The search for security in Baghdad

While Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki continues to act in ways that accelerate the ethnic and sectarian polarization of the country he governs in Iraq, Baghdad over the weekend hosted a very important meeting to discuss regional security problems. The meeting, organized by the Iraqi Strategic Studies Group, was hosted by Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the former Prime Minister and now the leader of the coalition in power. Giving the opening speech of the meeting, held under the title "Toward a Secure Regional Environment," Jaafari took the concept of security as a manifestation of the bounty of the Lord of the House, mentioned in Surat Quraysh, who removes hunger and provides safety.

These days there are quite a few in Iraq who link security, tranquility and safety to God's bounty or will, and attribute their lack to a social sinfulness.

Indeed, since the occupation Iraq has not been able to make ends meet in terms of safety. The possibility of a bomb going off somewhere at any moment has created an order in which security measures sit at the very center of people's lives to an extreme degree. Those trying to explain the gravity of the situation point out that suicide bombings with many casualties come up more often, yet since the occupation began, the number of those killed one by one with ordinary weapons is many times greater than the number killed in bombings.

That such a life can ultimately be taken for granted and become the normal course of everyday life also leads one, truly, to a separate reflection on the limits of humankind's capacity to get used to the worst conditions. In this respect too, the human being is a real miracle; but it is clear that for those who govern the country this situation is unsustainable and especially that it threatens their own power.

The Pandora's box opened by the American occupation has now created resentments that are very hard to make up for, and deep cracks, among people who lived together for hundreds of years in Iraq. It is lived as a bitter reality that for Iraq, which with its Babylonian, Hammurabi and Abbasid civilizational past always has a very rich heritage to tell the world about and to boast of, that rich heritage is of no use at all today.

That rich heritage provides no benefit today, but it is nevertheless frequently invoked in the search for a zone where safety can be ensured. Even if Jaafari tries to produce some consolation for the gravity of what is going on in Iraq by referring to the Hundred Years' War and Thirty Years' War in Europe, the wars he mentions have remained in history, whereas he is now aware that he faces a painful problem whose solution is expected from the Iraqis themselves.

Israel as an element threatening security in the region is a very clear reality. Israel is a real problem. The security problems caused by the unrest it has created in the region by occupying Jerusalem and the Palestinian lands are beyond dispute. But the more important problem that this issue has caused for decades is probably not the threats coming from Israel itself, but rather the practices of rulers who, using it as a pretext, consolidated their dictatorships over their peoples on the basis of hostility to Israel. The Arab Spring process was a reaction to the hypocrisy of these dictatorships, and that is why the new rulers who have come to power disturb Israel.

The view of regional security from the Iraqi front is of course quite interesting. In this view there are different reflections of Iran, Turkey, Egypt and the Gulf countries. Let us relay a few fragments from this view:

In particular it is asked whom Iran's nuclear program will secure, and against whom, in the region, and no one's mind, in plain terms, accepts that such a weapon could fulfill the function of protecting the Arab or Islamic world against Israel. The idea that security can be better ensured by arming no longer sounds convincing at all in this picture, because where a weapon comes into play, the danger of its use also turns from a possibility into a reality.

Saying not a word about the nuclear weapons that Israel actually and in fact possesses while attempting to question Iran's nuclear program is complete hypocrisy; that is a separate matter. But one must see that the arms race is also a great threat to regional security. It is well known that after each move by Iran, which gives itself meaning by being an enemy of the US-Israel axis, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf countries rush to enter a race to buy arms from the US. Israel, for its part, uses precisely these threats to elicit pity and draw in a great deal of American and European aid.

Will the time not come for Iran to review this concept of threat, which in the end serves no purpose other than filling the coffers of American arms dealers?

Relations between Iraq and Turkey are currently problematic for well-known reasons. But the rule of democracy has started to function, for better or worse, and as this rule operates, it is destined that peoples will draw closer rather than move apart.