More Tension between the Iraqi Security Forces and the Badr Brigades, This Time in Hilla

Contrary to the standard image of the Iraqi security forces as lightly camouflaged members of the Badr brigades, tension between those forces and Badr actually seems to be on the increase. In a recent episode in Hilla, Iraqi security forces carried out a surprise search of the headquarters of the Badr brigades, and according to some reports confiscated both rockets and explosives. The ISCI governor of Babel claimed that only Kalashnikovs were taken and that these were for the “personal use” of the Badr members.

Assuming that the reports are genuine and that this was not a staged event of some kind, the episode is interesting because it seems to add to a more general trend. Earlier this year in Maysan, posters of Hakim were torn down during operations carried out by the security forces. Some months ago, ISCI protested strongly against the interior ministry’s appointment of a new police chief in Nasiriyya. Some reports claim that the notorious “Scorpions” of the Iraqi security forces took part in the recent Hilla operation, even in cooperation with US forces. Earlier, the late police chief in Babel, Qays al-Mamuri, had fought Badr with determination.

Moreover, the incident throws into question the true degree of demilitarisation as regards the Badr forces and other pro-ISCI elements. It is worth recalling that as late as 2007, the leader of “Hizbollah in Iraq”, an integral part of ISCI, made a public request to Maliki to have his “30,000 militiamen” integrated into the Iraqi security forces and complained that no action had been taken.

In other news, Wifaq and al-Hiwar al-Watani have decided to contest the local elections on a joint ticket, with Hiwar’s leadership specifically rejecting an alliance with (Sunni-dominated) Tawafuq on the grounds that they found it “too sectarian”. That’s a step in the right direction, but where are Fadila, Jaafari’s Islah, the UIA independents and the tribal leaders?

No, Senator Obama, On This One You Were Wrong and McCain Was Right

Senator Barack Obama to Senator John McCain during yesterday’s presidential debate: “You said that there was no history of violence between Shiite and Sunni. And you were wrong.”

Since this is forceful claim about Iraqi history which was presented during a contest for the position as the world’s most powerful leader, it is worth examining in some further detail. Let’s take a closer look at that “history of violence between Shiite and Sunni” in Iraq. Shiites and Sunnis have coexisted in Iraq since they crystallised as two distinctive religious communities in Baghdad in the tenth century AD, when the struggle for power between various factions of the Islamic caliphate that had been going on since the seventh century became transformed into a theological one with the (Shiite) doctrine of the imamate. In the subsequent centuries, there was certainly tension between these two communities at times (not least because the rivalling ruling elements of the caliphates chose to cultivate links with particular communities to further their own power struggles), but outbreaks of violence on a large scale were extremely rare. In fact, not more than three cases stand out before the late twentieth century, and these were all related to invasion by foreign forces rather than to internal sectarian struggles between the Iraqis.

The first major case of extensive Shiite–Sunni violence was in 1508: A massacre by invading Persian Safavids of Sunnis and Christians in Baghdad. The Safavids returned a little more than one hundred years later, in 1623, and once more went ahead with a massacre of Sunnis in Baghdad. Later, in the nineteenth century, extremist Sunni Wahhabis from the Arabian Peninsula would regularly overrun the settled areas of Iraq; on one occasion, in 1801, this took on a clearly sectarian nature as Bedouin warriors massacred Shiites in the holy city of Karbala. The list can be completed down to 2003 and the US invasion with a series of ugly episodes that took place in the late twentieth century: Between 1969 and 1971, the Sunni-dominated Baathist regime performed mass expulsions of Shiites (including a high number of Fayli Kurds); in 1980 there was another wave of mass deportations of Shiites in the wake of the Iranian revolution; finally, in 1991 there were massacres of Shiites after the failed intifada that followed the Gulf War. (Conversely, some of the other historical episodes that are occasionally described as instances of “sectarian violence” simply do not fit this label. For example, the conflict between the government and the mostly Shiite tribes on the Euphrates in the 1935 was interwoven with questions relating to agrarian issues and conscription, and Sunni politicians had ties to both the government and the opposition camps.)

