Iraq Helsinki Project

Iraq's journey from democratic dream to sectarian headcount

secretariat@iraqhelsinkiproject.org — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 02:18:45 PST

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Edmund O'Sullivan
25 February 2010

An ancient divide is becoming the dominant factor in Iraq’s new politics. Voting is no answer

Winston Churchill said that democracy was the worst form of government with the exception of all the others that have been tried.

It was a resonant assault on the critics of representative government that struck a chord in the 20th century when the Western concept of political progress was principally challenged by authoritarian states.

But the times we live in are dominated by another spectre. It is not the oppressive power of government but its opposite: the disintegration of the state, the collapse of order and the rise of the sectarian and ethnic divisions at a national and regional level.

As has been the case throughout history, the Middle East leads the rest in defining the future. In 2003, US President Bush completed the work his father began 12 years earlier by deposing then Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The justification that he represented a threat to the US and the region quickly looked unsound. It was quickly replaced by the assertion that the war was about bringing democracy to Iraq and the region.

For its advocates, democracy is more than an absolute value. It entails specific practices: frequent voting by everyone about practically everything. In Western eyes, elections are indisputably a good thing. Whether they might not be for Iraq was never seriously considered.
Free election

Iraq’s 2005 parliamentary poll, the first genuinely free election since Britain created the country in 1921, was hailed in Washington as redemption for its Iraq adventure and the start of a bright new future for the Middle East. It sounded like wishful thinking even then. Today, it looks like willful deception.

Almost 19 million Iraqis, including about 1.5 million who live outside the country, are eligible to vote on 7 March in the first parliamentary elections since 2003 that Iraqis themselves will run. This should be a golden moment for them all, but it is turning into a brass one. Many Iraqi Sunni Muslims are unhappy that hundreds of candidates deemed to be former senior figures in the Baath Party or Baath sympathisers have been banned from standing.

Even less surprising are US claims that Tehran is meddling in the poll by providing support for pro-Iran Shiite parties. This is, of course, a definitive expression of US double standards. Even more perversely, the US is making the case for the Sunni Muslim minority to reject the election results and, consequently, democracy itself.

History suggests the results could be dire. The year Iraq was confected, the British government defined the border between Northern Ireland and what is now the Irish Republic. The partition was validated by democratic elections north and south of the border. But voting was no more a guarantee of peace and stability then than it is now. Trapped inside an entity they never wanted, Northern Ireland’s Catholic minority felt abandoned and victimised. In 1969, their frustrations exploded into a conflict that continues, in a muted form, to this day.

One of the many paradoxes of the Northern Ireland crisis is that the province is part of a parliamentary democracy, with an independent judiciary and, from 1945, a cradle-to-grave welfare state providing education and healthcare free at the point of use. Yet it has produced in the past 40 years the highest number of legitimately-convicted terrorists as a proportion of the total population than any country on earth. They include Martin McGuinness, who could soon be, in effect, North Ireland’s prime minister.
Communal divisions

Communal divisions have dominated Northern Ireland from the moment universal adult franchise was introduced in 1918. Since then, most voters in what is now Northern Ireland have voted for their sect. Terrible consequences were only averted by exceptional security measures that were regularly illegal and the suspension of democratic practices that were normal in other parts of Britain.

Iraq is now about to have its own Northern Ireland moment. Rather than being an expression of the Iraqi national will, elections next month will probably constitute little more than a sectarian head count. Outside northern Iraq, most Shiites will vote for Shiite parties and most Sunnis will vote for their opponents. Since there are more Shiites than Sunnis in these places, the Shiite parties will win most seats in Iraq’s parliament and form the next government. It’s democracy in action. But it almost certainly won’t work.

But let us be positive. The minority might peacefully assent to the subsidiary role they have been allocated in the new Iraq. The majority might generously secede power to their political foes. But democracy’s logic and track record suggest otherwise. The religious divide buried in Iraqi society that has been brought to the surface since 2003 will probably institutionalise at the level of the state. It will have consequences few can contemplate without a shudder.

Democracy is a means to an end, not an end in itself, as the citizens of Iraq intuitively know. And if it fails to deliver peace, it is an exception that should not have been tried in the first place.

Iraq's dangerous trigger line: Too late to keep the peace? (The Economist)

secretariat@iraqhelsinkiproject.org — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 06:47:51 PST

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11 February 2010

The Americans are trying again to keep the peace between Arabs and Kurds

FROM the market town of Khanaqin, on the Iranian border, all the way to Sinjar, near the border with Syria, a fortified line snakes across northern Iraq. To the east and north stand Kurdish forces, known as the Peshmerga, keen to reclaim land taken from them by Saddam Hussein more than two decades ago. On the other side of the line, to the west and south, are Iraqi regular-army troops sent by the central government in Baghdad to stop ancient cities along the Tigris river falling into what it fears may become a purely Kurdish sphere.

