Golden Oldie: Aaron Mannes on "Victory in Tripoli" in the Journal of International Security Affairs

Here is one from the archives of my previous blog. The Fall 2006 issue of the Journal of International Security Affairs includes my review of Joshua London's Victory in Tripoli: How America’s War with the Barbary Pirates Established the U.S. Navy and Shaped a Nation, about the first American crisis in the Middle East. A fine book and another reminder of the axiom plus ca change...

Past as prologue
By Aaron Mannes

Joshua E. London, Victory in Tripoli: How America’s War with the Barbary Pirates Established the U.S. Navy and Shaped a Nation (Hobocken, NJ: J.W. Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2005), 276pp., $24.95.

Faced with a choice of appeasing hostage-taking Middle Eastern despots or overturning the international order, the United States hems and haws as its prestige wanes—until finally an outraged American public demands action. The European powers watch carefully, and maneuver to gain their own advantage. After marginal pinprick strikes, American forces mount a major campaign, receive rapid capitulation, and predictably fail to press their advantage.

The year was 1804.

In Victory in Tripoli, Joshua London tells the story of the first American Middle East crisis. For centuries, pirates based in the North African states had been extorting European governments. Shortly after America’s independence, these bandits set their sights on the United States as well. The resulting hostage crises and plunder finally became so severe that the United States was compelled to construct a navy (indeed, the Barbary crisis effectively forced the debate towards those who felt the new nation should have a strong navy) and launch it against the Pasha of Tripoli. But the ensuing naval blockades and limited forays were mere pinpricks, and although the United States enjoyed some tactical successes, the Pasha became even more convinced that the United States lacked resolve.

Enter William Eaton, Revolutionary War hero and former U.S. Counsel to Tunis. Eaton proposed that the United States support Ahmed Qaramanli, the Pasha’s deposed brother, in re-taking the throne. In late 1804, Eaton traveled to Egypt, recruited Qaramanli and raised a small force, including a single squad of eight U.S. Marines, some mercenaries, and a local band of followers. He quick-marched his tiny army across the desert and stormed Derna, the easternmost outpost of the Pasha of Tripoli’s realm, in the spring of 1805. The expedition is commemorated in the famous refrain in the Marine Corps hymn: “…to the shores of Tripoli.”

The Pasha, after failing to retake the city, became nervous and entered serious peace talks with the United States, eventually coming to terms of sorts with Washington. The United States, in turn, abandoned Derna, spiriting out its own personnel and the pretender Qaramanli (who died impoverished and exiled.)

Victory in Tripoli is a page-turner that moves deftly between Washington machinations and naval maneuvers in the Mediterranean. London lets this terrific story tell itself, writing in a lean, effective style. A bit of explanation about diplomatic protocol at the turn of the 19th century, some decent maps, and perhaps a bit of background on naval warfare in the age of wooden ships (for those of us who don’t know a schooner from a sloop) all would have been useful—but these are merely quibbles.

Most writers would have been temped to play up the parallels with today’s events. London, however, for the most part has wisely resisted this impulse, restricting himself to some wry descriptions. But the similarities between today’s troubles with the Middle East and the war with the Barbary pirates are unmistakable: disputes between the diplomats and the military, a perfidious role by the European powers (Britain encouraged Barbary piracy against the Americans because it kept the United States out of the valuable Mediterranean trade routes), and a divisive domestic debate over the U.S. role in the world. As such, the underlying lesson contained in Victory in Tripoli is crystal clear: Middle Eastern despots change their behavior when faced with overwhelming force. Precision strikes, soft power, smart sanctions, and carrot and stick approaches are not sufficient.

But London’s book is not a policy monograph; it is a work of history. Its great strength is in illuminating our present predicament by showing us the past. London’s descriptions of the tendentious and erratic negotiation tactics used by the Barbary chieftains, and the ubiquitous decay and weakness characterizing North African societies, could have been ripped from today’s newspapers. In a chilling harbinger of today’s mega-terror, London shows us how the Barbary pirates were forthright in citing the Koran to justify their plundering ways as a form of jihad. This piracy was not merely a vocation; it was a religious duty.

To be sure, there are important differences between the crisis of today and the war against the Barbary pirates. The pirates were more akin to contemporary organized crime networks than to the mass-murdering terrorists of today’s Middle East. And the United States of 200 years ago did not have the confidence of its own democracy to dream of changing the Middle East. Nonetheless, the perennial issue remains the same. Two centuries ago, as a diplomat in Tunis, Eaton wrote:

…there is [no] …friendship with these states, without paving the way with gold or cannon balls; and the proper question is, which method is preferable.

As we again face this critical choice, a look back at the first American crisis in the Middle East has become increasingly valuable. Mr. London has done a great service in telling this tale, and telling it well.