On the one hand, there can be no doubt that this is a grim record: it involves thousands of innocent people who were massacred simply because they belonged to the wrong sect. On the other hand, however, it is important to keep things in perspective. These six cases of widespread sectarian violence took place in a time span of more than 1,000 years. Moreover, they were mostly instigated by foreign invaders. The Iraqis themselves repeatedly closed ranks against these aggressions, uniting Shiites and Sunnis against the foreign forces. For example, in 1623 when the Safavid army was about to massacre the Sunni population of Baghdad, Shiites of Karbala intervened to save Sunnis from Shiite aggression. Similarly, in 1801, when Sunni Wahhabis sacked Karbala, the Sunni pasha of Baghdad punished the Sunni governor of Karbala for having failed to prevent the attack on the Shiites. Also, in none of these cases did the victims propose separative solutions. Never in Iraqi history has there been any call for a small Sunni state. And with the exception of feeble and short-lived attempt by some low-ranking clerics and notables of Baghdad in 1927, the Shiites have also consistently shied away from a call for a small Shiite breakaway state. None of the major upheavals of twentieth-century Iraqi history – 1920 and 1958 – featured sectarian conflict as the main mode of political action.

The accumulation of cases of sectarian violence during the decades of Baathist rule calls for special comment. True, the measures taken against the Shiites in the early 1980s and in 1991 were extremely repressive, and in a one-off episode in the immediate wake of the 1991 uprising they turned into fully-fledged explicit sectarianism through a series of chauvinist Sunni editorials in the Thawra newspaper in which the Arabness of the Shiites was questioned. However, subsequent developments in Iraqi politics show that the “Sunni” character of the Baathist regime was not its real core and that it was first and foremost an authoritarian regime built on relations between patrons and clients: In the mid-1990s the dominant political trend in Iraq was intra-Sunni struggles, as tribe after tribe challenged Saddam Hussein, who ended up executing people from his hometown Tikrit and his own family. When the defector Husayn Kamil Hasan al-Majid returned from Jordan in 1996, he was put to death just like many Shiite rebels had been after the 1991 uprising.

Perhaps most importantly in the context of the US elections, this record needs to be compared with that of the country Barack Obama represents himself. Did not the Civil War cause some 600,000 deaths between 1861 and 1865? How many thousands of African Americans have been killed in KKK violence? What about the Native Americans? The numbers here are clearly higher than the number of deaths caused by sectarian violence in Iraq, and yet few are prepared to question the viability of the United States as a political project. So where did Senator Obama really want to go with those comments?

There is a problem in Democratic discourse on Iraq that consists of always trying to put the actions of the Bush administration is the worst possible light, even in situations when this forces the Democrats to twist the reality. It seems reasonable to criticise the Iraq War on several grounds: there were no weapons of mass destruction, no al-Qaida link and no 911 relationship, and the unilateral action without a UN mandate created yet another dangerous precedent in international affairs. But Democrats go further than this: they frequently claim that the sectarian problems seen in Iraq since 2003 and especially in the wake of the Samarra bombing in 2006 were a “natural” expression of Iraqi politics, and that the high degree of Iranian influence seen in today’s Iraq is somehow a “natural” phenomenon in a country with a large Shiite population. The argument is that the Bush administration should have known that any tampering with the authoritarian structures of Baathist Iraq would automatically have prompted a civil war with a strong Iranian role among the Shiites. It is also a way of ultimately blaming the Iraqis themselves for all the problems they are currently going through.

This is to ignore the historical record of coexistence between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq and the fervent anti-Iranian attitudes among large sections of Iraq’s Shiites. Of course, on the latter point, John McCain is off the mark just like Obama: by suggesting that “the consequences of defeat would have been increased Iranian influence” he overlooks the fact that some of America’s best friends in the Maliki government have extremely close ties to Iran and that Iran’s interests so far have been well served by the Republican “victory” project and Washington’s peculiar choice of alliance partners among Iraq’s Shiites. But on the whole, Republicans, to a greater degree than Democrats, at least seem to recognise the historical roots of Iraqi national unity. From the Iraqi point of view it simply seems more dangerous to have a US president who based on some extremely superficial reading pretends to know something about the divide between Sunnis and Shiites than to have one who reportedly is completely ignorant about the subject.

