2009 Annual Conference Panel III: Iraq in 2020
Featuring Deborah Amos, Ali Allawi, Michael Corbin, James Dobbins, Rend al-Rahim Francke
These remarks were delivered in the third panel of the 63rd Annual Conference, November 10th, 2009. Kate Seelye:  It gives me great pleasure to introduce our moderator, Deborah Amos, who will be running the show. She is a former colleague of mine at National Public Radio and a dear friend who has covered Iraq extensively for NPR, in addition to many other countries in the Middle East. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and returned to working with NPR after a decade in television news, including stints with ABC’s Nightline, World News Tonight and the PBS program Now. She is also just about to have a book come out, and the name of the book – Deborah? Well, when it comes out in a month’s time, you’ll find out the title. Let me hand the panel over to Deborah. Deborah Amos:  Thanks very much. Good afternoon. I’d like to welcome you to this panel on the future of Iraq. You may think that it is folly to predict the future of a country in 2020, as our panel is billed, but I think you will hear that our panelists will be a little closer to the present. There is some immediate good news about Iraq. The parliament passed an election law. There is an identity in the country that is emerging that appears to be more secular, more nationalist. The sectarian divide appears to be blurring. The recent bombings in August and October did not ignite a sectarian revenge cycle. Of course the bombers made no distinctions at all between Sunnis and Shiites and the segregated neighborhoods in the country mourn without reprisals. Ahead of the national elections, Sunni politicians have been courted by powerful Shiites – it is a kind of political speed-dating – to find willing and acceptable partners to prove nationalist credentials. In some ways the politicians are running to catch up with the population. There are serious fault lines that I think our panelists will address. The tensions between Iraq’s Arabs and Kurds over not just Kirkuk but the future of Kurdistan is now considered, certainly by American commanders, as the most serious divide in the country. Transparency International lists Iraq as one of the three most corrupt countries in the world. There is still a serious brain drain as more people want to leave. The earlier mass exodus – some 2 million Iraqis left the country and another 2 million were displaced – has barely been reversed. Relations with the neighbors are more fraught than ever and I think we have to ask this panel if Iraq’s institutions are strong enough to survive after the Americans pull out. We have a great panel to ask these very hard questions. Each is going to speak for fifteen minutes. If I read all of their bios that would be the entire afternoon so I’m going to give you a short introduction. I will start with our first speaker, Michael Corbin, who has enormous “street cred” in the region. In July of this year he was appointed deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of Near East Affairs for Iraqi issues, but prior to him coming back to Washington he was posted and served in Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo. Rend Francke has ground truth from Iraq – not only was she born there, she has just come back from there. She is the executive director and co-founder of the Iraq Foundation, dedicated to promoting democracy and human rights in Iraq. She represented her country in Washington; she was one of Iraq’s first ambassadors after the fall of Saddam. She makes frequent trips to Baghdad and she is a senior fellow at the US Institute of Peace. Ali Allawi is the guy who follows the money. He is a visiting senior fellow at the Kennedy School of Government’s Carr Center. He has been a minister of trade, a minister of defense and minister of finance in Iraq, as well as a sharp critic of Washington policy in his book Winning the War, Losing the Peace. Finally, but certainly not least, James Dobbins. He also follows the numbers. He is the director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at RAND. He was the Bush administration’s special envoy to Afghanistan and he raised the flag on the newly reopened US embassy there. He has been a special envoy in Kosovo, Bosnia, Haiti and Somalia. Mr. Dobbins was quoted in just about every article critical of troop strength in Iraq in those early days after he published an extensive study on how many troops you actually need to pacify a country. I would like to welcome all of our panelists and we’ll start with you, Ambassador Dobbins. James Dobbins:  Thank you. The ultimate test of any effort at post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction is whether you can leave behind a society that is at peace with itself and its neighbors. I think we can debate whether the intervention in Iraq was necessary. I think we can also debate whether or not on balance it was beneficial. But I do think there is a reasonable chance that we will meet that particular test – that is, that we will be able to leave behind a society at peace with itself and its neighbors – although this is by no means assured. RAND published a report a couple of months ago that was mandated by the US Congress, looking at American plans to withdraw from Iraq and critiquing and evaluating them. RAND first of all looked at sources of the threat to Iraqi stability and concluded that the principal threats did not come from marginal extremists, from Al Qaeda or from elements outside the political system. In fact the main threats came from elements that are currently in the political system but might withdraw from it under some conditions. I’ll go through some of these threats. The threat that RAND assessed as the most serious – and Deborah has already mentioned this – is not the tensions between Shia and Sunni but the tensions between Arabs and Kurds. This is most dangerous because these are the factions that are most heavily armed, for one thing, and therefore the most capable of actually sustaining a large-scale civil war and not the kind of irregular civil war that you saw in 2006-2007, in which only one side had heavy weapons and a capacity to take and hold territory, but in which both sides have that capacity. In that kind of civil conflict casualties tend to escalate, refugees tend to escalate; it is a much more violent kind of conflict. So that’s the rift that could be most dangerous and difficult to handle. It may also be the more likely. A second of course is the familiar Sunni-Shia divide. There is continuing tension which could again become a source of violence on a large scale. Finally there is Shia-Shia tensions – that is, between the more extreme factions like those associated with Moqtada al-Sadr and those that are more mainstream and more thoroughly integrated into the political system. At the moment, all of these are inside the tent; they are all participating in the political system. The objective obviously should be to keep them in that system, which means among things that they all need to perceive benefits from participating in that system. A study of post-conflict reconstruction shows that the most dangerous period in these kinds of societies is not the run-up to elections. In the run-up to elections everyone is on their best behavior – they are trying to win votes. It is the aftermath of elections in which the power-sharing decisions have been made and there are inevitably relative losers, and these relative losers – there is no tradition of good losers or loyal opposition – and so this is the period of maximum danger. I think we saw that with the last Iraqi elections, that the greater violence occurred after the elections and not before. So the fact that things are fairly quiet at the moment should not be too much of a source of confidence that they could not get worse. In addition to the internal sources of conflict which I have mentioned there are obviously the important effects of external actors, and in particular of Iraq’s near neighbors. There, our report assessed that the only neighbor that was likely to intervene overtly was Turkey. Turkey is the only neighbor that would under conceivable circumstances – and actually quite conceivable circumstances – actually invade Iraq. It has done so periodically over the last several years and it could do so again with much higher levels if provoked in certain conditions. Indeed this could be one of the consequences of a deterioration in Arab-Kurdish relations. The