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Cordesman’s Tenuous Case
Anthoney Cordesman, a sound military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was in Iraq again and unlike Michael O’Hanlon and Ken Pollack, he comes away with a quite pessimistic view.
He lays out the issues in 25 pages titled The Tenuous Case for Strategic Patience in Iraq (pdf).
The paper contains some full broadsides against the Bush administration, various government agencies and the former U.S. military and political leadership in Iraq.
Iraq is in shambles and the general economic situation is getting worse. Cordesman lauds the current leadership team, Petraeus/Crocker, but sees there effort stymied by false decisions and idiotic ideas coming out of Washington.
The "surge" has failed, Cordesman says, both in its military and political dimension. It was sheer luck that the Sunni "awaikening", the tribes getting sick of "al-qaida" salafists, happened in time and that the military could take advantage of it.
The problem now is that these awakened tribes expect some payback from the central government for their efforts and cooperation. Such rewards must come through within 6 month or they will convert back to be resistance fighters.
The government is in all aspects in shambles. Maliki and his friends are completely sectarian. The political process, if there is some at all, is very, very, very slow.
The U.S. can not withdraw parts of its troops or retreat back to big bases. If all troops leave, the problem of Iraq will not vanish and the strategic problems in the Middle East might escalate.
There might be a 50:50 chance for things to turn around if the U.S. stays committed for a long time and the Iraqis somehow manage to solve some of their many, many problems.
Cordesman doesn’t say so explicitely, but the case he makes for strategic patience is a lost one. All the ifs he attaches to some success are very, very unlikely to happen. A tenuous case indeed.
Some quotes below the fold:
(soory that these are so long, but it’s a 25 page report and the best we’ll get about Iraq.)
(emphases are in the original)
Iraq’s insurgency and civil conflicts have, [..], already done immense damage to virtually every ordinary Iraqi, and there are essentially no provinces where the problem will not produce further hardship and violence, even in a best-case scenario. Iraq may not be Darfur, but to talk about what is happening as something that does not involve immense suffering, that does not involve immense future risk, and for which the US does not have direct moral and ethical responsibility is absurd.
[…]
There is no point in pursuing failed strategies or failed policies. Iraq is a gamble, and one where even the best-managed future US policies may still fail. It is a grim reality that the mistakes and blunders that have dominated US policy in Iraq throughout the US intervention have interacted with Iraqi failures to make any continued US effort one filled with serious risks.
[…]
The idea that General Petraeus can give a military progress report in September that should shape US policy ignores the fact that the fate of Iraq is scarcely dominated by US military action. US policy must look at the political and economic situation, and all of Iraq’s civil conflicts, and must not just focus on Al Qa’ida and the worst elements of the Sadr militia.
For all the reasons described above, the US has a vital national interest in changing the nature of the debate in the US from the current options of either staying the course or rushing out with little regard for the consequences. The domestic US security structure has so far failed to present meaningful options, and seems incapable to doing so. The US team in Iraq, however, is much more experienced, and there is a new degree of realism and competence that clearly can never come from within a failed Bush Administration.
[…]
The drop in violence is tied largely to cooperation with the US. The same fighters that were killing Americans could be killing them again in a matter of weeks or months if the central government does not act, and Sunni tribal loyalty oaths to the government are now worth about as much as central government help to the Sunnis – which is to say that some could prove to be little more than worthless if the central government does not act.
There is a real opportunity that did not exist at the start of the year. What is critical to understand, however, is that while the surge strategy has had value in some areas, much of this progress has not the function of the surge strategy, US planning, or action by the Maliki government. In fact, the “new” strategy President Bush announced in January 2007 has failed in many aspects of its original plan.
[…]
Iraq has not made anything like the political progress required, and the effort to expand and revitalize the US aid effort to help the Iraqi central government improve its dismal standards of governance and economic recovery efforts have already slipped some six months and are far too dependent on the US military.
[…]
Sheer luck has created a major synergy between Sunni willingness to attack Al Qa’ida and other abusive, hard-line Sunni Islamist elements and far more effective US efforts at counterinsurgency.
[…]
Sunnis that were shooting Coalition and ISF forces six months ago now want to work with the central government if the central government will work with them. They will sign loyalty oaths, join the regular police, and join the army if the government will give them money, status, and a share of power. The problem is that this shift is tenuous and depends on reasonably rapid central government action to give the Sunnis what they want. (US officers put the limit of tribal and Sunni patience at 130-180 days).
