A Timetabled, Conditional Surge

As President George W. Bush contemplates policy alternatives for Iraq, input from experts in Washington has become polarized. Opponents of the Iraq War consider any increase in troop numbers a non-starter and prefer to focus on the modalities for withdrawal. Supporters of the Bush administration seem incapable of framing their latest idea – that of a temporary surge of US troops – as anything other than a repeat of the same old policy, perhaps with some added manpower and resources.

Either approach has its problems. Withdrawal of US military forces from Iraq within one or two years seems a natural goal, but right now may be the worst time since 2003 for such an operation. The simple reason is that Iraqi politics has deteriorated dramatically: Today, sectarian militia activity has been maximized to levels never before witnessed in Iraqi history. At the moment, Iraq does need help from the outside, because its elected politicians are incapable of transcending their own narrow party interests in a bid for national unity. And whereas the Iraq Study Group may have offered some sound advice about enhanced regional diplomacy, on the whole their report seems more like a containment strategy than a plan that pro-actively can induce rapid political realignment inside Iraq.

A troop increase could be equally problematic. Even if more US firepower should succeed in temporarily stemming the violence, there is nothing in the prevalent neo-conservative expositions of the “surge plan” that would address the fundamental problem of national reconciliation in Iraq. There simply is no new substance compared with what was being said back in 2003 and 2004; neo-conservatives still seem convinced that as soon as there is calm on the streets of Baghdad, a Mesopotamian zest for democracy will miraculously rise from the ashes. Within the Bush administration, the only vision about a parallel process at the political level is that of a “new coalition government” – involving a few cosmetic changes in the line-up of Iraqi elite politicians currently engaged in a game of musical chairs inside the Green Zone, and carrying considerable risk of marginalizing those few parliamentary factions that do enjoy a certain degree of popular support, like the Sadrists.

What is required in Iraq today is not cosmetic change, but heavy lifting. The colossal irony of the current situation is that a large majority of Iraqis actually agree with the declared aims of the Bush administration – national reconciliation followed by a withdrawal of US troops – but their “representatives” in the Iraqi parliament (many of them newly returned exiles with limited insight into the situation of the ordinary people) are locked in petty shouting matches instead of working for national unity. It is the open-ended US military commitment that enables them to go on with this: Certain Shiite politicians infuriate Sunni politicians with newly concocted demands for federalism; Sunni leaders, in turn, hesitate in condemning even the most grotesque atrocities committed by al-Qaida-linked terrorists. Forgotten in all of this are the ordinary Iraqis. The Shiite masses have so far expressed only limited interest in “Shiite federalism”, and the average Sunni is quite prepared to denounce al-Qaida as long as a minimum of security can be guaranteed.

A troop surge offers a unique opportunity for resolving this paradoxical situation. If implemented in an innovative way, it could enable the United States to circumvent the bellicose Iraqi elite politicians and appeal directly to Iraqi nationalism. But success would require that the troop surge be offered as a package, with obligations for both sides. The United States should commit forces and economic aid to create the necessary momentum for a dramatic security improvement, but at the same time should realign itself with Iraqi nationalism by presenting a timetable for a withdrawal after the surge. Iraqi politicians, for their part, should undertake to make immediate constitutional revisions that could bring the Sunnis back in and achieve national reconciliation. While Washington should not seek to micro-manage this, it must be made perfectly clear that the forces that have so far dominated the constitutional process in Iraq (the two biggest Kurdish parties as well as SCIRI, one of the Shiite groups) will need to make general concessions in the areas of federalism and de-Baathification before any troop surge can be offered.

By making the surge conditional, Washington would for the first time create pressure on Iraqi politicians, through their own electorates. If presented with a credible plan for national reconciliation and the eventual withdrawal of US troops, Iraqi politicians would find it hard to persist in their current squabbling. This would enable the United States to tap into a most remarkable factor in Iraqi politics: the seemingly unshakeable belief in the concept of “national unity” that has persisted among ordinary Iraqis, even in today’s violent climate.

A Strategy for Dealing with the Sadrists?

[Book review of Mark Etherington, Revolt on the Tigris: The Al-Sadr Uprising and the Governing of Iraq (London: Hurst, 2005, 252 pages including index). The book review was first published in the International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies, vol. 1 no. 1, December 2006, and is reproduced here with some additional remarks on a recently proposed shift of US policy towards a security “surge” and greater isolation of the Sadrists.]

Mark Etherington’s Revolt on the Tigris: The Al-Sadr Uprising and the Governing of Iraq recounts the author’s experiences as chief civilian coalition official in the province of Wasit in Iraq from October 2003 to June 2004. Three features make this book especially interesting: its level-headed consideration of the complexities of post-war reconstruction as a multi-national effort; its unique geographical focus on a peripheral province of Iraq that does not receive much media coverage; and its insightful discussion of the early rise of the Sadrist phenomenon in Iraqi politics.

Mark Etherington is especially well positioned to discuss the intricacies of joint Anglo-American and wider multi-national reconstruction projects in Iraq. Of British origin but brought up in the Gulf in an expatriate environment with many American influences, Etherington straddles the trans-Atlantic cultural divide and is able to take a detached view of Anglo-American relations. Also his particular assignment in Iraq gave him insights into several camps at once. As a British official, Etherington was appointed as supreme Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) official in Wasit province (to the south-east of Baghdad), an area that was militarily under Polish command, and with a degree of civilian oversight and coordination from a regional CPA headquarters under US control in Hilla.

The author makes no bones about the shortcomings of the colourful carnival that was the “Coalition of the Willing” in Iraq in 2003–2004. Troops had been mustered from small and inexperienced countries to create the image of a strong international coalition behind the war effort, under what some Americans bluntly referred to as a “rent-an-army” scheme. A Republican ideological preference for using subcontractors wherever possible led to a maze of private companies, even in fields normally reserved for the state such as nation-building and democratisation. The result was a Byzantine patchwork of organisations, each with their own values and idiosyncrasies, and each with their own motives for being present in Iraq.

