What to Do in Iraq: A Roundtable

Larry Diamond, James Dobbins, Chaim Kaufmann, Leslie H. Gelb, and Stephen Biddle

From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2006

Summary:  Can anything -- international mediation, regional collaboration, decentralization, or constitutional negotiations -- save Iraq from a full-fledged civil war and the Bush administration from a foreign policy fiasco?

This strategy is likely to fail. Attempts to compel power sharing among sectarian groups in Iraq will not stop the fighting and could even accelerate it. Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has stepped down, but the uia has not split. Despite serious internal rivalries, Shiite leaders have redoubled their commitment to make key decisions among themselves before negotiating with the U.S. government or anyone else. In April, the uia chose Nouri al-Maliki to replace Jaafari. The main Kurdish and Sunni parties promptly accepted the nomination even though Maliki, whom they see as inflexible and excessively sectarian, was their least favorite candidate (their endorsement may reflect the fact that they have little leverage). Shiite leaders will retain control of the all-important Interior Ministry. In early May, it was still unclear whether the Defense Ministry would remain under uia authority or if its control would go to a technocrat not affiliated with the alliance.

A governing coalition has yet to be formed. But it might come to resemble the Kurdish-Shiite accord that underpinned the last government: Baghdad turned a blind eye toward Kurdish activities in the north in return for Kurdish acquiescence on anything the central government did elsewhere. A few Sunni ministers might be appointed, but the Shiites do not want -- nor do they need -- to offer significant concessions. Even if an all-party unity government could be formed, it would not be able to function; the parties' demands cannot be reconciled, and their mutual distrust is far too great.

Trying to create a genuinely Iraqi security force will not work either, because there is no powerful, legitimate political movement loyal to "Iraq," in or out of government. Nor could most members of the security forces be persuaded to identify with such a force if it did exist. Some Iraqi army units, under tight U.S. control, have been deterred from using violence for purely sectarian goals, but others are openly loyal to Kurdish or Shiite leaders. Reforming the police is a lost cause; any U.S. remark about the force's performance is met with heated retorts from Shiite leaders. In March, uia spokespeople demanded that U.S. forces stand aside from further involvement in internal security. Most Shiite leaders do not desire an immediate U.S. departure, but only because they hope to collect more U.S. aid before the civil war escalates further. An additional barrier to coercing Shiite leaders is the fact that Shiite militias are already receiving aid from Tehran on a moderate scale.

Any serious attempt to compel the Iraqis to share power would result in either a quick, ignominious reduction in U.S. troops or an actual U.S. withdrawal followed by a massive escalation of hostilities. Control over every mixed settlement and neighborhood in the country would be up for grabs, which would increase incentives for ethnic cleansing throughout the country. The Shiite-dominated Iraqi government might also find itself forced deeper into a clientelistic relationship with Iran.

In any case, it is beyond the power of any Iraqi government to stop the violence between the communities if they are not separated first. Although the main Shiite militias are controlled by factions within the uia, they do not answer to it or to one another. The most active death squads seem to be those of the Badr Brigades, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which controls the Interior Ministry. Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army has also killed many people.

As a result, Iraq is breaking up into communal cantons. As they become unsafe, mixed towns and urban neighborhoods are becoming segregated. No one knows how far this process has gone already; some reports suggest that many towns have already become monoethnic. Shiite and Sunni militias have been inundated by new volunteers, and new independent neighborhood militias are forming, too. Free movement between Sunni and Shiite areas will be increasingly curtailed by checkpoints manned by militias, if not by government forces, as is already happening within and around Baghdad.

Iraq will eventually develop internal communal borders with a few heavily guarded crossing points. Since the ethnic makeup of Baghdad is far too complex for the city to be divided into just two parts, some of its neighborhoods will become isolated enclaves surrounded by barbed wire. This ugly solution has worked before: in Jerusalem, Mount Scopus was a Jewish island from 1948 to 1967. Any such partition of Iraq would likely be de facto, because many Shiite leaders still hope that a unified country can emerge, and no regime in the Middle East would tolerate formal independence for the Kurds.

MISSION: POSSIBLE

In the meantime, the United States will remain the strongest military force in Iraq. As such, it will have one remaining duty: the moral obligation to minimize the damage, human and otherwise, caused by ethnic cleansing. This is also a U.S. national security interest: the U.S. government is -- and will continue to be -- blamed by most of the world for all of the harm that befalls the people of Iraq. The shorter that bill of indictment, the better.

Satisfying this obligation would mean using U.S. military strength to protect Iraqi refugees who wish to relocate. U.S. forces must defend the most vulnerable mixed towns and urban neighborhoods from both Sunni and Shiite attackers for long enough to organize transport for those who want to move to safer locations. Otherwise, who controls Baghdad and dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of towns in central Iraq will be determined by full-scale sectarian battles that could go on for months or even years.