The Key to an Honorable Exit from Iraq
Now that the Obama administration has redoubled its military focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is worth remembering that Iraq is by no means a completed or “won” war. One hundred and forty-two thousand coalition troops are still deployed, mainly in a peacekeeping capacity.
It’s true that overall violence has remained low since the surge. However, the current Iraqi government, which just concluded a successful provincial election, operates today on what can only be described as a temporary truce agreement among various sectarian parties, and the future of this fragile country is by no means certain. In six weeks, the U.S. will begin an estimated sixteen-month withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq, so the conversation turns, albeit at a much more muted level than before, to the subject of exit strategies.
Dissent magazine is hosting a written symposium on this question, and one submission by a participant who has long devoted himself to the Iraq war and its bloody aftermath is a necessary read. Brendan O’Leary is an international constitutional adviser to the Kurdistan National Assembly and Government (KRG), who, having matured in the cask of Northern Ireland, is an expert on federalism and ethno-religious power sharing arrangements in post-colonial societies.
(To get a sense of O’Leary’s cogence in years past, read his brilliant rebuttal to the Baker-Hamilton report on Iraq.)
In 2005, O’Leary helped edit a collection of essays, published under the title The Future of Iraqi Kurdistan, which elegantly tied the historical struggle of the largest stateless people of the Middle East to their current ascendancy in post-Saddam Iraq. A strong defender of the Iraqi constitution, for which he also served as a Western consultant, he has been arguing for years that the political salvation of the country — the avoidance of genocidal civil war and partition — lay in this overlooked or dismissed founding document, ratified by four out of five voters in 2005 in a UN-certified election and composed by the elite of the Shiite party now known as ISCI (the Iraqi Supreme Council of Islam, formerly the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a name-change that is as significant as the precipitous decline of daily violence in the country).
Together with Kurdish leaders, the majority Muslim sect of Iraq placed every check on a centralized Iraq, which under Saddam had enabled every act of brutality visited upon religious and tribal minorities. Kurdistan, it was understood and then codified by the Iraqi framers, is an autonomous region with its own functioning legislature, judiciary, military, and industry, and it ought to be allowed to continue as such in order for Iraq’s largest non-Arab bloc to consent to any viable reconstructed Iraqi state. The constitution also allowed for all eighteen provinces — excluding Baghdad and Kirkuk — to combine into larger regions if they so choose, but if they do not, then the provinces are still entitled to significant rights of self-government.
As O’Leary writes:
The Constitution, in short, permits either a symmetrical federation, in which other regions are built with the same powers as Kurdistan, or an asymmetrical federation, in which the existing provinces of Arab-majority Iraq, by comparison with the KRG, choose to grant greater authority to the Baghdad government.
He adds that a common misreading of the 2009 provincial elections has it that the federalist idea was undercut by the victory of centralists, a fact owing more to the incompetence of the ISCI, which was effectively branded a handmaiden of Tehran. But it is important to remember that no elections were even held in the key region of Kurdistan or the contentious province of Kirkuk, which together make up a fifth of the entire country.
Furthermore, “[i]n no province did any Arab party or list win 50 percent of the vote, and in only one did any list come close,” meaning that power sharing, and an emphasis on local representation, remains the most attractive option for Arab Iraqis.
(Baathist holdovers and Sadrists who turned out to vote last February were not declaring their willingness to cooperate with each other in a pluralist, democratic Iraq; what “they promise is little more than competition over who will organize the first coup” — a reality that should be burned into Hillary Clinton’s cortex.)
will there be a no fly zone for the Turks or will there be more room under the bus for the Kurds. the notion of a strong Kurdistan freaks the Turks out. the Arabs want more control, poor Kurdistan so close to the United States, so far from God. what would Obama do?
“Honorable Exit?”
What a poor choice of phrase.
good article,thanks for the links…they were very informative.
joe biden was right abut something?broken clocks….know what i mean.
Iraq is lost and history will credit the Usurper with losing it. With a date certain, all the terrs have to do is wait until the US is gone, then dig up their guns or get new ones from Syris, Iran, KSA, etc. and the party is back on.
The left rejected this argument against a date certain and now they will find out how valid it is. They won’t have to pay for it however. The long suffering Iraq commoners will shed the blood for the left’s mistake.
Because it takes more then voting to make a democracy, Bush’s noble idea that Iraq could act as a seed bed for Democracy in the ME never really had a chance. What there was in Iraq was the opportunity to put in place some of the prerequisites for democracy.
Democracy requires a population literate enough to staff a bureaucracy that is reasonably free of corruption to the point where they can turn laws into rules that provide for all citizens a more or less level playing field. Democracy also requires citizens that are literate enough to read those rules and wealthy enough to have the leisure time to contemplate them. Somebody that just worked a 16 hour day and still has to feed the kids, take out the trash, do laundry, etc. before dropping exhausted into bed to do it all over again in a few hours hasn’t the time or energy to think about politics.
Given those 3 things and a little security, ANY society can develop it’s own brand of Democracy. Without them it is extremely difficult. The Usurper has kicked out the security leg that supports all the rest.
The left is going to claim that the Iraqi’s are capable of providing their own security. No evidence of that. When the Iraqi security forces get involved with the upcoming civil war in Iraq, they will become the biggest part of the problem, not part of the solution. It takes generations for a national military to become truly national and not an instrument of the latest Tyrant de’ Jour.
There have been US troops in Germany for 3 generations now (63 years). If the US withdrew those troops, within a decade the French and Germans would be back to killing each other. With Russia wanting in on the action too. No nations drops thousands of years of history in a generation or two. Or even three. Maybe in another 100 years Germany and France can be left alone in the same room without being restrained and searched for sharp objects.
I hope we do the Kurds right, after HW Bush told them to rise up against Saddam’s poison gas, and then threw them into hell.
Of course FDR did that to the Poles and eastern Europe, and Truman to N. Korea, and Kennedy to the Cubans, and the Ford era Democrat Congress to the Vietnamese, the Mung, the Cambodians.
Life is tough when you trust the US.
What did Obambi say to the Israelis? ….What ever. Jews aren’t that stupid.
Oh yeah. Those wonderful Kurds. Lets pump them up so they can take over eastern Turkey, Northern Iraq and north western Iran. Then everything will be just peachy. And while we’re at it maybe we should (sort of on the sly ) help them to acquire nuclear arms. Yeah, that’s the ticket. That will stabilize the WHOLLLLLLLLLE world.
scott, you just get a shipment in? I don’t see anyone except you advocating a greater Kurdistan with nuclear weapons.
Have you ever heard the term ” strawman argument “? Maybe you should google that. I would post a link, but you are the only one here that needs it and a little research would be good for you.
While Scott’s point may come across –with respect– a smidge histrionic, his underlying thesis does have merit.
However richly they may deserve it (and they surely do), care must be exercised in the nurturing of Kurdish empowerment. As indicated above, several states (notably Turkey) are a mite twitchy about the notion of Kurds having their way.
Still, supporting an emphasis on existing Constitutional provisions for a strongly federalist policy toward the KRG is just good sense. The kind of robust Kurdistan which is straining to burst forth would be a gusher of prosperity (literally) for the Iraqi state. As long as due tithes flow Baghdad way, and nationalistic sentiments are kept carefully in check, it is a win-win, North to South.
I think the position of the article is a tad over the line (I fear it underestimates the centrifugal forces that position’s implementation would amplify). However, somewhere short of Scott’s Scary Place there is a sensible spot where an existing reality can be yoked to the possibilities of an even better one to come.