THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VII, Issue # 201, September 10, 2005
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE "ARAFAT MODEL" FOR THE NEW IRAQ
By Michael Rubin
IRAQ'S DRAFT CONSTITUTION & THE DIFFICULTIES ITS FRAMERS & SUPPORTERS FACE IN GETTING THE DOCUMENT ADOPTED,
ACCEPTED, & FOLLOWED BY THE VARIOUS COMPONENTS OF THE IRAQI POPULATION: SECTARIAN & ETHNIC CONFLICT,
LACK OF A SINGLE IRAQI COMMON NATIONAL CULTURE & IDENTITY, OPERATION OF ISLAMIST & TRIBAL MILITIAS, LOCAL &
REGIONAL DICTATORSHIPS, THE INSURGENCY, BLUNDERS OF AMERICAN & BRITISH OFFICIALS & DIPLOMATS IN IRAQ, & THE
INSINCERITY & DOUBLE-DEALING OF IRAQI POLITICAL ELITES WHO PRETEND TO COOPERATE WITH THE AMERICANS & BRITS --
THE REALITY THAT IS DIRECTLY CHALLENGING ASPIRATIONS FOR CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT & THE RULE OF LAW BEING
ESTABLISHED IN IRAQ
FULL STORY:
In Erbil, Iraq, Iraqis gathered around television sets as midnight approached on August 22, 2005. They watched as constitutional
drafting-committee members and political elites whispered among themselves. When the Speaker of the Iraqi National Assembly,
Hachim al-Hasani, declared, "We have received a draft of the Constitution," the Assembly erupted in applause. "But," he added,
"there are some points that are still outstanding and need to be addressed in the next three days." Late into the night, politicians
and activists continued to meet in the Baghdad homes of the major powerbrokers, grappling with the roles of federalism and Islam
in the new Iraq.
While U.S. diplomats and Washington advisers continue to facilitate compromise among Iraq's disparate sectarian, ethnic and
political groups, the reality emerging outside Baghdad is directly challenging Iraq's aspirations to constitutionalism. The U.S.
government has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring outside experts to Baghdad for a period of a few days or a few
weeks, but Iraqi powerbrokers dismiss their advice as naïve or irrelevant. Massoud Barzani in the Kurdish north and Abdul Aziz
al-Hakim and Moqtada al-Sadr in the Shiite south have rejected the experts' academic proposals, and have chosen instead a model
perfected by Yasir Arafat, the late Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Standing in front of the White House on September 13, 1993, Arafat, U.S. President Bill Clinton, and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin shook hands. Western diplomats could hardly contain their optimism as Israel and the PLO signed the Oslo Declaration of
Principles, upon which they pledged to build Arab-Israeli peace.
But, we now know that this optimism was misplaced. While President Clinton fêted the Palestinian leader at the White House,
cajoled him with aid and turned a blind eye toward his corruption, Arafat broke promises habitually and, until the last years of his
life, without consequence. He encouraged incitement, refused to prepare the Palestinians for compromise, and ruled by militia,
even as European and American agencies trained Palestinian police.
From an Arab perspective, Arafat's strategy looks successful. He extracted blood from the Israelis and treasure from the
Americans, all the while consolidating his position. His concessions were limited to pledges whose fulfillment was never required.
The result is now clear. Even as drafting-committee members debated Iraq's future, pan-Arab satellite stations broadcast
Palestinian celebrations amid what anchors and commentators uniformly described as Israel's defeat in Gaza.
That conclusion is something Iraqi militia leaders have taken to heart. While diplomats and parliamentarians debate the finer points
of federalism, warlords are constructing something rather different. One sees it on entering Iraq from Turkey and discovering not a
trace of the Iraqi central government. Just last year, Kurdish officials manning the border post with Turkey declined to stamp
passports. They now do so, and not with the Iraqi stamps used at other checkpoints, but with the emblem of the Iraqi Kurdistan
Region. The Kurdish flag alone flies over the border post; the first Iraqi flag is an hour away, on the outskirts of Mosul.
Kurdistan Democratic Party officials, rather than the Iraqi government, levy customs and taxes on cargo crossing the border.
Owners of the cargo say they must make separate payments to the Iraqi central government, the Kurdistan regional government,
and the Barzani family. Banners hang from official buildings and declare not only Kirkuk and Sinjar, but also Khanaqin and Mandali
-- towns 200 miles south of Kirkuk -- to be integral parts of Kurdistan. In Erbil, the administrative center of the Kurdistan regional
government, only Massoud Barzani's picture hangs. Storekeepers say that Barzani's militia forbids flying the Iraqi flag or hanging
the portrait of Jalal Talabani, a rival Kurdish leader who is now President of Iraq.
