In the spring of 2004, Muqtada al Sadr was a radical and relatively marginalized cleric, but his fiery anti-American speeches touched a cord with masses of young, unemployed and undereducated male Shi'ites throughout southern Iraq. Al-Sistani, on the other hand, is the most respected Shi'ite cleric in Iraq and commands a wide audience. He spoke out against the American presence in Iraq, but maintained political contact in the hopes of a Shi'ite dominated future government.  AI-Sadr led a Shi'ite uprising against American and coalitionforces throughout southern Iraq. Coalition forces were routed from cities throughout the south, namely al-Sadr'sstrongholds of Najaf and Karbala, and it took several weeks of intense fighting to recover these population centers. At the very least, al-Sistani stood by and did nothing as the American forces withstood a trial by fire. It is more likely that he incited al-Sadr's uprising to emphasize American dependence on Shi'ite goodwill to maintain control of the country and to express displeasure for the Americans not turning over adequate power to the Shi'ites in a more timely fashion. Either way, the Americans did not turn to al-Sistani for assistance as he hoped, but instead displayed their distrust by alienating al-Sistani and beginning a dialog with the Sunnis. As a result, al-Sistani lost his supporters in the interim government and, for a time, the Shi'ites were underrepresented.

Evoking memories of former Cold War alliances played out on battlefields across the Third World, the U.S. began negotiating with Shi'ites and Sunnis, to include former hardcore Ba'athists, and played all parties against each other to attain some semblance of peace in Iraq. Al-Sistani and the Shi'ites realized that they overplayed their hand and came back to the table. When the Shi'ites agreed to make a serious push for elections, the U.S. turned the heat up on the Sunnis to become involved in the process. The Sunni tribal leaders gambled that Iraq was too chaotic to hold elections, boycotted them, and continued the fight. American forces severely crippled the Sunni insurgency in November of 2004, killing or capturing thousands in Fallujah, and the elections in January of 2005 were deemed a success. The Sunnis are now regretting their overplayed hand and have split into two camps. The first group is negotiating a way to take part in the new government. The second group, flush with foreign fighters, money, and logistical support, is refocusing the insurgent attacks on the Shi'ites and Kurds in hopes of pushing the country into civil war. Many Sunni leaders are on the fence, waiting to see which tactic prevails. Having their fate on hold is an odd position for the Sunnis to be in.

When the British took control of Iraq in the First World War, their divide and-rule strategy allowed the unrepresentative Sunni minority to gain and maintain an unfair balance of power in Iraq for over three quarters of a century. In general, the current scramble for political control is a direct result of this strategy that allowed Britain to walk away from Iraq, but was ultimately implosive for the Iraqi people. This strategy was replicated in the Near East, with even more dire results in the manifestation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In general, we need to be careful in imposing a "democracy" on Iraq. Musing about the Iraqi government formed out of the British mandate in 1932, author Ofra Bengio wrote, "Because democracy was imposed on Iraqis, it came to be identified with the British enemy; many argued that its values ran against the grain of Arab and Muslim norms."

In selecting the Sunni minority to control the military, the British were essentially guaranteeing the formation of a police state, as doing whatever was necessary to maintain Sunni control of the government became synonymous with self-preservation. It was a monumental mi stake for the D.S. not to have co-opted moderate Ba'athists into Iraqi security forces and civilian government positions at the cessation of major hostilities during the present conflict. One to the Sunni's historical place in Iraq's recent past, as the need grows to entice them into the Iraqi nation-building effort, we must ensure there is an adequate screening process in place to root out subversive elements. In post mandate Iraq, to justify their rise to power, the Ba'ath party often cl1aimed to be the ideological descendants of the pan-Arabists of the 1930s. In addition to the fact that the Ba'ath party cannot be separated from a generation of massacre and repression under Saddam Hussein, pan-Arabism by definition excludes both Shi'ites and Kurds. The UD.S. will need to rely on some of the former Ba'athist military and intelligence personnel to root out the insurgent Ba'athists still waging the anti-American guerrilla campaign. Once that mission is accomplished, those rebuilding Iraq need to form well-balanced security services that are not dependent on single parties, tribes, ethnicities or religious sects. (Bengio Ofra, "Pitfalls of Instant Democracy," in D.S. Poliev in Post-Saddam Iraq: Lessons from the British Experience, ed. Michael Eisenstadt and Eric Mathewson,The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2003, p. 24.)

