Focus 580; Inventing Iraq: the Failure of Nation Building and A History Denied

In this hour of focus 580 will be talking about Iraq and try to get a better understanding of what is going on there today by looking back to the last time a Western power tried to create a democratic nation in the State of Iraq. And we're talking about the experience of the British in the 20s and the 30s. Our guest this morning Toby Dodge has written a book on this. It's titled inventing Iraq the Failure of Nation Building and the history denied and it is published by the Columbia University Press and in this book he makes the argument that there are parallels between the place we find ourselves now in this country in Iraq and the experience of the British back in the 20s and 30s that we are encountering some of the same kinds of firsts and in fact he makes the argument that if the United States is not careful it will make some of the same mistakes that the British made and ultimately have no more success than the British did. If you're interested in reading and on this subject in some depth you certainly can go and look for that book out here on this program. Questions are welcome.

3 3 3 9 4 5 5 of the champagne Urbana number we do also have a toll free line. That's good to anywhere that you can hear us and there he is. Eight hundred to 2 2 9 4 5 5 Let me just tell you a little bit more about our guest Toby Dodge is a senior research fellow at the Center for the Study of globalization at the University of work in. And he's also an associate fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. He's acted as a consultant on Iraq for ABC News he's also written for The Guardian. He is in Chicago today and he's talking with us from there. Dr. dodge Hello. Hi It's a pleasure to be with you. Well we appreciate very much you giving us some of your time to well let's talk a bit about that and the British experience in Iraq. Obviously there is that in your book you go into it in great depth. What we're going to just have to give people this morning here is kind of the big picture but I think that the basic themes are pretty clear and and do indeed give us something to think about as we look at the experience of the United States. And basically here we're talking about going back

to the time this is. This is after World War 1. This was a territory that had been part of the Ottoman Empire that was acquired by the British as a result of the war and that there were these three provinces and names that are now familiar to people. Mosul Baghdad and Basra decided to take them and merge them into one country and try to create a nation. It seems that part of the problem here for the British was that they came to Iraq not knowing much about Iraqi society and having ideals about it that simply weren't weren't right. That's exactly right I think the story stopped a week off the Ottoman Empire came into the First World War on the side of Germany. Britain invaded what was to become Iraq through baje the port town of the very south of the country and then gets wiped out. It's a back that now fighting they and mounting Seven same general Moet the British general

who seized Baghdad announced that he can name all the British forces came as liberators not conquerors that they went to help the Iraqi people help themselves. They were to help the Iraqis build a liberal democratic state said I was I think I did that but there are strong similarities with the day regime change done in the name of efficient government in the name of the iraki people but from 917 to 19 20 not nothing much changed to the British the British controlled the country during much and increasing resentment built up. Iraqis got very dissatisfied and in July 19 20 again with strong contemporary power revolt. Oke out across the country and lasted until February 19 21 it took 2000 casualties and 30 million pounds a great deal of money then to suppress and I think this was the turning point for the British occupation of Iraq the British public at the end of a grueling first

world will probably woke up to the fact the British troops were dying in a country they've never heard of. I often why we tell one of the British during that and a few years later it's a truly curious right. An election in Britain was on the basis of Iraq and the coalition government of Lord George you mentioned she would have thrown out of power and the prime minister who was elected on a law was elected on the slogan We cannot be the policeman of the world. Now this then becomes a crucial moment from 1920 onwards the British politicians and civil service realise that they can hold Iraq indefinitely but. Politics in Britain won't allow them to stop cutting corners they stop trying to find a rock is we're in a rocky society. Let's try to make it the states who can they offload this troublesome home. I think perhaps one British misperceptions come to dominate that is that they move through rocket science and they try to

