13 July 2006
U.S. Envoy Sees New Iraqi Identity Emerging
Khalilzad says ethnic, sectarian communities are working together
Washington – Iraq is undergoing a difficult period of simultaneous state building and nation building, according to U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who remains optimistic about the country’s future given recent developments in the political sphere.
“The challenges of curbing sectarian violence or defeating terrorism are difficult and will require the full commitment of the Iraqi government and the coalition to resolve. And it will take time,” he told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee July 13. “However, the political progress that has been made in Iraq has created opportunities and has Iraq on the right trajectory.”
He cited what he called a “tectonic shift” in the political orientation of the Sunni Arab community as a sign that Iraqis increasingly are committed to working together on rebuilding their country.
“Sunni Arabs who boycotted the January 2005 elections have largely participated in the political process, with representation in the National Assembly and the government proportional to their share of the population,” he said.
He said there is also a growing rift between al-Qaida and Iraq’s Sunni Arabs, who increasingly are willing to provide intelligence information about foreign fighters and conduct operations against them.
The ambassador said Iraq’s Shi’a, Sunni and Kurdish leaders are preparing to work on consensus solutions to disagreements over the legislative process, the distribution of oil resources and actions on former officials of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party.
He also pointed to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s reconciliation project as a tool for bringing Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian communities together, particularly those members of insurgent groups who have expressed an interest in joining forces with the government to confront terrorism.
Khalilzad said Iraq’s leaders are working to build up their institutions of state.
“[I]n Iraq what we have is, with the liberation of Iraq that the existing institutions of the state were destroyed, and so new institutions are being built. And we are in a transition in that process. We have state institutions being built, the army and the police,” he said.
Also in the area of state building, he said the Iraqi government is working to demobilize militias, fight corruption, curb subsidies and win political and economic support from its neighbors.
He said the country is struggling with a parallel nation-building project as it tries to define the meaning of being Iraqi.
“Iraq is an ancient land, but it's really a new nation in the sense that for the first time in the history of Iraq, perhaps, at least in the modern history of Iraq, you have the people of Iraq, the community leaders engaging with each other about what does it mean to be an Iraqi and how do they relate to each other,” he said.
In the past, he said, this process always has been controlled by external empires or internal autocrats.
“And now, for the first time, all Iraqis are participating in the elections,” he said. “They sat across the table with each other arguing about federalism, arguing about the nature of the state, what powers should be given to what institution, rules and procedures for decision making, programs and so on.”
He said history shows that this is a long, difficult process.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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