Washington Post The Middle East's Growing Pluralism By Jim Hoagland May 22, 2005
Official visits are frequently divorced from reality or even designed to obscure it. But two meetings that Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari held last week candidly reflected the groundbreaking policies his fledgling government intends to pursue. Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq's regional diplomacy consisted of invading some neighbors, subverting others and threatening them all. Jafari's coalition cabinet demonstrated last week that it sees the world -- and particularly the Arab world -- differently. Jafari first welcomed Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi to Baghdad on a visit that the Bush administration wisely did nothing to obstruct or protest. This restraint suggested a new, more sophisticated attitude coming out of Washington toward the Persian Gulf. So did Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick's second trip to Iraq in little more than a month, according to Iraqis he met last week. Jafari then traveled to Turkey on his first trip outside Iraq since taking office in April. The priority given to Iraq's two important Islamic but non-Arab neighbors will not go unnoticed in a region where Arab nationalism has been a dominant and frequently malignant force. The Shiite and Kurdish politicians who head Iraq's coalition cabinet have survived kingly protests, jihadist suicide bombers and American skepticism to come to power. They must use their brief moment of command to trace a path for a new Iraq that will show the entire Middle East the value and viability of political and cultural pluralism. Multiculturalism is a main target of the Sunni jihadists and Baathist assassins who have concentrated their attacks and propaganda against the country's Kurdish minority, its Arab Shiite population and any Iraqis who work with U.S. forces. The insurgents draw their support from Iraqi Sunnis who seem intent on recapturing the absolute power they enjoyed under the deposed dictator. After a stumbling start the government -- headed by President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd, and Jafari, a Shiite -- seems to be making headway in getting organized and gaining external acceptance. Jordan's King Abdullah has ceased issuing blood-curdling warnings to his Sunni co-religionists about the dangers that a Shiite takeover in Iraq would pose. He welcomed Talabani in Amman recently. And two Arab leaders visiting Washington last week dropped hints that pluralism is gaining acceptance, however grudging, in some key Arab nations in the wake of regime change in Iraq. "There is a realization that Arab nationalism should be redefined," Kuwait's foreign minister, Mohammed Sabah, told me. He pointed out that Iraq has Kurds as its president, deputy prime minister and foreign minister; Sudan is shortly to name a non-Arab vice president, and minority groups advance toward greater influence in other Arab countries. "We should look again at the concept of the Arab League, to get away from any racist interpretation that Arab nationalism emphasized in the past," said the forward-thinking Sabah, whose country was invaded by Iraq in 1990. "The Iraqis are showing that a more multicultural approach does not divorce the country from the Arab world." Ahmed Nazif, Egypt's coolly competent prime minister, addressed the same signs of change with characteristic pith: "The Arab League is melting at the edges. It is a time of change, in many dimensions." One of the engineers of this change sees these developments this way: "Arabs are a majority in this area, but it is not an exclusively Arab area. Other communities cannot be subjugated and their identity eradicated by the force of arms, as Saddam tried to do. We can show that Arabs will accept pluralism as a fact of life, politically and culturally. "The great majority of Iraq's population lives nearer to the borders of non-Arab Iran, and non-Arab Turkey, than to Arab countries. These are realities that our politics and culture must reflect." The words were spoken by telephone from Baghdad by Ahmed Chalabi, a Shiite who is one of three deputy prime ministers whom Jafari has named. It happens that over three decades I have heard Chalabi express this view, and I have seen him work to implement it. Bitterly opposed at one time by Jordan's Abdullah and the king's allies in the CIA, Chalabi has survived smear campaigns and controversy to emerge as a balance wheel in a coalition government that Washington originally hoped would not come to power. On their recent trips to Iraq, Zoellick and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice emphasized the need to include more Sunnis in the power structure. But their presence also sent to the region a strong message of new U.S. support and understanding for the pluralistic coalition in Baghdad and the positive change it can inspire. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
