Donald J. Devine

August 17, 2005

Iraq Exit

No matter how one rationalizes it, the failure of the Iraqis to devise a constitution by the August 15 deadline is a serious blow to U.S. policy in the Middle East.

The fundamental problem is that there are (at least) three very different peoples within the artificial borders of Iraq and they have very different worldviews. The Shia majority has been oppressed by the Sunni minority since the nation was formed (and well before) and the majority want their opportunity to rule (and maybe even a little payback). Sunni and Shia have very different ideas about Islam and each considers the other as heretical, much as did European Protestants and Catholics during and after the vicious 17th Century 30 Years War. The Kurds are not even Arab and are much more liberal about Islam than either. All three have fought each other repeatedly over the years, with the result so far being one kind of dictatorship or another under the better organized and determined Sunnis.

All three groups do agree the new Iraq must adopt and follow the formal law of Islam, Shari’a. The very day Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visited just before the deadline to urge all parties not to delay writing the constitution, its committee chairman Humam Hammoudi announced: “Average Iraqis now support a significant role for religion in the state. If we don’t put this demand in the constitution, the constitution will not get votes” [in the October referendum] and “we will fail.” He described the draft language as allowing individuals to decide matters by Shari’a “if they so choose.” Unlike Turkey the veil would not be forbidden but unlike Iran it would not be required for women. “Everyone can practice their freedom in their personal affairs according to their beliefs,” Hammoudi explained.

But there was more. “Drafters were also in agreement that no law conflicting with Islam can be adopted,” he reported, together with Kurd delegate Fauad Massoum. A constitutional court would be created, they said, to decide which laws were in accord and which were not. But what had been determined? The whole point is--will it be Shiite or Sunni Islam that is the guide for the court? What if one’s view of Islam requires a veil? A constitutional court is precisely the mechanism used by the Shiite clergy in Iran to control its elected officials and enforce its view of the constitution.

The reality that these matters have not been resolved becomes clear in the matter of federalism. The bottom line Kurd requirement is that they continue the autonomy they have enjoyed even before the rest of Iraq was freed from Saddam Hussein, under the American “no fly zone.” Most Shiites do not want autonomy for minorities but rule by the majority. At 60 percent of the population, they see themselves as that majority (although the elections suggest they do not have the support of 10 percent or so of more secularized Shiites). While the Shia religious leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has asked the constitutional leaders to work by “consensus,” Hammoudi announced the parties could not agree on federalism. Although there is some difference on how much centralization is necessary, and one of the major Shiite parties did raise the possibility of some autonomy for the south at the very last moment, every American leader from L. Paul Bremer in the beginning to every State and Defense decision-maker today says that without significant local autonomy there is no chance for success in Iraq.

Of course, the Sunnis leading the insurrection will have nothing to do with federalism. But the most disturbing fact is that even the more moderate Sunni oppose federalism as splitting the unity of the state. If that critical community were really thinking of cooperating as a minority in a unified Iraq, would not federalism be the logical solution? The Shiites could follow their brand of Shari’a in the south and east and they could interpret Islamic law in their own way in the center-west, with the Kurds interpreting it more liberally in the north. But the Sunnis on the constitutional committee reject federalism absolutely. While the Sunnis do have a point that their region would be the poorest of the three, they could probably bargain for a share of the oil revenue. Is not the most reasonable interpretation that the Sunni expect to control the government or the constitutional court some day even though they know that their numbers would never allow this democratically? Must they, then, not expect a coup in the future and desire to keep Iraq unified so they can control the whole as historically?

No political idea is more difficult than federalism. The long-term trend even in the U.S. has been for its constitutional court to erode local autonomy and bring it increasingly under unified central control. It is so difficult a concept that the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page dismissed what it called a “phony federalism objection” against a bill offered by Arizona Rep. John Shadegg to allow Americans to purchase health insurance approved by any state rather than just by its own. The editors said: “The Founders wrote a Commerce Clause into the Constitution precisely so that Congress could act against internal restraints on trade of the sort represented by today’s 50-state health insurance market.” Actually, a commerce clause solution would override state power, but a federalism solution could simply require each state to recognize each other’s laws, as was the case with the Shadegg bill.

