The mirage of a united Iraq

Ma'ariv ^ | 27 June 2003 / 8 Tammus 5764 | Jonathan Ariel and Shlomo Dror

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The mirage of a united Iraq
President Bush Sr. allowed Saddam Hussein to remain in power in order to maintain a united Iraq, which turned out to be one of the worst decisions he made as president. His son is in significant danger of losing Iraq due to the same mistake. It’s time the preconception of the necessity of a united Iraq was reassessed, since the US, may be missing viable opportunities while fruitlessly chasing after mirages in the desert.
Jonathan Ariel and Shlomo Dror

A week before the interim Iraqi government assumes responsibility for managing the affairs of the country, the chances of that happening are looking increasingly slim.

In addition to the doubts as to the ability of nascent rebuilt Iraqi security services to take on and defeat the coalition of Baathist and Jihadist terrorists plaguing the country, historic rifts are reemerging, threatening to tear asunder the carefully and painstakingly crafted interim constitution that was the framework upon which the entire handover rests. The raison d’etre of this constitution was to guarantee, at all costs the continued existence of a united Iraqi state. This fixation, on the prime necessity of keeping Iraq a united state, has become the main obstacle over which US policy in Iraq has foundered for the past decade and a half.

President George HW Bush allowed Saddam to brutally quell Shiite and Kurdish uprisings that broke out in the wake of Desert Storm, in the belief that a united Iraq was vital to regional stability. The result was an unnecessary prolonging of Saddam’s reign of terror for over a decade, during which he repeatedly tried to flout the arms limitations imposed on him by the UN, hardly a recipe for stability.

An additional result was widespread mistrust and hatred of the US, especially among the Shiites, who saw the US as having sold out those who had rebelled at its instigation.

The current administration is in serious danger of losing Iraq, and with it a second term in office. It has committed more than its share of gaffes and blunders, but the prime one may very well be the overall strategic goal of maintaining a united Iraq while creating a democratic one.

No such animal

A look at the recent history of the region shows that a united Iraq, far from contributing to regional stability, has constantly been a prime generator of geo-political instability since its artificial creation by the British in the 1920s.

Mesopotamia may be one of the cradles of civilization, but it has never been a united state in its own right, Empires came and went, bringing the entire area under their brief sways. However the area never evolved into a single political unit of its own, and any unity was always imposed by force of arms, in ancient times by one of the city states turned empire (Sumeria, Akkadia, Assyria, Babylon), subsequently by outside forces, the most important of which were the Persian, Arab (or Islamic) and Ottoman Empires. However the local political culture remained a hodge-podge of city-states, tribal areas and provinces, ruled by an empire.

Under the Ottoman Empire, the last great empire to rule the area for any significant length of time (approximately 400 years until 1918), it was divided into three provinces, Mosul, predominantly Kurdish in the north, Baghdad, populated primarily by Sunni tribes in the center and Basra, primarily Shiite in the south. There was no such thing as Iraq, which had never existed until misconceived by the British, in the aftermath of World War One, during which the Ottoman Empire dissolved and the UK and France ended up ruling all its Middle Eastern possessions. The British took Palestine (the area that includes modern day Israel and Jordan), Mesopotamia and Arabia, with Syria and Lebanon going to the French as a consolation prize.

The British immediately proceeded to carve up the area to suit their colonial and imperialist ambitions. They allowed Ibn Saud to take over the entire Arabian Peninsula, founding modern day Saudi Arabia. This was done at the expense of the Hashemite family, their long time allies (Lawrence of Arabia), who, for centuries had, under the Ottoman Turks, governed the Hejaz area, and held the hereditary title “Sheriff of Mecca and Medina”, one of the most important religious and administrative posts in Sunni Islam.

Feeling guilty about having abandoned their ally to Ibn Saud and his band of Wahabis, the British decided to give the Sheriff’s sons consolation prizes. In order to do this they created two new, and until then non-existent states with no historical basis or foundations whatsoever, Iraq and Jordan.

The former was given to Feisal, the third son of Hussein Ibn Ali, the last member of the Hashemite family (direct descendants of Mohammed) to hold the office of Sheriff of Mecca and Medina. The latter was given to Feisal’s elder brother Abdullah.

However the Sunni area of Iraq was too small and economically insignificant to be a viable state. Moreover the British wanted the region’s strategic assets, primarily the post of Basra and the oilfields around Kirkuk to be in friendly hands. Their solution was to combine the three disparate provinces, which had never had anything in common other than being subject to the same empire, into the new state of Iraq, which came into the world as an Emirate, under the Emir (soon to be promoted to King) Feisal. No one asked the Kurds or Shiites whether they wanted to be part of this state, they were told that’s how it’s going to be, and ordered to become loyal subjects to King Feisal.

Since then Iraq has been a prime source of regional turmoil and strife. During World War Two there was a pro-German uprising which the British had to put down for Feisal, who was unable to deal with a popular uprising against what was perceived as an alien dynasty.

During the 1948 Arab-Israeli war Iraq was one of the most extremist countries, constantly pushing the Arab League into uncompromising positions. The irony was that at heart Feisal the second (succeeded his father in 1935) was as moderate as his late father and uncle Abdullah. However unlike Abdullah he was never able to become master of his own house, due to the inherently volatile and unstable nature of his artificial country, and had to maintain hard line positions in order to survive.

