Iraq’s Final Hoorah

Iraq was an ingenious experiment in colonial design: piece together the eastern flank of the defeated Ottoman Empire, import a Hashemite Arab to rule over a collection of tribes and cities, and preserve British and Western interests under the rule of a friendly local government. Needless to say, the experiment has failed. It is time to sort out Mesopotamia and give its people what they both need and desire: true self-determination for the respective ethnic and sectarian communities via autonomous regions operating within a decentralized Iraqi state.

Iraq has never been stable or cohesive. The years of “stability” under Saddam Hussein and prior autocrats were the result of unimaginable brutality, a suppression of the majority for the benefit of ruling despots and their kin. Some Iraqis yearn for the relative stability and prosperity witnessed during the pre-revolutionary days prior to 1958, when Iraq was still a kingdom. Those days are over, and the bloody coup that followed speaks to the unpopularity and unrepresentative nature of that regime.
Today, Iraq is no longer a nation, but rather a collection of interest groups that cooperate marginally and only when it benefits their particular agenda. Indeed, Iraq’s power brokers increasingly appeal to their respective audiences with sectarian rhetoric and violent reprisals in the name of defense of their particular communities. Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds, not to mention the numerous other ethnic and religious minorities, are all guilty of this, but one cannot blame them outright. Iraq could never have worked, save for a brilliant and truly inspirational nationalist leader who granted every Iraqi freedom and equality in the truest sense of those words. This has not yet happened, nor is it likely to happen anytime soon.

The American invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 brought about a monumental change in Iraq and the Middle East, one which most Americans have not yet fully understood. The rise to power of the Arab Shiites in Iraq, and the subsequent stirrings among the Shiites of Lebanon and the Gulf, are no less a dramatic alteration to the Middle Eastern map than was the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. As Israel brought together a persecuted minority under the banner of self-determination and national pride, the American invasion of Iraq has given the Arab Shiites their first taste of real power and influence in centuries. Like the Israelis, the Arab Shiites will never give that power up again.

For over a millennium in Iraq and throughout the Arab world, the Shiites were marginalized, persecuted, and generally ignored by the rest of the Arab population. The urban migrations of the mid-20th century altered this long-established power structure. The Sunni Arab elite of the cities had to contend with the mass education and political transformation of these formerly rural peasants and villagers. In Lebanon, the entrenched establishment refused to give credence to the Shiites’ desire for political power relative to their numbers and growing influence. Hezbollah is, in large part, an outgrowth of the Shiites’ attempt to correct this perceived imbalance. The consequences of increased Shiite power, and the Arab elite’s response to it, are still being felt today, as witnessed during last summer’s destructive and costly war between Hezbollah and Israel.

In Iraq, the Sunni Arab political establishment responded to the Shiites with brutal suppression and latent discrimination. Saddam executed thousands of Communist Party and Al-Dawa members, both largely Shiite-populated organizations. Shiites were barred from the vast majority of high posts in the government and military. Saddam’s regime suppressed Shiite religious rituals, all while appealing to a historically-defined sense of Iraqi “nationalism.” This repeated exclusion and discrimination at the hands of the government has never been forgotten by the Iraqi Shiites and, in part, explains the Shiites’ disdainful attitude toward their former rulers and countrymen in the Sunni Arab heartland.

The Kurdish case in Iraq is even more transparent. The Kurds have never wanted to be part of the Iraqi state, and for good reason. They, like all peoples, desire their own land that incorporates their unique traditions, language, and political and social values. The government in Iraq today is in large part the result of an implicit understanding between Iraqi Arab Shiites and Kurds: both are content to look the other way while the other consolidates power over its respective population and territory.

Iraq, as a functioning cohesive unit of political power, no longer exists. In its place, one of three entities will likely manifest itself: a loose collection of de facto ethnic and religious enclaves operating within a centralized “state” of Iraq, or a de juris separation of the Iraqi state into either distinct nation-states or legally-defined autonomous regions. Each scenario has benefits and drawbacks, but, given the untenable situation in Iraq today, a loose federation of autonomous regions appears to be the only viable option that addresses the problem of ethnic and sectarian mistrust that has plagued Iraq since the founding of the state.

Instead of watching helplessly as Iraq descends further into chaos, U.S. policy makers and Iraqi politicians should begin to contemplate concrete steps that must be taken in order to achieve what Iraq desperately needs, namely autonomy and self-determination for its warring communities. The battles over Baghdad and Kirkuk will undoubtedly be bloody, but no more so than the daily battles that rock the capital’s streets today. Partition of Iraq into loosely-bound autonomous regions is the lesser of two evils, perhaps, but the alternative—the continued existence of a centralized government that attempts to hold a failed state together—could be far worse.

The author is a student in the Law School.