A Tenuous Leadership Deal in Iraq
This OP-ED first appeared April 7th in the Boston Globe.
By Peter W. Galbraith | April 7, 2005 - Boston Globe
YESTERDAY, Iraq’s National Assembly chose Jalal Talabani — the lifelong Kurdish rebel — as Iraq’s first ever democratically elected head of state. Talabani’s personality could not be more different from Saddam Hussein, whose seat he now holds. While Saddam was insular, paranoid, and ignorant, Talabani is gregarious, widely traveled, and has an appetite for knowledge as large as his legendary love of food. He is a humanist who opposes the death penalty, perhaps the starkest contrast to a predecessor regime that murdered well over 500,000 of its own citizens.
President Bush’s supporters rightly will trumpet a democratic process that has replaced Saddam Hussein with a leader of the very people Saddam once gassed. But democracy can also be inconvenient, especially for an administration that has made the spread of freedom its top foreign policy goal for the Middle East, but which also is deeply committed to preserving the region’s existing states.
Jalal Talabani’s elevation is the product of a deal between the two winners of Iraq’s National Assembly elections in late January. The winners — a Shi’ite religious list that was supported by two thirds of Iraq’s Shi’ites and a Kurdish nationalist slate that won nearly all the votes in the Kurdish north — were able to agree that a Kurd would hold the largely symbolic presidency while a Shi’ite would be the more powerful prime minister. They agreed on a division of Cabinet portfolios, but on almost nothing else.
The negotiations, ostensibly about the powers of a Kurdish region that has been de facto independent since 1991, masks the simple reality that the people of Kurdistan do not want to be Iraqi at all. Simultaneous with the official balloting in January, Kurdistan held an informal referendum on the region’s status, with 97 percent choosing independence. Contrary to Bush administration hopes for building a united and democratic Iraq, democracy has not endeared Iraq to the Kurds but has intensified their belief that independence is achievable. Even if Kurds and Shi’ites can find common ground on a loose federal system, it is hard to see how it will last. The Kurdish people will always want their own state and will use the democratic process to ratchet up their demands.
If Iraq does come apart, it will follow the pattern of the other multi-ethnic states. Democracy broke apart the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia because major national communities — the Baltics and Ukrainians, the Croats and Slovenes, and the Slovakians — could vote not to be ruled by Russians, Serbs, and Czechs.
Throughout the Middle East, religious and ethnic divisions lie just below the surface. With its sclerotic political system and almost complete isolation, Syria is a prime target for administration democratization efforts. As in Iraq, ousting the regime may be the easy part. For decades, Syria’s Alawite minority has ruled over a Sunni majority, who will have scores to settle. Having seen their Iraqi brethren help overthrow Saddam, Syria’s long suppressed Kurds staged nationalistic protests of their own in 2003. It was the only direct democratic fallout of the regime change in Iraq.
Iran, also in the administration’s crosshairs, has more non-Persians than Persians. Iran’s 7 million Kurds have long resisted Tehran’s authority, but they are not alone in their grievances. Iran’s Azerbaijani and Baluch populations have been relatively quiet, but may not remain so in a climate of political change.
Pakistan, not a country on the Bush democracy list, is the scene of regular and horrific attacks on its Shi’ite minority. Its southern provinces — Sind and Baluchistan — are deeply resentful of the Punjabi dominated military that has governed Pakistan directly — or behind the scenes — for most of its history.
As it did in Eastern Europe in the 1990s, the spread of democracy in the Middle East threatens existing states. As in Europe, the emergence of new states is not inherently bad and is probably unavoidable. The problem comes when the breakup is accompanied by conflicts over territory and resources — conflicts that are often rooted in a web of historical claims that leaves each group deeply convinced of the rightness of its position.
As Yugoslavia disintegrated in 1991, the first Bush administration focused on the hopeless task of trying to hold the country together when it should have been working to prevent a war. The current President Bush cannot promote democracy in the Middle East without also being prepared to manage the inevitable breakups. As the Bush administration salutes President Talabani, it must still face up to the reality of a Kurdistan that dreams of independence.
Peter W. Galbraith, a former US ambassador to Croatia, is a fellow at the Center For Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington.