Decentralizing Iraq: More perspectives

"The prospect of a low intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq is probably more likely at this stage than a successful and substantial transition to a stable democracy," wrote William Patey, "Britain's outgoing ambassador in Baghdad" in his final "diplomatic telegram" to Prime Minister Tony Blair and others. [1]

"A decade ago, Bosnia was torn apart by ethnic cleansing and facing its demise as a single country. After much hesitation, the United States stepped in decisively with the Dayton Accords, which kept the country whole by, paradoxically, dividing it into ethnic federations, even allowing Muslims, Croats and Serbs to retain separate armies. With the help of American and other forces, Bosnians have lived a decade in relative peace and are now slowly strengthening their common central government, including disbanding those separate armies last year.
Now the Bush administration, despite its profound strategic misjudgments in Iraq, has a similar opportunity. To seize it, however, America must get beyond the present false choice between “staying the course” and “bringing the troops home now” and choose a third way that would wind down our military presence responsibly while preventing chaos and preserving our key security goals.
. . . Things are already heading toward partition: increasingly, each community supports federalism, if only as a last resort. The Sunnis, who until recently believed they would retake power in Iraq, are beginning to recognize that they won’t and don’t want to live in a Shiite-controlled, highly centralized state with laws enforced by sectarian militias. The Shiites know they can dominate the government, but they can’t defeat a Sunni insurrection. The Kurds will not give up their 15-year-old autonomy.
Some will say moving toward strong regionalism would ignite sectarian cleansing. But that’s exactly what is going on already, in ever-bigger waves. Others will argue that it would lead to partition. But a breakup is already under way. As it was in Bosnia, a strong federal system is a viable means to prevent both perils in Iraq." [2]

"This [decentralization] plan is consistent with Iraq's constitution, which already provides for the country's 18 provinces to join together in regions, with their own security forces and control over most day-to-day issues. This plan is the only idea on the table for dealing with the militias, which are likely to retreat to their respective regions instead of engaging in acts of violence. This plan is consistent with a strong central government that has clearly defined responsibilities. Indeed, it provides an agenda for that government, whose mere existence will not end sectarian violence. This plan is not partition -- in fact, it may be the only way to prevent violent partition and preserve a unified Iraq. . . . We would maintain Baghdad as a federal city, belonging to no one region. And we would require international peacekeepers for other mixed cities to support local security forces and further protect minorities." [13]

"I am not recommending the break up of Iraq. I am simply saying that it has happened.
But I see no reason to hold countries together against the will of their people. We lived with the break up of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Just like Iraq, these were multinational states put together after WWI and held together by force. The real issue is not the break up but avoiding the violence that can accompany it.
Alas, we have not learned the lesson of Yugoslavia where we put all efforts into preventing a break up--a futile task-- when we should focus on stopping the war." [3]

"Iraq's territorial integrity should be reinforced through a regional nonaggression pact, which must be achieved through active international diplomacy. As a first step, a regional security conference should be convened, where Iraq's neighbors, including Iran, should be encouraged to pledge respect for Iraq's borders and its federal system and to establish procedures to implement a nonaggression plan. Iraq's neighbors have strong incentives to try to make such a deal work. For Turkey, it would be the best way to avoid Kurdistan's becoming a separate state and a rallying point for separatist Kurds in Turkey. States with majority Sunni populations, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, would find consolation in the fact that Iraqi Shiites and Iran would not be controlling all of Iraq. For Iran, stability in Iraq would help it avoid new and unsettling confrontations with other countries.
. . . Uniting Iraq by decentralizing it is not likely to make most Iraqis happy, but it is a plan that gives each group most of what it considers essential: re-blessed autonomy for the Kurds, some degree of autonomy and money for the Sunnis, and for the Shiites, the historic freedom to rule themselves and enjoy their future riches." [4]

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman said, "I think we need to try a last-ditch Bosnia-like peace conference that would bring together all of Iraq's factions and neighbors . . . As in Bosnia, any solution will have to be some form of federalism, a division of oil wealth and policing by an international force, where needed. For such a conference to come about, though, the U.S. would probably need to declare its intention to leave. Iraqis, other Arabs, Europeans and Chinese will get serious about helping to salvage Iraq only if they believe we are leaving and it will damage their interests.
. . . Some fear that Iran will be the winner. But will it? Once we are out of Iraq, Iran will have to manage the boiling pot next door. That will be a huge problem for Iran. The historical enmity toward Iran by Iraqi Arabs -- enmity temporarily focused on us -- will re-emerge. And Iran will also have to compete with its ally Syria for influence in Iraq." [5]

