Despite the
imminent formation of a government of national unity, Iraq is
splintering into its three historic provinces. The break-up can be
managed, but it cannot be avoided. The western powers and Iraqi
nationalists must now accept that radical federalism is the only
alternative to civil war
Sometime in the next few days or weeks, a government of national
unity will finally be formed in Iraq. This rare piece of good news
will briefly rekindle some of the optimism about the political
future of a unified Iraq that followed last December's election. But
the reality on the ground is that Iraq is breaking up. The Kurdish
north is largely independent and Basra, capital of the Shia south,
is increasingly falling out of Baghdad's orbit. Moreover, there is
anecdotal evidence of significant population movement—with Shias
leaving Sunni areas, Sunnis leaving Shia areas, and Kurds (and many
professionals of all identities) moving north to the relative
sanctuary of Kurdistan.
The partitioning, or rather radical decentralisation, of Iraq is
under way. This should not necessarily be seen as a problem.
Historical Iraq was a place of three semi-independent parts—Kurdish
north, Sunni centre and Shia south—within the loose framework of the
Ottoman empire. It is the centralised Iraq—starting with Britain's
creation of the modern state in 1921-23 and reaching its nadir in
nearly three decades of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship—that has
failed and should be allowed to die.
There are, however, powerful forces refusing to contemplate
partition or "hard federalism." The radical Shia movement led by
Muqtada al-Sadr, emerging as one of the most powerful groups in
Iraq, rejects federalism as a divide-and-rule tactic and defends
Iraqi identity in traditional nationalist terms. Opposition among
the Arab Sunnis who have traditionally dominated the state is even
stronger. Whether radical Islamists, ex-Ba'athists or secularists,
Arab Sunnis see federalism as undermining everything they have stood
for in nearly a century of Iraqi history.
The coalition—especially the British—is also opposed to further
decentralisation. On his recent visit to Baghdad Jack Straw refused
to discuss with Kurdish officials the distribution of power between
regions and the centre—and the British insist on talking about
Kurdish areas rather than a distinct Kurdistan region of Iraq. US
officials too are committed to the status quo, but a debate is
starting in Washington about how to respond to the new realities.
Peter Galbraith, former US ambassador to Croatia, recently said that
"a break-up has already taken place," and hoped that the
constitution's federal provisions would be effective enough to avoid
a "Bosnia-type" war.
Even if an Iraq dominated by its regions does come to be seen as
part of the solution rather than the problem, there are many
obstacles in its path. Turkey is nervous about an even more
independent Kurdish north, and Iran might come to dominate the Shia
south. Partition would also change the geopolitical balance of the
middle east in unpredictable ways and would be seen in many parts of
the world as an egregiously colonial parting act: what imperialists
can assemble they can also disassemble. Inside Iraq there is the
question of whether extensive population movement would be
necessary—especially in flashpoints like Kirkuk and Baghdad itself.
There is also the question of whether the two areas that have
oil—the Kurdish north and the Shia south—would distribute any
proceeds to the Sunni centre. And would there still be a place for a
national army in a semi-partitioned Iraq? If so, what authority
would it be answerable to? If not, would that increase the
possibility of conflict between the three new entities?
Before considering how the logic of radical decentralisation arises
from Iraq's own history, and examining various scenarios for the
country's constitutional future, an illusion must be dispelled: the
idea that Iraq already has a functioning federal constitution. Iraq
has great democratic achievements under its belt since 2003, but the
truth is that there is no agreement in the constitution over the
powers of the regions, the distribution of oil revenues, the
deployment of military forces, the control of borders or the role of
Islam, to name a few issues. Some optimists argue that the delay in
the formation of a new government is evidence that Iraqis are
forging a deal on these matters to last for generations. There is,
alas, little evidence for this. It would be truer to say that the
different ethnopolitical groupings are stockpiling arms and building
alliances, in case they have to fight for their interests.
Iraq as a powerful central state has already been shattered. Whether
as a result of Saddam's attacks on the rebelling Kurds and Shias
after the first Gulf war, the quasi-independence of the north since
1991, the rise of political Shi'ism in the south, or the mistakes of
the coalition since the 2003 invasion and its almost-total
dependence on ethnic and religiously based groups to govern the
country—there can be no going back. Kurdistan is already operating
as if it were an independent country in all but name. The Kurdistan
regional government (KRG) recently concluded deals with DNO, a
Norwegian oil company, to investigate oil reserves near Dohuk, with
the implication that the KRG, rather than the Iraqi government,
would legally own any resources. There is also an attempt to break
linguistically with Iraq—English is now being promoted as the second
language in Kurdish schools and colleges, replacing Arabic. But more
striking, perhaps, are the murmurings of secession in the south.
