Pauline Baker (PB) Yes, thank you.

MB: As you know, we’ve had quite a week here last week with the General and with the Ambassador and with everybody else speaking up. But before that you issued a report called, The Way Out: A Union of the Iraqi States and you’ve called very clearly and very thoughtfully for an entirely new political order in Iraq, and I wonder if you could just briefly outline that.

PB: Yes, I call for an entirely new political order based on the trend lines that we’ve been seeing ever since the invasion of Iraq. And basically what we are arguing is that ….. the whole argument that soft partition or decentralization is very nuanced but it doesn’t confront the central question which is that neither of the three groups really want to be governed by any of the other groups. And yet there is some sort of logic in staying together. So what we are proposing is a Union of Iraqi States very loosely modeled on the European Union where there are sovereign components, three sovereign components at least, and each one is recognized as a truly independent and sovereign state with a seat in the United Nations and its own flags and its own security forces and its own revenue. But that they each be part of a larger political order called the Union of Iraqi States in which there is a single economic entity which is funded largely by the oil revenues and that there be an agreed upon formula for dispersing those oil revenues which I think actually might be easier to agree upon once people know they have their own political self government…and that there would be laws that respect minorities, that respect movements, free labor and so forth based on the European model.

MB: Why have you taken this one huge step beyond what is being discussed in Washington, for instance, Senator Biden’s Plan, a confederation, a federal arrangement of Iraq because the very notion of creating individual countries there and that coming from a Western occupation would cause a lot of people in the region to say once again – you guys have come here and told us how we’re going to live.

PB: Well I don’t think we should tell them how they’re going to live. I think that what we should do is add it to the debate. Obviously, it’s the Iraqis who are going to have to decide whether or not they are going to live together and in what way they are going to live together. But I do think that the kind of formula being presented now – I think that Biden is the closest when he talks about decentralization and confederation. But confederations don’t last. There really isn’t a successful confederation in the world now other than Belgium. And that has very unique characteristics to allow it to survive. Our own political experiment started out as a confederation and failed and then we formed a strong federal system.

The reason why a confederation in Iraq’s case probably will not last is because even in a confederation, the security forces have to be controlled by the center. And that means probably a Shiite-dominated security force, which will not solve the problems of the Sunni insurgency and the Sunni resistance and the kind of sectarian violence that we see there now.

MB: How do you envision the division of Iraq taking place? How do you envision the Union of Iraqi States … let’s assume your arguments were persuasive to people here in Washington and to many Iraqis…what would be the steps that would bring it about?

PB: Well it would have to be done through a negotiation and you’d have to have kind of a grand bargain with the neighboring states as well because it can’t survive unless the neighboring states also support it. Henry Kissinger had come out with an op-ed recently in which he proposed a three-tiered track of negotiations: one on the international level, one on the regional level and one with Iraqi parties, which would all debate this and then come together in an orchestrated fashion. That’s one way to do it. Another way to do it would be to decide to talk to Iraqis themselves directly about that. There would be people who would resist it, but, convene a conference where if this political order or formula were not agreeable then what others might be put on the table? But the important thing is to have a vision of a sustainable society. And there isn’t a vision of a sustainable society now. We’re really talking about very fuzzy concepts that are not sustainable and that really do require continued external involvement by military forces.

MB: And what happens to the current Iraqi constitution which does allow for federalism, does allow for the provinces becoming part of regions, but specifically disavows the idea of Iraq breaking up?

PB: Well actually, there’s an awful lot in the current Iraqi constitution that points toward autonomy. And as one commentator said recently, the Kurds took the existing constitutional provision and ran with it. The Shia said, we like this but let’s go softly-softly because we want to bring the Shia in and maybe be able to dominate the whole of Iraq whereas the Sunnis rejected it entirely.

There are already constitutional principles and I would think that if there was an agreement by the Iraqi parties they could amend the constitution to allow this to happen. So there still would be an Iraqi entity – the Union of Iraqi States. But this would really be a very unique political order in which sovereignty would be shared rather than concentrated in the center.

MB: And I gather that’s why you use the European Union as an example. The states have sovereignty, they have UN membership, but nevertheless, the borders are pretty much open and the economic union is pretty vibrant.

PB: Precisely. Now the European Union, as everyone knows came about as a result of negotiation of existing sovereignties to come together and you don’t have that in Iraq now but that is the way the trend lines are heading. And if there’s going to be fragmentation and even the current successes that the administration is pointing to point to fragmentation because the successes are at the local level, not at the center. And if those are the trends, the question is – is it going to happen violently or is it going to happen more peacefully? If they want it to happen peacefully, we are saying that it should be a managed partition, whether soft or hard or whatever way you want it to go. But managed in the sense that all of the interested parties come together and say – how can this be done where we salvage what’s really good in the union – and mainly that’s the economic cooperation which can be the foundation for recognizing minority rights and free movement and property rights, etc., while allowing and recognizing that the grievances that exist in Iraqi society which are extremely deep, can be addressed.

MB: Well speaking of the trend lines, while you were off in Turkey, I read again your report and then listened very carefully to the hours and hours and hours of Petraeus and Crocker testimony – - it was a little hard to find the trend lines that your report outines in what they testified.

PB: Well they are being very selective in what they site. And as you know there is a controversy on even the count. When they decide not to count sectarian deaths, people who are shot in the head, I don’t know what those numbers really mean. But even if you accept their numbers, while there are improvements in the Ambar Province, there is a report in the Washington Post today that says that violence is actually up in the south. So it is kind of a “wackable” situation where the insurgents retreat when there is a high concentration of American forces and destabilize other parts of Iraq where we don’t have a concentration of American forces. So that suggests that the trendlines are still fundamentally in the same direction and that whatever success we have is not sustainable.

