Neglecting Civil Society in Iraq Posted by Michael Signer

The last few weeks I've been writing a lot about Iraq -- about how we need to understand the people, in general, are fighting each other, not us, about how investing in the civil and political infrastructure is actually the effort that would most benefit America's security. 

It's not that I think I'm discovering anything -- I honestly have thought that there's a growing, albeit liminal, consensus about this, that people are gradually realizing that the "winning the war" metaphor just doesn't map onto reality there, that the principal challenge is building a civil society to which these three factions -- Sunni, Shiite, and Kurdish -- and all the dozens of discrete cleric-led factions -- commit.  We will win by stopping internal conflict; and so we need to build a civil society and constitutionalism.

Obvious, right?

But then this week there was a startling WaPo story that belies the notion that this is obvious at all.  Here's how the article begins:

While President Bush vows to transform Iraq into a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, his administration has been scaling back funding for the main organizations trying to carry out his vision by building democratic institutions such as political parties and civil society groups.

The administration has included limited new money for traditional democracy promotion in budget requests to Congress. Some organizations face funding cutoffs this month, while others struggle to stretch resources through the summer. The shortfall threatens projects that teach Iraqis how to create and sustain political parties, think tanks, human rights groups, independent media outlets, trade unions and other elements of democratic society.

If there's a more perfect example of the consequences of poor planning -- a frazzled, scattered need to focus massively on hard security maintenance, rather than long-term civil society efforts -- it's hard to imagine.  Ironically, the stated goal of the Administration's foreign policy -- democratization -- has been sacrificed on the altar of its unstated goal -- the obdurate defense of its own poor neoconservative ideology.  Here's the consequence:

[The National Democratic Institute] and its sister, the International Republican Institute (IRI), will see their grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development dry up at the end of this month, according to a government document, leaving them only special funds earmarked by Congress last year. Similarly, the U.S. Institute of Peace has had its funding for Iraq democracy promotion cut by 60 percent. And the National Endowment for Democracy expects to run out of money for Iraqi programs by September.

It could be argued, I suppose, that the NDI and IRI are two very specific organizations that are your garden-variety advocacy NGO, running seminars on balloting and setting up computer systems at other NGO's and, in the end, really just doing peripheral work. 

But then why couldn't the Administration explain the choice in actual language?  Here's how they responded to the reporter's questions:

Officials at the White House, the State Department, the Office of Management and Budget and USAID were contacted for comment in recent days, but none would speak on the record. In response to a request for comment, USAID sent promotional documents hailing past accomplishments in Iraq, such as sponsoring town hall meetings, training election monitors, and distributing pamphlets, posters and publications explaining voting and the new constitution.

Pamphlets -- ah, yes, that time-honored Beltway proxy for a precarious on-the-record rebuttal.  Furthermore, why was the Administration committed to these programs early on -- before the "insurgents" (or civil warriors) put the squeeze on?:

Money flowed to such programs in the beginning of the Iraq enterprise. The National Endowment for Democracy, which supported projects in the Kurdish north of Iraq even before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, found itself soon after Baghdad fell with $25 million to expand elsewhere in the country and eventually received a total of $71 million. It distributed some to IRI and NDI and some to groups such as the Iraqi National Association for Human Rights in Babylon and the Organization for a Model Iraqi Society.

Oh, right.  I forgot.  The Iraqis just need to "stand up" -- and then we can "stand down."

Geez, that makes me feel so much better.

Comments

[Dan Kervick]

Michael, perhaps the cutback on funding for these organizations simply reflects a more realistic assessment by the Bush administration of the most urgent current needs in Iraq. In case you haven't noticed, the United States has already spent a fortune in Iraq, and funds are limited. It would be nice to provide work for every American NGO with a scheme for social transformation, but not every wish list can implemented.

If Iraq ever becomes a pacified, functioning state again, then perhaps at that time the NGOs can have at it, and work on building up the wonderful social infrastructure of Western-style civil society - if, that is, the Iraqis are in any mood to listen. But given that large and important pieces of Iraq cannot even hold together the components of their essential material infrastructure, provide for basic needs, and maintain fundamental security, then isn't there some reason for thinking that the civil society reform statge will simply have to come later? If we can even get to that stage without an intervening catastrophe of awful proportions, we will have reason to be grateful. So I'm for spending the available money on catastrophe-avoidance.

Do you really think that what Iraq most needs right now are think tanks, town hall meetings and Western-style civic organizations? None of these institutions can even function without a basic foundation of peace and security. Perhaps our dwindling supply of allies and near-allies in the country, who already maintain some of their own political parties and civic and religious organizations without any help from the US, have communicated to the administration in no uncertain terms that while the shipments of NGO activists, democracy pamphlets and professors are appreciated, they would really prefer more construction equipment, trucks, power lines, foodstuffs, potable water, batteries, sewars and ammunition for police and security guards.

In any case, the kinds of efforts you are describing can only be effective if the people they are meant to help are receptive to them. I have trouble imagining how it is that a bunch of fresh-faced young democracy-builders are supposed to show up at the doortep of somebody like the Ayatollah Sistani - one of the most powerful leaders of a Shiite community that has been in existence for over a millenium, and say "we're here to teach you how to organize a society." What response do they get? Outrage? Perplexity? Laughter? Whatever it is, surely Kurdish and Sunni Arab leaders and organizations have much the same response.

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