Ironically, Saddam's de-politicizing of the officer corps in order to hold absolute power over them needs to be maintained to keep sectarian differences out of the new security forces. The new Iraqi security forces need to focus their energies on national defense and internal security and avoid involvement in the nation's politics. (Peter Sluglett, "The British Legacy," in Poliev, 2003, p. 10.)

Iraq was the first Middle Eastern nation to experience a coup in 1936. The country then experienced a cascading wave of coups leading to the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958 and the rise of Saddam Hussein in the 1960’s. (See Michael Eisenstadt and Eric Mathewson, Poliev, 2003, p.74-5.)

After the second Battle of Fallujah, the U.S. Marines in charge of providing security developed a process by which the 300,000 residents could return to the city. Citizens funneled through processing centers set up on the main roads back into the city. Iraqis from the city had their DNA pulled, their retinas scanned, and obtained badges that they will have to wear at all times. Cars were initially forbidden in order to avoid massive casualties from car bombings.

While the (second) Battle of Fallujah was no picnic with 50 American combat deaths, the elimination of what was essentially a guerrilla safe zone, forced the insurgents into smaller groups and pushed them out into a larger swath of territory. The focus of effort next, was the network of tribes and families that were directly tied into Saddam's intelligence, military, and political machine. They are mainly located in the area to the south of Baghdad that once supported many of the locally recruited Republican Guard units and weapons related plants. After the   initial American invasion, these units were disbanded, leaving skilled, unemployed, bitter people with access to large caches of weapons.  Thousands of them formed the bulk of the insurgency. A 25x50-mile swath of land between the Tigris and Euphrates containing powerful Sunni tribai families. Two families in particular, the Janabis and Kargoulis, act as feudal aristocracies and comprise the region's landlords, "political agents, senior military officers, imams of major mosques and business owners." (John F. Bums, "Resentful Sunnis Battle On," New York Times, 28 November 2004, 117.)

In the weeks prior to Iraq's first election in January of 2005, and in the election's aftermath, insurgent violence increased. "The ideological reason for attacking election crowds is one of legitimacy. A pillar o revolutionary warfare is undermining the opposing force's legitimacy while attempting to establish one's own authority.. In Iraq, legitimacy takes the form of simple physical security. As far as the Iraqi people are concerned, if a government cannot provide security, it is not fit to be a government at all. (John F. Bums, "U.S. Seeking Grip in "Throat of Baghdad," New York Times, 6 December 2004, 1.)

This is the reason that a thug like Muqtada al-Sadr was able to gain widespread "legitimacy" in the spring of 2004. By the   simple use of checkpoints and registration of residents, he appeared to be in charge. The new government needs to provide a decent level of security to demonstrate to the people that it is actually in control.  Until the situation in Iraq improves dramatically, a long-term threat to the country is the ability for the al-Qaeda network to gain adherents from among the war scarred, depressed population of disillusioned Iraqi male youth.

Al-Qaeda's aim is to target Iraqi Shia and Kurds for the purpose of fomenting a civil war. Ultimately, al-Zarqawi and al-Qaeda hope to send the Americans packing and want to position themselves to be the strongest group left standing once the fighting ends so they can set up an Islamist government. This strategy has not had the desired effect, as the majority of the Sunni leadership is focused on the more tangible goal of attaining a higher standing in the on-going political process. After the battle of Fallujah in November of 2004, al-Zarqawi blasted the Sunni religious leadership for not working harder to raise public outrage in order to put pressure on the American-Ied assault into the city. It is assumed that after the battle, his group is responsible for the assassination of two Sunni clerics from the Association of Muslim Scholars. lronically, this group opposed the American led assault on the city. His goal was to drive a wedge between hard-line Sunni leaders that he wants to draw into his fold and the ones willing to compromise with Baghdad in order to retain some semblance of political clout. A fissure was opened, but al-Zarqawi's attempt at division failed on a large scale since the majority of the Sunnis follow a nationalist-Islamist philosophy that is out of touch with his transnational brand of fundamentalist Islam.