[…]
A visit to Iraq reveals far less confidence in Maliki at every level than is apparent from the outside. No one seems to trust Maliki outside his immediate coterie, and many Iraqis and US officers and officials in the field feel he has tacitly or actively supported sectarian cleansing in Baghdad and the south.
[…]
The case that Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus make for "strategic patience," and one that President Talibani and Vice President Mahdi make in very similar form, is that Sunni, Shi’ite, and Kurdish leaders are slowly coming together in ways that may develop the ability to evolve a form of central government that would keep Iraq united but devolve enough power and money at the provincial and local level to secure the Shi’ite majority, offer the Kurds what they want most, and give the Sunnis a deal they could possibly accept.
[…]
It must be stressed that nothing about the process will be neat or pretty, or conform to US ideals about political reform. Any such solution will evolve in a morass of feuding, conflicting political signals, staged walkouts, and occasional nasty clashes — some violent. It cannot come in a neat package or come quickly. It will mean agonizing further negotiations, squabbles, and delays.
Success of any kind will require US force reductions to be loosely tied to the pace of Iraqi action, and not some predictable schedule. It will mean that many original US goals in trying to transform Iraq would have failed. A workable compromise cannot reverse many of the impacts of sectarian and ethnic cleansing.
Such a compromise must also effectively devolve substantial amounts of power to Provincial governments to allow the creation of Sunni, Shi’ite, and Kurd controlled sectarian and ethnic partition or enclaves. The resulting local and provincial power structures will sometimes be corrupt, nepotistic, and repressive.
[…]
The structure of the central government is so horribly inefficient, and its ministries so vulnerable to power brokering, corruption, and ethnic and sectarian manipulation that meaningful reform is impossible.
[…]
Can the Iraqi political structure and the US pull this off? The odds are at best even. If the US is to be successful, it must accept the fact this level of risk exists and cannot be eliminated for at least several years. It is important that US decisions be based on honest and objective assessments of the full range of problems that still exist and not Panglossian fantasies about progress that has not really occurred. The situation in Iraq still has many pitfalls, and these can still force the US out of Iraq in failure.
The key risks and problems the US faces can be summarized as follows:
Here comes a detailed seven pages long list of some 19 major possible or likely failure points, from Maliki’s unreliability, through oil industry state, an incompetent U.S. aid process and unreformable partisan police forces.
The paper continues:
At the same time, it is important to point out that the US will have to face many of these risks – or their consequences — in some form regardless of how fast it withdraws its troops. They will haunt the US throughout the life of the next administration and well beyond. This is why the previous list does not address the steadily escalating Iranian intervention in Iraq, and one clearly designed to target US forces as well as divide the country on sectarian lines. The problem of Iran, and the US need to confront it, will be a fact of life in the Gulf regardless of US policy in Iraq and – if anything – will be much worse if the US leaves a power vacuum in Iraq.
Similarly, the US cannot ignore the Kurdish issue and its impact on Turkey and US Turkish relations. The US will have to take some kind of policy stand regarding the future security and autonomy of the Kurds, and cannot ignore Turkish pressure on the Kurds or the dangers posed to Turkey by the PKK. Once again, strategic patience seems to offer the least risk, although scarcely eliminate it.
Finally, very similar considerations are involved in dealing with the Syrian role in Iraq and – far more importantly – the role of friendly Sunni states like Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, US support of the Sunni tribes and more active efforts to end sectarian cleansing are a key to defusing outside Sunni Arab anger against the US, and preserving American strategic interests in the region. They present obvious risks, but the risks in not acting will almost certainly be greater.
[…]
It is just possible that "strategic patience" can work over time. What are the odds of such success? No one can honestly say, but they may well become higher than the 50-50 level if Iraq’s political leaders do move forward by early 2008, if the Sunnis are co-opted by the government and brought into the Iraqi Security Forces, and if the US does not rush out for domestic political purposes.
They will also be greatly improved if the US country team is allowed to develop plans
and budgets for the coming year and longer-term action. The US national security team in
Washington is clearly ineffective and lacking in core competence. Real leadership has to
come from the field and the country team, and has to be exercised in a context where the
issue is the ability to present workable plans for sustained action – not purely military
situation reports or efforts to rush various benchmarks.
