Monday, February 14, 2005
Speculation on Iraq
Now that we have the election returns, it is striking just how complete the Sunni boycott was. I can't tell from today's news just how many seats the Sunnis have, but they appear to have gotten under 5% of the vote, and well under 5% of the seats (remember they are 20% of the population). Turnout in Anbar province, heavily Sunni and the biggest locus of violence, was 2 percent. That's 2 as in 1 in 50 registered voters. That's quite a boycott, whether by choice or intimidation.
The Kurds did better than expected, with turnout in the 90s, and have 26+% of the votes and seats.
Within a week or two, we should see the fruits of bargaining among the theocratic Shias (50+% of the seats), the secular Shias (about 15%) and the Kurds (almost 30%). It's a fascinating problem:
two sides want secular rule, but don't quite have a majority;
the Sistani group doesn't have enough power to design institutions, so any likely institutions will include super-majority requirements to prevent them from taking total control;
the Kurds are in a powerful position, especially since they don't need or want much from an Iraqi state anyway, and will side with whoever gives them the greatest autonomy.
The big problem in Iraq, of course, is the Sunni insurgency, and while the election was a success in the smaller goal of convincing Shias to particate in a democracy they can dominate, it was a failure in the sense that Sunnis refused to participate, choosing instead to continue their insurgency. Now the insurgency has new targets: the officials of the new government, and assassinations look to be the order of the day.
We have successfully transformed a vaguely Sunni, vaguely anti-American insurrection into a nascent civil war, through the magic of ethnic bloc voting. Kudos!
(Another way of putting it: In Bush world, democracy tastes like kordite.)
Now how can the Sunni-Shia war be ended? With almost no Sunnis in the assembly, there is no real political representation to connect the Sunni population with any dealmaking between Sunni and Shia leaders. Hell, they aren't real public Sunni leaders, and I don't expect to see any among the non-suicidal. Whether a majority of Sunnis want peace or democracy doesn't much matter if the only structure in their society is a well-armed, well-organized rebellion willing to kill anyone who tries to settle things politically.
So unless the Shias have the patience and forebearance of Job, eventually this conflict is going to move from nascent civil war to full-on civil war---and the US will be the Shia army. (Which is rather ironic, and has the pleasant side-effect of making it harder to move towards a US-Iran war.) We will have created a new Beirut/Northern Ireland/Palestine right around our occupying forces. At least one side will want us to stay now!
I wonder whether the Kurds will try to extricate themselves of a messy situation altogether. A clever Sunni strategy would be to stop attacking Kurdish leaders or Mosul, while redoubling attacks on Baghdad---in essence, saying to the Kurds that they can go their own way with the Sunni's blessing, as long as they don't side with the Shias. (If we see this happening, it would also probably tell us how centrally coordinated the Sunni rebels are.)
This could be a very long conflict. Perhaps, though great luck, and contingencies I'm afraid I can't really imagine, be nipped in the bud. At this stage of the game, I would like to remind everyone that we knew this day would come when we invaded Iraq. And given the probability distribution of possible outcomes, we can also say that only a fool would have invaded Iraq in the first place.
If things somehow work out, all we can say is that the fool was lucky.
The Kurds did better than expected, with turnout in the 90s, and have 26+% of the votes and seats.
Within a week or two, we should see the fruits of bargaining among the theocratic Shias (50+% of the seats), the secular Shias (about 15%) and the Kurds (almost 30%). It's a fascinating problem:
two sides want secular rule, but don't quite have a majority;
the Sistani group doesn't have enough power to design institutions, so any likely institutions will include super-majority requirements to prevent them from taking total control;
the Kurds are in a powerful position, especially since they don't need or want much from an Iraqi state anyway, and will side with whoever gives them the greatest autonomy.
The big problem in Iraq, of course, is the Sunni insurgency, and while the election was a success in the smaller goal of convincing Shias to particate in a democracy they can dominate, it was a failure in the sense that Sunnis refused to participate, choosing instead to continue their insurgency. Now the insurgency has new targets: the officials of the new government, and assassinations look to be the order of the day.
We have successfully transformed a vaguely Sunni, vaguely anti-American insurrection into a nascent civil war, through the magic of ethnic bloc voting. Kudos!
(Another way of putting it: In Bush world, democracy tastes like kordite.)
Now how can the Sunni-Shia war be ended? With almost no Sunnis in the assembly, there is no real political representation to connect the Sunni population with any dealmaking between Sunni and Shia leaders. Hell, they aren't real public Sunni leaders, and I don't expect to see any among the non-suicidal. Whether a majority of Sunnis want peace or democracy doesn't much matter if the only structure in their society is a well-armed, well-organized rebellion willing to kill anyone who tries to settle things politically.
So unless the Shias have the patience and forebearance of Job, eventually this conflict is going to move from nascent civil war to full-on civil war---and the US will be the Shia army. (Which is rather ironic, and has the pleasant side-effect of making it harder to move towards a US-Iran war.) We will have created a new Beirut/Northern Ireland/Palestine right around our occupying forces. At least one side will want us to stay now!
I wonder whether the Kurds will try to extricate themselves of a messy situation altogether. A clever Sunni strategy would be to stop attacking Kurdish leaders or Mosul, while redoubling attacks on Baghdad---in essence, saying to the Kurds that they can go their own way with the Sunni's blessing, as long as they don't side with the Shias. (If we see this happening, it would also probably tell us how centrally coordinated the Sunni rebels are.)
This could be a very long conflict. Perhaps, though great luck, and contingencies I'm afraid I can't really imagine, be nipped in the bud. At this stage of the game, I would like to remind everyone that we knew this day would come when we invaded Iraq. And given the probability distribution of possible outcomes, we can also say that only a fool would have invaded Iraq in the first place.
If things somehow work out, all we can say is that the fool was lucky.