Aaron Mannes is a terrorism researcher at the University of Maryland’s Information and Network Dynamics Lab, and the author of Profiles in Terror: The Guide to Middle East Terrorist Organizations (Rowman & Littlefield—JINSA Press, 2004).

Remembering the Tokyo Subway Attacks

Fourteen years ago today Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas on the Tokyo subway. A few years ago I wrote a short post about it on my old blog, which I re-post below. (The old blog is now defunct, but I am slowly posting it into The TerrorWonk.) At the time, this was seen as the future of terrorism. In retrospect, there are enormous barries to terrorist groups producing and delivering WMD in major quantities. In a chapter of the Stimson Institute's October 2000 publication Ataxia: The Chemical and Biological Terrorism Threat and the US Response, Amy Smithson shows how little Aum accomplished relative to its massive investment in chemical and biological weapons. The sarin attacks killed 12 on crowded Tokyo subways. Supposedly 5500 were injured by the sarin attacks, but the vast majority experienced minor symptoms and or were merely scared - there were 54 serious injuries. While these injuries and deaths were tragic, conventional attacks on subways have wreaked much more terrible damage. Suicide bombers on London's subway in July 2005 killed 52, bombs planted on the Mumbai trains killed 209 in 2006, and the Madrid train bombings killed 191 people.

Relative to the investment (and Aum Shinrikyo had far more resources and expertise than most terrorist groups are likely to acquire - including a number of qualified scientists) WMD production does not pay off. Successful terrorist groups employ cold hard logic in developing their tactics and capabilities. While many terrorist groups have shown a willingness to employ WMD, terrorist use of WMD has - thankfully - had limited efficacy. However, if the acquisition costs decline dramatically, this could change. Some kinds of WMD might become easier to produce, a state may choose to provide it, or terrorists may be able to procure from corrupt or failing states.

But this is cold comfort in the face of the continual adaptability terrorists have shown using readily available technology.

From the Profiles in Terror Blog Archives

Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Another Anniversary - Tokyo Subway Attacks
The focus on the 3-year anniversary of Operation Iraqi Freedom overshadowed the anniversary of another day important in the annals of terrorism - Aum Shinrikyo's sarin attacks on the Tokyo subway.

The strange cult, with its apocalyptic ambitions, is right out of a Bond thriller. Their use of sarin and their attempts to acquire biological weapons raise interesting questions about the future of terrorism. Did Aum Shinrikyo, which only had limited success at acquiring WMD despite its recruitment of top scientists and vast financial resources, show just how high the bar would be for a terrorist group to acquire WMD? Or were these attacks the equivalent of WTC I, a harbinger of a much deadlier attack in the future.

Another aspect is how Aum Shinrikyo represents an "X" factor terrorism that is very difficult to predict or deter. Much of the terrorism today is connected to radical Islam. There are also various terrorist groups left over from the Cold War and various separatist movements - most notably the FARC and the LTTE. Aum Shinrikyo represents something very different - a truly radical group disconnected from any political stream. Aum Shinrikyo was actually a large group and carried out its attacks, at least in part, because its many enemies (particularly the Japanese government itself) were beginning to crack down. But smaller groups with equally bizarre goals, fueled by obscure frustrations, could operate under the radar screen and carry out mass attacks.

A final note - Aum Shinrikyo operatives, on the order of the cult's leader, underwent flight training in Florida. There is no evidence that they made any attempts to use this training. It is just an odd, disturbing coincidence.

Mobile Opportunities Redux

Some time ago, in response, to legitimate concerns about possible illicit uses of mobile banking, I wrote that mobile technology also offered enormous counter-terror and development opportunities.

It turns out, as a thoughtful commentator mentioned, that USAID is already on the case. I hope the public diplomacy community follows suit. Really development and public diplomacy can go hand in hand – particularly now with 60% of the world’s population using mobile phones.
It may turn out that simply dispersing mobile phones or using them as a means to distribute aid will prove to be one of their greatest development roles. Also, people could be paid to access valuable information that they might not seek on their, but that might prove very useful - such as health education.

Mobile Surveys
As it happens, in my coursework at the University of Maryland I am studying surveys. In the United States, where random dialing surveys were – until recently – considered a terrific way to reach representative samples, mobile phones are a source of frustration. Certain demographics are unlikely to own a landline at all and surveying mobile phones is problematic because the exchanges are not tied to a particular geography.