Some leading Shias have begun to consider Basra as the capital of a
southern region that would include Iraq's southern oilfields. One of
the most prominent is Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the
pro-Iranian Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq party
(SCIRI). His views put him sharply at odds with his fellow Shia
leader Muqtada al-Sadr who has an Iraqi nationalist's deep suspicion
of Iran.
The british invented Iraq as a modern state in the 1920s, but it had
long existed as a decentralised federal entity within the Ottoman
empire, known in Europe by its historic name Mesopotamia (and
locally as al-Iraq). The three Ottoman provinces of Mosul, Baghdad
and Basra developed in distinct but connected ways. Life in these
provinces was focused upon their major towns (of Mosul, Baghdad and
Basra) and each of them existed within separate geo-economic
spheres. Mosul was linked with Anatolia, Baghdad looked west to Arab
lands, and Basra had a "Gulf-centric" identity with connections to
India. The past three years have seen the re-emergence of these
regional identities: Kurdistan is the old Mosul province, the old
Baghdad and Basra provinces are now nicknamed "Sunnistan" and "Shiastan"
respectively.
In the aftermath of the first world war, the imposition in Iraq of a
European-style centralised state clashed with local habits, as
elsewhere in the former Ottoman empire. The empire is often seen as
having fostered cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic societies. This is true,
in the main, although Sunni-Shia tensions certainly existed in the
old Iraq and Kurds remained isolated in their mountains. But the
sociopolitical conditions that underlay the foundation of most
European nation states could not be found in Ottoman Iraq—there was
no dominant nation that came together to form a state. Meanwhile,
the structure that the British imposed—a constitutional monarchy in
their own image, based on strong control from the capital and
negligible power to the provinces—was a radical change from a system
that had worked well under the Ottomans. The idea that the British
created Iraq is widely repeated, but inaccurate. They did, however,
reinvent its internal structure.
The logic behind Iraq's new centralised structure made sense only
from the perspective of the British. Chairing the Cairo conference
in March 1921, Winston Churchill headed a "who's who" gathering
including TE Lawrence, Percy Cox, Gertrude Bell and the Emir Faisal,
son of the Sharif of Mecca and leader of the Arab revolt against the
Turks. Churchill's main concern was to secure Mesopotamia from any
threat from Turkey or Russia. For Bell, Cox and Lawrence, the
objective was to ensure the accession of Faisal, their wartime ally.
These priorities helped to implant the two main pathologies of the
modern Iraqi state. The Cairo conference saw to it that the non-Arab
Mosul province (Kurdistan) remained within the newly named and
centralised state of Iraq because of its oil, because its
inhabitants were Sunnis (from the British perspective, more
trustworthy than Shias), and because its mountainous terrain
provided the new state with natural defences. The conference also
nominated Faisal as king, thus ensuring that Sunni Arabs continued
to dominate the predominately Shia population, as they had in
Ottoman times. Iraq was therefore constructed with a non-Arab
minority, the Kurds, who objected to their inclusion in Iraq and to
the failure to grant them their own state, and a majority Shia
population that remained unimpressed with their Arab Sunni monarch
and his British backers.
It was this dominance of the institutions of the state by one group
that allowed the Ba'athist junta of 1968 and then Saddam Hussein to
turn Iraq from an authoritarian state into a totalitarian one. Under
Saddam, differences between and within communities were exploited as
a means to divide and rule. Saddam's Arab Sunni clique committed
acts of sectarian and ethnic aggression against the Shias and the
Kurds, and inevitably inflamed the country's enduring sectarian and
ethnic identities, as was seen in the aftermath of Saddam's defeat
in the first Gulf war in 1991. With the government seemingly on the
verge of collapse, a regional rebellion broke out in the Shia south
and a Kurdish one followed in the north. Although both rebellions
were quashed by Saddam's Republican Guard, the blueprint for the
current surge of political Shiism and Kurdish nationalism had been
written. The violence and the centrifugal forces we are witnessing
in today's Iraq are the reckoning for the 30 years of war that the
Sunni-dominated regime waged against the Shias and the Kurds.
