Internets round-up: The future of Iraq

By Heraclitus

I hate to suggest that there's something more important than John Kerry's latest demonstration that he is to politicking what W. is to governing, but I'd rather write about the future of Iraq. I will say this about Kerry, though -- his bizarre and moronic refusal to apologize for his comments, and his apparent determination to come out swinging against the White House, are weirdly out of place now, all the more so because they were so sorely missing during his own presidential campaign. It's as if someone just now showed him the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads. I think it's just further proof that he has the worst instincts in the history of democratic politics.

(Okay, if you want more, see the excellent John Cole. When I see Cole take on a large swath of right-wing bloviators, blogular and otherwise, I feel like I'm watching the scene at the end of Unforgiven where Clint Eastwood walks into the saloon and kills everyone. Just a taste: "The Republicans are corrupt, morally bankrupt, have no ideas, no principles, and are hoping upon hope that this latest distraction will help to stop the bleeding. Unfortunately, the bleeding they care about is at the polls and not the bleeding in Iraq.")

So, getting back to Iraq -- while Bush has been pledging to tweak his strategy and trying to disavow the "stay the course" mantra--as if the criticism of him sprang from some irrational dislike of that phrase, rather than from his own staggering ineptitude -- others have been having serious, adult conversations about the best and most plausible course of action for the country. I'm not talking about McCain's call for more troops -- all the troops in the world will be to no avail as long as the civilian leadership is incompetent, as it clearly is. At the same time, though, simply arguing for withdrawal is not a respectable position either. So, why not kick off this round-up with everyone's favorite, Christopher Hitchens? I'll leave my thoughts on Hitchens for another post; for now I'll just note that he not only makes the obvious moral arguments for why we are obliged to try to see Iraq through to some sort of decent peace, having let all the genii out of the bottle, but also presents a hard-headed argument for why it is in our vital interest to do so, especially in light of the growing power of Islamists within Iraq:

[D]oes anyone want to argue that a Talibanized Iraq would not require our attention down the road if we left it behind us?

There are many different plans to reconfigure forces within Iraq and to accommodate, in one way or another, its increasingly tribal and sectarian politics. (Former Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith's suggestion, arising from his admirable book The End of Iraq, involves a redeployment to the successful and peaceful north, with the ability to answer requests for assistance from the central government and the right to confront al-Qaida forces without notice.) But all demands for an evacuation are based on the fantasy that there is a distinction between "over there" and "over here." In a world-scale confrontation with jihadism, this distinction is idle and false. It also involves callously forgetting the people who would be the first victims but who would not by any means be the last ones.

Again, the argument is not merely that Iraqis will fall victim to Taliban-like factions in Iraq, but that a precipitate US withdrawal from Iraq would turn that country into the new matrix or seedbed of Islamist terrorism.

So, given that rather glum reality (and I think Hitchens is probably right that it is a reality), what is to be done? Hitchens mentions one possibility, Peter Galbraith's plan. Another proposal has been set forth by Gareth Stansfield in The Telegraph. Stansfield argues that the only viable solution is to divide Iraq into five federated regions:

[T]he ability to project power in Iraq has devolved, chaotically, to localised forces. The unitary state is on the verge of failure, if it has not actually failed already.

The Coalition, though, still seems to be wary of embracing a federal plan as a means to maintaining the country's integrity, even though the Iraqi parliament (dominated by Shi'a and Kurds) passed a bill earlier this month allowing federal regions to form (by majority vote in the provinces seeking merger).

The law, which unsurprisingly failed to win Sunni support, will be reviewed over the next 18 months in a bid to bring its opponents round.

So the next year and a half is crucial to designing a federal model that will be accepted by a majority of Iraqis. Several prominent observers, particularly in the US, have suggested a tripartite division of the country, with maps showing a neat arrangement of Kurdistan in the north, a Shi'a-dominated south, and a Sunni central zone.

But, if the intention is to build a stable political system, then "three regions" is simply not the way to do it. A three-way split would likely mean that the political process would be dominated by Kurds and Shi'as (as it is now) at the expense of the Sunnis, unless each region were given the power of veto — which itself would make any progress almost impossible to achieve.

Stansfield also notes that Baghdad creates a huge problem for a simple tripartite division, since it comprises significant numbers of both Shia and Sunni, and since it has been a center of violence:

With these requirements in mind, a three-region solution could create more problems than it resolves. But a system based upon five regions would seem to have more chance of succeeding. A five-region model could see two regions in the south, one based around Basra and one around the holy cities. Kurdistan and the Sunni region would remain, but Baghdad and its environs would form a fifth, metropolitan, region.

Under such a division, each region would need to build alliances and make compromises to achieve its particular objectives: Kurdistan, for instance, the most monolithic of the new "states", would need to find agreement with at least two of the other regions to achieve any particular objective. There would also be plenty of opportunity for cross-communal relationships emerging due to the existence of the metropolitan Baghdad and two Shi'a regions.

From what I can see, however, Stansfield never explains how this is going to bring stability to Baghdad. There are already major sectarian tensions and violence in the capital city; how is making it the center of a "metropolitan district" going to change that? Nevertheless, the rest of the plan seems to me more promising than a tripartite division.

For more on the plan for a fivefold division, see this brief post by Oliver Kamm. In The Times of London last week, Tim Hames made an argument that Saddam is to blame for Iraq's fracturing into warring factions. For a response to this claim, see this post by Oliver Kamm and my (much shorter) discussion of it here (see especially the quote from Noah Feldman). For more on the growing rift between the US government and what central authority there is in Iraq (specifically Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki), see this AP article.