MB: Well, the New York Times wrote a pretty harsh editorial after the testimony and they did, I believe use the phrase “cooking the books.” You might use a different phrase, but are you saying that? That that’s what the Bush administration is doing?

PB: Well I’m not saying, certainly, that General Petraeus is doing that and I disagree with people who assault his integrity by saying that HE cooked the books. I don’t believe that at all. In fact I believe that General Petraeus has brought the sanest strategy yet to Iraq. The problem with it is that it is too little too late. It would have been very good had he would have introduced that strategy right after the invasion and we really did make protection of civilians the centerpiece of our strategy. It’s very very hard to do that when Iraq has deteriorated so badly and the institutions have eroded so badly now.

I don’t think they’ve cooked the books, I think they’re just being very selective in what they define as success and not really looking at the whole picture and the fundamental drivers of conflict in Iraq.

MB: Most crucially you mentioned the region and when I asked you, okay, let’s assume that there aren’t alternatives anymore – that it is too late for anything else, and that everyone agrees that something of this kind has to be done whether it is going to be a federal state (not called partition) or whether it’s going to be what you call an entirely new political order? So let’s assume we go down that direction – but the region seems to be boiling – there does not seem to be much interest in Washington for any grand bargain – and all the talk is actually about a much expanded conflict with one report after the other about how the U.S. and Israel are getting prepared to attack Iran.

PB: Yes, that’s very unfortunate and I agree that even the proposal that I am promoting is a long shot. It really does take political will. But if the administration could, in its last month’s in office see the logic in trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat here they may just try as a last ditch legacy to really convene a larger conference and start the kind of diplomacy that even their republican supporters have been promoting. If not, then the hope is that people will hold on until the new administration comes in and is more open to fresh suggestions and fresh approaches about how to do this.

In fact, the denial…the refusal to think of fresh approaches is actually making things a lot worse with Iran – because Iran sees, or calculates, I believe, that it’s inevitable that our troops will be drawn down, that we will not be able to sustain the kind of transition that the administration is talking about and so it’s in its interest to continue to fuel the conflict in Iraq so that it has allies when the power vacuum inevitably will come. And then its allies will fill that power vacuum.

MB: And what would be the ramifications in your view for U.S. interests and for the region if things went the other direction from the grand bargain and the other direction from a negotiated new political order but rather the greater attack on Iran takes place in which many many people around the world are talking about including the French foreign minister yesterday when he basically said to the world, “Prepare for war.”

PB: Yes.

MB: So what would be the ramifications of that taking place, not only for Iraq but for our country’s interest?

PB: Well I think that any pre-emptive attack would be disastrous. I think that even if the world decided that Iran could not be allowed to have nuclear weapons we would have to go through the United Nations. And I think that the folly of not doing that is evident in what has occurred in Iraq. So if it’s true that Iran is tying international opinion it is promoting nuclear weapons then we should present this evidence to the United Nations and get an international action underway.

But any unilateral action or even a collaborative action between the U.S. and some allies would be actually disastrous. It would certainly inflame the whole Muslim world. It would make the situation in Iraq much worse and even if it were a surgical strike and not an occupation, which is what people are talking about, it would have the same net effect politically.

MB: I think that there are people in this city (Washington, DC) …most of them called neocons who actually would see your disastrous scenario as the very one that is needed to truly bring about an entirely new political order – to use your phrase.

PB: Well I’d like them to point out what that political order would be – with some convincing evidence. The only thing that it would be would be to strengthen the radicals in Iran. Any time that there is a foreign attack even the dissidents within a country rally around their own government and it would strengthen the hand of Ahmadinejad and strengthen the hand of those who say we have the right to nuclear weapons and attack shows not only the right but the need to have nuclear weapons to defend ourselves against external aggression. And of course the rest of the Muslim world would see that as another attempt to dominate an Islamic country.

I don’t see any benefit to come out of a preemptive attack on Iran and if there is evidence that they in fact are closer to developing nuclear weapons then I think that we ought to reveal that publicly and shame the Iranians into more compliant behavior with more sanctions.

MB: Well when you ask for making the case – Norman Podhoretz has made it on the cover of Commentary magazine. There have been plenty of other people who have spoken up loudly – we know what the vice president has been pushing this direction for a long time. We know the Israelis very much have been pushing, and AIPAC even had a convention in town not that long ago that “Get Iran” was the central theme of the entire affair, so ….

PB: Did they go to the next step? Did they paint about what happens afterward? Do they really look at the consequences of what they are proposing or is it just sort of follow the end of my nose strategy?

MB: I think they believe they can change the regime in Iran. I think that they believe they can through military force and CIA covert activities control the region, and they can deny anyone else sufficient weaponry to actually challenge them.

PB: Well if you change the regime in Iran – what would the successive regime look like? It certainly wouldn’t be a democracy. It certainly would not be a pro-Western regime. They may get rid of the nuclear establishment but then what? Could the state fall apart? Would you then get a radical regime that’s even more radical than the current one in power? What would it do to the whole relationship in the region in the Israeli Palestinian conflict? It would actually doom any diplomacy there. So they may well paint a picture which looks to them favorable to the west but it doesn’t play out over the long term.

MB: You’ve mentioned the concept of grand bargain – the idea of a regional international conference – you’ve mentioned Henry Kissinger’s approach to this… A grand bargain doesn’t necessarily have to end with Iraq. A grand bargain can involve the need for a Palestinian State…the need for some accommodation with Iran…the need for settling issues with Hezbollah and Lebanon…. So why not actually say, we need a new political order in the region but it has to go beyond Iraq – in fact there were many issues that inflamed the region long before we did our invasion?