The two forces have come close to flat-out fighting several times, usually outside the cities where commanders act off their own bat. Last year an Iraqi army unit drove into the disputed, though mainly Kurdish, town of Altun Kupri and took up sniper positions on rooftops. When residents, supported by armed Peshmerga, started demonstrating against their presence, the Arab soldiers were told to shoot to kill. Bloodshed was avoided at the last minute by American troops stationed nearby.

Small incidents of this kind could easily spark a wider conflict. Edginess along the “trigger line”, as it has become known, is now the biggest threat to Iraq’s stability. Sectarian tension between Sunni and Shia Arabs further south are far from resolved, but an ethnic conflict between Arabs and Kurds is more dangerous, partly because both sides are well-armed. Hence the Americans are making one last effort to dampen tension before their combat troops leave Iraq by the end of August.

Since late January, several hundred Kurdish and Arab soldiers have been patrolling parts of the disputed area together, under American tutelage. The idea, forged by General Ray Odierno, the overall American commander in Iraq, is to build trust between the two sides by bringing them into daily contact. In addition to staging joint patrols, they have started manning checkpoints together. In a few places they sleep and eat under the same roof.

Americans are always around to keep the peace. Patrols are tripartite, so the Americans are now peacekeepers rather than counter-insurgents. Since they withdrew from all Iraq’s cities last year, they have not been manning checkpoints outside their bases.

Will this work? Tension ran high before provincial elections a year ago—and is running even higher now, as the general election on March 7th draws near. The hope is that joint checkpoints will let voters move more freely in the disputed areas and prevent incidents such as one that occurred when Kurdish soldiers stopped the Arab governor of restive Nineveh province from visiting the Kurdish-controlled town of Bashiqa, in the area he is supposed to govern. It is also hoped that the joint patrols may deter al-Qaeda’s suicide-bombers, who want to exploit ethnic tension along the trigger line to reignite civil war.

But trust is scarce. The Kurds regard Abdul Amir, who commands an Iraqi army division near the disputed city of Kirkuk, as a former Saddam henchman who once slaughtered their people and may be ready to do so again. In turn, many Arabs believe the Kurds will never compromise on land they occupied after Saddam’s fall.

Yet the two sides are co-operating well in Kirkuk, where they and the Americans jointly operate a police command-centre. But assassinations and kidnappings of officials persist. Efforts to co-operate along the trigger line can seem to make matters worse. In Khanaqin Kurdish soldiers and Iraqi interior-ministry forces run joint patrols in the town, but the commander on each side claims he is in sole charge. There is little chance that fortifications along the line in Kalar and Kifri, north-west of Khanaqin, will be dismantled soon or landmines removed. Nor are the Kurds likely to take down fortifications around Dibis, where a big oil-pumping station sits on top of one of Iraq’s biggest oilfields.

So the American peace effort may have come too late. The two sides, both ruthless, are engaged in what they see as an existential struggle. In the end, a solid peace will emerge only if clear regional borders are agreed. And that has yet to happen.

Obama, Biden meet with Iraqi VP (AFP)

secretariat@iraqhelsinkiproject.org — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 02:13:02 PST

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2 February 2010

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met Monday with Iraq's Sunni Vice President, Tariq al-Hashimi, and discussed the importance of Iraq's general election in March, the White House said.

Eight days after Biden visited Iraq at Obama's request, the three leaders "discussed political and economic developments within Iraq, the importance of transparent elections with broad participation, and Iraqi refugees," a White House statement said.

The meeting was originally scheduled between Hashimi and Biden, but "President Obama joined the discussion," it added.

Hashimi's Sunni community in Iraq is facing a political crisis regarding the upcoming legislative vote since 511 of its candidates have been struck from the lists for being members or supporters of former dictator Saddam Hussein's Baath party.

The ban has angered the Sunni community and threatens to undermine Washington's reconciliation efforts in Iraq that are crucial to a pullout of US combat troops in August and a complete military withdrawal in 2011.

After Biden's January 23 visit to Iraq, 59 Sunni candidates were returned to the electoral list, but the country is still in the grips of denominational violence.

On Monday, a female suicide bomber killed 41 Shiite pilgrims in Baghdad in an attack the Iraqi government blamed on the Baath party and Al-Qaeda.

Hashimi is one of two vice presidents in the Iraqi government. The other one is a Shiite.

