Ahmedinajad in Baghdad
One of the significant events that has taken place amidst the insurgency torn tragic happenings in Iraq is the state visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Baghdad in the first week of March. Once an arch foe, personified by Saddam Hossain who was aided and abetted by the United States of America immediately after the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Iraq fought a ten year bloody war with Iran. A million people died.
The terrible war with its huge human toll has not been forgotten in Iran or Iraq. Even today, Iranian towns and streets remember their lost sons and daughters: their photos, pictures and murals adorn the walls of the buildings and city squares. With such a scar the Iranian president took the journey to Baghdad.
One is reminded here of a historic journey to Jerusalem decades ago by the Egyptian President Anwar Sadaat to cut the Gordian knot of military disengagement with Israel and to break the political and diplomatic impasse to usher in the signing of a peace treaty with Israel, once a bitter foe, freeing occupied Egyptian lands and opening trade, travel and diplomatic relations with that country.
While the Sadaat trip transformed a once seemingly intractable and hostile relationship into a friendly, normal one in a single stroke, no such dramatic transformation is expected in the case of Ahmadinajad's recent trip to Baghdad. But, as the indications go, positive developments are going to take place in such important areas as trade, transport and industry.
The Iranian president is said to have signed seven pacts in promoting economic ties with Iraq. This in itself augurs well for the well-being of the two neighbour nations, securing peace, and creating an atmosphere of optimism in this volatile region.
In the case of the Egyptian president's dramatic dash to Jerusalem, the United States was a happy cheer-leader. In the event of Ahmadinejad's trip to Baghdad, the United States appears apparently as an indifferent bystander.
Ahmedinejad travelled through the "Green Zone" of Baghdad, an area secured by the US military as a safe haven for the US and Iraqi administration and military establishments, to reach Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri-al-Maliki's place. Without the nod of the United States, it is clear that the Maliki government would not have laid down the red-carpet and presented a guard of honour to the Iranian president.
After a dangerous and dreary five years of the Iraq war, is there now a realisation on the part of the US administration that the resolution of the Iraqi problem cannot be reached unilaterally without the co-operation and support of Iraq's immediate neighbours, particularly Iran, whose leadership is close to the present Iraqi leadership?
Mr. Nuri-al-Maliki, the prime minister, Mr. Jalal Talabani, the president and Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani, the respectable cleric of Iraq, were all once in exile in Iran. Their hugs and kisses dubbed as "love-fest" for the Iranian president were expressions of thanks and respect to Iran.
The response of Mr. Bush, when asked about his reaction on Ahmadinejad's visit to Baghdad was: "He is a neighbour and the message needs to be; quit sending sophisticated equipment that is killing our citizens."
After meeting Nuri-al-Maliki, the Iranian president responded: "You can tell Mr. Bush that accusing others will only complicate America's problems in the region. They must come to terms with the realities. Iraqi people do not like the Americans."
The Iraqi prime minister hailed Iran's contribution to improved security in Iraq: "I can honestly say that the Islamic Republic's recent position has been very helpful in bolstering security and stability." Does the road to peace in Iraq lead through Tehran? The religious unity, cultural identity and geographic contiguity should have made Iran and Iraq natural partners in ensuring peace, stability and security in the region, and significantly reduced the burden on America. So far this has not happened.
Both materially and metaphorically, US is bleeding in Iraq. In spite of the presence of 160,000 troops, $275 million expenditure per day, 4,000 soldiers dead, 60,000 wounded, 700,000 Iraqis killed and 4 million Iraqi refugees, the goal of a stable, peaceful and democratic Iraq has not yet been achieved.
The UN Security Council resolution sanctioning the intervention/invasion of the coalition forces will come to the end of its term by December 2008. The US administration is now busy drafting a new strategic and security agreement with Iraq. The celebrated US economist and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and his colleagues have calculated the cost of the Iraq war, and have put it at $3 trillion, a staggering figure compared to the $2 to $3 billion forecast at the beginning of the Iraq invasion.
The Iraq war has imposed a burden of $4100 on every US household. The Iraq issue has become a hot election agenda in the forthcoming US elections.
Here, again, there is a historical parallel between what US government is trying to achieve in Iraq with what Imperial Britain endeavoured to do unsuccessfully between 1920 and 1930. On the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War, Britain occupied the provinces of Iraq. In 1920 a revolt, or "Thawra," broke out.
Fuelled by a population resentful of the heavy- handed approach of the occupying forces, the rebellion quickly spread throughout the country. The cost in lives and money made the continued occupation of Iraq unpopular with the British. Britain attempted to build a modern, sustainable and liberal state.
But how the British understood Iraq made it impossible for them to accomplish what they initially set out to do. Ultimately, the decision was made to extricate Britain as quickly as possible and hand over the country under the League of Nations' mandate. That failure to engage the Iraqi society for a sustainable, stable and liberal state reverberates today in the crashing sound of bombs and bombers under the American and coalition occupation. Observes an academic: "The sense of incoherence and political division at the heart of American attempts to rebuild Iraq has been seriously exacerbated by the Coalition Provisional Authority's inability to establish meaningful communication with the Iraqi Society."
Ahmadinejad's visit to Iraq is to be seen as a great bolstering of his own image and standing in his own country. It is also a strong signal to the Shia majority in Iraq of Iran's support for the Maliki government.
A stable and friendly Iraq is also in the interests of Iran, but the deep schism which has been sown over decades between the Shia majority and Sunni minority in Iraq stands as a roadblock, not only for the Americans in constructing a sustainable, liberal and democratic state in Iraq but also for Iran in claiming unalloyed friendship and close relationship with that country. The road to peace in Iraq may travel through Tehran, but the process of reaching that final destination seems still unclear.
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