The Agony of Change

THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM usually meets in Davos, Switzerland, but they have left the Alps to meet in the lowest place on earth: the Dead Sea. They hold a three-day conference here, focused on the Middle East. They first held such a conference in 2003, shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. They wanted to “seize the moment,” and that is, in fact, the motto of Davos-in-Jordan: “Seizing the moment.” On the first day, there is a panel on Iraq, featuring three participants in the new democracy: the foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari; the speaker of the parliament, Hajim al-Hassani; and the governor of the Central Bank, Sinan al-Shabibi. Zebari is a former Kurdish militant, and he has sometimes been electrifying on the world scene. At the U.N. a year and a half ago, he told off that body memorably: “The United Nations as an organization failed to help rescue the Iraqi people from a murderous tyranny that lasted over 35 years. Today we are unearthing thousands of victims in horrifying testament to that failure.” Talk about speaking truth to power. Zebari leads off the panel by giving a speech: He notes that it has been only eleven months since the U.S. transferred sovereignty to the Iraqis themselves, “and we are not an occupied nation, but an emerging democracy.” On January 30, “millions of citizens defied death” to cast their ballots, and people are “hungry for democratic progress.” Unfortunately-and outrageously-“the insurgency has persisted.” What are “Saddamists and foreign fighters” doing? They are trying to “foment civil war, undermine the new government, and spread terror,” for the purpose of “destroying our vision.” But the Iraqi people “will not have their future dictated by the atrocities of an extreme few.” The foreign minister cautions that his country is “not yet ready to be self-reliant.” But “the faster we can build our military and security capacity, the sooner the multinational forces can go home.” A free, self-governed Iraq is realizable, and is, in fact, taking shape before our eyes: It is not “an intangible ideal.” We then hear from Hassani, the parliamentary speaker. He begins by saying that he agrees with Zebari on every point, except one: “And we can disagree. This is the new Iraq, a democracy!” (The disputed point is this: Zebari has said that Sunnis, regrettably, chose not to participate in the Iraqi elections; Hassani argues that they had no choice, given the violence in their areas.) Hassani, like other Iraqis, asks for patience, as national pioneers go about the hard work of “building a new republic.”

As for Shabibi, the central banker, he speaks of “moving from a war economy to a peace economy, from a command economy to a market economy, from a highly centralized system to a federalized one.” He comports himself with the sobriety you might expect from a central banker.

About the Author

Jay Nordlinger

Jay Nordlinger was a senior editor of National Review and a book fellow at National Review Institute.

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THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM usually meets in Davos, Switzerland, but they have left the Alps to meet in the lowest place on earth: the Dead Sea. They hold a three-day conference here, focused on the Middle East. They first held such a conference in 2003, shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. They wanted to “seize the moment,” and that is, in fact, the motto of Davos-in-Jordan: “Seizing the moment.” On the first day, there is a panel on Iraq, featuring three participants in the new democracy: the foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari; the speaker of the parliament, Hajim al-Hassani; and the governor of the Central Bank, Sinan al-Shabibi. Zebari is a former Kurdish militant, and he has sometimes been electrifying on the world scene. At the U.N. a year and a half ago, he told off that body memorably: “The United Nations as an organization failed to help rescue the Iraqi people from a murderous tyranny that lasted over 35 years. Today we are unearthing thousands of victims in horrifying testament to that failure.” Talk about speaking truth to power. Zebari leads off the panel by giving a speech: He notes that it has been only eleven months since the U.S. transferred sovereignty to the Iraqis themselves, “and we are not an occupied nation, but an emerging democracy.” On January 30, “millions of citizens defied death” to cast their ballots, and people are “hungry for democratic progress.” Unfortunately-and outrageously-“the insurgency has persisted.” What are “Saddamists and foreign fighters” doing? They are trying to “foment civil war, undermine the new government, and spread terror,” for the purpose of “destroying our vision.” But the Iraqi people “will not have their future dictated by the atrocities of an extreme few.” The foreign minister cautions that his country is “not yet ready to be self-reliant.” But “the faster we can build our military and security capacity, the sooner the multinational forces can go home.” A free, self-governed Iraq is realizable, and is, in fact, taking shape before our eyes: It is not “an intangible ideal.” We then hear from Hassani, the parliamentary speaker. He begins by saying that he agrees with Zebari on every point, except one: “And we can disagree. This is the new Iraq, a democracy!” (The disputed point is this: Zebari has said that Sunnis, regrettably, chose not to participate in the Iraqi elections; Hassani argues that they had no choice, given the violence in their areas.) Hassani, like other Iraqis, asks for patience, as national pioneers go about the hard work of “building a new republic.”

As for Shabibi, the central banker, he speaks of “moving from a war economy to a peace economy, from a command economy to a market economy, from a highly centralized system to a federalized one.” He comports himself with the sobriety you might expect from a central banker.