In Iraq, It's Time for Some Smarts by Fareed Zakaria

March 1 , 2004, U.S. Edition

In Iraq, It's Time for Some Smarts
The lesson here is not that the U.N. is always right or competent. It isn't. The lesson is that America needs to exercise power shrewdly
By Fareed Zakaria

As the war in Iraq was coming to a close, many people—from Tony Blair to Joseph Biden (and even this writer)—urged Washington to give the United Nations a central role in postwar politics. This had been a well-worked formula for at least a decade: in Kosovo, East Timor and most recently in Afghanistan, where it produced a legitimate government and a constitutional process with remarkably little conflict. But the Bush administration was adamantly opposed—even though sidelining the U.N. would mean fewer troops and less money from other countries. " We fought the war," administration officials explained to me at the time, "and besides, the U.N. is not competent to handle a complex undertaking like Iraq." Six months later, with Washington facing a political train wreck in Iraq, whom did it call? The United Nations.

The lesson here is not that the United Nations is always right. It isn't. The lesson is that America needs to exercise power shrewdly, using those instruments that help achieve its goals—U.N., NATO, World Bank, Rotary Club, whatever. As politics in Iraq get more complicated—and they're going to get a lot more complicated—Washington will have to be far more sophisticated than it has been.

It was obvious that a nakedly American occupation was going to make Iraqis resent the United States. The Pentagon's ideologues couldn't see this, but Ayatollah Ali Sistani did. From the start he has refused to meet with any American, including Paul Bremer. But he met with the U.N.'s senior official, Sergio Vieira de Mello. When Washington argued that elections couldn't be held by this June, Sistani wouldn't buy it. But when Kofi Annan sent his envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, Sistani spent two hours with him and consented to a delay.

In an interview with Der Spiegel last Saturday, Sistani voiced opposition to the invasion and occupation, and accused the United States of delaying the elections. His strongest criticisms, however, were about the sidelining of the U.N., saying, "We had demanded from the beginning that the U.N. play a primary role in the political process ... The U.N. was not even mentioned in the agreement reached between the occupying power and the Interim Governing Council on November 15th of last year. Now Annan has responded to our request, which we consider a great victory."

Sistani insisted that going forward, the Security Council should pass a resolution specifying the date of the elections and tightly limiting the powers of the government that will rule Iraq from June 30 until the elections. In other words, the only authority Sistani accepts outside of the Iraqi people is the United Nations. (He also showered praise on Brahimi.)

Sistani is a shrewd man. He is not making this case out of a deep love of the U.N., but because he realizes that he needs to show his distance from the United States. Yet he doesn't want to provoke a clash with the U.S. He seems to be signaling that if Washington worked through the U.N., it would be easier for him to bless the results. In the rest of the Spiegel interview, he was careful to say that he did not want an Islamic state for Iraq and that religious minorities should be protected by law. "Shiite clerics [in Iraq] subscribe to the view that religious scholars should neither be involved with political questions nor assume government offices," he said—and in one pivotal sentence totally repudiated the Iranian model of government.

That's why Paul Bremer's statement last week—that he would veto anything in the interim law that established Islam as the source for the country's constitution—backfired. There was little danger of this happening, as Sistani's comments make clear, and it galvanized Iraqis, with almost all major religious groupings denouncing Bremer for interference. Apparently Bremer was pressured to do this by some senators, who don't seem to understand that a soft touch would work better than a sledgehammer.

Come July, America will have much less influence over Iraq's political development than it had once hoped. It will have troops on the ground and provide massive economic assistance to the Iraqi government. But such power does not always translate into influence. Ask anyone who worked in the American Embassy in South Vietnam. You need political and diplomatic skill.

The next American ambassador to Baghdad will run the largest embassy in the world. But he must keep the Shiites happy and yet encourage the rise of a Sunni leadership that can stand up to the Shiites. He must get the Kurds to give up some of the independence they've enjoyed for 12 years now. He must work through the Security Council to put pressure on the Iraqis if and when needed. He must use American aid to influence economic and political reforms. And he must ensure that none of this is branded imperialism. Hmm, I wonder if the U.N. could spare someone.