The start of the Iraq war in 2003 marked a crucial break between the US and almost all the states of the region. “None of Iraq’s neighbors, absolutely none, were pleased by the American occupation of Iraq,” says Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. Long-term US allies like Turkey astonished the White House by refusing to allow US troops to use its territory to invade Iraq.
Barack Obama, who made his first official visit to the country Tuesday, is now trying to disengage from Iraq without appearing to scuttle or leave anarchy behind.
He is trying to win back old allies, and, as he made clear in a speech in Ankara on Monday, to end the confrontation between the US and Islam which was President Bush’s legacy.
It is not easy for Obama to reverse the tide of anti-Americanism or bring to an end the wars which Bush began. For all the Iraqi government’s claim that life is returning to normal in Baghdad the last few days have seen a crescendo of violence. The day before the president, arrived six bombs exploded in different parts of Baghdad, killing 37 people.
And as much as Obama would like to treat the Iraq war as ancient history, the US is still struggling to extricate itself. The very fact that the Democratic president had to arrive in Iraq by surprise, as George Bush and Tony Blair invariably did, for security reasons, shows that the conflict is refusing to go away. The Iraqi prime minister and president remain holed up in the Green Zone most of the time. The American president could not fly into the Green Zone by helicopter because of bad weather but the airport road is still unsafe and Baghdad remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world. The Iraqi political landscape too was permanently altered by the US invasion and it will be difficult to create a stable Iraqi state which does not depend on the US. Opinion polls in Iraq show that most Iraqis believe that it is the US and not their own government which is in control of their country.
One change which is to Obama’s advantage is that the American media have largely stopped reporting the conflict because they no longer have the money to do so and a majority of Americans think the war was won. But the danger for the president is that if there is a fresh explosion in Iraq, he may be blamed for throwing away a victory that was won by his predecessor.
The rhetoric with which the US conducts its diplomacy is easier to change than facts on the ground in Iraq or Afghanistan. Obama’s speech to the Turkish Parliament in Ankara was a carefully judged bid to reassure the Muslim world that the US is not at war with Islam. Everything he said was in sharp contrast to George Bush’s bellicose threats post-9/11 about launching a “crusade” and to the rhetoric of neoconservatives attacking “Islamo-fascism” or claiming that there was a “clash of civilizations.”
The leaders of states with Muslim majorities appreciate the different tone of US pronouncements, but privately wonder how far Obama will be able to introduce real change.
Turkish students at a meeting with Obama in Istanbul voiced skepticism that American actions in future would be much different from what they were under Bush. Reasonably enough, Obama replied that he should be given time and “moving the ship of state is a slow process.” But he also cited the US withdrawal from Iraq as a sign that he would match actions to words.
Istanbul, on the boundaries of Europe and Asia, is a good place for the US leader to declare a more conciliatory attitude toward Islam. But Obama’s effort to make a U-turn in American policy toward the Islamic world will ultimately depend on how far he changes US policy toward Israel and the Palestinians, the occupation of Iraq, the confrontation with Iran and Syria and the war in Afghanistan.
The Iranians, for instance, note that despite Obama’s friendlier approach to them, the US official in Washington in charge of implementing sanctions against them is a hold-over from the Bush administration.
The American confrontation with Islam post-9/11 always had more to do with opposition to foreign intervention and occupation than it did with cultural differences; the most ideologically religious Islamic countries supported the US and it is doubtful how far Al-Qaeda fighters were motivated primarily by religious fanaticism.
It was the success of the Iranian revolution against the Shah in 1978/79 which began an era when political Islam was seen as a threat by the West, but Ayatollah Khomeini’s appeal to Iranians always had a strong strain of nationalism and his exiling by the Shah in 1964 was because of his vocal opposition to extraterritorial rights for US military personnel in Iran.
The success of political Islam over secular nationalism in the Arab world has largely been because of the former’s ability to resist the enemies of the community or the state. Obama’s aim of ending the confrontation between the US and the Muslim world is both easier and more difficult than it looks. It is easier because the confrontation is not primarily over religion or clashing cultures. But the confrontation is over real issues such as the fate of the Palestinians, the future of Iraq and the control of Afghanistan. And even if Obama wanted to change the US political relationship with Israel, it is not clear that he has any more political strength at home than George Bush had to do so.
If these concrete issues are not resolved then America’s confrontation with the Muslim world may remain as confrontational and difficult as it was under Bush.
