Today’s NYT had an important article by Kanan Makiya, who was the most significant Iraqi to be an intellectual father of the whole 2003 US invasion of Iraq. Writing nowadays with a dateline of “London”, not “Baghdad”, Makiya comes the closest he has ever come yet to articulating a “mea culpa” regarding his role instigating the invasion of his homeland.
Makiya was the self-exiled Iraqi intellectual who in 1989 published in the US– under the pen-name Samir al-Khalil– a searing criticism of the totalitarian ways of Saddam Hussein’s rule. The book was very emotional, ill-organized, and departed in many ways from the norms of a political-science study. (Not surprising, since Kanan had never trained as any kind of a social scientist. He was an architect, educated in the west on the profits his father–also an architect– made designing massive palaces for Saddam.) But given the book’s target, and the gossipy insider-y feel Makiya was able to give it, it became a smashing hit. Especially, of course, the year after its publication when Saddam invaded Kuwait and suddenly anti-Saddamism flew to the top of the US political agenda.
Throughout the whole period 1990-2003 Makiya became increasingly influential– within the US political discourse, as well as in the growing international “community” of Iraqi political exiles. He was one of the early, or perhaps even founding members of Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress, which got large amounts of funding from the US during the 1990s. But in the US, Makiya always had much more appeal than Chalabi to people on the pro-human-rights-y “left” of the political spectrum. He became the most powerful and credible Iraqi figure able to swing large portions of the US “left” behind the idea of regime change in Iraq.
He was very active in Iraqi-oppositional circles as well. In 1992, he (and I think also Chalabi) took part in the inaugural meeting of the Kurdish “parliament”, a gathering that was held in Salahuldin, in the portion of northern Iraq that was protected from Saddamist power by the close and constant overflight of US (and British) war-planes.
In today’s NYT piece, Makiya offers a warning of almost jeremiad-like proportions about the prospects of an imminent breakup in Iraq and the chaos and civil strife that, he argues there, would almost certainly follow. (I’ll come back to that later.) He notes that this situation has come about because of the way that the country’s current Iraqi leaders have approached the idea of “federalism”. And he makes some fairly sane-sounding– though actually, at this point, not very realistic– suggestions about how a workable “federal system” might yet be salvaged for the country.
So it is not federalization itself that he’s criticizing, but the way that the current (still-unfinished) Iraqi constitution proposes doing it.
He writes this:
- Federalism first entered the lexicon of the Iraqi opposition in 1992, when the newly created Kurdish Parliament voted in favor of it as a way of governing the relation of Kurdistan to the rest of the country. That vote was ratified a few months later by a conference of the Iraqi opposition in Salahuldin, in northern Iraq.
…I was one of the idea’s most ardent Arab advocates. In Salahuldin, I delivered the keynote speech on the subject, not only endorsing the Kurdish Parliament’s decision, but presenting federalism as a general solution to the problems of the Iraqi state. A federalism based on Iraq’s existing 18 governorates broke the rotten mold of Iraqi and Arab politics, I argued. No Iraqi political organization could afford not to be for it, especially not one that called itself democratic…
Federalism in Iraq would both separate and divide powers. Painstakingly negotiated arrangements would distinguish the powers of the parts from those of the center, taking care to leave important functions in the hands of the federal government.
We thought it wise to define regions territorially, according to the relative distribution of the population, and to include in the constitution the claim that the country’s resources (in particular oil revenues, the only real source of income for the foreseeable future), would belong to all Iraqis equally and would be managed by the federal government. Different ethnicities and sects would almost certainly form majorities in particular regions. The point was not to change such distributions, but to emphasize the equality of citizenship.
Such a federalism, Iraqi democrats said, was the logical extension of the principle of human rights. It was based on the notion that the rights of the part – whether that part was a single person or a group – should not be sacrificed to the will of the majority.
All well and good so far… He is telling us that those were their ideas and ideals back then, sitting around in their series of gatherings in Salahuldin in 1992.
But then, he writes this:
- What people like myself failed to appreciate, or understand, before 2003, were the powerful forces driving toward purely ethnic and sectarian criteria for the definition of the “parts” of the new federal idea. The consequence of those forces has been a tremendous weakening of the political idea of Iraq, which the new Constitution has converted into hostility toward central government per se.