What is most obvious is how little has changed from our trip to Iraq in November 2003 (http://acuf.org/issues/031204news.asp). The violence existed then—the Baghdad Green Zone was fired upon, killings occurred in Takrit, and a helicopter was shot down in Babil—all on the day after we left the same spots. Together with the continuing hostility, the key issues are the same. How long must U.S. troops remain engaged in nation building, what will be the role of Shari’a law in the constitution, and can federalism be agreed upon as the essential means to separate the three very different peoples of Iraq?

In the face of these political developments, the U.S. has been pursuing a consistent course on troop deployment. Commanding General George Casey announced on Sec. Rumsfeld’s visit that the U.S. would make “fairly substantial reductions” in troop strength “after these elections, in the spring and summer” as long as “the political process remains positive.” Readers of our report more than a year and a half ago know this is not a “shift for the administration,” as The Wall Street Journal and other media reported, but precisely what the generals on the ground told us way back then—that the troops would be drawn down and drawn back from regular operations after the December 2005 Iraqi elections. Yes, President George W. Bush has publicly and repeatedly said he will not set a deadline but he meant a rigid deadline and, anyway, his job is to rally the nation not to tip his hand on strategy.

There have been some recent developments that do move the long-term military strategy further forward. A month before the Rumsfeld trip, Gen. John R. Vines was even more specific, stating that four or five of the 17 battalions could be moved by early 2006. A joint U.S.-Iraqi task force has been created to start setting the conditions for U.S. withdrawal. The Iraqis will be represented by the very top leaders, the national security advisor, the defense minister and the interior minister. Top security advisor, Mowaffak Rubaie, specifically identified several cities in the more stable Shiite south and Kurdish north where U.S. troops could withdraw immediately. He says the U.S. troop level will be down from 138,000 to 100,000 by early spring.

Anyone who wanted to know the planned withdrawal schedule could easily find out by asking and listening. We have reported on this a half dozen times, including a statement by the president himself from the White House late last year. So why do the reporters consider this something new? The regular news media ignored this information because, in its desire for dramatic flare, it wanted to portray a president under pressure. Besides, it did not like him. The left avoided the truth like a vampire before a cross because it disliked both him and the war, and wanted to think the worst of both. Even the right has had an interest in avoiding the facts. The pro-war mainline right did not want to appear disloyal when its president was saying, “stay the course.” The neoconservative right has been determined to keep large numbers of U.S. troops in the Middle East indefinitely and did not want to hear otherwise. It still hopes some adversity will prevent any drawing down of forces in 2006 or thereafter.

The danger is not a quagmire resulting from the lack of an exit strategy but the possibility that a catastrophe in the political situation will upset the plans. Legalisms will not dictate the outcome. In fact, it is very questionable whether the delay, which had the legislature amend the temporary constitution without the stated authority to do so, was constitutional. The most immediate real problem is that the Kurds will break from a centralized Iraq if they do not receive autonomy. Yet, on the very day the constitution was delayed for a week a leader of the largest Shia party, Jalaladeen Sagheer, said bluntly: ”There shall be no constitution with Kurdish self-determination. It shall not pass.”

In fact, Kurdistan already is separate. The Washington Post recently reported that although the well armed Kurdish militia, the pesh merga, “wore the brown-on-brown of Iraq’s new national forces, to which they technically belong,” the “flag flying here and across the region known as Kurdistan, was the Kurdish sunburst, with Iraq’s green and white banner nowhere in sight.” Indeed, as their battalion commander, Col. Sayyid Hajar Tahir said, Kurds are “100 percent” for independence. ”If not today, then tomorrow. If not tomorrow, the day after.” It is only the leaders on the constitutional committee who talk of federalism. Even they, such as minister Barham Saith, stress that federalism must be “voluntary” and not be held together by “brute force.”

All of this looks more like American democracy in 1860 than today. The only solution is for the U.S. to exit before the whole thing comes apart. How can the U.S. impose federalism in Iraq when it broke down in civil war in the U.S. after four score years of relative success and, according to Justice Clarence Thomas among many others, hardly works even here any longer? The elections provide the obvious rationale. That has been the continuing logic of positioning American troops to more isolated outposts and leaving the police work to the Iraqis, flexibly withdrawing U.S. soldiers after the next election one way or another turns power to the Iraqis to work out their own destinies.