By Entifadh Qanbar

Modern Iraq which was incepted by the British colonial in 1921 is different from the ancient Iraq in history books. The British colonials assembled several regions to make up the modern Iraq, combined of non-homogeneous territories which historically were not part of the ancient Iraq.

The British colonials transformed Iraq from backwardness under ailing Othman Empire to a modernised state with three pillars of statehood, strong army and police, a semi functional democratic institution; a parliament and King Faisal I, who was from Hijaz and a government bureaucracy.

The political system was formed based on alliance between two main components, the Kurds, and the Sunni Arabs. Most politicians and first officers of the newly established Iraqi army were Sunnis and Kurds, a remanence of the Othman Empire army. The first Iraqi army Mousa Al-Kadhim battalion was commanded by Jaafar Al Askari, who was a Kurd in the Othman army and other important politicians were Sunnis former Othman Army officers such as Noori Al Saeed.

The Shia of Iraq were sidelined from political and the military a continuation from the Othman Empire army for many centuries, therefore, due to lack of Shia experience in politics or the army, and as practical fix, the British foresaw a nascent stable Iraq can only established under the Sunni-Kurds alliance, which became the main pillars of the political system. This Sunni-Kurdish alliance seemed to be working at the beginning, while King Faisal I of Iraq sought an exceptional role to outreach to the Shia majority and consolidate their support to his new state of Iraq. Other minorities such Jews and Christians were living with the rest of Iraqis and participated in this new state as bureaucrats.

However, many problems started to surface with political system some of which were due to structural deficiencies of the formation of Iraq and others due to change of the political dynamics in the middle east. As I said before, the addition of territories to what knew of ancient Iraq to make up the modern Iraq such as Mosul and Basra, but specifically Kurdistan, created early friction and aspirations, which was the beginning of the fracturing of this very critical balance.

The partnership or alliance between the Sunnis and the Kurds kept Iraq monolithic meanwhile Shia aspirations in politics have not materialized to a meaningful competition for power yet. The other fundamental problem is that he Iraqi army was established by the British simultaneously with the Iraqi state, not by or under the Iraqi state. Meaning, the Iraqi army officers whose loyalty was recently to the Othman Empire did not feel they were answerable to the Iraqi state and there was always a common feeling within the military establishment that the army is doing the Iraqi state a favor rather than obedience and duty, adding to this the complication that the King is not an Iraqi, but he is a coincidental King from Hijaz.

In the 1930s, there was a growing popular nationalistic feeling in Europe which led to the emergence of several chauvinistic and Nazi parties and movements plus a wide militarization of European societies, targeting of minorities and anti-Semitic wave against the Jews. These ideologies infected Middle Eastern politics which led to the emergence of Arab chauvinistic aspirations within the Iraqi society, but most dangerously, within the ranks of the Iraqi army who their allegiance to the Iraqi state was always in question.

Iraqi army Arab nationalist officers turned their guns on the Kurds, and this led to a huge crack of the Sunni-Kurdish alliance formed by the British and the pillar of the Iraqi state. From being the pillar of Sunni-Kurdish alliance, the chauvinist Arabist Iraqi army officers regarded the Kurds as an inferior part of the Iraqi state and a crusade was launched to diminish Kurdish identity and existence. his shake up of the Sunni-Kurdish alliance was the beginning of a significant setback of the legitimacy of the Iraqi state, which deteriorated its integrity.

The inherited lack of loyalty of the Iraqi Army to the state powered by the Arabist chauvinistic aspirations opened the appetite for the Iraqi army officers to overthrow the political system through a series of coup d’états starting as early as 1935 with a failed Coup d’état by Iraqi officer Bakir Sidqi.

As a reaction, in the late 1930s, the Kurds feeling increasingly targeted and sidelined, started to organize themselves and political Kurdish movements were emerging, which escalated the confrontation between the Iraqi Army and the Kurdish people and led to further oppression and killings of the Kurds. Forced by a growing Arab nationalism and the Iraqi monarchy submittal to the will of chauvinism led by the army resulted an internal war between the Iraqi army, led by a government centered in Baghdad against Kurds.