Thus far, al-Zarqawi and al-Qaeda have failed to incite civil war or win over a significant number of Sunnis. The Shi'ites appeared generally inclined to follow the U.S. formula, many of the Sunnis seem inc1ined to play some part in Iraq's future, and the U.S. has maintained steady relations with the Kurds in the north of Iraq.

Nearly a century ago, the British played a similar game of chess with Iraq's ethnic and religious groups. Like the United States prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom, when the British invaded Mesopotamia (Iraq) during World War I, they launched the offensive from bases on the Gulf that they had eontrolled for some time. For the British, their dominant presence was a naval base in the southern port city of Basra. On November 6, 1914, the British Indian Expeditionary Force landed in southern Iraq and quickly moved north through Ottoman controlled territory to secure British oil interests.

Just as a primary goal for the U.S. invasion of Iraq was stability of the region in order to protect our own self-interests, the British goal was to stabilize Iraq, secure the lines of communication between Britain and India, and protect Britain's Iraqi and Iranian oil fields. While the U.S. needed to overthrow. Saddam Hussein to accomplish its goal, the British hoped to install a friendly Iraqi monarch to accomplish theirs. (Erle Mathewson, "Rebuilding Iraq: Assessing the British Military Occupation," Poliev, 2003, 52.)

Early in his stint as an officer with the British Intelligence Service in Cairo, T.E. Lawrence in fact was sent east on a classified mission. He traveled to the British front north of the Persian Gulf in the Iraqi city of al-Kut, to assist the Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force. This British force was bogged down in the city, starving, and near the point of surrender. Lawrence's mission was to attempt to bribe the Turkish commander, Khalil Pasha, into allowing the garrison to go free. This attempt proved futile, as Khalil knew victory was near at hand and he   was too well funded from Constantinople to consider the British offer.  Throughout the negotiations, Lawrence pursued a personal mission of utilizing the local Arabs to foment revolt along the Turkish supply line, cutting the Turkish garrison off from reinforcements andd equipment. Lawrence failed in this endeavor on two fronts. First, the Arabs sensed that the British were at the juncture of defeat and did not want to upset potential Turkish victors. Secondly, the British officers refused to work with the Mesopotamian Arabs who they considered to be untrustworthy. At various times, both of these issues have raised their ugly head in the current insurgent campaign in Iraq.

Despite the setback in al-Kut, the British took Baghdad in Mareh of 1917, and Mosul was eaptured in November of 1918 as an armistice ended World War I. All told, it took the British four years and over 90,000 easualties to conquer the area approximately encompassing modern Iraq. Nonetheless, it had been a fairly straightforward fight against the Ottoman armed forces. The complexities were yet to come. Iraqi oppression under nearly five centuries of Ottoman rule ensured that during the initial combat phase, when British forces pushed north against the Turkish forces, they interacted with a generally neutral, and sometimes helpful, Arab populace. Even during the immediate aftermath of the war, British martial law ensured relative peace and the cooperation of most Iraqis. The tranquility began to unravel when the British military occupational forces started relying on their Indian administrative model. It was sometimes brutal, and rarely open to input from the indigenous inhabitants. As time progressed, British military officers allied themselves with questionable leaders without thought as to ethnicity, sect or tribal affiliation. Forced labor was common in some areas, and food and medical issues were neglected. All the while, there were less and less assurances that Iraqi independence was forthcoming.

Much like the debate in the immediate aftermath of Operation Iraqi Freedom as to whether it was best to use the "post-war German Model," the "Bosnia model," or the "Afghanistan Model" in Iraq, the British found that occupation is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Culture, religion, ethnicity, and current level of civil governance, will always determine the method of occupation and peacekeeping duties during the involved process of nation building. Ignorance in any of the above areas will lead to problems that will invariably prolong this process. Sectarian and tribal differences are going to play out in the  rebuilding of Iraq's civil structure. The U.S. needs to accept this reality and focus on the strategic priorities of stabilizing the country.