[…]
The bad news – and the key factor that makes the case for strategic patience so tenuous – is that the above list of problems is now so long and so critical that some key steps are already badly overdue. Any major Iraqi failure to move forward over the next six months, to come to grips with the realities described above, and to solidly co-opt the Sunni tribes and put a real end to JAM and other Shi’ite sectarian cleansing will make strategic patience of limited value or pointless.
Reading through the above again, tenuous may be an overstatement …
So what should the U.S. do now?
from april this year
“Printable version
The Iraqi Resistance Only Exists To End The Occupation
Haifa Zangana
The Guardian/UK
April 12, 2007
The Escalating Attacks Are Not Usually Aimed at Civilians, But Are a Direct Response to the Brutal Actions of US-Led Troops
In Muqdadiyah, 50 miles from Baghdad, a woman wearing a traditional Iraqi abaya blew herself up this week in the midst of Iraqi police recruits. This was the seventh suicide attack by a women since the Anglo-American invasion in 2003, and an act unheard of before that. Iraqi women are driven to despair and self-destruction by grief. Their expectations are reduced to pleas for help to clear the bodies of the dead from the streets, according to a report by the international committee of the Red Cross, released yesterday. It’s the same frustration that drew hundreds of thousands to demonstrate against foreign forces in Najaf on Monday.In the fifth year of occupation, the sectarian and ethnic divide between politicians, parties and their warring militias has become monstrous, turning on its creators in the Green Zone and beyond, and not sparing ordinary people. One of the consequences.
During the first three years of occupation women were mostly confined to their homes, protected by male relatives. But now that the savagery of their circumstances has propelled many of them to the head of their households, they are risking their lives outdoors. Since men are the main target of US-led troops, militias and death squads, black-cloaked women are seen queuing at prisons, government offices or morgues, in search of disappeared, or detained, male relatives. It is women who bury the dead. Baghdad has become a city of bereaved women. But contrary to what we are told by the occupation and its puppet regime, this is not the only city that is subject to the brutality that forces thousands of Iraqis to flee their country every month.
Bodies are found across the country from Mosul to Kirkuk to Basra. They are handcuffed, blindfolded and bullet-ridden, bearing signs of torture. They are dumped at roadsides or found floating in the Tigris or Euphrates. A friend of mine who found her brother’s body in a hospital’s fridge told me how she checked his body and was relieved. “He was not tortured”, she said. “He was just shot in the head.”
Occupation has left no room for any initiative independent of the officially sanctioned political process; for a peaceful opposition or civil society that could create networks to bridge the politically manufactured divide. Only the mosque can fulfil this role. In the absence of the state, some mosques provide basic services, running clinics or schools. In addition to the call to prayer, their loudspeakers warn people of impending attacks or to appeal for blood donors.
But these attempts to sustain a sense of community are regularly crushed. On Tuesday, troops from the Iraqi army, supported by US helicopters, raided a mosque in the heart of old Baghdad. The well-respected muazzin Abu Saif and another civilian were executed in public. Local people were outraged and attacked the troops. At the end of the day, 34 people had been killed, including a number of women and children. As usual, the summary execution and the massacre that followed were blamed on insurgents. The military statement said US and Iraqi forces were continuing to “locate, identify, and engage and kill insurgents targeting coalition and Iraqi security forces in the area”.
It is important to recognise that the resistance was born not only of ideological, religious and patriotic convictions, but also as a response to the reality of the brutal actions of the occupation and its administration. It is a response to arbitrary break-ins, humiliating searches, arrests, detention and torture. According to the Red Cross, “the number of people arrested or interned by the multinational forces has increased by 40% since early 2006. The number of people held by the Iraqi authorities has also increased significantly.”
Many of the security detainees are women who have been subjected to abuse and rape and who are often arrested as a means to force male relatives to confess to crimes they have not committed. According to the Iraqi MP Mohamed al-Dainey, there are 65 documented cases of women’s rape in occupation detention centres in 2006. Four women currently face execution — the death penalty for women was outlawed in Iraq from 1965 until 2004 — for allegedly killing security force members. These are accusations they deny and Amnesty International has challenged.
