RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
In the fast past few days, Iraqi forces have retaken most of Fallujah, which had been under ISIS control. It's a huge strategic and symbolic loss for the Islamic State. Fallujah is one of several key cities Iraq has taken back. But ousting ISIS is only one of the battles Iraq must fight as a country. Political feuds, ethnic tensions and sectarian hatred have fragmented Iraq.
Earlier this past week, I sat down with Lukman Faily, the Iraqi ambassador to the United States. In July, he's going to be leaving his post here in Washington. And we started our conversation by talking about the deep political divisions in his country. I asked him what he thought about recent suggestions by Kurdish leaders that Iraq just be split into three separate nations - Sunni, Shia and Kurdish. It was an idea, he said, works in theory but not so much in practice.
LUKMAN FAILY: There always has to be an interdependency and a need for a mutual beneficial relationship between all the elements of the current existence of Iraq. So you cannot go and say, well, everybody have their own country. Even if we do that, we still need to talk each other. We still have an issue of ISIS as a threat to the region as a whole. The issues of separations and others can be discussed. However, the constitution, which the Kurds have ratified and agreed to, talk about unity of the country.
MARTIN: So why do you think Iraq, with all its disparate elements, with years and years of sectarian conflict - what's the case that all these parties are safer together than they are apart?
FAILY: The wealth of the country, the geopolitics within the region - if all of these three entities aspire for democracy in a region which is not democratic, then you want them to work with each other. On the other side of it, let's say you go with a division. What would this contain within the three borders? If you're promoting a new narrative based on nationality, ethnicity and others, why would the current borders of Iraq be contained within that?
MARTIN: You're saying it's a slippery slope. Where do you draw the borders?
FAILY: I'm saying where would - if the borders are artificial...
MARTIN: Yeah, where would it end?
FAILY: ...Such as those (unintelligible) who are promoting it, there may have been - but (unintelligible)...
MARTIN: I mean, many people say that...
FAILY: But that's a century now. Surely, we have learned for over a century how to work with each other. So Iraq is already a diverse, complicated situation because of civilizations, history and everything else. We have had generations of dictatorship engineering - socially destroying the fabric of the society - engineered that way. Saddam Hussein did it in culture of wars and everything else. So this requires generational fix. So it's not an issue of separation. Separation is a magic simple solution to a complicated problem.
MARTIN: How do you see America's role in that?
FAILY: It need to have that long view. The U.S., if its policy based on the next presidency politics or view alone, then, unfortunately, it will not be a cohesive policy. It will not be a long effective policy because these issues requires cultural change, requires social change. So it has to be done by us. But we need the Americans and other countries to help us in governance, to certainly help us in getting rid of the tumors of ISIS, to give our politics a breathing space so that we can talk to each other in a more civil or in a more peaceful environment.
MARTIN: The United States, as you know, has spent over $2 trillion in Iraq since the invasion in 2003. That's a lot of money. There's a lot of fatigue among the American population about the investment.
FAILY: Let's - this way.
MARTIN: How do you keep making the case?
FAILY: The tragedy's not that. The tragedy is 5,000 soldiers. Tragedy is maybe 50,000-plus injured, maimed and others. The money can be generated. But lives going and so on - that's what I think we need to focus on. The region is...
MARTIN: Is it complicated to ask the U.S. government to keep writing the checks but to let Iraq make the decisions?
FAILY: No, no, no, no. Iraqis have wealthy country. We never said to the Americans we need (unintelligible) on the ground now. On the contrary, we're saying we don't. Even we get pushed, we say no. This is our fight. But we need the U.S. to enable us with technology, with better intelligence-sharing, with, for example, our pilots being trained better, faster. We need to go on a faster track in addressing our issues so that we can help you in addressing the global problem of terrorism.
MARTIN: You and I have been talking about the long view and the necessity of taking the long view. In that spirit, may I ask you to look back in time and tell me, for the average, everyday Iraqi, is life better today than it was under Saddam Hussein?
FAILY: Well, under Saddam Hussein we had what we might call republic of fear. People were not allowed to think. People were - had - certainly had not ability to change, to do anything about their lives. Now we have democracy - nascent democracy, I might add. Society is trying to be empowered. GDP per capita is 10 times better than during Saddam time.
So I don't think it's that aspect of it. We certainly have high expectations and aspiration as a society. We may not know what it takes to go there. We may want to jumpstart it. We may want to do shortcuts. For example, we tried to fix issues with legislation while, in reality, we need to change the culture, not just legislations. So we need to have a long view of that aspect of it.
So the Americans need to understand that. They need to understand the complexity of it. Unfortunately, people thought that only give them democracy, everything else will be on an autopilot. That's not working. That will never work. Why? Because the culture was not - the region is not accepting it. Let me give example, Arab Spring - tons of generations tried to change it. It was hijacked. Why? Because the politics were not there. It wasn't just an aspiration. You need the infrastructure of societies, NGOs and others to promote it and to guide it and to shepherd change in politics. That's not an easy aspect of it.
MARTIN: Thank you so much for talking with us, Mr. Ambassador. We really appreciate your time.
FAILY: Thank you for having me again. Wish you all the best.
MARTIN: That was outgoing Iraqi ambassador to the U.S. Lukman Faily. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.