countries that are likely to intervene covertly would be Syria and Saudi Arabia on behalf of the Sunnis and Iran on behalf of the Shia – and indeed potentially Iran on behalf of some Shia as opposed to others, although by and large Iran has hedged its bets and provided support to all of the Shia factions. Again, we do not assess any of these interventions as likely, at least at high levels, unless a deterioration of relationships among the main Iraqi actors that are in the political system at the moment were to break down, offering opportunities and provoking that kind of external intervention. So what are the conclusions for American policy? First of all, we assess the current schedule for withdrawals which has us removing all so-called combat troops by next summer but redefining a number of combat troops as non-combat troops in the process. So although the US will withdraw a significant component of its current capabilities between the elections in (ideally) January and the summer, they will leave behind a number of what are called advise and assist brigades which retain very substantial combat capabilities although combat is not their principal mission. Their principal mission is to partner, train and mentor Iraqi units. The schedule is feasible provided the conditions that I set out – that is, no major falling out among the main parties in the Iraqi political system – develop. Secondly, that the US should withdraw last from the areas that are most volatile and most likely to become flashpoints, which include in particular the contested areas between Kurdish and Arab Iraq, like Kirkuk and other areas along that divide. That should be the last area from which US troops should leave. Finally, the US needs to begin to give serious consideration to what kind of role it intends to play in Iraq and what kind of relations it wants with Iraq after 2011. The process of training and equipping and supporting Iraq’s own security forces has progressed considerably over the last several years and in many respects these forces are increasingly capable of standing on their own and should be by the end of 2011. But there are some things that they are not going to be ready to do, including defending Iraqi airspace and assuring Iraqi sovereignty over its airspace. That is something they are not going to be able to do by the end of 2011. There are other, more limited areas where some further sort of external assistance is likely to be necessary. One of those areas is to continue to monitor and mediate along the Arab-Kurdish divide. We do not believe those issues will be settled by 2011 and at the moment the US is playing an important role by being in communication with both sides, by mediating individual pursuits which could escalate if they were not controlled. While you do not necessarily need a large armed force to continue to provide that, there probably does need to be some sort of external monitor and facilitator to play that role after 2011. Clearly the US needs to look at its post-2011 role in Iraq in a broader regional context. What sort of long-term role does it envision for itself in the Gulf, in the Middle East? My personal view there is that we ought to be over time looking to a return to the equilibrium that existed from the British withdrawal in the 1950s until the American entry in 1991. That is, you had a prolonged period during which there were no Western forces in the Gulf. You had visits, you had over-the-horizon presence, you had small facilities where ships could come in and refuel. But you had no ground forces and in fact no air forces throughout the region, and the region remained stable. It is worth remembering, as we tend to be very concerned about Iran and the rise of Iranian power, that it was not Iran that precipitated the American engagement in this region: it was Iraq. It was Iraq that brought us in the first time, in the first Gulf War; it was Iraq that kept us there after the first Gulf War; it was Iraq that brought us in even more heavily since. So you can conceive of an equilibrium in that region which does not require a major Western military presence and I believe in the long term that ought to be our objective. I also do not believe it is an objective that can be reached early. I think it requires a good deal of time and a changed relationship with Iran, among others, before it becomes feasible, but I do believe that it ought to be the declared US long-term objective. Thank you. Michael Corbin:  First of all, I am honored and humbled to be here at an organization that has so many people that I have followed in their footsteps, who have been so successful or not in the region, but as an Arabist I have to say when I start talking about Iraq that Iraq was the reason that Arabists fell out of favor. Arabists are in favor now but we never know what Iraq may do to our futures, so I stand here humbled by that prospect. It is an honor to talk about Iraq. I am going to try to be brief to allow questions and talk about what the administration is focused on now. When I left Baghdad in July I said I would keep to the mantra that things are changing in Iraq in a way that they have not changed in any of the countries that I have had the pleasure of serving in (sometimes twice). After three months out of Iraq, there are changes going on every day that are significant. For any expert to keep track of what’s going on in Iraq it is necessary to keep in touch with what’s going on in the ground. That of course leads to the question: Iraq 2020? This is a very difficult discussion but let me frame what the administration is focused on and what we are working on. Really there are two transitions that we are looking at now that we think will lay the groundwork for our relationship as we go ahead past 2012 and towards 2020. The first is the major transition from a military/security-driven relationship to a civilian, traditional diplomatic partnership. That is very important and I will talk about some of the elements there. The second is the transition that is going on within Iraq, the transition from a government that had sectarian conflict in 2006-2007, had violence, an economy that was in shambles, to where we are now and what prospects we see. So I’m talking about two transitions; let me start with the military to civilian transition. We now currently have about 116,000 troops in Iraq. We are going to go down to 50,000 by August 2010 per the president’s plan – this is the withdrawal timetable. They will have a role after August 2010 but that will be a non-combat role. They will still be present and they will still have some influence. However what we are building now is a civilian relationship that is not so security-driven. We have something called the Strategic Framework Agreement which was signed with much less fanfare at the same time as the security agreement (the equivalent of a SOFA, what the Iraqis call the withdrawal agreement). The Strategic Framework Agreement provides the basis for traditional modes of diplomacy and traditional interaction with the government of Iraq in some sort of a partnership. We have these relations around the world that vary from once a year partnerships to once every month partnerships. So when we look at the Strategic Framework Agreement, which was launched at the end of the last administration and then recertified by Hillary Clinton with Prime Minister Maliki in July, we see a framework that actually has a lot of support in Iraq. I would argue that most Iraqis, except some of the extremist trends, believe that Iraq should have a partnership with the United States and the Strategic Framework Agreement possesses the factors necessary for that. It includes economic cooperation, cooperation in assistance, education, health, culture. It provides a basis where we can bring to bear some of the traditional tools of diplomacy using agencies that have been present in Iraq for six years but were present under a military umbrella. This is very important for the US military because they view, as the US military presence goes down, that there should be an increase in the US civilian presence. I was the political-military affairs counselor in Baghdad and my tried-and-true speech was how few Foreign Service officers there were and how there was not going to be a new surge in Iraq of civilians that would equal the 116,000 that they have now. We are however going to go to some traditional, tried-and-true methods through AID, through police training – which will switch from a military program to