There is only one solution to this disaster, and that is for the US and Britain to accept that the Iraqi resistance is fighting to end the occupation. And to acknowlege that it consists of ordinary Iraqis, not only al-Qaida, not just Sunnis or Shias, not those terrorists — as Tony Blair called them — inspired by neighbouring countries such as Iran. To recognise that Iraqis are proud, peace-loving people, and that they hate occuption, not each other. And to understand that the main targets of the resistance are not Iraqi civilians. According to Brookings, the independent US research institute, 75% of recorded attacks are directed at occupation forces, and a further 17% at Iraqi government forces. The average number of attacks has more than doubled in the past year to about 185 a day. That is 1,300 a week, and more than 5,500 a month.
Another way of understanding this is that in any one hour, day or night, there are seven or eight new attacks. Without the Iraqi people’s support, directly and indirectly, this level of resistance would not have happened.
____________________
Haifa Zangana, an Iraqi exile who was imprisoned by Saddam Hussein, is the author of Women on a Journey: Between Baghdad and London
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Aug 8 2007 22:19 utc | 49
you might sort of be on to something ann missed. but, no way US engineered the federalism issue. to be sure, there is much evidence of support for a continuum of federalism/partition in
the foreign policy establishment (like galbraith). from allawi’s book:
By 1992, SCIRI had become a major player in the Iraqi opposition. It also began to evolve a political programme that went beyond the generalities of the Islamist framework. As its relationship with the Kurds changed from that of a tactical wartime alliance into a long-term and strategic relationship, so did its views on federalism, a key Kurdish demand. It began to acknowledge the concept as a valid principle for the restructuring of Iraq’s political life, casting it in the framework of the Islamic concept of wilayet. SCIRI, however, stood firmly against the threat of the division of Iraq into statelets for the Kurds, Shi’a and Sunni.
…
The focus on issues that disproportionately affected the Shi’a of Iraq, which included the environmental catastrophe of the draining of the marshlands and many specific human rights abuses, also accelerated the formation of an evolving Shi’a political identity. Dr Sahib al-Hakim uncovered many violations and published a detailed expose of how Saddam’s regime had committed atrocities against 4,000 Shi’a women, through a systematic campaign of rape, torture and murder. By the end of the 1990s, the ranks of those who were calling for a special status for the Shi’a of Iraq had swelled enormously.
These evolving currents of a separate Shi’a consciousness found their most complete expression in a manifesto entitled `The Declaration of the Shi’a of Iraq; issued in July 2002.’9 It was written by Mowaffaq al-Rubai’e, Ali Allawi and Sahib al-Hakim. The Declaration drew in a wide range of participants from academic, professional, religious, tribal and military backgrounds. Over 400 Iraqi Shi’a opinion leaders in exile signed it. The Declaration called for a new Iraq based on the three principles of democracy, federalism and community rights. While not explicitly demanding a Shi’a region, the `Declaration’ did itot rule this out. It stressed that the Iraqi state was inherently sectarian in nature and that the structures of institutional discrimination against the Shi’a had to be completely dismantled.
…
In response to these pressures, the State Department hurriedly organised a conference on the future government of Iraq to be held in Nasiriya.” Zalmay Khalilzad led the US side. The State Department sent a high-level contingent to the conference, headed by Ryan Crocker, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, who also acted as the conference’s moderator. The conference opened on 15 April, 2003. Jay Garner made his first public appearance to the assembled Iraqis. The organisers had invited the entire leadership council of the Salahuddin Conference. (SCIRI and the Da’awa Party – the latter was not in the leadership council – declined to attend.) The conference was accompanied by Islamist demonstrations in Nasiriya.
The conference adopted a thirteen-point programme, calling for democracy, a federal system for Iraq, and respect for the rule of law. ‘3 It also demanded the dissolution of the Ba’ath Party.
…
For the first time in modern history, the fall of the regime confronted Iraqis with the question of where their true loyalties and identities lay. The public airing of community differences and grievances had previously been taboo. Any mention of them, or any suggestion that the state was institutionally biased against certain communities, was drowned in a sea of vituperative condemnation, and was equated with treasonous talk that aimed at undermining national unity.’ Even a casual acknowledgement of sectarian and ethnic grievances would open the country to the dreaded threat of fitna (sedition). This would inevitably lead to partition. The airing of sectarian issues was tantamount to condoning the division of the country into mini-states, thereby ensuring the continued dominance of foreign powers, especially Israel. The charge of ta’ift (sectarian) was difficult to live down, and was frequently used to smother the possibility of any debate about the sectarian issue in Iraq. The political discourse in Iraq was therefore channelled in any number of directions – into Arab nationalism, socialism, modernism – but never into an examination of the sectarian basis of power .z The denial of sectarianism was so potent and deep-rooted that it pushed discussion of this
problem to the outer limits of acceptable dialogue. In time, this denial created its own reality, and became an article of faith.’
