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On
June 4, Jalal Talabani, president of Iraq, attended
the inauguration of the Kurdistan National Assembly
in Erbil, northern Iraq. Talabani, a Kurd, is not
only the first-ever democratically elected head of
state in Iraq, but in a country that traces its
history back to the Garden of Eden, he is, as one
friend observed, "the first freely chosen leader of
this land since Adam was here alone." While Kurds
are enormously proud of his accomplishment, the flag
of Iraq—the country Talabani heads—was noticeably
absent from the inauguration ceremony, nor can it be
found anyplace in Erbil, a city of one million that
is the capital of Iraq's Kurdistan Region.
Ann Bodine, the head of the American embassy office
in Kirkuk, spoke at the ceremony, congratulating the
newly minted parliamentarians, and affirming the US
commitment to an Iraq that is, she said,
"democratic, federal, pluralistic, and united." The
phrase evidently did not apply in Erbil. In their
oath, the parliamentarians were asked to swear
loyalty to the unity of the Kurdistan Region of
Iraq. Many pointedly dropped the "of Iraq."
The shortest speech was given by the head of the
Iranian intelligence service in Erbil, a man known
to the Kurds as Agha Panayi. Staring directly at Ms.
Bodine, he said simply, "This is a great day.
Throughout Iraq, the people we supported are in
power." He did not add "Thank you, George Bush." The
unstated was understood.
1.
When President Bush spoke to the nation on June 28,
he did not mention Iran's rising influence with the
Shiite-led government in Baghdad. He did not point
out that the two leading parties in the Shiite
coalition are pursuing an Islamic state in which the
rights of women and religious minorities will be
sharply curtailed, and that this kind of regime is
already being put into place in parts of Iraq
controlled by these parties. Nor did he say anything
about the almost unanimous desire of Kurdistan's
people for their own independent state.
Instead, President Bush depicted the struggle in
Iraq as a battle between the freedom-loving Iraqi
people and terrorists. Without the sacrifices of the
American servicemen and -women, and the largesse of
the US taxpayer, the terrorists could win. As Bush
put it, "The only way our enemies can succeed is if
we forget the lessons of September 11—if we abandon
the Iraqi people to men like Zarqawi."
Bush's effort to revive the link between Iraq and
September 11 produced a flood of criticism, leading
some of his critics to dismiss him as a habitual
liar on Iraq matters. Alas, the comment may be more
indicative of how disconnected administration
strategy is from the realities of Iraq.
Unfortunately, many of the administration's sharpest
critics seem to share its assumption that there is a
people sharing a common Iraqi identity, an
inaccurate assumption that provides fodder for
misleading Vietnam analogies.
There is, in fact, no Iraqi insurgency. There is a
Sunni Arab insurgency. And it cannot win. Neither
the al-Qaeda terrorists nor the former Baathists can
win. Even if the US withdrew tomorrow, neither
insurgents nor terrorists would be knocking down the
gates to Iraq's Presidential Palace in Baghdad.
Basically, the military equation in Iraq comes down
to demographics. Sunni Arabs are no more than 20
percent of Iraq's population. Even in Baghdad—once
the seat of Sunni Arab power—Sunni Arabs are a
minority. To succeed, the insurgency would have to
win support from Iraq's other major communities—the
Kurds at 20 percent and the Shiites at between 55
and 60 percent. This cannot happen.
While the Kurds are mostly Sunni Muslims, they have
a history of repression at the hands of Sunni Arabs.
A few dozen Kurds have been involved in terrorist
acts, but al-Qaeda and its allies have no support in
the Kurdistan population, which is one reason
Kurdistan has largely been spared the violence that
has wracked Arab Iraq.