On Tuesday afternoon, Hashimi is scheduled to meet with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Amendment of election law is a deal struck by dominant forces (Iraqi Communist Party)

secretariat@iraqhelsinkiproject.org — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 01:20:54 PST

Amendment of election law is a deal struck by dominant forces

(Iraqi Communist Party)
7 December 2009

The Political Bureau of the Iraqi Communist Party has issued a statement on 7th December 2009 about the deal reached by Iraqi lawmakers to amend the election law, shortly before a midnight deadline on Sunday 6th December 2009, in an urgent session of the Parliament to resolve the impasse. The following is a full translation of the statement:

"The Parliament voted last night, Sunday 6th December, to amend the election law on the basis of a compromise formula reached by the big blocs after intensive meetings and discussions that continued, with the participation of representatives from the U.S. Embassy and the UN, until the last moment of the period allowed to veto the previously amended version of the law. Under the new law, the number of seats in Iraq's parliament will be 325, including 310 seats for provinces and 15 compensatory seats.

"Although the vote on the new version of the law has spared the country a political crisis and unforeseen repercussions, our Party considers the agreement that has been struck by the dominant political and parliamentary blocs, and voted by the Parliament, to be disappointing and one that does not change the unfair and undemocratic nature of the law. Our Party reaffirmed its reservation and abstained from voting on the amended version presented by the Speaker of Parliament. The amendments did not put forward anything new to address the serious anti-democratic deficiencies of the election law, in particular with regard to the first and third articles, which reduce the compensatory seats to 15 and adopt the infamous rule that grants remaining seats to the bigger winning lists, in flagrant violation of democracy and principles of justice. The amendments have instead consolidated the tendency towards monopoly and limiting the diversity of political representation in the Parliament, as well as unlawfully usurping millions of votes and confining the distribution of compensatory seats to the winning lists.

"We have followed, along with the rest of our people, the regrettable spectacle presented by the dominant political forces as they were locked in an intensified struggle to redistribute seats among the provinces in accordance to narrow calculations, while pushing to the back, if not totally disregarding, the public national interest and the pressing issues of the people. This was done in favour of a discourse and practice that agitated and raised political tensions, fuelled sectarian polarization, and brought the country to the brink of a severe political crisis.

"This attitude and behaviour is the basis for the political crises that have broken out from time to time, and its continuation will result in the continued outbreak of crises, pushing the country every time to acute crises and new tensions. It is also oblivious to the main worries and concerns of our people, large sections of whom are suffering extremely difficult living conditions, with the deteriorating level of services, unemployment, high prices, a security situation that is still unstable despite relative improvement, incomplete sovereignty and vicious forces that are hostile to the political process.

"Despite the reservation of the Communist Party about the new version of the election law, we shall accept this challenge and participate actively in the forthcoming elections to get our representatives elected to the Parliament in order to defend the interests of the Iraqi people, especially the toilers, and to ensure achieving full independence and national sovereignty, reforming the political process and building a prosperous democratic Iraq.”

Iraq and the Kirkuk conundrum: A hint of harmony, at last (The Economist)

secretariat@iraqhelsinkiproject.org — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 06:18:56 PST

Iraq and the Kirkuk conundrum: A hint of harmony, at last

(The Economist)
3 December 2009

It sounds far-fetched but it may be true. A group of Irish peacemongers, from both sides of their long-divided island, claims to have made rare progress last month towards getting Arab and Kurdish Iraqis to settle their differences, which have been threatening to drag the country back to the level of bloodshed that engulfed it three years ago. With a South African who had helped reconcile white and black South Africans looking on, a clutch of Iraqi members of parliament got to unusual grips with the mechanics of sharing power between Kurds, Arabs and Turkomans in the disputed region of Kirkuk. If they can build on this momentum after the general election that is now expected in mid-February (the January date having slipped), a modicum of federal harmony may eventually be achieved—to the benefit of all Iraqis.

One suggestion that may be taken up is the creation, at least for a time, of mixed councils to run the province. Another fruitful idea is to set up a permanent framework for talks involving the outside backers of the various Iraqi communities. For London, Boston and Dublin read Baghdad, Ankara (Turkey’s capital) and Erbil, Iraq’s Kurdish one.

The latest meeting was sponsored by one of Iraq’s two vice-presidents, Adel Abdel Mahdi, a Shia Arab sometimes mooted as a possible next prime minister. More such gatherings are expected. Other efforts to solve the Kirkuk puzzle have intensified, under the aegis of both the Americans and the United Nations.

On November 22nd units of the Iraqi federal police and the Kurds’ gendarmes, known as the Zeravani, trained publicly together for the first time. It is hoped that this month tripartite patrols around Kirkuk will start, with government and Kurdish troops to be overseen by American ones.