a civilian program – to some of the traditional educational and cultural partnerships, where we will have a better opportunity of working with the Iraqis in partnership not under the shadow or not under the overall security concerns. This is an important transition and it will take time. We are not going to be able to go straight from where we are today to some sort of traditional partnership overnight. This is why the 2012 date is important, because we have a time to set up these institutions and support Iraqi institutions as we go forward. Our plan is to continue things that are sort of an aberration for diplomats. We have these things called Provincial Reconstruction Teams. Even though we are out of the business of reconstruction we are going to keep our provincial presence around Iraq into 2012. That is very important. The cost of these is enormous and it shows our commitment to remaining engaged in Iraq that we will keep this presence around Iraq. We are also going to coordinate very closely with the advise and assist brigades that Ambassador Dobbins referred to. What will these advise and assist brigades do if they are not doing combat and training? They are going to be involved in, we believe and we are working with the military very closely, supporting the provincial diplomatic presence, supporting UNAMI, supporting the EU, supporting NGOs that need security and logistics support. This is a very important part of our transition. The other aspect of the transition is to get the agencies that were there – such as Agriculture and Commerce – to move out from under the military funding umbrella, which is a wonderful umbrella to be in given how many billions of dollars are available there. We want a traditional Commerce office, a traditional Agriculture office under the Foreign Agricultural Service. We want DOJ and rule of law present as they are in many other embassies and with many other countries around the world. We have a basis to establish that in the platform that we have built in Baghdad and the platforms that we will have around the provinces in Iraq. This transition is not going to be easy. State resources are going to be taxed as we do this. We have the competing challenge of staffing Afghanistan. We have the competing challenge of the number of people who have already gone to serve in Iraq; a similar factor that we have in the military is that people are going to have to go back to Iraq to help with the civilian buildup. But we are working very closely and Ambassador Chris Hill and General Odierno in Iraq are working very closely on the parameters of this cooperation as we transition. The second transition is very important also. That is the transition that is going on in Iraq. What I saw that was one of the most important events during my eleven months in Baghdad was the transition on January 1 of this year when the UN mandate ended and Iraqis declared full sovereignty over their country. There really was a change in the air when that happened. Iraq is pursuing a sovereign course that depends on Iraqi institutions and the Iraqi government taking the lead in a way that represents an Iraq nationality, an Iraq status. I think elements of that are in politics. We saw that in January with the provincial elections. Though Ambassador Dobbins is correct that there was violence after the 2005 elections, there was not violence after the provincial elections. In fact people tended to accept the results, which were quite surprising. Sectarian-based parties did badly. Iranian-affiliated parties did badly. Traditional incumbents did badly. This is where we first saw the open list system where individuals were held accountable. Prime Minister Maliki and the State of Law coalition did very well based on security and services. We saw a real participation in the process that we believe will be reflected in the national elections. These of course are more important but as Deborah said at the beginning, the fact that the parliament did come to agreement on an election law – including discussion of the issue of Kirkuk – was extremely important. If you recall the provincial elections went ahead without Kirkuk being included and that led to a veto by President Talabani last summer that caused all sorts of problems. So we are seeing a political participation that we believe shows a transition in the politics. As we talk about the major transition in Iraq I think what we are looking at is politics rather than sectarian violence, and politics is going to be messy. We are going to continue to see political interests rather than the institutional interests that are so important for that society. That is where I go back to the Strategic Framework Agreement. One of the key motivations of that agreement is to build the institutions that will continue as we go through a period of government formation, which will be the first politically messy time that we have. It took almost five months to create a government after 2005. Politics remains the same and politics may even be more important so we do not see that being necessarily a shorter period this time. We need those institutions – economic, educational. We need those links that we can work with the Iraqi government as we go forward. I think that is extremely important for our partnership and the way we will move. I think what is also important is to talk about Iraq’s regional role. This is where I have to say that I have seen Maliki did confound most of the predictions that he would not be able to stand up to Iran and that the Iraqi political parties themselves viewed that he would be a weaker leader. I have seen that there is an Iraqi nationalist trend that has led to a resistance to Iranian influence. I would say that when we look at how relations with Turkey – and it is quite clear that Turkey was the country that has most recently invaded Iraq – when you look at the dramatic change in one year in relations with Turkey, where Turkey is working now both with Baghdad and with the regional government of Kurdistan on a way forward based on shared economic interests and shared interests against terrorism; when you look at the visits by Prime Minister Erdogan and President Gul to Baghdad, Prime Minister Maliki going to Turkey, we really see the Turkish approach (which is also domestic, on how to deal with the PKK) reflects a new maturity in that relationship which is extremely positive. One of the things that I was involved in was setting up a joint counterterrorism center aimed at the PKK in Kurdistan that included people both from Baghdad and the KRG and Turkey, which was unthinkable two years ago. When you look at Iran, when you look at the fact that Iranian-affiliated parties did poorly in the provincial elections, when you look at the change from more hard-power covert action to much more soft power, trade delegations from the Iranian side, we see that the Iraqis are making clear that they are not going to be subservient to Iranian desires. There will of course be influences from Iran but we see that’s positive. Switching to the GCC, Saudi Arabia is key there. We understand that the problem with a Shia government for Saudi Arabia will remain but we are hoping that after this election there will be an understanding that there is likely to be into the future a Shia government in Iraq that the region needs to deal with. We saw that at the end of last month when the Egyptians had a strategic framework of their own which they launched with Iraqis. Egypt has just sent its ambassador back after the tragic assassination of an ambassador in 2006. They have sent an ambassador now to Iraq for the first time. That link – having Sunni countries link with Iraq is key to some of the issues that we have talked about in general. I could talk about some other relations but I want to skip to give more chance for questions. Let me talk about challenges. Since security is always in the media I will start with that although I do not think that is the biggest challenge. From Yemen to Morocco, the way Arab governments deal with security threats is through effective intelligence. I think the high-profile attacks, the bombings of August 19 and October 25, underline for the Iraqis that intelligence is the key to being able to defeat the enemy. They need to go from five different intelligence services to at least coordinating their intelligence. That is something that they are addressing that they do realize. We see the extremists started with targeting economic infrastructure, moved to encouraging sectarian