Decentralized Government
Best Hope for Self-Determination and True Sovereignty in Iraq?
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Morning In Iraq?
by Ivan Eland
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Oakland, Calif. -- With Monday morning's surprise ceremony in Baghdad, transferring political authority from the United States to an interim Iraqi government, officials hope insurgents in Iraq will lose support, after attacks across Iraq killed more than 100 people last week, and insurgents captured and threatened to behead a U.S. Marine and four other foreign civilians over the weekend. But with more than 130,000 U.S. troops remaining in the country, a hand-picked Prime Minister who is a former CIA asset, and U.S. "advisors" running Iraqi ministries well past the changeover to a permanent Iraqi government, this interim government is not "fully sovereign" or representative of Iraqis, says Ivan Eland, Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute, a think tank in Oakland, California.
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The best long-term chance for peace and prosperity in Iraq is probably a decentralized government in the form of a confederation or loose federation of states within the country, says Dr. Eland, a former defense analyst and foreign policy expert. "Only some form of decentralized arrangement in Iraq would lessen the fears of various factions, including the Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds, of being dominated by each other. It would insure genuine self-determination and enable the U.S. to leave Iraq with honor," says Dr. Eland.
Each locality in Iraq could send a representative to a constitutional convention, without members of the U.S. military or occupation authority present. "The delegates would not only negotiate the future governing structure of Iraq, but also key issues such as the future distribution of oil revenues," says Dr. Eland. "Iraqis would then ratify by referendum what the convention produced. More than likely, the constitutional convention would produce some type of confederation or loose federation similar to the Swiss canton system-giving substantial autonomy to various groups, tribes or regions-or even three or more independent states," he says.
"In the current situation, many Iraqi factions are likely to retain their armed militias because they fear domination from other groups that might gain control of the central governmental apparatus of a unified post-occupation Iraq," says Eland. He points to the recent Shiite street demonstrations as an indication that tensions have increased greatly between the Shia and Sunnis. Similarly, he says, "the Kurds threatened to walk away from the new interim government after becoming suspicious that their long-standing autonomy could become endangered by the Shiite majority. Such tensions and fears could ultimately cause a civil war."
But the creation of a confederation, loose federation, or even a partitioned nation should reduce such fears and lessen the chance of internecine conflict, says Eland. "Of course, there's no guarantee peace has much chance after the Bush administration foolishly opened Pandora's Box by removing the only thing holding this fractious, artificial country together-Saddam Hussein. But Iraqi self-determination is the best remaining hope for peace in that country."
Morning in Iraq?
According to former U.S. proconsul Paul Bremer, the transfer of power to Iraqis will launch Iraq on the road to peace, prosperity and democracy. If Bremer is not cynically spouting the Bush administration’s party line, he is in a parallel universe.
The main problems with Bremer’s rosy vision are twofold. First, the insurgents know the United States can be beaten because it is already happening. They know that their increasingly sophisticated and coordinated attacks over time have caused the American public to sour on both President Bush and the Iraq War. According to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, the president’s approval rating has fallen to 42 percent, the lowest of his term. Also, 60 percent of Americans now disapprove of the president’s Iraq policy and don’t believe that the invasion was worth the cost.
Although the U.S. military believes that the "center of gravity" in the continuing Iraq War is the "hearts and minds" of the Iraqi people, the Iraqi insurgents believe, as did the North Vietnamese almost 40 years ago, that the center of gravity lies with the hearts and minds of the American people. The Iraqi insurgents must be pleased that in the age of 24-hour news, the Iraq War became unpopular in the United States much faster than the years needed to drain away American public support for the Vietnam conflict. Why would the Iraqi insurgents stop fighting when they are winning? Military experts say that the United States is winning tactically (specific battles), but losing operationally, strategically and on the level of grand strategy. This abysmal state of affairs replicates the U.S. experience in Vietnam, in which the United States won every battle and lost the war because the American public eventually became tired, disillusioned and exasperated with it.
The Iraqi insurgents have patterned their insurgency after the effective Palestinian uprising against the Israelis in the occupied territories. They have also learned lessons from U.S. involvement in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The guerrillas will keep up their hit-and-run attacks until the stronger power becomes exhausted and leaves. In other words, if the guerrillas don’t lose decisively, they’ll eventually win.
Guerilla-style fighting is the most successful form of warfare in human history. And the Iraqi insurgency has all of the needed prerequisites for a successful guerrilla operation. To prevail, the insurgents need a sanctuary, a source of arms and supplies, and the support of a significant portion of the Iraqi people. Iraq’s borders with Syria and Iran are so porous that jihadists from outside Iraq can infiltrate easily from sanctuaries in those nations. Arms and supplies also are likely flowing in from those nations. Syria and Iran may be actively providing them or looking the other way as they flow in from jihadist and other financiers around the world. Furthermore, Iraq is awash with weapons, and there are many unguarded arms and ammunition depots.
Finally, and very distressingly, significant segments of the Iraqi people are likely to be assisting and supplying the insurgents. Although the Bush administration likes to blame the violence on rogue elements (foreign terrorists and former Saddam supporters), the Iraqi people don’t seem to be turning in these people to the occupation forces. Of course, the administration would say that the insurgents are intimidating ordinary Iraqis from doing so. But even that is not a good sign. At minimum, many Iraqis--seeing support for the president and the war waning in the United States and remembering that the United States abandoned the Kurds and Shia to slaughter by Saddam after encouraging them to rise up after the first Gulf War--are betting that the insurgents will be around a lot longer than the fickle Americans. Furthermore, the hapless Iraqi security forces are unable to provide anyone—including themselves and other "collaborators"—adequate security from guerrilla attack.
It’s bad enough that Bremer’s vision doesn’t acknowledge that many ordinary Iraqis are hedging their bets by remaining on the fence. A second and worse problem with Bremer’s Pollyanna scenario is that numerous Iraqis are jumping off on the other side. Ominously, during the last few months, Saddam loyalists seem to have been playing less of a role in the insurgency, at the same time that participation has spread to ordinary Iraqis. Even President Bush has admitted that the U.S. occupation is unpopular with the Iraqi people. That blooming nationalist sentiment has been further stimulated by the U.S. torture at Abu Ghraib prison and because the slow and violence-hampered U.S. reconstruction of the country hasn’t met Iraqi expectations.
So it is hardly morning in Iraq for the Iraqis or the U.S. occupation. In fact, it is twilight and the rays of hope for a successful outcome in Iraq are fading.
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