A decentralized, federal state system that devolves power to the regions is not the same as a dysfunctional one in which power at the federal level has been eviscerated. The former preserves power while distributing it; the latter destroys it. At the moment Iraqis have a dysfunctional and powerless state. The Constitution does not fix this; it makes it worse.
So that is what I am identifying as his mea culpa. It’s still a very partial one. But he is taking some responsibility for, at least, not having at that earlier time understood the dynamics of Iraqi society. And for someone who– from 1989 onwards– has gotten used to nearly always being treated as a “world-famous authority on Iraq”, such a confession is not trivial.
It will be interesting, anyway, to see what broader influence this essay by Makiya might have. Remember how influential he was in the pro-war circles prior to March 2003, and the extent to which he had become a darling of the neocons. Now, he’s writing this:
- WASHINGTON and Baghdad will be tempted, with the adoption of a new Constitution and the election on Thursday for a four-year government, to declare victory in Iraq. In one sense, they are right to do so. The emerging Iraqi polity undoubtedly represents a radical break not only with the country’s past but also with the whole Arab state system established by Britain and France after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
But in the larger sense, such optimism is misguided, for none of the problems associated with Iraq’s monumental change have been sorted out. Worse, profound tensions and contradictions have been enshrined in the Constitution of the new Iraq, and they threaten the very existence of the state…
Well, we have to understand that there are still, among the powerful people in the Bush administration, people who deeply distrust the idea of any functioning state, anywhere– at home or aborad. These are the “starve the beast” fanatics, ideologues who see all state power, everywhere, as usurping (rather than protecting) the freedom of the individual. And in addition to those people, there are many others– principally, hardline supporters of Israel– who are very happy with the idea of not having a functioning state in Iraq, in particular. (And more broadly, in any other Arab society– including Palestine.)
To Makiya’s credit, he goes out of his way to counter such arguments. He writes:
- Without the return of real power to the center, the ascent of sectarian and ethnic politics in Iraq to the point of complete societal breakdown cannot be checked. We cannot fight the insurgency, rebuild Iraq and live in any meaningful sense as part of the modern world without a state. There are no human rights, no law, and no democracy without the state; there is only anarchy and a state of insecurity potentially much worse than what Iraqis are experiencing today. For democracy to emerge out of the current chaos in Iraq, the state must be saved from the irresponsibility of the Iraqi parties and voting blocs that are today killing it.
That’s good. I am glad to hear him speak with the voice of increasing experience, and humanity.
As for the specific policy changes that he advocates in the piece, he urges the new Iraqi parliament to do the following:
- • Recognize that at the moment only Kurdistan fulfills the conditions for being a region. Using the Kurdish experience as a model, the Constitution must define the minimum conditions that need to be met by any group of provinces that desire to form themselves into a region. Then set a moratorium of 10 years on the establishment of new regions, this being the time necessary to crush the insurgency [! ~HC], establish properly accountable institutions of law and order and ensure that those applying for such status have met the criteria.
• Limit the size of any new region formed after the 10-year period to a maximum of three governorates and fix the existing unmodified boundaries of the 18 governorates of Iraq as the basis for the establishment of new regions.
• Delete Article 109, which allocates extra oil revenues to the regions that generate them. There is no defensible case for imposing special reparations on the Sunni populace for the crimes of Iraq’s former leaders.
• Appoint a committee of expert constitutional lawyers to make the necessary amendments reconciling the legislature with the executive and the different parts of the executive with each other. This is not a matter that can be resolved by the politicians alone.
That last recommendation I found pretty hilarious. I can understand it if he judges that Iraq’s present political leaders can’t resolve these issues. But to imagine it could be done by lawyers??
… Which brings me– very belatedly, I’m afraid– to the work of another person who has recently produced an excellent diagnosis of the current political woes in Iraq. This is my friend Marina Ottaway’s policy paper, Back from the Brink, which has some things in common with Makiya’s analysis and prescription, but differs from it in a couple of significant ways.
But I don’t think it’s fair to Marina to tack an analysis of her paper onto the end of this JWN post on Kanan Makiya. So I’ll wait a bit and write another post later this evening that provides that. (Besides, I have another important post I want to put up here, and an action in the real world associated with it…)
Makiya was the self-exiled Iraqi intellectual who in 1989 published in the US– under the pen-name Samir al-Khalil– a searing criticism of the totalitarian ways of Saddam Hussein’s rule. The book was very emotional, ill-organized, and departed in many ways from the norms of a political-science study. (Not surprising, since kenan had never trained as any kind of a social scientist.