identify a group of Iraq his who have social influence who can persuade the population that the British occupation is a good thing and who ultimately they can get the states and that's the great thing. It's interesting that the British seem to have this odd sort of way of looking at Iraqi society they have this idea that people who live in the country were somehow more pure than people who lived in the cities and perhaps also they saw that the place where they're likely to have the most trouble is in urban areas. So they had this they had this preference for this leaning towards that the country and the people the shakes who who ruled her so to speak in various places around the country and so they that's where they threw their lot in they threw a lot of those people because you know they thought that they would that they could work with them more easily or that they they would end up with a better state or a better kind of government if they used those people and. A

devotion that perhaps was didn't really exist in Iraqi society but in the minds of the British did exist. If it was a fundamental misunderstanding about Iraqi society and the many reasons for it especially as you said but that there isn't any British corruption sadly in British culture in the 1920s a kind of a worship of all things rural but that the countryside in Britain but across the world was seen as to hold the essence ever of decency and of that that the cities are seen as polluted and corrupting. Now we add on to that British passion for all things tribal But the tribes shaken and British folklore the kind of book a form of a question of a gentleman that it was cool to hide things from the grubby politics. Now did I get the book but reinforced this perception of Iraq as faulty perception of Iraq with an understanding of the Ottoman Empire as corrupt and corrupting a despotic dictatorship based in the

city is based on open open individuals who would who would spread disunity and violence within Iraq you society so the ramification of this profound and very damaging that what actually happened with the British had no chance to do any sustained research in to Iraq. I understand the rocky dynamics are going to sit on the status. Because they haven't been able to get into Iraq while it was ruled on the video out of an empire any great in any great numbers or for any great length of time and secondly once they receive what they seized Iraq because money was so short they had no great time to do a census to do a land survey to do to get to know the country in any detail so that they didn't realize that a journey eighteen hundreds. Iraq had been radically transformed. Now keep in mind that the eight hundred to a period of intense free trade probably freer international economy than we have today. And Iraq had been slowly integrated into

that system. Exporting grain and rice through the port of Plaza. Now this transfer the social dynamics in Iraq land became very very valuable and had a price attached to it and the tribal sheiks set out to seize that land for themselves so they took it away from tribes people and registered it in their own names and bombed it sending the tribes people into it. That the sun is being kept on the land by the force of violence being kept on the land and in very very poor situations. So the British when they went into Iraq thought they were finding noble representatives of wider tribal society. The first among equals gentleman who they could rely on to to act as a conduit for British power and for Iraqi society. But who could deliver large numbers of the Iraqi population. They were fundamentally wrong for that misconception that misunderstanding of Iraqi society that undermined the evolution of the state in Iraq.

It's also interesting to another sort of parallel to where we are today. This decision by Winston Churchill at the point where there was increasing pressure in Britain to pull troops from Iraq. This idea that he could and the British could maintain control by using air power and by using airplanes. Yeah I mean this is the fascinating question of history and it's Chuck Norris is the buzzword of all of the Rocky will and I pulled out in March and April now shocking or the use of airplanes to populations the use of airplanes to impose order. As you say was it was invented by Winston Churchill in Iraq as a way of cutting. But also to what every imposing on a population without losing large numbers of British troops. So again there are very strong in the United States Air Force the daily bombing the Sunni Triangle bombing secretes and the surroundings on the basis of that

these are the bubble population into submission than it is to send troops in because the troops will bottom out will be politically unpopular at home. Let me introduce again just very quickly our guest for anyone who has tuned in we're talking with Toby Dodge. He is a senior research fellow at the Center for the Study of globalization at University of work in the U.K.. He's also an associate fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London and is here spending some time in the United States talking about Iraq and some of the parallels between the period where Britain was involved in Iraq this was in the 20s and 30s and the place that we are now. And if you're interested in reading some of the history you can look for his book which is titled inventing Iraq the failure of nation building and a history denied it is published by Columbia University Press. He today he is in Chicago. Questions here on the program are welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 and we do also have a toll free line that's good anywhere you can hear us and that is 800 to 2 2 9

4 5 5. We do have some callers are getting lined up and the first is in Champaign on line 1. Hello. Yes. Two questions one general one specific specifically wasn't the case that Winston Churchill also justified the use of poison gas by the circumstances in Iraq that the British had experience with it during the Great War. Now we're going to use it to their Iraqi provinces. Second one would you say something about the question of oil politics this seems to me one of the major differences between the American and British occupations for America today oil is clearly the fore front of consideration. I have the impression that in the 20s the oil riches of Iraq were either know or are uncared for it. That's very good. I'm too much. The last decade in British occupied sifting through a little pipe woke up the occupation of Iraq.

