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Let
me, a citizen of Ireland and the European Union,
resident in the USA, provide a little shock to some
of Europe’s intellectual classes, whom I otherwise
admire as supporters of international law,
democracy, human rights, self-determination,
constitutionality, and cosmopolitan thought.
From what I read of their views on Iraq many possess
a narrow prism that only lets them see certain
issues, namely, the illegality of the United States
war to depose Saddam Hussein’s regime; the falsehood
of claims that his regime very recently possessed
deployable weapons of mass destruction and was
linked to al-Qaeda; the violation of human rights
under the US-led occupation authority and the
subsequent transitional government; and the
necessity of relying on the United Nations as the
sole means of providing legitimate international
assistance in the constitutional reconstruction of
Iraq.
Indeed some of Europe’s intellectuals talk without
qualification, or with approval, of an Iraqi
“nationalist resistance” to the American Empire,
while others, especially in government, express
concern for the “inclusion of Sunnis” in
constitutional renewal, to show their fairmindedness
toward the group that largely boycotted (or was
intimidated from participating in) Iraq’s first
genuinely open elections in January 2005.
Some of the same intellectuals have recently worried
that America is going to help Islamists to power –
and destroy women’s rights, but in the same breath
insist that the Americans should not interfere in
“Iraqi” ownership of the new constitution. In
Kurdistan, this prism I have sketched, without much
burlesque, seems largely irrelevant, when it is not
regarded as contradictory. In much of Shi‘a Arab
dominated Iraq, it would be regarded as similarly
strange – if anyone had time to consider it. This
prism, Europe’s “conventional wisdom”, distorts
constructive thinking about the constitutional
reconstruction of Iraq.
To say this is not to offer any apologia for the
mistakes – and indeed any crimes – of the Bush
administration. But, it may enable a hearing for
three obvious considerations required for realistic
as well as forward-looking appraisal. First, the
enemy of one’s enemy - assuming George Bush’s
administration is the enemy of liberal intellectuals
- is not necessarily one’s friend. Second, the
pivotal friends of democratization in Iraq are among
people who rarely call themselves “Iraqis”, namely
Kurds, and Shi‘a Arabs (who are normally understood
by Europeans to be outlawers of alcohol and the
equality of women – and the clients of Iran). Third,
those most opposed to the constitutional
reconstruction of Iraq are found among Sunni Arabs,
intent upon blocking the deal that might otherwise
be made by the friends of democratization. Thanks to
the foolish policy of inclusion of the
unreconstructed, they include Saadoun Zuibeidi,
Saddam’s former translator and a former Iraqi
ambassador.
Let me suggest a different frame for understanding,
not one derived in the least from American
neo-conservatism. (I write as a European social
democrat or American liberal, as you prefer).
Consider an imaginary Germany, just liberated from a
repressive dictatorship that had been supported by a
minority of its population. Imagine that minority
was mostly comprised of Protestants, both secular
and Calvinist. International forces carried out the
liberation, but with mixed motives, and subsequently
mismanaged their occupation, badly.
Imagine that this German Protestant minority has
governed, and been socially dominant, for eighty
years, culminating in its collusion in an externally
aggressive fascist dictatorship, that was both
racially and religiously genocidal, and that
unilaterally launched two wars against its
neighbors. Evaluation shows that two communities
were the primary victims of the deposed regime. One,
a majority of the population, comprised Catholics,
who have been treated as illeducated, heretical and
superstitious fools. The other, comprised a minority
of Poles - led by secular Protestants, who slightly
outnumber the German Protestants. Foreigners call
these Poles, German Poles, even though they are not
German. The German Protestants treated these Poles
as racial inferiors, or, as comically backward
people who should learn to speak German to advance
themselves, or, worse, collaborators with the
foreign powers who have just overthrown their
regime. These “German” Poles have struggled for
their independence since the creation of an
artificial “Germany” by foreign powers - who put
together provinces of the former Holy Roman Empire,
betraying promises made to both Germans and Poles.
