Options for minizing the mess in Iraq

What of the future? We are where we are and bemoaning Dubya's mistakes isn't going to fix anything. The first thing to realize is that (unless the US is prepared to flood Iraq with troops and stay there for many years) there will be no happy ending, only damage limitation. Democracy will fail in Iraq in the short term. There will be a civil war. US prestige will take a hit and Al-Qaeda and Iran will claim a victory. None of that can be avoided. What can be salvaged?

Kurdistan for one. The US should seriously consider sponsoring an independent Kurdish state. The basics of Kurdistan are that the Kurds are the majority of the population in the area where Iraq, Iran and Turkey meet. The population of this area is estimated at 27-37 million. Turkey, Iran and former governments in Iraq do not agree on much, but one thing that united them and continues to unite Iran and Turkey is the desire to prevent Kurdish independence. Iran and Turkey fear an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq because they believe (with some justification) that the Kurdish parts of Iran and Turkey would wish to secede and join it.

In recent years the Kurds have been involved in bitter guerrilla wars with the Turkish and Iraqi governments in bids for more autonomy. If the Iraqi Kurds had ever succeeded in setting up a stable independent state and definitively throwing off rule from Baghdad, they would have had to fear invasion from Turkey. At the end of the first Gulf War in 1991, the Iraqi Kurds staged another uprising against a weakened Saddam Hussein. The dictator eventually managed to crush the revolt and sent millions of Kurds fleeing towards the Turkish border. The Turkish government, which was waging its own war against the Turkish Kurds, refused to admit them, and even launched raids into Iraqi Kurdish territory to try to catch bands of Turkish Kurdish guerrillas who had fled into Iraq. The West eventually succeeded in providing some succour to the Iraqi Kurds by enforcing a no-fly zone that prevented Saddam Hussein from using helicopter gunships, by dropping relief supplies and, eventually, by providing a peacekeeping force for Kurdish Iraq.

If the US proclaimed support for an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq, and stationed US troops in the area to defend it from outside enemies, the Iraqi Kurds would be genuinely grateful. The Kurds may be muslims, but the Al-Qaeda message of jihad against the West would have very little traction with them. US troops would be welcomed as liberators and could be stationed in barracks almost as peacefully as they are in Germany or South Korea. Meanwhile the Kurds would get on with the happy task of building their own new country. Although the Kurds would rejoice at this outcome, and in many ways it is morally the right outcome, and it would solve America's problem in the norther third of Iraq, there are also disadvantages for the Americans.

First, it would greatly annoy Turkey, which has been a staunch US ally through the Cold War and into the present time. There is moreover a risk that effect on Turkey of an independent Kurdistan would go much further than mere annoyance. TheTurkish people's anger with the United States could cause the Islamist party to consolidate its power and take Turkey away from secularism and democracy. A further risk is that the existence of an independent Kurdish state in the northern part of the former Iraq would cause a renewed uprising by the Turkish Kurds. This would exarcerbate the feelings of dislike for the US in Turkey and the danger of the Islamists winning absolute power in Turkey.

A second problem for America with an independent Kurdistan is that Dubya proclaimed he would set up a democracy in all of Iraq, not break it up. Breaking it up would make him look like he was going back on his word, it would also look like an admission of defeat. Finally, he may not get UN recognition for a break-up. Dubya, however, has never taken much notice of the UN, so it is hard to imagine this being too much of an obstacle.

Even if America does not go down the road of supporting an independent Kurdistan, the very threat of it is a bargaining chip for the US against Iran, something the US has rarely had since the Iranian revolution. America wants Iran to stop building nuclear weapons and to stop sponsoring insurgents in Iraq. Iran does not much fear an American invasion because it can see the US has its hands full with Iraq and has no spare troops. Moreover, there is no way Dubya could get the American people to support it. The Iranians would, however, fear the Russians. If the Russians and the Americans (especially if also backed by China) together threatened Iran with force, it would be amazing how compliant the Iranians would become. Thanks to Dubya's foolish disregard for the UN when he started the Iraq war and other provocations, however, the Russians and the Chinese are annoyed with him and won't threaten Iran with the big stick. America's lack of allies means that Kurdistan is one of the few ways it can put pressure on Iran. By threatening to support Kurdish independence, the Americans may just be able to persuade the Iranians to ease off on their support for the Iraqi insurgency and/or their nuclear weapons programme. It's important to recognize, however, that the threat of Kurdish independence is not a gun to Iran's head. The Iran's Kurds make up a much smaller part of Iran than Turkey's do of Turkey.