In recent weeks, the Kurdistan regional government has flouted both Iraqi law and the human-rights standards on which U.S. aid is
conditioned by the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961. When many contractors moved their headquarters from Baghdad to Erbil, as a
result of deteriorating security in the spring of 2004, their Iraqi staff continued to operate in Baghdad, Mosul, and Kirkuk -- at great
risk to themselves -- motivated by allegiance to their mission. In recent weeks, however, Kurdish police have refused these Iraqi
Arabs, including employees of U.S. firms, entry into the Kurdistan region. Kurdish peshmerga have maltreated them simply because
they are Arabs.
Searches of vehicles and persons are prudent, but apartheid is not. U.S. laws and regulations require basic human rights and
freedom of movement within political entities, and Washington still considers Iraq an integral whole. By law, then, Kurdish actions
should endanger the eligibility of Kurds to receive aid, but both Iraqi officials and bureaucrats within the U.S. Agency for
International Development have come to view such aid as an entitlement, rather than a privilege.
Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, may counsel compromise, but American officials have a long history of giving an
opposite message by failing to enforce their demands. Ambassador Frank Ricciardone, Gen. Jay Garner, and Ambassadors L. Paul
Bremer and Robert Blackwill have all come to Iraq, issued démarches, and left. Barzani and Talabani have learned to nod politely,
while ignoring the demands. They have witnessed a growing divergence between policy and implementation. While Bremer
demanded Iraq's unity and opposed ethnic federalism, his representative in the northern region affixed the Kurdish flag to his
business cards. Certificates signed by American officers express appreciation for the hospitality of local officials, not in Iraq or
Iraqi Kurdistan, but simply in Kurdistan.
Bush's second-term State Department has continued to give mixed messages. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice undercut
compromise on federalism when, on a surprise visit to Iraq on May 15, 2005, she went directly to Barzani's mountaintop
headquarters. In the Middle East, who visits whom, and where, matters. By going first to Barzani's headquarters, rather than to
Baghdad, she bolstered the Kurdish leader's position in the eyes of his constituents and among the other Iraqi political leaders
negotiating in the nation's capital. In the wake of Rice's visit, Barzani increased his territorial and political demands. Kurdistan
Democratic Party representatives may participate in constitutional discussions, but Barzani shows a willingness to abide by their
pledges no greater than Arafat's willingness to honor his negotiators' commitments.
Across southern Iraq, a similar tension has arisen. While the constitutional commission debates the role of religion in society,
Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, leads the militia of firebrand cleric Moqtada
al-Sadr in striving to impose their vision of a society based on Islamic law. Constitutional decisions about whether Islam is to be
a "main source," rather than "the source" or "a source," of legislation are irrelevant on the streets of Basra, Najaf, and Karbala.
Rights may exist on paper, but to the militia leaders' guns are what matters.
Like the Americans in the north, the British have ignored southern militia abuses in the hope of securing a shortterm peace. But
that choice is negligent and destructive. Its result is that the militias impose their will with impunity. The democratic
constitutionalists -- who do not have the benefit of a militia--are the losers.
Upon the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, Coalition officials redistributed Baath Party property to various political groups.
In the south, the British tried to purchase calm by giving the most prominent properties to militias, regardless of their popularity.
For example, in Amarah, they gave the keys to the former city hall to the Badr Corps, which proceeded to festoon the building
with anti-American and anti-British slogans. The Badr Corps also occupied choice real estate along the Euphrates River in
Nasiriya. Locals saw these gifts to an oppressive militia as an implicit endorsement of Islamism -- a view that is now conventional
wisdom, not only among many Iraqis in the south of the country, but also in Baghdad and the north.
Islamists have learned that, what they cannot win through the political process, they can impose by violence. They have
firebombed liquor stores and forcibly veiled women. On March 15, 2005, al-Sadr's militiamen broke up a Basra University student
picnic because men and women were socializing. British forces refused to stop the vigilantes from beating ordinary civilians. The
murder, on August 2, 2005, of freelance journalist Steven Vincent, two days after he published a New York Times
commentary exposing the death squads within the militia-dominated Basra police, underscores the depth of the problem.
Even as Islamists force their will on once constitutionalist Basra, many Iraqi Shiites see Iranian-style theocracy as theologically
blasphemous. Increasingly, though, their concerns do not matter. This is the legacy of Arafat: Words and processes satisfy
Western policymakers, but sincerity is irrelevant.
Iraq's sovereignty may limit our ability to intervene directly, but Washington still has great leverage. U.S. officials should stop
turning a blind eye toward their interlocutors' insincerity and realize that policies consisting exclusively of carrots do not work. If
the Iraqi Constitution is to be worth more than the paper it is written on, the rule of law must triumph.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Middle East & the Problem of Iraq
Page Two
Page One
The Problem of Rogue States:
Iraq as a Case History
The Israeli-Arab Conflict
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Michael Rubin, Editor of the Middle East Quarterly, is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
The foregoing article by Michael Rubin was originally published in National Review, September 12, 2005, and can be found
on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum.
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
August 29, 2005
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