By: Claude Salhani – Middle East Times

In the words of Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari, we are all aware of the painful trajectory Iraq has gone through over the course of the last five years. Indeed, the people of Iraq had to go through a devastating war; a near civil war; daily terrorist attacks that have claimed thousands of lives; the second-largest refugee crisis in the Arab world, after the Palestinians; and the list goes on, and on.

Iraq has come a long way, yet the road ahead is still long and tortuous, and very perilous. Iraqi police cadets march during a graduation ceremony at a U.S. military camp in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, on Sept. 18. (UPI Photo)

But “the Iraqi people fought back against crisis after crisis,” the foreign minister told a small group of journalists, including the Middle East Times, during a meeting in Geneva last weekend on the sidelines of a conference organized by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Perhaps they fought back because they simply had no other choice.

However, in spite of the 80 percent reduction in violence Iraq has registered over the last several weeks, and the fact that 11 of the country’s 18 provinces are now under Iraqi control, including Anbar Province, one of the most rebellious and possibly the deadliest for U.S. forces in Iraq, it is of paramount importance that neither the Iraqi government, nor the U.S. military (and civilian) command in Iraq believe they can rest on their laurels.

To quote the country’s foreign minister once again, there is little doubt that Iraqis “have turned a potentially huge corner.” As Zebari told the small group in Geneva, “We have managed to pull ourselves from the brink.”

Truer words have rarely been spoken. Iraq has come a long way. Yet the road ahead is still long and tortuous, and very perilous.

“What we have now is fragile. What we do next is crucial,” Zebari said.

He pointed out four “major challenges” the country still faces, saying that Iraq “must progress on all four fronts.”

1. Achieving national reconciliation: If Iraq is to overcome the odds and surmount the risk of being fragmented into several states along sectarian lines, efforts by the country’s different communities, primarily the Sunnis, Shiites and the Kurds, but also the Turkmen and Assyrians (who are Christians), will have to learn to live together. That includes having the foresight to see beyond the current crisis and project into the future and imagine where a peaceful and unified Iraq could be down the road. As a major oil producer and sitting on the region’s second-largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia, Iraq has all the chances of becoming once again a successful country. The difference this time around is that it should be a free, successful country. Iraq and its people have paid a very hefty price for this freedom. It would be criminal to waste this opportunity. However, in order to succeed the people of Iraq will need to start thinking of themselves as belonging to a nation, Iraq; and not think of themselves as belonging to a religion, a tribe, a clan or a party serving the interests of its neighbors, which no matter how you spin it, can never serve the cause of Iraq.

2. The status of U.S. forces in Iraq: the quicker the Iraqis succeed in putting their differences behind them and focusing on the future, rather than dwell on the past, the sooner foreign forces are likely to leave Iraq. Though the foreign minister cautioned: “There is, however, need for a continuous presence of the multinational force.” He insisted that “there is no timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces. Their withdrawal must be condition-driven. A premature withdrawal will create chaos.”

3. Iraq needs greater cooperation with its neighbors: During the disastrous years that Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq, he took the country to war with three of its six neighbors, Iran and Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, the latter becoming the staging ground for the U.S.-led coalition put together by President George H. W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States and father of the incumbent, which eventually ousted Saddam from Kuwait. Relations with Syria were tense with the opposing Baath parties forever plotting against each other. But if Iraq learns how to live with its neighbors, the difficult task remains getting its neighbors to stop meddling in Iraqi affairs.

4. And finally, the challenges posed by the government to demonstrate good governance and undertake the monumental task of reconstruction of the country’s institutions and learning how to serve its people, rather than expecting the people to serve the government.

Zebari recognizes that the road ahead will be hard. “It would be naïve not to recognize that some groups are positioning themselves for a change of administration in the United States,” he said. But he stressed: “A winners-take-all approach in a democratic Iraq will not work.”

The major development is that, as Zebari pointed out, “Iraq is no longer a threat to its own people, to the region or to the world.”

The threat today comes from its own people and the region.