Iraq: Instability and Social Integration

Von Professor Ghassan Atiyyah

Today’s Iraq

• Iraq is highly diversified country: ethnically, religiously, socially, and culturally.
• Decades of dictatorship glossed over its inner divisions rather than facing them.
• The process of social integration that took place during the Royal regime as well as during the seventies (with help of Oil bonanza), gave way in the eighties to policies of domination and suppression thus reversing the previous trend.
• The war against Iran and later the invasion of Kuwait to be followed by years of UN sanctions extenuated and exasperated the decline.
• The invasion of Iraq and lack of effective post-war plans opened the gates for war of identity among Iraq’s ethnic and sectarian groups.
• Saddam regime was characterized by the ascendancy of the rural Sunni, however after the invasion Iraq witnessed the ascendancy of the rural Shia to power and in both cases the urban centers (Baghdad, Mosul and Basra) lost much of their influence.
• Mainstream Arab Nationalism gave way to religiosity and sectarianism.
• Iraq of today faces a crisis of identity.

Nation building

• Although most Iraqis agree on the need for nation building, but they have no common perception of it.
• The recently adopted constitution reflects deeper division and mistrust among Iraqis.
  
  1. Who is responsible for nation building? The federal or local Governments or both, are present political parties willing and/or able to assume such a role?
  2. With the decline of civil society, who is filling the vacuum?
  3. Is federalism as stipulated in the constitution enhances social integration and economic development?
  4. Does the Coalition forces (especially the American) have the conceptual framework (mindset) and the will to assist in nation building, and if so do they have the time and money?
  5. What role could be played the international actors? Especially by the UN and EU and other international organizations?
  6. Although Iraqis are aware they need outside help to bring about social and economic development, but they disagree on how and where.
  7. This leads to the problem of security as prerequisite for development and stability.

Security

• The war caused not only the collapse of the regime, but also of the state and its institutions; especially security institutions, without effective replacement.
• Lack of security had negative effect on improving social services (health, transport, electricity etc.), which affected the poorer classes most.
• In the absence of the state (with the Army and police dissolved) people reverted to their traditional ethnic, social and sectarian groupings for protection, thus pulling people apart rather than uniting them.
• Emergence of local mafias making use of dismissed military personals, which took law in their hands as well as making it a source of their livelihood.
• Al-Sahwa "Sunni awakening" encouraged by the US has short term benefit, but dire future consequences. 
• Major political parties expanded their militias as a source of power.
• Providing protection became lucrative business not only for the militia, but also to tribal clans. They became a source of protection as well as threat and intimidation.
• The newly establishment army have inherit problem, because it is based on ethnic and sectarian lines.
• Disaffected parties (tribal, sectarian, ethnic etc) resort to force to deny central and local authorities stability.

Political Stability

• Do Iraqis have the desire or/and the will to live together? The war brought dramatic change in Iraq body politics by striping the traditional rulers of Iraq (the secular Sunnis Arab) of their power, and handing it over to the Shia Arab in the south and the Kurds in the north of Iraq.
• Iraq enjoyed relative stability only under dictatorship or when it was under the British influence prior to 1958 revolution.
• Power sharing had no lasting tradition in Iraq.
• The prerequisite for political progress is economic stability.
• Political stability must be underpinned by process of national reconciliation.
• Rushing the constitution failed to bring about national reconciliation.
• Force alone will not yield stability, what is needed is a political solution based on compromise and national reconciliation.
• The new law replacing “de-bathification” failed to win over the Bath party members.

Culture of dependency

• Previous regime cultivated a culture of dependency among the Iraqi population, by subsiding food as well as most services (electricity, gas, food), any change will drastically effect the poorer segments of the society, especially the unemployed.
• The state controlled economy of the previous regime created a predator state capitalism, which manipulated the population by means of fear and greed.
• The growth of villages into towns and whatever signs of recent prosperity were more as the result of greater government presence than as locally developed economic viability.
• However, with the demise of central authority, the newly sprung political grouping became self sufficient rely on illicit source of income (i.e. stealing and blackmailing).
• After five year of occupation, Iraq is awash with money (2008 budget is $48 billion), but still Iraq lacks capability to use it efficiently.