The Shiites are completely immune to any appeal by
insurgents. Sunni fundamentalists consider Shiites
as apostates, and possibly a more dangerous enemy
than even the Americans. (The Americans, they know,
will leave. The apostates want to rule.) For the
last two years, Sunni Arab insurgents have targeted
Shiite mosques, clerics, religious celebrations, and
pilgrims—with a toll in the thousands. The insurgent
goal is to provoke sectarian war, and they seem to
be succeeding. In spite of calls for restraint by
Shiite leaders, there are growing numbers of
retaliatory killings of Sunni Arabs by Shiites.
But while the insurgents cannot win, neither can
they be defeated.
For most of his thirty-five-year rule Saddam Hussein
faced guerrilla warfare from Kurds or Shiites—and
sometimes both. Even the most brutal of tactics
could not pacify communities that did not accept
Sunni Arab rule. Today Sunni Arabs reject rule by
Iraq's Shiite majority. It is unrealistic to think
the American military—operating with a fraction of
the intelligence of the Saddam Hussein regime and
with much less brutality (Abu Ghraib
notwithstanding)—can quell a Sunni Arab resistance
that is no longer solely anti-American but also
anti-Shiite.
2.
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In his speech, President Bush outlined a two-pronged
strategy for dealing with the insurgency: the
training of Iraqi military and security forces to
take over the fight ("As Iraqis stand up, we will
stand down") and the continuation of Iraq's
democratic transition with the writing of a
constitution as its centerpiece.
Building national security institutions is a
challenge in a country that does not have a shared
national identity. Saddam's army consisted of Sunni
Arab officers (with a few exceptions) and Shiite and
(until 1991) Kurdish conscripts. Today, the Iraqi
military and security services are a mixture of
Kurdish peshmerga, rehabilitated Sunni Arab officers
from Saddam's army, and Shiite and Sunni Arab
recruits. What is little known is that virtually all
of the effective fighting units in the new Iraqi
military are in fact former Kurdish peshmerga. These
units owe no loyalty to Iraq, and, if recalled by
the Kurdistan government, they will all go north to
fight for Kurdistan.
The Shiites, naturally, want a Shiite military that
will be loyal to the new Shiite-dominated
government. They have encouraged the Shiite
militias— and notably the Badr Brigade—to take over
security in the Shiite south, and to integrate
themselves into the national military. Neither the
Shiites nor the Kurds want the Sunni Arabs to have a
significant part in the new Iraqi military or
security services. They suspect— with good reason in
many cases—that the Sunni Arabs in the military are
in fact cooperating with the insurgency. No Kurdish
minister in the national government uses Iraqi
forces for his personal security, nor will any of
them inform the Iraqi authorities of their
movements. Instead, they entrust their lives to
specially trained peshmerga brought to Baghdad. Many
Shiite ministers use the Shiite militias in the same
way.
A few months after the Iraqi elections, Defense
Secretary Rumsfeld flew to Baghdad to warn the new
Shiite-led government not to purge Sunni Arabs from
the police and military. He got a promise, but the
government has no intention of keeping on people
associated with Saddam's regime. Too many of them
have the blood of Shiites or Kurds on their hands,
and neither group is in a forgiving mood. But the
Americans, with little comprehension of Iraq's
recent history, seem not to understand. Recently,
the Kurds identified the retired Iraqi officer who
personally carried out the 1983 execution of more
than five thousand members of the tribe of the
Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani. The killer's son
holds a senior security position in Iraq, appointed
by the American occupation authorities.
3.
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A Shiite list won a narrow majority in Iraq's
January elections. Sponsored by Iraq's leading
Shiite, Ali al-Sistani (himself an Iranian who was
therefore ineligible to vote for his own list), the
list includes Shiite religious parties, some secular
Shiites including the one-time Pentagon favorite
Ahmad Chalabi, and even a few Sunni Arabs. Real
power in Shiite Iraq rests, however, with two
religious parties: Abdel Aziz al-Hakim's Supreme
Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI)
and the Dawa ("Call," in English) of Iraq's Prime
Minister Ibrahim Jaafari. Of the two, SCIRI is the
more pro-Iranian. Both parties have military wings,
and SCIRI's Badr Corps has grown significantly from
the five thousand fighters that harassed Saddam's
regime from Iran in the decades before the war; it
now works closely with Iraq's Shiite interior
minister, until recently the corps' commander, to
provide security and fight Sunni Arab insurgents.
