A challenge for Iraqis

9/3/2003

THE HORRIFIC blast last week that killed the revered Shi'ite Ayatollah Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim and more than 80 worshippers at the shrine of Ali in the holy city of Najaf represents an all-too-familiar continuation, by terrorist means, of the long war that Saddam Hussein's regime waged against Shi'ites and everyone else in Iraq who was not complicit with Saddam's Ba'athist gang. Whether specific attacks are the work of Ba'athist intelligence operatives or foreign Islamists affiliated with Al Qaeda, the political meaning for Iraqis hoping to create a new Iraq based on democracy, rule of law, and human rights is clear: They are being plunged into a postwar struggle for power.

This is the crucial reality that US policy makers ought to have foreseen and must now confront.

The failure of the Bush administration to implement a clear postwar strategy in Iraq is largely to blame for the current disorder. The unchecked looting of the immediate postwar period, the confusion of the first US administrative authority under retired General Jay Garner, the hiring and firing of notorious Ba'athists, and current civil administrator Paul Bremer's early blunder of summarily discharging the entire Iraqi military -- these errors opened the way to the present chaos.

Yesterday, when Bremer declared that he and the other US advisers "will not only yield authority, we will thrust authority" on the new Cabinet ministers appointed by the Iraqi Governing Council, he belatedly acknowledged what the administration ought to have been doing from the moment Saddam fell.

The assassinated Hakim, though he spent more than two decades under the protection of the clerical regime in Iran, had used his considerable prestige to counsel Shi'ite cooperation with the Americans. In a eulogy to his brother yesterday, Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim castigated the occupying powers and called for them to leave Iraq. This turning away from the Americans by a political force that has favored a democratic future for Iraq came about not because the Bush administration overthrew Saddam but because it has failed to protect the Shi'ites and to help forge a new Iraqi state.

In the current situation, there are no easy remedies for the chaos induced by Ba'athist remnants and Islamist extremists. But since the current struggle for power is primarily an Iraqi conflict -- one that the Ba'athists have almost no chance of winning -- the Bush administration should greatly accelerate the transfer of political authority and responsibility for security to Iraqis.

If a new UN resolution enables other countries to contribute troops to the stabilizing of Iraq, they should be welcome. But the empowering of Iraqis to govern themselves must not wait for the assistance of foreigners.