The Kurds had managed to slip out of this straitjacket because of a grudging acknowledgement of their `peculiar’ status. Also, their decade of semi-independence confirmed their demands for special treatment within a federal Iraqi state. The Shi’a, however, were another matter altogether. Their attitudes and beliefs in terms of their loyalty to religion, sect, race or nation would be critical in determining the course of Iraq’s political future. The Iraqi state, dominated by the Sunni Arabs, of which Faisal I had spoken, and which had continued unchanged in its basic form for decades, had come crashing down. What kind of state would replace it would be partly dependent on how individual Iraqis felt they had been treated, whether they had gained or lost by the state’s existence over the years; also, whether they could be convinced that the state could be reformed, so that it would become more fair and just to all its citizens. In short, did a national compact still exist between Iraqis and their state, in spite of the abuses and injustices that had been visited on most of the state’s citizens at one time or another?
…
The essence of the plan involved the drafting of a basic law for the transition period by 1 March, 2004. This was to be written mainly by the CPA, although the process was to be under the nominal tutelage of the Governing Council. Elections for a transitional assembly and government would then be held in July 2004, and a constitutional convention would be elected in January 2005. The plan was soon dropped in favour of holding `caucuses’ that would select the transitional government. The direct elections route was deemed impractical in the time frame that the Coalition wanted to impose on the return of sovereignty to Iraq: 30 June, 2004.’9
The agreement had five basic provisions. The first element was the drafting of a’Fundamental Law’, which was intended to provide the legal framework for the government of Iraq. It included a bill of rights, a commitment to a federalist Iraq, an independent judiciary, civil control over the military, and a statement that the fundamental law could not be amended. The second element was a provision to reach an accord between the CPA and the Governing Council on the status of Coalition forces in Iraq. The third and most controversial provision was the selection process for a Transitional National Assembly (TNA). It specifically stated that the TNA would not be an extension of the Governing Council. The members of the TNA were to be selected through a caucus system in the eighteen governorates of Iraq. The fourth provision involved the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty by 30 June, 2004, through the nomination of a government by the TNA. The final provision was to set out a detailed timetable for an elected convention that would write Iraq’s new constitution which would be subject to referendum. A new set of elections for an Iraqi government would be held no later than 31 December, 2005.
…
The essence of the plan involved the drafting of a basic law for the transition period by 1 March, 2004. This was to be written mainly by the CPA, although the process was to be under the nominal tutelage of the Governing Council. Elections for a transitional assembly and government would then be held in July 2004, and a constitutional convention would be elected in January 2005. The plan was soon dropped in favour of holding `caucuses’ that would select the transitional government. The direct elections route was deemed impractical in the time frame that the Coalition wanted to impose on the return of sovereignty to Iraq: 30 June, 2004.’9
The agreement had five basic provisions. The first element was the drafting of a’Fundamental Law’, which was intended to provide the legal framework for the government of Iraq. It included a bill of rights, a commitment to a federalist Iraq, an independent judiciary, civil control over the military, and a statement that the fundamental law could not be amended. The second element was a provision to reach an accord between the CPA and the Governing Council on the status of Coalition forces in Iraq. The third and most controversial provision was the selection process for a Transitional National Assembly (TNA). It specifically stated that the TNA would not be an extension of the Governing Council. The members of the TNA were to be selected through a caucus system in the eighteen governorates of Iraq. The fourth provision involved the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty by 30 June, 2004, through the nomination of a government by the TNA. The final provision was to set out a detailed timetable for an elected convention that would write Iraq’s new constitution which would be subject to referendum. A new set of elections for an Iraqi government would be held no later than 31 December, 2005.