During the British period of direct rule in the early twentieth century, Iraq's tribal areas were scattered throughout the countryside and three quarters of the tribes lived in these rural areas. British political officers who governed at the village level e!llpowered tribai sheikhs who often brutalized their own people. This mieromanagement was infinitely expensive and the resulting hostility of the tribesmen toward the British became clear in every revolt from 1920 onwards.

When George W. Bush won re-election to U.S. president in early November of 2004, the reality for Sunni triballeaders in Iraq ehanged dramatically. "Holding out against the Americans and allowing their populations to aid the guerrillas made a great deal of sense if the United States was about to retreat from Iraq." Bush's re-election virtually guaranteed that the U.S. is not only going to stay in Iraq for same time, but will continue to increase pressure on the Sunnis. Caught between the guerrillas and the Americans, tribai elders are now having to reconsider their positions. The U.S. will increasingly ratehet up its use of the money carrot and the military stick to force the Sunni triballeaders to abandon the guerrillas.

In 1918, the British government named Percy Cox as high commissioner for Persia and chose Arnold Wilson to replace him as the acting civil commissioner for Iraq. Not believing the Iraqis were capable of governing themselves, Wilson placed all levels of Iraqi's government under strict British control. Political officers were placed in charge of each district and had full control over such varied tasks as mediating tribai disputes, recruiting labor, and determining compensation for war damages. Even should we ignore the attitude of racial superiority that drove this forced level of control, this system was flawed in its application because few of these political officers had any experience in civil administration, and had little knowledge of Iraq's laws, customs, languages or culture. The importance of these factors cannot be overstressed. Having these skills while still allowing the indigenous people to maintain the bulk of their own governance, especially at the municipal and district levels, will go a long way in preventing the formation of grassroots insurgents who claim the Christian infidels are the cause of all of the people's ills. (Judith Yaphe, "The Challenge of Nation Building in Iraq," in U.S. Policy in Post Saddam Iraq: Lessons from the British Experience, ed. Michael Eisenstadt and Eric Mathewson,The Washington lnstitute for Near East Policy, 2003, 423. )

In all aspects of the rebuilding effort, the U.S. needs to be careful not to put too many of the Diaspora Iraqis into power. At the beginning of Britain's occupation last century, the British brought the well respected sayyid, descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, and Arab war hero, Feisal Ibn Hussein, to power in Baghdad. In order to impose stability on chaos, along with Feisal, they installed the Sunni, mostly non-Iraqi, officers who had assisted them in the Great Arab Revolt. Allowing these men to become entrenched to the detriment of the Iraqi populace was a huge British mistake. In strikingly similar fashion, it was necessary for the U.S. to install Iraqi opposition-in-exile cadre in government positions at the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.

As in Iraq, as in all of their colonies, the British used local proxies to form a large part of their police and military forces. This measure saved costs, allowed the British to control the security organizations' structure and make-up, while ensuring that they were weak enough to prevent a coup of the pro-British government. During the initial years of occupation, these forces were comprised of a 4,000-man army of Christian Assyrians. The majority of them were recent arrivals from countries devastated in the Great War, and they were a11 placed under the command of British officers. (Abbas Kelidar, "Iraqi National Integration Under the British," Poliev, 2003, 31.)

The new Assyrian speaking levies were used in conjunction with the British Royal Air Force (RAF) to control a majority Muslim and Arab population. We can learn two lessons from this combination. First, putting newly arrived minority Christians in a position of physical authority over a longstanding Muslim and Arabic speaking population was a recipe for disaster. For the Iraqi populace, it invoked images of massacre and carnage during Assyria's empire thousands of years prior and stories of Christian Crusaders slaughtering Muslims hundreds of years before. Any hope the British   had for gaining support from the common Arab Iraqi dwindled. Several years later, in 1934, the resentment ignited the wholesale massacre of unarmed Assyrian civilians in the village of Simel. (Sluglett, 6-7.)

