politically and over
time you can begin to deal with their more
responsible leaders and wean them into the
political process. But if you force them into a
corner, you're basically declaring war on a very
large percentage of the Shi'ite population of
Iraq.
The end of the state NIO: To what degree would a
highly decentralized federal government in Iraq
feed Iraqi concerns - rooted in the colonial era -
about outsiders dividing and weakening the state?
And if security
were
also decentralized, as you have recommended in the
past, wouldn't minorities remain quite vulnerable?
AA: I believe that the Iraqi
state that was constructed so laboriously after
World War I has come to an end, simply because it
has ended up being occupied and has been
responsible for great instability in the area and
a great deal of domestic violence and oppression.
So the state came to an end when the United States
invaded the country and broke open, as it were,
all the possibilities that Iraq could evolve into
the future.
From that premise, the
geopolitical unit that was created in the early
1920s had now ended. We now have to come up with a
different formulation and we have to deal with the
requirements of the major constituent groups as to
how they see their role in this state, in this new
country, assuming it maintains its geographic and
geopolitical boundaries.
From that point
of view, it's very difficult to re-establish a
centralized state, given the great deal of fear
and hostility that exists between various
communities and also given the fact that something
like 25% of your population and territory is
already effectively outside the control of the
central state.
So we have to really
reconsider this. I suppose it's like the United
States when it started - there was a great deal of
devolution of power to the states and only after a
period of time some federal institutions emerged.
I think you have to start with that premise.
The various component groups of Iraq now
feel far more vulnerable than they had, say, 20 or
30 years ago. They have gone through a very
traumatic post-Ba'athist period in the last four
years and we have to rebuild and reknit the
sinews, as it were, of a unitary society and
state. Now, you can't do that under conditions of
great turmoil. So when you refer to the
minorities, there are minorities in Iraq outside
of the three main blocs, but none of them, I
think, are sufficiently large to warrant their own
territorial unit. I mean I can't imagine a unit
for, let's say, the Iraqi Christians or the
Turkomans.
So you have to work within
decentralized areas. When you devolve power this
way, you basically assume, or expect, that
security will be provided at the local level. As
you try to build up towards a central and federal
arrangement, then you have to be prepared to cede
part of power to the center. But until all groups
are prepared to cede that, the center can't
reimpose its will on the parts.
NIO: And in areas that are
multi-ethnic, say Baghdad, Kirkuk, is there
anything specific you would propose there?
AA: Well, it's not a
cut-and-dried process. I think you have to start -
I mean, Baghdad can be turned into a territory
with its own government and its own regional
powers over and above that of the federal region.
Or maybe Baghdad may be divided into three cities.
I mean, it is already. Sadr City itself is
probably as big as the rest of Baghdad, just by
itself. It may very well warrant that it should be
incorporated as a city, in which case the capital,
excluding Sadr City, might become part of a
workable administrative unit.
So you have
to think a little outside the box, but the plan
should be towards creating not necessarily
homogeneous units, but units that are large enough
to be self-sustaining, to have the appropriate
administrative and security machinery, and, at the
same time, not have so many fault lines that
create or exacerbate tensions.
And I think
this should be monitored by some kind of
international force after - with the United
States' agreement, obviously - after this thing is
headed to a transition, to a new situation.
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