Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

Over the weekend Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki offered a national reconciliation plan to the Iraqi National Assembly. The plan offered to the Assembly was lacking some of the more controversial clauses that were part of an earlier draft. Nonetheless the plan signals the beginning of the end of the American occupation of Iraq.

The Prime Minister’s gambit comes a week after his national security advisor floated the idea of a timetable for an American military withdrawal from Iraq. Maliki’s plan highlights the important cross currents in Iraq that the Bush Administration has thus far failed to appreciate or understand. There are three separate wars raging in Iraq. There is a war between the occupying forces and the Iraqi national resistance; there is a war between the United States and the jihadists; and, finally there is a civil war between the Shia, Sunni and Kurds. The United States is fighting only one of these wars - the war against the jihadists.

Maliki’s reconciliation plan aims to end the war against the occupation only. This is the war the United States has been sleepwalking through in its quest to fight the War on Terror on Iraqi soil. The key elements of the national reconciliation plan that address the occupation are:

• A call for a timetable for the withdrawal of all occupying forces
• Release of all security detainees being held by the occupying forces
• Amnesty for resistance forces but not "terrorists" 

These elements of the reconciliation plan have appeal to all major factions in Iraq with the possible exception of the Jihadist foreign fighters. An American withdrawal will take the oxygen out of the Jihadists’ campaign in Iraq. With the Americans gone, the foreign Jihadists become easy targets for native Iraqis and are likely to be driven out rather quickly. With the American withdrawal, Iraq will cease to be a battleground in the war between the United States and the jihadists; a new battleground will undoubtedly be chosen, but at least Iraq will be spared.

A withdrawal of American forces has been the goal of Iraqi Shia, Sunni and Kurds from the outset. However, they have had differing agendas on when and how the withdrawal should take place. The Sunni have always resisted the Americans because they understood that the longer the Americans stay in Iraq, the more firmly the majority Shia will consolidate their hold on power.

The Shia have used the American occupation as cover to consolidate power. They have very astutely managed to ride the American occupation without losing their political independence. You will note that the spiritual leader of the Shia, the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has never once met with any American official - choosing instead to work through intermediaries to influence events. Having now consolidated power, the Shia are ready to remove the "training wheels" by asking the Americans to leave.

The Kurds are the faction in Iraq who can afford to wait the longest for the Americans to leave. However, make no mistake, they certainly want the Americans to leave. They have used the occupation to quietly position their militias around the city of Kirkuk. However, they have made no attempt to take Kirkuk while the Americans are on the ground in Iraq. The Kurds view Kirkuk, with its vast oil wealth, as the future capital of Kurdistan. They will almost certainly take Kirkuk after an American withdrawal from Iraq.

The release of all security detainees being held by American forces is another plank of the plan to end the occupation. Iraqis view these detainees as the resistance and similar to prisoners of war. Thus, they expect that at the end of hostilities, that is, when the Americans withdraw, these prisoners will be released.

The call for amnesty for the Iraqi resistance is perhaps the most controversial element of Maliki’s plan. However, it is a necessary condition for the Iraqis. The earlier draft of the plan made a distinction between "resistance" and "terrorists". This is a crucial distinction for the Iraqis. But the definition of "terrorist" is not the same in Baghdad as it is in Washington. It is clear to the Iraqis that the "resistance" is any Iraqi engaged in attacking American soldiers. To Washington, what Iraqis call the "resistance" are "terrorists". However, when Maliki or the Shia ruling alliance call someone a "terrorist" they are referring to both foreign Jihadists and Sunnis who are engaged in sectarian violence against the Shia. Washington makes no such distinction when it comes to "terrorist"; in Washington, everyone involved in violence in Iraq is a terrorist. When Maliki’s plan calls for offering amnesty to the "resistance" he is aiming to end the occupation, not the civil war. This is an important distinction that the Bush Administration and much of the American press fail to understand.

The American occupation of Iraq was always destined to end. Whether President Bush chooses to "cut and run" or leave at the request of the Iraqis, the occupation by its very nature was always time limited. The Iraqis have always known it. The only unknown was how much havoc it was going to cause Iraqi society. Unfortunately, the more intractable conflict will continue to rage. That is the civil war between the three main factions in Iraq. There is little indication that the civil war is going to subside any time in the future. All indications are that it continues to rage and is likely to get worse. Maliki’s plan, even if it is implemented, will do very little to quell the civil war. The tensions that have been unleashed by the American invasion of Iraq are now set to play themselves out. That tension, manifested in the current Iraqi civil war, has the potential of becoming a regional conflict. If that happens, the legacy of George W Bush will not only be a failed invasion of Iraq but also a destabilization of the entire region.

Today in Iraq a suicide bomber killed 17 police recruits in Fallujah. In Baghdad, 37 people were found handcuffed and shot to death. That 54 people lost their lives in Iraq in one day has become so commonplace that the news did not even warrant a prominent place on The Washington Post web site. As I write this the headline on The Washington Post web site is a story about the Washington Nationals baseball team.