A number of difficulties arose from this particular constellation of participants. Private US subcontractors were not “turned on” to do certain security tasks that would normally have been provided in a traditional military mission (at one point they were unable to fortify Etherington’s headquarters because the process of fortifying them was deemed to be too dangerous). Nation-building experts that had been hired in were knowledgeable about water management, agricultural issues and women’s rights, but included no personnel capable of attending to what Etherington describes as more immediate concerns in the fields of justice and general administration. Ukrainian military forces in the region were robust but hopelessly “wedded to their tanks” and essentially incapable of performing any meaningful security functions at the micro level in Kut, the provincial capital of Wasit. US marines had been in control over Kut for several months immediately following the occupation, but had left no intelligence records and thereby forced Etherington’s team to start from scratch.

Etherington succeeds in describing all these complexities in a frank and convincing manner. He is merciless in detailing errors, and that includes those committed by himself personally. He also manages to bring attention to a very basic point that is lost in many other accounts of this period: the watershed that was felt by CPA staff as a result of the 15 November 2003 agreement on handover to Iraqi civilian authorities by June 2004. Etherington and others with him had foreseen a much slower and gradualist process towards the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty, but due to the sharp handover deadline in the new agreement, any aspirations about a thorough and systematic process were effectively crushed.

The original geographical focus is another strength of the book. Wasit is a mainly Shiite province on the Tigris south-east of Baghdad, with little claim to fame: it has neither holy sites nor copious amounts of oil. Etherington describes in considerable detail how he worked to set up the rudiments of political and administrative structures in this region and provides rich information about the politics of a largely unknown Iraqi periphery during a crucial period of a transition. Particularly interesting is the portrayal of Wasit society as divided between a minority of politically active “political” opportunists (some party apparatchiks, some tribal leaders) and a large mass of silent “middle classes” who at first were passive in politics. Anecdotal information from other parts of Iraq suggests that such patterns were widespread beyond Kut, but in other books this important point often drowns in accounts that focus exclusively on the “formal” political stage. Etherington provides an illuminating description of attempts to interact with and engage the silent majority, and also discusses the dangers involved in the perhaps more convenient solution of surrendering to the loud cries from professional and tribal politicians. By staying focused on Kut, Etherington manages to produce an insightful account of local politics that doubtless is of relevance to Iraq more generally, and indeed to post-war democratisation in a wider global perspective.

The third important theme in the book is contained in the title: The Sadr uprising of April 2004. US accounts of this episode are often focused on the military modalities of the crisis, and tend to be characterised by an uncompromising view of the Sadrists. Etherington seems to have had an open mind at the outset and is clearly aware of the dangers of facile essentialisms as regards religion – at one point he accuses American officials of harbouring “an almost visceral suspicion of Islam”. He is also conscious of other problems involved in post-war operations in foreign cultures, declaring that he mistrusted his own “cargo of Western values” and speaking of unease about “inflicting more turbulence on a society I did not yet understand”. So how did Etherington interact with what was perhaps the most native of post-war Iraqi political movements, the Sadrist phenomenon?

Even to Etherington, the Sadrist uprising seems to have come as a surprise. He describes a situation in late 2003 in which two currents vied for local domination, the pro-Sistani faction which was numerically dominant, and the Sadrist group, which was smaller but louder. He recounts his own tentative policies in dealing with the Sadrists: sometimes allowing them access to the local television station, sometimes refusing it; inviting them to join a local council but without obtaining their actual participation; refraining from personally meeting their leader (this on account of their anti-state attitude, as seen in their separate militia and legal court structures) but at the same time allowing for contacts between Sadrists and subordinate CPA staff. In the end, it appears, he was as exhausted with the Sadrists as the Americans were: an act of collusion between a local police commander and the Sadrists prompted Etherington to take action against this alliance shortly before open unrest began in April 2004. And in a subsequent private crisis meeting with the top Sadrist representative in Kut the gap between the two sides appeared to be just as unbridgeable as that between the Americans and Muqtada al-Sadr’s supporters in Najaf. Etherington found the Sadrist cleric to be “impossibly young” and “implacably opposed” to the foreign forces; thus ended the dialogue. Days later, following the arrest of several Sadrists in Najaf and elsewhere in Iraq, Kut was in armed rebellion and the CPA were forced to temporarily withdraw.

How could this happen? To some extent Etherington explains the revolt as a failure to engage the middle classes – something which in turn left the opportunists to dominate the scene. In his words, “the Jaysh al-Mahdi danced briefly on a largely empty stage.” Etherington then goes on to describe how in a final push before the June 2004 handover, a new provincial governor was “selected” caucus-style, to ensure a more meaningful involvement of that important silent majority. He carefully details the dilemmas involved in choosing between “unrestrained democracy” (which would always be tempered by the fact that the “political parties”, including the Sadrists, mostly had militias at their disposal) and paternalist efforts to circumvent the opportunists, by promoting selected “independent” candidates outside the parties and without tribal affiliations.

The outcome of this sort of process could smack of neo-imperialism, whether intended or not: a local representative of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) was sidelined in the Wasit council, allegedly because the council chairman had indicated that the candidature of this person would be unacceptable to Etherington. An “independent” candidate was selected instead, apparently to the CPA’s satisfaction (they had been wary of the influence of the SCIRI militia). To what extent this effort to engage the “educated middle classes” was truly successful in Kut remains a moot point, though: later, in the January 2005 local elections, a coalition in which SCIRI participated would receive around 75 per cent of the vote in Wasit; whereas the December 2005 parliamentary elections returned a Sadrist candidate prominently placed as number two candidate on the United Iraqi Alliance list in the province. On top of this, from January to December 2005 the absolute number of secularist voters in Wasit was reduced by some 50 per cent. Even if the CPA may have succeeded in ensuring a head start for those elements they believed to represent the true centre in Iraqi politics, it seems clear that other forces prevailed in the subsequent period.

