The Bulletin this week has an interesting commentary on the situation in Iraq by my colleague Professor Imad Moosa. Imad was borne in Iraq but is now an Australian citizen. He supported the US invasion of Iraq and, indeed, has worked for the US in Iraq. However he was disillusioned by the adherence of the Americans to an IMF-inspired policy agenda that he saw as inappropriate for a country which had been at war. He is also 'sickened at the waste and corruption of Iraq's administration in the three years since Saddam fell'. The country earns a lot of oil revenue but is not rebuilding. He sees the future of Iraq as plausibly being determined by fundamentalist Iranian fanatics who are transforming a secular country to a sectarian province run by Iranian-appointed mullahs'. His assessment of the current situation: 'Things in Iraq were less bad under Saddam Hussein. Not better. Less bad.'
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The man with the great idea and plan has been shuffled sideways to the Wrold Bank where he has no experience, qualifications or background.
What did people expect?
It was clear to me and many people who were affected by the Lebanese civil war that the US and its allies would be defeated in Iraq. I hadn’t expected that this would happen so quickly.
The best developed institutions in the Arab world are those whose aim is to generate perpetual chaos. Chaos with the purpose of making the situation ungovernable. These institutions are modern and were refined during the Lebanese civil war.
Their activity, however, has a long tradition going back at least to the first crusades: A tradition that is part of the protestant reformist tradition to which Islam was born. A tradition of independence and local militias, freedom from foreign occupation, and liberation.
Of course, these same institutions act to suppress decent in times of peace.
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