ABC News.com
Brighter View
There Is More Than One Way to Look at Upheaval in Iraq
Analysis
by Dave Marash
BAGHDAD, May 30, 2004
Most thinking these days on Iraq is decidedly pessimistic. Part of
that is traditional political/intelligence cover your a--, "worst case
analysis." Part of it is a very justifiable fear of the unknown,
because the surest thing to be said about Iraq's political future is
that it is unknown. Nevertheless, here's a more, but not completely,
optimistic view.
First, the strategic threats to the state of Iraq are declining. In
ascending order, they are civil war between Sunni and Shi'ites; a 3-way
division of the country into Kurdish, Sunni and Shi'ite dominated
mini-states; the guerilla threat of Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army,
and the threat from international terrorists, perhaps led by the
Jordanian ally of al Qaeda, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Let's start with the easiest, the dismissable threat: civil war
between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims. Although definable, the dividing
line between Sunna and Shi'a in Iraq, has not been violent for hundreds
of years. For decades, intermarriage between Sunna and Shi'a has been
common, especially in Baghdad. Furthermore, each attempt to drive
wedges between the communities, by assassination or mass murder, has
been overwhelmingly rejected by public expressions of solidarity, "We
are all Muslims, nothing can divide us." Within days, thousands of
pints of blood were collected for Shi'ite victims of the Ashoura attacks
in Kerbala and Baghdad in March, by the 2 "hardest-line" cities of the
so-called Sunni Triangle, Ramadi and Fallujah.
Almost as remote, the threat most recently raised by the former
US Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith: an Iraq tri-furcated along
Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish lines. Please.
Significantly, this is not a threat seriously raised in Iraq by
Iraqis, this year, because it has no constituency here. The interests
of none of the 3 parties would be served by partition; the interests of
all of the parties are susceptible to compromise. Those who worry about
the rhetoric unleashed in Iraqi media about national offices and
ministries and oil revenues, and degrees of autonomy and immediately
translate it into a real threat have never covered a New York City labor
negotiation. Kurds, their political/paramilitary parties KDP and PUK,
and their respective leading families, are all better off in a stable
Iraqi Kurdistan than in any of the alternatives, including an infeasible
independent Kurdish micro-state. Furthermore, the Kurds are guaranteed
an acceptable, close to current, level of autonomy and oil money (the 2
big issues here) because no one in the region, including Turkey, the
strongest remaining regional military power, wants to tangle with the
Peshmerga, the 100,000 man strong Kurdish militia, more or less equally
divided between adherents of the KDP and the PUK. Rest assured, Mssrs.
Barzani and Talabani will negotiate a deal through which Kurdistan will
be rich enough and autonomous enough to stay within an Iraqi state.
Settling the future of Kirkuk, violently claimed by Kurds, Arabs, and
Turcomen, will be the hardest single issue.
Moqtada al-Sadr may once again emerge as a problem for the 95% of
Iraq and the Shi'ite hierarchy that is to the right of him, but his
threat to involve Coalition Forces in a half-national guerilla war is
over. His skillfully managed but still, to Iraqis, unmistakable
retreats from Kerbala and Najaf, following equally forcible, but less
formally negotiated retreats from Nasiriya and Amarah, and the
disintegration of his forces in Basra have left Moqtada considerably
reduced and increasingly rejected by the people of the places he tried
to take control of. His militia, the Mahdi Army, originally (perhaps
under-) estimated at 2000, lately (perhaps over-) counted at 5000, lost
a more painstakingly estimated 300-400 dead and 2 or 3 times that
wounded, in a month-long campaign that wound up gaining nothing, and
left al-Sadr with just 2 strongholds, the Najaf suburb of Kufa and the
huge Shi'ite ghetto of Sadr City in northeastern Baghdad. Sayyid
al-Sadr knows the US military is itching for an excuse for a final
showdown. He's unlikely to stir up serious trouble before June 30,
since he's been encouraged to think he will eventually be able to cut a
deal on his murder charges with some future Iraqi government. That, and
the hope of a political future in the elective Iraq, where at the very
least his Sadr City stronghold should command him some respect, may be
enough to keep harmless.