Now this is a very controversial and powerful point about Winston Churchill was telling the Royal Air Force to experiment with bombing the shit with poison gas. I found no evidence that that actually took place what I found about this that this myth is based upon. It was a telegram sent by Churchill. So you backed out saying maybe we should experiment with poison gas and it was decided not so as far as I can understand I found no definitive proof of that. And you've got to keep in mind that the use of air power in Iraq would seem pretty deeply unpopular in Britain. Many questions are often pot. And a lot of public counties because it was seen as both technologically extremely advanced and very unfair and damaging the church and the role that force is very much constrained by popular opinion and aid that suppliers they frequently get about the use of bombing for example to get rocky motivation to act or to be restrained by popular opinion and not use it so I don't think there is evidence all over

poison gas used. So it was certainly suggested by Churchill and I'm going to show it although this indeed. At the end of the First World War that the British Navy fleet the Royal Navy was using coal and only slowly switching to oil and so on to begin with It wasn't the dominant issue in Iraq that it bought as oil came on on stream and that the economic power became apparent then oil politics did come to influence the occupation. But I agree with you Well the the major impetus now let me be a bit controversial and disagree with you on oil today. I think clearly you know oil is an influential factor but I don't think it's a dominant one. As Now we discovered that weapons about fashion aren't added the dominant one. I think Iraq and 9/11 and indeed in the run up to 9/11 George Bush's neoconservative advisers looked out at the developing world and they saw. In the developing world the main threats to American interests the main

threats are America through the use of asymmetrical warfare. So we came up with this argument that the right to sovereignty and the post-colonial world have to be by respect by making a certain set of responsibilities that states in the developing world can't develop weapons of mass destruction. They compas support terrorism or symmetrical warfare. Take your term whichever you feel up to World and they talk and they must have transparency in banking and finance agreements. Well but neoconservatives and George Bush were trying to do was change the terms of international politics in the Octomom of 9/11 and that they were as they they strove to do that. There was one country Iraq who had some Bush knows who. Turn its back on international convention since 1999 he won in the invasion of Kuwait and had survived near continuous aerial bombing since that time and the harshest sanctions ever imposed. So I think George Bush's people decided that they had said that they had to get regime change in Iraq

to signal to the rest of the developing world how serious they were about the Bush Doctrine how serious they were about demolishing something from states in which sovereignty so well played a role but wasn't a crucial defining role I think an invasion over Iraq. But you generous reading of the Bush administration is just but as far as well is concerned it seems to me that that in a sense has been at the center of American foreign policy at least since the Second World War. Ministration referred to ease Mideast oil as the world's greatest geopolitical prize. It's just made what US is doing in its control of Iraq is controlling worldwide energy resources against its real enemies its real economic means which is Europe. North east northeast Asia but as far as Iraqi oil is concerned how did the awareness of the Iraqi oil reserves and the concern for any sort of control of them come out of the 20s and 30s it was by the late 1920s the oil began to loom as a commercial issue.

