House vote on Iraq is naïve, irresponsible

The Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a war-funding bill with a timeline for troop withdrawal from Iraq and substantially less funds to conduct the war than President Bush has requested, according to this report from CNN.

To be sure US President George Bush will veto the vote, as threatened. The vote which went mainly along party lines cites December 15 next year as the date for US combat troops to be out of Iraq.

The Democrats have once again acted naïve and irresponsible. America has to know that it just can’t go and shake up the institutions of a country, including its army, impose new ones of its own, and then say, “ Nice knowing you guys. Try and manage”.

The war was ill-conceived from the start, but the US cannot pull out from Iraq just because things didn’t turn out to the advantage of Americans.

There is a civil war going on in Iraq, with Sunnis and Shias battling each other, and with the prospect of the Kurds trying to find their own independent solution to the problem. If Americans pull out prematurely, there will be terrible bloodshed in Iraq. This is not the point in time when the US can say, “let us live it to the Iraqis to solve their problems”.

It is the responsibility of the US to now help move the country politically towards a solution, which as some suggest could be a loose federal system where each ethnic and religious group have control over autonomous regions. The US has to also work with the Kurds, Sunnis and Shias to pass in the Iraq Parliament a formula for the management and sharing of oil revenue.

A number of Democrats including Hillary Clinton voted authorizing the war. They now have to live with the consequences of the war, rather than scamper when the going gets hot.

It makes for great political posturing for the Democrats to vote for a withdrawal within a time-line. Their constituents will love it. But the Democrats, including Clinton, have yet to come forward with a proposal for the resolution of the Iraq problem. The Democrats are at this point not conveying to the US, Iraq, and the rest of the world that they have a grip on the Iraq problem, that they have the capacity to think beyond their vote banks.

Related article:
Why the US should stay in Iraq

Turkey to attack Iraq soon ?

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkey will attack bases of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, in northern Iraq ``soon,'' according to a report by Bloomberg which quoted a senior lawmaker of his ruling Justice and Development Party on condition of anonymity.

Separately CNN reported that an Iraqi Kurdish official said two Turkish military aircrafts crossed into Iraqi border space on Monday and dropped stun grenades on an uninhabited border area in an apparent attempt to locate targets there.

The dispute between Turkey and the PKK promises to be long and violent, unless Turkey seizes the initiative and moves towards meeting some of the political demands of Kurds in Turkey.

Turkey’s leading pro-Kurdish party, the Democratic Society Party, called on the Turkish government to grant autonomy to the mainly Kurdish southeast as a solution to the violence that has plagued the impoverished region for more than two decades, according to a report by Reuters.

By dealing with the moderates at home, Turkey will be able to marginalize the extremist PKK, and also prevent the Kurdish problem in its country from becoming a trans-national issue.

An attack by Turkey on PKK positions in Kurdistan will not solve the Kurdish issues but instead exacerbate it. It could provide a rallying point, a trigger for a Kurdish nation cutting across Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, and bankrolled by oil in the Kurdistan autonomous region of Iraq. In all these countries, there are Kurds, proud, fierce, and with a long tradition. The money from oil in Iraqi Kurdistan has in certain sectors created the confidence that the Kurdish diaspora in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria may be finally united in a nation.

Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria will certainly not cede a Kurdish nation without a fight and a lot of bloodshed. By attacking Iraq, rather than negotiating a settlement at home, Turkey may precipitate a crisis on an issue which is right now only a dream among a few radical Kurds. A Turkish attack may make the sentiment of Kurdish nationhood a mainstream issue.

Related article:
The makings of a Kurdish nation ?

The makings of a Kurdish nation ?

Kurds in Iraq already enjoy a substantial degree of autonomy. In Turkey, the Kurds say that autonomy is the best way to solve the problem of Kurdish terrorism. Iran is also fighting a Kurdish secessionist movement. All this seems to point to a separate Kurdistan, carved out of these three countries in a bloody conflict..