PB: Well that’s certainly the ideal. The only problem I see with it is that if you have multiple conflicts going on in the region and you say that you want to wrap them all up in one pretty package then failure in any one could doom them all. And I say that a half a loaf is better than none.

So I would go all of those tracks. And I don’t think you really are going to get a grand bargain of any sort whether it’s the whole region or Iraq or Iran or the Israeli Palestinian conflict unless there is a perception that you have a new foreign policy here in Washington and a new approach to the region here in Washington. Unless that comes about, there’s going to be logjams all over. So, I mean one of the ways to convince them is to open the doors to diplomacy and really start very serious conversations on all of the conflicts. But I wouldn’t make success in one dependent upon success in the others.

MB: What has been the reaction here in Washington among the powers that be and among the think tanks and among the political intellectual elite to your idea of – it’s time for an Iraq Union of Iraqi States and to bite the bullet?

An Iraqi insurgent aims his weapon – Baghdad, Iraq.

PB: Well it’s very interesting. I have seen over the course of I’d say…last year, but more concentration over the last six months, a shift of opinion in thinking about partition…a lot of other think tanks have talked about various other ways of partitioning Iraq. Some don’t use the word partition – some do use the word partition…. So it’s a very sort of subterranean kind of conversation that’s going on because partition to some people is a dirty word. It’s a dirty word because it is thought particularly, I think, by this administration to be equivalent of failure. And we don’t want to be blamed, obviously, internationally for breaking up Iraq.

MB: Well, it’s not only Pauline, not only from this administration, Biden on Sunday went well out of his way the moment the question of partition was asked of him to spend about 30 seconds saying, “No, no, no, no…we are not talking about partition!”

PB: I saw that and he even said and it was incorrect that Les Gelb did not call for partition – in fact he called for partition right after the invasion. So I don’t know what the hang-up is on the word partition… Maybe it’s because Iraqis don’t like the word partition. I don’t know where that hang-up is and if it’s a semantical argument, well then we ought to drop the word and talk about a union of Iraqi States and a new political order and other phraseology that is more acceptable.

Because partition does suggest that it feeds into the radical Islamic ideology which accuses the west of trying to dominate Muslim lands and carve up Muslim lands. And if that’s the case, and I don’t know that it is, but if it is the case then we ought to respect that sensitivity and move on…move beyond it and not get hung up on a semantic argument. But in fact, Biden himself doesn’t call for partition. He does call for decentralization and that’s the only flaw in what he’s calling for because it does still put security in the hands of a central government which would inevitably be dominated by one group, the Shia.

MB: Yes and as you know, Goals for Americans for the past couple of years has also been dealing with these concepts and we’ve been talking about a Republic of Iraq but staying very much away from that code word “partition” because that in itself seems to … it’s almost a fighting term you mention it and no longer is there a rational discussion about…okay so what can we do? Which is why we get back to Federalism, which is why we get back to the concept of States within a union – not on the model of the European Union but it’s a bit presumptuous of Americans, but more on our model, where we have a federal capital – you and I are living here – and where we have autonomous states… Granted in Iraq they may have more power than our states do, but nevertheless, the sovereignty continues to be one state, we’re not talking about partition, we’re not opening ourselves to the historical …. to being accused of – you invaded this country, and then you partitioned it and divided it and Balkanized the Middle East even further than was done before.

PB: Well, I don’t think we Balkanized it. I think the Iraqis Balkanized it and history will show that.

MB: I meant the region – going back to the Paris Peace Conference.

PB: Right…oh the region…right. Well, it’s a fair argument and I commend you for all of the proposals you put on the table but I say again, I don’t think it will work because our model, our kind of federalism has a very strong central government. And the kind of checks in power that we have developed have taken hundreds of years to develop. There is no culture of it. There are no shared values to do it in Iraq…. And more importantly, Iraq’s experience has broken trust among the groups. And you have to have a certain level of public trust in your institutions and in the people who run them to make Federalism work. And the confidence that if you have a dispute – you have a grievance – you have several ways of redressing that grievance that will be handled institutionally through the courts, through the legal process, through the press, through the legislature… Several ways of doing it.

That confidence, that trust does not exist in Iraq. In fact, quite the opposite. Fears have grown, hardened identities have grown, the desire for revenge has grown. So while that may have been a viable option after the invasion and in fact, I have come to the partition position very reluctantly over the course of years. I was not in favor of it right after – I thought that Iraq could be held together at that time. But too much has happened. And the Iraqis, of course, if they could pull their act together and say, yes, we want federalism, and we’re going to act to make it happen, then, all the better. But in fact just the opposite has happened.

They have had an outline for a federal state and they haven’t acted to implement it – to make it happen. So what has happened is just the reverse, that in fact, everything is pulling apart, everything is going local. And there is a power vacuum at the center, the government is paralyzed and external parties are filling that power vacuum. So I would say that it was a desirable outcome and probably the preferred outcome, but at this point in time, I don’t think it can work.

MB: On page three of your report – I’m quoting: “…The conflict is threatening to inflame the entire middle east.” On page five, I’m quoting: “…no amount of reshuffling the deck will save a disintegrating Iraq.”

If we don’t go this direction, if things do continue to disintegrate, if public opinion does continue to build, pushing and pushing for some sort of withdrawal without managed partition, what…when you say the conflict is threatening to inflame the entire middle east… what are you suggesting could happen if we don’t get our act together?