…
The evident support of the Arab League for the opposition and the national resistance, however, considerably emboldened those Sunni Arabs who were prepared to engage critically with the Iraqi government and the US Embassy. The persistent refusal of the Arab League to accord full recognition to the Iraqi governments that emerged out of the political process continued. No Arab League mission visited Iraq until October 2005. Predictably, the Arab League was praised by the leaders of the Sunni Arab community for its concern with Iraq’s sovereignty and for averting civil war. At the same time, it was condemned by the Shi’a religious and secular groups for ignoring the indiscriminate terror of insurgents. The Kurds, who throughout had been sceptical of the Arab League, were considerably mollified by the changed tune of the League regarding Kurdish demands for federalism. The Arab League reflected the increased willingness on the part of the Arab regimes to countenance, and even support, Kurdish demands for autonomy. This was a signal to show that the Arab world could accommodate an effectively confederal Iraq, but that it would not countenance a Shi’a-dominated Iraq or a three-way federal state with a weak centre. The bogeyman of Iran and the Shi’a’s assumed subservience to that country would simply not go away.
…
As the Bush administration moved from containment of Iraq to outright belligerence towards the country, however, Turkey became seriously alarmed at the huge risks to its own security that war with Iraq would entail. Turkey had always supported a strong centralised government in Iraq as the best bulwark against the possibility that a weakened Iraqi state might unleash forces that would jeopardise Turkey’s own security and vital national interests. By far the greatest of Turkey’s fears was the possibility that a weakened or divided Iraq would give rise to a Kurdish state in northern Iraq that would act as a magnet for similar claims by its own substantial Kurdish population, nearly twelve million strong. The consolidation of the Kurdish parties’ hold on Iraqi Kurdistan, and the vital role that the Kurds played as the USA’s main strategic ally inside Iraq, seriously concerned the authorities in Ankara. The Turks watched with increasing alarm as the demands for a federal Iraq became legitimated in the TAL. Thwarting the plans for an emergent Kurdish state or an Iraqi confederation became a main feature of Turkey’s policy in Iraq, even while it appeared to accept that some degree of autonomy for Iraq’s Kurds would be inevitable. The re-formation of Turkey’s main Kurdish insurgent group, the PKK, against which the Turkish army had fought a decades-long dirty war, in northeastern Iraq, was also looming as a critical Turkish national security problem.
…
Jaafari and his cabinet were sworn in on 3 May, 2005 in front of the National Assembly. The fragility of the coalition government was apparent, even as it was being sworn in. A key phrase in the oath calling for a’democratic and federal’ Iraq was surreptitiously dropped by Jaafari’s aides, much to the anger and consternation of the Kurds. It seemed to confirm their suspicions about Jaafari and his less-than-sterling commitment to a federal future for Iraq. Jaafari followed the swearing in with a speech that laid out, vaguely and grandiloquently, the government’s plans over the transition period. The commitments made were completely unrealistic and unnecessarily bound the Transitional Government to reforms and improvements in services, jobs and incomes in ways that would prove difficult to achieve. The government, after all, only had an eleven-month life, and three months had already been spent in bickering and manoeuvring. The unfortunate pattern of over-promising and under-delivering had begun with the CPA and the Governing Council, and continued with the Interim Government and, now, with the Jaafari government. It was a case of politicians making expedient or wild promises that took no notice of the prevailing conditions of insecurity, administrative chaos and dysfunctional government. A tired and weary citizenry stood back and hoped against hope for some reprieve from lawlessness, violence, power blackouts, gasoline lines and water shortages.
…
The Issue of Federalism for the South
The constitutional drafting committee was still wrestling with the most contentious issues that had been inherited from the TAL, when another bombshell erupted. On 11 August, four days before the deadline for presenting the draft constitution to the National Assembly, Sayyid Abd elAziz al-Hakim, leader of SCIRI and the head of the UIA, stood up in front of a large crowd in Najaf and made a startling announcement; `To keep the political balance of the country, Iraq should be ruled under a federal system next to the central government … We think it is necessary to form one entire region in the South:” Until that day, no senior political figure had publicly demanded that the Shi’a of Iraq should have a region of their own with commensurate powers and status like Kurdistan. Hakim’s comments went against the prevailing current within Islamist circles that emphasised central rule The Shi’a region he was demanding would embrace the entire South, and would hold the major oil fields and reserves, and the ports of the country. It built on the residue of frustration and anger that southerners felt at their neglect and impoverishment by successive central governments, which had continued in a more pronounced form since the fall of the Ba’ath regime. The scheme also dovetailed into SCIRI’s own political supremacy in the south where it controlled, alone or in alliance, a number of provincial councils.