Because modern Iraq was the creation of British imperialism, it has
become a cliché to describe it as an "artificial state." But one
should recall that under the Ottomans the three parts of Iraq had a
long association. Moreover, all states are to some extent artificial
constructs and nearly a century of existence has endowed Arab Iraq
with some sense of national identity. Outside of Kurdistan, Iraqis
today are almost unanimously loyal to such symbols of nationalism as
their flag and their rather successful football team. Many
historians claim that a regional identity existed before the state
was formed, and that Iraqi nationalism grew and prospered during the
20th century—at least in the Arab communities, among whom
anti-Iranian feeling also acted as a glue, especially during and
after the Iran-Iraq war. For promoters of this secular vision of
Iraqi nationalism, there has never been a sectarian problem in Iraq
between Sunnis and Shias, and the ethnic problem with Kurds was the
result of imperial meddling.
This appealing vision appears to have coloured the view of the US
administration as it geared up to remove Saddam; it seemed genuinely
to believe that an overriding sense of Iraqi unity would emerge
following the dictator's demise. Perhaps a primary error made by
both the US government and many western academics in the run-up to
the war was the implicit belief that most people in the world are
post-ethnic individualists, like Americans believe themselves to be.
The continuing hold of ethnic and sectarian allegiances was
underestimated. (Within academic circles, the focus upon ethnicity
as a politically mobilising force has become unfashionable, often
attracting the accusation of Orientalism or essentialism.) But the
vision of a unified, secular Iraq existed mainly among the middle
classes. Cosmopolitan Iraq could indeed be found in the urban spaces
of Baghdad and other major cities, but beyond these narrow confines
Iraqi identities remained conditioned by local colourings of
ethnicity and confessional background.
The evidence for this emerged after Saddam's removal in 2003.
Sectarian-inspired violence spread quickly, while the Kurds
consolidated their autonomy. The exponents of the "one Iraq" thesis
blamed coalition mismanagement for these developments. The occupiers
may not have helped, but the reason for the drumbeat of civil war
could be found in the particularist way that Iraqis began to
identify themselves in the absence of a strong centre.
Federalist thinking in modern Iraq was pioneered by the Kurds. By
the end of the 1990s, the freedom and independence of the Kurdish
north meant that they could impose their federal agenda on most of
the Iraqi opposition movements. But the fall of Saddam ushered in a
wider debate about different federal models, in which Shia notions
of administrative federalism clashed with the more ethnic definition
of the Kurds.
Which of the many possible federal models does the Iraqi
constitution mandate? The imprecise nature of the document—adopted
by referendum in October 2005—makes it hard to say. It describes
Iraq as being democratic, federal and representative. But it is
difficult to pin down exactly how these ideals will be achieved.
Kurdistan was "approbated" in the constitution and recognised as
existing within the boundaries of the 1991 entity—which did not
include any of the disputed territories, including Kirkuk. In
addition, provision is made in section 5 of the constitution for new
regions to establish themselves. The regional governments are held
responsible for all domestic affairs that lie outside those assigned
to the federal government, including the organisation of internal
security forces, and regional guards (known as militias, or
peshmerga in Kurdistan). The ownership of oil and gas reserves is
vague, but the emphasis of article 109 upon the federal government's
management of oil and gas from "current fields" has encouraged both
the Kurds and Shias to believe that new fields would be the property
of the region rather than the centre. Furthermore, the fact that
article 117 places regional law above federal law (at least for
those matters not designated as exclusively federal) again
emphasises the extent of possible decentralisation. However, all of
these federal provisions remain in question, and the constitution is
flanked by several supplementary deals, such as the famous "Kurd
veto," which remain shrouded in mystery and ambiguity.
If, however, those favouring a stronger national centre—above all
Muqtada's Shias and the Sunnis—were to prevail in the constitutional
debate, an attempt could be made to rein in the most independent
regions—by disbanding their regional guards, for example. Such a
development would antagonise the Kurds and the SCIRI-supporting
Shias in the south and could encourage them to take matters into
their own hands. The Kurds suspect that the current prime minister,
Ibrahim al-Jaafari, does want to pursue a recentralisation strategy,
with the support of Muqtada al-Sadr and the Arab Sunnis. But in its
present state, the Iraqi army could not occupy Kurdistan —many of
its most effective units are actually taken from the Kurdish
peshmerga. Similarly, the well-organised and well-funded
Iranian-backed Badr army of SCIRI is itching for an excuse to attack
the more Iraqi nationalist forces of Muqtada al-Sadr and settle
scores with other Shia militias. Even if al-Jaafari remains prime
minister, it is unlikely that the Iraqi government will risk
antagonising the two most powerful military forces in the country.