PB: Well it’s a little bit of a…I mean there are many scenarios one can paint – but it goes back to what you suggested before. Resentment will grow at Iran’s role in Iraq. Saudi Arabia will also be very concerned so you’ll have a confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab states who fear radicalism coming out of Iran. You’ll have a confrontation between Iran and Iran-backed groups in Israel. And you’ll have a new Palestine and a new Palestinian population of exiles and refugeed Iraqis who will not be able to go home because the war will go on and you’ll have carnage in Iraq of a wider scale than you have now. And I think that it will inflame the entire region.

MB: …If things move in that direction…

PB: …if things move in that direction and this is a kind of attempt to look at that in a cold way and say how can we bring it back from the brink?

MB: Because it’s not only that – you’d have oil prices soaring..

PB: Absolutely.

MB: …you’d have worldwide economic recession if not depression. God knows what that would do to the various political systems and the various tensions not only to our situation here at home… So we’re in a situation that is extremely more difficult and dangerous than we were just four or five years ago.

PB: It’s very inflammatory and I don’t think that we can predict with any certainty what the consequences would be because we have had a lot of surprises. But I do think that it’s very unlikely that as things spin out of control that it will be self correcting.

MB: Well, Pauline Baker, thank you very much. It’s been an extremely interesting discussion with you and your report – The Way Out: A Union of Iraqi States – is available at your website: fundforpeace.org.

PB: Yes, thank you.

Gareth Stansfield Book

Gareth Stansfield Interview
06/19/2007

“Federalism is the way that you maintain
the Iraqi state. If you really want to break
it up, then you attempt to impose a unitary
centralized government against which
different political forces within Iraq would
come into conflict…”
- Gareth Stansfield speaking from London

The following Goals for Americans Foundation Interview with Gareth Stansfield, International expert on Iraq & author, was conducted by Mark Bruzonsky on June 19th, 2007.

This is Mark Bruzonsky (MB) in Washington and we’re speaking to Gareth Stansfield (GS) who is in London. Mr. Stansfield is the author of a recent Briefing Paper called Accepting Realities in Iraq and the author of a book about Iraq and the author of an important article in the Prospect Magazine last year called Divide and Heal.MB: Mr. Stansfield, thank you so much for joining me today.

GS: It’s a pleasure, thank you.

MB: The title of your article in the Prospect, Divide and Heal, that’s really what I’d like to talk to you about. You’ve reached the conclusion that Iraq needs to be recreated in a sense, in a Federal form…divide and then heal. Could you elaborate on that a bit with an emphasis on what you think the American government should know in order to come forward with better policies?

GS: Yes indeed. I think the idea is firstly built upon an understanding of Iraq, that while it’s not necessarily pre-determined that it will succumb to dictatorship it is predisposed to it its current territorial construct. And that explains the rise of certain dictatorships that culminated in Saddam. Now with the removal of the dictatorship, we had what was in effect a chaotic devolution of power…down to localities to those groups who were best placed to project that power which became governed by particular identities, Shiites, Kurds, what have you…whether the western powers like that or not.
So the idea of divide and heal is simply to accept the reality that’s on the ground now in Iraq. And that reality is that power is held locally, that security is managed locally and that it cannot be enforced by some overarching state power. And if that is accepted then it becomes necessary to construct stretches of administration and governance at the more local or regional level that represent and reflect those local trends.

With that in place you can then have a system whereby Iraqi is administered politically in I suppose some form of federal…well not even federal system at this point, but in terms of localities. And then these groups, perhaps after a period of time have the choice to decide whether they want to stay part of Iraq or not, and then we get for the first time in the history of modern Iraq a consensus, if this happens, that the Iraqi state can exist and it has popular mandate to do so.

If it happens, then terrific, if it doesn’t then the international community needs to respect the decisions of those regions that decide not to be part of the Iraqi state and to work with them to stabilize them in their own future.

The chances are is that these regions if given the chance after a period of stability, would choose to remain as part of Iraq. There are many benefits to being part of a larger state in an environment such as the Middle East. And it would also be a very rich state with the oil wealth available and would have the benefits of being in a large state that are simply not available from being in a small state.

But to get to that position first, you have to have a mechanism that allows communities to feel comfortable, allows local expression to be heard and not to be bombed out of existence,…needs to allow communities to feel comfortable with their neighbors, and then needs these communities to decide in a proactive sense that they actually do want this larger construct to exist.

But that’s a long process and it ultimately would result in a federal Iraqi state, one that where the regions are the most powerful forces within the state and the government, the central government, is in effect quite weak but has defined duties to perform.

The position of the U.S. in this would be very interesting. In some ways this is not so dissimilar to the process in designing the current Iraqi constitution, whereby regions can form from three governorates. And that, to my mind, the U.S. government and the U.K. government have been astonishingly poor at pushing the constitution of Iraq seeing that they put and invested so much effort into it politically….

MB: Why do you think that is, cause as you are suggesting, we put so much effort into that Constitution, the Constitutional mechanism is there, and as you say, the U.S. and the U.K. have not pursued it.

GS: Firstly, I think the Federal aspect of the Constitution was initially put in in order to placate the Kurds. Because quite simply, you would not get the approval of the Kurdish parties if you did not have Federalism in it. And then I think there was a hope that it would simply go away as the Kurds were the only ones who supported it. But then certain prominent Shia parties expressed their support of it as do some Sunni groups as well.