But with international help, the Democratic Party of
Poland and the Patriotic Union of Poland recently
managed to carve out an autonomous “Poland-stan”,
within what had been part of historic Poland –
partitioned by great powers eighty years before.
“Poland-stan” is the sole entity in conquered
Germany to have the rule of law, social peace,
economic development and fair treatment of
minorities.
Perhaps this frame of reference may help persuade
you that the dominant European vision on
contemporary Iraq distorts political and moral
sense. Would liberal intellectuals insist that the
just described imaginary Germany immediately needed
to make a constitution “in the interests of all
Germans”, just by themselves, in which “just
Germans” would determine the content of the
constitution - and in which the United Nations would
provide only technical assistance? Instead, they
would begin by recognizing that not everyone in this
imaginary Germany is a German. And, they might ask:
“What about those Poles?” “Should echte Germans,
Catholic or Protestant, decide their rights?” “What
about those Catholics?” “Don’t they have dual
loyalties, to the Vatican as well as Deutschland?
And connections with Austria?” “Hasn’t Germany been
defined in an exclusively Protestant way? Isn’t that
what has to be changed?” “Wasn’t extensive
centralization under dictatorship part of what made
Germany a threat to its peoples – plural - and its
neighbors?” “Surely an effort should be made to have
a “federalization”, as well as a “democratization”
and “constitutionalization”, of political power?”
“Should we let the German Protestant minority, and
its reconstructed fascist or theological
spokespersons, under the banner of “inclusion”, have
a veto over the wishes of the former regime’s
victims, the vast majority, to have meaningful
“federalization”? This imaginary allegory will have
served its purpose if it allows the following
arguments to be heard.
The constitutionalization of Iraq, if it is to
succeed, must begin where we are, not in one of
Jurgen Habermas’s “ideal speech situations”, or John
Rawls’ “original position”. What is required is not
the construction of some immediate – or subsequent –
transcendent “constitutional patriotism” that is
difference-blind to history, religion, ethnicity and
nationality. Iraq’s prospects of survival as a state
that may properly democratize lie in the creation of
a multinational, multi-regional federation, one that
recognizes its existing deep diversity, and tries to
resolve past antagonisms through a mixture of loose
power-sharing and profound autonomy. That is a far
taller order than that facing Europe’s constitution.
Iraq’s constitution must first address the historic
and continuing conflicts between Arabs and Kurds.
The Kurds are neither Arabs nor Iraqis. They speak
Kurdish; have a different culture, look different,
do not fly Iraq’s flag, and insist that Iraq should
not be defined as part of the Arab nation.
Americans, who have leverage but lack dictatorial
power, need to be clear about their sole ally in
Iraq, and it would help if Europeans could overcome
their anti-Americanism to tell them the same
message: The Kurds do not want an “Iraqi
nation-state.”
Kurds are willing, with extreme caution, to build a
democratic, pluralist Iraqi federation. They have no
love for the American prompted arranged marriage on
offer after 2003. Kurdistan’s citizens prefer an
immediate divorce. In January 2005, in a parallel
private referendum held at the same time as the
elections to Iraq’s constitutional convention, 98
per cent of two million voters endorsed an
independent Kurdistan. “We deserve independence”,
says President Masoud Barzani of Kurdistan,
precisely because of what Kurds have suffered under
successive Baghdad regimes, e.g. the destruction of
4,000 villages, forced displacement of hundreds of
thousands, and the mass killing of up to 180,000 of
their people under Saddam. The best feature of the
liberation of Iraq from Saddam and its partial
reconstruction is that it has strongly facilitated
the healing of Kurdistan’s nasty civil war of the
1990s. Kurds are, so far, strongly politically
united in the current negotiations and neither
outsiders nor Arabs should count on being able to
divide their two major parties.
But, Kurdistan’s leaders, and their people, may
compromise their maximal preferences if their
minimal interests are met. They have urgent, and
easily appreciated “red lines” in the current
negotiations.
