. “Then we will have a major war. . . . I’m so upset to hear from some generals that ‘We can’t do it. We can’t stop Iran. It would be too hard.’ But we must do it. We don’t have any other choice. It would actually be a short operation to stop the danger. Iran is not as strong as everyone thinks. Right now, they don’t even have the Bomb yet, but they are taking everyone hostage. ‘If you try to stop us,’ they say, ‘we will send terrorists to attack you. If you stop us, we will bomb your oil fields. If you stop us, we will set the region on fire.’ They keep making threats, and no one in the free world is taking action. Now, imagine if they have the atomic bomb, how shall we ever stop them from their evil goals? The world should stop them. America should stop them, and Iraq should help, because there is no other alternative. Other politicians may not be able to say it yet, but who cares? It has to be done.”
“How much time does the West and Iraq have to stop Iran before it is too late?”
“The Iranians have a time schedule,” Alusi said. “I don’t know what it is. They are playing a game. They are working full-time to get atomic bombs. From my point of view, they need one year at most. They are determined to get to their goal.”
The Iraqi Model?
On September 10, 2008, Alusi returned to Israel. It was his third visit but his first as an actual member of Parliament. During his speech, he called for greater cooperation between Baghdad and Jerusalem. But when he got back to Iraq, he found himself facing a firestorm. Some MPs demanded he be arrested for traveling to an “enemy” state. Others demanded he be stripped of his parliamentary privileges and banned from the parliament building. Alusi received numerous death threats and could not travel for fear of being assassinated.
“Was it worth it to visit Israel not just once but three times?” I asked.
“Did you see President Talabani shaking hands with the Israeli defense minister [Ehud Barak] last month?” he asked in response. “If I had not gone, would that have happened? We are breaking the taboos, and they don’t exist anymore. I will pay any price to keep Iraq safe and create a free society.”
“Do you advocate a formal peace treaty with Israel at present?”
“Look, we Iraqis have respect for the Jewish people,” he said. “There are more than three hundred thousand Israelis who were born in Iraq. But we are also politicians. We are trying to build a state, and we have to be careful. . . . So we don’t want to move too far, too fast. . . . We need each other. We have tools that the Israelis need. They have tools we need. Staying alone we will be weak. Working together is very important, but a formal relationship is difficult right now.”
This man is not only brave, I thought; he is also quite shrewd.
I had one more question for him.
“If Iraq gets it right,” I asked, “if it can truly become a healthy, secure, fully functioning democracy, what kind of impact will this have on the rest of the region?”
“I am trying to learn from the international community how to build an Iraqi democracy,” he replied. “If we succeed in Iraq, we—not as individuals, but as a whole, as an emerging democracy—we will have great influence on the whole region. Look at what has already happened since Iraq became free. Kuwait now allows women to be elected. There were elections in Bahrain. In the Emirates, they are trying small experiments with giving people more say in their governments. The Saudis, too. In Egypt, President Mubarak is having clear difficulties trying to install his son to succeed him. We are gratefu
l to the American people for helping us become a free people. But it is not that you are exporting Thomas Jefferson to us. It’s not exporting. You cannot force people to embrace liberty and democracy. But if they want it, they will accept it and embrace it. And Iraqis, we want democracy. We want freedom. This is coming from our hearts and our souls. We are fighting Islamic fascists who want to rule our lives. But we want to be free, and I am very hopeful about how things are going.”
Chapter Twenty
Meet Jalal Talabani
The inside story of the first democratically elected president of Iraq
Few Reformers have intrigued or impressed me like Jalal Talabani. The first democratically and constitutionally elected president of Iraq, he is trying to govern a country devoid of any tradition of representative government in more than five thousand years of recorded history.