SCIRI and Dawa want Iraq to be an Islamic state.
They propose to make Islam the principal source of
law, which most immediately would affect the status
of women. For Muslim women, religious law—rather
than Iraq's relatively progressive civil code—would
govern personal status, including matters relating
to marriage, divorce, property, and child custody. A
Dawa draft for the Iraqi constitution would limit
religious freedom for non-Muslims, and apparently
deny such freedom altogether to peoples not "of the
book," such as the Yezidis (a significant minority
in Kurdistan), Zoroastrians, and Bahais.
This program is not just theoretical. Since Saddam's
fall, Shiite religious parties have had de facto
control over Iraq's southern cities. There
Iranian-style religious police enforce a
conservative Islamic code, including dress codes and
bans on alcohol and other non-Islamic behavior. In
most cases, the religious authorities govern—and
legislate—without authority from Baghdad, and
certainly without any reference to the freedoms
incorporated in Iraq's American-written interim
constitution—the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL).
Dawa and SCIRI are not just promoting an
Iranian-style political system —they are also
directly promoting Iran- ian interests. Abdel Aziz
al-Hakim, the SCIRI leader, has advocated paying
Iran billions in reparations for damage done in the
Iran–Iraq war, even as the Bush administration has
been working to win forgiveness for Iraq's
Saddam-era debt. Iraq's Shiite oil minister is
promoting construction of an export pipeline for
petroleum from Basra to the Iranian port city of
Abadan, creating an economic and strategic link
between the two historic adversaries that would have
been unthinkable until now. Iraq's Shiite government
has acknowledged Iraq's responsibility for starting
the Iran–Iraq war, and apologized. It is an
acknowledgment probably justified by the historical
record, but one that has infuriated Iraq's Sunni
Arabs.
Through its spies, infiltrators, and sympathizers,
Iran has a presence in Iraq's security forces and
military. It is virtually certain that Iran has
access to any intelligence that the Iraqis have. Not
only does Iran have an opportunity to insert its
people into the Iraqi apparatus, it also has many
Iraqi allies willing to do its bidding. When I asked
an Iraqi with major intelligence responsibilities
about foreign infiltration into Iraq, he dismissed
the influx from Syria (the focus of the Bush
administration's attention) and said the real
problem was from Iran. When I asked how the
infiltration took place, he said simply, "But Iran
is already in Baghdad."
On July 7, the Iranian and Iraqi defense ministers
signed an agreement on military cooperation that
would have Iranians train the Iraqi military. The
Iraqi defense minister made a point of saying
American views would not count: "Nobody can dictate
to Iraq its relations with other countries."
However, even if the training is deferred or
derailed, it is only the visible—and very much
smaller—component of a stealth Iranian encroachment
into Iraq's national institutions and security
services.
So far, the Bush administration seems surprisingly
untroubled by the influence in Baghdad of a country
to which it has shown unrelenting hostility. But
should the President want to understand why the
Shiites have shown so little receptivity to his
version of democracy, he need only go back to his
father's presidency. On February 15, 1991, the first
President Bush called on the Iraqi people and
military to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The Shiites
made the mistake of believing he meant it. Three
days after the first Gulf War ended, on March 2,
1991, a Shiite rebellion began in Basra and quickly
spread to the southern reaches of Baghdad. Then
Saddam counterattacked with great ferocity. Three
hundred thousand Shiites ultimately died. Not only
did the elder President Bush not help, his
administration refused even to hear the pleas of the
more and more desperate Shiites. While the elder
Bush's behavior may have many explanations, no
Shiite I know of sees it as anything other than a
calculated plan to have them slaughtered. By
contrast, Iran, which backed SCIRI and Dawa and
equipped the Badr Brigade, has long been seen as a
reliable friend.