Yes but again I again in the 1920s and again stated I don't disagree with you but I'd maybe put a difference of emphasis that the oil is very important but it isn't the dominant theme in any governments from policy clearly strategy strategic interest military threat. I don't have economic interests I'm not an economic determinist in that sense that sadly invading Iraq has been very profitable for some of the some of the individuals in the administration's friends in and large oil companies around the United States but the invasion of Iraq was driven forward by however wrongly we might think of them but certainly by strategic and political goals held by the Bush administration. I hope the caller forgive me for jumping in because the lines are full and I have some other folks who would like to to be a part of the conversation. It will go on and the next person in line is in Charleston line for them. Yes thank you. Lately I have been thinking

in terms of Conservation and Natural Resources and conserving close. Second and Third World. And it used to be dominated by the West and since capitalism in my opinion is you know it's it's what does that mean. That's the dominating group of Western capitalism. I will not be interested in consuming or distributing natural resource. But we will conserve those resources certain diminished population and a new paradigm for us culture well-being to fascism. We're at peace. Few people which is most likely now who own

everything and the masses of the world have nothing. I went up and asked for your spot back. All right can you. Can you comment on that. But it's a very complex and wide ranging question I think there are several issues that I could address. Certainly you know the mass majority of the well-timed the mass majority of consumption is is focused on the west in the north of the globe and the south. Clearly it is not developing as quickly or as straightforwardly as some people in the 1960s and 70s would have predicted. Certainly I think the caller was also referring to the dominance of the world economy by multinational companies on international companies recently monopolizing at the exportation own natural resources in the south in the developing well. Sure one talks about that clearly that there was an immediate offer mouth of

decolonisation Iraq was at the forefront of this there was a move to nationalize its economic resources especially in the Middle East of the main oil companies were nationalized and run for run by the governments in the name of the population. Now that didn't work because we sold that old I was in the Middle East a set amount of economic development was pushed forward the nationalizing of oil resources. It was used by the government as a powerful tool to suppress the populations now. We seem to swung back to the other extreme a kind of free market fundamentalism that gives much much more power to multinational companies and international markets for that. But it does to government. I suppose what would one what one would want to see in Iraq and I doubt it will get it but one would want to see a balance between those two forces decentralized ownership of the oil might be on a regional basis on the governorates of Iraq so people of the grassroots level could have had more ownership more influence over how

oil revenues to spend in Iraq and then how that money were still deployed across the whole of the country. All right let's continue to the next caller Bloomington IN. Yeah well into the low I haven't been able to listen to all your comments. I hope I hope you haven't already answered my question but my question is about the fact that at the time that Britain took took over in Iraq Britain had an empire. Britain was in the imperial power and imperialism was respectable in Europe and any country that was occupied by Britain could reasonably feel that Britain was going to make that country part of the British Empire. It's very different now. I don't think anybody thinks that America wants an empire and I don't think that anybody thinks that America wants to stay in Iraq one day longer than we possibly could we want to get out as soon as we reasonably can. Doesn't that change the picture son. It certainly does not I agree with you re we're living in radically different historical

circumstances and I got about it in. And quite a lot of detail in the first chapter of the book. I think what's so fascinating about Iraq in the 1920s and this is on the basis of American President Woodrow Wilson meant that if it hadn't been for the instant that the brief ascendancy a president would soak Woodrow Wilson and America's power that the immediate aftermath of the First World War Iraq may well have been annexed to the British Empire. I want to be Bob of the British Empire but Wilson very powerfully demanded that it shouldn't be that imperialism had destabilized the international system and that the territories seized at the end of the First World War should be overseen by the League of Nations in the name of self-determination and the growth of independent states and I think that leapt to declare my position the outcome of the Second World War and where we are today. So I agree with you that the term empire and imperialism. My well carry too much historical baggage and white for it to be applied to the United States today

but kind of roughly what the United States did when it invaded Iraq was change remove a regime that it thought of as its enemy intervened in a country without an international mandate to change the government. Supposedly separate independent entity now that is clearly out using powerful military influence to change a regime you don't like now that may well not be imperialism I totally agree with you. But then at especially today the United States and the dynamics of the forthcoming present presidential elections may well lead Iraq to another without doing the job it promised to do which is through building a liberal Democratic state. But that still doesn't negate the fact that they used military power to change a government of a supposedly sovereign state. That's right may I just make one quick comment and that is let's let's advance our imaginations fifty years and think back if we're if it's 50 years hence now and we're thinking back to these days. The one thing that will be remembered about these early