But in class I pointed out (and the USAID folks get it as well) that over the long-term mobile phones are going to be a tremendous boon to surveys. One big problem with surveys is reaching people at all, but mobile phones are not attached to a location, but to the person. Also the mobile phone can reach people multiple ways, so that the survey can combine verbal and “written” components. Best of all, people can be paid – perhaps by free minutes or in cash – to participate. Cellphone companies can give people the option of making themselves available for surveys in exchange for reduced rates and then sell the lists to marketing companies. There is no privacy issue as participation would be entirely voluntary.

Cellphones offer a tremendous way to create a feedback loop between providers and consumers in which needs can be quickly identified and addressed. The producer and consumer concept are not limited to commerce. It applies to development issues and counter-insurgency. Armies fighting insurgents (if they are doing a decent job) collect lots of data about their progress and public attitudes. The ubiquity of mobile phones will make this challenge much easier.

A brave new world – and yes, bad guys will figure out how to abuse it – but the benefits will almost certainly outweigh the costs.

Mysteries of Musharraf and Mumbai

The news, discussed in a previous post that India and Pakistan were involved in very secret negotiations solves two minor mysteries.

First, it clarifies why the Bush administration hung on to Musharraf, even as his political standing collapsed. Unlike other countries, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, where the Bush administration gave only lip-service to reform, in Pakistan there were viable civilians alternatives in Bhutto’s PPP and Sharif’s PML. The conventional wisdom was that the administration needed Musharraf to chase al-Qaeda in Pakistan – but really any non-Islamist Pakistani government would have offered this support. The current government has permitted US drone strikes from a base within Pakistan. But if the Pakistan-India peace talks were in an advanced stage, it makes sense that the administration would have wanted to give them the fullest opportunity to complete the talks, which would have had enormous strategic benefits for the region and the United States.

The second mystery is how little effort LeT put into plausible deniability for the Mumbai attack. Surely they must have had some inkling about the vulnerability of cel-phones and other mobile communications devices to eavesdropping – to say nothing of the extensive physical evidence. But, if the attack’s primary purpose was to drive a stake through the heart of any Pakistani-Indian peace process, then allowing the attacks to be linked clearly to Pakistan was part of the strategy. The fact that the LeT assessed (accurately, as it turns out) that the Pakistani government would not undertake a harsh crackdown when their role in the attacks became clear is extremely frightening in its own right.

The fighting sparked by the storming of the Lal Masjid Mosque in Islamabad triggered the insurrection in the tribal areas. A crackdown on LeT (and its parent Jamaat ul-Dawa) would undoubtedly spark open rebellion in parts of the Punjab – in the very heart of the country.

Kashmir Peace: Another Mumbai Casualty?

"It is too early to say."

Zhou Enlai's response when asked for his assessment of the 1789 French Revolution

In the last week’s issue of the New Yorker Steve Coll reported that in 2007 India and Pakistan where, through diplomatic back-channels, engaged in talks “so advanced that we’d come to semi-colons” on a deal over Kashmir. Unfortunately, Musharraf lost his political credibility and had to resign from the Pakistani Presidency before the deal could be completed. The new civilian and military leaders are, by most accounts, inclined towards continuing the process. But in the wake of the Mumbai attacks, it is difficult to see how this process can be re-started.

Pakistani-Indian rapprochement could be a tremendous aid to the Pakistani leadership in their efforts to stabilize their deteriorating country. If the Mumbai attacks have made that impossible, then the Mumbai terror attacks may prove to be one of the most consequential terrorist attacks in history.

Pakistan in Free Fall
Yesterday’s attack on the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team, while a tactical failure relative to its ambition of copying the Mumbai assault (the cricket players survived and were not taken hostage and overall casualties were limited), was another blow to Pakistan’s domestic and international prestige.

Other incidents highlighting Pakistan’s possible collapse were the all too successful attacks on highly symbolic targets such as the Islamabad Marriott (the watering hole of Pakistan’s elite) and the assassination of former PM Benazir Bhutto. The recent “deal” allowing Islamists to govern the Swat Valley is yet another example of the state’s loss of control.

Unfortunately, Pakistan’s twin assets of nuclear weapons and a strategic location (American efforts in landlocked Afghanistan will become untenable without access to Pakistan’s ports) mean that the country cannot be ignored.

Game Changer
It would require multiple volumes to explain the complex interlocking problems facing Pakistan. But, Pakistan’s conflict with India, primarily over Kashmir, is central and exacerbates many of Pakistan’s other challenges. Having fought (and lost) several wars with India, Pakistan is locked into an arms race that it cannot win. Beyond India’s demographic and economic advantages, Pakistan has long borders and little strategic depth. Massive outlays for defense needs have choked off funds for much needed development, while the military – once respected for its relative probity – is becoming yet another Pakistani institution mired in corruption. Islamist organizations have filled the void left by the government’s failure to provide basic social services like education.