"Historian Bernard Lewis . . . suggests that while many of the notions that the West associates with the nation-state, including ideas of citizenship . . . eventually found their way into the Middle East, they took root there in a very different form, partly because of the political ramifications of Islam. He points out that in the West the nation is the guiding category of allegiance, under which religious affiliations are grouped; but the opposite is true in much of the Middle East. Religion is the unifying principle, and nations associate under its banner." [6]

"Last year I asked a retired Israeli intelligence officer what he thought about the American struggle to create a new Iraq. 'Forget it,' he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. 'Iraq is not a real country. Let it dissolve into its parts.' " [7]

DAN W. (ARLINGTON, VA): "If the Iraqis cannot resolve their tribal differences without war why can't the UN step similar to OSCE in Bosnia and Kosovo and simply separate them into their respective enclaves under armed guard until they resolve to settle their differences."
PETER GALBRAITH: "Neither the UN nor any of its members is going to be willing to put its troops into harm's way in the midst of a civil war." [3]

"The de facto partition of Iraq has already begun, and we can see what a brutal process it is -- especially around Baghdad, the epicenter of sectarian violence . . . It's hard to imagine that things could get worse. But they almost certainly would the moment it became clear that the United States had given up on a unified Iraq. That would unleash a violent separation of populations and wholesale killing until Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish militias established what they considered defensible boundaries. In this initial separation, tens of thousands could be killed. (The Indian subcontinent still shudders from the trauma of the India-Pakistan partition almost 60 years ago.) Once stable ethnic cantons were established, the killing would diminish but not stop. In Lebanon, the separation phase was followed by 16 years of civil war that included sniping and artillery duels across the 'green lines' that separated the cantons.
. . . A partitioned Iraq, too, would risk being carved up by the regional powers, with Iran enfolding the Shiites in its wings, Turkey setting brutal red lines for the Kurds lest they try to wrest away a chunk of its own turf, and the Syrians and Jordanians sharing the thankless task of trying to maintain order among the Sunnis. Not an appealing prospect.
. . . The Kurds, for all their tragic history, have been part of the problem in post-liberation Iraq, too, by pushing their own agenda for greater self-rule so hard.
. . . In the end, accepting partition may amount to accepting reality -- but that's a measure of just how bad things have gotten in Iraq." [7]

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: "Well, the unity government that they've formed; the armed forces that continue to fight; the people who continue to show up to serve in the police forces or in the army, despite the violence that is being done against them; the fact that their neighbors are rallying around them; the fact that you have a prime minister who sits with a national unity government to make policy every day. Those are very strong indications that these are people who want to live together. They've had plenty of opportunity to say, "No, we would rather live as Kurds, and Shia, and Sunni." That's not what they've done. In fact, the Kurds, who everybody accused of being just ready to secede any moment, the president of Iraq is a Kurd. He's one of the founding fathers, if you will, of a new Iraq." [8]

Qubad Talabany, Representative of the Kurdistan, said that "Kurdish leaders played a key role in bringing Sunni Arabs into the political process . . . many thousands of Kurds have joined the Iraqi security forces and have led the fight against terrorists, not only for the protection of Kurdistan but also to ensure victory in Iraq." [9]

"The top Kurdish politicians in Iraq officially are not pushing for an independent Kurdistan. They are all too aware that a Kurdish nation would draw intense hostility from Turkey, Iran and Syria, which all have Kurdish minorities chafing to raise their own flag. . . . Here in Kurdistan, the people are open about their reluctance to participate in the project of a greater Iraq. In January 2005, 98 percent of Kurds voted for independence in an unofficial referendum." [14]

"Jaafari was nominated with the approval of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, but against the will of the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraqi (SCIRI), the biggest party within the Shiite alliance. There have been tensions between SCIRI and the Sadr camp for some time. Sadr wants to see a uniform state "from Kurdistan to Basra," while SCIRI favors a federalist model and wants to establish an autonomous Shiite region in southern Iraq. While Sadr seeks cooperation with the Sunni insurgency against the US occupation, SCIRI prefers to avoid open confrontation with the Americans.
. . . Neighboring countries are showing increased interest in Iraq's troubles. Iran, in particular, has been systematically strengthening its dominant position in the south for months. Muqtada al-Sadr, who was in Beirut on the day of the attack on the Shiite shrine in Samarra, first traveled to Iran before returning to Iraq, where he addressed his supporters in Basra, Amara and Najaf -- a detour that speaks volumes. Sadr then unleashed his militias while at the same time calling for calm.
. . . As Iran becomes more powerful in Iraq, Damascus, Amman and Riyadh are increasingly tempted to rush to the aid of their fellow Sunnis in the country. 'The day will come,' says Mustafa Alani of the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, 'when the Arab neighbors will cooperate with the resistance movement -- not with terrorists like Zarqawi, but with groups that fear partition or complete Shiite dominance.' " [10]