years of the 21st century will be that the United States and Britain cooperated in in in overthrowing a terrible tyranny in Iraq with weapons of mass destruction be totally forgotten. Nobody will care about it. But but we will remember that Britain and America overthrew this terrible dictatorship and freed the Iraqi people. Is that possible. It's a it's an excellent point and I had gone straight to the future of Iraq. So yes there's no denying that Saddam assigned was probably one of the worst tyrants in. Well it did absolutely horrible things to his population and destabilize the region and his removal was welcomed by the Iraqi people bots. And this is the huge pot. If we go forward 50 years and we turn around and look back that removal won't be charged I suspect by the removal of the tyranny it will be judged by what comes out of the woods. Now clearly it's patently obvious that there was a chronic negligent lack of planning about work.

We should do in the off the mouth of regime change. What do we do with Iraq. Off by people not them that wasn't simply wasn't thought about and it isn't going well. The attempt to build a liberal democratic state seems to be being short circuited undermined by understandably but very warily by President Bush's desire to get re-elected and pull American troops out soon as possible. Now if that's the case history may well not judge British and American intentions favorably because if they don't deliver on the promises and let us not forget the promise that George Bush and Tony Blair made to the Iraqi people before the invasion was we will help you build a stable liberal democratic state and if they don't hang about to do that then history and historical judgment might be a lot hotter than you suggest. I knew I would come back to one point you just touched on it is is the question of why it is that the United States seemed so poorly prepared for what happened after the government of Saddam Hussein fell and I came across an interview that. You gave and I think this was it

for with ABC News here in the United States and this was back in March so this was before the war happened and that is right around the time that the fighting was going on and you told the interviewer that you thought that there was a fundamental misconception at the heart of the U.S. strategy and it ran all the way from the president down through the military. And you said that they meaning the president and the Pentagon believe the Iraqi state is highly dictatorial which it is they believe the Iraqi state to be run by a tiny group of very ruthless and violent men to which it is but the third point they believe the Iraqi nation will welcome them as liberators and see them as doing a good deed for them which they're not at the moment I think what they've misunderstood is a tenacious and possibly quite violent nationalism. It's very understandable these people have gone through two wars and 12 years of crippling sanctions these people are angry and that's going to. The highly problematic Now you said that in March it turned out that you were right on the money and I'm sure that you probably weren't the

only person who had that understanding and I guess the question that I keep coming back to is why is it that the people in the White House in the Pentagon didn't understand it. Well you've set it on a recession I don't like you typically one of them or suspend an interview let it be affordable. I think I go into this in great detail in the final chapter of inventing a rock that was found a misunderstanding at the heart of neoconservatism at the heart of that. But the lack of planning before the war now 20 United States 0 or 70 key decision makers believe that Iraq was a very strong state which it was but they believed that the institutions of the state were very strong which they won. They believed that once they seem used to back that they could rule through the strong state institutions and then slowly reform them and I think this is goes to the heart of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld's comments that American troops money going after. It's mumps now anyone who'd been so Iraq before the invasion which I had on several occasions found two things one that you indicated a very powerful nationalism

but soon the fact that strobe years of sanctions and three wars now in the last 20 years and three weeks of looting in the Octomom of all regime change I've broken the state there's simply not a nationwide state system in Iraq anymore. Now the reason for that was I'm going to throw to be sanctions the hottest most efficient sanctions ever imposed on a country were specifically designed to break state power and they did that very well. So bad it's on America's gets a Baghdad and I pull mine. The state that they want to root for is collapsed it's disappeared it's been broken. What Saddam actually Saddam guaranteed his very successful grip on power. Successful has been poor because he was never thrown out by creating a kind of shadow state a parallel set of infernal institutions where you ram money through a flexible network of its friends people tied to him by region people tied to him by loyalty and he stripped the power of the state. Now I was in Iraq in 2001 and I want to I want to go and do some recession and