The conflict over Kashmir is not merely over resources and territory. It also touches on Pakistan’s identity as the homeland for Indian Muslims. In the face of the Indian threat and its own panoply of ethnic divides, the government relied on Islam as a national unifier. These policies, combined with ISI support, created a fertile ground for Islamist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba to take root.

An agreement with India over Kashmir, the key point of Pakistani-Indian contention, would have allowed military reformers both to shrink the military overall and to re-orient it from its conventional war India mission of countering India to a lighter counter-insurgency force that can keep peace within Pakistan.

An agreement with India is no guarantee that Pakistan would stabilize – the Islamist groups are now effectively self-sustaining and the country has been so poorly governed that reforms may be too little too late. But it is difficult to see how Pakistan can make the necessary institutional changes without an improved relationship with India, and the agreement described in Coll’s article would at least have improved Pakistan’s odds.

World Historical Terror
There is an interesting argument that most terrorism proves to be politically ineffective. This excellent paper surveys major terrorist groups and finds that, with few exceptions, terrorist groups do not achieve their political ends. The most notable exception is Hezbollah’s campaign against the U.S. and other Western powers in Lebanon in the 1980s.

But there are also terror attacks that have world historical significance beyond the orchestrating organization’s ambitions. 9/11 would be an example. Sadat’s assassination is also an example of an attack that did not achieve specific political goals (the Egyptian government remained in power) but did remove the Arab politician who had the greatest potential to change the dismal course of Middle Eastern politics.

If the Mumbai attack has successfully derailed Indian-Pakistani negotiations for the foreseeable future, then the attack may join the annals of terror attacks with great historical reverberations. It is not inconceivable that future historians will see the failure of peace talks as Pakistan’s last chance to come to grips with its internal challenges and avoid collapse. If this collapse occurs, even laying aside the nuclear weapons, it is sure to be a geopolitical earthquake leaving a vacuum in a strategic location and sending waves of refugees into the unstable Middle East and beyond.

History is not set in stone. It is still possible for Pakistan and India to come to an agreement. Both countries’ leaders recognize the importance of defusing their conflict, although it remains unclear if the Pakistani leadership has grasped the precariousness of the Pakistani state. If these leaders can overcome the setbacks they can deny the Mumbai murderers the ultimate victory

Golden Oldie: Mannes in the Weekly Standard on Tamil Tigers

With the the notorious Tamil Tigers, once one of the world's most formidable terrorist groups, on the ropes and possibly in their death throes, I thought it would be timely to post this piece I wrote a couple years ago for the Weekly Standard Online urging a more pro-active American counter-terror role against the Tigers.


Catch a Tiger by the Toe
The conflict in Sri Lanka presents the United States with a rare, low-cost opportunity for leadership in the region.
by Aaron Mannes
08/08/2006

WHILE THE WORLD focuses its attention on Lebanon, the bloody civil war in Sri Lanka looks poised for yet another flare-up. Even excluding the Sri Lankan army's current offensive, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)'s June 15 bombing of a passenger bus that killed 64 people and the June 26 assassination of a top Sri Lankan general, LTTE terrorism and Sri Lankan military reprisals have claimed hundreds of lives this year. Sri Lanka is a democratic ally, but the United States has limited options for preventing further bloodshed. However, international frustration with LTTE intransigence has created a rare, low-cost opportunity for American leadership in the region. If the United States can effectively target the LTTE's international finance and smuggling networks, a lack of money and weapons will reduce the group's capability to commit terror attacks, increase the possibility of a political solution in Sri Lanka, and improve the regional situation in Southeast Asia.

Long before the terms entered the American lexicon, the LTTE's struggle for an independent, ethnically Hindu Tamil homeland in northern Sri Lanka featured hundreds of suicide bombings and IEDs at a cost in lives now estimated to exceed 64,000. According to the United Nation's Children's Fund, the LTTE has a history of recruiting child soldiers (including children orphaned by the December 2004 tsunami.) The LTTE has bombed Sri Lanka's World Trade Center and assassinated dozens of political leaders, including two national leaders: former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandhi in 1991 and Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1993.

Sri Lanka's Tamils have legitimate grievances against the Sinhalese Buddhist-dominated Sri Lankan government. The Tamils have suffered from Sinhalese mob violence and the Sri Lankan military has attacked Tamil civilians both directly and through paramilitary groups. But Sri Lanka is a democracy and Tamils have held high positions in the government. Furthermore, the LTTE pursues a strategy designed to stoke ethnic tensions and provoke attacks on the island's ethnic minority, hamstringing the Sri Lankan government's faltering attempts at a political solution.