Against this backdrop of mayhem in Iraq, Senator Joseph Biden and Leslie Gelb have put forward a five-point plan to prevent a further slide into Civil War in Iraq. In an op-ed piece in The New York Times, Messrs. Biden and Gelb argue that Iraq should be divided into ethnic federations along the Bosnian model. While it is commendable that Senator Biden has finally proposed a thoughtful alternative to the Administration’s jingoistic and simplistic "stay the course" plan, the proposal does have some fundamental flaws that need to be addressed.

Senator Biden and Mr. Gelb believe that it is a zero sum game between the American military and the insurgents. They state:

As long as American troops are in Iraq in significant numbers, the insurgents can’t win and we can’t lose. But intercommunal violence has surpassed the insurgency as the main security threat.

This is a fundamental misreading of the situation in Iraq. The United States has already lost Iraq. The war in Iraq is not about military victories; it is about local, regional and global politics. The United States military cannot hope to win enough battles in Iraq to reverse the political loss the United States has already suffered. Insurgencies win against foreign occupations not by vanquishing the occupier on the battlefield but by making continued occupation a painful and counterproductive path for the occupier. By that measure the United States has lost in Iraq and the only political and military calculation left to make is how to withdraw and when. The communal violence in Iraq has not surpassed the insurgency but in fact is a direct consequence of the insurgency and America’s inability to quell it. For better or for worse, civil war in Iraq has been a goal of the insurgency. That civil war has made America’s presence in Iraq irrelevant at best and counterproductive at worst.

The centerpiece of the Biden and Gelb proposal is a division of Iraq into autonomous zones along ethnic lines:

The first is to establish three largely autonomous regions with a viable central government in Baghdad. The Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite regions would each be responsible for their own domestic laws, administration and internal security. The central government would control border defense, foreign affairs and oil revenues. Baghdad would become a federal zone, while densely populated areas of mixed populations would receive both multisectarian and international police protection.

This proposal has appeal given, as the authors point out, that Iraq is already headed toward violent division. However, the proposal glosses over some difficult truths about Iraq’s ethnic and geographical structure that cannot be ignored.

First, there are sizable minorities that live within majority Shia, Sunni and Kurdish areas. Any partition into autonomous zones would lead to large scale ethnic cleansing and quite likely violent migration patterns as the minorities flee these newly formed autonomous zones. Though Iraq is distinctly divided into Shia, Sunni, Kurd, Turkmen and other minorities demographically, it is not necessarily divided along those lines geographically (except perhaps in the Kurdish controlled north where ethnic cleansing has already taken place). The proposed division of Iraq is less likely to look like Bosnia and more likely to look like the partition of India into India and Pakistan in 1947. In that instance there was large-scale migration of Hindus and Muslims resulting in violent clashes and significant loss of life. The end result was a geographical monstrosity that led to three wars and finally the formation of an independent Bangladesh in 1971.

Second, the proposal glosses over the thorny issue of oil revenues. Iraq’s oil fields are largely concentrated in the predominantly Shia South and in the contested city of Kirkuk in the North. The Sunni areas are largely devoid of oil reserves. The geographic distribution of the oil fields is a major stumbling block in any proposed partition of Iraq along ethnic lines. The city of Kirkuk in particular generates half of Iraq’s oil revenue. The Kurds have historically laid claim to this city and will not cede control of the city or its oil revenues under any federalist agreement. Though the problem of Kirkuk has gone largely unaddressed by the United States, I believe it will be the epicenter of a larger struggle for the future of Iraq. With Kirkuk as their capital, the Kurds have ambitions for a greater Kurdistan that spans Iraq, Turkey and Iran. This is a goal the Kurds are unlikely to give up through any negotiation that does not give them full control of Kirkuk and its oil revenues. Turkey and Iran will almost certainly intervene if and when an autonomous Kurdistan in Iraq comes into being. This is a powder keg that will cause major regional instability and is the fly in the ointment of the partition proposal. There is already cross border fighting between Iran, Turkey and the Kurdish region of Iraq and this will likely flare into open warfare in the event of a partition [via Juan Cole].

The other points in the proposal that offer Sunnis financial incentives, offer protection to women, recommend an orderly withdrawal of U.S. forces, and recommend convening of regional summits all have merit but are eclipsed by the difficult task of overcoming the demographic and geographical challenges in Iraq. The incentives to Sunnis and the protection of women in fact argue for a stronger central government rather than a loose federation as has been proposed.

Senator Biden and Leslie Gelb have begun the process of exploring alternatives to the current policy of failure. The White House characteristically has rejected this proposal out of hand. However flawed the proposal is it is perhaps the first step in working our way out of the mess in Iraq and hopefully will spur other serious alternatives that may stem the civil war already raging in Iraq. The prospects of turning back from a violent restructuring of Iraq are bleak, but any proposal that attempts to avert further bloodshed should be given serious consideration.