So I think this has taken the U.S. by surprise. There are still foreign service staffers within the U.S. and the U.K. who view Federalism in Iraq as something that would ultimately result in the breakup of the state. Where arguably, it should be viewed the other way around. That Federalism is the way that you maintain the Iraqi state. If you really want to break it up, then you attempt to impose a unitary centralized government against which different political forces within Iraq would come into conflict with including the Kurds and the Shia, tribal groups, whatever. They will all come into conflict with a strong unitary state. Whereas if they had some ownership, some power themselves and some authority in office, then the central state is no longer really be an issue, it then becomes a partnership. So Federalism should be viewed in that sort of way.

And the U.S. and the U.K. are particularly important in allowing Federalism to work with their own experiences as Federal entities themselves and with evolved power. They could do a lot good diplomatic work, especially in the Middle East in the Arab world and in the Islamic world in explaining to let’s say Gulf States, Saudi Arabia and other states in the sub-continent about what federalism is, the importance of about what Federalism is, why it’s a system that is designed to protect the integrity of the states to some extent, and it shouldn’t be seen as a threat. And a very proactive, diplomatic campaign to do that would, I think, pay dividends. And bringing in other states on board which are also federal, such as the United Arab Emirates, such as India, to use, I suppose, as success stories about how Federalism can be used as a means to protect the integrity of states. And the UAE is particularly good as an Arab state that is Federal.

MB: You’ve used the term “radical federalism” to describe your proposal for Iraq. What does “radical” add to this?

GS: I think its radical in an Iraqi sense. Iraq has been…under Saddam it was obviously a very unitary style state. It’s also radical in a sense that it’s, I suppose…it’s radical in that it would be in some ways asymmetric, as the the Iraqi Constitution does allow an asymmetric form of federalism to develop with different relationships that exist between different regions and the center – which is not unheard of – asymmetric federalism is a complex way of organizing state but it’s one that does exist.

It would be radical in terms of how oil is redistributed across the states and that’s radical in I suppose a Middle East sense, whereby it would be distributed on a per capita basis between regions. So I think that there are all sorts of innovations that can take place in Iraq that would make a federal system work. It would be a unique form of federalism – I suppose that would be why it’s radical as well. But then every form of federalism is unique. There are no identical models.

MB: That’s true. The regions in Iraq are fairly defined but the central city of Baghdad which has a large percentage of Iraq’s population – that has always been very much a mixed city – you’ve got the various ethnic groups… How do you propose to… How does Baghdad fit into your proposal for radical federalism?

GS: Well I think that there is a chicken and egg situation going on with the mixes in Iraq where the opponents of federalism say that you cannot… if you create regions you would then be promulgating ethnic cleansing within Iraq or ethnic removals and killings because the regions would seek to homogenize themselves. But I think the opposite has… I think what we’re seeing now is that that process is happening anyway without the regions actually forming. We’re seeing brutal massive ethnic removals going on in Baghdad and Kirkuk, and Mosul and even in Basra. So it’s not the case that one is going to cause the other – the ethnic problems have started already.

Now that is going to be brutal and bloody and I think the U.S. and the International Community does have a role to play in insuring that a transition to a federal structure manages these problems. And we’ve had experience in managing these sorts of issues in the form of Yugoslavia. Again, we’ve been there.

It terms of how to manage crisis such as Baghdad. First we have to accept realities on the ground again. In Baghdad, there is a Shia majority in that city. It is no longer a Sunni city as many Sunni Arabs would claim. It’s a Shia city. And that changes things markedly.

Similarly in Kirkuk, the reality on the ground is that it’s a Kurdish city. In Mosul it’s divided between Kurds and Arabs. These are very difficult things to accept especially if you are from the community that you’re the other side and telling them the other side actually has a majority there. But it does help in the process of developing structures for managing them.

I think in situations such as Baghdad in particular there could be strategies for internationalizing cities or making special mandates in particular cities, and that’s where you have a very heavy presence while the process is deciding where they are located and the federation is decided. But..I mean for example, Baghdad could quite easily become the equivalent of Washington D.C. within an Iraq state whereby it has different values within the federal structure than any of the States of the Union have.

So there are different models as well there, but I think that we have to start off with a reflection of the realities that are there. And in some ways Baghdad has gone to the Shia already but we have to take into account the sensitivity of that situation and ultimately look toward different strategies to managing the conflict particularly in Baghdad, maybe also in Kirkuk although I think Kirkuk has already gone down the road to being Kurdified.

MB: If you had a chance to talk to American officials at the State Department, at the White House, what would you suggest to them they should actually do in the next few months? And how would you evaluate their current policies?

GS: Well I think that in terms of evaluating their current policies, I think firstly…you cannot fight socially based movements with military power as they are currently trying to do in Baghdad. They are trying to fight, particularly the Sadrists and often the insurgents with military force and you simply cannot do this. These are political and social problems that have to be handled in ways that are sensitive to those origins. And I think the surge has failed … has caused violence to emerge in other places in which we’ve seen this terrible bomb go off in Baghdad today as well.

MB: What are you expecting this surge policy and this increased military policy is going to result in?

GS: Well it will result in further radicalization of both the Shia and the radical Sunni camps. That… Al Qaeda is being strengthened in Iraq at this point. So yes the logistical and I suppose the operational sense I suppose of Al Qaeda is back on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border. And there has been a regrouping of Al Qaeda in a very real way there. But the inspirational side for Al Qaeda is now Iraq. This is where its young fighters are going to get politicized, gain their experience, and where they get their propaganda victories as well. And we have seen their influxes of fighters coming back into Iraq from outside and they’re getting strengthened, but also they are becoming more and more popular in Iraq as well.
We hear the U.S. military talking about the tribes going over to the military and that sort of thing. But the tribes will go over to whoever pays them the most. And I think the more military that you put into Baghdad, the more killing that the U.S. military does of Shias and Sunnis, then the more radicalized they become against the U.S. and to each other. So it becomes a…I suppose…a circle of violence and hate having the military there.

