“Are you personally optimistic about the future of your country?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said with a smile. “I believe the democrats in the Middle East will win this war in the next ten to fifteen years.”
Stunning Results
Not everyone has been so optimistic.
In the spring of 2007, Senate majority leader Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat, marked the fourth anniversary of the liberation of Iraq by declaring that “this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything.”524
In the spring of 2008, Senator Hillary Clinton marked the fifth anniversary of the liberation of Iraq by denouncing the entire effort—a war she voted to authorize—as “a war we cannot win.”525
That same spring, former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who served in the Clinton-Gore administration, insisted that “Iraq will go down in history as the biggest disaster in American foreign policy.”526
Talabani and his senior advisors say the exact opposite is true. They say the “surge” has proved a stunning success. They say the war in Iraq not only can be won but is being won. Moreover, they say that Iraq will go down in history as one of America’s greatest success stories. And they say they now have solid and compelling evidence to prove their claims.
As far as the “surge” is concerned, in just the first nine months of 2007, the number of U.S. boots on the ground in Iraq increased from 132,000 to 168,000. More troops and better tactics and strategies in using those troops had an immediate and powerful impact. During those first nine months, Iraqi officials note that 4,882 insurgents were killed by Iraqi and Coalition forces. That was a 25 percent increase from the same period the year before. It brought the overall total to nearly twenty thousand insurgents killed in Iraq in the first five years after liberation. More than twenty-five thousand insurgents were captured in the first five years as well.527
Over the course of the following year or so, the results were even more impressive. In August of 2008, Moqtada al-Sadr—the Radical Shia firebrand—effectively surrendered. He ordered his fighters to lay down their arms and transform their Mahdi Army into a social services organization. This was a dramatic development and is a key reason why violence levels continue to drop.
Could al-Sadr reverse course at any moment and launch a new and even more violent insurgency? Yes. Could Iran decide to invest even more heavily in such a revived insurgency? Absolutely. So Talabani and his team remain vigilant. But they certainly do not believe al-Sadr would have folded if the U.S. had unilaterally surrendered and left the country as many in Washington and European capitals were strongly recommending.
By the end of August 2008, even the New York Times had to acknowledge how much progress was being made. “The surge, clearly, has worked, at least for now,” wrote Times correspondent Dexter Filkins. “Violence, measured in the number of attacks against Americans and Iraqis each week, has dropped by 80 percent in the country since early 2007, according to figures [U.S. General David Petraeus] provided. Civilian deaths, which peaked at more than 100 a day in late 2006, have also plunged. Car and suicide bombings, which stoked sectarian violence, have fallen from a total of 130 in March 2007 to fewer than 40 last month. In July, fewer Americans were killed in Iraq—13—than in any month since the war began.”528
Bremer’s Perspective
In July of 2008, I called Ambassador L. Paul “Jerry” Bremer, who was appointed by President Bush as presidential envoy to Iraq from May 2003 to June 2004, and asked him for his assessment of the situation in Iraq. Bremer had been there essentially from the beginning. He knew Talabani well. He had seen the horrific violence al Qaeda, the Mahdi Army, and others had unleashed in the country over the previous several years. So I asked him, “Looking back on your time in Iraq and considering all that has happened since you were there, whom do you believe is winning—the Radicals or the Reformers—and why?”
The long-time diplomat—Bremer served in the State Department for twenty-three years—and confidant of the legendary Henry Kissinger thought about the question for a moment. Then he said he was finally cautiously optimistic that Iraq was going to turn out well. There had been a number of very painful years, he readily acknowledged, but now he believed there was light at the end of the tunnel, and it was not an oncoming train.