The LTTE has two major sources of revenue with which to fund its war: maritime smuggling and the international Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora. The LTTE, with its base of operations in close proximity to some of the world's busiest shipping lanes, maintains its own fleet of ocean-going ships that engage in commerce both legitimate and otherwise. LTTE arms buying expeditions have ranged from southern Asia to Africa and beyond. Meanwhile, the international Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora has provided financial and political support critical to the group's survival. Much of this support, according to a Human Rights Watch report, may be coerced through the intimidation and even murder of diaspora Tamils who criticize the LTTE.

These international fundraising and smuggling networks are vulnerable to concerted international efforts. Canada, home to the world's largest Sri Lankan Tamil expatriate community, banned the LTTE this April after the release of the Human Rights Watch report. The EU, frustrated with LTTE obstruction of the Norwegian-sponsored peace process, banned the LTTE in May. While these bans have not brought the LTTE back to the negotiating table, they could be part of a long-term effort to cripple the LTTE's international networks. But such an effort would be futile without American leadership. Only the United States, which banned the LTTE in 1997, could facilitate international intelligence sharing, and ensure the dismantling of the LTTE's international networks by applying the procedures and policies used to target al-Qaeda's financial network.

Although the LTTE is not an Islamist terrorist group, an LTTE crackdown should not be viewed as distraction from the war against Islamist terror. Attacking the LTTE's smuggling and financial networks will likely reveal a wealth of data on other criminal networks in the region. For example, exposing and dismantling the organizations which supply such lethal weaponry to the LTTE could only reduce the availability of arms to the region's Islamist terrorists as well.

Violence in Sri Lanka also has implications for India. The 50 million Tamils living in southern India will be distressed by the suffering of their brethren in Sri Lanka and could demand action. Inspired by the LTTE, India's Tamils may come to nurture their own separatist ambitions. The LTTE's establishment of a satellite television station that reaches throughout Southeast Asia only heightens Indian concerns. American help containing the situation would build bridges with India in a sector where Pakistan, India's traditional rival, has minimal interests.

Certainly, the United States should continue to facilitate development and improvement of human rights policies in Sri Lanka. But adding a few dozen analysts, special agents, and diplomats to pressure the LTTE is an inexpensive way to help ameliorate the violence in Sri Lanka and move the island beyond its past of ethnic conflict.

Lessons Learned: Aaron Mannes in Policy Review on Agresto's Iraq Memoir

The latest issue of Policy Review just published my review of John Agresto's Mugged by Reality: The Liberation of Iraq.

Agresto, a former President of St. John's College and chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities served as the special adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education for about a year. Although a true believer in the cause, he has harsh criticism for poorly thought out U.S. policies. However, as that story has been told by so many others I focus on Agresto's deeper questions about the nature of democracy, the role of higher education in democracy, and the enormous challenges to building an Iraqi democracy. I did not realize that the article would come out as Iraq's provincial elections were being held. The elections have been generally peaceful and according to some reports the secular parties are winning. However, as I discuss in the review, the Iraqis appear to have adopted the forms of democratic government - but the open question remains whether or not the substance has taken hold. This is a fundamental question for reform in Iraq and throughout the region.

BOOKS:
Lessons Learned in Iraq

By Aaron Mannes

Aaron Mannes on Mugged by Reality: The Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions by John Agresto

John Agresto.Mugged by Reality: The Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions. Encounter. 300 pages. $25.95

John Agresto’s Mugged by Reality: The Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions is dedicated to Jim Mollen, a State Department official advising the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education who was killed on November 24, 2004, and Ali al-Hilfi, an Iraqi who worked for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). After Agresto helped Ali’s sister transfer to another college — a small favor — Ali was so impressed that he declared he was going to start becoming “an American.” When Agresto asked what this meant, Ali replied, “Everyday I will try to do something good for someone I don’t know, like you did for my sister. That’s all.”

Ali was assassinated in his car on August 7, 2005 — a punishment for working with the Americans.

This vignette captures the hopes and frustrations Agresto felt about his own service in Iraq, from 2003 to summer 2004, as the CPA advisor to Iraq’s Ministry of Higher Education. Agresto’s experience with poor planning, inflexible bureaucracies, bad decisions at the top, and a military not configured to its new mission echo other critiques of the American endeavor in Iraq. Many of these problems have since been rectified or ameliorated. Agresto warmly praises many of the individual Iraqis with whom he worked, but, unbound by political correctness, he candidly details not only American failings, but also those of the Iraqis. His greatest criticism of the American liberation of Iraq is of its failure to understand human nature. In examining this critical issue, Agresto sees past the immediate challenges and takes on the broader problem of building a culture that can support democracy.