MB: Well it sounds like you are suggesting that the policies the U.S. are pursuing are achieving the exact opposite results of what the U.S. says it wants to achieve.

GS: Yes, I think that’s fair enough. I think that the surge has not resulted in the securing of Baghdad. It’s actually strengthened the political legitimacy of Moqtada al Sadr. It’s strengthened the fighting cause of the Al Qaeda unit, and it hasn’t…if anything it’s further weakened the power of the Iraqi military. It simply has not succeeded.

I think then the strategy is one whereby, you have to take the things that you have on the ground, and you have the Constitution that these political parties are still trying to follow. There are definite benefits if you are a Sunni Arab leader that’s not connected to Al Qaeda to start to work with the Iraqi government and particularly start to look toward what federalism brings to your region.

For example, it’s simply wrong to say that there is no oil in Sunni Arab regions. There is oil in Sunni Arab regions, it just has not yet been exploited. And if you get that message across, and say that of course this fits within a wider framework of what’s happening across the whole of Iraq, then you benefit as well as managing to govern your own territory, then it starts to look like a very attractive package. Particularly if you get the idea across that this is not about breaking up Iraq. This is about maintaining the integrity of Iraq.

So I think that that sort of approach by the U.S. and the U.K. of explaining what devolved power actually means then and the benefits of devolved power for particular local power holders, it would be a profound and very proactive move to make rather than flooding the streets with soldiers and turning people towards Al Qaeda or the Mahdi.

MB: Well in two months, General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker are scheduled to testify before the Congress of the United States at a very uneasy and skeptical time here in Washington. From what you’ve said, they’re not going to have a lot of positive to report and the political pressures are growing considerably here in terms of withdrawal of American troops. What is it if you were asked to testify in a panel at the same time what you would say to the Americas Congress about what the United States should specifically start doing?

GS: They should start undertaking far more… Well first of all there should be an acceptance that to deal with local problems in Iraq you have to have local solutions. So rather than sending in the Iraqi military or the U.S. military all over the place, you have to start working with people on the ground in securing neighborhoods and localities even if that means working with Sunnis with Sunnis, Shia with Shia or Kurds with Kurds. The idea that you’re going to impose some kind of central security is now wrong. So you have to go down to that basic level. Once you do that, you can have a…perhaps have a local security being developed, you then have to start pushing the idea in the Constitution itself, of federalism, of regions, and what that means, of how it protects the integrity of Iraq, with how it brings resources and revenues to localities as well.

I think that there has to be much bigger emphasis on social issues and localities rather than the national level politics.

MB: It doesn’t seem like the current government of Iraq wants to move in this direction. So how in the world…how to bring about something that sounds so reasonable and yet all of the parties that are in control seem to be resisting it?

GS: Well it depends on which party you look at. I mean the Kurdish parties obviously have their interest in promoting this sort of line that ends up in federalism… (beep beep) Sorry I think that my phone is about to die… The Shia parties and critically The Supreme Council have expressed their support for federalism as has fedillia(?) You then only got groups such as Moqtada al Sadr and some of the ultra nationalist Sunni parties that are opposed to this and that is where the work obviously needs to be done.

But the work on those guys needs to be done by other Iraqis. It needs to be done by the Kurds. It needs to be done by the Supreme Council, by tribes and supporters of this rather than Americans doing it.

Where Americans can actually help is by going to the regions, by explaining this problem, by explaining that federalism is not a precursor to the division of Iraq, that it’s not some Zionist plot to create new states, and creating a regional context whereby the Iraqi domestic councils feels that they can make these moves toward federalism without incurring the wrath of Saudi Arabia or Iran.

MB: This is Mark Bruzonsky in Washington, we’re talking with Gareth Stansfield in London. Mr. Stansfield, thank you very much for this very insightful discussion. I hope that we can have part 2 of this sometime in the weeks ahead when you’ve got your battery charged up.

GS: Great. Thank you very much.

MB: Thank you.

Ali Allawi Book

Allawi Interview
05/15/2007

“So a solution will require a really very very pronounced commitment on the part of the United States…a political and a diplomatic solution that would try to balance the changes in Iraq that…cannot be reversed without a great deal of turmoil inside the country. Try to balance these with the interests of each of the regional powers and come up with a kind of optimized solution which may require I think the appointment of what I’ll call a super ambassador who has enough power and enough skill to be able to negotiate or to calibrate the needed policy changes.”
- Ali Allawi speaking from London

The following Goals for Americans Foundation Interview with
Ali Allawi, former Defense Minister of Iraq, was conducted by Mark Bruzonsky on May 6th 2007.

This is Mark Bruzonsky in Washington and I’m speaking with Ali Allawi, who is today in London.Mark Bruzonsky: Mr. Allawi, as I just mentioned to you, your book tour, and your book and your views and the speeches you gave have caused a great deal of interest here in the United States. If you had an opportunity to speak to the president of the United States for a few minutes privately, what would you tell him at this point about what changes need to be made in American policy in view of your experiences?

Ali Allawi

Ali Allawi: Well I think what I would tell him is that wittingly or otherwise is that the United States has really affected in a very dramatic way the balance of power both inside Iraq and in the Middle East, generally, and unless you undertake the remedial policy to resolve the consequences of these actions, that it is unlikely that a unilateral or even a one dimensional military-based policy would succeed. There are just too many consequences of this unusual action. And this would require a very significant increase in the political and dramatic commitment on the part of the United States to resolving this crisis.