discord by mosques and churches, but now we see that they are targeting – as Deborah said at the beginning – indiscriminately targeting buildings, government buildings, which will have no resonance in the Iraqi populace. Of course, the Kurd-Arab conflict. This is going to be something that takes years to resolve. Right now everyone is working together because the Kurds will have a very significant role to play in government formation after the election. That is something that with these coalitions that have been formed, there may be a basis for agreement after the elections. But it will continue to be the most potentially destabilizing issue. Roles of sectarian parties and Sunni disaffection. The Sunnis are participating in the national elections – this is key. We will see, but they are so divided and their expectations are very high for these elections. We need to see what happens there after the election results are in. Sectarian parties – so far the coalitions have focused on multi-sectarian coalitions. If Maliki joins the INA (the Shia coalition) this would be a sign that they are moving away from multi-sectarian coalitions and that would be a bad sign. Corruption. We talked about the influence of corruption on the economic system and the political system. This is going to be something that we have to redouble our efforts to address. The role of a strong judiciary, which is one of the things that we are promoting, is key to that – as well as a free press, which we are also very keenly focused on. One of the greatest economic dangers is return to a statist, centrally run economy. That is something that is of great concern. We have had some progress – the oil bid rounds going to private international companies – but this is going to be an issue that we have to watch very closely because the tendency is centrally controlled economic policies which will not be good for the future and will not bring the private investment, which is key. Protection of minorities. It is absolutely critical that the minority populations – who unfortunately tend to be mainly in the Kurd-Arab fault lines – are protected. The government of Prime Minister Maliki has taken steps and there are protections there but this is going to be a continual issue that we follow. So with those challenges that we are going to be addressing next year, we have a way forward that is going to be based on a Strategic Framework Agreement and on a partnership and a commitment and a withdrawal timetable for our US troops. Thank you. Rend Francke:  My thanks first to the Middle East Institute for inviting me to speak at this forum. Thanks, Deborah, for moderating the panel. I am glad to be speaking after Ambassador Corbin because it gives me something to slightly punt against. As everybody knows, at midnight plus five (not midnight less five) the Iraqi parliament finally voted for an election law for the elections in January 2010. It is as good a law as one expects; probably not what the political parties wanted but certainly a law that is good for the country. But the debate began last June – I was in Iraq at that time when the debate began – and it has been fierce and very acrimonious and very adversarial. The debate encapsulated the divisions and the distrust and the uncertainties that dominate the political arena and the fragility of the state structure and the continuing vulnerability of Iraq to external influences. All of this came together in the debate of the election law. The fact that the law was passed through debate in parliament rather than shootouts in the streets is a testament to how far Iraq has come along. There could have been a political meltdown. With the help of the allies, the United States, Sistani and so on, there was not a political meltdown and we have the law. In official Washington circles there is this myth that Iraq is now becoming a normal country. You hear this very often: we want a return to normal relations and so on, because Iraq is normal. Well, Iraq is anything but normal – and with good reason actually. Iraqis, you could say, are redefining their state. You could say they are reinventing their state. In the process all the received truths that Iraqis have inherited are subject to doubt, subject to questioning and rejection, and also subject to competing ambitions and mutual fears. Everything is on the table. Internally, Iraq suffers from tensions and conflicts that could return it to a state of chaos as in 2006; and externally, it is buffeted by rival agendas from its neighbors both close and far. In spite of the dangers, let’s point to some positive elements in Iraq – there are many. Most of these positive elements have been cited so far but let me go through them very quickly. The virtual disappearance of sectarian violence – I won’t say it is 100 percent gone but it is almost gone. Indeed the drop in all kinds of violence in Iraq despite the uptick over the last few months, which I think is also connected to the elections and is likely to go past the elections through the formation of a government. But the violence, unlike the violence previously, is not to overthrow the new state but to shape it to the will and the image that those perpetrators wish. This is how I would explain it, that it is an effort to mold the political process rather than to negate it entirely. And, the impact of this violence on the political process and the social fabric is far less damaging than the sectarian killings than we saw in 2006-2007, which really did threaten to undermine the entire Iraqi state and society. The other positive parts of the procedure is, as mentioned, the disaffection of the population at large with the use of religion as a symbol for politics and the political process, and the recognition finally by the political elite that they must respond to this rejection of the population. Therefore the political parties have been compelled to take on a more national rhetoric, to move away from at least overt sectarian rhetoric, and to begin to project national platforms. Whether this is sincere or not is another question, but the mere fact that the political parties are moving in that direction is in itself a positive factor. The fact that they are responding to public opinion on this is an important positive element. We now actually have public opinion in Iraq, whether it is through the press or through nongovernmental associations and so on, that can have an impact on the political process. That is a big advantage. The very fluidity, and I would say the sort of protean nature, of the political scene is encouraging. If you simply look at the elections in December 2005 and the provincial elections of January 2009 and the line-up for the elections for January 2010, you can see the progression from starkly sectarian, starkly ethnically based election lists to a much more diverse group with diverse messages, diverse combinations. Shia now compete against Shia. If Maliki goes in separately and the ISCI-led group goes in separately, they will be competing against each other. Similarly, Sunni groups will be competing against Sunni groups. The breakup of the monolithic United Kurdish Front into the KDP and the PUK on the one hand and the Goran (“change”) group on the other is not only unprecedented but unexpected, and in fact is probably the most momentous change in Iraqi politics today. So we see a lot of movement in the political process. The open list system is a great advantage for democracy. The provinces and single districts are moving the process toward greater transparency and accountability. But along with all this, I want to talk about some of the problems that the next government will face. First of all, sectarianism. It is still a political reality. Some of the political groups are trying to disguise it under new rhetoric. We have new names for political parties that project a more national image. But the sectarian fears – mutual fears, conflicting ambitions – are still under the surface and still ultimately what governs the relationship between the political groups. If you look at the two major coalitions – the coalition of Prime Minister Maliki, the State of Law, and the coalition that is led by the Supreme Council – they really are Shia groups with token Sunni participation. If you look at all the names that are in there and you look at the platform when they make the announcements, those are Shia parties with only a sprinkling of Sunnis. The Tawafuq is an unabashedly Sunni group. The Kurds of course run on their own platform. Really