The Sunni speaker of the Iraqi Parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani's "strong stand against regional autonomy has angered Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, one of the most powerful Shiite leaders, Mr. Othman said. The Sunni Arabs, who make up a fifth of the population, are generally wary of autonomy because they suspect that the Kurds and the Shiites will hoard oil wealth in their regions. The majority Sunni provinces in Iraq have little oil compared to the Kurdish north or Shiite south." [11]

"Iraq's neighbors are just as fractured as Iraq itself. Should Iraq fragment, voices for secession elsewhere will gain strength. The dynamic is clear: One oppressed group with a sense of national identity stakes a claim to independence and goes to war to achieve it. As long as that group isn't crushed immediately, others with similar goals can be inspired to do the same.
The various civil wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s provide a good example. Slovenia was determined to declare independence, which led the Croats to follow suit. When the Serbs opposed Croatian secession from Yugoslavia by force, the first of the Yugoslav civil wars broke out. The European Union foolishly recognized both Slovene and Croatian independence, hoping that would end the bloodshed. However, many Bosnian Muslims wanted independence, and when they saw the Slovenes and Croats rewarded for their revolts, they pursued the same course. The new Bosnian government feared that if it did not declare independence, Serbia and Croatia would gobble up the respective Serb- and Croat-inhabited parts of their country. When Bosnia held a March 1992 referendum on independence, 98 percent voted in favor. The barricades went up all over Sarajevo the next day, kicking off the worst of the Balkan civil wars.
It didn't stop there. The eventual success of the Bosnians -- even after four years of war -- was an important element in the thinking of Kosovar Albanians when they agitated against the Serbian government in 1997-98. Serbian repression sparked an escalation toward independence that ended in the 1999 Kosovo War between NATO and Serbia. Kosovo, in turn, inspired Albanians in Macedonia to launch a guerrilla war against the Skopje government in hope of achieving the same or better." [12]

"The type of cross-border disputes occurring in Kurdistan could spread across Iraq should the country splinter. Some Shiite leaders are working to create a nine-province autonomous Shiite region in the south, one that would include the oil fields around Basra. If this were to happen in the context of a large-scale civil war, Saudi Arabia and Syria, countries with Sunni Arab majorities, could openly back Sunni militias in Iraq against the Iranian-supported Shiite fief." [14]

sources
[1] BBC. Iraq civil war warning for Blair. August 3, 2006.
[2] The New York Times. Unity through autonomy in Iraq. May 1, 2006.
[3] The Washington Post. Book World. Live discussion with the Book World and reviewers. Peter Galbraith. Author, "The End of Iraq." August 8, 2006.
[4] Foreign Affairs. What to do in Iraq: A roundtable. July/August 2006.
[5] The New York Times. Time for Plan B. August 4, 2006. (TIMES SELECT).
[6] The New York Times. Labyrinthine complexities of fighting a terror war. August 7, 2006. (TIMES SELECT).
[7] The Washington Post. The center cannot hold: A former U.S. ambassador argues that we must split Iraq into three pieces or face even more bloodshed. August 6, 2006.
[8] MSNBC. Hardball. Condoleezza Rice on Iraq, Lebanon and Cuba: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tells NBC’s David Gregory that there are ‘sectarian differences in Iraq,’ but it is not a civil war. August 4, 2006.
[9] The New York Times. Iraqi Kurds' Key Role. August 2, 2006. (TIMES SELECT).
[10] Der Spiegel. The battle of the militias. Religious strife is pushing Iraq towards civil war. March 6, 2006.
[11] The New York Times. Speaker of Iraqi Parliament May Step Down. August 15, 2006. (TIMES SELECT).
[12] The Washington Post. What Next? August 20, 2006.
[13] The Washington Post. A Plan to Hold Iraq Together. August 24, 2006.
[14] The New York Times. For an Iraq Cut in 3, Cast a Wary Glance at Kurdistan. August 27, 2006.

related postings
[1] Al-Hakim supports decentralization. July 31, 2006.
[2] Crack Iraq (If it works for the Kurds . . .). July 26, 2006.
[3] Africa and Iraq postscript (alternative solutions to the war in Iraq included). July 08, 2006.

posted: august 10, 2006, 11:12 PM ET
update: august 27, 2006, 5:11 AM ET