The bottom line is that there is nothing in Iraq’s history that should prevent the country from reverting to its natural role as one of the world’s great nations. Those who try to suggest otherwise either ignore the empirical record or do not care for the well-being of the Iraqi people. It is said that Obama has several top-notch, progressive and knowledgeable advisers who know about all these things, and who are unlikely to look to soft partitionist Joe Biden when it comes to actual policy-making. But unless these voices can have a real impact on what their candidate says in front of millions of Americans in prime-time televised debates, their usefulness seems unclear. If yesterday’s unfounded attack on Iraq’s record of coexistence is the most inspirational thing Obama can come up with on Iraq then it is hard for a non-American observer to see any fundamental difference between his candidacy and that of all the others before him. Obama’s remarks were yet another example of how American politicians can be careless in dealing with other sovereign nations and their histories, and they also go in exactly the wrong direction at a time when politics in Iraq is once more becoming more cross-sectarian.

More on the Elections Law

The Iraqi parliament has now published what is supposed to be the final version of the elections law. One remaining caveat concerns the discrepancy between some of the articles in the published version and those quoted in yesterday’s official press release from the parliament, especially concerning articles 32 and 35. The second point about a permission to use symbolism related to non-candidates except “religious authorities” (maraji‘ al-din) has been omitted in the complete version of the law, and article 35 sounds altogether different from the original: the press release referred to a permission to use public buildings and mosques for “information purposes” related to the electoral process but not for political campaigning as such, whereas the newly released text bans the use of government offices for campaigning purposes but expressly allows it in mosques and places of worship. While the “change” to article 32 may be a case of an oversight by the website staff, the differences between the two versions of article 35 are substantial. It could be simply the case of a wrong draft having been used, but it might also reflect some last-minute changes to the law that have not yet received the attention they deserve.

Another notable feature of the released law is the non-mention of Kurdistan, where leaders reportedly have decided not to carry out elections. They appear to be doing this unilaterally – it is not something that is explicitly part of the law, whose language itself is general and refers to “all the governorates” with no other exception than Kirkuk.

There has been a degree of confusion in the press about the women’s quota: this quota was adopted already on 22 July, but back then it was purely aspirational – no mechanism for arriving at the quota was defined other than an instruction to parties to nominate a certain proportion of women. Now, the counting of the open lists results is arranged so that every fourth* winner from these lists will be a woman, but there is no guaranteed quota (theoretically, in some small electoral districts male independent candidates might win all the seats) and the specific goal of 25% does not appear in the final version of the law referred to above.

Finally, there has been some debate about the omission of a total of 13 seats that had been reserved for “micro-minorities” (including Yazidis, Shabak, Sabaeans, Christians) in the original 22 July version of the law (though no modalities for their election had been specified). A third of these seats were in Kurdistan and another two in Kirkuk. Some minority representatives have protested against what may possibly have been horse-trading between Kurdish and Iraqi nationalists; others may hope that the renewed focused on national unity in the parts of Iraq south in Kurdistan in itself may offer new possibilities for minorities without any need to resort to a quota system.

*Or more probably every third? The original has “At the end of every three winners there should be a woman irrespective of men winning [more votes]”.

After Compromise on Kirkuk, Finally an Elections Law for Iraq’s Governorates

Iraq’s parliament today approved the remaining article 24 of the provincial elections law that was partially approved on 22 July except for the provisions relating to elections in Kirkuk.