Towards the end of 2006, many of the problems discussed by Etherington assumed renewed importance. Today, rumours from Washington suggest that once more the United States is headed for confrontation with the Sadrists: leaked policy papers from the National Security Council indicate US ambitions about some kind of reconfigured Iraqi coalition government – supposedly a “moderate” one – where the Sadrists would be excluded from office. This in turn would facilitate a move by the Iraqi government (possibly aided by a “surge” of US forces or by what is apparently seen as “good militia” by Washington, the pro-Iranian Badr brigades) to rein in Sadrist paramilitaries, which are now considered one of the greatest threats to security in and around Baghdad.

Even on the surface, such a new coalition would have obvious problems. Although the parliamentary arithmetic might support it, it would be a huge gamble to isolate one of the few blocs inside the Iraqi parliament that can claim to have a degree of support on the Iraqi streets (rumours suggest that the other Sadrist grouping, the Fadila, would also remain outside government). Also, it could cause a dramatic reduction of grassroots Shiite support for the government without any appreciable strengthening of its Sunni level of support (reportedly, only the Iraqi Islamic Party would be involved); in this case a perpetuation of the Sunni insurgency along with increased Sadrist violence might be expected – and this on top of problems already underway in Basra with the Fadila. And above all, this would be just another deal among the cadres of the Green Zone – many of them returnees from exile – without any substantial links to the millions of “ordinary Iraqis” who care less about ideological bickering and the finer points of federalism than about security and services. To a non-US observer it really is difficult to grasp the logic of the policy now being proposed. Still, it has to be remembered that to many Americans, Muqtada al-Sadr means war: whereas the rest of the world tended to view the Sadrist uprising in spring 2004 as yet another facet of general Iraqi discontent about the occupation, US media reported it much in terms of a D-Day operation. There were phone-ins with agitated citizens on the pros and cons of an advance on Najaf, and Muqtada al-Sadr was soon portrayed as a demon and arch enemy of the United States. (Ironically, Muqtada al-Sadr, who is easily the Shiite Islamist with the most long-standing Iraqi nationalist credentials, is frequently described in such publications as the New York Times as “pro-Iranian”.)

Is there an alternative to the confrontationist position? The evidence from the south of Iraq is not too promising, with another interesting and recent British account, that of Rory Stewart (The Prince of the Marshes and Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq), clearly demonstrating that a more reconciliatory approach to the Sadrists in Maysan and Dhi Qar ultimately did not pay off. But there are other cases that can be of interest. In Basra, for instance, the Fadila party – which shares much of the Sadrist ideology – has at least periodically demonstrated a more businesslike attitude than could be expected on the basis of the anti-Western rhetoric of their spiritual leader Muhammad al-Yaqubi. Early in 2006, they claimed to have rejected any oil dealings with the British on account of the occupation, but at the same time were happy to publicise their alleged oil contacts with the Russians. And whereas the increasing involvement of Sadrists in government in Baghdad has mostly been portrayed as an appropriation of government property for the sake of party (and militia) interests, there is also a different aspect to this. Last summer, Western media made much of the resignation from government service by a leading Christian Iraqi archaeologist. It was alleged that Iraq’s cultural heritage was coming under threat from Sadrists who now had come in control via the ministry of tourism. On closer inspection, however, it emerged that the main complaint concerned a shift of emphasis from classical Mesopotamian to Islamic archaeology. Surely, in the bigger scheme of things, a temporary decline in Babylonian archaeology in favour of a focus on Islamic medieval artefacts might be a price worth paying for a Sadrist move from armed uprising to participation in government?

Unless the United States pursues a policy that stimulates the Sadrists to take part in government – in a responsible manner – it may soon be facing the same kind of challenge as that described in Etherington’s book: uprisings on two fronts. Any increase of troops levels that comes without some serious attention to political reform would simply mean more of the same; even if US forces should prove capable of handling increased Sadrist militancy they would wake up to unchanged realities on the ground in Iraq once the surge was over. It is conceivable that the United States might be able to engineer a ceasefire within the Iraqi parliament and install an eggshell coalition of nominally pro-US politicians, but this would be an arrangement whose expiry date would coincide with the end of the proposed surge. On the whole, the United States would remain locked in its current predicament: it is being held hostage to Iraqi politicians who are not working in accordance with their professed ideals of Iraqi nationalism; instead they are exploiting the open-ended US military commitment to pursue their own narrow party interests.

The only way a troop surge could possibly succeed would be to firmly align it with the vision that Washington ostensibly supports: Iraqi nationalism. The point of departure would be the realisation that American and Iraqi interests in many ways coincide. Like Iraqi nationalists, the United States is seeking a unified, non-sectarian Iraq – and by now it has understood (mostly) that other declared war aims, such as a “model democracy for the Middle East”, or even a “torch of secularism in the region”, are distinctly unrealistic. The Bush administration should therefore start by admitting, in a very public manner, that grave mistakes in the conduct of the Iraq War have created a situation in which the American presence has had a destructive rather than a unifying effect, and that the current policy is working to the detriment of both Iraqi and American interests. To boost troop levels in the current situation without at the same time addressing fundamental issues of national reconciliation would simply perpetuate and augment the artificial sectarianism that has exploded in Iraqi politics over the past years. (Similarly, to rely exclusively on the Baker–Hamilton recommendation of increased regional diplomacy – in itself a commendable proposal – would probably be difficult given the likely lapse of time before real results with the potential to induce national reconciliation in Iraq would filter through.)

Any credible troop surge, then, would have to be moulded as a one-off project to try to open a new chapter in US–Iraqi relations. If attempted, it should consist of a Herculean effort in which the United States would undertake to make available the very best of its mighty resources, to create the sort of post-1945 European reconstruction climate that it should have aimed at once the fateful decision to go to war was taken back in 2003. This would mean more troops temporarily, but such an increase would make sense only in the context of a definitive timetable for the surge, including substantial and speedy reductions after the surge phase (to levels far below current ones), as well as specific guarantees and limits concerning foreign bases and foreign advisers – two factors which historically have provoked allergic reactions among Iraqis and have made many of their governments worthless in the eyes of the general public. But with this kind of concessions to Iraqi nationalism, Washington would also be in a position to make certain demands on the Iraqi government in return for the “investment”. Any surge should be made conditional on immediate constitutional and legal reform to defuse sectarianism and to get all components of Iraqi society back to the table: in particular there would need to be real concessions on the part of the forces that have so far dominated the constitutional and legislative process (the two biggest Kurdish parties and SCIRI), over issues like de-Baathification, militias and federalism. Importantly, the United States would be able to appeal to popular Iraqi nationalist sentiment on this: whereas politicians in the Green Zone have made federalism and de-Baathification into holy cows, most ordinary Iraqis south of Kurdistan (i.e. those who actually experienced the Baathist regime of the 1990s) do not care a fig for federalism and know well that most of the population at some point had to engage in dealings with the former regime.

