APPLYING THE LESSONS OF IRAQ TO SYRIA

By NADIM SHEHADI

Nadim Shehadi is an associate fellow at Chatham House, the

Royal Institute of International Affairs in London.

LONDON ­ There is no doubt that the Iraq war experience is not to be
repeated. This conviction is driving policy toward Syria, but the West has
learned the wrong lessons from the Iraq example. The United States
military intervention in 2003 and the chaos and waves of sectarian killing
that followed in Iraq haunts the West into indecision, and irreparable
damage is being inflicted on Syrian society.

The world stands by and watches while the Syrian regime violently
represses the uprising, increasing sectarian tensions and radicalism,
while sanctions erode the economy and weaken the middle class. The longer
this lasts the closer Syrian society will move toward fulfilling President
Bashar al-Assad?s prophecy that his regime?s fall would be worse than
?tens of Afghanistans.?

There is a different lesson to be learned from policy toward Iraq before
2003, the period when Saddam Hussein was ?engaged,? became an ally of the
West by fighting Iran and was kept in power even after his invasion of
Kuwait for fear of the unknown if he fell.

From 1991 to 2003, the West allowed the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein to
drive Iraqi society back to the Stone Age and contributed to the process
with policies of containment. Sanctions punished the Iraqi people while
strengthening the regime. Saddam flourished under the oil-for-food program
by distributing oil coupons to his supporters in Arab countries and
financing his lobbyists in the West. Devaluation of the currency meant
that the middle class was driven to poverty and those who were lucky to
emigration.

During the Gulf war in 1991, the arguments against going all the way to
Baghdad and dislodging Saddam after the liberation of Kuwait are similar
to those used now for not intervening in Syria. Fear of the aftermath kept
Saddam in power, with a secret hope that he would be overthrown internally
through a military coup or an assassination. Iraqis were encouraged to
rise against the regime and when they did, thinking the Americans would
support them, the United States looked the other way as tens of thousands
of Shiites and Kurds were slaughtered. This worsened ethnic and sectarian
tensions and radicalism.

An Iraqi transition to democracy would have been much smoother in 1991,
despite the country?s coming out of two wars. Policy toward Iraq before
that included engagement with the regime and Western support for it in the
Iran-Iraq war. While he was an ally of the West, Saddam was allowed to gas
and massacre the Kurds and other minorities. The nightmares of the Anfal
campaign against the Kurds, and Halabja ­ where more than 5,000 Kurds died
in a gas attack ­ haunt the world and are part of the legacy Iraq must
deal with. The regime survived all these years by killing its people,
eroding its institutions and hollowing out civil society. Two whole
generations of Iraqis suffered from the West?s engagement with and support
of Saddam since 1980.

There is a price to pay when keeping a dictatorship in power, and there is
also a price to pay after removing it. The number of casualties in Iraq
before 2003 are different from the numbers seen after 2003, but the toll
on the population was profound. Iraq after 2003 was not only recovering
from the invasion, but also from 24 years of being battered by a brutal,
dictatorial regime. Inaction on Syria will have similar consequences.

Syrians cannot liberate themselves from the Assad regime without
international support. The regime will stop at nothing to remain in power.
We must also not forget that Syria, together with Iran and other countries
in the region, contributed to the post-2003 mess in Iraq by supporting the
insurgency. Syria also facilitated the infiltration of terrorists
sympathetic to Al Qaeda.

A post-Assad Syria, however, will not face the same regional challenges.
Political culture has changed radically from the days when Saddam Hussein,
Hosni Mubarak, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, Ali Abdullah Saleh, Muammar
el-Qaddafi and other despots thrived through extortion and blackmail. None
of these regimes ever had an interest in seeing Iraq reform. Assad himself
boasted that Syria was indispensable to stability in the region because it
could help resolve the problems it created in conflicts like Iraq, Lebanon
and among Palestinians.

Meanwhile the delusion that negotiation with Assad can lead to a peaceful
transition and that the regime will cooperate is still maintained. The
regime will continue to play mind games and gain time in the hope that the
wind will again blow in its favor and that it will be able to suppress the
revolt. Lessons from Iraq illustrate what a big mistake it is to allow
this illusion to continue.

Bahman Baktiari