U.S. troop fatalities in Iraq have fallen. The number of Iraqi civilian deaths and the number of violent incidents reported in Baghdad show similar positive trends. The re-opening of public parks and outdoor markets, relaxed nighttime curfews and increased alcohol sales and consumption are just a few indicators of Baghdad society inching towards normalcy. While there is little debate over whether life in Baghdad has improved, there is much debate over how this change occurred.
The essence of government is the delivery of services. A government’s legitimacy is a measure of how connected citizens feel to the political process that determines the distribution of servicse, and a measure of their confidence in the government’s ability to provide those services. At the onset of the surge, Iraq’s new regime was failing on both counts; the political process was widely perceived to be subverted by sectarianism, and government institutions were not perceived as being capable of providing adequate services — which was true.

In January 2007, a new shift in strategy called The New Way Forward in Iraq — better known as the “surge” — added over 20,000 US troops to the Baghdad area. The surge had as much to do with increasing the number oftroops as it did with changing troop strategy. Troops were deployed in smaller units in more neighborhoods, with a new focus on providing security for the Iraqi population. The overall goal of this shift in security posture was to alleviate the security concerns disrupting the Iraqi political process, and thereby legitimize the new Iraqi regime.

Key players

A key aspect of the strategy shift was the “civilian surge,” an increased deployment of State Department officers assigned to Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). Provincial Reconstruction Teams, civil/military interagency workgroups, are tasked to help province-level governments develop a transparent and sustained capability to govern. They also aim to promote increased security, the rule of law, political reconciliation and economic development. I returned to the Baghdad PRT in early 2007 with the State Department after completing a tour with the Army in Baghdad, and served again in Baghdad as a senior policy advisor until May 2008. Working with Iraqi politicians, civil society activists, tribal sheikhs and the occasional reformed insurgent, we sought to turn short-term political reconciliation into the sustained political participation.

Baghdad’s provincial government has three major positions, all filled by individuals affiliated with ISCI (the Supreme Islamic Council in Iraq, led by Shia cleric Abd-al Aziz al-Hakim): Provincial Council Chairman Mueen al-Khademy, Governor Hussein al-Tahan and Mayor Saber al-Esawi control key levers of power in Baghdad, with authority over millions of dollars in budgets, hiring and firing of thousands of government employees, and the disbursement of a wealth of government contracts. Baghdad is a unique province because it is home to the capital city of the nation. Because of ambiguities in Baghdad’s administrative law, traditional systems compete with post-2003 innovations and political and institutional conflicts are rife; even though they are affiliated with the same party the Provincial Council, Governor and Mayor often find themselves at odds with each other and with the national government on many issues.

Mid-level officials without strong party affiliations form another key group in Baghdad; individuals like Zaid al-Jafari at the office of Iraq’s National Security Advisor, and Ali Fadel al-Misir, a former governor of Baghdad, face extraordinary challenges performing their duties. Iraq has seen its traditionally large pool of competent civil servants reduced due to violence and mass emigration; many who remain are cowed into supporting the whims of a new cadre of extremist political bosses. However, there remains a vanguard committed to using its position in government to equitably and efficiently serve the public. Many of these servants have faced politically-motivated firings, intimidation and even assassination for their efforts, yet they continue in the face of adversity.

Another key group in the reconstruction of Iraqi civil society are a number of marginalized politicians who actively reject the appeal to insurgency and violent resistance to the government that has marked some offices. Subhy al-Meshadani, the lone Sunni on the Baghdad Provincial Council, embodies the efforts of those able to bridge the gap between the politically disenfranchised and the institutions of power in Baghdad. Working with tribal leaders in rural communities on the outskirts of Baghdad, Subhy was instrumental in creating forums to build sustainable relationships between these communities, often former al-Qaeda havens, and Baghdad’s government.

An urban strategy

Security in Baghdad turned a corner in 2007. The U.S. military, working more closely than ever with its Iraqi counterparts through an intergovernmental agency called the Baghdad Operations Command, launched a series of security initiatives intended to better protect the Iraqi population. One initiative focused on protecting key markets in downtown Baghdad frequented by the largely Shia population through controlling access points and thereby preventing access to suicide bombers. A second program installed protective barriers around Sunni neighborhoods targeted by Shia militants pursuing a strategy of violent eviction and sectarian intimidation. By mid-year, mass-casualty suicide bombings in markets dropped, and the pace and ferocity of forced sectarian removals slowed.

