Is the D-word getting in the way of good governance?

The term 'democracy' should not be one size fits all, argues Sholto Byrnes

American army soldiers stroll past two bronze busts of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in the Green Zone in Baghdad. Hadi Mizban / AP Photo

It is nearly 14 years since the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom, in which the US-led coalition drove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan. And 12 years have elapsed since the invasion of Iraq, which led to the fall of Saddam Hussein.

It could be described as a period in which a wound that was thought to be healed has broken out again and become worse than the original infection.

One could point to the stoking of Sunni-Shia tensions, or the hundreds of thousands of deaths attributable to these two invasions; to the tidal waves of bombings, so frequent that the outside world almost appears to have become inured to them; to the rise of ISIL and the reintroduction of mass slavery.

There are plenty of other examples. To my mind, however, the most poignant was presented in a report earlier this week about the Syrian rebel force Ahrar Al Sham. According to the Financial Times, the 25,000-strong group that is opposed to ISIL wants to "go mainstream" and deal with the West, rather than being considered too radical to come to the table. Ahrar has apparently sent representatives to so-called Track II diplomatic discussions, including one hosted by the Brookings Institution where free elections, women's rights and representation for minorities were non-negotiable.

“Ahrar representatives agreed on those principles,” one diplomat recalled – on one condition. “They didn’t want to use the word democracy.” And they were not alone. “Actually,” continued the diplomat, “that was a condition for nearly every group.”

So, 12 years after president George W Bush announced that “our men and women are fighting to help democracy … rise in a troubled and violent region”, the result is this: the word “democracy” has become so irreparably tainted that even those willing to contemplate the kind of participatory governance we might normally call “democracy” will only talk about it if the “d-word” itself is entirely absent. The bleak humour the situation provokes is worthy of Joseph Heller or Gore Vidal.

For those of us who have an attachment to the idea of democracy, it is sad. It is not, however, incomprehensible in the context of Iraq. After all, if democracy means the destruction of a fairly well-developed country’s institutions, a descent into civil war, and such chaos that its future as a unitary state is cast into doubt, then you might not be terribly keen on it either. Nor might democracy be so appealling if its pursuit gives “warlordism, banditry and opium production a new lease on life”, as a 2004 Pentagon study on Afghanistan concluded in 2004.

Maybe the surprise is that we should still be surprised. After all, I have heard several academics and diplomats from developing countries point out – without any US-bashing glee – that, apart from the first Gulf War, the last time America actually won a military conflict to impose “freedom” and democracy was before the Korean War. This may be down to any number of factors.

Earlier this year, a news cameraman named Tom Streithorst claimed that one reason why the “liberation” of Iraq went wrong was because too many translators hired by the US came from different parts of the Middle East and didn’t understand the local Arabic. Consequently, the information they passed on frequently bore no resemblance to what had actually been said. Streithorst commented: “It is impossible to successfully conduct a war if you can’t distinguish friend from foe because they all look the same to you.”

A lack of understanding of local cultures, histories and traditions has been a hallmark of failed efforts to impose democracy over the decades. But it also raises the question of whether bringing its blessings to populations whom, it is assumed, will be grateful for the gift, is the right way to encourage democracy at all.

The great 19th century liberal philosopher John Stuart Mill would have thought not. He wrote: “To go to war for an idea, if the war is aggressive and not defensive, is as criminal as to go to war for territory or revenue; for it is as little justifiable to force our ideas on other people, as to compel them to submit to our will in any other respect.”

This would appear to be borne out by the fact that most of the successful democratic transitions of the past 30 years have been home-grown. When the Iron Curtain fell, communism collapsed across eastern Europe with no tanks or bombing required. Democracy emerged in the world’s fourth largest country – Indonesia – after president Suharto resigned in 1998, and it is its people and politicians who can claim credit for the strengthening of Indonesia’s newly free institutions and increasingly fair elections.

Democracy, as many Asian leaders have said, should not be “one size fits all”, and it is not the only source of legitimacy, especially in countries which place collective and communal values and interests above those of the individual.

What an irony, though, that after all the bloodshed, groups in Syria should now be willing to talk about democracy – but the word has become so freighted with mayhem and deathly chaos that they cannot bear to hear or speak of it. Another term is needed. “Good governance”, perhaps. In fact, that might have been a better concept for us all to have been aiming for in the first place.

Sholto Byrnes is a senior fellow at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Malaysia