Misinformation about Iraq
By: Dr. Edward Said*
He surfaced in 1990 as Samir Khalil, the author of a vaunted book called The Republic of Fear that described Saddam Hussein’s rule with considerable dread and drama. One of the media-rousing works of the first Gulf War, The Republic of Fear seemed to have been written — according to a fawning interview with Makiya that appeared in the New Yorker magazine — while Makiya took time off from working as an associate of his father’s architectural firm in Iraq itself. He admitted in the interview that, in a sense, Saddam had financed the writing of his book indirectly, although no one accused Makiya of collaborating with a regime he obviously detested.
Two quick points:
First, Makiya sadly believes he got noticed because of the power of his ideas. He got used because he was useful. Now, he will recede into obscurity.
Second, your description of the “starve the beast” contingent is not quite accurate. They do not oppose “the idea of any functioning state, anywhere– at home or aborad.” They are very much in favor of a powerful state apparatus which they control. What they oppose is any social programs designed to help the common people or (God forbid) educate or empower them.
Good point.
Someone signing JohnMcCutchen posted this link in a Comment made at Juan Cole’s blog. The article offers a quick summary of a recent frightening report written in October by Terrill and Crane from the US Army War College. It shows clearly where the exit strategy of taking out the ground troops and keeping an “off the horizon presence” in neighbouring states may lead.
“Precedents, Variables, and Options in Planning a U.S. Military Disengagement Strategy from Iraq,” warns not only that a civil war in Iraq may be approaching, but that it could threaten access to Middle Eastern oil and possibly spread violence — and terrorism — throughout the region. Such a powerful shock to the United States must be avoided by all means, it maintains.
The report argues that the efforts to build a new Iraqi army are falling short and that the United States should be willing, at least for an interim period, to permit militias to control sections of Iraq, even if that brings with it human rights violations.
In the interview, Terrill added that America should be prepared not just to provide billions of dollars in aid for Iraqi reconstruction for years to come, but also should be prepared to supply arms to an authoritarian government.
“There is a danger they will use those weapons in a way we don’t want,” said Terrill. “I hate to say that, but we have to maintain our influence there. Some problems are too difficult to solve right away, and you have to kick them down the road.”
The two war experts conclude that the model for Iraq shouldn’t be Germany or Japan, but Yemen, thus confirming what John just said. (same Johns may be ?). As a side note, I find it very interesting how the true reasons explaining the war (the control of oil ressources) are now more and more openly stated in the US; this reports says it explicitly too in the first quoted paragraph.
The article by Makiya is enlightening on the topic of weaknesses in the current Iraqi constitution. Note that the US started with a very decentralized Articles of Confederation that was later replaced by an amendable Constitution.
If centrifugal forces start to tear Iraq apart, it could clearly be a tragedy. Makiya’s suggestions sound sensible to me, but there may be other good approaches.
Helena seems to want Makiya to apologize for opposing Saddam Hussein! Further, Helena seems to think that deposing Saddam Hussein was wrong! Now, words fail me.
Also, the derisive remarks about “Starve the beast” fanatics don’t really apply to the Bush administration. I am not a small-government conservative but there are forces that would swell government to be 150% of the size of the country and it is necessary to have countervailing forces.
And the Bush administration (and Israel, for that matter) would clearly prefer a stable central government in Iraq. Not as “Strong” as Saddams but one that permits economic growth and prevents anarchy, et cetera. At the very least you must believe the Bushies want to make it safe to invest! The canard that the Bush administration wants anarchy or seccessionism in Iraq simply doesn’t stand the light of day.
Preserving the Iraqi oil flows is more important to Iraqis than anyone else. Disruptions in supply might produce recessions elsewhere but disaster in Iraq.
Warren, this is a most extraoridnary reading of what I wrote: Helena “seems to want” Makiya to apologize for opposing Saddam Hussein! Further, Helena “seems to think” that deposing Saddam Hussein was wrong!
I think you’ve been a reader of JWN for long enough, Warren, to know that I have never defended Saddam’s record in power, and moreover that I have brainstromed extensively– here and elsewhere– to sketch out ways that the international community could and should have acted non-violently in order to bring about the assured end of the commission of atrocities in Iraq in the era of Saddam.