“The Sunni extremists are on the way to losing what they themselves define as the central battle—the battle in Iraq—after being thrown out of power in Afghanistan,” Bremer told me. “They really have come close to losing in Iraq. This could certainly still change. But I think the Sunni Radicals overplayed their hand in Iraq.”529
When I asked him to explain, Bremer said first that in his view, al Qaeda leaders and other Sunni extremists have overplayed their hand by talking incessantly about creating a Sunni-led Islamic caliphate. “When they talk about reestablishing the caliphate, average Iraqis,”—60 percent of whom are Shia Muslims—“hear, ‘Gee, they’re talking about Sunni domination. Didn’t we just get rid of a thousand years of Sunni domination?’”
Second, Bremer said he believed Al Qaeda in Iraq had overplayed their hand by instigating Muslim-on-Muslim violence that Iraqis saw on their televisions—as well as in their streets—day after day, night after night, week after week. “The Sunni Radicals have killed so many innocent Shias, and almost succeeded into setting off a full-blown sectarian war,” said Bremer. “But Iraqi Sunnis are now pushing back. The Anbar awakening was impressive, seeing tens of thousands of average, everyday Sunni citizens band together against al Qaeda.”
Bremer also noted a third trend he found positive. He recently had a meeting with Sunni tribal leaders in Washington who told him, “We’re close allies with you [the U.S.] because of our common enemy—Iran.” After that meeting, Bremer concluded that “Sunni Arabs who were very hesitant to welcome us overthrowing Saddam [who himself was a Sunni] are finally coming to see they have a major stake in us succeeding because of what they see as the serious threat posed by Iran.” Iraqi Sunnis do not want to be controlled by the Shias of Iran, and many have come to realize that if Sunnis force a civil war with Iraqi Shias, they could drive those Shias into the arms of Iran once and for all, a prospect they do not find appealing at all.
Confronting the Cynics
Not everyone, of course, believes it is possible to build a Jeffersonian democracy in the Muslim world, much less in a country as challenging as Iraq.
Barack Obama put it this way during his 2008 presidential campaign: “We were told this would make us safer and that this would be a model of democracy in the Middle East. Hasn’t turned out that way. . . . This Administration’s policy has been a combination of extraordinary naivety—the notion that, you know, we’ll be greeted as liberators, flowers will be thrown at us in Iraq, we’ll be creating a Jeffersonian democracy, that it’s a model.”530
Obama’s running mate, Senator Joe Biden, the Delaware Democrat, readily concurred, dismissing President Bush’s “wholesome but naive view that Western notions of liberty are easily transposed to that area of the world. . . . I think the president . . . thinks there’s a Thomas Jefferson or a (James) Madison behind every sand dune waiting to jump up, and there are none.”531
The Obama-Biden ticket was hardly alone. Anthony Zinni, the retired Marine Corps general who once led the U.S. Central Command, argued that “the Bush administration’s idea that you could transplant a Jeffersonian democracy to Iraq and christen it with a single election and a lot of fingers dipped in ink was ridiculous. . . . Civics 101 should have alerted you that the region wasn’t ready and that we first needed viable government structures, functioning political parties that everyone understood, and an educated electorate.”532
Despite such critics, however, Jalal Talabani remains undaunted. He believes to the core of his being that Iraqis want freedom and democracy. He believes Iraqis are capable of creating a society of peace and prosperity. He also believes Iraqis are making great and steady progress. He does not claim it is easy. He does not claim there will not b
e setbacks. But one thing is clear: he is willing to live and fight and die, if necessary, to accomplish what is for him a lifelong dream.
In a sea of sadness and cynicism throughout the epicenter, I have to say, Talabani strikes me as a man of impressive integrity, courage, and hope for the future. As best as I can tell, he is a Reformer who is getting results, and that is no small thing anywhere in our world, but particularly in the heart of the Muslim Middle East.
A Conversation with Qubad Talabani
After these two chapters on President Talabani were largely completed, I was invited to meet with and interview Qubad Talabani, the son of the Iraqi president, on October 10, 2008, in his Washington, D.C., office. Naturally, I accepted without reservations.
