Analyzing the motives behind the Iraq government’s actions, United States Institute of Peace expert Daniel Serwer suggested last week that the Prime Minister is determined to assert a “monopoly over the means of coercion” prior to the October, 2008 provincial elections. The government and its American backers know very well that political stability – much less democracy – will never come to Iraq if the national army (such as it is) continues to co-exist with independent Shi’ite, Sunni and Kurdish militias. But the situation is vastly complicated by infighting between the Mahdi Army and its principle Shi’ite rivals in the Badr Brigades--the Iranian-supported military wing of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Sadly, the time for dealing with this awful mess probably passed in 2003, when the Iraqi military was virtually dismantled.

What lessons does the Iraqi story teach about the wider “Muslim World”? This is a short space to tackle such a complex question. But for starters I would suggest that Iraq’s trials and tribulations remind us that the term “Muslim world” provides practically zero analytical insight into the challenges of state and nation building.

The problem is not merely that the so-called “Muslim world” boasts a myriad of diverse religious practices, cultures, ethnic identities and ideologies that cannot be subsumed under the term “Islam.” The more fundamental issue is that Islam rarely provides a coherent or widely shared roadmap to political identity and action. Ask a Kurd in Iraq, Syria, Turkey or Iran, a Berber in Morocco, Tunisia or Algeria, a traditional Sunni Muslim who also adheres to Javanese cultural traditions, or a secular Sunni Muslim in Egypt, Palestine or Kuwait whether “Islam is the solution” and they will look askance. Put the same question to Sunni Islamists, and they will answer in the affirmative, but in the same breath reject the notion that Shi’ite Islamism offers a religiously legitimate path to political salvation.

But, readers will say, with the possible exception of Lebanon, the pathology of sectarianism in Iraq has no equal in the Middle East or the wider Muslim world. It is unique, born of a legacy of colonial and post-colonial interference, economic and social discrimination, and the nefarious exploitation of sectarian and religious divisions by a succession of Iraqi strongmen. While all of this is true, the “Iraqi” malady of sectarianism and fragmentation has echoes within and far beyond the Middle East.

This problem includes but transcends the much discussed and often misunderstood phenomenon of Sunni-Shi’ite conflict in Lebanon, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Even in countries such as Egypt, Tunisia or Morocco--where Sunnis are the vast majority --when it comes to defining the religious or cultural foundations of political life, consensus has proven elusive. This fact was brought home during a conference in Morocco that the USIP held some months ago. In one of the most pluralistic Arab states, it was very hard even to get mainstream, moderate Islamists and secularists to sit at the same table.

Some Islamists believe that the West has created identity conflicts to weaken the Islamic world. Like all good conspiracy theories, this one has a kernel of truth that has been distorted and vastly exaggerated. After all, some policy makers and pundits believe that identity struggles benefit the West because they frustrate radical Islamist dreams of unifying Muslims in opposition to Western policies and values. Moreover, the rising power of Shi’ites and their presumed Iranian backers has occasioned a revival of Realist thinking in Washington and other Western capitals, most clearly manifest in the effort to build a new “Sunni Axis.” Arab leaders in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia have happily exploited such thinking in an effort to distract Washington from pressing Arab governments to pursue political reforms. But this calculated use of sectarian divides for political or geo-strategic purposes hardly accounts for the development or persistence of identity conflicts. Indeed, these disputes would not be so easily exploited if they didn’t have roots in the cultural and religious soil of the Muslim World. That world has always been far more pluralistic than some Islamists and even some Western scholars would admit. Thus the most pressing task is how to manage such pluralism, how to turn it into a political and social asset rather than a liability or an opportunity to be exploited by political leaders seeking their own, narrow advantage.

I have no illusions about how hard this will be, particularly if we seek -- as we should -- to accommodate ethno-religious divisions democratically. The problem, as any prescient student of democracy will tell you, is that even the most competitive elections have the potential to empower some groups and exclude others. Knowing this, many leaders in the Arab and wider Muslim world assert that domestic peace is far easier to achieve – or at least to enforce – under the umbrella of authoritarianism than under the uncertain canopy of democracy. Because some groups have reason to fear that free elections will result in regimes that will diminish their freedoms, hopes for sustained political change will partly hinge on building new alliances of trust and cooperation, especially between Islamists and their non-Islamist rivals. How this can be done, particularly given the discouraging example of Iraq, is a subject I will tackle in a future essay.