Assuming the Kurdish bargaining chip did not draw co-operation from Iran, but the best course of action for America may be to allow a referendum on independence in every part of Iraq. This would probably result in Kurdistan voting for independence and the Shias and Sunnis voting to stay in Iraq. The referendum would lend legitimacy to an independent Kurdistan because the world would recognize that no American president could oppose such a clear exercise of democracy. The Turkish fallout would probably be a price worth paying. As for the rest of Iraq, the more the Sunnis and the Shias are physically separated, the less protracted will be the civil war.

The Iraq war was a mistake from the start

The Iraq war - what a mess! The Washington Post recently had a worthy article by David Ignatius urging a bi-partisan approach on the part of Dubya and Nancy Pelosi to take US policy forward. They should aim for a policy based on a lesser US role that both parties can sign up to, and that will outlast the current US administration.

Why do people in the West still have so many dreams and illusions about Iraq? Some basic home truths seem to have been missed, namely:

1. There is no democracy in Iraq. Democracy is not the same thing as holding elections. There is a certain element of mass psychology to democracy - a critical mass of people need to know it and want it and be prepared to accept the result of an election even if it is not what they voted for. If this state of mind is not there, to hold elections is to do no more than go through the motions, as is the case now in Iraq. If the coalition forces left now, Iraqi democracy wouldn't last a week, to be replaced by warring factions who would take no notice at all of the result of the last Iraqi election. The eventual winning faction would then institute an iron rule not dissimilar to Saddam Hussein's.

2. There is no solution that will combine a stable government friendly to the West with Iraqi independence and territorial integrity. The Kurds have wanted to be independent every since Iraq came into being at the end of the First World War. The last thing they want is to have to take orders from Baghdad. The Sunnnis and Shia hate each other from centuries of the Sunni minority lording it over the Shia majority. The two communities are not easy to separate geographically, so once the US leaves, they will fight it out in a very ugly way until one comes out on top. Interestingly, Al-Qaeda would probably back the Sunnis and Iran the Shias. Dubya may not have noticed, but Iran and Al-Qaeda don't much like each other.

3. There is nothing the US can do about Al-Qaeda or the Shia militias in Iraq. It's like trying to fight cancer by genetically engineering every cancer cell. The only way to stop that kind of guerilla war by force is to flood the country with millions of troops (a G.I. on very street corner) or to throw human rights out of the window and imprison or massacre large numbers of people. History is full of examples of guerrilla victories, or of insurgencies suppressed, but only with the most brutal methods. Dubya should think back to America's own history. How many troops would the British have needed to suppress the American Revolution? A very large number, because millions of Americans wanted them out. As soon as the British redcoat's back was turned, the American minuteman got out his musket and formed a militia. Every time the British took repressive measures, it made propaganda and recruits for the revolutionaries. It's all vividly depicted in the Mel Gibson's film The Patriot. Dubya should think of Fallujah in terms of Bunker Hill.

There is no good solution possible in Iraq, and there never was. It would have been far better never to have invaded. 20-20 hindsight? No. Dubya just didn't think it through properly. He knew Iraq was ethnically divided. He knew from Vietnam and various US interventions in Latin America that democracy can rarely be imposed by force. He just ignored those examples and thought it would be like Germany in 1945. He did not seem to realize that the example of Germany was very different. It was invaded by about 18 million Allied troops. He invaded Iraq with 300,000. Nearly all Germany's men of military age were dead or in prison camps. Iraq's were mostly alive and free and armed. The Germans feared that if they resisted beyond the formal surrender the Allies would do to them what the Germans had done to the Jews - massacre them. The Iraqis do not fear this from the Americans.