The new article, which has been crafted in cooperation with the United Nations special representative in Iraq, Staffan de Mistura, delays the elections in the disputed Kirkuk province, but also establishes a committee which will deal with power-sharing issues in local government there. The committee will consist of 7 parliamentary representatives from Kirkuk – 2 Kurds, 2 Turkmens, 2 Arabs and 1 Christian – and will have until 31 March 2009 to prepare its report. The Iraqi parliament will then proceed to create a special elections law for Kirkuk. (Or, if it fails to do so, the prime minister, the president and the speaker of the parliament will decree a suitable system for elections in cooperation with the United Nations!)

The new law is a compromise between federalists (in particular the Kurds) and nationalist centralists (now increasingly referred to as the “forces of 22 July”). Back in May this year, Kurdish politicians spoke in favour of postponing local elections in all disputed areas such as Kirkuk, arguing that their strong position in these areas – based on the heavily-boycotted January 2005 elections – would play to their advantage and could perhaps be a negotiating card towards a rapid settlement of territorial issues. The forces of 22 July, on the other hand, demanded more equitable power-sharing in the interim, thereby seeking to shake up Kurdish dominance in the local council and to challenge what they consider to be a number of pro-Kurdish placemen and figureheads that have been anointed by the Kurds to serve as “Arab” and “Turkmen” representatives in Kirkuk despite having little support in the communities they purport to represent.

The compromise is more than a mere postponement: it keeps Kirkuk and the issue of power sharing on the agenda, even if these issues are now lifted to the abstract realm of a parliamentary committee and with a timeline that stretches well into 2009. Also, it is noteworthy that the forces of 22 July scored at least a symbolic victory by gaining an explicit assurance that the central government would play an equally important role alongside the local authorities in facilitating the work of the parliamentary committee. The language on this disputed “fourth point” of article 24 is what held up the passage of the law for the last week or so, and in a testament to the lingering conflict between centralisers and decentralisers in the Iraqi parliament, both Kurds and ISCI (Jalal al-Din al-Saghir) had criticised the nationalists for insisting on a reference to the central government.

In the end, the role of the central government was confirmed, thus in some ways also confirming the diminishing parliamentary clout of the federalists in Iraq. This has apparently enabled many of the component elements of the 22 July forces – including MPs from Iraqiyya, Fadila and the Sadrists – to feel satisfaction about the passage of the law, as seen in a number of positive statements in the wake of the adoption of the law. Perhaps the more important result of the process – in addition to the fact that provincial elections may now actually be held in late 2008 or early 2009 – is the increased awareness, both inside and outside the Iraqi parliament, of this cross-sectarian bloc and the potential it represents. The big question now is whether the Maliki government is prepared to go ahead with free and fair elections given the increasing signs of a cohesive challenge from the opposition.

Postscript: After having blown hot and cold – mostly cold – with regard to Kurdish participation in the elections, Kurdish leaders according to press reports now say that local elections will not be held anywhere in the Kurdistan region, as the right to legislate on those elections is seen as falling within the domain of the regional government. While the Kurds are the most pro-federal force in Iraq, Kurdistan itself is quite centralised (with two competing centres in Arbil and Sulaymaniyya), with the local governorates having considerably less power vis-à-vis the Kurdistan Regional Government than their counterparts elsewhere in Iraq have towards Baghdad. This stance does throw into question the heavy Kurdish involvement in drafting the law, where they dominated parliamentary debates in long periods with their insistent demands that closed lists be used due to the supposed illiteracy of the Iraqi electorate – no such qualms when it came to the constitution back in 2005, apparently!

ISCI vs the interior ministry in Nasiriyya?

The police commander of Nasiriyya, Sabah al-Fatlawi, is in the news today due to his complaints of “special groups” that are entering from Iran through Maysan and then go on to commit mischief in the Iraqi south. Fatlawi has an interesting background: his appointment by the ministry of interior was furiously resisted by ISCI back in June, with protests about his alleged “political” ties. Fatlawi was backed by Daawa members in the governing council.