possibly the weakest area of Iraq and it will if I do it. Go down from the Jap from Kabul of the Shi'ite holy cities in the south of Iraq and I'll interview the governor up this province the you know the but the but the most proper matic province for Saddam Hussein. I had to step out of a rural sewage outside the governor's office that had come from a broken toilet to actually get in to interview him I mean this is indicative of the fact that the institutions of the state were powerless that they'd been stripped of any power and Saddam was rooting through a separate set of informal structures. So when they had the United States or the Coalition Provisional Authority went to reach for those institutions to route a route they they they they dissipated man and that and that's the problem that we're seeing now that an episode is still that we're going to be engaged in a short process of state Reformation. Well that actually involved in is a four beat generation 10 or 15 year long process of building state building a state up from the very grassroots. This has to be understood if you I'm to stab at it then

you get to the very bottom of the problems that we're fighting in Iraq today. We have a couple callers here I'll get right to them where a bit past mid-point fact we have about 15 minutes less than if you just very quickly again for anybody who has just joined us I'd like to introduce Again our guest Toby Dodge. He's a senior research fellow at the Center for the Study of. Globalization at University of warke in the UK he is also an associate fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. He's acted as consultant on Iraq for ABC News he's also written for The Guardian. If you're interested in exploring some of the history of Iraq particularly this time when the British were involved in the 20s and 30s you should look for his book Inventing Iraq. It is published by the Columbia University Press. We have a couple of callers here and we'll get on to the next and that would be Herb Bana. Lie number three for them. Yeah right. You know a lot of people talk about this war on terror and said Well you know the Bush administration is not really and didn't

didn't really invade Iraq because of the war on terror. It's just about oil. People said well you know if you look at al Qaeda the a lot of the the funding and the source of organization Proc. al Qaeda actually come from these sources in Saudi Arabia and they said well look look at that you know obviously that can't be a reason for going into Iraq. But but the thing is if you if you take a little bit of Mark. Complicated view of it you could argue that you know if there's any American who drives a sport utility vehicle no as you know we use a lot of oil. And right now Saudi Arabia has one of the biggest sources of oil and so at this point it just it would just be very difficult for us to put pressure on Saudi Arabia to deal with that. Because they could just you know a bit just because they were dependent on them. So if you think about it in terms of oil you could you could argue that if if we're able to to secure Iraq that can be another supply source of oil and that actually reduces our dependence

on Saudi Arabia. And so we can just tell them OK now we've got Iraq we've. What oil and we don't we're not as dependent on you so you could argue that it's we're actually fighting a war on terrorism because then we'll be able to tell Saudi Arabia you need to crack down on those on those sources of terror support. That's a fascinating and and very interesting approach to the question. I tried to do with oil earlier on and in a in a previous offset but I certainly agree with you that al-Qaida had had no real contact routes whatsoever within or Iraq under Saddam Hussein before April 9th and certainly the lot of the funding especially if you measure will fall short of the personnel for 9/11 and a lot of the planning came from Saudi Arabia but clearly not from the Saudi government. But the question the issue that begs from the your question begs is that there were people who

really dislike foreigners coming in and running neck I'm trying to say not very quickly. I operate full not in Iraq but you know foreign soldiers they are what however good their intentions are. I'm soon joined. Resentment and the tend to be the focus of a nationalist anger you know and if you go to a feather Square where the statue of Saddam Hussein was I publicly toppled and I pull a knife around the base of that statue someone has written both in English and in Arabic. Thank you much very much now go home. I think there is a sense that and I think the United States realizes that that their presence is a focus for resentment. So now we have a problem the problem is that clearly Iraq has needs to help move a 10 15 years to build up a stable liberal Democratic state but the United States is becoming the focus of resentment as the recently leaked CIA report suggests. So what can we do. We couldn't and shouldn't abandon Iraq to its right. That would be a betrayal of the promises made in the run up to the war. It would

