Farish A. Noor
08:00pm 27 April 2005

The election, albeit ceremonial in nature, of Jalal Talabani – leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan – as the new interim President of Iraq has been seen as a mixed development in many ways. It should be noted that the entire process was routine and in many ways expected; and that for many critical voices in the Arab-Muslim world the election of Mr Talabani in no way sanctions or post-rationalises Washington’s violent invasion of Iraq. Nor has it calmed the nerves and tempers of those stalwarts of the old regime who see the new interim government of Iraq as nothing more than a puppet show designed to pull the wool over the eyes of Iraqis and the world in general, disguising the fact that the invasion of the country was still a case of a single superpower acting unilaterally against the collective will of the United Nations and global opinion.

Be that as it may, it has to be said that current developments in Iraq – regular violent attacks against civilians and occupying forces notwithstanding – have baffled many observers. For a start the transition to a working democracy – feeble though it may be at this stage – has nonetheless resulted in the growing prominence and political clout of the country’s Shia Muslim majority. The prospect of having the Shia leader Ibrahim Jaafari as the future Prime Minister of Iraq is already sending out warning signals to foreign governments in and around the Middle East, as the man is known for his sympathies to the Shia cause and is widely seen as a supporter of the imposition of Islamic law.

But perhaps in his own quiet way, Jalal Talabani has achieved a minor miracle of his own. By becoming the first non-Arab to assume the post of President in an Arab-majority country, he faces the daunting task of trying to cobble together a country made up of various ethnic and religious groups that have been at odds with each other since the postwar era.

Up to the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Iraq’s monolithic national narrative has been decidedly one-sided, telling the story of the nation’s history solely through the eyes of the Sunni Arab community. Saddam’s vainglorious attempts to create for himself a dynasty that would match that of previous Arab dynasties culminated in his grandiose project of reconstructing the ancient temple-city of Niniveh, heart of the Assyrian Empire (which was, incidentally a pre-Islamic empire to boot) in decidedly contemporary Arab-centric terms. Complimenting the vast arsenal of military, police and secret agencies that he built and kept close at hand, Saddam’s vision of Iraq was totalizing in the manner in which his power extended even back into history, claiming the legacy of the ancient past as his own as well.

In this respect, the postwar history of Iraq is no different from that of many other Middle-eastern counties or nation-states in the developing world. In neighbouring Iran, the Shah of Iran also attempted to build a dynasty founded on the collective memory of the past. This culminated in his doomed (and not to forget expensive) celebration of ‘4000 years of Persian history’ during the celebrations at Persepolis. Just as Saddam Hussein’s vision of Iraqi history marginalized and erased the presence of other ethnic, linguistic and religious groups, so did the myopic state-orchestrated history of the Shah of Iran relegate other communities to the margins.

The one community that has suffered unduly in the Middle-east is the stateless Kurdish nation; who are a people with a past but no homeland to carve it on. Straddling a vast expanse of territory that stretches from Turkey to Iraq and Iran, the Kurds have been everywhere and yet are at home nowhere. Which is why the election of Jalal Talabani today is of considerable historical importance. In a region and at a time when the Kurds, as a rootless diasporic nation, are seemingly powerless and without a state, the election of a Kurdish President – politicized and manipulated though the act may be – is of great comfort. Mr Talabani has, however, an important cultural precedent to look back upon: the great warrior-statesman Salahuddin al-Ayubi, or as he is known in the West, Saladin.

It is interesting to note that Saladin, despite his non-Arab roots, has been elevated to the status of a transcendental overdetermined signifier in the political discourses that circulate around the Arab-Muslim world. From the nationalist rhetoric of the Pan-Arabists to the Islamist rhetoric of groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Saladin has been, and is still seen, as a hero for the collective Arab consciousness. So strong is the image of Saladin that his name is still mentioned in the contemporary annals of Arab politics and history as one of the greatest Arab heroes of all time – save for the fact that he was of Kurdish origin!

Saladin was able to make this transition (or perhaps we can say that the transition was made for him) from being a Kurd to a Pan-Arab hero for one simple reason: Success. Both in the eyes of this Arab-Muslim admirers and in the eyes of his Western European Crusader adversaries, he was portrayed as a man of honour, a chivalrous and generous victor who never succumbed to the temptation of butchering or humiliating his fallen enemies. Saladin’s conduct both as a military commander and more importantly as a statesman showed that it was indeed possible for a Muslim leader to oppose the enemies of his people without hating them in toto; that he treated all his subjects (Muslims, Jews and Christians) with the same degree of equal respect and dignity showed that his conduct of government was ethical, fair and just. It is for these reasons that he was, and remains, a paragon of virtue both in the East and the West.

Jalal Talabani, as the new interim President of Iraq, should therefore study the conduct and practice of his Kurdish ancestor not simply because they both happen to be Kurds, but rather because in the life and achievements of Saladin we find concrete evidence that it is possible for Arab leaders to govern societies that are plural, complex and evolving. It is perhaps too much to expect Mr Talabani, still new to his post, to play up to the role of the great Saladin. But at this stage in Iraq’s tortured and blood-stained history, that is what the country needs the most: A Saladin for the new Iraq of the 21st century.