He is a Kurd in a nation where Kurds make up only about 15 percent of the population. And he is trying to govern a nation of Arabs, who make up some 80 percent of the population and have long ridiculed, hated, and even massacred the Kurds.494
He is a Sunni in a nation where Sunnis comprise only about 35 percent of the population. And he is trying to govern a nation of Shias, who comprise about 60 percent of the population.495
He is a Muslim, yet no national political leader in Iraq has done more to protect Iraqi Christians from both Sunni and Shia Radicals. Nor has any Iraqi leader besides Mithal al-Alusi been so friendly to Jews and particularly to Israelis. It was Talabani who shook the hand of Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak at a conference they both attended in Athens in July of 2008, sparking calls for his resignation from some members of the Iraqi parliament.496
It was also Talabani who said in November of 2007 that Israeli president Shimon Peres was “an individual welcome in Iraqi Kurdistan” because Peres had long supported “the establishment of an independent Kurdish state or independent federal region for the Kurds in the north of Iraq.”497
Looking closer, one finds that Talabani is a former guerrilla leader, yet he is trying to persuade Iraqis to give up sectarian violence as a political tool. He made his name as a Kurdish separatist, yet he is trying to persuade his nation to stick together, create a federal republic, and embrace national unity. He is the founder of a Socialist political party—the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan—yet since the early 1990s he has helped create a real, functioning market economy in the Iraqi Kurdish republics.
What’s more, today he supports Iraq’s flat tax, is doing what he can to attract more foreign direct investment into the country, is committed to U.S.- and British-style democracy, and is trying persuade his fellow Iraqis to embrace market economics and Jeffersonian democracy.
And if all that were not enough, Talabani is in his seventies, yet he is trying to govern a country where the average age is just twenty and nearly four in ten citizens are under the age of fifteen.
The task has been daunting, to say the least. Yet against all odds, it is now clear that Talabani has played a critical role in helping create a new Iraq that is increasingly peaceful and prosperous.
By the fall of 2008 an estimated 90 percent of Iraqi territory was considered safe for travel without much fear of kidnapping, assassination, or terrorist attack. Violence in Baghdad was down some 80 percent from its worst months in 2006. More than 70 percent of combat operations were being led by Iraqi military and security forces, with U.S. assistance, and Iraqi forces were increasingly battle-tested and successful, killing and capturing jihadists in impressive numbers. Iraqi civilians throughout the country were becoming so disgusted by Muslim-on-Muslim violence they were turning against the jihadist leaders, calling the tip lines and helping U.S. and Iraqi forces capture key leaders and huge caches of weapons.
As violence dropped, Iraq’s economy began accelerating. Oil production and exports increased. Scores of foreign companies began arriving. Tens of thousands of Iraqis created their own small businesses. New jobs were created. Housing prices rose. New construction began. Cranes were everywhere, particularly in the north, as new high-rise office buildings and apartments were springing up. By the end of 2008, the Iraqi economy was doing so well that the government actually wound up with a budget surplus of about $80 billion, tangible evidence that the country was finally moving in the right direction.498
There is far more to be done, to be sure. Iraq is by no means out of the woods. But though it is seldom reported in the Western press, many good things have occurred in Iraq since Talabani came to power. The question is, why?
The Rise of “Mam Jalal”
Who is Jalal Talabani? Where did he come from? Where does he want to take Iraq?
To understand the Iraqi president’s remarkable rise to power and the vision he has for his country, several colleagues and I took the opportunity to travel to Iraq twice in 2008, once in February and again in late September. We traveled extensively throughout the Kurdish provinces where Talabani made his name, talking to people who have followed his career for decades and affectionately call him “Mam Jalal,” or “Uncle Jalal.” We visited the town where he was born and saw the home he still owns and visits along the shores of Lake Dukan, not far from the border of Iran. We interviewed several of his senior advisors. We also interviewed a number of U.S. diplomatic and military officials in Iraq and Washington who have known Talabani over the years.
Here is what we learned.
Talabani was born on November 12, 1933, during a time of tumultuous political change in Iraq. Just one year earlier, Iraq had gained its independence from British control after being carved out of the Ottoman Empire as a modern country by the League of Nations on November 11, 1920.