MB: Well, could you be a little more specific…. What would you actually advocate the United States specifically do – rather than the policy that we are pursuing at the moment?

AA: Well the policy now is to basically try to get regional powers to confront the political process in Iraq and to basically to agree that whatever emerged out of the various elections that we’ve had should be there are connections we’ve had is somehow acceptable to them. But the reality of the matter is that it’s not. Now that doesn’t mean to disparage the political outcome in Iraq. The Constitutional election – the elections were held according to Constitutional means and by and large they reflect the sectarian ethnic divisions in the country . But a political resolution in Iraq based on ethnic and sectarian concentration is unacceptable in the region. And maybe unacceptable within Iraq itself even though it might have a plurality.

And the reason for that is very simple, it’s that in each of the surrounding countries there are important effects on their own national security by the changes that have taken place in Iraq and unless you are able to contain them and to resolve them, in ways that are at least minimally damaging to these countries, you are unlikely to get a long-term commitment to a political settlement in Iraq.

For example the Turks feeling threatened by what is likely to happen in Iraq…mainly an increased degree of autonomy perhaps leading to a confederale arrangement for the Kurds. And at the same time, the Saudis, they feel that a Shiite government in Iraq will have a profoundly destabilizing influence on their own Shiite populations. Jordan probably feels threatened by the changes in Iraq’s economic and external relations to its own detriment and therefore wants to undertake remedial changes that will allow it to at least contain the shock to it of reducing its dependence on trying to trade with Iraq.

And so on down the line. I mean Iran for example; Iran is in some ways threatened by the presence of U.S. troops there. And feels that it is in one way or another is being targeted.

And therefore it will continue to destabilize the situation in Iraq. So unless you have a framework solution that takes into account the effects of the changes in Iraq on each of these countries you are unlikely to get a long term genuine commitment to stabilizing the situation in Iraq.

At the same time changes in Iraq are not easily reversible, at least not in their broad outline.

So if you look at for example the empowerment of the Shiite community – this is unlikely to be reversed under any conditions in the sense that you can’t expect to go back to the status quo. So a solution will require a really very very pronounced commitment on the part of the United States…so a political and a diplomatic solution that would try to balance the changes in Iraq that are irreversible or that cannot be reversed without a great deal of turmoil inside the country.

Try to balance these with the interests of each of the regional powers and come up with a kind of optimized solution which may require I think the appointment of what I’ll call a super ambassador,who has enough power and enough skill to be able to negotiate or to calibrate the needed policy changes…

MB: Do you have anybody in mind for that role since the Bush administration seems to be looking around without too much success?

President Bush

AA: Well the Bush administration is looking for somebody who can coordinate the various elements of the current administration’s activities within Iraq. There’s a difference in a person who is trying to work out the conditions for a stable arrangement in the region as a whole. I mean the Bush administration is talking about a “War Czar”, a person who can coordinate for the Pentagon and State Department and so on. This is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about a person who is really charged with coming up with a Peace Plan for the area that may end up with a kind of congress out of which a perhaps even a treaty may come out that would guarantee the political settlement in Iraq in a manner also that would get the nearby countries, the regional countries, to commit to supporting that which is basically a treaty obligation. Without that I think we would just be spinning our wheels until the next internal crisis.

MB: While you were traveling in Africa…Michael Bell – I assume you know him …. Either personally or of him….

AA: No I don’t personally know him.

MB: He’s the former chairman of the Fund for Reconstruction of Iraq, and he wrote while you were traveling… this is the first paragraph on what he wrote on April 30, he says,

“Last month, my term as Chairman of the donor committee for the International Construction Fund Facility for Iraq expired. And I left the job despondent. I have no real expectation that Iraq can be reconstituted as a viable entity whatever is done. Many of my colleagues, Iraqi and international, have privately shared that view for some time. We knew we were working in a glass bubble, isolating ourselves from the carnage on the ground. That sense of hopelessness weighs increasingly heavy.”

AA: Yes, I mean I suppose it’s a sentiment that is becoming greater and greater. I mean people are despairing that Iraq can be put together again. But you know nations are either put together because of the desires of their own population or because the region as a whole cannot accept a kind of dismemberment. So I think we have to find as it were a new formula that would allow both things to happen. That is, to see who want to maintain an Iraqi state inside Iraq. And so far, I think, the Kurds don’t But the Arab population, by and large, is still committed to some kind of geo-political unity. But they have an entirely different perspective on it.

MB: But does the new formula you mention – Confederal – does the new formula at least go in the direction of real autonomous states for the Kurds, the Shiites, the Sunnis? Of course in the Baghdad area, especially, everything is very integrated so you have to have some special arrangement for Baghdad…. But does it move in that direction in your view? Is that what the super ambassador would be…

AA: This is really the second best solution… The most likely solution that I think is possibly the most stable is some kind of Arab-Kurdish Federation. But for that to happen the Sunnis and the Shiites have to bury the hatchet. And again for that to happen you have to have a series of … not confidence building measures … but a series of constitutional measures that basically make it impossible to have sectarian based political parties – perhaps through some kind of threshold of votes in each province for a majority party to emerge.

I mean there are a number of constitutional arrangements you can do that. If that fails, if for one reason or another the depth of animosity between the two sects which has grown I think exponentially within the last two years, then I think that we have no choice but to go through a kind of multi-regional solution. But then again this multi-regional solution would have to be related to the security requirements of nearby countries so that it will not seen to be a threat to their own internal security.