With progress being made on the security front, eyes turned towards the political process. At the national level the Iraqi government was paralyzed at an impasse, but at the local level the additional troops and PRT personnel on the ground had begun collaboration in earnest with local leaders frustrated with the performance of their national political leaders. Our strategy was to empower neighborhood and village leaders by helping them to acquire better services for their constituents; our goal was to use this new grassroots political agency to pressure Iraq’s lawmakers into making political compromises in the name of progress. Standing between the two were the notoriously corrupt officials who restricted access to what should be Iraq’s most readily available resource: fuel.

Many of Iraq’s government officials travel by way of armored sedan, but Zaid al-Jafari still drives a beat-up Volkswagen to his job at the National Security Advisor’s office. In his mid-forties, with a wife and several children, Zaid has a lot to look forward to in life – and a lot to worry about. Zaid resists the temptation to take advantage of his position, either for personal safety (by way of an armored car) or for the numerous kickbacks and perks enjoyed by many of his colleagues. His reputation for integrity brought him to the attention of a U.S. Embassy official, Jamie Miller, whom Ambassador Ryan Crocker had tasked with initiating a joint Iraq-U.S. effort to stem corruption in fuel delivery. Zaid and Miller created Project Clean Delivery, a pilot program to improve the delivery of kerosene to one of Baghdad’s neighborhoods, and hopefully, to create a model for further efforts to sidestep corrupt officials standing in the way of fuel delivery.

Iraq’s welfare state delivers each citizen a basket of food each month, as well as a subsidized ration of fuel. Given Iraq’s weak regime, its subsidy of fuel in the face of what were then skyrocketing global prices created an illegal black market for hijacked fuel. Corrupt officials and criminal syndicates diverted subsidized fuel, resold it at exorbitant prices, and used the profits to fund militias that terrorized the very neighborhoods the fuel was initially stolen from. Project Clean Delivery brought together U.S. and Iraqi officials from a variety of agencies to examine aspects of the problem related to economy security, polity, bureaucracy, and infrastructure. Over the winter of 2007-2008, the Project Clean Delivery team securely delivered kerosene at the government price to over 50,000 families in recovering post-conflict neighborhoods in downtown Baghdad. This successful delivery inspired the expansion of the project into other areas of Baghdad and brought attention to efforts to fight corruption in the delivery of other government services. Project Clean Delivery, as a coordinated attempt to build Iraqi inter-institutional cooperation, propose effective anti-corruption measures and encourage debate about Iraq’s social and economic policies.
One of the primary reasons Baghdad’s citizens permitted militias to operate in their neighborhoods was the perception of security they could provide in an unpredictably violent city. But that security, ironically, came with a terror of its own. Criminal militias extorted “protection fees” from merchants, ransoms for kidnappings, a cut of service fees owed to the government. As security began to improve, many of Baghdad’s citizens began to turn against these militias. A combination of grassroots backlash against militias,  effective targeting of militia leadership by U.S. forces, and the obedience of militants to influential theologian and militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr’s cease-fires produced significant momentum towards convincing many Shia political leaders to consider compromise with rival factions. As we PRTs watched urban service delivery fertilize change from the grassroots, our colleagues gained ground in Baghdad’s rural suburbs.

A rural counterpart

The ring of small towns and villages flanking metropolitan Baghdad historically have been ignored by Iraq’s political leaders. One Provincial Council summarized Saddam Hussein’s attitude toward these rural areas dominated by tribal leaders: “Fuck them.” However, these rural areas and tribal communities could be ignored no longer, their isolation having borne a safe haven for Iraq’s insurgency. Even though “foreign fighters” from neighboring countries imported the ideology, weaponry and funding that fueled the insurgency, the truth of the matter was that the Iraqis of rural Baghdad often harbored, supplied and fought alongside these insurgent groups. But just like the Shia militants that were rebuked for their exploitation of urban Baghdad, rural Sunni insurgents lost their host villages’ welcome after they demanded strict observance of Islamic customs, banning smoking, alcohol and entertainment. As insurgent groups grew in their influence over rural tribal leaders’ traditional instruments of graft — the distribution of jobs and money around the village — the sheikhs started to push back, too.

This Sunni backlash in Baghdad’s hinterlands was led by Anbar province and fostered by U.S. policies that permitted military units to hire local “security guards” from among these tribal populations. Money is a strong competitor with ideology. So, fairly soon, we found ourselves engaging with a number of Sunni leaders from rural Baghdad that suddenly liked Americans, but certainly didn’t like the Shia politicians running the central government. To help bridge that gap, we needed a communist.