This episode is interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, it might be of relevance to the question of tension between Maliki and ISCI, possibly with Jawad al-Bulani (minister of interior) on Maliki’s side. Secondly, Daawa in Nasiriyya primarily means the notoriously elusive Tanzim al-Iraq branch: they now seem to support the security forces of the government. Finally, ISCI was supported in its opposition to Fatlawi by Fadila, which is their arch-enemy in neighbouring Basra and in Iraqi politics more generally.

Two Very Different Takes on Centralism

Diverging opinions on the virtues of centralism as a principle of government have created tensions between the Daawa party and ISCI for some time, yet without escalating to the point where their alliance appears to have been under serious threat as such.

It is nevertheless interesting that over the past two days, the two opposing poles have expressed their conflicting views on the issue with almost perfect synchronisation. In an interview in al-Hayat, Nuri al-Maliki largely reiterated his position on federalism along the lines he described it an earlier interview back in November 2007: federalism is a constitutional option, but not something that should threaten the potency of the centralised state. Conversely, ISCI’s Jalal al-Din al-Saghir expressed the exact opposite attitude in Friday prayers yesterday, describing “centralism” as a distinguishing feature of the old Baathist regime.

There can be little doubt that to Daawa, centralism remains a positive concept while to ISCI, it has negative connotations. This is interesting, because at least since the release of the main draft of the oil law in early 2007 it has been plausible to ask whether ISCI pursues a centralist plan B as an alternative to its severely criticised scheme for a large federal Shiite region south of Baghdad. As of today, it seems as if ISCI still has some internal debating to do before the party can be at ease with the idea of centralism in the same way as the Iraqi premier and some of the circles around him. Oil minister Husayn al-Shahristani, for example, seems to belong to the latter camp in this question: In an interview in today’s Al-Sharq al-Awsat he criticises the Kurds for obstinacy with regard to the oil law and contends that the only option left to “the Baghdad government” would be to revert to Saddam-time legislation. The symbolic significance of this kind of adoption of Baathist centralism by the new Shiite-dominated regime would be quite considerable.

Importantly, though, others see it in a different ways: in the context of the stalled debate over the provincial elections law and military operations by the central government in Diyala, Kurdish politician Qadir Aziz today speaks about a conspiracy against the Kurdish cause and he mentions both ISCI and Daawa as part of that conspiracy.

No Friends but the Kurds? The Biden Problem in Democratic Iraq Policy

According to the Democratic Party platform presented in August, it is the goal of the party “to renew American leadership in the world” through rebuilding “the alliances, partnerships, and institutions necessary to confront common threats and enhance common security.” Moreover, “needed reform of these alliances and institutions will not come by bullying other countries to ratify American demands. It will come when we convince other governments and peoples that they, too, have a stake in effective partnerships. It is only leadership if others join America in working toward our common security.” This seems to be a step towards increased multilateralism, as well as a greater focus on searching for foreign-policy solutions that resonate with popular sentiment in the areas they apply to, instead of imposing an American agenda.

In the case of Iraq, the logical operationalisation of this programme would be to 1.) Listen to credible representatives of the Iraqi people as far as possible in finding a way to terminate the US military presence there; and, 2.) Help the Iraqis reverse imbalances and biases in Iraqi politics and artificial institutions of government and political arrangements that were introduced with the help of formidable military power during the Bush era between 2003 and 2008. It should be stressed that the second point is just as important as the first one: even if security has improved in Iraq over the past year, in terms of political institutionalisation the country has been in steep and continuous decline since the formation of the governing council in 2003, with the current climate best described as asphyxiating and certainly not the “breathing space” promised by the “surge”. It is the American-sponsored system of ethno-sectarian shares (muhasasa) rather than the Iraqis themselves that must shoulder most of the responsibility for the current stalemate in parliamentary politics in Baghdad and the failure to pass crucial legislation on oil, provincial elections and revision of the Iraqi constitution. On most of these issues, cross-sectarian majority alliances that could have produced legislative results are in fact in the making, but they stand no chance of succeeding due to the Byzantine system of minority vetoes introduced through the 2005 constitution – vetoes that by the way are no longer being used to guard the assumed “ethno-sectarian interests” they ostensibly were designed to protect, but rather serve to perpetuate the hegemony of three or four big political parties representing only 90 or so Iraqi parliamentarians out of 275 – the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) and Daawa. It is critically important that Democratic policy-makers understand the nature and extent of these problems: without a minimum of arrangements designed to put Iraq back on its track it is simply impossible to withdraw US forces and assume that the status quo ante of April 2003 – a liberated Iraq free to make its own choices – has been restored.