John Agresto was a true believer, not just in Saddam’s perfidy and the security rationales for removing him, but in the idea of building a new Iraq. When he was invited to play a role in the CPA he signed on “For the duration.” Agresto reminds readers that many shared these ideas and hopes: Virtually all of the civilians he knew in Iraq had volunteered to go in order to help build a new and better Iraq. Ali would have said that Agresto and his CPA comrades were being Americans.

A former policy chief at the National Endowment for the Humanities and president of St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Agresto became the CPA advisor to Iraq’s Ministry of Higher Education, though it was a role in which he had little formal authority or access to resources.

Decades of Saddam’s misrule had taken its toll on Iraq’s institutions of higher learning, just as it had on every institution in Iraqi life. The Baathists had closed Iraq’s private colleges in the 1960s, leaving the entire higher education system under state control. University presidents and officials were selected not to build programs or encourage research and education, but rather to spy on their faculties and keep them in line politically. Saddam’s police state created a culture of fear throughout Iraqi academia that extended to matters major and mundane. A professor insisted, for example, that Agresto sign off on a student’s transferring classes, even though as CPA advisor he had no authority to do so. But the professor pressured Agresto because, as he told him, “your signature will mean that, if a question ever arose, that you yourself had authorized it.” In another instance, a professor of literature and Iraq’s leading authority on Shakespeare, who was considered the best English speaker in the country, feigned public drunkenness to avoid serving as Saddam’s interpreter. Saddam had ordered his execution, but the U.S. invaded before the order was carried out.

Iraqi universities also suffered from material deprivations, which were exacerbated by the post-Gulf War sanctions regime that ended most academic travel and contact with the outside world. Universities were starved for funds (although Saddam could be generous in supporting sectors of the higher education system he found useful and founded several universities himself.) Facilities were hopelessly out of date. In some universities, forty- and fifty-year-old periodicals formed the core of the faculty research collections and were kept under lock and key. Many of the “books” in the university libraries were actually copies of copies of old texts. Basic scientific equipment was scarce, while computers and internet connections were virtually nonexistent.

Unfortunately, according to Agresto, post-liberation mistakes by U.S. forces had some truly terrible consequences. The looting, which then–Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld dismissed by stating, “Freedom is untidy,” had a profound effect on Iraqi infrastructure. Agresto writes:

However many books the library at the Arts College in Baghdad once had, after the war they had none. I toured Mustansiriya University in September of 2003, right after I arrived in Iraq. Vandals had taken everything. Desks, air conditioners, chalkboards, chalk, doors, windows and window frames. . . . They pulled the wiring out of the walls and ripped out plumbing fixtures. And what they couldn’t use — like books — they burned.

Much of what was taken was for use or sale. The wire stripped out of the walls had a good market in Iran. . . . But so much of what happened was simply wanton destruction. . . .

The physical damage was only part of the harm done by the post-invasion looting spree; it also had a devastating impact on how Iraqis viewed the future and the Americans. Many Iraqis greeted the Americans with tremendous hope. That the Americans would permit the vast outbreak of national “untidiness” was inexplicable to the Iraqis, who assumed that there must have been some devious American purpose to this failure to secure order. That the one ministry protected by the Americans was the Oil Ministry only fueled this speculation. All of this set the stage for Iraqis to shift from seeing the Americans as liberators to seeing them as occupiers.

Iraqis also saw the looting as a harbinger of social disorder, and in that environment the dark spots in the Iraqi national psyche began to emerge — particularly sectarian, ethnic, and tribal rivalries. The upsurge in religious fanaticism had a particularly powerful effect on Iraq’s university campuses. Religious groups began insisting on segregated classes and women, even Christians, began covering their hair. Professors and staff reported being harassed. Religious groups began forming campus branches and blocking secular groups from campus elections. Religious fanaticism would have almost certainly surfaced in Iraq no matter what the situation, but the lack of order and security following the U.S. liberation fostered conditions conducive to this rise.

To stem this growing trend, Agresto and his team cobbled together a Bill of Rights for the universities of Iraq. This document declared that the goal of Iraq’s higher education system was promoting “broader capacity for thinking, accepting the opinions of others, and encouraging the search for truth.” It also insisted on freedom of thought, belief, and, significant in the wake of the Islamist resurgence, freedom of dress. It gave university authorities the power to expel individuals who did not respect these rights. This document had some impact, but not for long. The religious militias were too powerful; Agresto started to worry that the American effort to bring democracy to Iraq would lead to elections bringing religious extremists to power.