What is the distribution of assets in Iraq?
Oil Industry

• Oil industry, the main source of income, faces political difficulties as well as financial one. The Kurdish and Shia desire to turn new oil development as a source of finance for their regional provinces in the north and the south rather than to the central government in Baghdad. Accordingly the Sunni Arab in central and western Iraq, whose region lacks oil, will oppose such development.
• Oil could be the most important factor in maintaining and sustaining Iraq unity and stability.
• The present situation in Iraq is not conducive for foreign investment; at the same time the American administration is in no position to spend what is needed to develop Iraq oil industry.
• Denying the central government oil revenue became prime target for the insurgency, thus adding to the oil industry collapse.
• The previous regime used smuggled oil as a source of revenue, the insurgents as well as some ruling political parties are doing the same now.
• Oil is Iraq main source of wealth and it is mainly in the South and Kirkuk in the north. Under the proposed federal system the revenue of existing oil fields will revert to the central government, but the revenue of newly developed field will belong to the regional governments. 
• Oil Industry is the main source of employment after the Government.
• Privatization of the Oil Industry faces strong traditional and political opposition, and American supported initiative to pass new Oil law failed to be adopted by Parliament.
• Union of Oil industry workers was subdued by Saddam regime, but could play vibrant role in the future.

Agriculture, Land

• Agriculture used to be the main source of revenue in the state of Iraq during the period between 1920-1950, but not anymore.
• The continued impoverishment of the rural masses was evident in the tremendous migration that continued through the 1960’s, 1970’s, and into the 1980’s from rural to urban areas.

1. What is known as Al Thawra City (renamed Sadr City after the fall of Saddam) in Baghdad neighborhood is an offshoot of this migration.
2. Depressed rural conditions and other variables- rather than job opportunities in the cities- accounted for most of the migration.
3. Massive migration and land reform reduced the number of landless peasants.
4. Despite some commercial developments in rural areas, in the late 1980s the economic base was still agriculture and, to lesser but increasing extent, animal husbandry.
5. Failure to resolve the technical problem of irrigation drainage contributed to declining rural productivity.
6. The immediate impact of the agrarian reform initiated by Abdul Karim Qassim (1958-63) was limited to land expropriation and thus the demise of Shaikhs and big landowners, giving rise to new class of farmers.
7. Decline of agriculture is more evident in the South and mid Euphrates.
8. While rice production in the south is labor intensive, but in the north that produce mainly wheat and barley utilize minimum labor.

Land ownership

• The most comprehensive tenurial statistics available is the Agricultural Census of 1971, put the total farmland (cultivable) at over 5.7 million hectares, of which “civil persons” held more than 98.2 percent. About 30 percent of this had been distributed under the agrarian reform. The average size of the holdings was about 9.7 hectares; but 60 percent of the holdings were smaller than 7.5 hectares, accounting for less than 14 percent of the total area. At the other end of the scale, 0.2 percent of the holdings were 250 hectares or larger, amounting to more than 14 percent of the total. Fifty-two percent of the total was owner-operated, 41 percent was farmed under rental agreement, 4.8 percent was worked by squatters, and only 0.6 percent was sharecropped. The status of the remaining 1.6 was uncertain. On the basis of limited statistics released by the government in 1985, the amount of land distributed since the inception of the reform program totaled 2,271,250 hectares.

1. Most rural communities are nucleated settlements rather than dispersed farmsteads; that is, the farmer leaves his village to cultivate the fields outside it.
2. The Marsh Arab of the south usually live in small clusters to two or three houses kept above water by rushes that are constantly being replenished, they were forced to leave their dwellings during the Iran-Iraq war and moved to other rural areas in the south.

