The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq [Anglais] [Relié]

The thing I appreciate most about Ajami's book is that it's based on research he gathered during six trips to Iraq. He's interviewed, listened to, and spoken with people from every conceivable position of influence. As a result, he's writing from and commenting on a collection of feelings, hopes, and fears prevailing in Iraq.

Ajami has a deep love for the Middle Eastern culture, which combined with scholarly insight produces a book of beautiful and revealing sketches of the ongoing struggle for Iraq and of the American encounter with the Arab culture. If that sounds like a contradiction, it almost is.

While Ajami is careful to avoid generalizations he ends up painting a portrait using both black and white - hope and despair. In fact, he believes both are living together side-by-side in Iraq. It is through this haze that he peers in order to bring some clarity and insight regarding the daily life of various Arab perspectives on the current state of Iraq. One way he does that is by focusing on how Iraq's particular history led to its present circumstance.

In addition to the historical emphasis of the book I wish Ajami had asked questions of Islam itself and how the foundational tenants of the religion contribute to the feelings, tensions, and state of the region. Of course that might require a level of fearlessness that even Ajami would prefer to avoid.

For many Americans - myself included - the war in Iraq was not entirely about oil, weapons of mass destruction, nor links between al-Qaeda and the regime of Saddam Hussein. Although all of these reasons were given for going to war, it was ultimately about something else. The nineteen young Arabs that attacked America on 9/11 were products of Arab history and culture. They were products of the "anger" of the Arab world were terrorism had taken root. Of all the Arab lands, the most tortured and merciless was Iraq. The Baath regime in Baghdad had poisoned the atmosphere in the Middle East for many years. The American overthrow of the regime was meant to give Iraqis and other peoples of the region the possiblity of liberating themselves and building a decent future, and in the process eliminating the root causes of terrorism.

To my knowledge no one has articulated this view better than Fouad Ajami. I have been a fan of his for many years, finding his assessments of the Middle East to be very accurate. He was born of a Shiite family in Lebanon and he is currently professor of Middle Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins. His new book is based on six trips he made to Iraq since the American invasion. He has been granted access to many government officials in Iraq as well as Washington.

The overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the ruling Sunni minority in Baghdad caused an upheaval in the Arab world that at first was met with silence. The Sunni Arab elites were reticent about the rise of the Shiite majority and were secretly hoping that the Sunnis would remain in power. They rarely criticized the Jordanian born Sunni al-Zarqawi during his three year reign of terror when he brought death and destruction to Iraqi civilians. Officially it was the fight against American occupation, unofficially it was to stop the rise of the Iraqi Shiites. It was not until al-Zarqawi's brigades bombed three hotels in Jordan that he lost the support of the Jordanians.

Ajami is well aware of the difficulty and the heavy burden of the task America has undertaken, the outcome of which looks more dismal by the day. He correctly notes that the mess in Iraq was not entirely of America's making. The Iraqis have been given a chance to build a new government and a new future. He sees Sunni intransigence and sectarian bias as the main source of failure thus far. It remains to be seen whether a political solution can be reached, since a military solution is no longer possible short of civil war.

One criticism I would have of this book is that Ajami does not fully recognize the Shia inclination toward Iranian-style theocracy. One of the most powerful and malignant forces waiting in the wings is Moktada al-Sadr and the Mahdi army. Even if they are independent of the Iranians, they still have the potential of creating a society that will be worse than the one that was there before.

As the future of Iraq hangs in the balance, Ajami makes a powerful and eloquent plea for supporting the current fragile, but democratically elected government that is trying desperately to hold the country together.

In a recent review for a best-selling book "America Alone," one of Amazon's top 30 reviewers had just one "major complaint."

"(Author) Mark Steyn does a great job describing where we're at NOW, and where we might be in thirty years, but offers almost nothing about what could happen in the middle. A lot of events will occur between now and then" (for instance) "radical Islam could implode --- simultaneously squeezed from the outside by the United States and from within by substantial . . . differences among the branches of Islam."

For all of us asking the same question, "What's going to happen there next?" I believe the most enlightening answers are available right here -- in this beautifully written, deeply insightful book by Fouad Ajami: "The Foreigner's Gift: Americans, Arabs and Iraqis in Iraq."

A teacher at Johns Hopkins University ("2006 recipient of the Bradley Prize") Ajami enlightens us on why things will get better in Iraq - eventually. But in the meantime he says,

"Pity those men now hunkered down in Baghdad . . . as they walk a fine, thin line between the yearning for justice and retribution in their land, and the scrutiny of the outside world."

"In the fullness of time," the author says, "the Arab world's order of power will come to a grudging acceptance of the order that is sure to take hold in Baghdad." This is after all, a region which "respects the prerogatives of power." Of all Arab lands, "Iraq is the most checkered -- a frontier country at the crossroads of Arabia, Turkey and Persia" . . . and "Sunni Arabs in Iraq and beyond have never accepted (such) diversity."

The author quotes one of Iraq's "most respected scholar-diplomats" as saying "It is proper now, to speak of an `American Iraq' as once we spoke, in turn, of a Sumerian, Babylonian, Ottoman, and British (Sunni) Iraq."

The new reality is "American-SHIA." As a result, the author says, militant preachers railing against `American crusaders' and `Shiite heretics' cannot prevail.

Another good sign: Sunni regimes are not of one mind on Iraq: "Curiously," says the author, "the Arab state most likely to make peace with the new reality of Iraq is Saudi Arabia (whose) King Abdullah has read the wind with accuracy: He has a Shia minority in his domain (in the oil-rich eastern province) and he seems eager to cap the Wahhabi (SUNNI) volcano in the heartland of his kingdom."

"There is a pragmatism there," says the author, "that should give us cause for hope: a pragmatism "that lives by its own coin." In contrast "Jordan and Egypt present the odd spectacle of countries in the forefront of the anti-Shiite drive - but which have "no Shia citizenry in their midst." Regimes that "derive a good measure of their revenues from foreign powers -- the subsidies of Pax Americana to be exact." So the threat of Shiism is "a good, and lucrative, scarecrow for the rulers in Cairo and Amman: and the promise of standing sentry in defense of the Sunni order is what these two regimes have to offer both America and the oil states."

After his sure-footed assessment of why the current Maliki government in Iraq can succeed in its "marriage of convenience" with America, the author states that, with Saddam's execution, this prime minister "made himself a power in the vast Shia mainstream, America's success in Iraq now depends on him."

And with a "balance of terror" between Sunni and Shia, the "Sunni Arabs know that their old dominion is lost," (that) "they had better take the offer on the table . . . a share of oil revenues and access to political power -- in return for reining-in the violence and banishing the Arab jihadists."

This is the country "midwifed by American power," says the author. "We were never meant to stay there long. Iraq will never approximate the expectations we projected onto it in more innocent times. But we should be able to grant it the gift of acceptance, and yet another dose of patience - as it works its way out of its current torments.

"It's said that much of the war's `nobility' has been drained out of it - that we now fight not to lose, and to keep intact our larger position in the oil lands of the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf." Maybe "not the stuff of glory," Ajami says "but it has power and legitimacy all its own."