By the 1940s, the purge of the Kurds was institutionalized within the Iraqi state. The crushing of the anti-British, Nazi backed 1941 Iraqi Army coup d’état, then the reinstallation of the monarchy by the British followed by the execution of the four officers’ leaders of the coup d’état, galvanized the Iraqi army and the willingness to overthrow and liquidate the monarchs of Iraq.

Additionally, the establishment of Israel in 1948 further galvanized the Free Officers movements and the Palestinian problem became the common cause for the Arab chauvinists’ movements, fueling the sentiment to overthrow monarchies and establish military regimes in the region.

The first success of a “Free Officers” movement to overthrow a monarchy and establish a republic was in Egypt in 1953, and the emergence of the charismatic Arab Nationalist leader Gamal Abdul Naser, who actively incited the Iraqi Army against the monarchy, which led to the bloody 1958 coup d’état. The overthrow of the monarchy in a bloody coup d’état led by a group of military officers who called themselves the Free Officers movement such as Abdul Karim Qasem and Abdul Slam Arif with slogans to end British colonialism and advancing progressivism, equality and fairness to the Iraqi people. Promises to end the Iraqi government wars against the Kurds were quickly evaporated, and Baghdad returned to attacking the mountains of Kurdistan relentlessly, this time with dangerous weapons such Napalm bombs, targeting indiscriminately Kurdistan villages, killing innocent Kurds and destroying the nature.

Between 1921 and 2003, Iraqi officers attempted 10 coup d’états, all bloody, some of which were successful and some failed. But most significant was the 1968 coup d’état, which was led by the Baath party, a social, chauvinistic Arab nationalist party which systematically transformed Iraq from a military authoritarian state into a totalitarian state. The Baath regime was targeting dissidents against the regime and the Kurdistan region which was the host of most of the Iraqi opposition movements and parties became the main target by the regime in Baghdad.

After Saddam Hussain’s seize of power in 1979 in an internal Baath party coup d’état, similar to the night of the long knives by Hitler to eliminate his party opponents comrades, Iraq was increasingly becoming hellish and with the beginning of the Iraqi-Iranian war, attacks and bombardments of Kurdistan were dramatically increasing, and the oppression of the Kurds was at its peak during the 1988 massacres of the Iraqi Army Anfal operations, which killed what is estimated 180,000 Kurds and destroyed 6,000 villages in the span of less than a year. The catastrophic blunder of the Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait and chaos followed; then images watched by the whole world of mass migration of millions of Kurds in the aftermath of the 1991 uprising led to the UN imposing of the No-Fly zone in 1991, which led to the creation of a de facto semi-independent Kurdish state until the fall of Saddam in 2003.

After the 1990 invasion of Kuwait and the aftermath of the UN embargo on Iraq until 2003, the US and the world started to realize that Iraq is a failing state. In fact, from the aforementioned historical review, if you look at Iraq’s history objectively, a country was established based on an alliance between the Kurds and the Sunnis which collapsed very early on after the establishment of the state in 1921. Ten bloody coup d’états, four major external wars, one of which lasted 8 years, plus numerous wars against Kurdistan region and the Anfal operations, and millions killed or displaced by successive oppressive regimes in Baghdad, Iraq was never a successful state from the get go. Also, to describe Iraq was a stable country before 2003 is a total myth.

There was a vacuum for new ideas to solve the predicament of Iraq. In Washington, there was a wide understanding that Iraq as is no longer viable. A new Iraq naturally should be a democracy and in which the majority should rule. Despite the Shia of Iraq being the majority, the US and the west were wary of the Shia as a reaction to the anti US anti-western Shia Iranian revolution in 1979.

The brilliance of Ahmad Chalabi and his deep roots and wide network in Washington was able to convince those who seek a change to democracy in Iraq and the region that the Shia of Iraq will be a new viable ally to the US and the Shia of Iraq are the cradle of Shiism and they will become the alternative to the US and the west loss of the Shia of Iran.