If Kanan Makiya or other Iraqi nationals wanted in the 1990s to organize efforts inside Iraq to depose Saddam, I would certainly have supported their right to do so. What I opposed was their successful attempt to get my government to commit to doing the job for them using means of massive violence.
Anyone who knows anything about violence (and I do, Warren, from bitter experience; do you?) knows that the violence the US used against Iraq was bound to unleash powerful forces of further violence into the future. Those entirely predicable (indeed, predicted, as I did here) knock-on effects could have been reduced or mitigated if the administration had had a responsible “Phase 4” plan. They didn’t.
But please don’t put words into my mouth or, even worse, thoughts into my head through the weaselly use of phrases such as “Helena seems to want… or think…” The record of what I have actually written is open for you and all to see. That is the text you can consult.
I do not see what is wrong with using “massive violence” to abolish a fascist dictator whose policies were dictated by irrational racialism. I do not understand how Arabs and Muslims and other peoples can complain that the United States is wrong in deposing Saddam Hussien for Iraq; there is no indication whatsoever showing that the Iraqis could have done it themselves. The United States moved against a genocidal Ba’thi, what is wrong with this? The resulting violence is perpetuated primarily by the old order and foreign opprotunists (jihadis, Iranians etc.). Any way that Saddam Hussien would have come down would have been violent and would have exposed the same fissures in Iraqi society. I wish that countries would have interviened on behalf of Algerians when we were being abused by jihadis and government made rape squads. But no, they ignored it like they did Iraq for many years. The only major positive move that the United States has made in the last 50 years was removing Saddam Hussien. It may have been planned poorly but it is a good deed and Iraq is violent but freer than most of the other Arabic speaking states. As I see it the positives out weigh the negatives and if there si a withdrawl or too weak a constitution, it will all go down the drain.
Cheers, Nouri
Nouri’s comments are refreshing to me. I am a gay man from an affluent and educated family in Memphis. I am CPA, but for a career I am a high school accounting and finance teacher. To stick to the topic, why I find Nouri’s comments refreshing, I thought the previous background info would be helpful view. I read in a previous post the assumption of innocence in the ‘since I am not them, therefore I must be nicer, better, or right’argument. Indeed, If asked, most speculate that in a previous life they were somebody famous. And then there’s the bumper sticker that wonders if we would have been fighting for Kuwait if the #1 export was brocolli. Yes, dirty work for a better, nicer, right world is universally done by the therefore people. People in Memphis, people in Iran, 99% of the good Christian prison population, the neighbor that proposes a three-way with your spouse… What is harmless? It’s easy to abhor the violence, blame somebody or a theology, yet harder for us all to protect ourselves from ALL the ‘therefores’.
Nouri, I’m sure, from your knowledge of affairs in Algeria, you would agree with me that any use of violence has a strong tendency tio engender further violence? (And the greater the original violence, the greater the knock-on effects… ) That is why peopl who have studied the ethics of war have always started from a starting point that it is ipso facto a harmful activity.
I wrote there, regarding the present war, that Those entirely predicable… knock-on effects could have been reduced or mitigated if the administration had had a responsible “Phase 4” plan. They didn’t. I think you would agree with me there, too? And also perhaps, further, that that failure to implement a viable Phase 4 (= after major conflict) plan has caused enormous harm to the Iraqi people and placed them on a course where their country might break up into mutually warring fractions?
These are serious matters. Even if you and I disagree on the original decision to launch the war, given that they were determined to do so,surely they were under an obligation to do so in a manner that was as ethical as possible?
Also, given the terrible degradatiuon of the social and physical infrastructure in Iraq in the past 30 months (which causes many thousands of deaths) and the continued direct-death toll there, I don’t see how you can possibly say “the positives outweigh the negatives.” What use are abstract “freedoms” if you’re dead, maimed, jobless, or lack the basic atmosphere of public security required to be able to enjoy the freedom of association, freedom of expression, freedom of commerce, etc?
Eventually everyone is a ‘therefore’. SOMEONE, somewhere, has to be stopped or has to be started in order to make us not them, and regardless of who does it, how can any pasivist support anything other than endurance and tolerance of their choices?
So what would an ethical war look like? How do you construct that construct: loss of human life must be minmized by just nuking the opposition on the front end, saving the lives of the obviously selfless therefores?
“Also, given the terrible degradatiuon… and the continued direct-death toll there, I don’t see how you can possibly say “the positives outweigh the negatives.”
