On April 6, 2005, the first-ever free and fair elections in Iraq’s history were finally held. And when the 275-member Iraqi National Assembly (parliament) was seated, it was Jalal Talabani who was chosen as president.
The following year, on April 22, 2006, after Iraq’s constitution was completed and approved, Talabani earned the distinction of being Iraq’s first democratically and constitutionally elected president.
Why? It was not complicated. Over more than seventy years, Talabani had earned the trust of the Iraqi people. He had devoted his life to opposing Saddam Hussein. He had been willing to die if necessary to fight for the liberation of his people. Everyone knew he was a real Reformer.
And he was certainly no Johnny-come-lately, just trying to grab power for power’s sake or get his name in the papers. Over the decades, Talabani had built alliances all over the world with leaders and nations willing to help the Iraqi people gain their freedom, and he had impressed Iraqis with his diplomatic skills along the way. Moreover, he not only talked about building the first true democracy in the Muslim world; he was one of only a handful of leaders in Iraq that had actually helped create and run a true, healthy, functional, operational democracy—the Kurdistan Regional Government—comprising three of Iraq’s eighteen provinces (Erbil, Sulymania, and Dohuk), 4 million people, and forty thousand square kilometers of territory, an area four times larger than Lebanon.
“We will spare no effort to present Iraq as a model of democracy,” Talabani said upon taking office. “We hope to consolidate national unity . . . regardless of religious and sectarian backgrounds. . . . [And we will ensure that] all Iraqis are equal before the law. It means that there [will be] no discrimination [and] that all Arabs, Kurds, and other nationalities have the same rights.”514
Chapter Twenty-One
Talabani’s Test
The insurgency, the surge, and the future
On September 13, 2005, President George W. Bush welcomed President Jalal Talabani to the White House for a series of private strategy meetings. When they were finished, the two leaders held a formal press conference.
“I’m proud to stand with a brave leader of the Iraqi people, a friend of the United States, and a testament to the power of human freedom,” Bush began. “Mr. President, thank you for your leadership. Thank you for your courage. President Talabani has dedicated his life to the cause of liberty in Iraq. As a lawyer, journalist, and a political leader in northern Iraq, he stood up to a brutal dictator because he believes that every Iraqi deserves to be free. The dictator destroyed Kurdish villages, ordered poison gas attacks on a Kurdish city, and violently repressed other religious and ethnic groups. For President Talabani and his fellow citizens, the day Saddam was removed from power was a day of deliverance. And America will always be proud that we led the armies of liberation. The past two years, the Iraqi people have made their vision of their future clear. This past January, more than 8 million Iraqis defied the car bombers and the assassins and voted in free elections. It was an inspiring act of unity when 80 percent of the elected national assembly chose the president, a member of Iraq’s Kurdish minority, to lead the free nation.”515
The Iraqi president beamed. “It is an honor to represent the world’s youngest democracy,” he said graciously. “In the name of the Iraqi people, I say to you, Mr. President, and to the glorious American people, thank you, thank you. Thank you because you have liberated us from the worst kind of dictatorship. Our people suffered too much from this worst kind of dictatorship. The signal is mass graves with hundred thousand of Iraqi innocent children and women, young and old men. Thank you. And thanks to the United States, there are now fifty million Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq liberated by your courageous leadership and decision to liberate us, Mr. President. We agree with Mr. President Bush that democracy is the solution to the problems of the Middle East. Mr. President, you are a visionary, great statesman. We salute you. We are grateful to you. We will never forget what you have done for our people.”
Talabani continued by declaring Iraq “partners” with the American people in the fight against the Radicals. “We are proud to say openly and to repeat it, that we are partners of the United States of America in fighting against tyranny, terrorism, and for democracy,” he said without apology. “That’s something we are not shy to say, and we’ll repeat it everywhere, here and in Iraq and the United Nations and everywhere. Iraqis and Americans alike in the war against terrorism. Our soldiers now fighting side by side with your brave soldiers, now and every day. We have captured many senior elements of Al Qaeda. We killed many of them. And we had also many of them in our prisons. . . . Now Iraq is a free country. . . . With your support, we [will] create a society enjoying democracy for the first time of the history.”516
What a remarkable moment. The world was watching the president of Iraq, of all countries, stand before a cynical White House press corps to thank the American people for their commitment to democracy and to suggest that Iraq could one day be a model of reform for other Middle Eastern countries.
More Troops, or Fewer?
To his enormous credit, the new Iraqi president was not just talk. As his entire life to date had demonstrated, he was a man of principle and a man of action. When he was tested, he rose to the challenge.
The first test came as the Sunni and Shia insurgencies accelerated. More and more Iraqis, Americans, and other Coalition members were being killed each and every day. A growing number of U.S. and foreign political leaders were urging President Bush to withdraw American forces and let the Iraqis fight on their own.
Talabani could not have disagreed more vehemently.