It is for this reason that Democratic Iraq policy is at its best when it emphasises conditionality, or when it dares to be critical about the Maliki administration and the system it upholds. For example, last spring, during the Iraq hearings in the US Congress, Democrats suggested that the United States should use the occasion of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) negotiations to put pressure on the Iraqis to achieve reconciliation goals. This is useful not because conditionality in itself is such a wonderful idea, but because the legacy of mistakes in terms of institution-building during the Bush era in Iraq is so extensive that it is probably only American power (or UN power with US support) that can reverse it. This sort of conditionality could be employed to make sure that free and fair provincial and parliamentary elections are held (to rectify the imbalances of the heavily-boycotted 2005 elections), and also that the Iraqi constitution is in fact revised – a key milestone in national reconciliation.

The big problem with Democrats when it comes to policy on Iraq is that they either focus exclusively on withdrawal (and thereby close their eyes entirely to the mistakes of the Bush administration in shaping Iraq’s political system between 2003 and 2008), or they engage with questions regarding choice of political system but do so in a manner that is even less in harmony with Iraqi traditions than Republican policy is. And this is where the vice-presidential candidature of Joe Biden is particularly important. After having been less specific about Iraq for a while (and especially around the Democratic convention in August), he has now resumed his agitation in favour of a decentralised Iraq, with several press interviews confirming the basic thrust of his “plan for Iraq” from 2006–2007.

It can be useful to briefly recall what the Biden plan is and what it is not. In its most innocuous iteration – the so-called “Sense of the US Congress on Federalism in Iraq – it advocates an “active federalisation” of Iraq. Contrary to press reports, it does not explicitly envisage tripartite partition or the complete obliteration of the central government. Nevertheless it does violate the Iraqi constitution in two big ways, firstly by proposing a conference to “settle” Iraq’s federalism question once and for all (the Iraqi constitution stipulates the opposite alternative: an evolutionary, bottom–up approach), and it also foreshadows a comprehensive federalisation of all parts of Iraq and features a general attack on centralism (the Iraqi constitutions enables those parts of the country that wish to retain a centralised state structure to do so in a hybrid, asymmetrical system). Additionally, much of the rhetoric by Biden and other senators on the subject clearly do favour a tripartite soft partition: Biden has “guessed” that there would be three regions, and much of the argument in favour of the scheme is based on the assumption of irreconcilable differences between “Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds”, and the supposed need for each of the three communities to have “space to breathe in”.

Over the past few weeks, all of these themes have been revived by Biden. The Delaware senator has repeatedly sought to convince journalists that the reason the “surge” is working is the absence of Shiites from Sunni-dominated Anbar: “there are no Sunnis in Anbar province–I mean, Shia in Anbar province…” This belief in sectarian identity as something that creates internal sub-group unity and enmity towards others is at its most glaring in Biden’s comments on the situation in Basra: “Do you think the people down in Basra are going to vote for a government in Basra any different than an all-Shia government in Basra?” asks Biden. In fact, the power struggle in Basra is currently between different Shiite groups that have radically different visions for what kind of status their area should have in Iraq. Some want a small federal region for Basra only, but most appear to prefer remaining under the central government. And those who back in 2005 and 2006 for a while advocated a third solution kindred to that proposed by Biden – a big Shiite region – have remained almost silent on the issue since late 2007.