At the other end of the federal spectrum, and a novelty for the
middle east, is the idea of Iraq as a confederal state with a weak
central authority. Rather than Baghdad being the undisputed centre
of what is seen by many Arab Sunnis as the heart of Arab
nationalism, it would be the reduced administrative centre of a
state in which the regions, and primarily Kurdistan and Shiastan,
would be the real powers. Under these circumstances, no Iraqi
military forces could be based in Kurdistan without consent from the
Kurdistan national assembly; the boundaries with Turkey and Iran
would be policed by Kurds answering to Erbil rather than Baghdad,
and Kurdistan's new oil resources would be controlled by the KRG.
(Whether Kurdistan's existing oil reserves would remain under the
control of a weakened Baghdad would remain to be seen.)
A similar pattern could develop in the south, with SCIRI probably
becoming the leading political force and its military wing, the Badr
army, becoming regional guard. Control over the oilfields of the
south would be a source of dispute between Baghdad and Basra, but it
is unlikely that force could be exerted on such a strong region,
with a committed political leadership and capable military, from a
weakened centre.
Political leaders in both the north and the south realise that they
must tread carefully to reach their decentralising goals, and they
also realise that there are some advantages to a residual central
Iraqi state—a large single market, more clout on the international
stage and so on. Nonetheless, the radical decentralisation scenario
is the more likely of the two, if only because one of the confederal
entities, Kurdistan, already exists. The momentum behind the
formation of a Shia entity in the south remains strong, although it
may, at least temporarily, have been slowed by falling electoral
support for the pro-Iranian, pro-decentralisation SCIRI party. SCIRI
is thought to have won around 20 per cent of the votes in the
December election for the main Shia coalition, the United Iraqi
Aliance, considerably less than the 35 per cent for the parties
backing Muqtada al-Sadr. SCIRI, however, remains a force, and it
still controls nine out of 11 councils in the south. This pattern of
support and influence helps to explain why SCIRI is keen to build up
power at the regional level while Muqtada is happy to consolidate
the centre.
The push for a strong federalism, as with attempts at
recentralisation, could trigger serious conflict. The stand-off over
the premiership of Ibrahim al-Jaafari suggests that this is a real
possibility. If the Kurds and SCIRI succeed in ousting him from
power as a first step towards a looser Iraq, this could galvanise
those opposed to federalism into an Arab nationalist bloc willing to
take up arms in order to prevent what would be perceived as an
existential threat to Iraq. In this eventuality, different Shia
militias would turn on each other, particularly in Basra and
Baghdad, with Arab Sunni insurgents also heavily involved.
The Kurdish parties, meanwhile, would seize the opportunity to
secure their hold on Kirkuk, where they would face a challenge from
Shia Turkmen and Arab Shia followers of Muqtada al-Sadr. And if the
Kurdish leaders were to go as far as claiming all the disputed
territories—a broad arc that runs from Syria to the Iranian border,
including Sinjar, Makhmour, parts of Mosul, Tuz, Kirkuk, Khanaquin
and Mandali—then serious fighting would break out between local
communities and Kurdish liberators/ occupiers. Many of these areas
contain significant non-Kurdish populations, who, especially in the
area of Mosul, would react violently towards any threat to Iraq's
integrity. A similar pattern could be expected in the south of the
country, except that there would also be a strong possibility of
internal Shia conflict in addition to conflict between Sunnis and
Shias.
History may suggest that a loose confederation of three
semi-autonomous statelets is the best long-term solution for Iraq.
If the three main groups cannot even agree on a mild form of
federalism then the status quo will not hold for long. But if they
cannot agree on a modest federalism they are unlikely to agree on a
more radical untangling and, as we have seen, recentralisation is
also not a realistic option. The best hope for a resolution is to
convince some of the main opponents of a looser federation, in
particular Muqtada al-Sadr, that it is in their interests. This is
not impossible in the case of Muqtada. He has said that he is not
against federalism in principle, but as an Iraqi nationalist he is
suspicious of too much Iranian influence in the south. If, however,
Muqtada's party started to eclipse SCIRI in the south, his interest
in federalism might increase.
But even if the coalition and a big figure like Muqtada are
converted to federalism, there are still some large obstacles to
overcome. Opponents of decentralisation often point out that nearly
all of Iraq's urban centres have heterogeneous populations. Hard
federalism could speed up the ethnic-sectarian population movement
that is already under way, creating flashpoints where populations
are most mixed, including in Kirkuk, Mosul and Baghdad, in addition
to the scores of smaller towns and settlements across the centre of
the country. Since the fall of Saddam, Baghdad's dominant Sunni
identity has been increasingly challenged by the Shias of Sadr City.