In November of 2006, Talabani met in Paris with then French president Jacques Chirac, who had strongly opposed the liberation of Iraq from the outset. Some may have expected Talabani to try to ingratiate himself to Chirac by agreeing with the French leader’s sharp criticisms of American leadership and his insistence that President Bush pull U.S. forces out of Iraq as quickly as possible.
But Talabani would have none of it. He not only reiterated his gratefulness for the U.S.-led regime change in Baghdad but added that he wanted U.S. forces to stay at least three more years. “We need time,” said Talabani. “Not twenty years, but time. I personally can say that two to three years will be enough to build up our forces and say to our American friends, ‘Bye bye with thanks.’”517
Behind the scenes, Talabani went further, urging the White House and Pentagon to send more U.S. troops to help defeat the Radicals in Iraq. He was not alone. One of his key allies in Washington, Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, was also pressing the White House to implement a “surge” policy, putting an additional fifteen to thirty thousand U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq—and deploying them more effectively—despite the fact that polls showed only 15 to 18 percent of the American people supported such a policy.518
On January 10, 2007, President Bush formally embraced and announced his support for a surge, telling the American people that “it is clear that we need to change our strategy in Iraq. . . . Failure in Iraq would be a disaster for the United States. The consequences of failure are clear: Radical Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits. They would be in a better position to topple moderate governments, create chaos in the region, and use oil revenues to fund their ambitions. Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Our enemies would have a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks on the American people. On September the 11th, 2001, we saw what a refuge for extremists on the other side of the world could bring to the streets of our own cities. For the safety of our people, America must succeed in Iraq.”519
Bush noted that “our past efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two principal reasons: There were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents, and there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have. This will require increasing American force levels. So I’ve committed m
ore than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq. The vast majority of them—five brigades—will be deployed to Baghdad. . . . Our enemies in Iraq will make every effort to ensure that our television screens are filled with images of death and suffering. Yet over time, we can expect to see Iraqi troops chasing down murderers, fewer brazen acts of terror, and growing trust and cooperation from Baghdad’s residents.”520
Battle over the Surge
The Bush-McCain surge policy unleashed a torrent of opposition in Washington, and the attacks came from both Democrats and Republicans.
Senator Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat, immediately went on MSNBC to declare his belief that the surge would make life in Iraq worse, not better. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq [are] going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”521
Later that night on CNN’s Larry King Live, Obama discounted the entire concept of creating a healthy, functional, representative government in Baghdad. “We know we are not going to have a Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq,” the junior senator insisted. “We have to have a more realistic and constrained view of what’s possible. . . . I don’t think we advance that task [securing Iraq]—in fact, I’m certain we don’t advance it—by putting more American troops at risk. . . . For us to simply think that by adding 15,000 or 20,000 more troops, as opposed to beginning a phased withdrawal, that we’re sending that message, I think we’re making a very bad mistake.”522
Talabani, by contrast, strongly and publicly supported the surge, insisted in numerous interviews in the Muslim world as well as in the West that he was an optimist about the future of his country, and adamantly refused to surrender to the Radicals by encouraging the U.S. to cut and run. In an interview with an Arab newspaper in Damascus just days after Obama’s comments, Talabani unleashed his fury against Islamic Radicals. He said he felt deep “resentment” toward them, especially toward al Qaeda, which he charged was “waging a war of extermination against the Iraqi people.” He said al Qaeda does not “respect Islam” because they are “targeting innocent civilians.”523
Talabani went on to reveal that in 2006, at least four thousand foreign-born terrorists—upward of 90 percent of whom enter his country through Syria—were killed inside Iraq by Iraqi and Coalition forces. Such terrorists were causing horrific damage inside his country, he said, noting that in 2006 some thirty-four thousand Iraqi civilians had been killed by Radical Islamic terrorists. “This is a form of genocide against the Iraqi people, carried out by people who came from outside Iraq,” Talabani charged.
“Al-Qaeda has announced that the Shias are Rafidites [infidels who reject legitimate Islamic authority and leadership] and therefore it is legitimate to kill them,” he added. “It has also announced that the Kurds are traitors; therefore it is permissible to kill them, and that the Arab Sunnis, who do not follow them, are apostates whose punishment is also known. . . . This is a declaration of war on the Iraqi people.”
Talabani was then asked by the Arab reporter conducting the interview, “Mr. President, are you afraid that there will be no way out of this situation?”
“No, I believe there is a way out,” Talabani replied confidently.
First, he argued that as more Iraqi security forces were properly trained and equipped and able to take the leading role in defending their country, the Reformers would be able to crush the Radicals.
Second, he argued that as the population watched the horrific explosion of Muslim-on-Muslim violence—and, just as important, as they watched the Reformers showing courage, fighting back, and actually defeating the Radicals—many more Iraqis would start to feel a measure of hope, would begin participating in the political process, and would help the Iraqi security forces hunt down the terrorists and uncover arms caches. In fact, he argued that this was already beginning to happen.
