Building on sand?

Joseph Braude, The New Iraq: Rebuilding the Country for Its People, the Middle East, and the World (New York: Basic Books, 2003), 288 pp., $26.

IN THE months to come, hundreds of books on the "new Iraq" by experts and non-experts alike will be rushed to press. A notable addition to this growing list is one by Joseph Braude entitled, of course, The New Iraq. Braude is ambitious, attempting to tell the story of the old Iraq while also making a series of recommendations about how to proceed in the new, post-Saddam Iraq. This is certainly a tall order, and Braude mostly rises to the challenge: providing many good insights and some sound ideas.

The book's main deficiency, however, is its largely anecdotal and insufficiently systematic approach. This downside stems, in part, from the fact that the author did not consult crucial secondary source material easily available in every large public library. This lack of a systematic approach leads to a number of mistakes and misperceptions that could have been avoided easily. (1) As a result, his policy recommendations, while well meaning and mostly sensible, are all too general and occasionally erroneous. Most troubling, Braude does not address major aspects of the damage done by Saddam's socio-political policies and their likely continuing influence over Iraq's future. These policies include the modern-day return to tribal ways and the old-new autonomy that it implies, as well as Saddam's problematic attempts at forging a strong Iraqi national identity.

Despite the perplexing opening sentence--"this book is not about Saddam Husayn [sic]"--the book is very much about Saddam Hussein, even though not exclusively so since it also endeavors to discuss aspects of Iraqi society and history that preceded the fallen dictator. Braude does describe Saddam's crimes, often in great detail, but he also understands that any serious policy recommendations for the new Iraq must rest on an understanding of what 35 years of Ba'athi rule did to Iraq.

Questions of National Identity

IN IRAQ TODAY, nationalism is the only political force that can possibly strengthen the ties between Sunni Arabs, Shi'a Arabs, Sunni Kurds and Christians; strengthen ties between traditionalists and secularists; and reaffirm the invisible barrier between Iraqi and Syrian Sunni Arabs or Iraqi and Iranian Shi'a. This is the only way to make Iraq less vulnerable to political intervention by expansionist neighbors.

Iraqi nationalism is a positive leftover of the decades of Ba'athi tyranny. The trouble here is that its Ba'athi taint may very well have corrupted the most important component that could provide an Iraqi identity with any depth: the rich historical and cultural traditions deriving from thousands of years of civilization in Mesopotamia.

Saddam's hijacking of ancient Mesopotamia, and his politicization of the past more generally, was forced upon educators of all levels, party apparatchiks, journalists and writers. They, in their own turn, imposed it on their captive audiences. The most damaging aspect of this brainwashing campaign was the fact that it became inseparable from Saddam's personality cult. He was presented as the latter day incarnation of all the great Mesopotamian kings: the lawmakers, builders and warriors--even of the Sumero-Akkadian god of fertility and rebirth, Tammuz. While Ba'athi apparatchiks dutifully parroted their leader, it is not at all clear how the Mesopotamian-Iraqi identity has been perceived by the people. It may very well be that Saddam destroyed its potential as a unifying force by linking it to himself.

Likewise, claiming that Iraq was the cradle of human civilization, Saddam linked Mesopotamia's legacy to a myth of the Iraqi people as supreme leaders of the pan-Arab movement. As his Revolutionary Command Council phrased it on the day Iraq invaded Kuwait, the Iraqis are "the pearl of the Arab crown." This aspect of Saddam's legacy is troubling, not only because of its potential for arrogance, but also because it ties the Iraqi people to the Arab nation in a way that makes both Kurds and Shi'a uneasy and exposes Iraqi politics to massive Arab intervention. Most Iraqis are, indeed, Arabs, and cultural ties with the Arab world are essential, but political Arabism (like political Islam) poses a serious threat to a democratic union of all Iraqis.

The nexus of Iraqi national identity and the efforts of intellectuals and politicians since 1921--and especially since 1968--to forge it is a pivotal theme of the story of Iraq. But it is missing from Braude's book. The author does discuss the disastrous effect of pan-Arabism in Iraq and other places, but he fails to deal with the complexities of Iraqi identity and its clashes or, occasionally, compatibilities with pan-Arabism and pan-Islamism. Indeed, one of the most pressing questions confronting the new Iraq is that of the content of Iraqi national identity. The legacy of Mesopotamia could serve to differentiate Iraq politically from the rest of the Arabs, as well as from Iran, thus establishing the necessary breathing space for the peoples of Iraq--something sorely needed to rebuild the country on a firm and non-threatening foundation.