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By Shlomo Avineri

August 22, 2005

Original Article (English)

Despite all the recent frantic attempts at constitution-making, Iraq is not a state anymore. It is difficult for the U.S. government, as well as for the international community, to realize this, but the earlier it sinks in the better the chances for a realistic approach which could give the people in Iraq a chance for a more peaceful future.

Even since Iraq was cobbled together by British imperial dreamers in the 1920s from three very disparate provinces of the old Ottoman Empire the only way to hold it together was by brute force. The British vested power in the Baghdad-based Sunni Arab minority. The Kurdish minority in the north, as well as the Shiite majority in the south, were virtually excluded from power. Consequently, all Iraqi governments were faced with recurring mutinies: by the Kurds, by the Shiites, even by the small Christian Assyrian community.

Saddam Hussein's regime was the most brutal of all of Iraq’s Sunni Arab minority regimes, and this is why Iraq has always long been the most repressive Arab regime.

The end of Saddam Hussein also toppled Sunni Arab minority rule; the current mayhem in Iraq is mainly the work of Sunni Arabs trying to abort any alternative government. The sophistication, logistic precision and overall planning of the terrorist attacks, as well as the apparent availability of hundreds of suicide bombers, cars and explosives all point to a well-prepared campaign based on the human and material resources of Saddam's old regime.

It is obvious that the Kurds, who have enjoyed de facto autonomy since the early 1990s under the protection of the Allied "No Fly Zone," are not going to accept being subjected to Sunni Arab rule. The Kurdish regional government runs a more or less successful system of political authority. For a decade now, schools in the area have taught in Kurdish and not in Arabic, and a de facto arrangement allows the Kurdish authorities to use oil revenue in the area to pay for impressive development projects.

Given their terrible experiences in the past, the Kurds will accept only the kind of federal structure that guarantees them effective control over their own affairs, including maintaining their own armed forces.

Similarly, the Shiites are not going to accept Sunni hegemony any longer, and the brutal terrorist attacks of the Sunni insurgents against Shiite shrines only strengthens their resolve to insist on a Shiite autonomous region in the south, similar to the Kurdish area in the north.

The Sunnis rightly realize that unless they succeed in re-imposing their power by brute force, they are doomed to minority status - something which is alien to the Sunni Arab tradition. Hence the Sunni boycott of the elections and the attempt by Sunni terrorists to frighten any moderate Sunni ready to cooperate in setting up a democratic Iraq.

Constitutional phraseology is not a remedy for these conundrums.

When the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia were on the verge of collapse along ethnic lines, the administration of Bush Senior urged the maintenance of the existing structures: It failed dismally. Iraq may now be going the way of Yugoslavia, yet the U.S. government does not wish to recognize this obvious fact. What is failing in Iraq is not only the attempt to build democracy, but the very attempt to keep the country together.

'Operation 'Spear and Dagger' by U.S.-Led Iraqi Forces' [From Ad Dustour, Jordan]

There is no way of putting Humpty-Dumpty together again. The Kurds and the Shiites will go their separate ways, and both entities have the paramilitary capability to do so. There is no Iraqi army capable of maintaining the unity of the country. And, just as in the former Yugoslavia, the separate countries - Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia - have a better chance of creating coherent and democratic systems than the old coercive Yugoslavia, the same may apply to Iraq.

The U.S. will obviously have to change its policy over Iraq - maybe this is what President George W. Bush is devoting his vacation to. It would be advisable to think outside the box and realize that Iraq is not a country anymore.

This is not the end of the world, but it calls for courageous and creative thinking about alternatives.

The writer is professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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