As a child, Talabani was raised in the village of Koya, near Lake Dukan, in the heart of Iraqi Kurdistan. Koya is surrounded by beautiful countryside whose geography reminded me of New Mexico or Arizona in the American Southwest—rugged mountains, arid deserts, and vast, painted skies that are particularly moving when the sun rises and sets. It is known by many Kurds to be a “progressive” center, home of many well-known Kurdish poets, singers, and intellectuals.
As he grew older, Talabani went to high school in Erbil, a more modern and prosperous Kurdish city that today boasts a population of more than one million and is the official political and administrative capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.499 It was there that Talabani became politically active, founding his own secret Kurdish student group at the age of thirteen and officially joining the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)—headed up by Mustafa Barzani, the legendary Kurdish resistance leader—at the age of fourteen. Just four years later, Talabani had so impressed his elders with his intelligence and political savvy that he was actually elected to the KDP’s central committee, helping shape future policy and strategy.
“Upon finishing his secondary education, he sought admission to medical school but was denied it by authorities of the then ruling Hashemite monarchy owing to his political activities,” notes his official biography. “In 1953 he was allowed to enter law school but was obliged to go into hiding in 1956 to escape arrest for his activities as founder and secretary general of the Kurdistan Student Union. Following the July 1958 overthrow of the Hashemite monarchy, Mr. Talabani returned to law school, at the same time pursuing a career as a journalist and editor. . . . After graduating in 1959, Mr. Talabani performed national service in the Iraqi army, where he served in artillery and armor units and served as a commander of a tank unit.”500
Ironically, it was in the Iraqi military that Talabani received the training in weapons, military strategy, and combat tactics that enabled him in 1961 to join Mustafa Barzani as one of the leaders of the “first Kurdish revolution,” an armed and violent insurgency against the Iraqi government.
Talabani and Barzani’s dream was to create a free Kurdistan, independent from Baghdad’s control. Their plan was to recruit, train, mobilize, and deploy young Kurdish men to attack Iraqi military units and installations until Baghdad relented and recognized the Kurds’ right of se
lf-determination. Their chief allies were Iran, the U.S., and Israel.
Talabani and Barzani shrewdly exploited the Iranians’ long-standing hatred for the Iraqi Arabs and successfully petitioned the shah to partially fund their rebellion against Baghdad. They also persuaded Washington and Jerusalem that in the spirit of the old Arab proverb “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” financially supporting the Kurds against the anti-America, anti-Israel government in Iraq and working in concert with the pro-Kurd shah was a wise investment. The CIA and the Mossad, therefore, became quite active in Kurdistan during this time.
A House Divided
By the early 1970s, the Kurdish insurgents had inflicted significant damage and casualties against the Iraqi central government, but serious cracks were growing within the resistance movement.
When the Ba’ath Party offered the Kurds a peace agreement and partial autonomy, the KDP under Barzani was inclined to accept the deal. Many Kurds were exhausted from years of armed struggle. Talabani, however, fiercely opposed anything short of full independence.
By 1974, the KDP’s negotiations with Baghdad had collapsed, but the strains between Barzani and Talabani were pronounced. The two men had developed two very different strategies to achieve their common goals. At the same time, they each had amassed a large and growing following of deeply devoted Kurdish supporters. A split was coming, and the events of 1975 became the turning point.
In March of 1975, Baghdad and Tehran signed what became known as the “Algiers Agreement.” The accord—negotiated in secret in Algeria by Saddam Hussein, then Iraq’s vice president—was designed to settle long-standing disputes over land and border demarcations between the two countries. As part of the deal, Saddam demanded that the shah cut off aid to the Kurdish rebellion against Baghdad.
The shah agreed. Funds stopped flowing from Tehran almost instantly. Saddam returned to Iraq, quickly marshaled his forces, and launched a massive counterattack against the Kurdish forces. Barzani was forced to flee for his life into exile, eventually ending up in Washington, D.C.
Inside the Revolution Page 33