Only in this way would the quarrelsome elite politicians of the Iraqi parliament come under some substantial pressure from below. It would become painfully clear that by insisting on their narrow pet projects and various causes célèbres they are effectively hindering national reconciliation, diminishing the prospects for a reduction of foreign troops levels, and preventing all Iraqis from sharing the oil income that theoretically could have made them into one of the wealthiest nations in the region. By pursuing this kind of policy, the United States might be able to turn nationalism into a formidable tailwind for its reconstruction efforts in Iraq. But this would require a serious rethink in Washington: above all, the Bush administration must realise that it needs to prioritise the real components of Iraqi society – like the powerful Sadrist base – instead of seeking hollow truces among elite politicians jostling for positions in the Iraqi government.

The Iraq Study Group: Regionalisation Not Balkanisation

In a remarkable rejection of partitionist winds that have blown through America over the past year, the Iraq Study Group (ISG) in its report of 6 December 2006 recommended a final big push for the Iraqi national reconciliation process, with the collective effort of regional powers as a potential catalyst.

As far as state structure issues are concerned, partition (or any kind of unconstitutional federalisation, whether “from above” by Iraqi elite politicians or on the basis of foreign advice) was apparently never taken seriously by the ISG. Already prior to the release of the report, a few members of the ISG working groups had complained to the press that they had felt marginalised during the process and that their proposals never truly came on the agenda. The report itself rather brusquely dismisses the prospect of “devolution to three regions” (p. 43), citing arguments that for once are almost identical to those of the Bush administration: practical infeasibility and the dangers of greater regional chaos. Elsewhere, the report mostly shuns the federalisation question, with the implicit message that the ISG envisages this process to stay on track according to the constitution: outside Kurdistan, federal decentralisation is optional not mandatory, and if it is to be done, it will start by initiatives “from below” in the Iraqi governorates, not by Baghdad politicians or by outsiders with “plans” for Iraq.

Instead, the report advocates a serious attempt to get the national reconciliation process back on track, especially as regards re-inclusion of the Sunnis. To facilitate this, it proposes new initiatives at several levels. Perhaps most significantly, there are proposals to work for greater regional momentum that could be conducive to a more peaceful Iraq. The ISG advocates the creation of an “international support group” for Iraq that would include neighbouring states, which in a collective forum might be able to transcend some of their narrow interests linked to their particular protégées inside Iraq. Importantly, active steps to progress in the wider Arab–Israeli conflict and the Palestine issue are recognised as a central pillar for improving the regional atmosphere.

The ISG also suggests that the Iraqi government itself is not doing enough to drive the national reconciliation effort forward. It focuses on the need for rapprochement with the marginalised Sunnis, and introduces several new ideas about how to achieve that. These include a suggestion for United Nations support in the constitutional revision process, a rather outspoken criticism of the current Iraqi constitution’s allotment of undiscovered “future” oil fields to the regions instead of to the central government (apparently the criticism is also directed against regional control of the oil sector as such), international arbitration over Kirkuk, and a delay of the Kirkuk referendum (pp. 65–66.) There is also a more general “talk-to-everyone-but-al-Qaida” attitude throughout the report.

Many of these proposals are quite radical in that they explicitly challenge the current version of the Iraqi constitution. But at the same time they also serve as alternatives that could receive consideration in the constitutional review process. Some of these suggestions have earlier been floated in international NGOs and by figures working in the United Nations system. It is likely that the driving forces behind the 2005 constitution (chiefly the two big Kurdish parties and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, SCIRI) will feel threatened by some of the recommendations in the report. On the other hand, these suggestions should appeal to a large silent majority of Iraqi nationalists of both Shiite and Sunni backgrounds, as well as to regional powers worried about Iraqi decentralisation spinning out of control.

In the current situation, regionalisation and multilateralism generally come across as good ideas, although the United States should not underestimate the desire of regional powers to keep them engaged, mired down in Iraq. The proposed overtures to regional powers in turn reflect a failure of United States policy in the Middle East in two areas. Firstly, inside Iraq, it relates to a communications problem. The ISG report explicitly acknowledges this (p. 14), asserting that the United States is “unable” to talk to the most important Shiite figure (the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani), and “does not talk” to another important political leader, Muqtada al-Sadr. This has led to sole reliance on the Shiite party that best understands how to deal with Washington – SCIRI – which happens to be the party with the most long-standing and systematic ties to Iran, and which is also the author of the Shiite federalism proposal that most infuriates the Sunnis. But SCIRI account only for some 23% of the deputies within the big pro-Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), and their elevation to a pre-eminent contact point reflects a failure on the part of Washington to engage other partners among the Shiites. This has created some remarkable contradictions in US policy. There was something distinctly Trojan about the way in which pro-Iranian SCIRI leader Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim was invited to Washington for high-level talks only days after a leaked memo by Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld had advocated a robust strengthening of US forces along the border with Iran to physically protect Iraq against Iranian influences.

The second issue that has precipitated a turn to regional powers relates to overall US policy in the region. Importantly, the ISG recognises the inter-relationships between Iraq and broader regional issues. Until there is a minimum of consistency in the US approach to democracy and human rights issues across different countries in the Middle East, it will remain unable to conduct an ideological foreign policy and will rely on compromises with regional states. This also affects the situation in Iraq, where many parties are reluctant to talk to the United States precisely because they are unconvinced about Washington’s overall vision for the region. Until the US becomes more energetic in solving the Arab–Israeli conflict – chiefly by speeding up the process towards an independent Palestinian state within borders approximating the pre-1967 situation and with an honourable settlement for the 1948 refugees – this problem of scarcity of local pro-democracy partners will remain.