Meanwhile, staff at the UN mission in Baghdad are drawing up lists of possible concessions that might mollify all sides. In parliament there is talk of a dialogue council to resolve land disputes, determine the role of the Kurds’ military forces (known as the Peshmerga), share out oil revenues, settle Kurdistan’s constitutional status and agree on the voters’ register.

This surge in activity has come not a moment too soon. Tension over Kirkuk has been worsening. Although the rest of Iraq has been a lot quieter, violence along the Arab-Kurdish border (the “trigger line”) has been rising. At a rate of about 130 attacks a month, more violence is taking place there than in the rest of Iraq put together. Moreover, Arab-Kurdish tension has been gumming up politics in Baghdad.

And time is running out. By next summer, most American forces, who have been Kirkuk’s ultimate peacekeepers, will have gone. Those left may no longer have the strength to put out fires. Yet an opportunity may beckon. After next year’s general election, Iraq’s politicians will haggle over the make-up and programme of the next government, possibly for as long as four or five months. Dealing with Kirkuk could be part of any bargain. Most outsiders closely involved in Kirkuk have long argued that it cannot be solved piecemeal but only as part of a big package.

Most of Iraq’s non-Kurds—Shia and Sunni Arabs and Turkomans (kin of the Ottoman Turks who for centuries ruled what is now Iraq)—fiercely oppose what they consider to be the Kurds’ excessive demands, especially their desire to control Kirkuk. Arab and Turkoman leaders in Kirkuk recently formed an electoral front to counter the Kurds’ numerical advantage since they took back the province in the wake of Saddam Hussein’s overthrow by the Americans in 2003. The Arabs and Turkomans insist that the city, now reckoned to contain some 850,000 people, should never be part of an autonomous Kurdish region. Few other issues unite non-Kurds so passionately. An Iraqi prime minister who gave away the city would almost certainly lose his job. Iraq’s neighbours too, especially Turkey but also Iran, vehemently object to the idea of the Kurds controlling Kirkuk, lest it boost Kurdish separatism in their own backyards.

Yet the Kurds are equally adamant. They call Kirkuk their Jerusalem. Their politicians in Erbil may have become even more inflexible since the long-dominant parties lost ground in a regional election this summer to a new group called Goran (Change) that beats the nationalist drum while inveighing against corruption. Masoud Barzani, the region’s president, and Jalal Talabani, Iraq’s president, who runs one of the two main Kurdish parties, have raised the rhetorical heat over Kirkuk.

The Kurds have a strong moral claim to the province. During two decades of enforced Arabisation under Saddam, some 250,000 Kurdish residents of Kirkuk were expelled. Few Arab leaders acknowledge the brutality of that crime. If they did so, a compromise might be easier. The Kurds might, for instance, at least consider an Iraqi government proposal to create a city council with seats split equally three ways for a limited period (to be precise, 32% for each of the three main groups and 4% for the tiniest minorities, such as Christians). “It would give all sides time to get used to a situation where nobody is a clear winner,” says Iyad al-Samarraie, a Sunni Arab who is the parliament’s speaker in Baghdad.

The Irish peacemakers have suggested, among other things, a detailed “road map” towards sharing power that could lead to a multiethnic administration. Though understood to be only temporary, such a system, optimists hope, would gradually become entrenched.

But the Kurds would have to give up their ambition to make Kirkuk an immediate and integral part of an autonomous Kurdistan. That suggestion would outrage them. The city of Kirkuk was once predominantly Kurdish. They have shed much blood losing it and in seeking to get it back. But the alternative—a war with the Arabs that might draw in neighbouring countries—would almost certainly see the Kurds lose in the long run, even though they are better armed than ever before.

A parting gift from Mr Obama

The Americans are the only ones who might persuade the Kurds to change their mind. American representatives in Baghdad have become impatient with the Kurds, considering them to have overreached themselves in recent years. “But nobody on the American side has ever looked Barzani in the eye and said, ‘You can’t have Kirkuk’,” says a Western diplomat. In the past the Americans were sympathetic to the Kurds. But now their patience is wearing thin.

The American vice-president, Joe Biden, who is Barack Obama’s point man on Iraq, may urge Mr Barzani after the Iraqi election to say goodbye to a Kirkuk controlled solely by the Kurds. It may be suggested that the province should—at least temporarily—have a special status. In return for giving up soil, the Kurds could—as part of a quid pro quo—get a better deal on the oil in their territory.

Would Mr Barzani listen? The Kurds need America’s patronage more than ever now that its troops are leaving and the Kurds’ opponents in Baghdad have a freer rein. It may be the last bit of really tricky diplomacy in Iraq that falls to America.