The second lesson involved the RAF, which was often used to literally bomb the various tribes into paying their taxes or often, just to punish them for some offense committed against the occupiers. For the British, this tactic conducted outside the scope of strong public scrutiny, proved to be a low cost, short-term success. When the RAF took over occupational duties, the annual military budget for Britain's Iraq commitment dropped over eighty percent. In practice, when intelligenc assets determined that a certain individual, tribe, or village, had committed an offense, leaflets were dropped on the location demanding  that the offending parties turn themselves in and warning that their hornes would be bombed if they did not comply. If nobody stepped forward, the bombing raids were carried out. This tactic proved especially effective in the Kurdish north where Turkish military elements still battled the British for control of the region, while Kurdish elements fought both sides in an effort to secure an independent homeland. (Mathewson, 57-60.)

While the British may have done their best to avoid unnecessary casualties, deaths nevertheless occurred on a scale unacceptable in the modem world of global media coverage. In addition, the tactic of aerial bombardment hardened the resentment of key tribes, especially in the Shi'ite south, where the British never did gain comfortable control. In the long term, the aerial bombing of troublesome tribes meant that neither the Iraqi mandate government, nor the later independent Iraqi government, were forced to enact reasonable methods of dealing with the tribes. Major tribes that could have been used to form a cohesive Iraq were left on the fringes. With this as their history, we begin to see the reasons behind Shi'ite defiance to U.S. plans for the current Iraqi government, and their reluctance to compromise in any Iraqi government that does not guarantee their domination. From their perspective, only through control of the government can they guarantee that the past will not be repeated.

While the British did not want to allow the formation of Iraqi security forces that could be a threat to British interests in Iraq, they nonetheless wanted the Iraqi forces to eventually evolve into an army and police force that were capable of becoming self reliant. The British viewed this as an essential element in ending the mandate, much as the formation of Iraqi security elements is necessary before the U.S. can begin any type of significant withdrawal from Iraq today. In a nearly identical scenario as the one we now face, the early British backed Iraqi forces were unable to stand-up to the Iraqi rebels, who maintained hundreds of thousands of weapons, and the early Iraqi monarchy was seen to be a mere puppet of the British government.

Another comparison, to date, has not played out in a significant fashion, is the anti-British nationalism that formed among the Iraqi officers, and eventually penetrated the Iraqi army as a whole. In the 1920s, most of the officers in the Iraqi army were former Ottoman officers who surrendered to the British during World War land were co opted to fight along side the British in Syria and Palestine. While in these regions, Iraqi officers were introduced to Arab Nationalism, and the possibilities of a Pan-Arab Movement became very appealing. Over the next ten years, these men became the majority of Iraq's premiers, composed over half of the nation's cabinet, and were the driving force in ousting the British from the country. Today, there are some instances of fledgling Iraqi soldiers and police officers who join the insurgent cause, but not in significant enough numbers to prevent the slow formation of an indigenous allied force. This likely results from the relatively high pay in both the military and police services, combined with the brutal nature in which the insurgents' target both the Americans and, more importantly, the Iraqi people.

As Iraqis began to resist British occupation, the resistance centered on the Shi'ite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. Prominent Shi'ite clerics joined with tribal sheikhs and Sunni leaders to defend Islam from the British. The insurgents killed a British officer in Najaf and the British quickly retaliated with a blockade of the city. Arrests were made and executions followed. The revolt spread. In Karbala, the prominent Shi'ite cleric Ayatollah Muhammad Taqi Shirazi issued a fatwa making it unlawful for Iraqis to serve in the British administration. British government officials such as Oriental Secretary to the High Commissioner, Gertrude Bell, advocated curbing the growing power of the fundamentalist Shi'ite clerics by working with the less religious oriented, mainly urban, Sunni nationalists. (Yaphe, 45-6.)