He ruminates in his book on the nature of democracy, observing that American democracy has been so successful that Americans believe it is easy. But it is not. Elections and institutions are essential to a liberal democracy — but they are not its essence. Something else is required to make democracies run. Agresto illustrates his point by noting that when King Faisal II of Iraq was overthrown in 1958, he was hanged and then dragged behind a car. It is simply inconceivable that in 1958 then-U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower would have had his electoral opponent, Adlai Stevenson, murdered to solidify his own rule. For a democracy to function, citizens must hold certain fundamental values, such as the rejection of violence as a means of resolving disputes, tolerance of dissenting viewpoints, and respect for the freedom of others. Iraqis themselves have an intuitive sense of this problem.

On a trip to the University of Dohuk in Kurdish Iraq, Agresto met the university’s president, Dr. Asmat Khalid, who was hoping to establish a true liberal-arts curriculum. In Iraq, such a program would have been novel. Iraqi higher education was a strictly utilitarian endeavor, and therefore subjects such as medicine and engineering were the most prestigious. Students in these fields had minimal exposure to other subjects, too. Because students were strictly tracked according to test scores, the best students studied the most respected subjects, while areas such as history were the provinces of the less capable. A student in a medical program who preferred history or literature would be considered foolish. Furthermore, most education was rote memorization. Agresto had been lobbying Iraqi university presidents to strengthen their liberal-arts programs, arguing that the liberal arts and social sciences were needed to cultivate future democratic leaders and citizens. Without leaders who have knowledge both of the world and of themselves, and citizens who have some grasp of their political system and can resist propaganda, no democracy can survive.

For Agresto, the critical importance of liberal education crystallized during his trip to Dohuk, when his translator Suhail and Dr. Khalid had an argument — that is, they were “laying out their positions, marshaling evidence, debating consequences.” This, Agresto observes, was the first real intellectual argument (as opposed to the mere assertion of opposing positions) he had observed in his six months in Iraq. Agresto views not only liberal education’s subject matter but also its methods — inquiry, deliberation, interpretation, and argument — as fundamental to the building of an Iraqi democracy.1

That is a powerful and compelling idea. One Iraqi university president, after observing a college seminar in the United States in which students questioned the professor and each other in working to solve a common problem, stated that upon his return he would have all the desks and lecterns at his school removed and replaced with chairs and seminar tables.

In his 2001 What Went Wrong, Bernard Lewis describes the many failed instances of Middle Eastern states attempting to import Western ideas. These transfers began with Western weapons, and when Western arms did not stem the tide of Ottoman defeats, Middle Eastern powers began adopting Western uniforms. They even established Western-style military bands. These transfers extended to politics, the arts, and virtually every aspect of life. Yet, time and again, the transplants were unsuccessful. Most Middle Eastern states have constitutions, elections, and parliaments — but none is a true democracy. Rearranging the furniture in Middle Eastern universities might become only another instance of what Stanley Kurtz has called “adopt[ing] the ‘words’ of various Western cultural innovations while nonetheless failing to master the ‘music.’”2

Iraq’s universities are poorly equipped to take on the challenge of building a democratic culture. While Agresto met many Iraqis of great ability and virtue and is unsparing in his praise for them in his book, Iraqi academics reflect their society. Agresto found even among the most educated Iraqis a predilection for conspiracy theories, and many Iraqi academics were inflexible and resistant to pragmatic reforms. He is somewhat forgiving, noting that the effects of decades of Saddam’s repression understandably squelched normal initiative. But, he writes, “I was constantly reminded of the difficulty of making any progress in a system where honor counted for more than service.” The most often-heard complaint was over faculty pay (perhaps no surprise to any veteran of campus politics). In fact, during Agresto’s tenure, senior professors were paid extremely well by Iraqi standards, receiving twice what they had been paid under Saddam. The problem was that junior professors were making three times as much. When Agresto asked a full professor what would best rectify the situation, raising his salary or lowering the salaries of his junior colleagues, the professor responded, “It doesn’t matter; either way.”

The obsession with honor, even among educated elites, is not an idiosyncrasy; it reflects the core values of the societies of the greater Middle East and is a critical reason why the region (not just Iraq) has been so resistant to Western ideas when, in every other part of the world, nations have been able to adopt at least some aspects of liberal democracy.

McGill University anthropology professor Phillip Carl Salzman, in Culture and Conflict in the Middle East (Humanity Books) argues that the importance of honor is an outgrowth of the patrilineal kin-based social structures that evolved in the Middle East in response to competition for scarce resources. The system is best characterized by the Arabic expression I against my brother; I and my brothers against my cousins; my brothers and my cousins against the world. Under this system, an individual seeks gains, first on behalf of his family against rival families, then on behalf of his clan against rival clans, and so forth. The Sunni-Shia split was rooted in a clan dispute. Ultimately, this framework extends to the Muslim world itself against non-Muslims.