North's firms wanted to help rebuild Iraq (Irish News)

secretariat@iraqhelsinkiproject.org — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 01:35:18 PST

North's firms wanted to help rebuild Iraq

Gary McDonald (Irish News)
24 November 2009

Northern Ireland companies are being offered the chance to help rebuild large swathes of war-torn Iraq.

Business agency Invest NI confirmed yesterday that it has added the Iraqi Kurdistan region to its trade mission programme for the next financial year.

An Invest NI spokesman said the trade mission -- which will also take in parts of Turkey -- is likely to take place in March 2011.

Alongside established destinations such as China, the US and the Netherlands, Invest NI said it is always looking to explore new or emerging markets.

A spokesman said its trade team has already visited the region and the mission to Iraq is at "the early planning stages".

But over the next few months it will begin the search for participating companies in sectors such as construction, quarrying, food processing and engineering.

The news of the trade mission emerged as a delegation of politicians from the north -- including Sinn Fein's Alex Maskey and former Stormont speaker Lord Alderdice -- attended a conference in Iraq examining how Northern Ireland peace principles might be applied to the city of Kirkuk.

Kirkuk is the centre of the northern Iraqi oilfields and is an ethnically mixed city populated by Kurds, Assyrians, Turkmen and Arabs.

The northern Kurdish authorities and the southern Iraqi authorities have laid claim to around 18 per cent of Iraq's oil reserves.

The area was decimated during the Iraqi war and has benefited from little or no infrastructural investment.

But the authorities plan to use the oil money for major projects over the next decade, including building roads, water systems, schools and hospitals.

There remains much ongoing political tension between the Kurds and Arabs in Kirkuk, stemming from an Iraqi-government programme of the 1970s, under Saddam Hussein, that moved thousands of Arab families to the province and expelled Kurdish and other ethnic groupings from their homes.

Known as the 'Arabisation of Kirkuk', the aim was to ensure Arab control of the oilfields that were first discovered by pipelines to Mediterranean ports.

Iraqi Kurds believe they should control the city because of the demographic distortion caused by Saddam's Arabisation, and therefore retain much say over the oil.

But the ethnic Arabs, together with the Turkmen community, maintain the oil should be a national and not a regional resource.

Slow steady steps towards dialogue on Kirkuk (Iraq Helsinki Project)

secretariat@iraqhelsinkiproject.org — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 08:10:55 PST

Slow steady steps towards dialogue on Kirkuk

(Iraq Helsinki Project)
22 November 2009

Yesterday (21 November 2009) political parties convened in Baghdad, Iraq, to accelerate implementation of the Helsinki Principles and Mechanisms for reconciliation and dialogue.

On the third and final day of intense discussions at “The Helsinki Agreement & Future of Kirkuk” conference, hosted by the speaker of the Iraqi Council of Representatives, the parties discussed a dialogue process for the intensification of discussions on political and humanitarian concerns relating to Kirkuk.

The landmark event included over sixty senior representatives from the Iraqi Council of Representatives, the Kurdistan Regional Parliament and Kirkuk Provincial Council, facilitating serious discussion on the future of Kirkuk involving Arab, Kurd, Turkoman, Christian and other interests.

The ICOR Speaker, His Excellency Ayad al Sammarai, praised the parties for their courage and leadership.

International experts from Northern Ireland and South Africa were in attendance, supporting the conference delegates by offering insights from their experiences in resolving their own conflicts.

The next discussions will continue to be advised by international experts, and will work intensively to develop its priorities and methodologies over the next six months.

“Time is of the essence”, explained conflict expert Professor Padraig O’Malley of UMass Boston, “as all parties strive for reconciliation and process. They have made a remarkable commitment at this event to underline the principle of dialogue above the drivers for conflict. This must now be underpinned by action for change, action for reconciliation and action for progress. The people of Kirkuk can be proud that their political representatives have made every effort on their behalf.”

Notes for editors:

The Helsinki Agreement was negotiated by Iraqi politicians over two sessions in Finland in 2007 / 08 and launched in Baghdad in July 2008. http://www.cmi.fi/files/Helsinki_agreement_English.pdf
International experts included: Lord John Alderdice a member of the British House of Lords and Chair of the International Monitoring Commission that supervises the demilitarization of the paramilitary organizations in the Northern Ireland conflict; Alex Maskey MLA and senior Sinn Fein negotiator, the first Republican Lord Mayor of Belfast and member of the Northern Ireland policing board and Roelf Meyer, negotiator of the end of apartheid in South Africa for President de Klerk.