In June of 1920, the British Civil Administration declared that they would hold elections for an Iraqi assembly, initially dividing some Iraqi groups as to the proper reaction. Britain then announced that it was instituting the Empire's League of Nations-approved mandatory administration over Iraq. In response, Shi'ites and Sunnis joined forces to ignite thawra 'ishrin, the "Great Iraqi Revolution.” Feisal ibn Hussein, former co-leader of the Arab Revolt with T.E. Lawrence and Sherif of Damascus, sanctioned the revolt.  Kelidar, 27.)

Shi'ite clerics in their religious strongholds of Najaf and Karbala issued fatwas authorizing full-scale rebellion. Sunni clerics followed suit. Tribes along the Tigris and Euphrates answered this religious call, though the reality is, they took issue with British taxation and the perception of an unjust judicial system. The uprising degenerated into a combination of siege warfare and pitched battles, costing hundreds of casualties on both sides. (Operating independently, the Kurds of northern Iraq revolted. Within six weeks, Shi'ite and Sunni Arab insurgents controlled the middle Euphrates region and various districts surrounding Baghdad. The uprising lasted six months, required both British ground and air forces to defeat, and cost 450 British lives, not to mention over 8,000 Iraqi casualties. Following the rebellion, the British looked for the most expedient means to end the occupation and pushed to "use air power and locallevies for internal security while creating a pliable government that would accept and implement British 'advise. (Mathewson, 56.)

When British military rule ended in October of 1920, the resulting government was nearly void of Shi'ites. While this was partially due to the influence of the Sunni ruling elite, British fear of fundamentalist Shi'ite clerics sealed the fate of the majority populace for the next three-quarters of a century. In a correct assessment of fierce Shi'ite and Kurdish tribal independence, the British did not implement a military conscription system. When Iraq's monarchy initiated military conscription two years after gaining independence from Britain, the move was a contributing factor in a major revolt throughout southern Iraq. Unfortunately, the British went too far in the other direction and virtually ignored the two groups when building the apparatus of control beyond their Assyrian levies. In fact, at the beginning of the mandate period, the British ignored the Kurds, Shi'ites and the majority of Iraqi Sunnis when forming the bulk of Iraq's army. Instead, the British recruited Arab officers who arrived with Feisal when they brought him from Damascus and placed hirn on Iraq's throne. The British felt comfortable with these Sharifian officers who recently fought along side of them against the Turks during the Great Arab Revolt.  Kelidar, 27-31.)

By 1921, the resentment of the Iraqi Sunni elites, combined with their political clout, convinced the British to recruit them en masse into the military to the detriment of the Kurds and majority Shi'ites. Though the Sunnis were a small minority for the most part, they !!lade up the former Ottoman aristocratic landowning class. The British formed a "close oligarchy of 200-300 individuals, mainly urban notables, military officers, and tribal shaykhs." It was c1assic divide and rule.  Eisenstadt, 71.)

Unable to attain positions in either the military or civil administration, Shi'ite intelligentsia began forming left-wing and radical nationalist organizations. Rebuffed from the same governmental positions as their Shi'ite counterparts to the south, the majority of Kurds boycotted both the national electoral processes and deliberations on the Iraqi state, and instead agitated for an independent Kurdistan. When this failed, they began a lengthy campaign for an autonomous state within Iraq. This marathon endeavor vacillated between political and violent measures and inc1uded major Kurdish revolts in 1923-4 and 1931, both of which required significant military force to suppress. In 1932, Iraq gained its independence, at least in principle.

No doubt, the disparate selecting of former Ottoman elite to prime positions in the military and civil administrations more quickly formed an Iraq the British could walk away from. Unfortunately, this disparity in Sunni power, with minor twists, lasted 82 years until Saddam's regime was toppled during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. As for Arabia and the Persian Gulf, "only one relic of Britain's king-making activities in this period survives, the Kingdom of Jordan; the Iraq royal family, which was her most ambitious creation, was murdered in its entirety in the revolution of 1958." (Izzard, 58.)