Subhy al-Meshadani is one of a dying breed of Iraqi: a cosmopolitan, poetry-quoting, hard-drinking, Paris-loving, international worker of the world. One of two members of the Iraqi Communist Party elected to the Baghdad Provincial Council, he has the distinction of being that body’s only ethnic Sunni Arab member. Known for giving long-winded speeches (even by Iraq’s lengthy standards) and then falling asleep during council meetings, Subhy’s career took a surprising turn when Chairman Mueen al-Khademy tapped him to assume control of the Rural Services Committee, the body responsible for delivery of services to the outlying rural counties of Baghdad province. At first it seemed like a clever ploy by Mueen – the token Sunni on the Council given the impossible task of improving services to ungovernable tribal areas. However, Subhy proved remarkably adept at charming both some very wary Sunni tribal leaders and some extremely hesitant Shia government officials, bringing them together in a forum called the Joint Rural Planning Committee.

The government of Baghdad is complex and unwieldy; improving any particular service involves coordinating action between bureaucrats, political bosses, neighborhood council members, and local executive officials who work for the provincial governor. Getting the Joint Rural Planning Committee up and running was a massive exercise. The Joint Rural Planning Committee’s aim was to schedule regular meetings, where leaders from rural communities and local government officials could meet in the International Zone (a.k.a. “Green Zone”) to discuss their service needs. Progress was slow; during the first few meetings, we were just glad nobody got shot. Soon, however, the meetings became more streamlined and productive. And then, in May 2008, Chairman Mueen decided that the meetings should be held at the Provincial Council, not at the PRT’s office in the International Zone. This was a crucial turning point: the Shia leader of the Shia-dominated Provincial Council was taking responsibility for a forum that would primarily benefit Baggdad’s Sunnis. In a moment of candor, Chairman Mueen admitted that the move might be “politically advantageous” for him; in other words, he saw political value in growing the Provincial Council’s tent by reaching out to disenfranchised communities. This may have been a stepping stone towards a more politically-inclusive Iraq, but political progress isn’t just about bridging the sectarian divide: it’s about fundamentally changing the nature of politics.

Voting against democracy

Ali Fadel al-Misir deserted Saddam Hussein’s army in the 1980’s near the end of the Iraq-Iran War. Like many deserters, he bounced around the neighboring countries of the Middle East waiting for the right time to slip back to his family in Baghdad without drawing any attention. He connected with a few Shia anti-Saddam groups while in exile in Iran and Syria, but never felt compelled to join forces with these emerging insurgent movements. He did make it back to his family (riding a motorcycle through the desert from Damascus to Baghdad) in time to witness the shame of the 1991 Gulf War and the ensuing decade of UN sanctions. He praised the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime and was eager to support the efforts of building a new democracy. He was selected by his neighborhood to serve on the local council and was soon moved up to higher positions within the district, and then the Provincial Council. In late 2004, the Provincial Council chose Ali Fadel to serve as Governor of Baghdad following the assassination of Governor Ali al-Haidary.

The elections of 2005 were a major turning point for Iraq’s democracy – but not in the way that they are commonly portrayed. They did feature millions of Iraqis participating in one of the cornerstones of democracy, an election; however, it is crucial to look deeper into this event to  its larger ramifications. Before these elections, most Iraqis serving in Baghdad’s provincial government were local community leaders with no partisan affiliation, and were generally dedicated to a “moderate” conception of what they wanted Iraq’s new democracy to look like: rejecting violence as a means to achieve political ends, respecting the rule of law and believing in human rights for all regardless of sect, ethnicity or creed. After these elections, the Baghdad Provincial Council’s membership did not represent Baghdad’s districts; they represented Baghdad’s major political parties, as the system changed from geographical representation to a party-list vote. It’s not hard to see that partisan loyalists conceive of politics as a winner-take-all endeavor, and democracy as a way to take power, not share it.

Ali Fadel and a number of other moderate leaders were swept from power in 2005, and watched from the sidelines as a new era of sectarian politics unravelled their earlier efforts to foster democracy. The new Shia-dominated Provincial Council (45 of 51 seats in the assembly) dismissed a number of professional municipal employees and replaced them with political appointees in a shameless instance of partisan patronage. Local councils that did not toe the line of new Provincial Council directives found their budgets slashed. The reverberations of this sudden and acrimonious divide between local moderates and provincial partisans still affect governance in Baghdad.

