Out of the Ashes…and into the Frying Pan?

Joost Hiltermann  |  27 Apr 2005

Presentation given by Joost Hiltermann, Crisis Group's Middle East Project Director, at MIT Workshop, “Iraq: Occupation, State Building & Democratization,” Boston, 27 April 2005.

Such positive developments notwithstanding (any break from the tyrannical past could be deemed progress), the occupying powers have failed so far to bring "democracy" to Iraq and they are unlikely to succeed.  Instead, the re-born Iraqi polity has been marked by escalating violence embodied in a home-grown insurgency, rampant crime in an environment of endemic lawlessness, an on-going alien military occupation, the flowering of militias linked to political parties, and the emergence of Iraqi security forces that remain weak, lack discipline, and are prone to violating human rights. The monopoly over violence, in other words, has become diffuse, and this is vastly complicating the task of state-building, which additionally has to accommodate the rise of religiosity and Islamic activism, as well as strong Kurdish demands for an advanced degree of autonomy within a federal Iraq (seen by many Iraqis as a bald bid for independence).

The nature of the insurgency, subject of a separate presentation today, must be understood correctly.  It is more proper to speak of "insurgencies", given the rootedness in local conditions and lack of coordination that seem to characterise most of the groups that are active.  These range from homegrown fighters feeding on a general disaffection with the new political order (constituting, I would argue, the majority), former regime elements bent on subverting this new order as their last remaining chance -- in their eyes -- of having a future in Iraq (Rumsfeld's "dead-enders"), foreign jihadis taking their fight against the United States to the most attractive battleground currently available (Iraq), and -- to the extent these feed off and/or into the insurgencies -- criminal gangs setting road-side explosives for money, taking hostages for ransom or selling them to political groups, making political hits ($200 per head), and so forth.

With increasing regularity, insurgent attacks have assumed a sectarian hue, raising the specter of communal conflict, possibly civil war.  At least two of the insurgencies' principal elements, foreign jihadis and Sunni-Arab-based fighters, may have an interest in jump-starting sectarian fighting -- the former for ideological reasons (being anti-Shiite), the latter because they resent the ascendancy of Shiite political power and fear their own resulting de-privileging.

Violence may be complicating the task of establishing stable government in Iraq but is not itself the cause of instability.  It was the absence of representative governing institutions and, more generally, the new order's pervasive lack of legitimacy that should be blamed for the onset and growth of violence in the first place.  Any successful attempt at state formation should therefore start with answering the question why political legitimacy has been weak and how this can be redressed.

A government's legitimacy derives from a number of sources: popular choice, most importantly, but also representativeness, ability to deliver needed services efficiently and fairly, and good governance (transparency, accountability, absence of corruption).  The problem in Iraq is that the legitimacy of the new order has been challenged, not just that of those running it.  This brings us to the "original sins" of the U.S. effort to re-make Iraq: critical errors of judgment that defined the course of development and that derived from difficult choices as often as from faulty information, lack of experience, and a profound cultural disconnect. They include:

• The U.S. decision to prosecute the war unilaterally: This decision, in evident defiance of the will of the international community (including popular sentiment in countries whose governments joined the "coalition of the willing") raised questions among Iraqis about the U.S.'s "true" motives in attacking their country: A grab for oil? An assist to Israel? A bid for U.S. domination? Or all of the above? Washington's bumbling attempts at explaining the war ex post facto, shifting from one motive to another, did not help in allaying these suspicions.
  
• A cavalier attitude toward Iraqis' national pride: Characterisations of the regime's removal as "the fall of Baghdad", added to the ignominious (but inevitable) defeat of the Iraqi army, constituted injuries that many Iraqis felt deeply, even as they celebrated the regime's collapse.  The summary and blanket (and thus far insufficiently explained) dismissal of the entire Iraqi army that followed was seen as gratuitous, a punishment for crimes not committed.  It thus added a direct insult to Iraqis' national pride, the army being seen as a national, nonsectarian, and not necessarily pro-regime institution that, moreover, had put up no resistance to advancing U.S. and British forces.  The conduct of the liberating armies' troops (humiliations and insults meted out at roadblocks, home searches experienced in a tribal society as blatant invasions of privacy, apparently arbitrary detentions, torture of detainees, etc.) quickly marked them as occupiers, and whatever goodwill they had mustered by removing the hated regime they soon began frittering away.
  
• The failure to restore law and order, as well as basic utilities: This was an incomprehensible lapse to Iraqis, who resorted to conspiracy theories in search of an explanation: If the United States, with all its power and resources, will not bring order, electricity and clean water -- so the argument went -- then surely this is so because it wants Iraq to be weak, so the easier to fall prey to Israel.  That the failure to restore order and services could have been the result of bungling and a deliberate shoving aside by the Pentagon of detailed post-war reconstruction plans drawn up by Iraq experts within the U.S. government is an explanation that has no resonance, no credibility with the vast majority of Iraqis.
  