Federalism from Below in Iraq: Some Historical and Comparative Reflections

Paper presented to the international workshop “Iraq after the New Government: Stabilisation, Reconstruction and the Security Regional Scenario”, arranged by the Landau Network, Como, Italy, 24–25 November 2006

Reidar Visser, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs

The Iraqi choice of federalism as a system of government is not surprising, but the particular path to federalism established in the Iraqi constitution is truly remarkable.(1)

Among the 25 existing federations of the world, the vast majority belong to one of two categories, or to a combination of these two. Firstly there are “evolutionary” federations – either polities that developed gradually from below by the amalgamation of entities that wished to federate (as in Switzerland), or those built on imperial remnants similarly created over time but which, with a single stroke, were converted into federations, often at independence (like Micronesia). Secondly, there are “designed” federations – political systems whose geographical make-up has been decided by a small group of political elites, often in closed-doors forums of experts on constitutional questions and democratic theory (examples include South Africa and Ethiopia). Only one existing federation has a method for implementing federalism comparable to that of the new Iraq: Spain.(2)

Federalism from below: Spain’s experience

The unique feature of Spanish federalism as expressed in the 1978 constitution – based on a precedent from the 1931 constitution of the short-lived Second Republic – is the role of the popular initiative in designing the federal map of the country. In theory, at least, the federal entities of Spain were to be crafted from below, abajo–arriba (bottom–up), through initiatives at the municipal level. The 1978 constitution allows contiguous provinces to amalgamate into autonomous regions provided that at least two thirds of the municipalities concerned (and representing at least a majority of the population of each of the affected provinces) have assented to the federalisation initiative; such efforts can be launched every five years until successful. On paper, this resembles the mechanisms adopted in the 2005 Iraqi constitution and the subsequent legislation for implementing federalism: with the exception of Baghdad, all Iraqi governorates south of Kurdistan – 14 altogether – are free to combine into federal regions on the basis of referendums, and the initiative for the referendum rests with the local governorates in that one tenth of voters or one third of governorate council members can call a plebiscite. Thus the thresholds for starting an autonomy initiative are markedly lower than in Spain (as is the moratorium on renewed attempts: one year only), but the principles are similar.(3)

However, the actual experiences of Spain in the crucial years of transition from 1978 to 1983 illustrate how building federalism from below can involve unexpected complications, and may prove to be less of a bottom–up enterprise than initially envisaged. The first point concerns the danger of federal chaos and reactions from conservative forces if the federalisation process should develop in unforeseen ways. In Spain, it had generally been expected that two or three regions with long-standing autonomy demands would take steps to ensure autonomous status, whereas the remainder of the country would retain a more unitary state structure. In fact, however, several candidates for self-rule suddenly materialised out of the blue. Members of the old establishment, particularly within the military, reacted negatively towards what they saw as a decentralisation process running out of control, and even many democratically inclined politicians were critical of the rapid proliferation of autonomy ideas in areas where such demands had no past history.(4) Matters came to a head with a military coup attempt in February 1981; at that point Spanish politicians decided that greater top–down control was needed and they effectively took over the job of completing and sealing the country’s federal map, including the demarcation of the federal regions of central Spain.(5) A compromise on federalism was thus an integral part of the package that facilitated Spain’s transition to democracy – in fact, in the 1990s Spain was able to “reopen” the federalism debate in a less frenzied atmosphere, now with the European Union as a stabilising external factor.

MAP 1. Spain’s pre-democracy regional structure (left); the administrative map of modern Spain (right).

The second important aspect of the Spanish experience has to do with the relatively high influence of regional administrative divisions of the past even in this setting of extreme flux and theoretical openness to change. Thus, ten out of the twelve mainland regions that were defined by bottom–up initiatives from the municipal level before the 1981 compromise on federalism had been readily identifiable as regions in the times of General Franco and earlier. Only two of the regions established prior to 1981, Cantabria and La Rioja (both uni-provincial “secessions” from the larger region of Old Castile), represented radical departures from this general picture. Arguably, one important reason why the instability of the Spanish transition could be contained was the relatively strong and unequivocal historical legacy that pointed towards a particular configuration of territorial entities.

Federalism from below in Iraq

These two points offer historical lessons of relevance to Iraq’s current situation. Firstly, federalisation is destined to become an extremely contentious issue in a state that emerges from a centralistic path. Clearly, reactionary attitudes to federalism should not be allowed to block the progress of genuinely popular desire for radical decentralisation. But the Spanish example shows that moderation and compromise in federalism issues can be the key to a successful democratic transition, even if this may mean that no group obtains exactly the state structure it was hoping for at the outset.

Secondly, the importance of strong regional historical legacies should not be underestimated. Whereas most of Spain’s federal units can refer to long experiences of administrative separateness, only Kurdistan and possibly the projected small-scale region of the south known as iqlim al-janub (Basra, Maysan and Dhi Qar – the old Ottoman vilayet of Basra) exhibit anything remotely comparable to this in Iraq.(6) (Kurdistan’s special position on this score was recognised through the enshrinement of Kurdish autonomy in the Iraqi constitution – a parallel to the Spanish recognition of long-standing self-rule demands through the “fast track” route to autonomy in article 151 of the 1978 constitution, but in the Iraqi case done in classic top–down style.) Throughout the rest of Iraq, historically there has been unity and subordination to Baghdad for long periods.(7) Thus, some of today’s schemes, such as the project of a nine-province Region of the Centre and the South (iqlim al-wasat wa-al-janub), do not correspond to any substantial historical precedent.(8) Of course, this in itself is no argument against the legitimacy of these projects – modern, voluntaristic federal entities may be just as successful as “historical” ones. In Spain, creations like Cantabria and La Rioja were ridiculed for their alleged “artificiality”, but one might also turn that logic on its head and argue that creativity may indeed be necessary to break centralist hegemonies of the past. But the point about historical endurance is worth bearing in mind when it comes to dangers of political instability, and it is one which the protagonists of the “modern” regions should heed so as to secure the safest possible transition to federalism for their citizens. This is doubly important because of the extremely low thresholds for initiating and repeating referendum initiatives under the Iraqi system, something which makes the entire process even less predictable than was the case in Spain.