the only two lists in the coming elections that can claim to be balanced between Sunni and Shia are the lists of Jawad Bulani, the current minister of interior, and Ali Allawi, who was the former prime minister. Other than that you do not have truly balanced Shia-Sunni lists. So sectarianism and all the tensions that arise from it is still an undercurrent and I think can still undermine the political process, because Sunni and Shia have very different interpretations of what the state should be like, what the identity of the state is. Apropos of this, I don’t think talking about a Shia government is very helpful to this process and to reconciliation between Shia and Sunnis and bringing them together on a shared vision of what the state is. So long as we continue to talk about a Shia government that we are defining it in sectarian terms both within Iraq and to the outside world, and I think this is a major problem that the US government ought to be thinking about. Another very threatening element is the weak institutions of the state. More than six years after the war and three and a half years of the current government, Iraq cannot be said to have institutions or a truly functioning state. The Iraqi people are getting extremely unhappy about this. The voter turnout in January for the provincial elections was merely 51 percent, which was a great disappointment to the political groups and really is a signal that the population at large is losing credibility in the state and the functioning of the state. (When I say “the state” I don’t just mean the Maliki government, I mean the executive branch and the parliament.) There are the trappings of statehood – a constitution, elected parliament and so on – but far greater energy is today invested by the political elite in acquiring and consolidating their own power and prerogatives than in building institutions and ensuring that the parts of the state work together in harmony and as a whole. Most ministries don’t function properly. Parliament has been paralyzed over numerous issues and has been extremely unproductive. There is mutual hostility between ministries, between the government and the parliament, and the prime minister and the presidential council. This has been a theme for the last three and a half years. The state really is fairly dysfunctional. There is a lot of ad hoc decision-making, a lot of mismanagement and nowhere is this lack of institutionalization, the inability to make things work together and fit in together – nowhere is it more dangerous than in the security sector. We saw that in the double explosions that occurred in October; there was mutual blaming, mutual recriminations between the ministry of interior, the ministry of defense, the prime minister’s office. Each one of them blamed the other because each one claimed that the job of securing Baghdad was not theirs but belonged to somebody else. This kind of disorganization in the system cannot but undermine the security at times when the insurgency has not died out. A third problem is the lack of definition of what the state is, what are its characteristics; there is no common agreement as to what Iraq is. We have a constitution but the constitution within it carries a clause that says it should be amended. The amendment should have happened a long time ago and in fact there has been a constitutional review committee functioning for the last three years; it presented its last report last June. Yet many of the cardinal issues that divide Iraq have not been resolved either within the constitution or by the constitutional review committee. There are tensions between provinces and national government, among the provinces themselves, certainly between the national government and the Kurdish Regional Government; there are problems over overlapping authorities or undefined authorities; there are tensions in the distribution of resources and so on. The Kurdish issue absolutely encapsulates all these question marks about the nature of the Iraqi state. It is a byproduct. Although the Kurdish region is recognized by everyone as a federated area within a greater Iraq, there is no consensus on the degree of federation, the degree of authority, the degree of powers, the distribution of resources between that Kurdish area and the rest of Iraq. But the same is true of all parts of Iraq, including the provinces. There was a provincial powers law that was passed in 2008 and already both the provinces – the provincial councils – and the national government are looking at that law and saying this is not a sufficiently clear law, that there are areas that still need to be revisited. Somebody has already touched on the question of Iraq’s relationship with the region. First of all, Iran and Turkey – there is hardly ever an absence of either Turkish or Iranian delegations or vice versa (Iraq is going to Turkey and Iran). Whether this constitutes influence – overt or covert, as Ambassador Corbin said – certainly because of the weak government in Baghdad, there is a power vacuum in Iraq. This power vacuum will be filled. There are competing regional agendas that wish to fill that power vacuum, be it Turkey, Iran, some of the GCC countries (notably Saudi Arabia), Syria – the Iraqis often accuse several of these countries of interfering in its affairs. But in the end, until and unless there is a competent and capable Iraqi government, the invitation to interference is always going to be there. Finally, there is the perception here in Washington that for the moment our attention should be on Afghanistan. I would like to posit that in fact the future of the Middle East region is not in Afghanistan, but it can be in Iraq. The way that Iraq goes is going to determine how this region goes. The impact of what Iraq does or fails to do is going to reverberate through the region in a way that Afghanistan will not necessarily do so. The horizon is 2005, I guess, not 2020, but the next government will have a lot of challenges. Thank you. Ali Allawi:  I would like to start by thanking the Middle East Institute for inviting me to this panel. I think it was Louis Mayer or somebody like that who said you should not make predictions, especially about the future. But I will stick my neck out and try to remain true to the title of the panel, which is “Iraq 2020.” I used to believe that history was formed by events, leaders, personalities and so on, but having gone through the experience of the last few years and even few decades regarding Iraq I believe there are also underlying forces, underlying currents that are equally if not more important than events designed by policymakers and individuals. These are what the great French historian Braudel called “long duration.” This is the format I am going to use to try to visualize the kind of Iraq that we may see in 2020. Before we do that, I will spend a few minutes reviewing past decades in Iraq, their beginning and end, and see how in some cases predictions based on just events of the moment and the prescriptions of policy planners lead nowhere. In the 1950s Iraq was known as the most advanced developing country in the Middle East. It started with a massive increase in oil revenues. It was part of the Baghdad Pact, the anti-communist pact based on the Iraqi-Turkish-Pakistani-Iranian-British alliance, backed ultimately by the United States. We ended that short decade of the 1950s with a world-class revolution, as far as we were concerned, which eliminated the monarchy, took us out of the Baghdad Pact and put us firmly into the camp of the neutrals (and for a short time, in the camp of the pro-communists). The 1960s, you could not make any predictions starting from 1960 because Iraq was neutral or pro-communist but ended up as an Arab nationalist regime dominated by the Baath Party, interspersed with several coups d’état and attempted coups d’état. The 1970s, or the long 1970s as I call them, was the period where the Baathist dictatorship consolidated itself and ended up in one of the great disasters of modern Middle Eastern history: the Iran-Iraq war. That decade was dominated by the war but was then punctuated by another incredible move. If you started the 1980s thinking that Iraq is going to dominate the Middle East by neutralizing the Iranian revolution, you ended up with the invasion of Kuwait. If you started predicting in 1990 what will happen in 2000, you had Iraq under sanctions and under international control. Of course if anybody looked at Iraq in 2000, they would hardly predict where