(i) They want full law-making autonomy in matters
outside a small number of competencies for the
federal government. That means keeping what they
have, which has worked far better than anything they
had before.
(ii) They want the right to control their security,
including the lawful army of Kurdistan, the
peshmerga. No people in history has been willing to
dissolve its army into the army of those whose
officers organized genocide against them.
(iii) They want regional ownership of natural
resources which they need to fund their autonomy and
security. Federations centralize quickly when
regions do not have substantial revenues – which is
why the European Union’s memberstates mostly resist
increasing the revenue capacities of the EU’s
central institutions.
(iv) They want satisfactory power-sharing
arrangements in the federal government. They do not
make a song and dance on this matter, but the
federal electoral system and co-decision making
procedures must enable them to block any legislative
dictatorship by a party or coalition comprised of
the Arab majority. For the same reason they want
their right of self-determination to be respected,
or a right to secession should the constitution be
violated.
(v) Lastly, they want a fair process to settle
“disputed territories” - particularly a referendum
to allow the province of Kirkuk to join the
Kurdistan region. This is not aggression: it is no
more than the refusal to grant Arabs the right of
conquest, or of colonial settler infusion, which
should be familiar to supporters of international
law.
In the Financial Times of August 16 2005, the day
after the deadline set by the US administration in
the Transitional Administrative Law for the draft
constitution of Iraq, the Prime Minister of the
Kurdistan Region observed that “Kurdistan’s leaders
do not have a free hand, either to forget the past
or to remake the future. The decision to accept the
constitution will not be made by me or the
president…, but by our National Assembly, and by our
people voting in a referendum. If Kurdistan’s red
lines are not met… our people will reject any new
constitution” [1].
Before this statement was published I had watched
Kurdistan’s President, recently chosen by its
elected National Assembly, make a solemn promise in
advance, on public television. Masoud Barzani
promised not to sign an agreement in Baghdad on the
15th of August or after. Any draft, he declared,
must be brought back to the Kurdistan National
Assembly. That parliament may then guide Kurdish
voters to vote for or against the ratification
referendum scheduled for October 15. Two thirds of
the voters in each of the three of the governorates
presently encompassed in the Kurdistan Region would
be sufficient to defeat the constitution.
Kurdistan’s platform, comprehensible once one
understands its recent history, is, strangely,
portrayed as ‘maximalist’, or as ‘unreasonable’ by
many Europeans and Americans. They see Kurdistan
taking advantage of its role as the US’s ally. I see
only remarkable collective self-restraint. Arabists
and Islamists in the wider world, of course, see the
Kurds as part of a plot to break-up Iraq in
America’s interests. If so, the plot is well-hidden
among US policymakers.
[1]. Nechirvan Barzani,
“Why Kurdistan Insists on Kirkuk”, Financial Times,
August 16 2005.
But what of the Arabs, the largest of the
nationalities of Iraq? Notoriously any encounter
with Iraq shows how divided they are - into the
Shi‘a majority and the formerly dominant Sunni
minority, each of which now has the potential to
become a separate nation-state. This division is not
one invented by foreigners, and indeed it is one the
Americans, ham-fistedly, have sought to bridge with
their “all should just be Iraqis” formula. Masoud
Barzani complained last August 15 that he should not
have to resolve within half an hour disagreements
between Shi‘a and Sunni of “thirteen hundred years”
standing.