Possible problems in the new Iraqi law on implementing federalism

These general observations on the limits of existing models of federalism “from below” are relevant to analyses of the new legal framework for implementing federalism in Iraq, adopted on 11 October 2006 – and, in particular, to discussions of possible complications that may arise once that law is put into practice. One remarkable feature of the Iraqi discussion of this legislation project is that very little of what has been said has been based on readings of the actual text adopted. Indeed, for a long time it has been almost impossible for the general public to obtain copies of the considerably modified version of the law that was agreed on after an original draft had been introduced on 26 September.(9) This in itself suggests that the public debate on the subject cannot be considered to have been truly exhaustive.

There are apparently several grey areas in the Iraqi law on the implementation of federalism. They include subjects such as the procedure for defining the referendum parameters in the case of mutually conflicting federalism visions for the same area (if, say, some in Najaf wish to become part of a three-governorate Middle Euphrates entity, whereas others favour a larger nine-governorate all-Shiite super-region). Here the law does not go into much detail beyond a single keyword – istibyan – or a (governorate-level) “poll” to determine which particular alternative should be put to the test in a referendum. Similarly, it is unclear to what extent there is any timeline for the start of the race, once the law has entered into effect in April 2008: if someone in Amara requests a referendum on day one, is there any deadline for others to submit a challenge and thereby prompt a pre-referendum “poll” within the governorate? (10)

Perhaps most problematic of all is the question of how to proceed in case several incompatible autonomy initiatives are launched and successfully survive the poll pre-selection process. Basra citizens may decide for a referendum on a uni-governorate Basra region. Residents of Maysan may come out in favour of a vote on a slightly larger Region of the South involving Basra and Dhi Qar as well. The people of Dhi Qar, in turn, may want to give a chance to the idea unifying all the Shiite communities northwards to Karbala – except that the inhabitants of Babel may want a referendum on a small-scale Middle Euphrates region, while those of Wasit and Karbala may not be enthusiastic about federalism at all and could fail to produce federal initiatives that would satisfy the minimum legal requirements. Perhaps the people of Diyala and other areas with strong Iraqi nationalist traditions might decide to take a pro-active stance to the challenge of decentralisation, by introducing a surprise nationalist–federalist project: a “Region of Mesopotamia” – iqlim al-rafidayn – stretching all the way from Basra to Mosul, and with the potential to put a stop to what could otherwise become an endless string of autonomy bids. This is all theory and hypotheses, but it is clear that a considerable mess – as shown in Table 1 – can emerge at the “poll” level, even before any referendum is held.

TABLE 1: SIMULATION OF POSSIBLE OUTCOMES OF PRE-REFERENDUM POLLS (ISTIBYANS) UNDER THE NEW IRAQI LAW FOR IMPLEMENTING FEDERALISM

Governorate	Available alternatives (see also note 11)	Winner of pre-referendum poll (or sole initiative launched)
Basra	Iqlim al-Janub Iqlim al-Wasat wa-al-Janub Iqlim al-Basra Iqlim al-Rafidayn	Iqlim al-Basra
Maysan	Iqlim al-Janub	Iqlim al-Janub
Dhi Qar	Iqlim al-Janub Iqlim al-Wasat wa-al-Janub	Iqlim al-Wasat wa-al-Janub
Muthanna	Iqlim al-Wasat wa-al-Janub	Iqlim al-Wasat wa-al-Janub
Wasit	Iqlim al-Wasat wa-al-Janub Iqlim al-Rafidayn	[Neither initiative reaches threshold]
Qadisiyya	Iqlim al-Wasat wa-al-Janub Iqlim al-Furat al-Awsat	Iqlim al-Wasat wa-al-Janub
Babel	Iqlim al-Wasat wa-al-Janub Iqlim al-Furat al-Awsat	Iqlim al-Furat al-Awsat
Najaf	Iqlim al-Wasat wa-al-Janub Iqlim al-Najaf	Iqlim al-Wasat wa-al-Janub
Karbala	Iqlim al-Wasat wa-al-Janub	[Initiative fails to reach threshold]
Diyala	Iqlim al-Rafidayn	[Initiative fails to reach threshold]
Salahaddin	Iqlim al-Rafidayn	[Initiative fails to reach threshold]
Anbar	[No initiative]	[-]
Nineve	Iqlim al-Rafidayn	Iqlim al-Rafidayn
Kirkuk	Iqlim al-Rafidayn	Iqlim al-Rafidayn

At least two very different scenarios can be inferred from this theoretical example. One alternative would be for all the referendums to go ahead on the basis of their original formulas, even as voters in Najaf and Muthanna would know perfectly well that some of the governorates listed in their preferred nine-governorate scheme would be barred from joining their entity – because in those governorates a different and mutually exclusive small-scale regionalist vision had triumphed in the local pre-referendum poll. A possible result might be the further fragmentation of the large-scale federalist project, with majorities in relatively poor Qadisiyya, Muthanna and Dhi Qar voting in favour, but with Najaf voters changing their minds and saving their vote for a uni-governorate federal entity at some future stage. The outcome would be a mix of uni-governorate entities, “rump” regions consisting of remnants of large-scale projects that failed to acquire support in all of their targeted governorates, and a rump Iraq without devolution to the regional level (Map 2, left).

                            

MAP 2. Left: Rump Iraq with remnants of partially successful regions; right, rump Iraq with uni-governorate and small-scale regions formed on the basis of pre-referendum elimination polls.