• De-Ba'athification: Along with the order dismissing the army, this was the single-most critical decision taken by the U.S. occupying authority in the immediate aftermath of the war.  The effort was misconceived: What should have happened was a thorough "de-Saddamization" of Iraq, a rooting out of those who had committed crimes under the past regime (many of whom never were members of the Ba’ath party, while many Ba’ath members were law-abiding citizens).  Instead, the broad-brush approach targeting senior members of Iraq's political and managerial class on the basis of their party affiliation rather than their past conduct was seen as unfair by many Iraqis, who discerned in it the hand of prominent former exiles, such as Ahmad Chalabi, the head of the de-Ba'athification committee, who was suspected of seeking to create a tabula rasa from which to launch an uncontested bid for political power.  It also removed in one fell swoop almost the entire layer of senior administration, paralyzing the bureaucracy and state institutions, and compounding post-war chaos.
  
• The empowerment of political proxies: The installation of the Interim Governing Council in July 2003 reflected the occupying authority's recognition of the need to hand over the day-to-day running of Iraq to Iraqis.  It didn't work out that way.  This was due in part because the council was unelected, unrepresentative, sectarian in composition, and heavily weighted toward former exiles and expatriates whose motives were doubted and whose money and skills were resented by the majority of Iraqis who had never left (or had the opportunity to leave).  It was also ineffective to the point of being paralyzed, prone to infighting, intransparent and unaccountable. Corruption, including in the appointment of relatives and political cronies, thrived.  Most of all, and perhaps most fatally, it was seen as doing the occupying powers' bidding.
  
• The attempt to impose a constitution: Shortly after the war, rumors started circulating that Iraq’s new constitution had already been written -- in Washington and Tel Aviv.  This prompted the Shiite community's most senior cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to issue an edict stating that the constitution should be drafted by elected Iraqis.  A few months later, CPA chief Paul Bremer announced that a transitional parliament with constitution-drafting responsibilities would be created through an intransparent system of local caucuses.  Sistani promptly weighed in again, insisting that any new parliament be established via direct elections.  On each of these occasions, the CPA backed down in the face of Sistani's appeal to popular legitimacy, thereby underlining its own actions' lack of legitimacy.  Even today, many Iraqis say that the constitution "has already been written" (i.e., in America), and the new parliament will have to make every effort at public education and consultation to convince Iraqis that it is they are who are drafting the constitution and not some outside power.
  
• Shunning the vox populi: The CPA faced difficult dilemmas as it set out to rebuild Iraq from the ground up.  In establishing local councils, it soon faced the choice of organising elections to legitimise the new councils but risk their take-over by Islamists and others perceived as inimical to U.S. interests, or appoint council members who would try to make up for their legitimacy deficit through effective governance and an active role in reconstruction.  It chose for the latter.  But to provide basic services effectively, the councils had to be given real powers, including budgetary oversight, and here another dilemma presented itself:  The CPA could devolve significant powers to the local councils early, before they had acquired either electoral legitimacy or experience in governance, but thus risk that they would prove both incompetent and illegitimate, or it could delay devolution to allow the councils to build up their capacity, but this could easily render them irrelevant.  Again it chose for the latter course.  In doing so, the CPA never allowed the new governing structures at the local level to realise their potential and contribute to the rise of an elected, representative Iraqi leadership from the bottom up (except, arguably, in Baghdad).
  
• The lack of a reconstruction strategy: The dysfunctionality of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) -- with political firewalls and heavy bureaucratic fighting between Pentagon and State (and other government agencies), poor relations with the military high command, a steady turn-over in staff (many eager to add a courageous Iraq experience to their CV via a safe three-month stint inside the protected Green Zone), and a jarring lack of relevant experience and knowledge of Iraq, its language and culture -- led to the absence of a coherent strategy for rebuilding the country, continuous policy reversals, gridlock, a lack of oversight over funds, and corruption.  Foreign contractors unconcerned with the country’s most pressing requirements (basic utilities, employment generation) created small oases of peace in heavily fortified compounds in the midst of civilian squalor, spending a good deal of their money on their own security and the remainder on projects from which few Iraqis experienced direct benefit, admired by those who succeeded in finding a job but resented by everyone else.  With the regime gone, all that Iraqis wanted was to be safe in their daily lives and put bread on the table.  Instead, they saw a country heavily damaged by three wars and a decade of punishing sanctions descend further into chaos.