In light of the September 11th attacks, the US was looking for alternative more tolerant forms of Islam. Chalabi was successful to present Shiism as this moderate alternative and pushed the narrative that the Shia majority in Iraq were historically oppressed by Sunni regimes in Iraq in collusion with Sunnis extremist Arab states such as the Gulf states but more specifically Saudi Arabia. In other words, Chalabi was able to present a new understanding, a roadmap for a transformation to democracy in Iraq and to divert the focus from the overthrow of the Iranian regime to the overthrow of Saddam’s regime, which will create a new US ally in the second largest Shia country, Iraq. The idea seems attractive, but it lacked two major aspects.

First: Chalabi was in exile for decades and it was hard to count that he had a wide popular base in Iraq, so the US would need a real Iraqi popular participation to backup this idea and give legitimacy which is almost impossible under Saddam’s totalitarian regime.

Second: The US did not trust the Shia of Iraq, and the conventional wisdom, especially within the Intelligence community in Washington, was that the Shia of Iraq, once Saddam’s fall, will follow Iran. Therefore, the US needed an Iraqi guarantor ideally with roots inside Iraq. Who is qualified to be this guarantor with a popular base? No one in Iraq could provide these two requirements, except for the Kurds. Unlike the Shia of Iraq, there was unanimous, bipartisan acceptance of the Kurds, plus the Kurds have their own territories and millions of people, a de facto independent state.

So, the Kurds were the ideal guarantor by the US and the West. Washington became increasingly willing to take the risk of a regime change in Iraq, with a strong conviction to replace the failed Sunni-Kurdish Iraq established in 1921 with Shia-Kurdish alliance in a new democratic Iraq in 2003. The idea was increasingly appealing to many key decisionmakers in Washington.

Examining the roots of the failure, it became very clear that Centralism is a main cause of failure because it was the most lethal weapon of oppression in the hands of successive dictators in Baghdad. As Iraq increasingly became reliant on oil revenues and the market economy diminished, as a result, governments in Baghdad owned the whole wealth of the country, controlled the army, the police and security apparatus, while the people owned or controlled nothing.

These unlimited powers concentrated in Baghdad, and the emergence of a ruthless dictatorship in Baghdad was inevitable with unlimited powers to oppress the rest of the country. But killing and oppressing the Kurds would be the best way to flex his muscles. Therefore, to put measures to prevent the next dictatorship in Baghdad is to distribute the power of Baghdad and to distribute oil revenue on the regions away from Baghdad to the rest of Iraq. This is how the idea of federalism emerged as a solution for a failing Iraq. As a result, the US, and the Iraqi opposition had mutual understanding that federalism is the only remedy for Baghdad’s chauvinism syndrome and to produce a stable and sustainable Iraq.

The idea of removing Saddam from power was based on these aspects and it became very clear, if it were not for the Kurds, a regime change would have not happened in Iraq and federalism, to empower the regions and take away the control of oil wealth from Baghdad and give it to the regions, was the bedrock bases for this new political matrix for Iraq.

In 1998, President Clinton’s policy of “Dual Containment of Iraq and Iran” which resulted in a policy of ending confrontation with Saddam’s regime, closing the door for the Iraqi opposition to Saddam, then followed by steps to restore the relationship with Saddam through UN Secretary General Kofi Anan who visited Baghdad on behalf of President Clinton. Despite these setbacks, for the Iraqi opposition, a breakthrough in favor of the Iraqi opposition was the Iraqi National Congress succeeded in passing the Iraq Liberation act in October 1998.

For the first time in history, opposition to a regime succeeded to pass a Congress resolution which calls for the overthrow of Saddam’s regime and establish democracy through supporting the Iraqi opposition inside Iraq to overthrow Saddam. This achievement was a major historical test for the new alliance, and it would have not happened without the Kurds.

After the liberation of Iraq in 2003, many of the American middle to low level bureaucrats who came to work in Baghdad had no or little understanding of the depth of the new political matrix. The US decision to declare occupation, in May 2003, was a political disaster for Iraq and a win for the Baathists and the terrorists in Iraq as they were handed full legitimacy to attack the Americans and launch full scale terror war, except for Kurdistan. Kurdistan was peaceful, quiet and it was clear that what separates Kurdistan from Iraq is more than a border but a different culture and environment. The quick spiking of the terror operations changed the focus of the US from rebuilding Iraq to force protection and fighting terrorism.

The next big test was the writing of the Constitution, which was a strategic milestone for Iraq and the Shia-Kurdish alliance held very well despite terrorism and mayhem in many parts of Iraq. The writing of the Constitution occurred in President Masood Barzani house in Baghdad. It was a unique experience for me, it was a very difficult process and sometimes we were faced with serious deadlocks, but we succeeded to finalize the Constitution.

The Constitution is the new deal for Iraq, adopted federalism and protected the de facto federal state in Kurdistan. In fact, Kurdistan region was a model which the writers of the Constitution intended to copy to allover Iraq. The transformation for any Iraqi province to a federal state was made fairly easy, and rights for oil in the region other than the ”current” fields, which means future fields are up to the regions. The discussion on the issue of oil and the regions i.e., Kurdistan was intense. It was a discussion between the conventional Iraqi strong centralism which failed versus the new idea for federalism to save what we have as Iraq.

The Constitution won unprecedented legitimacy:

a. it was written by people who represents wide variety of Iraqis (Shia, Sunnis, Kurds, Christians, Baathists, Islamists etc.)

b. it was endorsed by the Marjiyya in Najaf

c. most importantly it passed by a direct popular referendum by the Iraqi people.

This constitution was the new contract for Iraq, but constitutions do not enforce themselves, rather are enforced by the political will and the people. However, this Constitution had immediate enemies internally and externally. Baathists, terrorists viewed this constitution as an existential threat, Iran sought it as a threat to spread ideas they considered dangerous such democracy and federalism.

The Iranian regime immediately started undermining the Constitution. Ideas such federalism and distribution of oil wealth represented a huge danger to the Iranian regime which could spread to Iran and undermines the iron grip of Tehran on the Iranian people.

The new political matrix of Shia-Kurdish trio alliance and the US as a strategic partner, started to fall apart with encouragement of Iran and lack of understanding by the American bureaucrats in Baghdad and Washington. With Iranian incitement, the Shia started attacking the Americans, the very people who brought them to power and next step is driving a wedge between the Shia and the Kurds.

The political matrix, which the new system was built on, is crumbling. Balance of powers and accountabilities within the constitution were gradually diffused by the Iran and their proxies. The political system therefore became increasingly dysfunctional, and nothing is working. Democracy diminished to vote counting and meaningless elections, with no accountability or rule of law.

While the rest of Iraq was sinking in corruption, terrorism and political chaos, Kurdistan took advantage of its stability to thrive and advance, but the more Kurdistan advanced the more it was targeted by Iran proxies. The Shia quickly transformed, from allies of the Kurds, now officially became the enemies of the Kurds.

With the chauvinistic culture inherited from the Baath and decades of central ironfisted rule in Baghdad, the political Shia class has started working to deprive Kurdistan from its rights, interfering in the internal matters of the region and turning federalism to an obsolete order. For Iran, the threat of the Iraqi Constitution is not only about federalism and democracy spreading to their country but also the complicated system of the state and the separation of powers makes it more difficult to control Iraq.

The more authoritarian Baghdad is, and the more central Iraq is the easier for Iran to control and rule Iraq. Also, a thriving Kurdistan where the people have freedoms, Americans and westerners are welcomed represented a threat that Iranian Kurds within few hundred miles drive they can be exposed to transfer these values back to Iran.

The more Iran gets control of Iraq, the more their ambitions grow. President Masood Barzani historical ties with Iran and many of the Kurdish leadership spent decades of their lives in Iran but he stands an obstacle for a total control of Iraq by Iran. This is exactly why he became the target, not because he is anti-Iran, but he stands for his people independent of Iran.
This is the real story of why Iraq is falling apart and without federalism and the Kurds, Iraq may be no more.

Entifadh Qanbar is the founder and president of two non-profit organizations, Future Foundation and Kurdish Protection Action Committee (KPAC). Entifadh Qanbar worked with the late Dr. Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress (INC). In 2005, he was nominated as the Deputy Military Attaché, Embassy of Iraq, Washington D.C. He worked to strengthen US-Iraqi military cooperation.

This article has been published by CFRI previously