Born in London in 1977, Qubad—whose name has Zoroastrian origins and means “upright and strong”—currently represents the Kurdistan Regional Government in Washington and serves as a personal advisor to his father, particularly on U.S.-Kurdish and U.S.-Iraqi relations. I found Qubad very engaging—intelligent, sophisticated, good-humored, passionate about his people and his country, and as optimistic as his father about the future. I also found him to be a strong believer that building a Jeffersonian democracy in Iraq is both possible and the right thing to do, no matter how long it takes.
“It would be unwise for the United States not to finish the job [in Iraq],” Qubad told an American journalist in 2006. “It is half complete. You are still democratizing society in America after a few hundred years. We cannot expect to turn from tyrannical dictatorship to Jeffersonian democracy in two or three years. We have been ruled by personalities for decades. We need to create institutions of government, with checks and balances within the political system that can protect people’s civil liberties. A premature disengagement would lead to the collapse of our fledgling government, and would turn the situation into a full-scale civil war.”533
To that I would simply add, “Amen.”
What follows are excerpts of my conversation with Qubad Talabani.
JOEL C. ROSENBERG: For many years, your father was really a guerrilla leader, wasn’t he, fighting for Kurdish liberation from the Ba’ath Party and the Saddam regime?
QUBAD TALABANI: He was, but he was never a terrorist. His party, the PUK [Patriotic Union of Kurdistan], never attacked civilians. Their sole target was Saddam’s military. In 1983, my father told the leaders of the PKK [a Kurdish militant faction in northern Iraq and southern Turkey fighting for liberation from the Turks] that they had to lay down their weapons and stop attacking civilians. But they didn’t listen. . . . In 1991, during the Kurdish uprising against Saddam Hussein, the PUK forces had at one point captured 120,000 Iraqi troops. Not one of them was killed. All were treated humanely. They were fed, and eventually they were released and sent back to their homes. Compare that to the tens and tens of thousands of Kurds that were massacred by Saddam’s forces.
ROSENBERG: Did you or your father ever imagine a Kurdish president?
TALABANI (laughing): No, I never imagined such a thing. Nor did my father. In fact, when I see him on TV and hear him introduced as the president of Iraq, it still makes me look twice. It sometimes doesn’t seem real. It’s even more remarkable when you realize that in 1983, Saddam Hussein gave amnesty to all the members of the Kurdish resistance movement—everyone except Jalal Talabani.
You should talk to Zalmay Khalilzad.534 He will tell you about a meeting in 2002 in London. It was a conference of Iraqi opposition leaders. There was lots of squabbling going on. The meeting was completely disorganized. But finally my father pulled seven or eight key people in a room by themselves and calmed them down, and they were able to make progress on whatever issue was troubling them. At the end of the meeting, Zalmay took my father aside and said, “You know, you’re the only one in this room who could be the president of Iraq one day.” My father laughed. It was very kind what Zalmay said, but I’m not sure my father took it very seriously at the time. Years later, though, when my father was, in fact, elected president, one of the first calls he got was from Zalmay saying, “See, I told you so.”
ROSENBERG: Where were you when you learned the news that your father had been elected president?
TALABANI: I was in D.C. I was alone. It was a very emotional moment for me. I could hardly believe it. I poured myself a glass of cognac, and I thought about Frank Sinatra’s famous song “I Did It My Way,” because that is exactly how my father has lived his life and risen to power—doing it his own way. And now he had succeeded.
You have to understand, I never saw my father until I was four years old. After I was born, my mother and I lived in London to be safe from all the troubles in Iraq. My father was back in Kurdistan and traveling constantly. And one day there was a knock at the door, and I opened the door and then I went running to mother, and I said, “Mom, there’s a man at the door.” And she said, “That’s not just a man. That’s your father.” I was shocked. So I went back and let him in. But then I was being a little plucky and I said, “Where’s my gift?” And he said, “Well, I don’t have a gift. I’m sorry.” And I said, “What kind of father comes to your door and claims to be your father and doesn’t bring a gift?”
ROSENBERG: Now, at least, your father has given you and all the Kurdish people a gift—an Iraq free from Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath Party.