The international terrorist threat is still very much with us in
Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq. We call them "the car bombers." But the
terrorists' callousness about shedding Iraqi blood, their association
with Salafist anti-Shi'ite extremism, their increasingly notorious
refusal to accept guidance from local Sunni leaders in the Sunni "Free
City" of Fallujah, and above all, their foreign-ness, have turned many
Iraqis against them. As their only acceptable target, the occupation
forces, first reduce their activities, and later, shrink in size; and,
more important, as an Iraqi government, run by Iraqis, gains acceptance,
the waters of the public sea in which these exotic guerilla fish swim,
will start to dry up. That way lies defeat.
One serious threat remains, the one we call, with historical
nostalgia, "fuedalism," but which most Iraqis would recognize as
"Afghanistanism.
The first Iraqi rebellion against foreign forces of the 21st Century
is being won this week in Baghdad. The Iraqi Governing Council has
successfully defeated the forces of the Anglo-American occupation and
its designated semi-imperial successor, the United Nations. The IGC,
labeled irrelevant and discredited, by UN Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi as
he accepted to role of President, etc-maker in Iraq, wound up rejecting
his choice for Prime Minister and substituting its own, one of their
own, Iyad Alawi. The US, claiming amazement that one of its own should
be the man, declared that it was Brahimi's travels across Iraq, his
meetings "with thousands of Iraqis," that unearthed the drumbeat,
"Alawi, Alawi," and that when the IGC added it's "suggestion," Brahimi,
in his spokesman's word, "respected" it.
However it is spun, the truth is the Governing Council seized the
leadership selection process for Iraq's next "interim" government away
from the US and the UN and was able to do so for 3 simple reasons:
They are Iraqi. Ambassadors Bremer and Brahimi are not. Iraqis today
are far more likely to accept a government appointed by Iraqis than by
anyone else. They have the only really functional political
organizations in Iraq, with party structures, local leaders, community
networks. Most of them have paramilitary resources.Therefore they are
the only ones whose displeasure at the choices for the new government
matter.
Therefore, when they were displeased by the Shi'ite saint, Hussain
Shahristani's nomination as Prime Minister, it was withdrawn. When they
said they wanted Alawi, they got him. Now, they are left with a largely
generational choice for President: the 80-something Adnan Pachachi or
the 40-something Sheikh Ghazi Ajeel al-Yawer, both, Sunni pragmatists,
both members of the IGC "club" Shahristani never joined. Either way,
the Council has won.
Of course, the muscle that helped the IGC members win, represents the
gravest threat to a unified Iraq. One of the CPA's worst failures has
been dealing with Iraq's several strong militias, most of them
representing fractions of the Shi'ite majority. The British were the
first to opt for co-optation, giving much of the responsibility and
power, of law enforcement in their zone of southeastern Iraq to the Badr
Brigade, the militia to the Supreme Council for the Islamic Republic of
Iraq (SCIRI) party. The Badrs have somewhat won those spurs by proving
to be the most co-operative, as well as the best-armed, best-trained and
best-disciplined of the Shi'ite paramilitaries, but not all the people
they now police are glad to see them so empowered.
Recent ad hoc battlefield armistices in Fallujah and Najaf have
allowed local guerillas to keep their local organizations intact and to
keep their guns, as well.
An Afghanistan-like Iraq, in which a central government (and
reasonably cosmopolitan lifestyle) exists in Baghdad, while surrounding
regions are dominated by local warlords and their mafias, local
religious leaders and customs, and disputes are solved outside of the
rule of law, is the real threat. There is a balance of power among the
militias, as there is among Sunnis, Shi'ites and Kurds. None can easily
dominate all, or even enough of, the others. Hence, notwithstanding an
Arab cultural resistance to compromise, the likelihood is ways will be
found to find a way to keep Iraq together. It may not always be pretty,
but even American democracy has had its ugly moments (think of, say,
politics in New York City, circa 1850, or in Chicago,1960; or in
Florida, in the year 2000).
Fragmentation into mini-mafia-states can be countered only by Iraqis
with a strong national consciousness, stronger than the competing calls
of family, clan, tribe, mosque, party. This is one standard many of the
members of the IGC might meet, and most of the names being floated for
ministerial and executive positions in the interim government meet it as
well. This is probably the good news out of Baghdad this week. One
final point, most of the people going into major posts in the interim
government are "brand-names" at least in the influential circles of
Iraqi political life. This suggests that, limited caretaker government
though it might be, the group that takes over June 30 plans to continue
in power after elections are the selection route to Iraqi government
office. This, too, goes 180 degrees away from the formulations
announced by UN-man Brahimi and Big Yank Bremer a few months ago, which
is not, in itself, a bad thing.
