Former Secretary of State James Baker’s working group on Iraq, as commissioned by Congress with the blessing of President Bush, has come to the conclusion that division of the Iraqi state into three highly autonomous zones is the only feasible option left. I tend to agree, however implementing any plan based around loose federalization will have to address numerous issues, including:

Oil wealth sharing, which is essential if the Sunnis of western Iraq will even consider splitting off from the rest of the Iraqi state. Without an agreement in place on oil wealth, greed will undoubtedly take over as the Shi’a claim the massive oil fields in Basra as their own and the Kurds take the Kirkuk fields and pipelines. Without revenue brought in by way of these fields, the Sunni areas would continue to languish in poverty even if the security situation somehow corrects itself.

Increased Kurdish autonomy would worry Iran and especially Turkey. Both Iran and Turkey hold large Kurdish populations that would want to join with an independent Kurdistan. A way around this would be to place strict limits on Kurdish autonomy and include it within a weak Iraqi federal government, similar to the current configuration. Kurdish leaders, including Iraqi president Jalal Talabani and Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Massoud Barzani are not ignorant to the current situation and their available options, however. They will not force the issue of independence since current events allot Kurdistan a large amount of independence in reality despite its official inclusion into the Iraqi state. However, recent Kurdish overtures to foreign oil exploration companies have worried leaders in Baghdad. In response, Kurdish prime minister Nechirvan Barzani has threatened Kurdish secession, proving that not all Kurdish officials are on the same page nor is the issue of secession off limits for use as leverage in federalism negotiations. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish terrorist group that routinely targets Turkey from within that country and Iraq, also changes the calculus as it remains difficult to predict its maneuvers. Days after declaring a unilateral ceasefire, PKK terrorists attacked the Turkish city of Izmir, killing 15.

Speaking of the Kurds, Kirkuk would be a major point of contention under a plan of increased autonomy for the three primary Iraqi ethnic groups. Kirkuk and its surrounding areas are oil rich and coveted by Iraqi Kurds, Sunnis, and Turkomen. The Kurds have claimed control over the city as they were originally forced from the area by Hussein, but the Sunnis are not willing to give Kirkuk up easily. A plan to split western Iraq away from Kurdistan and Shi’ite southern Iraq would simply push the Sunnis to commit more violence in hopes of grabbing oil-rich Kirkuk, since it would offer the only hope of Sunnis attaining oil without an adequate oil wealth sharing plan put in place. Insurgents have had little trouble attacking pipelines connecting Kirkuk with the rest of Iraq and Turkey, and it’s guaranteed that those same pipelines will remain a target under a loose federalization plan that leaves Sunnis feeling disenfranchised and excluded from oil revenue sharing.

Shi’ite rivalries in an autonomous southern Iraq would promise continued violence and instability. Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army remains staunchly opposed to the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), and has routinely found itself in armed combat with the SCIRI’s Badr Brigades militia. The current governmental configuration allows Sadr a certain amount of leverage since his support of the Da’wa Party has kept the SCIRI from controlling the central government directly. The SCIRI, on the other hand, is for a southern autonomous zone since it would undoubtedly grab full control over the region. However, Sadr is popular among the Shi’ite poor and is gaining increased acceptance. Despite being a radical cleric with questionable credentials, Sadr routinely utilizes populism in order to gain support from Shi’ite classes that would otherwise ignore him. He criticizes the SCIRI for being an Iranian puppet despite his own spiritual guide, Ayatollah Kazem al-Haeri, being an Iranian exile. His continuing opposition to the American presence in Iraq continues to reinforce his nationalist message. His radical Islamic claims — including that the US is in Iraq to find and kill the messianic Shi’ite Mahdi, or 12th iman — alongside his populist leanings makes Sadr a frightening figure capable of capitalizing and harnessing Shi’ite fervor. There is little doubt that Sadr’s Mahdi Army would battle Abdul Aziz al-Hakim’s SCIRI for control of a southern Iraqi “Sumer” under a loose and ill-planned federalism.

Federalism is not a terrible idea since it would reflect the current Iraqi reality. However, the official split of Iraq would lead to a number of problems, including those mentioned above, that would have to be confronted before peace could be achieved.

technorati tags:iraq, oil, shi’ites, sunnis, kurds, federalism, al-sadr, al-hakim

Hussain Haqqani’s "Jihad and Jihadism" concerning Pakistan is rather ancient in blog terms (it was published on August 3), but I still find it timely considering my semi-recent discussions of Pakistan and terrorism. Haqqani focuses primarily on Musharraf kicking foreign students out of madrassas a few weeks back, which was obviously nothing more than an attempt to deflect further criticism following the London bombings:

The Pakistani government’s decision to bar 1,400 foreigners from studying at the country’s madrasas is not the solution to terrorism. None of the terrorists involved in international attacks linked to Pakistan , even tenuously, over the last several years have been regular foreign madrasa students. Pakistan ’s real problem is the training camps established by Jihad ist groups in the country, which were tolerated by the Pakistani state for strategic reasons. Some of these camps operated under the cover of madrasas. By focusing on madrasas, and then only on foreigners within the madrasas, Pakistani officials are again missing the opportunity to move forward with a complete roll back of Jihad ism.

 

Blaming foreigners has become a convenient excuse in Pakistan , and elsewhere in the Muslim world, to avoid condemning the extremist Jihadists’ ideology of hatred. It is not necessary for everyone in Europe or the Muslim world to agree with all aspects of US or British policy to acknowledge that many Muslims have been so consumed by hatred of the West that they have lost their moral compass. Terrorism is reprehensible. Extremist ideologies that feed, justify or condone terrorism deserve unequivocal condemnation. Instead, non-steps such as expulsion of foreign madrasa students continue to distract Gen Musharraf’s regime.

…

For Pakistan ’s intelligentsia, too, this is a moment of truth. The perceived or real flaws of Europeans and Americans must not be used as the basis for shifting responsibility for Islamist terrorism from its ideology of hate to specific US policy decisions. The bulk of the recent victims of global terror have been Muslims, slaughtered by those claiming to speak in the name of a purer Islam. This slaughter is hardly a rational response to ‘‘occupation of Iraq , Afghanistan and Palestine ,'’ as some commentators describe terrorist attacks.

A good column, definitely recommended in full.

The Bush administration needs to start applying some sort of pressure to Musharraf over the madrassas themselves, as well as the established terrorist camps being kept around for a number of reasons, one of those being their strategic importance in a possible future conflict with India. One way I’d go about it is through utilizing the Pakistan-India-Iran natural gas pipeline project as leverage. Back in June the US threatened unilateral sanctions on Pakistan if it continued with the project, although that was meant primarily as a warning against closer Islamabad-Tehran ties. If the administration’s willing to go that far to affect Pakistani regional policy, I don’t see why it cannot link the pipeline to internal reform, as well. Of course, the US would have to consider the project as a carrot in such negotiations, or, perhaps, replace it with a push for increased bilateral economic relations, something very much desired by high level and influential Pakistanis including Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri.

As it stands currently, US sway in the region, particularly with India, is going to kill the pipeline, anyway, perhaps in lieu of a different, more US-friendly project based in Qatar (Chevron, Mobil, and Enron are all involved in Qatar’s energy industry.) It’s conceivable that one reason the US pledged civil nuclear support to India was to dismantle New Delhi’s need for the natural gas pipeline to begin with. Obviously, no one should pledge nuke cooperation with terrorist-harboring Pakistan, but alternatives are out there, ready to be utilized to modify Musharraf’s more dangerous behavior.