TALABANI: That’s true. I called him that day and I said, “Mr. President, congratulations.” He got choked up, and he said, “Mr. Ambassador, congratulations.” It was really quite a remarkable moment. After all, very few political [opposition] parties actually achieve the objective for which they were created. But my father’s party has. They were founded in 1975 to remove Saddam Hussein from power and to create a federal, democratic Iraq. And against all odds, they have succeeded.
ROSENBERG: What would you say are the biggest signs of progress since your father became the president of Iraq?
TALABANI: I think the biggest sign of progress has been that people have actually turned against the extremists—against al Qaeda and the Mahdi Army. In part, the extremists have brought this upon themselves with all of their attacks against innocent civilians. Eventually Iraqis said, “Enough is enough.” And, of course, the surge policy [of more U.S. troops assisting Iraqi forces] has been very effective. Al Qaeda is now on the run. The Mahdi Army is laying low. So by and large we have a dramatically improved security situation
Things are still fragile, of course. We still don’t know how long things will stay quiet. But there’s no question that right now the fact that Iraqis feel safer and more secure and want the Iraqi government and the Coalition to succeed in defeating the extremists is the single biggest sign of success since 2005.
ROSENBERG: Are there other successes you would point to that have occurred on your father’s watch?
TALABANI: There are. I would call them mini successes. None are as important as crushing the terrorists, but they are still very important. The state of the Iraqi media is one success story. The media is very open now. There has been a proliferation of newspapers and radio stations and satellite TV channels and Web sites and blogs. Lots of Internet cafes have opened. News is being reported openly. People are able to voice their opinions openly about everything. That is a huge, positive change from life in Saddam’s police state.
Another success has been the lifting of the [international economic] sanctions. Goods and services are now moving between Iraq and other countries. Iraq is no longer isolated from the international community. This is also in sharp contrast to the Saddam era.
A third success, I would say, would be political pluralism. There are many political parties operating freely in Iraq today, and they represent many different ideas and points of view. This is quite a change.
And then, of course, this is the first time in Iraqi history that we’ve seen the peaceful transition from one government to another—no coups, no bloodshed, no conspiracies. Well, maybe a little conspiracy (laughter).535
ROSENBERG: What ar
e some of your major concerns going forward?
TALABANI: One of my concerns is that while there is more openness to discuss political ideas in Iraq, there hasn’t emerged a real tolerance of different religious beliefs. As you can imagine, this is a real challenge in Iraq because we are so divided along sectarian lines—Shias, Sunnis, Christians, secularists, and others. I believe it is vital that we are able to develop a culture where people have strong religious views but can respect someone who disagrees with them without becoming violent. And we need to find ways to encourage religious tolerance at the national level as well as at the local and regional levels.
Let me give you an example of one way we should be doing this. The parliament recently debated the provincial elections law, but during the process they dropped Article 50 from the bill, which was a very important article. This article would mandate the representation of different ethnic and religious minorities in the local governments so that all religious groups have a voice and a say in local decisions. President Talabani and a number of his colleagues have sent the bill back for reconsideration, insisting that Article 50 be reinstated to protect minority religious views. The KRG [Kurdistan Regional Government, representing five of Iraq’s eighteen provinces] is also pressing for Article 50 to be put back into the final bill.
ROSENBERG: Well, this raises a very interesting point to me, Qubad. Because during all of my research about Iraq and my travels in the country, I have been struck by how tolerant the Kurdish people—most of whom are Sunni Muslims—are of Christians. When we drive through Kurdish military checkpoints, if the soldiers find out that we are Christians, they smile and wave us right through. There are many churches operating openly and safely throughout Kurdistan. Christians are able to freely talk about their faith in Christ. In fact, several colleagues and I had the opportunity to attend a conference of some 640 Iraqi pastors and Christian leaders near Lake Dukan, within sight of your family’s presidential home. I personally cannot think of any other country in the Muslim world where hundreds of Christian leaders could openly gather for worship, prayer, and Bible teaching so close to a president’s house.
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