Guardian
A short hop from Belfast to Baghdad
Democracy is no more a panacea in Iraq than in Northern Ireland
Peter Preston
Monday January 10, 2005
The Guardian
It is the direst of descants. Here, day after day, comes the rumble of guns from Iraq, a crescendo of destruction. Another roadblock bomb, another five dead, another house razed by mistake with 14 under the rubble. And here, roaring across the Irish Sea, comes a matching refrain: a sad, sour anthem of hopes dashed as usual. Call it tragic, if you like. But don’t miss the bathos either.
The dichotomy has been implicit for months. Compare and contrast the soaring rhetoric employed by Messrs Blair and Bush when they hymn the prospective wonders of democracy in Baghdad, then turn to their growling frustration over Ian Paisley’s Belfast.
Democracy, among other things, apparently means peace and power-sharing and reconciliation and prosperity and the rule of law. That is why January 30 is Iraq’s great date with destiny. That is why an election must, somehow, be made to take place. But Northern Ireland has been voting repeatedly over the decades, and only exhaustion brings it a certain glum tranquillity today.
Power-sharing? You can forget hopes of that, yet again, until after the British general election - because elections make it difficult for politicians to concentrate on organising anything more useful than Tony snarling at Gordon. Reconciliation? The parties of the extremes grow stronger while the mushier middle turns to slush. Prosperity? Especially for the gang who made off with £26.5m from a local bank the other day.
And the rule of law? Well, the robbers are IRA Provos, aren’t they? The chief constable tells us so - in spite of the fact that in any other part of Great Britain, he’d be howled down by public, press and lawyers alike for tainting the wells of justice, flinging around unsubstantiated allegations and covering his back against detecting failure. But then, this is Northern Ireland. Different rules apply. Even the cabinet minister in charge of the mess tags meekly along behind.
Democracy, in sum, still brings few of its alleged wonders to the part of dear old democratic Britain racked by terrorism and organised crime for more than 30 years. Democracy has mostly turned to a state of stasis. Yet nobody makes the wider connection; nobody asks why Baghdad (or, for that matter, Ramallah) should be automatically transformed by its potency.
Just look for a moment at Belfast after the bank raid, a Belfast of tribes and intractabilities. If the gang had staged its coup in, say, Birmingham, the enormity of the haul would be front-page news day after day, with Hollywood bidding for film rights by the end of the week. But, because it is Northern Ireland, no such glamour can be conferred. Politics is the only dimension that matters, the familiar politics of blame and distrust.
Chief constable Hugh Orde still operates in a leftover world of terrorism where simple, spectacular crime - like robbing banks - is something his force doesn’t expect, and isn’t expected, to solve. He’s allowed to wave political conclusions without necessary evidence attached (just as his Met mainland oppo can stir the al-Qaida pot with impunity). He is not even required to find credible motivation for a charge that shafts Sinn Féin again.
Now, why on earth should Baghdad be a more hopeful case for freedom’s magic massage? The war there hasn’t subsided yet. On the contrary, it escalates almost daily: 1,352 American soldiers dead, uncountable thousands of Iraqis buried along with them. No wonder Washington and London are having to send out extra troops with no return ticket. No wonder General Gary Luck (what’s in a name?) has been dispatched to reflect on the entire shambles.
This isn’t - as Iraq’s own intelligence chief confessed last week - a small, isolated rebellion. General Mohamed Abdullah Shahwani reckons there are some 200,000 insurgents in direct or supportive action today, more fighters than Iraq’s army and police can muster between them. This isn’t a simplistically foreign-fuelled, zealot-led conflict. This is civil war.
Would Northern Ireland, in such circumstances, even dream of holding an election? Naturally not. The chief constable wouldn’t quaver over his advice. And voting in Protestant but not Republican areas (remembering that around 25% of their respective populations are Sunnis and Sinn Féin supporters)? It doesn’t bear inspection: it’s ludicrous, an impossible route to power-sharing. Of course, the majority Shi’ites want an election desperately. They’re going to win it. Of course, the Kurds more or less agree. There are other distant, devolved deals for them to make thereafter. But the Sunnis, Iraq’s erstwhile masters, have to be an integral and proportional part of the equation, and there is no realistic prospect of that happening.
American forces won’t defend the polling stations: that will be left to Iraq’s own failing resources. The only answer is to stay away, to skulk at home with the door locked, then complain about democratic illegitimacy later.
Our leaders, of every political persuasion, wriggle uncomfortably when asked if the election should go ahead - and say yes, with various reservations. So yes it will be, with many more lives lost before and after. And no, there will be no solution.
Our leaders’ faith in democracy is finite from bitter experience. They can only hope that time and familiarity and exhaustion will bring some kind of stasis in place of strife. They’re very anxious indeed not to let this election swill over into other elections closer to home.
So, just like the “end” of insurgency once Falluja was flattened, there’s no pat democratic “end” to Iraq’s travail. We kid ourselves if we think there is. We can’t even tell ourselves the truth. We can’t see as far as the Irish Sea.
p.preston@guardian.co.uk
