Ethnic rift tearing Iraq apart
The longer it takes to install a government, the harder the task of reining in the rebellious Kurds, assertive Shi'ites and resentful Sunnis
By Jonathan Eyal
FEB 21, 2004
LONDON - Rebellious Kurds in the north, assertive Shi'ites in the south and an increasingly resentful Sunni Muslim population in the middle: Iraq has all the potential for a major implosion.
If there is one fear shared by both allies and foes in Europe, the United States or the Middle East, it is that of Iraq's disintegration into statelets.
But how serious is this threat?
Although no comparison is perfect, lessons from the recent collapse of other states point to an ominous future.
The received wisdom, widely encouraged by Washington, is that Iraq will hold together despite its current difficulties.
First, the country's people, although diverse, have lived together for almost a century; the habits of cooperation, however patchy, are likely to endure.
Second, it is suggested that the various ethnic or religious groups will have to reach an accommodation inside Iraq, if only because none of their neighbours would tolerate the country's territorial division. Turkey, for instance, has warned repeatedly that the creation of a Kurdish state in Iraq's northern provinces would result in its military intervention.
So, the people of Iraq may not like one another but they have to hang together.
And, finally, the Americans claim to have a plan which should mitigate any pressures for a territorial disintegration: a 'wide measure' of autonomy is promised for the Kurds and an 'adequate, equitable' representation is offered for the Shi'ites and Sunnis within a new, 'democratic' constitutional framework.
These arguments may appear persuasive. Unfortunately, they are also largely irrelevant.
In recent history, Europe has witnessed the disintegration of no fewer than three countries, including a former superpower.
The case of Czechoslovakia, where Czechs and Slovaks opted for a peaceful, negotiated divorce, is not typical: in the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, the break-up was prolonged and very bloody.
More significantly, all the efforts designed to keep Iraq together were tried in the case of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia as well.
Both the Yugoslav and Soviet states were established at the end of World War I, about the same time as the creation of modern-day Iraq.
In both cases, the rationale was geostrategic. Nobody wanted to upset the balance of power in Europe by allowing the creation of new small states, so they turned a blind eye as Moscow's Red Army re-conquered most of the old Russian empire, and as small Slav nations were absorbed into Yugoslavia.
Similarly in Iraq, the British colonial regime invented a country from bits which did not seem to fit into any other arrangement.
To be sure, a homogeneous nationality is not a prerequisite for the survival of a state: many countries around the world not only manage, but actually thrive on ethnic diversity. But there is one precondition: in order to survive, such a state should satisfy the material and cultural needs of its ethnic components in an equitable manner.
And it is in this primary objective that the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Iraq singularly failed.
In all three countries, ethnic groups were held together by sheer brute force. At least in the case of the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia, power was exercised by the biggest single nation - Russians and Serbs, respectively. But in Iraq, control was for decades in the hands of the Sunnis, a numerical minority.
The result was the same in all three: the moment central governments wobbled, they faced an uprising from within.
And, just as predictably, the world tried to alleviate the pressures for disintegration.
The US spent the best part of the 1980s in vain efforts to encourage the nations of the Soviet Union - its old enemy - to stay together.
The European Union did everything possible to prevent Yugoslavia's break-up, at one point issuing a 'solemn promise' not to recognise any new independent state.
In the process, new Constitutions were written, and just as quickly ignored.
The reality is that Constitutions, however federal or liberal in their intentions, cannot be a solution.
Durable Constitutions are those which codify a political agreement which has already been reached; they cannot impose a political consensus.
The American belief that Constitutions can create nations and countries is a fallacy, born of US history but utterly inapplicable to either the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia a decade ago, or Iraq today.
Believers in Iraq's continuity as a unified state point to the fact that none of the country's ethnic or religious groups now demand independence.
Perhaps, but only up to a point.
For the last century, the Kurds have missed every historic opportunity to have their own state; their nation is still divided between Iraq, Turkey, Iran and the southern borders of Russia. At least for the Kurds, the current mayhem represents an opportunity to seize what history has so far denied them.
The Sunnis and Shi'ites have different ambitions. But their claims remain mutually exclusive: the Sunnis want to continue running the state despite their numerical inferiority; the Shi'ites are adamant that their plurality should now be recognised.
Washington is quite at liberty to write as many constitutional arrangements as it wishes, but they will have the same relevance as the Constitutions which colonial Britain wrote diligently for every African country, only to see them all consigned to the dustbin the moment the British flag was pulled down.
Despite all of this, Iraq's territorial breakdown is not inevitable.
The Kurds may yet decide that the Turkish threat imposes on them some moderation. And the turmoil in neighbouring Iran could persuade the Shi'ites, who share the same branch of Islam as the Iranians, to tread cautiously as well.
Nevertheless, it is already clear that with each passing day, with each delay in putting together a government in Baghdad, the task of keeping Iraq together gets tougher.
The experience of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia indicates that, at some stage, an irreversible process sets in, of action and backlash, which makes a break-up inevitable.
Iraq is not there yet, but the country is not far off that danger either.
At the very best, Iraq will be a loose state, theoretically one country but in practice run by various regional militias which, in turn, are patrolled by foreign troops.
This is the experience of much of Yugoslavia to this day. And this may yet be the fate of the country which the Americans entered, in the name of making it safe for democracy.
The writer is Director of Studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London
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