An alternative method would be to take more seriously the concerns of the voters: there is little point in staging a referendum for a project if its infeasibility is implicitly acknowledged ahead of the vote, as a result of the rise of incompatible schemes in one or more of the targeted governorates. Accordingly, should a situation arise along the aforementioned lines with mutual incompatibility between the various proposed schemes, it would make sense to ask voters to restate their preferences in light of the new realities, in a second pre-referendum poll. (To be workable, this kind of elimination race would require coordination and indeed synchronisation between governorates.) In such a poll, wealthy and autonomy-minded governorates like Najaf might elect to recast themselves as uni-governorate regionalists, thereby repeating the problem of exclusion on a smaller scale vis-à-vis poorer provinces like neighbouring Babel, Qadisiyya and Muthanna (who might still wish to pursue a second amalgamation bid, this time on a smaller scale, as a Middle Euphrates region). Najaf’s desire to go it alone would then perhaps impact on popular sentiment in the remaining Euphrates governorates during a third pre-referendum poll; Babel and Qadisiyya might conceivably agree on a joint two-governorate project, leaving Muthanna out in the cold. The end result with this kind of procedure would be a combination of small-scale regions, uni-governorate regions, and a rump Iraq of anti-federalists and governorates excluded during the initial poll rounds (map 2, right).

Potential areas for legal clarifications or adjustments

As of today, Iraqi lawmakers lean towards the second of the interpretations outlined above. To be valid, an autonomy referendum must correspond exactly to the territorial entity defined in the initiative; regions of “leftovers” are unacceptable and must be built from scratch instead. This means that the primary focus of future instability concerns failed regional initiatives on a larger scale: it is very easy to launch an initiative, but quite difficult to make it victorious in a single referendum. This in turn makes the prospect of repeated initiatives and even pre-referendum polls very real. Additionally, the problem concerning partially successful regions – outlined above with regard to the pre-referendum poll stage – may become equally relevant should a referendum on a successfully launched large-scale initiative fail in the referendum in one or more of the affected governorates. The Spanish constitution explicitly gives recognition to such partial regions (article 153.3), but it remains unclear whether a similar interpretation would be acceptable in Iraq. Such regions could be purely accidental creations which no one had even thought about prior to the referendum, and with the absence of a requirement for territorial contiguity in Iraq, they could in theory assume rather contorted shapes.

Fortunately, certain trends among leading Iraqi politicians can go some way towards mitigating these problems. Much emphasis is attached to the 18 months moratorium on federalism as a period for educating public opinion about the federalism question. Importantly, Iraqi politicians have a far more sophisticated approach to the overall question of decentralisation than many Western commentators. Iraqis tend to emphasise the asymmetrical, multi-layer characteristics of the Iraqi constitution, which mean that there is no absolute imperative for systematic federalisation, and many governorates may well choose to retain their current administrative status in the future. Some leading Iraqi politicians contend that a law on the governorates with provisions for wide-ranging local autonomy will make federal regions an exceptional feature of the Iraqi system, perhaps limited to the Kurdish areas and one or two small-scale regions elsewhere. Additionally, with a few exceptions, the majority of pro-federal Iraqi politicians have so far stayed true to the bottom–up principle, by refraining from aggressively marketing any preferred regional vision during what is a critical period of transition.

Helpful as such attitudes may be, certain questions pertaining to the legal framework remain. International political history has shown that federalism from below is a particularly challenging venture, and Iraq above all needs a decentralisation system that is watertight and capable of smoothly tackling the unforeseen. In particular, avoidance of a string of dead-end federal initiatives and the concomitant potential for political instability would seem a natural goal. At the same time, it is desirable that the democratic spirit of the bottom–up approach be preserved: the very last thing Iraqis want today is new dictatorships at a federal level. Two remedies could be relevant in this regard. Firstly, the existing law on implementing federalism could be elaborated in areas where it currently leaves question marks. Secondly, the committee charged with revising the Iraqi constitution could undertake a more thorough rethink of the basic framework for the country’s federalisation process.

Whatever road is taken, some key priority areas seem clear. Firstly, it would be advantageous for the modalities of the pre-referendum polls to be specified in greater detail, especially the question of inter-governorate synchronisation and how to deal with regional visions that become technically impossible after having failed at the poll level in one or more of the “affected” governorates. But also some very basic questions need to be addressed at the poll stage, like what level of participation, if any, should be required for this exercise, and what kind of appeals procedures should be available. Secondly, consideration might be given to the alternative of radically tightening up today’s lax requirements for calling a referendum – so as to avoid a multiplication of federal alternatives with limited popular support, repeated initiatives and even pre-referendum polls, and, ultimately, voter exasperation and contempt for the entire process of federalisation.(12) Here it is worth bearing in mind that Spain got into trouble even with relatively strict requirements for the initiation of autonomy projects. In fact, even if Iraq should decide to imitate the Spanish model, for instance by requiring pre-referendum consensus by a two-thirds or three-fourths majority at the lowest existing administrative level (i.e. all municipalities plus those rural subdistricts or nahiyas without municipal institutions), there would remain a considerable difference in the level of popular support behind the autonomy initiatives in the two countries. By the early 1980s, Spain had a population of some 35 million distributed in around 8,000 municipalities, i.e. on average 4,000 citizens behind every decision on an autonomy initiative; by contrast, the perhaps 25 million citizens of today’s Iraq have a local-level layer of government limited to around 500 entities, which yields a citizen/entity ratio of approximately 1 to 50,000. Clearly, such an arrangement would have represented an improvement on today’s proposed procedure and its roughly 1,400,000 citizens per governorate, but it would still be far from Spanish standards with regard to local-level control of the federalisation process.(13) A simple juxtaposition of the administrative maps of Iraq and Spain illustrates the salient differences in “democratic density” between the two cases of bottom–up federalism.(14)

         

MAP 3. Left, Spain’s fine-grained system of some 8,000 municipalities and the starting point for federalisation in the 1980s; right, Iraq’s provinces which form the suggested and comparatively crude framework for federalisation by way of “popular” initiatives. The relevant population figures are 35 million for Spain in the 1980s and 25 million for today’s Iraq.

