Reidar Visser’s latest (Sept. 17) analysis of the political decentralization issue in Iraq is really worth reading. I don’t have time to comment on it here. (I’m just off to breakfast at the Carter Center.) But any of you who are interested in the internal dynamics within Iraq should read it with care.
Visser, crucially, doesn’t seem to buy in to what is increasingly becoming the “received wisdom” in much of US discourse– and now, too, I note, from Kofi Annan as well!– about the imminence and almost inevitability of a Sunni-Shiite civil war.
He writes that a path for US policymakers that would be better than their current one would be,
- tapping into existing Iraqi nationalist sentiment. Ideas about a possible four-years moratorium on any federalism south of Kurdistan have circulated for some time among Sunnis and nationalist and Islamist Shiites; this could be justified as an attempt at giving Iraq a chance to get up and running again, to function as a normal, oil-rich, bi-national (Arab–Kurdish) federation, without the perversions of the Baathist regime (the move would be constitutional as part of the special revision process). This sort of “restoration of Baghdad” is regularly called for in newspaper interviews with ordinary citizens who think federalism is merely a politician’s tool designed to facilitate the self-aggrandisement of a tiny elite. Tired of militia strife, even the regionalists in the far south – possibly the Shiite pro-federal current that enjoys the greatest degree of cross-party backing locally – might well be mollified by the emergence of a genuinely national government in Baghdad capable of addressing concerns about regional underdevelopment.
If this trend should continue to grow inside the Iraqi parliament, the United States could find a way of supporting it as a policy alternative, without interfering directly. Washington would be able to expect a vastly improved security situation in the wake of serious Shiite–Sunni rapprochement, and should therefore be in a position to offer an accelerated withdrawal of forces in exchange for postponement of the federalism issue. At the very least, US officials could make an honest attempt at spelling out the security implications (and the likely prospect for a reduced foreign troop presence) of a rapid restoration of an effective unified government south of Kurdistan – versus what can arguably be described as the more risky option of devolution, where terrorists could be tempted to interfere at every single juncture along the road to new regions, and where external stabilisation forces might be required in greater measure. By choosing this sort of approach, Washington would be able to communicate with and build on Iraqi nationalist sentiment that is present among Shiite and Sunni Islamists alike, instead of creating further antagonisms through attempts at hypnotising Iraq’s entire population into a pro-federal trance.
I guess I wished I shared more of Visser’s presuppositions about the Bushists’ policies– such as that they are made on the basis of broad knowledge and colly applied reason, or that they are motivated above all by a desire for the wellbeing of the Iraqi people… But maybe they are open to reason at this point?
His observations about and analysis of what has been going on inside Iraqi politics, however, seem to me extremely informative. Just one question, though? After Hakim’s failure to get his decentralization legislation rammed through last week, what is the possibility he’ll be coming back with new attempts in the near future?
وفي هذا الاطار يؤكد النائب الشيعي في البرلمان العراقي أياد السيّد أن .
http://www.assafir.com/iso/today/world/1973.html
Bush and Cheney open to reason? No way.
“Cheney told the [National Automobile Dealers Association] that modern automobiles are ‘marvels of design, performance and reliability. … You’re part of the reason America remains among the strongest economies in the world.'”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/19/AR2006091900599.html
“Standard & Poor’s said Thursday it is cutting GM (GM) and Ford Motor (F) debt ratings to junk status.”
http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2005-05-05-gm-junk_x.htm
Helena, I agree that another attempt at this seems likely. In fact, the Iraqi parliament is scheduled to revisit the debate on Saturday. But the scepticism to federalism, even from within Shiite circles, seems to have been greater than its proponents expected. My impression is that, even in the middle of the ongoing violence, the bedrock of nationalist Iraqi sentiment is more formidable than news reports would like us to believe. But alas, reporting of these latest discussions on decentralisation has been quite typical: when the scheme for a Shiite region is announced, it makes sensationalist headlines (“The Shiites Have A Division Plan!!” etc.); when it suffers a setback and delays due to internal resistance and Iraqi nationalist ideas, this hardly gets any coverage at all. In that way, examples of centrist and nationalist thought in Iraqi public opinion drown in media reports, and this is certainly unfortunate.
Yes, Reidar, you’ve written about this “media effect” before, and I am convinced that it exists. (I.e., that the support among Iraqis for splittist policies is lower than the western media would have us believe.) I wonder to what extent this is due to “management” of the western media output from Iraq by the US military authorities, through their briefings etc? The evidence– based on the sources cited in many of these stories– suggests strongly that this is a non-trivial factor. But why would the US administrators choose to “brief” and to steer the coverage in this way? Is this just yet more of their attempt to keep Iraq looking like a dangerous situation about to spin out of control, and thereby to “justify” the US’s large continued troop presence?
Helena: incidentally, I discussed a related subject with the author of an interesting new blog yesterday; it is under the Maliki post. I briefly sketched out a few reasons why I think the “divide-and-rule” plot in this particular case does not seem to fit perfectly. My arguments mainly relate to US fears of Iran; what seemed to be genuine attempts at checking moves towards even greater fragmentation back in August 2005; as well as a diversity of motives within the oil sector, where not everyone is interested in fragmentation. I think the Western media are quite capable of creating this bias by themselves: straightforward partition stories make for dramatic headlines, whereas stories about subdivisions within the Shiite community are deemed too complex and longwinded for many audiences.
Helena, Reidar et al,
I think there is another reason why Western media have taken to this “inevitable Sunni-Shiite strife” scenario with such gusto. Having done something stupid, and found that there is no way of reversing it, the reaction is to say: The real problem pre-existed what I (the US) did. It doesn’t matter that much what I did, because this pre-existing problem (Sunni-Shiite differences) had to work itself out in any event. It isn’t just a lame excuse and a horrible distortion of history. It is also an insidious way of thinking, because it helps gear people up for the next horror (for instance: let’s now deal with the underlying problem by attacking Iran…) I think at least it behooves reasonable people to understand what is going on here, namely that Sunni-Shiite strife is serving for some as a moral palliative for what the US has done in Iraq, and for others (in the Bush administration, say) as a potential public-opinion springboard for doing even worse things.
(By the way, this question of “inevitable Sunni-Shiite strife” is one thing. The question of what US policy is–what the US is trying to accomplish by way of Iraqi national-government formation–is quite another. On the latter point, my jury is still out….