MB: Well as the Americans debate how long we’re going to stay and under what conditions it also appears from many press reports that we’re building permanent bases in the desert – a great deal of funds seem to be allocated toward the building of a number of permanent bases, a huge embassy complex in the Green Zone…so even if American troops are drawn down, doesn’t it appear that America is planning to stay in your country for a very long time?

AA: Well, I mean the presence of large scale American investments or physical assets in any country doesn’t necessarily mean that they are going to be there forever. There are many cases when they just walked away from that. So this sum cost arguments doesn’t seem to hold when it comes to the political scene. The fact of the matter is that obviously the United States will have a very important say in Iraq’s domestic affairs as well as in terms of its own security in the area. So when I say that America is going to withdraw … I think they are going to withdraw the bulk of the military force. But the scale of their bases which were constructed some time ago, in 2004 and 2005, I think that the past that they have abandoned them without many tears being shed, so this is not an insurmountable problem.

James Baker

MB: All right, before we conclude, I want to go back to your main suggestion about a Super Ambassador — the person who comes to mind, being an American and having watched politics in the middle east for some time, there’s actually a person who fulfills that role and his name is James Baker. Do you think that he would be an appropriate Super Ambassador?

AA: I think so… if James Baker is available and he has the stamina to do it and he certainly has the type of profile. Another one would be Richard Holbrooke, but I don’t know either gentleman really so I can’t really speak for whether they would be available or not. But we need a person would has the diplomatic skills, the knowledge of the area, and understands the strategic implications of the various proposals… and then bring all of these together in some kind of final form which would then be sealed by an agreement or by treaty. And that would then pave the way for the changing the nature of the crisis.
I think it’s doable but it requires the United States to do it. And it requires the United States to make a 180-degree turn. Without it I think it doesn’t auger very well…

Richard Holbrook

MB: In view of American politics the two people you mentioned happened to be the one senior republican and the one senior democrat – we might need a bi-partisan team to pull this off.

AA: Well I can’t think of anybody else with those skills. But the person has to have the ear of the president but he also has to be specific mandate with a specific end state.

MB: Also while you were traveling another major player made some comments which startled many of us. This is from the Telegraph of two days ago: “A former commander of the British army has said that Britain and America should ‘admit defeat’ and withdraw from Iraq. General Sir Michael Rose also said, ‘he understood why insurgents were attacking coalition forces and said that he believed they were right to try and force invading troops out of the country.’ ”

As an American, I find that a startling comment coming from the former Commander of the British army. I wonder how you find it being there is London?

AA: Well I also find it extremely startling frankly, but it’s also becoming an increasingly common theme here. I mean the commander of British forces – I think Michael Rose was in charge of British forces also in Bosnia before …

MB: I believe that’s right.

AA: But it’s also a common feeling that there is an element of a self-fulfilling prophecy in all of this. The fact that you are there attracts some dissonance … and President Bush himself said that. If America would be invaded you’d defend it I suppose … But this is not really the full story I think behind the … in terms of defining the nature of the resistance as well as the legitimacy of the presence of foreign forces. I think you have to go beyond that really. It’s not just a question of whether the U.S. should pull out or not pull out or whether a surge will work or not, it’s what’s going to happen to this country and what kind of end state that we expect both as Iraqis and I suppose as people from the area and the Untied States now that its got itself involved in this part of the world…

MB: Now you yourself were an important minister just a few years ago. You were, I believe… Which ministries did you hold a few years ago?

AA: I was Minister of Defense and Minister of Finance.

MB: Alright. And why did you decide to leave politics and spend your time writing a book instead?

AA: Because I think politics took a dramatically wrong turn in 2005 and 2006 when it became based on sectarian parties. Once you had sectarian parties you have to ask yourself what is it that made these sectarian parties to aspire to? I mean the Kurds are an ethnic party and they certainly aspire to a nation state. So there is an element of political justification for being an ethnic-based party if you are seeking a national state. But to be a sectarian based party in an environment where sectarianism has been abolished constitutionally implies that you also have a ruling program of the sect. But there is no ruling program for sects. There are only ruling programs for nations. And once you achieve a nationhood status then there are ruling programs for different political and economic ideologies. So the wrong turn that Iraqi politics took in the summer of 2005 made it clear to me that there is no room for a person who doesn’t believe in sectarian politics.

I believe that Iraq is a sectarian state and needs to be drastically reformed. And the arrogance of sectarianism has to be removed. And important institutions established to stop sectarianism. But once this is done, there is no justification for a sectarian based party. Especially if it is a Shia majority party because the only Shia political perspective beyond removing injustice against them is something like an Islamic state which I don’t and most Iraqis don’t want. So it was the wrong turn.

And now we have a sectarian based government that basically ends up being in the control of sectarian based parties who maintain these kind of animosities for personal and very narrow objectives. So there is no room for a very different kind of politics but we’ll have to wait and see to find out if this is at all possible.

MB: Well if I understand what you just told me – actually it was a cousin of yours who was a prime minister some years ago and was pursuing different policies in a non-sectarian approach so apparently you were much more supportive of what was happening in those years than when your cousin was the prime minister.

AA: Well not necessarily. I don’t see eye to eye with him because it’s true he does not have a sectarian agenda but he follows in trying to establish a kind of national security state…a state that depends on strong security institutions and intelligence institutions. It’s a perspective that I don’t share with him. Anyway…

MB: Well Mr. Allawi, thank you so much. This is Mark Bruzonsky in Washington. We’ve been talking to Ali Allawi in London, the author of the book The Occupation of Iraq.