“The people of the terrorism-plagued areas have begun to resist the terrorists,” Talabani noted. “In certain areas, the people are completely ready to work with the government forces to put a lid on terrorist acts. This is a good phenomenon.” Just as exciting, he said he was watching “a change in the mindset of almost all the Sunni community” who once thought that U.S. military forces were the enemy and that Iranian insurgents and their money and weapons were a blessing because they were helping kill the “infidels.” But, Talabani said, “they now believe that Iran is the main danger, not the Americans,” and “they have already started secret negotiations with the Americans” about how to work together to stop the Iranians from killing so many Iraqis.
Worst-Case Scenario
A year after the new surge policy was announced and set into motion, I sat down with Mala Bakhtyar, Talabani’s spokesman, and asked him point-blank if the president still believed things were moving in the right direction.
Bakhtyar’s answer was an adamant yes. He noted that all the evidence at that point reinforced the Iraqi leader’s confidence that the surge was working. He said Talabani and other Iraqi leaders—including Prime Minister Maliki—believed Iraq was finally moving in the right direction, despite all the critics and naysayers in Washington.
“President Talabani is optimistic about the future of Iraq,” Bakhtyar told me unequivocally. “He believes the forces of extremism will be defeated. He believes we will solve most of the problems Iraqis are suffering with and that democracy will go forward. . . . We think Iraq will eventually emerge as the central democratic country in the region. Other Middle East countries will look to Iraq as the model.”
He added that Iraq could ultimately be more influential in the region than other moderate, pro-Western countries like Jordan, Morocco, the Gulf States, and the like “because of the revenues” from accelerated oil exploration, production, and export over the next few decades that will give Iraq the ability to invest in other moderate states and strengthen the hands of fellow Reformers.
“What does President Talabani worry about most?” I asked.
“The worst-case scenario is a civil war,” he said, one that is full-blown, engulfs the entire country (not just specific villages, cities, or regions), and leads to genocide. “If civil war had broken out, five hundred thousand to one million people would have been killed. . . . Many terrorist groups have worked and planned hard to create a civil war, supported by neighboring countries. . . . If the U.S. was not here, the civil war would have already happened. As a patriot, I hope foreign soldiers will not be in my country for long. But the reality is, they are necessary for now.”
He quickly added that Talabani and his senior advisors fear that if the U.S. and Coalition military forces pull out of Iraqi too early or too recklessly, democracy could collapse, and a true, full-blown civil war could still erupt, leading to wholesale slaughter and chaos in the region. Having seen genocide happen to his people before, Talabani has no intention of letting it happen again.
During our conversation, Bakhtyar was very careful not to discuss the American presidential campaign that was well under way at the time. He knew full well that Senator McCain had been an early proponent of the surge strategy, while Senators Obama and Clinton—among many other American politicians—had been strong proponents of leaving Iraq as quickly as possible. Nevertheless, Bakhtyar made it clear that leaders at the highest levels of the Iraqi government had grave concerns that the U.S. might abandon the Iraqi people in their time of need.
“President Talabani thinks the relationship with the United States is strategic and related to Iraq’s destiny,” Bakhtyar told me. “But a part of American public opinion is mistaken. They think Iraq is facing struggles because of the presence of American forces. On the contrary, 80 percent of those problems have been contained by U.S. and British forces. Look, Iraq has been around for eighty-plus years. We have fought against Israel four times. We fought Iran for eight years. We occupied Kuwait. We were under international embargo for thirteen years. There has been continual fighting throughout Kurdish history. From 1938 to 1945, there were three u
prisings in the Barzan region. From 1961 to 1975, there was even more fighting in Kurdistan. From 1976 to 1991, there were many military operations and revolts. So what is Iraq? Is it a country or a butcher house? No one has experienced peace or happiness here. It’s a country of bloodshed. So why do we blame America for our troubles? Terrorists are fighting against the democratic process in Iraq. The terrorists are frightened of what will happen if democracy wins in Iraq. They know the age of terror and [Radical Islamic] fundamentalism will be over.”
“Aside from civil war and genocide,” I asked, “what else concerns the president about what the terrorists could do to derail the creation of a new Iraq?”
“Joel, 8 million weapons were distributed by Saddam before he fell,” Bakhtyar explained. “At the beginning of the insurgency, we estimated there were some eighty to ninety thousand volunteers to fight the U.S. Now we think that’s down to between four and five thousand. This is still a big menace. The assassination of Talabani or al-Maliki would have a huge effect. . . . Talabani is not just the president of Iraq. He is, in many ways, seen as the real leader of Iraq, because none of the rest of the Iraqi politicians right now has the trust and confidence of the Shias, and the Sunni Arabs, and the Kurds, and the leftists. This is the courtyard of President Talabani, because he is most wise and experienced leader Iraq has had in a long time.”
Inside the Revolution Page 35