Discussions at the start of this year, 2006 not surprising have touched on the question if the US when it invaded Iraq in 2003 had in fact a sufficient political goal that could be realized.  For example in “My Year In Iraq”, his memoir published early January this year, of his time at the head of the CPA, Bremer notes that the plans for the occupation of Germany and Japan were three years in the making and were constructed in such detail that, as Berlin fell, the Allies had ready freight cars of the correct European rail gauge. Any such advance planning for Iraq was shelved because it did not fit the Pentagon's model of a quick invasion followed by an occupation lasting a handful of months. But Bremer complains, with the advantage of hindsight that puts the blame for the errors of the first year of occupation anywhere but on his own shoulders, that he was left in charge of a country without sufficient troops to keep the peace and build a political consensus. He blames the US military, for blocking his plans to arrest the Shia Moqtadr al-Sadr, a move he believes encouraged the Sunni insurgents. And he blames the returning Iraqi exiles and members of the interim Governing Council for general recklessness. Bremer does not accept however he made his own mistakes, for example with his de-Baathification order, which would later undermine the coalition's efforts. (See NY Times Review of Books, January 12, 2006)

But also America’s flexible approach towards political Islam has come under fire particularly since the victory of Hamas in Palestine. Is facilitating the immediate political participation of Islamists tantamount to helping the enemy?

For example Professor Barnard Lewis and his disciples such as Samuel Huntington and Richard Perle who maintain that co-existence with Islam is not possible unless there is a major revision of Islamic texts such as the Quran. Lewis asserted his clash of civilization theory as early as 1964 when he wrote in his book the “Middle East and the West”: ‘We must view the present discontents of the Middle East not as a conflict between states and nations, but as a clash of civilisations.’ A third school of tought are called the accommodationists, led in the US by among others Professor John Esposito who espouses that the West has nothing to fear from political Islam and those Islamists who eschew violence can be accommodated. The latter two, however both recognize that America’s continued support for dictatorships in the Muslim world also, breeds anti-western sentiments and is an incubator of Islamic radicalism. After September 11 2001, both concur that America must promote democracy to counter the rise of political Islam. Bringing the discussion back full circle to the proposals of Daniel Pipes son of an American history professor. The opposite of the accommodationists he went as far as to claim it is preferable to have in power today’s dictators rather than tomorrow’s Islamists. He preferred a twenty-year goal, which would allow the US to focus its efforts on a long-term democratic transformation. Thus he was dismayed at the scheduling of the Iraqi elections only twenty-two months after the fall of Saddam Hussein, saying that the appropriate interval would have been more like twenty-two years. Opposing views like the above are not new of course.

In 1992 Edward Djerejian; the then US assistant secretary of state for Near-Eastern affairs attempted to sift through the arguments put forward by the three factions and come up with a policy on political Islam. The accommodationists prevailed here and some of their views were expressed by Djerejian who delivered a speech entitled "The US, Islam, and the Middle East in a Changing World." In the speech he said, ‘The US government does not view Islam as the new ‘ism’ confronting the West or threatening world peace. The crusades have been over for a long time.” Nevertheless the speech failed to provide a coherent framework on how to combat political Islam. The Clinton administration continued to traverse the path followed by previous administrations Exploitation of political Islam to stabilise dictatorships and protect US interests throughout the Muslim world became the mainstay of the Clinton era. This remained the case till September 11 2001. Thereafter, newfound support for the clash of civilisation theory gained popularity in the US and was immediately embraced by the hawks in the Bush administration. But resistance from the State Department, and other government institutions, together with America’s failure to stabilise Iraq and Afghanistan prevented the hawks from launching a full-scale crusade against political Islam. Instead, the Bush administration announced its Greater Middle East Initiative and carefully weighed up its policy towards Islamists. In some parts of the Muslim world the US chose to collaborate with Islamists to form governments, while in other parts, America opted to minimise their participation in government. Through these tactics the US is hoping to replace the autocratic regimes of the Muslim world with the Turkish model of democracy.

For the sake of argument one can indeed cite several characteristics of Islamist movements that render them anathema to a democratic society for example: devotion to Sharia, rejection of Western influence, totalitarian ideology, and a drive to power.’ In fact we have argued before that both violent and non-violent Islamists share these characteristics as part of the same movement striving towards radical change. See Case Study.

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