Kinds of fascist

The battle lines being drawn in Iraq could repeat themselves across the region, writes Abdel-Moneim Said*

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When this article appears the Iraqi elections -- however questionable their legitimacy -- will be over. The elections, the Iraqis hoped, would result in new balances between ethnic and sectarian groups and between the people and the government. Other avenues remain open, alternatively poised to dismantle Iraq entirely, weld it back within a new ideological casing or keep it staggering in the smoke and blood of chaos. As divergent as these paths are, a critical determinant remains: the extent to which democracy is accepted as a source of legitimacy, a system of government and a mode of peaceful coexistence between diverse social forces.

The array of alternatives for effecting change and development apply not only to Iraq but to the entire Arab world. Never before has a single country been identified as a model for the future of the countries and peoples of the region to such an extent. Perhaps the only instance that comes close is the Spanish civil war. The bloody clash between the fascists and democrats in Spain in the 1930s was, in effect, a dress rehearsal for the conflict that soon swept through Europe and beyond.

When it is finally written the history of this period will relate how the Jordanian fundamentalist, Abu Musaab Al-Zarqawi, came to define the hostility between the fighting camps in Iraq. What concerns Al- Zarqawi is not ending the American occupation and securing the Iraqi people's right to self-determination, nor defending the poor and needy or the freedom of all Iraqis regardless of their ethnic origins or beliefs. His cause is as clear as the summer sunlight in the Middle East and it is to keep democracy from taking root in Iraq.

He has identified democracy as a crusading ploy aimed at empowering Israel, a contention that has been aired in the rhetoric of other Arab political forces, not all subscribing to the fundamentalist school. He has also offered his own definition of democracy, a system in which "the people are the source of power, including legislative power. This is exercised through the choice of popular representatives who undertake the task of formulating legislation and promulgating laws. In other words, the legislator who must be obeyed in a democracy is man, not God. This means that with respect to lawgiving and the power to sanction or forbid, it is the people -- human beings, God's creations -- rather than God Almighty who are to be held sacred, worshipped and obeyed. This is pure blasphemy, heresy and falsehood."

In so saying the radical fundamentalist turned the political clock back to its very beginnings -- to Plato's Laws, in which the "strange Athenian", Socrates, asks his interlocutors whether the source of law is divine or human.

Al-Zarqawi comes down unequivocally in favour of God, as he and his supporters and those he has ruled qualified to pass judgement see Him. The rest are details that follow logically from this premise. The freedoms of religion, belief and opinion are, as he put it, "known in our religion to be false and invalid".

It comes as no surprise whatsoever, therefore, to hear his contempt at the prospect of control by the "Defectors" -- the Shia -- over the state and its sources of wealth. It is a stand that has brought Iraq to the verge of civil war between Sunna and Shia that all patriotic forces are attempting to avoid. Even less of a surprise is the vehemence with which he denounces "all who seek to establish that system [democracy]" as "pretenders to divinity and divine power" and those that elect them as "idol worshippers who have forsaken God". Needless to say, "in the religion of God" all are to be condemned as "heretics and apostates from Islam".

These are the boundaries of the political battle that is taking place in Iraq, a battle that will reverberate beyond the elections and beyond Iraq's borders. They have been defined by one of the most militant, perhaps one of the most destructive and certainly one of the most broadly supported and active factions in Iraq. And this faction is not just opposed to Iraqis who work or cooperate with the occupation, or even those who support a solution to the Iraqi predicament based on the resolutions of the UN and the principles of international legitimacy. It is opposed to anyone who favours the idea of democracy and who takes part in the democratic process -- candidates, organisers and voters alike. In short, it has targeted the overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people.

This is nothing less than fascism, which loathes the very thought of the people as a source of authority and which views authority as a sacred and eternal abstract the keys to which are vested solely in the organisation or group that fate has mysteriously ordained to accomplish holy missions and perform historic roles.

Herein resides the essence of the battle that will determine the fate of the people of Iraq and the future of this region. Recent opinion polls clearly show that Iraqis believe that the major problem in their country is the presence of the foreign occupation (67 per cent), which is why the majority (80 per cent) want the evacuation of foreign forces to commence immediately after legislative elections, which is to say by the end of the year.

However, the situation is no longer a question of whether or not the occupation forces should evacuate, nor even of whether the Baathist regime will make a comeback -- only a fraction of Iraqi opinion wants to return to the era prior to the fall of Baghdad on 9 April, 2003. What is at stake in Iraq is whether the people will rule themselves and agree to disagree among themselves, or whether a shadow of God on earth will take it upon itself to reorder society and determine the fates of the people as it sees fit.

This is not just an Iraqi concern. At a time in which talk about democracy in the Arab world drones on and people wonder if truly free elections will ever take place, the statements issued by the most powerful militias in Iraq and abroad have found no group that will openly denounce them and no articles to refute them. It is as if, for Arabs, the question of democracy is an issue that concerns only America and its allies.

* The writer is the director of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.