4.
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Days after the Kurdistan National Assembly convened
in June, it elected Kurdistan Democratic Party
leader Masood Barzani as the first president of
Kurdistan. Before so doing, it passed a law making
him commander in chief of the Kurdistan military but
then specifically prohibiting him from deploying
Kurdistan forces elsewhere in Iraq, unless expressly
approved by the assembly. (Kurdistan retains some
50,000 peshmerga under the direct control of the
Kurdistan government.) The assembly also banned the
entry of non-Kurdish Iraqi military forces into
Kurdistan without its approval. Kurdish leaders are
mindful that their people are even more militant in
their demands. Two million Kurds voted in a January
referendum on independence held simultaneously with
the national ballot, with 98 percent choosing the
independence option.
Kurdistan's leaders would like Iraq to be a loose
confederation in which Kurdistan makes its own laws,
retains its own military, the Iraqi military stays
out, and Kurdistan manages its own oil and water
resources. Although Iraq's interim constitution, the
TAL, talks of "federalism," it has been implemented
so as to create no more than a confederal
relationship between Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq.
The Kurdish leaders would accept its continuation
provided the text was clarified to assure
Kurdistan's ownership of petroleum in the region and
if the status of the disputed region of Kirkuk were
resolved.
While the Shiite religious parties accepted the TAL
when it was promulgated in 2004, the Kurds now
believe they don't mean it. When he swore in his
cabinet on May 3, 2005, Shiite Prime Minister
Jaafari eliminated the reference to a "federal Iraq"
from the statutory oath of office; this so angered
Barzani that he forced a second swearing-in
ceremony. Some Shiite drafts for Iraq's permanent
constitution would sharply restrict Kurdistan's
autonomy and demote Kurdish from its current status
at the federal level as an official language equal
with Arabic. The Kurdish leaders also worry that the
Shiites will try to eliminate Kurdistan's current
ability to modify the application of national law in
Kurdistan; they fear that the Shiites will, at
least, stop secular Kurdistan from rejecting the
imposition of Islamic law.
5.
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In his speech, President Bush alluded to the
importance of Iraqis meeting their deadlines. The
deadline that looms is August 15 for the National
Assembly to adopt a constitution. As of this
writing, great effort has been devoted to questions
of expanding the drafting committee to include Sunni
Arabs. Very little has been done on the substantive
work of writing a constitution.
Because the differences among Iraq's three
communities are so great, it seems unlikely that
they can find common ground on a constitution by
August 15, if ever. But the deadline could be met if
the assembly agrees simply to continue the TAL, with
some modifications of the provisions on oil and
Kirkuk. The Shiites have a desire similar to the
Kurds' for oil to be owned and managed by the
regions. The Shiite south sits on top of nearly 80
percent of Iraq's known oil and, like the Kurds, the
Shiites feel the old system of central management
enriched Baghdad and the Sunni Arabs without
providing any benefits to the regions owning the
oil. Shiite leaders from the three oil-rich southern
governorates have already proposed to create a
southern region that, like Kurdistan, would have its
own oil.
Control over Kirkuk, an ethnically mixed
governorate, will be much more difficult to solve.
The Kurds insist it is the heart of Kurdistan, and
believe a great injustice was done when Saddam
expelled Kurds from the area and resettled Arabs in
their place. But Kirkuk also has indigenous Arabs,
Turcomans, Assyrians, and Chaldeans. The Kurds and
Shiites could make a deal to have a referendum to
determine Kirkuk's future, which, since the Kurds
are now again likely to have a majority, could be
significantly at the expense of the Sunni Arabs. But
not entirely, since Kirkuk's Arabs and Turcomans are
both Sunni and Shiite.