While individuals are not prisoners of their culture, in this highly competitive social system, honor follows strength and is the central social currency. That educated Iraqi professors remain mired in this outlook demonstrates its resilience despite the inroads of urbanization and modernity. It is in this context that Agresto’s friend Ali saw the Americans doing good things for people they did not know as exceptional.

According to Salzman, the clan system that prevails in the Middle East is antithetical to the ideals of liberal democracy:

The particularism of Middle Eastern culture precludes universalism, rule of law, and constitutionalism, all involving the measuring of actions against general criteria, irrespective of the affiliation of the particular actors. What is right and wrong is defined under the rule of law and constitutionalism by general values that apply to all, not by whether one’s group is advantaged or disadvantaged.

The lineage-based clan system is not unique to the greater Middle East. Western history is replete with examples of feuds between lineages, but in such cases there usually have also been alternative sources of legitimate authority. Thus, Agresto’s hope of establishing outlets for liberal education in order to cultivate the values underpinning democracy seems, at best, quixotic. Having repelled so many previous Western imports, Iraq’s rejection of Western education seems comparatively easy. Over the past two centuries Europeans and Americans have established schools and colleges throughout the Middle East. And although they have educated many distinguished graduates, they have failed to spark broader changes.

But there is at least some potential for Iraq to break the tragic cycle of history. First, Salzman and others have observed that if any worldview can dilute the clan-based outlook that prevails in the Middle East, it is individuation: the emphasis of the rights and goals of individuals over the goals of the group. Liberal education can help introduce these perspectives, but it will be decades before more than a tiny number of Iraqis benefit from them. Fostering liberal, democratic values among the elites is essential, but the trickle-down approach to building a democratic culture is insufficient. The broader public must embrace these values as well. Without at least some support from the general public, no democracy is viable, and without public pressure, elites (who frequently benefit under the established system) may not be inclined to support reforms.

There is the potential for a bottom-up approach to social reform based in popular culture. In her brilliant autobiography, Ayaan Hirsi Ali mentions that while she was inspired by great literature, romance novels, with their depictions of such Western ideas as love and passion, also moved her. (Her own, incredible journey to the West was sparked when she fled an arranged marriage.) Other media can also deliver these messages. A Turkish soap opera featuring an independent woman with a glamorous career and a supportive, romantic husband has become a hit in Saudi Arabia.

Without changes in the power structure, the impact of new ideas on a Middle Eastern nation will be minimal. In Iraq, there is a new political situation. Security has improved due to the combination of the surge, the U.S. military’s adaptation to its Iraq mission, the increased capabilities of the Iraqi forces, and the realignment of key Iraqi tribal and militia leaders. As security has improved, Iraq’s democratic government has become increasingly confident and effective. However, without fostering a culture that supports these new democratic institutions, Iraq risks becoming a giant Lebanon — a confessional democracy that functions for a time but is ultimately overwhelmed and collapses. The emerging Iraqi democracy offers a favorable environment to encourage democratic values. The Kurds, in particular, may be an important asset to building a democratic culture there. In his time in Iraq, Agresto consistently found Kurdish educators among the Iraqis most committed to breaking the cycle of history and developing educational programs that will foster democratic values.3

Despite the dramatic improvements in Iraq, a favorable outcome is not guaranteed. Fostering the values needed to support democratic institutions is a long-term project. The U.S. has opened a space where Iraqis can begin to absorb and adapt the values and ideas needed for a democratic culture. But in the Middle East, oppositional, regional forces can close such spaces very quickly. It appears that major American fighting forces will be withdrawn from Iraq in a few years but that substantial residual forces will remain to provide critical intelligence, logistical, and training functions for the Iraqi government, helping to secure it against internal and external foes. These forces will also ensure that the United States has some leverage over the Iraqi government that can, if used judiciously, keep it from slipping into incompetence or autocracy. The enduring American mission in Iraq will be to ensure that this space remains open by helping to ensure Iraq’s security against internal and external threats while also assisting its evolving government so that it does not slip into autocracy or incompetence. Finally, the U.S. needs to promulgate the ideals of liberal democracy by strongly supporting higher education, cultural exchange, and Iraq’s internal dialogue. Achieving these goals will require resources and leadership, but most importantly it will require more of the spirit that so impressed Agresto’s friend Ali — the spirit that made him want to become “an American.”

Aaron Mannes is a researcher and Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland, College Park. He can be reached via www.aaronmannes.com.

1 Agresto admits to a certain irony here because as head of the National Endowment for the Humanities, he was a frequent critic of American higher education.

2 Stanley Kurtz, “Root Causes,” Policy Review112 (April & May 2002).

3 After his service with the CPA, Agresto returned to Iraq to serve as the acting chancellor and provost at the American University of Iraq in Sulaimani and continues to serve on its Board of Regents and Trustees.