• Prior to the Iran-Iraq war, the Bath party seemed to have few roots in the countryside, but after the ascent of Saddam Hussain to the presidency in 1979 a determined effort was made to build bridges between the party cadre in the capital and the provinces.
• Starting in 1984, the government launched a scorched-earth campaign to drive a wedge between the villagers and the guerrillas in the Kurdistan, in the process whole villages were torched and subsequently bulldozed, which resulted in the Kurds flocking into regional centers of Irbil and Sulaymaniyah. Also as a military precaution, the government has cleared a broad strip of territory in the Kurdish region along the Iranian border of all its inhabitants.

Industry

• Industrial sector was limited and was located mainly in the province of Baghdad and near big cities of Basra and Mosul.  However, government protection policies help this industry. Owners of these factories are Sunni and Shia businessmen, they suffered greatly by the American occupation of Iraq which opened the Iraqi market to free export of cheaper goods with no government subsidies or support. Thousands of such factories are idle and their laborers rendered redundant.
• The trader class, or better known the Bazzar is a dwindling force, moving to Amman and Damascus (Jordanian estimate, 67 per cent of the Iraqis in Jordan are Sunni Arabs) .

Population

• The total population increased from 12.029.000 in 1977 to 16.278.00 in 1987, an increase of 35.3 percent.
• 57 percent of the population in 1987 was under the age of twenty.
• In 1977 about 64 percent of the population was listed as living in urban areas; this was marked change from 1965, when only 44 percent resided in urban centers. In 1987 government estimates, the urban population as 68 percent.
• Migration: Partial destruction of Basra by Iranian artillery barrages had devastating effect; by 1988, almost half of the residents of the city (estimated 800.000) had fled.
• Nomadic: According to 1977 census 95.000 persons were nomadic or Sámi nomadic Beduins. The nomads and sami nomads constituted less than 1 percent of the population. Whereas in 1867 they had been estimated at about 500.000 or 35 percent of the population.
• The population remains unevenly distributed. In 1987 Baghdad Governorate had a population density of about 950 persons per square kilometer and the Babylon Governorate 202 persons per square kilometer, whereas Al Muthana Governorate possessed only 5.5 persons per square kilometer.
• The major cities are located on the nation’s rivers, and the bulk of the population lives in the areas that are cultivated with water taken from the rivers.

Kurds

• International development after the first World War were unfair to the Kurdish aspirations. President W. Wilson of the US declared his renowned principles of national self determination. The Kurds among others nationalities were hoping to realize their nation state, but regional development (Kamal Ataturk revolution) and Western designs (Paris Conference 1919) led to the fragmentation of  the Kurds among Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran.
• The Kurds were able to destabilize the Iraqi governments since the inception of the state, but their armed struggle failed to enhance their national aspiration, only another stroke of history i.e. the American invasion of Kuwait and then Iraq gave them what armed struggle failed to achieve.
• The maximlist Kurds believed that if Iraq fails, they will be okay. Under this theory, even if the country splits apart, the United States will stand by it Kurdish friends, establish military bases in Iraqi Kurdistan, and ultimately ease the way towards its independence, but recent development in Kurdistan with American acquiescence to Turkish incursion inside Iraq, proved that is wrong.
• There is a wide spread discontent among the Kurdish populace against the dominance of the two leading parties, corruption and inflation did not make things easy. The emerging opposition forces are basically Islamic and tribal.

Arab Nationalism

• Arab nationalism was instrumental in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, but after the rise of independent Arab States it became a vague concept. It was indeed used as a sort of fig leaf for mustering political support. The Palestinians called out to the Arabs to help them against Israel. The Iraqis invoked Arab nationalism in the 1960s to get their Syrian brothers’ support for suppressing the Kurds. When Saddam Hussein spoke about Arab nationalism, he was promoting himself as a custodian of the whole Arab nation. These days, Arab nationalism is a mere synonym for cultural identity. But this identity is in a crisis, not only in Iraq but throughout the whole Arab world.
• However, the rise of Iranian influence could breath life in Arab nationalism as a mean to rally Arab states against Iran.