In the coming constitutional battle, Kurdistan
leaders—and many secular Arab Iraqis—will be drawing
the line on three principles: secularism, the rights
of women, and federalism. They fear that President
Bush will be more interested in meeting the August
15 deadline for a constitution than in its content,
and that they will be under pressure to make
concessions to the Shiite majority. It may be the
ultimate irony that the United States, which, among
other reasons, invaded Iraq to help bring liberal
democracy to the Middle East, will play a decisive
role in establishing its second Shiite Islamic
state.
In fact an agreement on the constitution in the
National Assembly may not end Iraq's sectarian
divisions but set the stage for new battles. Voters
must approve the constitution in a referendum
scheduled for October 15, and under the TAL two
thirds of the voters in any three governorates may
veto it. There are three Kurdish governorates, but
also three Sunni Arab governorates. Even if
Kurdistan's leaders reluctantly accept a
Shiite-written constitution, the independence-minded
Kurdistan electorate may reject it. Moreover, the
Sunni Arabs could easily use the referendum to
torpedo any Shiite–Kurdish agreement.
The ratification clause of the TAL creates a timed
fuse that could blow Iraq apart, and as is true for
so much else that has gone wrong, it is American
arrogance and ignorance that are to blame. When
Iraq's Governing Council was considering the TAL in
February 2004, the Kurds came up with a simple
proposal to protect their existing autonomy: the
permanent constitution would come into effect if
ratified by a majority of Iraqis, but would only be
operative in Kurdistan if ratified by a majority of
Kurdistan's voters. This simple formula, which
involved no veto on the ratification on the
constitution but only a geographic limitation on
where it would apply, was largely acceptable to the
Arab Iraqis. But it was not acceptable to the
American administrator, L. Paul Bremer, who did not
want to concede that Iraq's ethnic communities
should be treated differently. He came up with the
three-governorate formula, preparing the way for a
future train wreck.
6.
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There are two central problems in today's Iraq: the
first is the insurgency and the second is an Iranian
takeover. The insurgency, for all its violence, is a
finite problem. The insurgents may not be defeated
but they cannot win. This, of course, raises a
question about what a prolonged US military presence
in Iraq can accomplish, since there is no military
solution to the problem of Sunni Arab rejection of
Shiite rule, which is now integral to the
insurgency.
Iraq's Shiites endured decades of brutal repression,
to which the United States was mostly indifferent.
Iran, by contrast, was a good friend and committed
supporter of the Shiites. By bringing freedom to
Iraq, the Bush administration has allowed Iraq's
Shiites to vote for pro-Iranian religious parties
that seek to create—and are creating —an Islamic
state. This is not ideal but it is the result of a
democratic process.
The Bush administration should, however, draw the
line at allowing a Shiite theocracy to establish
control over all of Iraq. This requires a drastic
change of strategy. Building powerful national
institutions in Iraq serves the interest of one
group—today it is the Shiites—at the expense of the
others, and inevitably produces conflict and
instability. Instead, the administration should
concentrate on political arrangements that match the
reality in Iraq. This means a loose confederation in
which each of Iraq's communities governs itself, and
is capable of defending itself. It may not be
possible to accomplish this in a constitution, since
the very process of writing a constitution forces
these communities to confront issues—religion,
women's rights, ownership of oil, regional
militaries— that are hard to resolve ideologically.
Many of these issues, however, could conceivably be
worked out practically. For example, the Iraqi
Ministry of Oil and the Kurdistan government are
currently cooperating on fulfilling oil contracts
made by the Kurdistan government, without having to
face the constitutional issue of who owns the
resources. Without having to make a constitutional
decision on religion, the Shiite south can apply
Islamic law as it now does and Kurdistan can remain
secular.
War always has unintended consequences. Currently we
are pursuing a strategy that will not end the
insurgency but that plays directly into the hands of
Iran. No wonder Agha Panayi, the Iranian
intelligence official, was smiling.
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