New Iraq ’ well on way to becoming Islamic state’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/10/29/wirq129.xml
By David Rennie in Washington
29 October 2003
The Daily Telegraph
THE United States is failing in its mission to create a secular,
overtly pro-Western Iraq, a leading adviser to the American
administrator Paul Bremer said yesterday.
Instead, the new, democratic Iraq appears bound to be an Islamic state
- with an official role for Islam, and Islamic law enshrined in its
constitution.
That prospect is triggering alarm and opposition from the White House
and the Pentagon, Noah Feldman, a leading American expert in Islamic
law, told The Daily Telegraph.
Dr Feldman served as senior constitutional adviser to the Coalition
Provisional Authority, working closely with Mr Bremer. Returning from
Baghdad this summer, the New York University law professor now works as
an unpaid adviser to the CPA, to the White House, and to different
factions in the Iraqi Governing Council.
“The end constitutional product is very likely to make many people in
the US government unhappy. It’s not going to look the way people
imagined it looking,” said Dr Feldman.
“Any democratically elected Iraqi government is unlikely to be secular,
and unlikely to be pro-Israel. And frankly, moderately unlikely to be
pro-American.”
While these predictions are spreading alarm inside the administration,
Dr Feldman advocates dealing with Islamic democrats.
He argues that Islamic parties will rise anyway, and are most dangerous
when forced underground by secular autocrats. Such views led Pentagon
officials to accuse Dr Feldman of being “soft on Islam”.
"When I tell them these things [Islam and Islamic law] are going to be
in the constitution, people are very concerned about it. They want to
know what can be done to avoid these things. There’s still a hope that
the country will be as secular as possible.
“But frankly nothing in Iraq is going to look the way people imagined.
Maybe if people had taken that on board, they might have felt
differently about the plan for an invasion.”
The hawkish idealists who pushed hardest for regime change in Iraq saw
the fall of Baghdad as the first step towards remaking the Middle East.
In their vision, Iraq would rise up as a democratic, secular, free
market capitalist beacon to its neighbours - guided, at least
initially, by such exiled leaders as Ahmad Chalabi, a secularist and
Pentagon favourite.
In their plan, the country was to be turned into a federation of 18 or
so provinces, preventing such powerful ethnic factions as the Kurds
from setting up autonomous fiefdoms that might split the country apart
and threaten the stability of an already volatile neighbourhood.
Yet the Kurds have made it plain that they expect to emerge with an
autonomous Kurdish region, and will not support any constitution that
would split their territory into mini-provinces, Dr Feldman reported.
Though US allies, the Kurds retain 40,000 men under arms, and have
declined US invitations to disband such militias.
Pentagon officials sent Dr Feldman to Baghdad for his knowledge of
Islamic law. In many ways he was an unlikely candidate: he is a
Democrat, Jewish and still only 32.
One senior administration official declared before the war that the
first foreign policy of a democratic Iraq would be to recognise Israel.
“I don’t know what he was smoking when he said that,” said Dr Feldman.
He argued that Iraqi-Israeli relations were off the radar, as
Washington struggled simply to keep Iraq from slipping into disaster.
Daily Telegraph. UK
Comment:
Intresting views by someone from a certain background. The west has come to realise that no matter how hard they try they cant stop the Islamic revival. Secularism and Islam cannot co-exist maybe in the west it can but in Muslim lands we will implement the Sharia even though the west will be unhappy and we will unify the Islamic lands and one day rival America as a superpower and leading nation who dictates world policy.