we are today. So it could be a foolish act, what I am trying to do. All I am trying to note here is a warning of caution that whatever we may think ought to happen will not necessarily happen. I will try to divide my views on Iraq in terms of a number of conceptual categories. One of them relates to the political divisions inside the country. We have heard about the terrible nature of sectarianism and how bad it is and so on. Will the basis of politics in 2020 be based on sectarianism, religious politics, a kind of Iraqi nationalism or a variant of modern liberal democratic thought? If I was going to stick my neck out I would say no, it will be based on sectarian affinity. Several decades of democratic politics in Lebanon have not really changed the patterns of voting. I think in Iraq most Shia will continue to vote for Shia and most Sunnis will continue to vote for Sunnis, and most Arabs will continue to vote for Arabs and most Kurds will continue to vote for Kurds. Whether this is done through a monolithic sectarian group or whether through individual groups or parties that focus on sectarian identity, I think it will probably be the latter. It will not be definitively sectarian but there will not be a national basis which voters cross ethnic and sectarian boundaries. I find that difficult to see how this would happen. So for better or worse, the “longue durée” that affected Iraq in 2003 was a fundamental shift in power from one community to the next, if that is how you want to view the progress of Iraqi politics. Many Iraqi politicians, now that this is safely behind us, still view it in these terms. The institutions that have emerged as a result of the 2003 upheaval, are they going to last? I think some of them will: parliament, parliamentary forms of government, electoral politics – these will continue to be the mechanism by which disputes are resolved in Iraq. But whether this means that there is a deep democratic and parliamentary culture that has emerged – again, sticking my neck out, I would say no. Parliament will be a mechanism by which conflicts are resolved and negotiated but it will not necessarily have a life of its own; neither will democratic culture and the understanding of it, in terms of various institutions or what Tocqueville called the “habits of the heart.” This will be a long, long time before they are inculcated, if at all, into the Iraqi body politic. We may tolerate each other and accommodate each other but that is a far cry from believing in the ideals of classical liberal democracy. In the area of economics, what kind of economy are we likely to see? Are we likely to see one that is dominated by the state? Are we likely to see a market-driven economy? Are we likely to see a combination of the two? Again, taking the past as prologue and sticking my neck out, unless there are some very important and radical shifts in policy, I believe that Iraq will be a state-dominated economy or a statist economy, where the major elements that constitute an economic order – apart from the oil sector – which is highly improbable that it would be in any sense or form allowed to be privatized or to have major private players in it. The other aspects of the economy will continue to be dominated by the state and the various institutions associated with economic activity will be, I believe, subject to the usual rules of patronage and so on. Under this general framework, I think there will be a reasonable scope for the private sector but it will have to operate in an environment that will be dominated by the state, by state-owned organizations and enterprises, and an environment which will be tilted definitively in that direction. Will economic policy be any different in the next ten years than it was in the last six or seven years? Again, unless some dramatic changes are made in the way in which economic policy is projected or transferred to specific rules and regulations and policy decisions, I think it will be one that will be driven by impulse, by short-term needs, by short-term considerations – in spite of the fact that we are part of the World Trade Organization and will be subject to constant pressure from our friends and allies to toe the line. In reality this has had very little effect in Iraq and I do not think it will – if you project the trend line – it will be an economic policy that would be by and large one that will respond to the exigencies of the moment. Looking at the security sector, especially the military and the internal security services, will these be able to maintain public order? They have two functions in any state: one is to defend the frontiers and the other is to maintain public order in case of breakdown in civil order. I think they will be able to maintain the external frontiers of the state against any threats that may emanate from whichever country. Unless these threats are so overwhelming and so immediate and concern the national security and threats of countries like Turkey, I think by and large very few countries will try to attack Iraq as long as the US military is one way or another in the country. Yes, our military will be able to maintain the borders. Will it be able to maintain and control civil disturbances? I think yes. I believe the state will always have predominance over any single individual group that may arise to threaten it, including a recombined insurgency (which I think is highly improbable anyway). It may be a serious problem if there is a direct confrontation between the state and the Kurdistan Regional Government. I hope that does not happen but we are speaking here theoretically. Will the current military disposition allow the government to control serious shifts in regional and national frontiers? Probably not. I think the utmost will be done to avoid such a likelihood. Will the security services do their job of finding out the actions of insurgents, malefactors of all kinds who are trying to disrupt and destroy the political order? I think yes. They are becoming more and more adept at that. I think they are learning quite a lot in terms of modern security and interrogation methods. In spite of the flaws and faults of the last few months, in time they are growing. However, we have several of them now. We have one security service that is by and large related to countermanding threats coming from Iran. We have one security service that is connected to the prime minister’s office. We have one that is connected to the military, we have one that is connected to the ministry of interior. So depending on the strength of these institutions, it will wax and wane as to what their priorities are. Will we have a national security service in 2020 that will obey the instructions of the government and abide by the constitution in the way that happens in most modern countries? I would say yes and no. They will still be subject to local pressures and local threats but the trend line there is the right direction. In terms of Iraq’s international relations, how will these relationships look? There are several key actors here and each one of them has a profound influence on the future course of events in Iraq. The most important obviously – that is non-regional – is the United States. Will the Iraqi relationship with the United States be along the lines in which it is envisaged in the security agreement? In the non-military side, non-security side, I would say yes. In the sort of softer areas of economic, cultural and social interchange and so on, I think yes, this is probably one of the cornerstones that one can build on. I can envisage a country in 2020 that has a large number of, for example, graduates who came from the United States; a large number of non-governmental organizations, a large number of cultural offices and exchanges. So that relationship, at least at the cultural level, will be maintained if not strengthened. How will Iran’s relationship with Iraq be? I think it is to do with the general pattern in which Iraq is going to resolve its regional issues, whether we are going to continue to act as a one-off partner in the area or whether we try to weave ourselves in a broader way into a larger economic and political framework that would include countries like Turkey, Iran, even Syria and possibly the GCC. If something like that evolves, as in the manifest interest of the countries of the area, then perhaps we will be able to create a regional economic confederation that will transcend the current limitations that we have. Will this happen in 2020? I think the