And a similar potential confrontation awaits in Kirkuk. Should
Baghdad and Kirkuk be given some sort of special status within a
federal structure? It is an attractive idea but will not be popular
with the dominant groups in those cities.
The oil issue, by comparison, looks less serious. Some Kurdish and
Shia politicians view federalism as a means to seize control of
their local oilfields and make up for the decades during which the
Sunnis benefited disproportionately from the oil revenues. However,
looking around the world it is unusual for regions to hang on to oil
revenues when they are part of states, even decentralised ones. The
compromise that seems to be emerging is that revenues from old oil
will remain nationally distributed, but revenues from new oil will
stay in the region where it is found.
Another consideration is the reaction of Iraq's neighbours. The main
concern of Turkey, Iran and the Arab states is instability in Iraq.
If they are persuaded that radical federalism will reduce violence
and disorder then they will be less hostile. For Iran, the loosening
of Iraq has much to be said for it. It not only removes a threat to
Iran's western border, but also presents an opportunity for Iran to
reassert its influence in the spiritual centre of Shi'ism—much to
the irritation of the US. It is not just in Shiastan that one would
expect to see strong Iranian influence. Already in Kurdistan,
Iranian companies are investing heavily along the border, especially
in Suleimaniyah, and the ethnically-based link between Kurds and
Persians is openly spoken about in both places with pride.
Turkey is, of course, hostile to any independence for the Kurdistan
region. However, Turkish companies have already invested $1bn there
and its military and intelligence services work closely with those
of the Kurdistan Democratic party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
And given Turkey's desire to secure EU membership, it will be hard
for it to oppose a people demanding self-determination. Turkey's
opposition to Kurdistan will not be enough on its own to stop it.
The belief that Saddam's regime was the glue that held together the
fragmented mosaic of Iraq has proved to be true. It is now too late
to resurrect a strong centre. New political forces have emerged with
strong localised support and the ability to project power far more
effectively than the nascent institutions of the new Iraqi state.
These forces also have very different ideas as to how Iraq should be
constructed and what it will mean to be an Iraqi in the future. For
the Kurds, the problem is the legitimacy of the state itself. For
the Shia, it is the nature of the state. In an ideal world, the
Kurds would secede, with or without Kirkuk, and even without oil if
it meant establishing their own state. Kurdish politicians are
caught between satisfying a realist position in Baghdad and
representing an increasingly noisy secessionist voice in the north.
This Kurdish disenchantment with Iraq has not gone unnoticed among
the two main Arab groups and it is increasingly common to hear the
refrain, "let them leave if they wish to, but not with Kirkuk."
Until an Arab-dominated Iraqi army is in a position to attempt to
bring the Kurds back into Iraq, there will be little fighting in the
north. For that reason, a Quebec-like asymmetrical
decentralisation—in which the Kurdish region opts out of the Arab
Iraqi state for most purposes—is likely to be officially recognised
at some point soon.
The nature of the dispute between Sunnis and Shias is much more
complex, as it is about who controls the narrative of the Iraqi
state—what it means to be an Iraqi. For most of the 20th century,
the narrative was one of Arab Sunni nationalism. Now, the Shia are
struggling to win it back. The real struggle is in Baghdad and it is
imbued with the symbolism of ancient religious disputes from the
formative years of Islam itself. The struggle is further complicated
by the fact that whereas Shiastan has resources, a relatively
homogeneous population and a political leadership with some
legitimacy, none of this can be said of Sunnistan—the most unstable
part of Iraq.
The re-emergence of ethno-sectarian identities in Iraq should not
have taken policymakers or academics by surprise. The Soviet
collapse, for example, led to the intensification of ethnic conflict
in several successor states, including Georgia, Moldova and
Azerbaijan, and changes in the ethnic balance of power in Yugoslavia
quickly heralded that state's demise. Iraq is mirroring this pattern
closely.
America and Britain still have some influence over events. We need
to consider the most realistic and appropriate options still
available. The return to a looser form of the Iraq state is a
difficult process that requires careful management. If it can be
achieved with little bloodshed and disruption, it will be a great
prize. The alternative seems to be break-up by a long, low-level
civil war—which would be a stain on the western conscience for
decades to come.
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