Turkey's leading pro-Kurdish party called on the Turkish government on Thursday to grant autonomy to the mainly Kurdish southeast as a solution to the violence that has plagued the impoverished region for more than two decades, according to this report in Reuters.

A Kurdish nation may not be without precedent. New nations sprung up after the breakdown of the former Soviet Union. In Yugoslavia after the Balkan crisis, new nations sprung up there too based on a mix of religion and ethnicity. Kosovo has also been threatening to declare independence from Serbia.

What this means is that throughout the world, the old order is changing, and is changing on the basis of ethnic and religious aspirations.

Some of these groupings will try to be nations in a hurry without the political institutions and the maturity to run countries. They will be unstable and dangerous neighbors. Some of them will be born, not unexpectedly in violence, as majorities in their countries oppose the birth of new nations. The birth of some of these parvenu nations could also be accompanied by ethnic cleansing of new minorities in the new nations.

All in all a bloody outlook ahead. It is avoidable if the majorities in each country show some interest in accommodating their minorities, work on their economic betterment, and try to concede to some of the demands of their minorities. It is also avoidable if some of the big countries like the US and Russia do not play with the ethnic and religious tinderbox for their petty political ends.

Turkey may avoid Kurdish separatism by conceding some of the autonomy the Kurds in Turkey demand, and also invest in the development of this community. Serbia may still be able to hold Kosovo within the country if it offers the Albanians in Kosovo a large degree of autonomy.

In September, Serbia warned the UN of “unforeseeable consequences” that could destabilize the world if the breakaway province of Kosovo declares independence unilaterally later this year.

If we go by history, and a sense of justice, there should be no objection to an ethnic group declaring independence, I wrote in an earlier blog. This stand unfortunately only looks good in a treatise on nationalities, meant for academic discourse alone.

If we put it into practice, we could see a large part of the world “balkanized” because every ethnic group or group with nationalistic aspirations could demand independence regardless of its political and economic viability as an independent country. Many of them will likely emerge in haste and violence, without the institutions in place required to be nations.

This bloody situation can only be avoided if host countries try to accommodate their ethnic minorities.

Related article:

Kosovo dispute highlights the issue of nationalities

Why Turkey should not cross the border into Iraq

Turkey’s proposed invasion of Iraq to flush out terrorists could provide a dangerous precedent for other countries handling separatist terrorist movements.

Just as the US and its allies invaded Afghanistan to flush out the Taliban, who were protecting Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, it would at first blush appear reasonable that the Turkish army crosses the border into Iraq and flushes out terrorists from the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan (PKK) who are using Iraq as a base for terrorist attacks into Turkey.

The Turkish government is under pressure from its citizens to cross the border. The country has a significant Kurdish population, which by some estimates is as high as 20 percent. The PKK aims to establish a separate Kurdish state in a territory (traditionally referred to as Kurdistan) consisting of parts of southeastern Turkey, northeastern Iraq, northeastern Syria and northwestern Iran.

The Turkish people find that the PKK is operating from within the Iraqi border, with neither the self-governing Iraqi Kurds or the government in Baghdad able to, or trying seriously enough, to stop them.

However, once this policy of invasion to settle scores with terrorists is established as acceptable, it could lead to a number of wars around the world, as countries invade other countries to chase terrorists hiding there.

India could, for example, build a case to attack and flush out Kashmir separatist terrorists who take refuge in Pakistan. In fact, India claims that its has evidence that the Pakistani intelligence agencies are involved in training Kashmiri terrorists, and other Islamic fundamentalists, who then cross the border into India to kill and maim.

Kurdish terrorists from Iran have also used Iraq as a base to attack Iranian positions. So Iran may also feel justified to attack Iraq from another frontier.

An attack by Turkey into Iraq, and the consequent political disruption, could also lead to the PKK, and its separatist agenda, winning popular support among Kurds living in various countries. It could disrupt US efforts to bring the Iraqi Kurds into the country’s political mainstream, as a lot of Kurds may now see a separate nationhood as an alternative. The Kurds are already close to it in Iraq, where they already enjoy considerable autonomy.