Similarly, at the national level in Iraq, the trend is towards emphasising the role of the central government rather than focusing on federalism demands or the grand federal “settlement” called for by Biden only a week ago. Parliamentary majorities have stressed the role of the centralised state in administering the oil sector, retaining central government control of Kirkuk, and defining wide-ranging powers for the existing governorates but without crippling the central government. Iraqi politicians who favour Biden’s vision – KDP, PUK and ISCI – portrayed the February vote on the provincial powers law as a battle between centralisation and decentralisation (their preferred option) and they lost. Again, there is the issue of the provincial elections. According to Biden, “Exactly what I’ve proposed is happening. We’re about to have regional elections.” The real reason those elections are taking place at all is pressure from the political forces that reject decentralisation and want to challenge the ruling parties in an open contest: the government parties strenuously tried to avert the insertion of a timeline for elections back in February, but ultimately failed. In other words, Bush is wrong in his unlimited support for Maliki, but Biden is doubly wrong for supporting the minority of federalists that are increasingly losing their parliamentary battles.

All in all, on questions relating to state structure in Iraq, Biden has been mistaken on all counts: in terms of his interpretation of Iraqi politics (through continuing to deny the growing centralist trend and through continuing to focus on the exceptional 2006 situation); through his reading of the Iraqi constitution (by overlooking the asymmetrical and bottom-up character of Iraqi federalism); and through his failure to highlight the potentially grave regional consequences of his scheme (especially in terms of Iranian influence, which would probably be stronger in an ISCI-dominated federal entity than under any other arrangement). While the pro-Kurdish tendency inside the US Democratic Party is entirely understandable (and to some extent laudable) given all the suffering of the Kurds in the past, this should not be translated into an attempt to impose a Kurdish agenda on the rest of the country (as seemed evident for example in the recent US Democratic initiative to prevent oil deals with the central government). Most Iraqis are in fact perfectly prepared to accept the notion of complete Kurdish control in Kurdistan. It is the way Kurdish power is being used to push Iraq south of Kurdistan towards a decentralised system that many object to. On this issue, Biden is going against the prevailing wind in Iraq perhaps more than any other American politician. Today, those who are in tune with Iraqi politics emphasise limits on federalism that could help bring back a political system more in harmony with Iraq’s history, rather than the replication of the federalism formula everywhere south of Kurdistan. In other words, the Maliki government, but not the concept of centralised government as such, should be the object of criticism.

In defining his “gravitas” on foreign policy, the statesmanlike thing for Biden to do would be to admit mistakes when it comes to his interpretation of Iraqi politics, and instead focus on those aspects of his Middle East initiatives that are unequivocally constructive, such as his warnings against a war on Iran. Iraqi politicians already speak about Biden as the father of a second “Balfour declaration” because of his “plans”, and the Democratic Party would lose its credibility in the entire Arab world if these schemes were allowed to snowball. Rather than conniving in soft partition agitation in the name of party unity, Democrats should now make a firm and public stand against an imposed federalisation of Iraq. A more sustainable Iraq position would be to start focusing on cross-sectarian politics and the unitary state as the best way forward – with federalism as an option for areas where there is a real popular demand for it (like Kurdistan and perhaps Basra), but not as an imposition on the entire country through US “help” and sponsorship. That would also be in the true spirit of the “carefulness in getting out of Iraq” so rightly advocated by Barack Obama.

Hakim’s Insincerity on the Local Elections

In a strange series of comments given to the Iraqi news agency Aswat al-Iraq, Ammar al-Hakim highlights the importance of holding early provincial elections and seems to forget that his own party, ISCI, has been at the forefront of attempts to derail those elections. First, back in February, ISCI along with the Kurds fiercely resisted the insertion of a timeline for elections into the provincial powers law. Subsequently, after having been defeated by a parliamentary majority on the issue, ISCI tried to use the presidential veto to avoid elections. More recently, ISCI has continued to complicate the parliamentary deliberations on the elections law itself through continuing to demand the right to use religious symbols for campaigning purposes. In a remarkable statement in the most recent interview, Hakim refers to the “timeline for elections laid down by the Iraqi constitution” – surely he must know that there is no timeline for local elections in the constitution.