Finally, it would be wise to think through the feasibility of any kind of further federalisation pending the completion and institutionalisation of the central government structure laid down in the Iraqi constitution. It has been suggested that at one point, during the putsch in February 1981, the persona of King Juan Carlos was the single factor that saved Spain from a relapse into authoritarianism. Under a republican system, this kind of safety valve of traditional authority is not available, and, in the Iraqi case, the scope for conflicting interpretations of the relevant legal codes for the federalisation process is such that the role of the arbiter will exceed what is normally expected from an independent electoral commission. Hence, it seems ill advised to enter this kind of legal grey-zone area without at least a constitutional court that is up and running.(15) The experiences of Spain strongly suggest that candidates for bottom–up federalism will need to prepare for the unexpected and for worst-case scenarios if their ambitious ideas are to prosper.

NOTES

1. Special thanks to Safa al-Din al-Safi, Iraq’s minister of state for national assembly affairs, for valuable information concerning the newly adopted law on the implentation of federalism, as well as to Lukas Oldenburg, Klaus-Jürgen Nagel and Tom Harrington for helpful comments concerning the autonomy question in Spain.

2. See Reidar Visser, “Building Federal Subunits By Way of Referenda: Special Challenges for Iraq”, 9 June 2006, http://historiae.org/federalism.asp. For an interesting hybrid case of tentative federal re-structuring “from below” (but with robust arm-twisting from above), see the case of contemporary Russia, as discussed by Helge Blakkisrud in “To Merge or Not To Merge: The Debate on Rationalizing the Russian Federal Structure”, paper presented to the ASN Convention, Columbia University, New York, 23–25 March 2006.

3. For problems of political stability related to this, see Reidar Visser, “The Draft Law for the Formation of Regions: A Recipe for Permanent Instability in Iraq?” 27 September 2006, http://historiae.org/aqalim.asp

4. To some extent, this echoed reactions seen under the Second Republic (1931–1939), see Luis Moreno, The Federalization of Spain (London: Frank Cass, 2001) p. 56.

5. Elite demarcation was instrumental in creating the region of Madrid and determining the new borders of the two Castiles. Effectively, Extremadura was also affected by elite-level decisions, as it had not seen municipality-level initiatives prior to 1981. The early initiatives for regionalisation outside the traditionally autonomist areas (Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia and, arguably, Andalusia) are often overlooked; for some interesting examples see Lukas Oldenburg, Recht auf Gleichheit vs Recht auf Differenz: Dezentralisierung und peripherer Nationalismus am Beispiel Kataloniens, thesis submitted to Europa-Universität Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) 2005, p. 62, n. 171.

6. On the history of various regionalist attempts in Iraq south of Baghdad, see Reidar Visser, Basra, the Failed Gulf State: Separatism and Nationalism in Southern Iraq (Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2005).

7. Even though Mosul technically formed a separate entity in certain periods, its politics was on the whole tightly linked to Baghdad; see for instance Stephen Longrigg, Four Centuries of Modern Iraq (Oxford, 1925), pp. 209–210.

8. One might perhaps argue that there are certain parallels, albeit tenuous ones, between today’s project of a grand all-Shiite entity and the ephemeral Hilla-based Mazyadid tribal Shiite emirate of the eleventh and early twelfth centuries. The latter has a rather marginal place in Iraqi historiography and so far has not been evoked by today’s proponents of a single Shiite federal unit.

9. The subsequent discussion is based on the original draft plus the descriptions of new amendments given in al-Ittihad, 12 October 2006 (requirement for consent by all affected governorates in referendum, and with at least 50 per cent participation), and al-Adala, 14 October 2006 (regions not to merge into super-regions). Texts purporting to represent the final version but failing to incorporate these changes continued to circulate in October 2006.

10. According to the draft law, there is a two-month deadline for holding a poll in the case of multiple federal schemes. But if the poll is to be held earlier than this, the question of the final date for challenges will be highly pertinent.

11. Two real and two more hypothetical federal visions are employed here: firstly, the existing projects of Iqlim al-Janub (Basra, Maysan, Dhi Qar) and Iqlim al-Wasat wa-al-Janub (all nine Shiite-majority provinces from Basra through Karbala); secondly, the more theoretical schemes of a Middle Euphrates region, Iqlim al-Furat al-Awsat consisting of Najaf, Babel and Qadisiyya – this actually has some tentative precedents dating back to 2005 – as well as an imaginary all-Iraq region designed as a nationalist response to the decentralisation challenge, Iqlim al-Rafidayn or the old Iraq minus Kurdistan and Baghdad (under the Iraqi constitution the latter is specifically prohibited from joining any region).

12. Another obvious argument in favour of tighter rules is the prospect of outsider interference: in a society dominated by militias it will be relatively easy for political powers outside the governorates to engineer factions large enough to satisfy the current regulations for launching an autonomy initiative. Another alternative would be to re-impose limits “from above”, for instance such as a ceiling on the number of governorates allowed to amalgamate (the 2004 Transitional Administrative Law has a limit of maximum three governorates), or a requirement about territorial contiguity (as in the Spanish precedent) – both of which would serve to cut down the number of potential combinations and thus reduce the scope for chaos and political instability.

13. The Iraqi model of local administration, largely inherited from the Ottomans, is asymmetrical in that whereas the entire country is divided into governorates, districts and subdistricts, municipal administrations have been carved out within the subdistricts in urban areas, but without any corresponding administrative structure in the countryside. A US-led venture to create a further layer of local-level politics of more than 1,000 “neighbourhood councils” was launched after 2003 but has reportedly partly disintegrated since 2004. On the other hand, many of the nahiyas and municipalities can be considered among the oldest elements of the state machinery of modern Iraq, with their roots and administrative borders in many cases dating back to the late nineteenth century.

14. These statistics also point to the dual-edged nature of federalism from below. It is the beauty of such a system that local communities are accorded increased control of their destiny: the higher the number of local-level entities whose consent is being sought, the more difficult it will be for outsiders to rig and manipulate the federalisation process. But small localities can also create hiccups, as names from Spain’s political history attest to: Almeria delayed the formation of the Andalusia region through abstentions; Teruel protested against the autonomy process in Aragón; and Segovia voiced resistance against inclusion in the re-constituted Castile and León.

15. Under the Iraqi constitution a special law on the composition of the court must be adopted with a two-thirds majority.