Our Last Chance to Build a Governing Coalition in Iraq?

By Barry R. Posen, MIT Center for International Studies. Posted January 24, 2007.

President Bush is renewing his effort to create an Iraq that can govern, sustain, and defend itself, and is throwing more resources at the project. The first priority must be governance, however, as administration and defense cannot happen without a functioning government. And government cannot function without a legitimate, broad-based, political consensus. Such a consensus has eluded Iraqis since March 2003, and the President's new strategy includes no political program to create such a consensus. Instead, he counts on creating a coalition of existing "moderates," which do not exist, as the intense violence within Iraq clearly demonstrates. Thus, the President's troop increases, economic assistance, and intensified training will likely prove futile.

Iraqi politics is presently at a stalemate. There are four main political factions in the country, and only two can agree on anything. This is not enough to govern. At least one of the other factions must change its position, and it will be a tall order to bring that about.

Four Factions and Their Interests

Iraqis divide along the issue of whether there should be a strong central state and weak regions, or strong regions and a weak central state. The United States should support the "strong regions" solution, but without encouraging or allowing a complete break-up of the Iraqi state. This outcome is best because none of the contending factions is strong enough to impose its authority on all of the others (as a strong central state would require), and because allowing Iraq to dissolve entirely will invite outside intervention and the risk of a wider war.

Those who agree on a strong central state, the Iraqi Sunni Arabs and the Shiites around the coalition of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa Party, and Moqtada al-Sadr's parliamentary followers and his Mahdi Army militia, themselves disagree on who should run that state. The Sunni Arabs oppose the notion that the Shia should run the new state and dominate its institutions. Without disproportionate weight in these institutions, the Sunni Arabs would be both unsafe and poor. Therefore, Sunni groups fight to prevent the consolidation of the current government's power, which they see as permanent Shia hegemony.

President Bush hopes that the Maliki government will appeal to Sunnis by offering them a share of the country's oil wealth, allowing more former Sunni Arab Baath party members the right to serve in government, and accelerating local elections, which would permit Sunni Arabs to govern their own communities. These changes are a step in the right direction, but they may not happen, and even if they do, they may not put real power in the hands of Sunni Arabs, and are thus unlikely to reduce significantly their support for the insurgency.

The Shia parties, having been repressed by the Sunni minority for decades, are not about to share power with them fairly, much less grant them a bonus for their minority status. At the same time, Sadr's supporters-who mostly inhabit the Shia slums of Baghdad-do not support a decentralized Iraq, because this outcome would permit the oil-rich northern and southern provinces to control the oil revenues, leaving the Shia in Baghdad as beggars in their own land. Maliki's Dawa Party will not abandon its alliance with Sadr, because Sadr can call on thousands of street soldiers, and Dawa lacks a party militia.

Sadr may also oppose decentralization because it leaves the Shia of Baghdad and central Iraq in the middle of the country mixed with a roughly equal number of Sunni Arabs. Though it seems implausible at this moment, they may fear that the Sunni Arabs might then be able to defeat them. It is noteworthy that the Shia-dominated Iraqi Army typically must call on U.S. support whenever the Sunni Arab insurgents choose to stand and fight. Why would Shia brothers come north to help in this fight, if they are comfortable and prosperous in their own oil -rich region?

The Kurds, and the Shia SCIRI party, with its competent and well organized Badr Corps militia, both want a weak central state, and decentralized power. SCIRI wishes to form a southern nine-province region, similar to the Kurdish region in the north. SCIRI is very close to Iran, which also does not want the re-emergence of a strong Iraqi central state. Both factions favor the current provisions in the Iraqi constitution that permit regionalization, and permit the regions to control oil revenues from future exploration.

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Barry R. Posen is the Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director of the Security Studies Program at MIT's Center for International Studies.

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