also lead to widespread radio instability. So what we should be much expect is bring in the United Nations internationalize or multilateral ize the occupation of Iraq for bringing in much more expertise bringing much more money bringing in a very different type of of troops and therefore reducing the resentment of the Iraqi people feel to the United States presence. Oh it's a bit Basically that means that at this point you could argue that Iraq more than any. Thing else is pretty much just a pawn in this this big war that the US is fighting. I mean you can call it a war on terrorism you can call it a war for oil. But maybe if you're taking all the you know the doctrine of the ideology out of it basically it's really just for American security. And if fighting terrorism in Saudi Arabia is required for our security and if it's having oil supply it is required for our

security then basically taking out Iraq getting control of Iraq gets us oil and gets us more security and ability to put pressure on Saudi Arabia to to to fight the terrorists. So so without without you know getting without saying that it's based on humanitarianism or horror you know freedom and democracy you could argue that. And and and without without denying the the arguments that it's about empire you could just say pure and simple it's about American security and just are doing whatever is in our best interests. Well let me let me try to from a nap. What we're going to terrorism has to do two things. Firstly I have to be a multilateral coalition that is global in reach. So you you reach out to every other country. Convince them it's in their interest to attack the United Coalition against it so in doing that you remove the area so you shrink or radically the areas where the terrorists can

operate with impunity. Secondly you shrink the population base the support for terrorism in an area like the Middle East and I would argue rather tragically that the invasion of Iraq has done the opposite of that. If you if you look around the world and find two governments that are very experienced and very committed to fighting Islamic terrorism the two at the top of the list of Germany and from that not Germany and France are also as we know now potent targets of popular opinion in America if they didn't back the invasion of Iraq they have a very very strong in backing the war against terrorism. So that's one of the negative spin offs. Secondly you know terrorism comment from public to us as President Bush said in his National Endowment for Democracy speech a couple of weeks ago it springs out of I would say it springs out of anger and resentment. Now if you want to convince the population of the Middle East where a lot of the terrorism comes from that you know on its side you don't invade another country and in the region in the end you don't stay there

long enough for a national resent backlash. To come back so I think the well on terrorism has been undermined by the invasion of Iraq the invasion of Iraq has been extremely counterproductive and a serious offenses which you would have expected us to triumph and to win the war on terrorism. Time is going short again I hope the caller will forgive me if I go on to the next person here and that's a caller in Champaign on line number one. And you've drawn parallels between the 1920s and the present situation and I was going to if you could maybe emphasize that more through the eyes of the people actually out of Iraq and how they would see the British and the Americans. And but yet how the geo political situation of change for example perhaps they were seeing this in terms of Arab nationalism anti colonialization and I'm you know anti occupation. And in the 20s and. And and how this might relate to you know average action of back to

nationalism passably and. And it turned towards an Islamist national incident do you think that this is turning into a war between Iran for example who are backing the Shiites to some extent and certain happy groups or other Sunni groups that are backing the Sunni. But I missed several It's three really good points. The lesson from the book from the popular perspective of ordinary Iraq is nice but what is State Building about it's about getting down into society and convincing the population that the institutions that you're building of the state have meaning for the everybody lives. The institutions of the state give them legitimacy and I don't have to fight hard to defend them. Now the British failed in doing that terribly felled in the night. They didn't get down in society they didn't set up institutions that had meaning to every day Iraq isn't there for legitimacy. My greatest fear and worry is that the same thing is happening today that the US or

the chief civilian administrator in Baghdad. I spent a lot of time and energy setting up the interim governing council a 20 member body sitting in Baghdad made up primarily of the exiles that came back and served with the American invasion. Now in my interviewing in Baghdad man June this year I found a deep resentment towards the people that made up that council and an Iranian nation you know this council had very little meaning to ordinary rock as I was saying. Now why am I spending so much time building up this institution for the people of Prout recently returned to the country it means nothing to us. So I think that I pull mine to an immediate optimal operate mines. There was an amazing that the Americans have managed to change this dictatorial regime so quickly and there was a lot of goodwill but since April the 9th a series of mistakes and inefficiencies but I do occupy and powers have alienated the Iraqi population and there is a growing anger at what's seen as the incompetence so of occupation. That's the first

