The mirage of a united IraqPresident Bush Sr. allowed Saddam Hussein to remain in power in order to maintain a united Iraq, which turned out to be one of the worst decisions he made as president. His son is in significant danger of losing Iraq due to the same mistake. It’s time the preconception of the necessity of a united Iraq was reassessed, since the US, may be missing viable opportunities while fruitlessly chasing after mirages in the desert. Jonathan Ariel and Shlomo Dror
A week before the interim Iraqi government assumes responsibility for managing the affairs of the country, the chances of that happening are looking increasingly slim.
In addition to the doubts as to the ability of nascent rebuilt Iraqi security services to take on and defeat the coalition of Baathist and Jihadist terrorists plaguing the country, historic rifts are reemerging, threatening to tear asunder the carefully and painstakingly crafted interim constitution that was the framework upon which the entire handover rests. The raison d’etre of this constitution was to guarantee, at all costs the continued existence of a united Iraqi state. This fixation, on the prime necessity of keeping Iraq a united state, has become the main obstacle over which US policy in Iraq has foundered for the past decade and a half.
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The current administration is in serious danger of losing Iraq, and with it a second term in office. It has committed more than its share of gaffes and blunders, but the prime one may very well be the overall strategic goal of maintaining a united Iraq while creating a democratic one.
A look at the recent history of the region shows that a united Iraq, far from contributing to regional stability, has constantly been a prime generator of geo-political instability since its artificial creation by the British in the 1920s.
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However the fault lines divisions that divide Iraq are more complex than Kurd, Sunni and Shia. Each one of these communities is a typical Middle-East community based on the hammulah (extended clan) and tribe, which command ultimate loyalty. The urban elite, which has adopted an Iraqi identity is both small and superficial, the real Iraq still lives in a world in which loyalty to the hammulah and tribe far outweigh that to that somewhat amorphous entity known as Iraq.
Hostility between tribes, even those belonging to the same main ethnic group, can be deep and long. The term blood feud is very much still part of Iraqi life, and for one tribe or hammulah to still be gunning for another over a hundred or two hundred year old grievance is not unheard of.
The bottom line is that there is no such thing as an Iraqi society or an Iraqi nation, since there exist none of the basic common denominators that are the foundations of any nation-state. The only way this edifice could be held together was by brutal dictatorship. As a result, each coup brought to power a new dictator, each one more brutal than his predecessor, who clearly was not brutal enough, as a plot could be successfully hatched against him. The only thing the various strongmen had in common was that they were all Sunnis, since the British, as part of their traditional imperial divide and rule policy, empowered the minority at the expense of the majority.
The result was that Iraq constantly fanned the flames of Arab intransigence, since an unstable government, especially in a Middle East dictatorship will always seek to whip up public opinion against the outside enemy, to keep it from concentrating on its own failings and shortcomings. Iraq became a regional monger of instability. In reality, it could never have become anything else, given its inherent nature and the rules of the game as played in the Middle East.
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US policy is based on creating a democratic Iraq. Democracy has never existed anywhere in the Arab world, and neither did Iraq until 70 years ago. Every time the West has come up against this unbridgeable incompatibility, it sacrificed democracy on the alter of territorial integrity, in the name of stability. The fact that the entity whose integrity was thus being safeguarded was a constant cause of instability never caused the mandarins of foreign policy to rethink their basic premises.
This is true to the present day. Even the current Bush administration, which has proven itself more capable than most governments of innovative strategic thinking, has remained wedded to the conventional wisdom of maintaining a united Iraq, despite the fact that it is clearly the crux of the problem, not the solution.
Allowing Iraq to split up according to its nature could be the first tentative but nonetheless meaningful step towards promoting democracy in the Arab world. Democracy is not coffee, and cannot be brewed instantly into existence. Democracy is an evolutionary process, which cannot begin without the pre-existence of a relatively stable and cohesive society.
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Jonathan Ariel is Editor-in-Chief of Maariv International
Shlomo Dror is an Arabist. He has served in several senior and sensitive posts including adviser to the Coordinator of the Territories and the Spokesperson of the Defense Ministry
http://www.maarivenglish.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=9029
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