The palpable reality of deep sectarian division
among Arabs is simply ignored by those who casually
talk of a nationalist “Iraqi resistance”. The
B‘athist and Islamist insurgents at war with US
troops, and their multi-national allies, are mostly
Sunni Arabs. But they are also at war with the Shi‘a
dominated and properly elected Iraqi government. The
jihadists among them are trying to provoke the Shi‘a
Arabs into a sectarian war – believing it will
hasten America’s departure. The methods they use –
suicide bombings in market-places and outside
mosques - are terrorist by almost anyone’s
definition. The exception is that repulsive branch
of Islamist thought which decrees that Allah will
decide the guilt or innocence of murdered civilians
and children - and thereby licenses the complete
abandonment of the moral control placed on guerrilla
warfare by the notion of minimizing “collateral
damage” to non-combatants. What is their agenda? It
is not mad; but it is not democratic, federal or
pluralist. The jihadist insurgents and the B‘athists
want the Americans to leave, and then to restore the
supremacy of Sunni Arabs. They will leave their
internal disputes, perhaps, until later.
The Shi‘a Arabs, by contrast, want the Americans to
go when they can control Arab Iraq, what I hereafter
refer to as Mesopotamia. “Please go, but for Allah’s
sake stay a little longer” is their considered
refrain to Washington. For now, it is the Shi‘a
Arabs who matter, because the Sunni Arab insurgents
cannot win, unless Washington decides on an
undignified exit. In response to the jihadists’
provocations, and perhaps not just in response, the
Shi‘a militia, notably the Badr Brigades, are
killing B‘athists, past and present.
If Shi‘a Arabs had a free hand they would re-shape
all of Iraq in their image, but they don’t agree
what that is. They are, presently, more disunited
than Kurds. Some want an Iraq that looks like Iran,
a theocracy, replete with the shari‘a, outlawing
alcohol, and the repression of women. They may get
their way in provinces where they are strong, and in
some places Islamic vigilantes are engaged in
Koranic enforcement. But not all Shi‘a Arabs conform
to this stereotype. Some lived in exile in Iran,
astringent therapy for those who want an Islamic
state. Some insist that they are as Arab as they are
Shi‘a, and are wary of imitating Iran, or of
becoming Tehran’s clients. Others are secular. They
vary, in short, between those who want to govern all
of Iraq (including Kurdistan), those who confine
their ambitions to Arab Iraq (Mesopotamia), and
those who confine their ambitions to self-government
in Shi‘a dominated Arab Iraq (Baghdad and the
South). This internal division among them may
scuttle an agreement. Those who want to govern
beyond Shi‘astan want to make a deal with Sunni
Arabs; those who want to govern primarily in
Shi‘astan are willing to make a deal with Kurdistan.
Shi‘a Arabs and Kurds were Saddam’s primary victims.
Will that enable them to make a constitutional
bargain? Perhaps. That is the logic of the
situation, the one Sunni Arabs want to prevent, by
fair means or foul, including manipulating the logic
of “inclusion” insisted upon by American and
European diplomacy.
Key Shi‘a Arab leaders agree with Kurdistan on
democracy, and on federalism, in principle.
Democracy brought the Shi‘a Arabs to power – against
the wishes and plans of the Bush administration. So,
they are not opposed to democracy; on the contrary.
But Shi‘a Arabs have been wedded to a “majoritarian”
conception of democracy - in which the majority can
do what it wants, with no constraints to protect
human or minority rights, no restraints imposed by
what Germans sensibly call “Basic Law”. That
majoritarian conception has been reflected in many
of the draft constitutional proposals from the
parties that comprise the United Iraqi Alliance, and
in their decision to over-ride in the Iraqi Assembly
most of the more careful decisions of the
sub-committees on the constitution.
Constitutionalism requires the tempering of this
majoritarian impulse, and confining its full ambit
to the emergent “Shi‘astan” of the South. It would
be admirable, if in the interests of balance and
pluralism, Shi‘a Arabs agreed to divide their large
emergent region in two. But they are not presently
inclined to be generous. After all, who has been
generous to them in the twentieth century, and why
should they trust anyone’s promises? They are the
people who suffered Saddam’s revenge in 1991, when
Europe and America left them to his mercies. But,
most realistic Shi ‘a Arab leaders realize that they
cannot dictate to Kurdistan. After all its ministers
and peshmerga sustain the current Baghdad
government, and the President of Iraq, Jalal
Talabani, is a Kurd, precariously performing a
juggling act for Iraq and Kurdistan, at the risk of
losing support among Kurds and his own party.