Democratization

• Five things hinder democratization in the region and in Iraq: demography, Islamic traditions, undemocratic elites (tribal, sectarian, ethnic), dependent people (culture of dependency), and the neighborhood. 
• First, demographic changes affect democratic practices: In Lebanon, the people feel threatened by a growing Shia majority, in Jordan by a Palestinian majority. The Iraqi city of Kirkuk is claimed by Kurds, Turkman and Arabs alike.
• Second, Islam (as practiced) has indeed certain undemocratic traditions. During the last elections in Iraq, the Islamic clergy heavily influenced people's votes. The right to vote as an individual, and not as part of a flock, was greatly disrespected.
• Third, until now, our elites who are lacking democratic practice have been power-grabbers. They have to learn to share power. This will not be easy in the short run, but there are traditional values supporting the idea of power-sharing as the best way to rule a country, even if this means that democratic principles are implemented only gradually. In the Arab world, the opposition is often worse than the government. There was a homegrown opposition in Iraq until the 1950s, but later on the communists with their ties to Moscow and the nationalists with their ties to Nasser were not a true indigenous democratic opposition but influenced by foreign interests. Similarly today’s Shia Islamic parties are very much influenced by Iraq.
• Fourth, in Iraq the nationalization of industries and the agricultural reform after the revolution of 1958 eliminated the independence of the middle and the lower classes. It became customary to live on state support. After the fall of Saddam, Iraqis depend on whomever is willing to support them, thus allowing loyalties to be bought, regardless of political inclinations. Building democracy is hard under these circumstances.
• Eastern Europe benefits from its Western European neighbors. Unfortunately, Iraq adjoins to Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Syria.

Islamic Tendencies

• Political Islam in a country divide on sectarian basis will be divisive force.
• The Iraqi Shi’a perception of being persecuted by the Saddam regime (i.e. Sunni majority), specially after March 1991 uprising, made them more conscious of their Shi’ism and thus open to influence by their religious leaders and Iran.
• Though the first Shi’a political organization was established late 1959, known as Dawa party, they gained momentum only after the Iranian Islamic revolution of 1979.
• Iran during and after the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) sponsored and supported Islamic Shia movements. They founded the Iraqi Islamic Revolutionary Council in Tahran year 1980, to be headed by Baqir Al-Hakim, a leading religious shia family from Najaf.
• The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 created a political vacuum in Iraq, which was soon to be filled by the Shia religious leadership, specially those supported by Iran and the extreme Sunni Muslim represented by Al-Qaida.
• The Arab Sunnis, unlike the Shia lacked (Al-Marjaiyah) religious leading authority.
• With the exception of the Muslim Brotherhood, there was no Islamic Sunni parties prior to the American Invasion.
• The Sunni Arabs demonstrated their ability to destabilize the post Saddam regime.
• Now we witness serious divisions within both Shia and Sunni religious camps, which could offer an opportunities for cross sectarian alliances.

Secularism in Iraq

• Secularism has long tradition in Iraqi history, and most political parties were secular.
• Secular forces were among the casualties of the American occupation of Iraq, while sectarian parties were backed by some neighboring countries, the secular were the victims of sectarian polarization.
• The secular political parties were dealt a serious blow in 2005 election.

Does Iraq has a future

• Iraqi is a failed state, and the Iraqi are so divided that rendered them incapable of salvaging the country.
• But is partition of Iraq feasible?
• Neighboring countries have an interest in maintaining Iraq unity, though for different reasons.
• Though American role is becoming ever more important, but they need to adopt a different approach, name that to engage all regional forces in an attempt to create in regional order, thus putting an end to the ever continuous vicious circle of war in the area.
• Can the European help? Yes and No (Kosovo as a precedent)