Perhaps sensing a degree of pressure from the higher Shiite clergy, Hakim now tries to present ISCI as an advocate of early elections – unsurprisingly, he now blames the very parties that demanded elections in the first place for trying to obstruct them! This refers to the demand by a majority of Iraqi parliamentarians that pending elections in Kirkuk, and as part of the elections law, there should be some kind of shake-up in the local administration there in the direction of greater power-sharing between the various communities. This demand reflects a widespread desire among Iraqi parliamentarians to challenge the hegemony of ISCI, the Kurds and Maliki in dominating Iraq’s politics – a hegemony which came under threat when the provincial powers law with the timeline for elections was adopted back in February, but which has since been restored through heavy-handed action (often with US support) against political enemies of all shades, in many cases on the pretext of vaguely defined “security” concerns that have yet to result in formal charges against those targeted in the operations.

In the interview, Hakim is less bullish than ever before on the idea of forming a big Shiite region. This time, he merely refers to the constitutional provisions on the subject, which leave the issue to popular grassroots initiatives.

The Sahwa of the South

The ”Council of the Tribes of the Sons of the Arab South” (various versions of the name occur but the leadership figures seem constant) has called for the ministers of electricity and trade to be sacked. This council is an interesting example of tribal cooperation in the far south (Basra, Dhi Qar, Maysan) where the anti-Iranian theme is extremely pronounced and where there are calls for better relations with Arab Gulf states. In other words, combining local regionalism, Iraqi nationalism and pan-Arabism, this represents the quintessential sahwa of the south – except that Washington’s preference for working with Nuri al-Maliki, ISCI and others with a more pro-Iranian attitude prevents it from replicating the Anbar experience south of Baghdad.

Biden Gets Specific on Iraq – Again

Immediately following his nomination as Democratic VP candidate, there were certain signs that Joe Biden was playing down his plans for an “active federalisation” of Iraq. However, now he is picking up where he left off. The following quotes are from “Meet the Press” on 7 September, along with some annotations in brackets:

“Everything that’s working in Iraq has been the bottom up approach, not a strong central government imposing. And the truth of the matter is the only way you’re going to make this–sustain it, the question is, how do we leave and leave a stable Iraq behind? Without a political settlement, Tom, we’re going to be back there in another year or two or three or five.”

[Here Biden reiterates a common misunderstanding of the Iraqi constitution. The Iraqi constitution outlines a hybrid asymmetrical federal system under which the various parts of the country can choose between remaining under the central government OR becoming a federal region – through specific procedures. Biden violates both these features: first he rejects the idea of asymmetrical federalism by excluding the possibility of some provinces remaining under the central government, then he goes on to push for a “settlement” instead of accepting the gradual evolutionary process foreshadowed in the Iraqi constitution.]

“MR. BROKAW: But the Iraqi government didn’t like the idea [i.e. Biden’s “plan”]. Maliki…

SEN. BIDEN: Well, the Iraqi government–Maliki didn’t, but the rest of the government liked it.

MR. BROKAW: But he is the head of the government. It’s their country.

SEN. BIDEN: Yeah–by the way, it is their country, but he’s the head of the government, but he’s the head of the government whose popularity is very much in question, and the election itself.”

[Biden apparently hasn’t noted that except from the Kurds and their partners in the Maliki government (ISCI), pretty much everyone else in Iraq is against his plans. These days, even ISCI seems to have second thoughts with regard to the wisdom of soft partition.]

“MR. BROKAW: Five years from now, do you think Iraq will have relative stability and democratic principles in a central government?

SEN. BIDEN: If there is an Obama-Biden administration, yeah. If there is a John McCain administration and Sarah Palin, I think it’s probably not going to happen, because John does not view this in terms of the region. I never heard him speak about how he’s going to integrate Iraq into the region where you have these competing interests that exist.”

[This is the truly frightening part. Integrate Iraq into the region?? After it has first been soft partitioned a la Biden? Sounds bad if you consider yourself an Iraqi.]