These did not help him for long. Following several attempted coups, in 1958 he was deposed and killed in a coup. The disparate, fragmented and nature of Iraqi society made it impossible to achieve stable government. Coup followed coup, and intrigue and uncertainty reigned supreme.

Held together by brute force

However the fault lines divisions that divide Iraq are more complex than Kurd, Sunni and Shia. Each one of these communities is a typical Middle-East community based on the hammulah (extended clan) and tribe, which command ultimate loyalty. The urban elite, which has adopted an Iraqi identity is both small and superficial, the real Iraq still lives in a world in which loyalty to the hammulah and tribe far outweigh that to that somewhat amorphous entity known as Iraq.

Hostility between tribes, even those belonging to the same main ethnic group, can be deep and long. The term blood feud is very much still part of Iraqi life, and for one tribe or hammulah to still be gunning for another over a hundred or two hundred year old grievance is not unheard of.

The bottom line is that there is no such thing as an Iraqi society or an Iraqi nation, since there exist none of the basic common denominators that are the foundations of any nation-state. The only way this edifice could be held together was by brutal dictatorship. As a result, each coup brought to power a new dictator, each one more brutal than his predecessor, who clearly was not brutal enough, as a plot could be successfully hatched against him. The only thing the various strongmen had in common was that they were all Sunnis, since the British, as part of their traditional imperial divide and rule policy, empowered the minority at the expense of the majority.

The result was that Iraq constantly fanned the flames of Arab intransigence, since an unstable government, especially in a Middle East dictatorship will always seek to whip up public opinion against the outside enemy, to keep it from concentrating on its own failings and shortcomings. Iraq became a regional monger of instability. In reality, it could never have become anything else, given its inherent nature and the rules of the game as played in the Middle East.

In 1979 Saddam Hussein, who was to prove by far the most brutal of any Arab dictator assumed the presidency. Within a year he had led his country into a ruinous war with Iran, and had embarked on an ambitious program to develop nuclear weapons. This was prevented by Israel, which bombed the Tamuz reactor in 1981. The only reason he lasted as long as he did was the fear generated by his cruelty and brutality, unprecedented even by the less than enlightened standards of the Arab world. This is, perhaps the ultimate proof that a united Iraq can only exist via force and brutality, since fear is the only glue binding the country together.

Instant democracy

US policy is based on creating a democratic Iraq. Democracy has never existed anywhere in the Arab world, and neither did Iraq until 70 years ago. Every time the West has come up against this unbridgeable incompatibility, it sacrificed democracy on the alter of territorial integrity, in the name of stability. The fact that the entity whose integrity was thus being safeguarded was a constant cause of instability never caused the mandarins of foreign policy to rethink their basic premises.

This is true to the present day. Even the current Bush administration, which has proven itself more capable than most governments of innovative strategic thinking, has remained wedded to the conventional wisdom of maintaining a united Iraq, despite the fact that it is clearly the crux of the problem, not the solution.

Allowing Iraq to split up according to its nature could be the first tentative but nonetheless meaningful step towards promoting democracy in the Arab world. Democracy is not coffee, and cannot be brewed instantly into existence. Democracy is an evolutionary process, which cannot begin without the pre-existence of a relatively stable and cohesive society.

Iraq has never been a stable and cohesive society, let alone a democratic one. Any policy based on creating a democratic Iraq within a year or two is doomed to failure. Iraq and democracy are mutually incompatible, since the former can only be held together by brute force, whereas the latter cannot exist in a society based on force.

None of the disparate societies that make up Iraq have ever known democracy. They have to develop it by themselves, with assistance and goodwill from the outside world. But they can only do this within a framework of their own workable societies. There is no way a society that is a mirage can develop of its own volition into something it has never been before, a democracy.

If the Shiites are ever going to evolve into an open tolerant pluralistic society they have to do so as a Shiite society. This has been proven by the Kurds, who, after a decade of de facto autonomy within the confines of an authentic Kurdish society have achieved the degree of cohesiveness needed to begin evolving from a clannish tribal society into a more advanced democratic one. Iraqi Kurdistan is far from being a western democracy, but it has taken several important steps down that road, and looks like it will, eventually succeed.

The Shiites and Sunnis are no less capable than the Kurds. If the latter could finally begin ridding themselves of centuries of internecine conflicts, so can the former, provided they are given the same conditions as the Kurds.

Undoubtedly allowing Iraq to split up could initially create tensions, but these would, in all likelihood be less serious than those generated by Iraq over the years. Instead of a superficially united state that has constantly threatened its neighbors and regional peace and stability, there would exist two or three smaller states, with inherently less capacity and motivation for geo-political mischief.

The unachievable and illogical goal of creating a democratic Iraq has brought the US to the point of deadlock. The mistake of 1991, when the idea of Iraq was given preference over the idea of democracy must not be repeated. It’s time to think out of the box, and consider goals that are realistic, logical and attainable rather than those that are nothing more than the illusions of minds grown flabby by overindulging in hidebound thinking. The idea of an instantly created democratic Iraq is a desert mirage. However the gradual evolution of separate democratic states, each dominated by a single ethnic group is not, and should be the one to be pursued.

Jonathan Ariel is Editor-in-Chief of Maariv International

Shlomo Dror is an Arabist. He has served in several senior and sensitive posts including adviser to the Coordinator of the Territories and the Spokesperson of the Defense Ministry

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B.S. Iraq has plenty of money and resources and theres tribal ties between at least the Sunnis and Shiites to suggest that anythings possible, especially with 170000 Coalition troops there.