Politics everywhere can be seen as a client/patron relationship: in return for political loyalty, leaders distribute money, jobs and other forms of largesse (like protection) to their followers. This is particularly evident in Baghdad, as its political parties are merely attaches of larger organizations with agendas broad enough to include public welfare and local warfare. Many of these organizations developed as underground and/or international resistance groups to Saddam Hussein’s regime, and they bring this siege mentality into Baghdad’s politics. During this time, I brokered a meeting between the current Governor of Baghdad, Hussein al-Tahan, and the Commander of the Fourth Infantry Division, where the two men argued over the best way to fight the insurgency.Governor Hussein, a former Badr Corps commander, candidly told me that he felt the American commander wasn’t taking his ideas seriously enough: “I think I know what I am talking about,” he said, a clear reference to his former career leading insurgent attacks in Baghdad against Saddam Hussein’s regime. Governor Hussein’s temperamental leadership style and relentless advocacy on behalf of Baghdad’s Shia community were clear indications of his past, and his strong connections to Tehran built during his years of exile in Iran.

New political parties that do not have a long history of armed resistance or the resources of a social welfare network are at a severe disadvantage in Baghdad’s political arena. However, Baghdad does have a sizable population of politically active individuals who would like to see the current politics of identity transform into a politics of issues and ideals. After being pushed out of politics in 2005, many of these local leaders turned their efforts to nongovernmental organizations and grassroots activism. Spurned by their own government, many of these leaders turned to American and international sources for funding. While we recognized that such one-off support to local moderates was indeed good for Baghdad, it did not seem to be either sustainable or conducive to helping these moderates affect change in the political system. Former Governor Ali Fadel al-Misir suggested a shift in our tactics.

Along with the “civilian surge” of PRT personnel came a surge of money, in the form of Quick Reaction Funds (QRF), which we were to spend on “soft” development (as opposed to “hard” spending on infrastructure projects). We had QRF money to spend on training sessions, cultural events, and democracy workshops, just to name a few initiatives. This money was intended to be catalytic - to help Iraqi moderates build a support network among themselves, eventually independent of American aid. The Baghdad League was an association that arose from these initiatives. Ali Fadel suggested we assemble a board of elite Baghdad moderates with some public recognition — like Ali Fadel himself, and activist Madeeha Hasan Odhaib (one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in 2008). This board would assist with the PRT’s efforts to support local activism and civil society organizations across Baghdad. Through the Baghdad League, American money would take on an Iraqi face and facilitate a different type of client/patron relationship – one based on shared ideals for social change, not sectarian identity. Under the leadership of Ali Fadel, the Baghdad League took shape as a forum for moderates who lacked an outlet in politics but were inspired by a sense of community and comradeship — and the possibility of running in future elections. With a provincial elections scheduled for early 2009, many Iraqis see the potential for real, participatory democratic change.

Change we can believe in?

Iraq has entered a new phase. The threat sectarian civil war has passed; most violence is the result of criminal enterprise in a weak state. The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has made strides in enforcing the rule of law, most notably in Basra, Sadr City and Mosul; this enforcement is prompting insurgent leaders like Moqtada al-Sadr to reevaluate their movement’s participation in political violence. Maliki’s progress is attributable to a number of factors, most notable of which is increased experience. Running a government isn’t easy under any circumstances; fighting a complex insurgency is a tough environment for on-the-job training.

It is tempting to disregard U.S. involvement in Iraq as the imposition of democracy at the point of a gun, forcing Western-style beliefs upon an unwilling population where they are doomed to fail. But closer examination shows that Iraqi politics is a competitive arena where many visions contend for supremacy; pluralistic democracy would be the goal of many with or without the US occupation. Iraq has been leveled twice in the past 20 years; the people of Iraq continue to cope with the violent transformation of their society. It is crucial to understand the complexity of this situation and the contours of its trajectory in order to determine the best course of action for the future.

Baghdad is still a very violent place. True political reconciliation is still an objective, not a reality. The trains are not running on time, and they won’t for a while. But Baghdad is also no longer “grave and deteriorating,” as the Iraq Study Group once observed. I once asked my friend, a former Iraqi army officer and born-and-bred Baghdadi, how we would know if life in Baghdad was getting any better. He said, “When we start drinking again.”  A few evenings later, Omar and I got the chance to split a bottle of scotch, drinking to the endurance of an extraordinary city and its courageous people.

Dan Bisbee worked in Baghdad for 29 months on a Provincial Reconstruction Team, supporting political development and government capacity-building. He is currently pursuing a PhD. in World History at the University of Pittsburgh. Some of Dan’s other writings on Baghdad can be found at www.TheBisbeeProject.org.