The TAL, which had basically limited federal regions to amalgams of not more than three provinces, was now being superseded in this most crucial of areas. Hakim was insisting that the constitution be drafted in ways that would allow the formation of `super regions: Grand Ayatollah Sistani had, apparently, been consulted on this matter, and while no formal statement was issued by his office, it was presumed that Sistani did not raise any objections. But Hakim’s demand for a federal solution to the Shi’a’s notion of being disadvantaged did not automatically translate into separatism and the establishment of a Shi’a state. In any case, there was scant support for such an entity; the belief that the Shi’a were specially targeted by the radical Sunni insurgents, however, grew in intensity, and this certainly played a part in the increasing alienation of the Shi’a from the idea of a centralised state.
The idea of a federal and multi-region solution for the structures of the Iraqi state was first mooted in an essay entitled `Federalism’ by Ali Allawi in 1992.’6 Decentralisation and strengthening of local government were important elements of the 2002 Declaration of the Shi’a of Iraq.”Ahmad Chalabi was also a proponent of a regional solution to the Iraqi state, and had made a number of speeches in favour of a three-province region in the deep south of the country. But none of the early proponents of federalism for the south had the mass base to promote these notions. The agenda was still dominated by Sistani’s broad principles for political involvement. It fell to SCIRI, a party with a large base of followers in the Shi’a community, to take the lead in moving away from the generalised demands for elections and a constitution to a specific plan of action. By pursuing a regional agenda, SCIRI, of course, had to abandon the idea of a non-sectarian and unitary state, which was always an important element in its political platform.
The possibility that Iraq would be divided into two regions, Kurdish and Shi’a, with the resource-poor, mainly Sunni, rump provinces left to fend for themselves, raised serious alarm bells with the Sunni Arab negotiators. It seemed to confirm their worse fears about the new constitution. ‘8
The Sunni Arab position on federalism was uniformly negative. It rankled those who believed in the binding unity of the country and the ever-present dangers of break-up if the centrifugal forces that threatened the country were given free sway. Of course the idea of a central state was indissolubly linked to the historical control that their community had exercised over the state, but it was also connected to the sense that it was they, uniquely, who had held the stewardship over a united Iraq identity. Now this was being threatened in a new compact, the consequences of which might reverberate for a very long time. But the Sunni Arab leadership had come around to accepting, grudgingly, that the Kurds did have an exceptional case, and by the time negotiations for the new constitution were afoot, the issue of Kurdistan’s semi-independent status was no longer seriously questioned. The details were [410] vigorously discussed, especially the territorial boundaries of Kurdistan and the case of Kirkuk’s status, but the main issue of a confederal status for the Kurdistan region had been conceded. The Shi’a `super region, however, was another matter altogether. It challenged the very heart of the Iraqi identity and the proposition that the Arabs of Iraq were at least united by their common ethnicity.
The response by the Sunni Arabs to Hakim’s call for a nine-province region, the first time that the idea of federalism had been expressly linked to a sectarian rather than a geographical, administrative or ethnic base, was immediate and loud. Sunni clerics fulminated in their Friday sermons about plots to break up Iraq, and promised to foil the plan by fair means or foul. The resource argument, also a vital consideration for the Sunni Arabs, was played down in the public debate, mainly to concentrate the public’s attention on the issue of unity and not on the division of resources, for which an accommodating formula had been found. The gauntlet was thrown down: SCIRI could now define the terms of the debate on regionalism, and for the first time the idea of an autonomous Shi’a region, albeit one in the context of a federal Iraq, was seriously broached.
The Hakim demands for a Shia region did not materially affect the progress towards completing the constitution, as it came well after the outlines of the new constitution were in their final draft form. A multiple province region had already been agreed in the draft, with the Kurds being its main proponents at first. They were looking to adding Kirkuk, and even parts of other provinces such as Mosul and Diyala, to their region. This would have necessitated that the TAL’s three-province limit to regions be dropped.
so, no obvious US policy here wrt federalism.
Posted by: slothrop | Aug 10 2007 3:47 utc | 84
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