odds are possibly in that direction. We see greater interest on the part of Turkey to reconfigure its power base in the Middle East. Iran also has, whether with or without the current structure of government, an important economic and political relationship with Iraq that must not be ignored. There are other factors that are at work that have not been looked at. One of them is the age of the population. We have a very young population and also a rapidly growing population. We have a population that has been very badly impoverished. Per capita income in Iraq in real terms in 1978 was nearly $3,000 – about three times what it is now. So we have had a real diminution of people’s incomes and stature. Ultimately a lot depends on the flow of oil and whether the current agreements that we have entered into or subsequent agreements have the potential of doubling Iraq’s oil every four years. If that happens then one of the important and critical bottlenecks that can stop us from achieving a more benign environment in 2020 – the financial state of the country – will be resolved. Lastly, I think in terms of state-periphery relations, will Iraq be a centralized state with a powerful central government and weak provincial authorities? The answer, I think, is no. I think already we have moved into a decentralized level but not one that would lead to the replication of the Kurdistan arrangement in other parts of Iraq. But we are more of a federal state and I think we will continue to be that in 2020. There are other issues that I do not have time to talk about but this is the general framework. Thank you very much. Deborah Amos:  Thank you. We have about fifteen minutes for questions and lots of them. A lot of them are bunched around external neighborly influence. We had a panelist in our last panel who announced that Kuwait would be participating in the Iraq election. Let me ask both Mr. Dobbins and Rend, your assessment of outside interference; what makes you think that Syria will interfere in Iraq on behalf of the Sunnis, one questioner asks; and about Turkey’s role after the US withdrawal. James Dobbins:  I think Iran’s behavior is likely to be more a function of its relations with the United States than its interest in Iraq. Its interests in Iraq are not inconsistent with those of the United States or for that matter inconsistent with those of Iraq. It wants a unified Iraq, albeit not a particularly strong or challenging Iraq. That’s what it has at the moment and there’s no particular reason to destabilize it unless Iran decides to do so for reasons that revolve around their relations with the US. So the degree to which tensions with the US increase over extraneous issues – the nuclear issue being the principal one likely to intensify conflict – will be the most important determinant of Iranian behavior over the next few years, as it relates to Iraq. In terms of Turkey, it will be the behavior of the Kurds – both the PKK and also on the border region and the minorities in the border region – that will be most likely to provoke some kind of intervention. I think those are the dangers. They are not insurmountable and it is not inevitable that there will be intolerable levels of interference, but it is certainly possible. Rend Francke:  I would differ with that slightly. I think a lot has to do with the way that Iran and Turkey see themselves in the region – in other words, the way they define their role in the region. I do not think that, for example, for Turkey the only issue in Iraq is the Kurds. It used to be at a certain point but we have seen Turkey evolve politically and we have seen it redefine its regional role. I think therefore its relationship with Iraq will transcend or go beyond this interest in the Kurds. Similarly, Iran sees a role for itself in the region that is not only connected with the US but is much broader. So they will continue to have an interest in Iraq beyond the narrower interests. By the way, those who know history know that Iraq – and Baghdad in particular – was throughout the 16th and 17th century subject to waves of successive invasions from Persia at one time, Turkey at the other time, and it would change hands all the time. The other thing to point out in all of this is that because over the last several years, since 2003, Iraq has not clearly defined itself as an Arab state, for example – not that I am suggesting it needs to – but in the past there was always a host, there was always a context for Iraq, which was the Arab world. That tended to slightly ease off – possibly Iranian pressure or Turkish pressure and so on – but now Iraq does not necessarily recognize its Arabness and its belonging to an Arab world. That makes the regional influences and agendas much sharper – they come into much sharper focus. Deborah Amos:  There is a series of questions on the issue of corruption I would like to ask Michael Corbin and Ali Allawi. Transparency International has named Iraq third from the bottom but it is also endemic – if you want a passport, it is $300 to the guy behind the desk. It is not just institutional, it is across the board. I wonder if both of you can speak to – you generally said it was an issue of free press and the judiciary. How long do we wait for that? Is it already in place before that happens? Michael Corbin:  Just quickly, it is about a free press that is willing to publicize these cases. It is about a judiciary that is willing to present cases about them. It is about a government that is willing to actually prosecute them. This is where I think institutions in Iraq are developing. The Council of Representatives is taking on its role of calling ministers who are accused of corruption. There is a lot more to do – Iraq has a tradition of a fairly independent judiciary and I think there is a basis to work with there. I think this will be a focus we have to work on and I think Iraq may be ahead of some other countries in the region in terms of what we have to work with to address this issue. Ali Allawi:  I’m afraid I slightly disagree. I think corruption in Iraq is really institutionalized, in the sense that it is part and parcel of whatever you want to do with the government. The fact of the matter is that a lot of – especially the larger cases of corruption – were exposed by the press. A lot of the actors were known. But there was neither the political will to bring them to task nor, might I add, an international environment that helped or supported the Iraqi desire to bring these people to justice. The scale of corruption in some of the ministries really goes beyond the normal 5 percent of whatever it is that people charge in commissions. It goes into theft of state assets and entire budgets. To some extent this is so interwoven with the political parties and the power structures that it is very difficult, except when things become so obvious and so immediately tangible, as happened in the case of corruption in the ministry of trade – it is institutionalized because in the past although the state was corrupt in the Saddam period, it basically managed the corruption. There was a very powerful force called the security forces which if people did not toe the line as to how much they could take, they were sanctioned. This is gone. The various institutions that managed the process of uncovering corrupt practices and so on are themselves infiltrated and subverted. The government constantly changes tack as to how to manage and go after those who indulge in these practices. So I think it will stay with us for some time to come. Deborah Amos:  Let me ask the panel in general: is there a place for high-ranking Baathist members of the former regime, such as diplomats or ministers not accused of human rights abuses, to take part in politics? Rend Francke:  There are two levels to this. First of all, in the constitution the Baath Party is banned. So I think that somebody who is running under the banner of the Baath Party would not be able to run for anything. The other part of it is that the de-Baathification law has been replaced by “accountability and amnesty.” I believe in it the people who have not committed crimes can participate in government. I think above a certain rank they cannot but they can retire, they can be pensioned off. Below a certain rank, and that rank is fairly high, they can participate in anything they wish. That is the sort of de jure part of it but in fact I think the Baathis are still regarded, even if they were lower-ranking, as very suspect. I’m sure they would be hounded