Intelligent Shi‘a Arabs realize that a federal
bargain with Kurdistan is the price of Shi‘a
pre-eminence in Mesopotamia, and of secure
self-government for themselves.
Geology matters. Like the Kurds, many ordinary Shi‘a
Arabs and their leaders want regional control over
Iraq’s oil to ensure that locals benefit properly
for the first time, rather than a predatory central
government. Iraq’s black gold is in Kurdistan
(especially if it has Kirkuk) and in the Shi‘a
dominated southern provinces. Geology and politics
therefore favor a deal on regional stakes in natural
resources between Kurdistan and Shi‘astan.
Nor is this, in principle, a bad, grubby or
exclusionary deal, as suggested by alarmed Sunni
Arabs, and their apologists. Such ownership will
endow the new federal units with sufficient power to
make them work, and there can be financial
redistribution to help the less well-endowed
regions, and appropriate allocations raised for the
limited competences of the federal government.
Geography and demography also make a deal possible
over Kirkuk, because January’s elections show that
the United Iraqi Alliance, backed by Ayatollah
Sistani, has few voters there.
So Kurdistan and Shi‘a Arabs may be able make a
viable constitution that would clearly represent the
combined interests of over eighty per cent of Iraq’s
citizens, and would converge on democratic and
federal arrangements. That certainly needs to be
encouraged by domestic and foreign liberals.
Of course, it requires Shi ‘a Arabs to decide what
regional configuration they want for themselves.
Some want a large – nine province – South. The
leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic
Revolution in Iraq, Ayatollah Hakim, has become its
champion, with the likely backing of Ayatollah
Sistani. The weak incumbent Shi‘a prime minister, of
the Dawa party, appears to be reluctant to follow
this line. Hakim has almost certainly correctly
calculated where both the votes and the
ethno-religious sentiment lie, but the issue is not
resolved. But, what about the Sunni Arabs? And
others?
Fair questions. It will be best if Kurdistan and the
United Iraqi Alliance, their leaders and parties,
make a principled deal that ensures a fair
representation of minorities - including the
interests of Sunni Arabs. Addressing the rights of
Iraq’s Christians and other religious minorities
should not be too troublesome ---- they are more
threatened by Sunni wahhabists than by secular Kurds
or Shi‘a Islamists. Iraq’s smaller nationalities,
notably the Turkomen, can be fairly dealt with
through proportional representation and cultural
rights - such as they enjoy in Kurdistan, although
you won’t find Ankara saying so in public. The real
problem is the formerly dominant minority. For a
start there are no obviously representative leaders
of Sunni Arabs with whom to bargain.
Insurgent Sunni Arabs are at war with Shi‘a Arabs
and in their dreams would re-conquer Kurdistan. The
fallacy that they constitute an “Iraqi” nationalist
resistance should be laid to rest: it is an illusion
beloved by both Sunni Arabs and critics of America’s
decision to depose Saddam. The resistance is that of
a formerly dominant minority, and it is either
fascistic or religiously fanatical, or both, in
thought and deed; it is not a program of
self-government, to the extent that it is a program
it is one that demands to govern others against
their will. Their international jihadist supporters
in the Sunni world, notably al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia,
regard the Shi ‘a Arabs as heretics and treat Iraq
as a site for a holy war of redemption. They don’t
want to be, and cannot be part of the new
constitution. The success of the constitution must
be measured by their eventual defeat. They cannot be
“included”, directly, or indirectly. To treat with
others as their supposed interlocutors, as the Bush
administration has undoubtedly contemplated, only
serves to undermine the legitimacy of the
transitional Iraqi government.
