The resentment and enmity towards the occupiers has been fuelled by the mounting death toll of ordinary Iraqis since the war formally ended. A recent study published in the Lancet medical journal estimates overall deaths as a result of the violence since the US invasion at 100,000 - mostly civilians.xvii This death toll coupled with the treatment of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib, particularly recent US offensives in Fallujah and elsewhere, has provoked the insurgency and the call for the US occupation forces to leave. In fact the support for the insurgency, which was described initially as ‘a few dead enders’,^xviii has grown at an exponential rate. The head of Iraq’s intelligence service, General Muhammad Shahwani estimates the number of insurgents at 200,000 claiming that such figures no longer represent an insurgency, but rather a war.^xix Indeed, contrary to the Bush administration’s denials, analysts maintain that these are ordinary Iraqis rather than ‘foreign fighters’ or the ‘super terrorist,’ Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi.^xx In order to be seen as having any real legitimacy in the longer term, any Iraqi government that comes to power will need to assert its independence from US control.

This popular uprising and resistance in Iraq clearly demonstrates that significant numbers neither accept the idea of self-determination under occupation nor relate to the so-called leaders that ostensibly represent them. This is a far cry from the democratic vision that the Occident has for Iraq; indeed shortly after Saddam’s regime was removed tens of thousands of Iraqis in a spectacular demonstration of popular will chanted, ‘No, No to America. No to a Secular State. Yes to Islamic State’.^xxi This is clearly not the expression of a people who wish to abandon their ideology or feel ignominy towards it unlike the Germans and the Japanese did. They have no reason to re-evaluate their values; the majority were victims of oppression under Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical regime and were never his followers. It was their leader and an imposed, alien system that failed them, not their ideological convictions. Such demonstrations, therefore, coupled with the growing insurgency against the occupation, depict a different story about Iraqis than that often presented by the occupying powers. A significant number of people in Iraq seek to define their political system based solely upon their beliefs, which invariably falls outside the constitutional parameters set by the occupiers.

Conclusion

A people reliant on a foreign military force and without control of their own political and economic vision are hardly a people self-determined, regardless of whether their occupiers facilitate elections. The Iraqis need to have the independence to choose a constitution that reflects their values and beliefs and the right to choose the system of government that sits in harmony with their convictions. As John Page states, ‘in its singular focus to establish democracy, it would be deeply myopic for the US and her allies to ignore the attitudes and beliefs of the intended recipients’.^xxii Sovereignty for most Iraqi Muslims and Muslims at large is inextricably tied to what is best described as ‘a theological and religious heritage’^xxiii which, unlike the West, it has not been secularised. Thus, the concept of democracy in which man usurps the sovereignty of God, is not acceptable to the majority of Muslims.

The assertions of widely respected international legal and international relations scholars such as Francis Fukuyama about the universality of democracy, without exploring its definition, have to be challenged. If democracy were simply the choice of government through secret ballots and multi-party elections on the basis of universal and equal adult suffrage,^xxiv very few would oppose this in the Muslim World. However, the concept of ‘democracy’ cannot be treated with the same simplified singularity as Fukuyama attests without also acknowledging that it is a system of government that demands the separation of the spiritual from the temporal and herein lies the problem which undermines the claim of universality. It is in fact governance by the secular idea of sovereignty, epitomised in demokratia that the majority of Muslims reject, and not necessarily political participation for all, plebiscites or universal suffrage, all of which exist and are encouraged in political Islam. For Muslims therefore, democracy does not, at least in this sense, possess ideological and political legitimacy.

Far from unifying the nation, the imposition of an Occidental brand of democracy is therefore destined to divide Iraqis. The process towards self-determination based upon Islamic political thought, which has dominated the Muslim world for almost fourteen centuries uniting not just Sunnis and Shiite but people from a multitude of ethnicities and nationalities, cannot begin whilst a hostile occupation persists This is perhaps now the greatest impediment facing Iraqi self-determination. However, the withdrawal of multinational forces will not necessarily result in widespread violence between Sunni and Shiite, or between Sunni and Kurd, or between Kurd and Shiite, as some argue.^xxv Indeed, Islamic thought on this issue is decisively clear. Islam does not seek to group people together based on their differences and thereby institutionalise ethnic divisions; but rather it unites tribes behind the core fundamental tenants of the Islamic law and prohibits the political community being ‘based solely on tribal, ethnic, or racial appeals’.^xxvi Therefore, any justification for an ongoing military presence in Iraq is more shaped by America’s own strategic objectives, rather than this veneer of humanitarian feeling towards the Iraqi people.^xxvii If self-determination is truly intended for Iraqis then they must be left to decide their own political destiny not one that has already been decided in advance by neoconservatives in Washington.