Why the US should stay in Iraq

On August 22, US President George Bush told war veterans that a US withdrawal from Iraq would lead to bloodshed and reprisals akin to those after the US withdrew from Vietnam.

Bush’s comparison of Iraq with the withdrawal in Vietnam has been described as inaccurate by many historians.

The scary fact remains however that should the US and its allies decide to pull out from Iraq, the country could in fact witness a blood-bath of violent sectarian squabbling.

There is a growing school of thought in the US and other countries that the strife among the Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds is an internal problem of Iraq, better left to the new government in Iraq to solve. Some have even said that the government in Baghdad will move to reconcile the factions, only after it knows it does not have the US to prop it up.

Having invaded Iraq in 2003 with the multiple aims of removing Saddam Hussein, destruction of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that were never found, and to bring democracy to Iraq, the US cannot now wash its hands off the problems that the new dispensation has thrown up.

The country does not as yet have a government in Baghdad that is accepted by all in the country. It does not have a strong police force that is respected and seen as impartial across the country, and is still trying to rebuild an army that was disbanded after Saddam Hussein’s government was brought down.

The Iraq oil and gas law, also referred to as the Iraq hydrocarbon law, approved by the cabinet in February, has still to be passed by Parliament. Under the proposed regulations, oil revenues will go to a central fund distributed to all Iraqis in all regions and provinces according their populations.

The oil law has however become a political battleground between those who favor a more unified Iraq and those who want a decentralized federation where provincial governments have larger rights over the award of contracts and the revenue from the oil and gas under their geographical jurisdictions.

Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia is clearly a key threat to the US in Iraq. But it is facile to blame all the violence in Iraq, and the problems faced by US troops there, on Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia. The violence in Iraq comes from a variety of factors including feuding militias, both Shia and Sunni that have still not come under the control of the government in Baghdad.

Clearly the US has a long way to go in Iraq both on the military and political front.

The political initiatives so far have assumed that Sunni, Shia, and Kurd populations will eventually put their heads together in a pan-Iraqi nationalism. What if they decide to fight, regardless of the consequences, for the control of Baghdad and the whole country ? What if they decide to partition the country, and feud and kill over which land and which part of the oil reserves should go to them ?

Bush has made a lot of the Anbar Awakening, the optimistic name often given to the move by some Sunni militias in Anbar to join Americans in fighting Al Qaeda. The US will surely pamper Sunni militias to counter the Al Qaeda influence, and hope to also nudge them into reconciliation with the Shias and Kurds.

There is however also the possibility that the Sunnis have teamed up with the Americans for arms and cash to be used after the Americans are out. They must be aware that the US administration is under pressure at home to get US troops out of Iraq.

Having played the role of global policeman, and got into this quagmire, the US will now have to stay there. If it pulls out prematurely, and there is civil war, the blame will be pinned primarily on the US. Public memory is short, and there may be some who may even argue that Iraq was better off before the US ousted the butcher Saddam Hussein.

An Iraq going through a civil war will also be to the US’ disadvantage as it will provide opportunities to US enemies like Iran and Al Qaeda.

All in all a thankless task for the US going forward.

When Democrats in the US demand the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, it is very reminiscent of Vietnam. When the going was just too hot, and public support at home waned, the US pulled out from Vietnam leaving behind all the people and interests that had counted on America’s continued support. These included the puppet rulers, but the rest were ordinary people caught on the wrong side.

Didn’t many of the Democrats including Hillary Clinton vote in favor of the Iraq war ? They probably didn’t want to be spectators or protesters during those heady days when images flashed worldwide of a tall statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down. But when the body bags started coming home, they quite naturally lost their nerve.

Both Democrats and Republicans showed lack of foresight on the US invasion of Iraq. The Democrats could do worse by now demanding a premature withdrawal from Iraq.

Related Article:
Six years after 9/11, whistling in the dark