The non-insurgent Sunni Arabs are hopelessly
divided. A minority are liberals, democrats, human
rights activists, excellent people, but most have
their heads cowed, for good reasons. Those abroad
tend to promote “civic Iraqi” agendas, which is
about as useful as saying secular prayers. More in
Mesopotamia are nostalgic for Saddam, or at least
for the Iraq before Saddam’s wars. They would,
preposterously, grant Kurdistan the deal Ba‘athists
offered --- but did not deliver on – in the 1960s
and early 1970s. It is such nostalgic reactionaries,
at best, who have been given voice and inclusion at
the insistence of the US, the UK and the Europeans –
a curious pay-off for the terrorism of their
insurgent brothers, and one that will yield no worth
while dividends. The Sunni Arabs in the
negotiations, both elected and unelected, have so
far refused, resolutely, to make any meaningful
concessions on federalism. In fact, most of them
want to postpone constitutional negotiations until
there are fresh elections – having worked out that
the boycott and intimidation harmed them they now
seek to manipulate the provisions of the
Transitional Administrative Law.
Not much sense can be expected from Sunni Arab
spokesmen like Salih al-Mutlak, of the “Iraqi
National Dialogue”, now their most widely quoted
spokesperson in the international media, desperate
for allegedly informed comment. He recently said
that “no one can overlook a community that makes up
42 per cent of the Iraqi population”. He must have
arrived at this peculiar demography by counting
everyone who did not vote in January’s election as a
Sunni Arab. But perhaps I am being unfair, perhaps
he was misquoted, and seeks to count Kurds as Sunni
Arabs! But, Al Mutlak is symptomatic. He and people
like him need therapy to cope with their community’s
loss of power. The name of his organization is just
as symptomatic. It is a law of politics that an
organization that calls itself “Dialogue” promotes
monologue.
Most prominent Sunni Arabs speak the same monologue:
“We don’t want federalism because it will break up
the country; we want a strong centralized Iraq”.
What they don’t say is that they want an Iraq in
which they come back to power (and settle matters
among their secular B’athists and Islamists). Yet,
it is precisely these platforms, with low levels of
electoral support, that the extraordinary majority
of the peoples of Iraq are being asked, by
outsiders, to “include” in the negotiated deal.
Americans and Europeans have themselves to blame for
not seeing that realism and principle point in
another, more productive direction. What the
Kurdistan Alliance and the Shi‘a dominated United
Iraqi Alliance must try to do in the next few days
is to make a bargain. It must have sufficient
protections – in human rights provisions, local
self-government, security arrangements, and the
distribution of oil and revenue resources – to
ensure that enough Sunni Arabs will not oppose the
new constitution when it is put to referendum in
October 15.
It will not be easy, but it can be done, although
time is running out. Sunni Arabs constitute a
majority in four of Iraq’s governorates, eighteen of
which were established under Saddam. To vote down
the constitution Sunni Arabs need to mobilize two
thirds of the voters to vote “No” in three of these
governorates. They can deliver such an outcome in
Anbar and Salahaddin, but, in my view, are most
unlikely to be able to do so in Nineva (where there
is a significant Kurdish population as well as
Christian minorities), or in Diyala, where there are
significant numbers of Shi‘a Arabs and Kurds. In
these two provinces, provided they are supported,
the relevant minorities can go to the polls to stop
a jihadist victory or a B‘athist restoration
(whichever they fear most). Boycotts and
intimidation that al-Qaeda and others will try to
impose would only help a “Yes” vote.
This is not to recommend that an unprincipled
constitution be rammed down the throats of Sunni
Arabs. Their legitimate interests in self-government
and human rights must be protected. But it is to say
that their legitimate interests do not include
holding the rest of Iraq to ransom, and there is a
major difference between claiming the right to
self-government and the right to govern others in a
away that they reject. Sunni Arab leaders are like
the traditional husband who has battered two wives,
and who insists – threateningly - that both of them
must come back to the old home. He promises things
will be better, and recalls past honeymoons, but
neither his fantasies nor his nostalgia are
persuasive to the spouses who know his past.
