- WASHINGTON -- The United
States is failing in its mission to create a secular, overtly pro-Western
Iraq, a leading adviser to the American administrator Paul Bremer said
yesterday.
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- Instead, the new, democratic Iraq appears bound to be
an Islamic state - with an official role for Islam, and Islamic law enshrined
in its constitution.
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- That prospect is triggering alarm and opposition from
the White House and the Pentagon, Noah Feldman, a leading American expert
in Islamic law, told The Daily Telegraph.
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- Dr Feldman served as senior constitutional adviser to
the Coalition Provisional Authority, working closely with Mr Bremer. Returning
from Baghdad this summer, the New York University law professor now works
as an unpaid adviser to the CPA, to the White House, and to different factions
in the Iraqi Governing Council.
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- "The end constitutional product is very likely to
make many people in the US government unhappy. It's not going to look the
way people imagined it looking," said Dr Feldman.
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- "Any democratically elected Iraqi government is
unlikely to be secular, and unlikely to be pro-Israel. And frankly, moderately
unlikely to be pro-American."
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- While these predictions are spreading alarm inside the
administration, Dr Feldman advocates dealing with Islamic democrats.
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- He argues that Islamic parties will rise anyway, and
are most dangerous when forced underground by secular autocrats. Such views
led Pentagon officials to accuse Dr Feldman of being "soft on Islam".
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- "When I tell them these things [Islam and Islamic
law] are going to be in the constitution, people are very concerned about
it. They want to know what can be done to avoid these things. There's still
a hope that the country will be as secular as possible.
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- "But frankly nothing in Iraq is going to look the
way people imagined. Maybe if people had taken that on board, they might
have felt differently about the plan for an invasion."
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- The hawkish idealists who pushed hardest for regime change
in Iraq saw the fall of Baghdad as the first step towards remaking the
Middle East.
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- In their vision, Iraq would rise up as a democratic,
secular, free market capitalist beacon to its neighbours - guided, at least
initially, by such exiled leaders as Ahmad Chalabi, a secularist and Pentagon
favourite.
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- In their plan, the country was to be turned into a federation
of 18 or so provinces, preventing such powerful ethnic factions as the
Kurds from setting up autonomous fiefdoms that might split the country
apart and threaten the stability of an already volatile neighbourhood.
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- Yet the Kurds have made it plain that they expect to
emerge with an autonomous Kurdish region, and will not support any constitution
that would split their territory into mini-provinces, Dr Feldman reported.
Though US allies, the Kurds retain 40,000 men under arms, and have declined
US invitations to disband such militias.
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- Pentagon officials sent Dr Feldman to Baghdad for his
knowledge of Islamic law. In many ways he was an unlikely candidate: he
is a Democrat, Jewish and still only 32.
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- One senior administration official declared before the
war that the first foreign policy of a democratic Iraq would be to recognise
Israel.
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- "I don't know what he was smoking when he said that,"
said Dr Feldman. He argued that Iraqi-Israeli relations were off the radar,
as Washington struggled simply to keep Iraq from slipping into disaster.
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- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2003.
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- http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5099.htm
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