In traumatised transitional societies, especially those emerging from dictatorial rule, legitimacy is established incrementally, and so measures that are not distinctly democratic may at times be advisable, a necessary medicine.  It is recognised, for example, that national elections held too early tend to favour the most radical elements, as well as members of the previous order.  In Iraq, however, the accumulation of errors and failed opportunities reached a tipping point.  Instead of contributing to an upward curve of legitimation, the occupiers' actions created significant political space for a range of insurgent elements, who were able to gain strength by capitalising on lawlessness and popular disaffection.

Today we have landed in a vicious circle: the new order's legitimacy deficit has given rise to violence, which further challenges and undermines the authority and legitimacy of the new governing class.  The 2005 election, for example, was a sectarian election from which one of Iraq’s communities abstained; this triggered a divisive dynamic in the formation of a new government even as it artificially inflated the winners’ victory and the supposed size of their popular legitimacy. Violence is impeding reconstruction, and the absence of reconstruction (jobs, basic services and utilities) is further eroding the little legitimacy the new order still enjoys.

The pressing question today, before the situation gets further out of hand, is how to break out of this vicious circle.  I suggest the following approach:

• Reversing the sectarian logic: The transitional government should make every effort to refrain from reinforcing the sectarian logic set in motion by the composition of the Interim Governing Council in July 2003.  This applies in particular to appointments to positions in all of Iraq's national institutions, including, most importantly, the security services.  Moreover, elements of party-based militias, such as the peshmerga forces, should not be deployed as distinct units in combat in urban areas such as Falluja, Mosul or Najaf, but fully integrated into the national army -- that should represent all communities -- before any such deployment.  Political leaders should, as they have done so far, urge the utmost restraint on the part of their supporters in the face of brazen provocations aimed at jump-starting communal warfare.
  
• Inclusiveness in governance: The elected authorities should make a good-faith effort to bring in a broad spectrum of Sunni Arab leadership, and offer qualified members of this community senior positions in the cabinet, the constitution-drafting committee, the ministries, the army and the security agencies.  Fears of re-Ba'athification should be allayed by the establishment of an impartial and fair screening mechanism aimed at weeding out the bad elements (those who committed crimes under the previous regime and/or have been involved in violence in the past two years).  Political overtures should be made to those members of the Sunni Arab community who have offered support to the insurgencies in an effort to draw them into the political process; if successful, such an effort would help isolate the insurgencies' other two prime components: former regime elements and foreign jihadis, neither of whom have an interest in, or a realistic chance of, becoming part of the new order.
  
• Good governance: Iraq’s newly elected leadership should make every effort to run a clean ship (especially compared to the deeply corrupt Allawi government), nurturing transparency and accountability, inviting oversight, and promoting the rule of law.
  
• Empowering local governance: The newly elected provincial councils should move swiftly to organise elections to lower-level (city/baladiya, district/qadha and sub-district/nahya) councils throughout Iraq in order to install representative government at all levels of society.  As part of the constitutional process, serious thought should be given to decentralising power in the new Iraq, possibly through the creation of federal regions with a high degree of local control over decision-making, resources, taxation, budgeting, and so forth.
  
• Transparency and consultation in constitution-making: For the permanent constitution to gain the legitimacy it will need to become the foundation of a stable Iraq, the drafting process should be transparent and participatory, involving a good deal of popular consultation and the active soliciting of input from all sectors of society.  For that reason, the process should not be rushed.  Given the time lost in the formation of the transitional government, a six-month delay in the deadline (from August 15, 2005 till February 15, 2006) should be considered. The Transitional National Assembly should engage in popular outreach and encourage the media and civil society to debate constitutional questions (content and process) immediately, continuously and openly.
  
• A fair solution to the Kurdish question: Iraq’s political leaders should make a good-faith effort during constitutional negotiations to achieve a just and fair settlement of the Kurdish question, taking at face value Kurdish leaders' explicit and oft-repeated public commitment to finding a solution within the boundaries of the Iraqi nation-state.  This will require compromises all around, especially with regard to revenue sharing, language and symbols, territorial boundaries, and the status of Kirkuk.  The international community should back up a final agreement with the necessary guarantees, given the Kurds' justified fear of arbitrary power and violence emanating from central government.
  
• Thank you and goodbye to foreign forces: Last but not least, the U.S. government should publicly state its commitment to an early withdrawal of all its and other foreign forces from Iraqi territory.  Such a withdrawal should be bound less by a specific timetable than by a set of clear criteria (most importantly, the standing up of an Iraqi army and other security agencies), and be implemented incrementally as viable units of Iraqi security forces are deployed, especially in urban areas.  Meanwhile, the transitional government should negotiate a new status-of-forces agreement with the governments that have troops on the ground that seeks to maximise Iraqi sovereignty while recognising the critical security role these troops must continue to play during the interim period.  The U.S. and other governments should take a hands-off approach toward developments in Iraq, including decisions taken by the Iraqi government (even if these are antithetical to U.S. interests), except on key questions of regional interest, including the protection of borders and the situation in Kirkuk