point I think your second thought anyone has. Her rock of Law Project She is calm how to come across a very powerful Iraq nationalism and it's a nationalism that unites sent to the south and center of the country and seems to me to be much stronger than she is. So New York Kodesh identity to be kept in mind of Iraq for 1980 to 1988 Iran-Iraq war against the wrong I think is chief of the Iraqi army are Shia and they fought mostly against their fellow share in Iran. Now they did this not because they like Saddam Hussein because they had very good reason to hate him for his oppression and violence they did this because they were fighting for the Iraqi nation. But I think the kind of popular punditry that says Iraq is equally divided between the Shia the Sunni and the Kurds is actually wrong. I think at the moment and let me stress at the moment Iraq is a unitary nation with a strong sense of its own identity that may well change but at the moment we have something very powerful to work on

a nation that knows itself as such and is very committed to the Unity State in Iraq and you think we wish now could it would we. I'm Kamin dad we thought we'd taken a place over Obviously there was a plan for people for the army to which route kind of disappear or whatever the word is it seems to me there was a well laid out plan on a part of Saddam for people to start. You know a guerrilla war s.t. out the Al Jazeera reporter out. I would say it about. You know at the time you know the invasion I think suddenly I'm not I'm not sure that was a plan but something there were measures taken. Well I interviewed Sarkozy's in Baghdad in November 2003 and he was very explicit about it he said you know when when the when the Americans comes back that they'll find ghosts a lot of people would have disappeared. They set up a

series of OMS stomps across the country. They despair yet they de-centralized camomile control gave local generals local power so I don't I'm not sure. You know I think it's new crude but I think the United States and it has always been my fear and I've written about this in the run up to the war quite a lot. I always felt the United States and I'm to estimate it the military power are all over the old regime. Clearly they won very quickly and very and mostly but with comparatively few loss of a loss of lives but now but those forces are coming back in a much more I symmetrical way to hold them United States and listening to people like Donald Rumsfeld who was interviewed a couple of summers ago after the tragic loss of that she knew. That doesn't seem to be any strategic. What you do about this I mean the use of every hour the use of bombing and helicopter gunships strikes me is very counterproductive because it's clearly a power that the United States I mean hasn't got the fine grained intelligence that the on the ground political intelligence to

talk to these people if it affectively by troops let alone by air power 3000 feet. So I think you know it's like occupation when faced with this violence is making up policy on the hoof it's making a policy in a very reactive short term y and that can only destabilized what they're involved in which hopefully would be successfully carried out the creation of a liberal Democratic state. Well just about the point we have to stop. I would like to ask the question What should the. United States do and I guess I will but I can only give you about a minute to give me an answer. I think it's unfair for any one country to be off to devote the troops money and expertise over 15 has to build a rocky start to help the Iraqis build a limited liberal Democratic state. And clearly the United States and the run up to a presidential election is in no mood to commit that time and money to deliver on President Bush or Prime Minister Blair's promises to the Iraqi people. We need to give this back to the United Nations we need a multilateral eyes and make it a United

Nations occupation a United Nations attempt at state but if you don't do that I think that that's great great danger that history will repeat itself and that the occupation won't build a liberal democratic state and if we fail in doing that the route will once again become the center of regional instability and Iraq is that once again used to high levels of violence and corruption to control its own population. Well there we must stop for people again are interested in reading more on the history of the British involvement there and how it may indeed relate to where we are now. You can look for the book we've talked about inventing Iraq it is published by Columbia University Press by our guest Toby Dodge senior research fellow at the Center for the Study of globalization University of work in England and Dr. Dutch thank you very much for talking with us. It was a pleasure thank you.