A Brief Note

One word about the conclusion of the aforementioned piece:

The experience of countries in different regions makes clear that terrorist groups can operate for sustained periods even in successful democracies, whether it is the Irish Republican Army in Britain or the ETA (Basque separatists) in Spain. The ETA gained strength during the first two decades of Spain’s democratization process, flourishing more than it had under the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco. In fragile democratic states—as new Arab democracies would likely be for years—radical groups committed to violence can do even more harm, often for long periods, as evidenced by the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, or the Maoist rebels in Nepal.

I don't have a clue about Maoist rebels in Nepal, but it strikes me that the important common element between the other cases here is that, from the perspective of the terrorists in question, the countries in question weren't democracies in a meaningful sense because the didn't allow the relevant political community to self-govern. Spain is a democracy, but to a Basque separatist the Basque Country isn't governed democratically because it's governed by Spain rather than by the Basque community. Similarly, the IRA regards London's control over northern Ireland as preventing the Irish Catholic political community from exercizing sovereignty over the whole of its territory. The Tamil Tigers and Abu Sayyaf, too, are political manifestations of minority ethnic and religious groups. That doesn't make the quoted passage wrong, but it's important to get a sense of the scope of its validity.

These considerations give us good reason to believe that holding elections in Iraq won't bring violent political conflict to an end there, or even mitigate it in any substantial way, since a very large (circa 40 percent) proportion of the Iraqi population seems to regard itself as outside of and separate from the dominant Iraqi political community. For broader "war on terrorism" purposes, however, the people we're mainly worried about are overwhelmingly Sunni Arabs living in countries with Sunni Arab majorities that are disempowered simply because their states are undemocratic.