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Aug. 22, 2005 19:39
Iraq is not a state anymore
By SHLOMO AVINERI


Despite all the recent frantic attempts at constitution-making, Iraq is not a state anymore. It is difficult for the US government, as well as for the international community, to realize this, but the earlier it sinks in the better the chances for a realistic approach which could give the people in Iraq a chance for a more peaceful future.

Even since Iraq was cobbled together by British imperial dreamers in the 1920s from three very disparate provinces of the old Ottoman Empire the only way to hold it together was by brutal force. The British vested power in the Baghdad-based Sunni Arab minority. The Kurdish minority in the north, as well as the Shi'ite majority in the south, were virtually excluded from power. Consequently, all Iraqi governments were faced with recurring mutinies: by the Kurds, by the Shi'ites, even by the small Christian Assyrian community.

Saddam Hussein's regime was only the most brutal of all Sunni Arab minority regimes in Iraq, and this why Iraq has always been the most repressive Arab regime.

The end of Saddam Hussein also toppled this Sunni Arab minority rule; the current mayhem in Iraq is mainly the work of Sunni Arabs trying to abort any alternative government. The sophistication, logistic precision and overall planning of the terrorist attacks, as well as the apparent availability of hundreds of suicide bombers, cars and explosives all point to a well-prepared campaign based on the human and material resources of Saddam's old regime.

IT IS obvious that the Kurds, who have enjoyed de facto autonomy since the early 1990s, protected by the Allied "No Fly Zone," are not going to accept being subjected to Sunni Arab rule. The Kurdish regional government runs a more or less successful system of political authority. For a decade now schools in the area have taught in Kurdish and not in Arabic; a de-facto arrangement allows the Kurdish authorities to use oil revenues in the area to pay for impressive development projects.

Given their terrible experience in the past the Kurds will accept only the kind of federal structure that guarantees them effective control over their own affairs, including maintaining their own armed forces.

Similarly, the Shi'ites are not going to accept Sunni hegemony anymore, and the brutal terrorist attempts of the Sunni insurgents against Shi'ite shrines only strengthen their resolve to insist on a Shi'ite autonomous region in the south, similar to the Kurdish area in the north.

The Sunnis rightly realize that unless they succeed in reimposing their power by brutal force, they are doomed to minority status – something which is alien to the Sunni Arab tradition. Hence the Sunni boycott of the elections and the attempt of Sunni terrorists to frighten any moderate Sunni ready to cooperate in setting up a democratic Iraq.

Constitutional phraseology is not a remedy for these conundrums.

WHEN THE Soviet Union and Yugoslavia were on the verge of collapse along their ethnic lines, the Bush Sr. administration urged the maintenance of the existing structures: It failed dismally. Iraq may now be going the way of Yugoslavia, yet the US government does not wish to recognize this obvious fact. What is failing in Iraq is not only the attempt to build democracy, but the very attempt to keep the country together.

There is no way of putting Humpty-Dumpty together again. The Kurds and the Shi'ites will go their separate ways, and both entities have the paramilitary capability to do so. There is no Iraqi army capable of maintaining the unity of the country. And, just as in the former Yugoslavia, the separate countries – Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia – have a better chance of creating coherent and democratic systems than the old coercive Yugoslavia, the same may apply to Iraq.

The US will obviously have to change its policy over Iraq – maybe this is what President George W. Bush is devoting his vacation to. It would be advisable to think outside the box and realize that Iraq is not a country anymore.

This is not the end of the world, but it calls for courageous and creative thinking about alternatives.

The writer is professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.