The center of gravity in the civil war in Iraq is not Baghdad - it is Kirkuk. Kirkuk is the prize that the Sunnis lost, the Kurds want, and the Shia will not give. The Kirkuk oil field has about 10 billion barrels of oil reserves and produces almost half of Iraq’s oil exports. He who controls Kirkuk controls Iraq’s oil and Iraq’s wealth.

Over the last year Kirkuk has become the central front in the struggle for control of Iraq’s wealth. Kurdish peshmerga militias, Shia militias as well as Sunni insurgents have been slowly but surely taking up positions in and around Kirkuk in preparation for the bloodbath to come. The various militias in Kirkuk have been carefully maneuvering around each other under the watchful eyes of the American military. The battle for Kirkuk will likely begin when the American military begins its inevitable withdrawal from Iraq.

After the fall of Saddam the peshmerga quickly took control over Kirkuk. After Turkey expressed alarm at the possibility of Kurdish control of the Kirkuk oil fields (and the resulting wealth) the Kurdish militia withdrew to barracks outside the city. However, they have remained a presence in and around the city since that time. The Kurdish militias have also systematically infiltrated the Iraqi Army units in the north of Iraq:

Kurdish leaders have inserted more than 10,000 of their militia members into Iraqi army divisions in northern Iraq to lay the groundwork to swarm south, seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and possibly half of Mosul, Iraq’s third-largest city, and secure the borders of an independent Kurdistan.

While the Kurds reinforce their control of the Iraqi Army, the Shia militias have begun to pour into Kirkuk in recent weeks and months:

Hundreds of Shiite Muslim militiamen have deployed in recent weeks to this restive city — widely considered the most likely flash point for an Iraqi civil war — vowing to fight any attempt to shift control over Kirkuk to the Kurdish-governed north, according to U.S. commanders and diplomats, local police and politicians.

The Shia militias in Kirkuk along with the Sunni insurgents in and around Kirkuk are bound together in this struggle as Arabs versus the Kurdish militias. The maelstrom in Kirkuk is a peculiar confluence of oil, wealth, Arab and Kurdish nationalism. Ever since oil was first discovered in Kirkuk in the 1920s, Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen have been vying for control of this city’s riches. Starting in the 1960s the ruling Baath Party began a process of ethnic cleansing in Kirkuk. This ethnic cleansing, called "Arabization", forced Kurds, Turkmen and other ethnic groups from their homes and replaced them with ethnic Arabs from the south of Iraq:

Turkmens and Kurds alike were suppressed by the aggressive Arabism of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. Official ‘’Arabization'’ began in the 1960’s and accelerated significantly in 1975, when the Iraqi regime began forcibly removing tens of thousands of Kurds, Turkmens and Assyrian Christians from Kirkuk and bringing in Arabs to take their place. This Arabization was chiefly motivated by the government’s wish to consolidate its grip on the oil-rich and fertile region — and to pre-empt a gradual demographic takeover of the city by the Kurds. Under Arabization, as many as 250,000 non-Arabs, mostly Kurds, were expelled north into Iraqi Kurdistan. Their former land titles were declared invalid, and ownership was assumed by the government, which rented the land to Arabs.

After the fall of Saddam the Kurds have reasserted control over Kirkuk. The Kurds consider Kirkuk to be the capital of a greater Kurdistan spanning from Turkey to Iran. The Kurds are prepared to fight in order to gain control of the city:

"Kirkuk is Kurdistan; it does not belong to the Arabs," Hamid Afandi, the minister of Peshmerga for the Kurdistan Democratic Party, one of the two major Kurdish groups, said. "If we can resolve this by talking, fine, but if not, then we will resolve it by fighting."

The Arabs, Shia and Sunni, are not prepared to hand over Kirkuk to the Kurds without a fight:

In a meeting here last week, Sadr’s representative in the city, Abdul Karim Khalifa, told U.S. officials that more armed loyalists were on the way and that as many as 7,000 to 10,000 Shiite residents were prepared to fight alongside the Mahdi Army if called upon. Legions more Shiite militiamen would push north from Baghdad’s Sadr City slum, he said, according to Wise.

"His message was essentially that any idea of Kirkuk going to the Kurds will mean a fight," Wise said. "He said that their policy here was different from in other places, that they are not going to attack coalition forces because their only enemy here is the Kurds."

The Shia militias in Kirkuk are currently outnumbered significantly by the peshmerga. However, any battle for Kirkuk is sure to draw in forces from Turkey and Iran. Both of these countries have Kurdish minorities that aspire for a greater Kurdistan. Turkey and Iran will both be concerned that a Kurdish controlled Kirkuk will give the Kurds the wealth needed to wage a war for a greater Kurdistan. 

However, under years of American and British protection, and the resulting autonomy, the Kurds of northern Iraq have worked steadily toward a Kurdish homeland. They are determined to make the dream of a greater Kurdistan a reality and any such state must include Kirkuk and its oil fields. The stage is thus set for a major confrontation in Kirkuk over the wealth of Iraq. Shia, Sunni, Kurd and Turkmen of Iraq are about to rendezvous with destiny in Kirkuk.