The world watches as Iraq becomes a litmus test of democratic success
writes Amir Taheri in the Times of London:

Soon after the liberation of Iraq in 2003, Yussuf al-Ayyeri, a chief theoretician of al-Qaeda, published a book entitled The Future of Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula after the Fall of Baghdad. In it, he designated Iraq as “the greatest battlefield of Islam against the infidel and its native allies”. Al-Ayyeri wrote: “It is not the American war machine that should be of the utmost concern to Muslims. What threatens the future of Islam, its very survival, is American democracy. To allow Iraq to build would represent Islam’s biggest defeat since the loss of Andalusia.”

This is why all reactionary forces, from pan-Arabists to Islamists, and their sympathisers in the West, have united to prevent Iraq from succeeding. Iraq has become the litmus test of the success of the democratic experience in the region. There is no guarantee that it will succeed. But it is vital for everyone concerned that it does.

And win we must.