Provided that a constitutional draft largely
composed by the Kurdistan and United Iraqi alliances
protects the core interests of Sunni Arabs it is a
fair bet that some Sunni Arabs will not vote against
the constitution. To do so would be to invite a
deepened civil war in which they only have more to
lose.
In short: there is a demographic, democratic,
reasonable and realist constitutional path to the
renewal of Iraq, in principle, as a democratic and
pluralist federation. Of course, that does not mean
that outcome is going to occur, but it does suggest
that Europe and America, and its politicians,
diplomats and intellectuals, might adjust themselves
to that feasible possibility, and help its birth,
rather than block it .
The negotiations, of course, are not being left
“just” to the major and minor players in Iraq.
Baghdad is awash with outsiders rendering advice –
often on behalf of the Sunni Arabs, or with their
own largely irrelevant agendas on how to make Iraq a
nation-state. If the outsiders are not there, then
they transmit their advice electronically. The UN is
in town, as have been former lead players from the
Organization for Security and Co-operation in
Europe. It is not clear these external
organizations, as opposed to the immediate advisors
to the local negotiators, are of any great help,
because they fail to see the bargain that must be
made.
When the Transitional Administrative Law was made in
the Spring of 2004 the Bush administration was in
control of the wheel. That’s no longer so. But the
US’s Ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, is doing his best
to be an authoritative back-seat driver. To finish
his job effectively, however, he will have to depart
from Washington’s script; he has shown some signs of
being willing to do so, but is handicapped by his
“inclusive” rules of engagement.
The Bush administration has wanted a centralized
(rather than federal and pluralist) Iraq for only
two reasons that make any sense, at least to me.
First, to have an Iraq that is a counterweight to
Iran. (It had hoped it would also be secular). That
cause is lost; Iran and Shi‘a Arab Iraq, at least,
will be at peace. The most feasible emergent
political settlement will leave Shi ‘a Arabs free to
make their religious choices in the South. Second,
the Bush administration has wanted to appease
Turkey’s fears of an independent Kurdistan. But, the
best way to discourage an independent Kurdistan is
to promote an Iraq that Kurdistan accepts, namely, a
democratic, pluralist and federal Iraq that meets
Kurdistan’s “red lines”. Turkey’s accession process
to the European Union admirably serves to restrain
the Kemalist instincts of some of its military.
The Bush administration has neither been a competent
imperialist, as suggested by its European critics,
nor an intelligent democracy-exporter, as claimed by
some of its supporters. If it had been comprised of
the ruthless oil-stealing imperialists its opponents
imagine then dividing Iraq, and having a sovereign
Kurdistan and a sovereign “Shi‘astan” able to supply
large amounts of oil to the world-market would have
been its smart strategic choice. In short, it has
not sought to do what Osama bin Laden has said it is
trying to do. If, by contrast, as it has claimed,
the Bush administration had been interested in
promoting a democratic Iraq, and transforming the
Middle East, then it would have worked out a long
time ago that it should support and broker a
settlement between Kurdistan and the United Iraqi
Alliance, while encouraging them to make a
settlement that was fair to Sunni Arabs – which is
not the same as supporting their so-called leaders’
unappeasable demands.
As negotiations splutter toward the second deadline
it is past time that outsiders, especially Americans
and Europeans, reframe their thinking, morally and
politically. I fear, however, that it will be too
late. It won’t only be the Americans who should be
held responsible if there is a full-scale
constitutional train-wreck. August 19 2005.
© Brendan O’Leary, If you wish to publish or
republish part of this article please contact the
author at: boleary@sas.upenn.edu Brendan O’Leary,
constitutional advisor to the Kurdistan Government,
presently in Iraq, offers a personal perspective on
the constitutional negotiations in Baghdad. He is
Lauder Professor of Political Science at the
University of Pennsylvania and co-editor of The
Future of Kurdistan in Iraq.
www.krg.org
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