For the same reason that when your neighbor loses his job it’s a recession, but when YOU lose YOUR job it’s a DEPRESSION.
Americans have to realize that 99.9% of us in positions of authority or command have ZERO experience with depravity, hunger, or hopelessness, and that if we did we’d readily say that any act that could even momentarily aleviate pain, suffering, and starvation for tens of thousands would be time well spent.
When you honestly sift through the billions of injustices and atrocities, personal and public, Do you really doubt that we are pack animals. Americans simply have the luxury to ponder want rather than fend it off with your every moment and breath. 2-3-10-20 years is not a long time in the span of human history, but it’s is a LONG time, an unbearable amount of time, when it’s you that’s hungry or victimized.
“…that failure to implement a viable Phase 4 (= after major conflict) plan has caused enormous harm to the Iraqi people and placed them on a course where their country might break up into mutually warring fractions?”
Fill me in here— When in history have these people NOT been warring factions?
It seems a chicken and egg quandry to me– Did the dictators create warring factions or was a dictator needed to keep warring factions on the plate as a nation?
And the answer should be, if I didn’t need anything from them, who cares if they don’t care? (So much for celbrating diversity?? Ha!)
Whadda ya gonna do with grown adults with likes, desires, and values ALL their very own? The middle east to Americans is kinda like dealing with a screaming 3 year old– your money doesn’t MATTER to them, so you’re forced to be respectful of their needs and desires if playing fair is the TRUE goal.
Being a pacifist, to me, just has to be a personal journey like religion; It has to be personal or your goal is as preposterous as milking the venom out of every rattlesnake in Texas and then releasing them because you’re so concerned for THEIR rights… lord. Just have enough sense to stay away from them, And damn sure don’t promote them, befriend them, drink beer with them, date them, support them, elect them, or do just enough to get you an invitation to their hot-ticket Christmas party. Beyond that it’s not lofty, it’s controlling.
“…(And the greater the original violence, the greater the knock-on effects… ) That is why peopl who have studied the ethics of war have always started from a starting point that it is ipso facto a harmful activity.”
OK, just be an honest pacifist and implore them daily with cards and letters to hear and respect your wishes. What else is the decent thing to do to prevent the nasty knock-on effects of perpetuating violence? (Hope your mother, in the rape room, has that long.)
“Nouri, I’m sure, from your knowledge of affairs in Algeria, you would agree with me that any use of violence has a strong tendency tio engender further violence? (And the greater the original violence, the greater the knock-on effects… ) That is why peopl who have studied the ethics of war have always started from a starting point that it is ipso facto a harmful activity.”
I would. I view Iraq very much like Algeria, with out the repulsive government in the way. From my experiences in Algeria and my knowledge of what happened, there is only one way to fight people like Zarqawi or his friends. With violence. They only understand this. If they are willing to kill children in the came of “Allah” (who?) they are not worth trying to coopt. They are just hate machines. Full of hate and death, and little more. Those who still have the capacity for rational and pragmatic desicion making like Sadr can be worked with but the bulk of these terrorists cannot. The same is true of regimes like that of the Ba’th.
As for phase four. I agree there wasn’t one and there needed to be one, backed up with more troops. Increased troop levels would solve this problem a great deal.
As for what good freedom is if you are maimed or killed, etc., Id say it is pretty good because you can at least vent your frustrations or you can move to a safer area of the country. We didnt have that in Algeria. If we went against the Islamic groups they’d kill us. If we went against the government, they kill us. The Iraqi government is much more benevolent than Algeria’s or almost any other one in the region. Since the Iraqis can take action in their government in a way that Algerians and Egyptians could not, they can eventually at least attempt to resolve the conflict as a people rather than be forced to accept some moronic notion that all is fine and just if you just let the murderers and rapists go for the sake of nonviolence, like Algerians were. Iraqis at least have some help and have a malable government. Things in Iraq look to me to be far better than they were in Algeria when we were in their situation with the swarms of murderers and rapists everywhere. They have all the dangers of trying to form a government under fire but they will get through it, I can tell. Their situation will force them to create a managable and mature government because if they dont they will be worse off than ever. Anybody in their situation would adjust. The biggest problem I see is the level of commitment of the americans and Britons because of their lack of confidence and unwillingness to fully committ and admit error.
Nouri