out of office, out of their jobs. So the laws and the reality do not necessarily match. Ali Allawi:  I think the underlying premise of this question is that those who came after 2003 do not have the necessary qualifications and gravitas, as it were, to run the state. We had this cadre of people whose only fault was that they joined the Baath Party, otherwise they were incredibly competent. I personally don’t believe that. The high Baathist officials, some of them were good, some of them were not – like what we have after the invasion. Nevertheless, a lot of Baathis – and some of them extremely high-ranking – managed to infiltrate the political process by joining political parties and their sins were forgiven. I remember when I was in the government there were several incidents of very high-level Baathis who for one reason or another were exempted from the de-Baathification measures. So it is not really a hard and fast rule that if you are a senior Baathist somehow or another you are not allowed to enter into political practice unless your livelihood, as it were, your iron ball is broken. This is not the case. With that in mind, I still maintain that these people were working for a state that by and large put us into two wars and was responsible for creating the circumstances by which our country was invaded. So I cannot by any standard see why they should be allowed to misgovern the country again. James Dobbins:  I think the scale of de-Baathification has been somewhat exaggerated in popular imagination and popular perception. The de-Baathification process affected 1 percent of Baath Party members. In other words, only one in a hundred of Baath Party members were affected, which meant it was 0.1 percent of the population as a whole – one person in a thousand. So it was far less sweeping than it generally appeared to be. In gross numbers the numbers were fairly high – several tens of thousands of officials lost their positions. Unlike de-Nazification, where a much higher percentage (25 times higher percentage) not only were banned from public office but were banned from anything except manual labor, in Iraq they were only banned from public office and could hold any other profession they chose. So the total numbers were more limited than generally appreciated. In fact the total numbers were probably not very different than the number of officials that change jobs when Democrats replace Republicans in this country, if you had all state, local and federal elections at the same time; then the turnover in patronage positions would be on a somewhat similar scale. It is not unusual that the new politicians – like Mr. Allawi, who took office in 2003 – would expect to find positions in the administration for their supporters rather than Saddam’s. That is how our system works and it is certainly how other systems that are even more patronage-driven than ours work. So I’m afraid we are going to have to largely live with those consequences, whether or not there may have been some degree of unfairness with respect to individuals. Deborah Amos:  We have time for one more question. I’d like to start with Michael Corbin for this one. This conference opened with an American ambassador criticizing this administration by saying we are not paying enough attention to Iraq, that Afghanistan has sucked all of our resources away and we are in danger of not paying enough attention. Do you find any truth in that criticism? Michael Corbin:  I think we will always be criticized but I think that is why this transition from a security-based relationship to a relationship based on a broader partnership is so important. I think President Obama made very clear in his Camp Lejeune speech that we do have a commitment to Iraq and we are committed through 2012 with the military and then beyond that in terms of the Strategic Framework Agreement. So we will face this criticism, it is something we will work with all the time. But we think we have partners in the Iraqis who want to work on institution-building and on the economy principally. James Dobbins:  We still have almost twice as many troops in Iraq as we do in Afghanistan. We certainly have a much larger number of diplomats and civilians in Iraq than we do in Afghanistan. So while there certainly has been a shift in public attention and probably a shift in attention by the president and his principal advisors in terms of where they are spending their time, I don’t think it has yet translated into a shift in resources. I do think there is one area where I am slightly critical of the administration. I don’t see enough attention being paid to the regional aspects of stabilizing Iraq. We have a special envoy for Afghanistan who spends a lot of time talking to Pakistan and China and trying to talk to Iran, engaged in regional diplomacy designed to promote convergent pressures on the Afghans from regional powers who have influence. I don’t think we’re doing enough of that with respect to Iraq. It’s not a job that Chris Hill can do from Baghdad. While I’m not sure that this administration needs yet another czar, it is a job that at the moment is going begging. Deborah Amos:  Rend, does this administration need to do more in a country that you called anything but normal? Rend Francke:  First of all, I would agree with James Dobbins that there is not a go-to person on Iraq. You really cannot think of the vice-president as the go-to person, he has got other things. So I think something like that would be helpful. I do think that more diplomatic engagement – for example, on the Strategic Framework Agreement, which was signed in late 2008, very little was done. None of the committees that were supposed to be set up and functional actually were functioning. At one point they eliminated the political-diplomatic committee. It is only with the most recent trip of the prime minister here that something began to move forward and the Strategic Framework Agreement began to be implemented. This is not just for a lack of interest on the Iraqi side. I think there was a lack of attention also on the American side. As I say, I do believe that the future of the region – of the Middle East proper – is highly dependent on which way Iraq goes. Therefore I think it behooves the United States to be more engaged. Ali Allawi:  I think somewhat differently. I think the US military presence in Iraq, in terms of its fighting Al Qaeda, fighting insurgents and acting as a stabilizing element internally, should come to an end. I think we are now in a different phase in the political culture of the country in the post-2003 period. The first one started in 2003 and ended sometime around 2007. The presence of the US military may of course help in terms of controlling extreme bouts of violence but it also stops the Iraqi security services themselves from becoming more directly engaged in this process. Nevertheless, I think if the United States wants to maintain its role and have some kind of return on this investment they have made in Iraq in life and treasure, it is far better done and exercised in the softer areas. Here I don’t mean just diplomatic and political but in terms of cultural and economic support – especially economic support – where a large part of the stabilization of the country and turning it into a modern state is going to rest. So the US should really change gears and it may already be doing that without actually articulating it, so that the military presence is then phased out within President Obama’s timeframe and replaced by a far more benign but focused set of activities and institution-building in the economic area. If that happens I think the US will be relatively secure in terms of the return on its engagement with Iraq. Iraq will be not just a long-term ally because of the military aspects of it but an ally because of a set of interwoven and interconnecting interests. Deborah Amos:  Thank you so much, and thank you, audience, for being so patient.
About this Transcript: Assertions and opinions in this Transcript are solely those of the above-mentioned author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Middle East Institute, which expressly does not take positions on Middle East policy.   Speaker Details Michael Corbin is Deputy Assistant Secretary of State. Rend al-Rahim Francke is Executive Director of the Iraq Foundation. Ali Allawi is former Iraqi Minister of Trade and Defense. James Dobbins is Director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at RAND. Deborah Amos covers Iraq for NPR News and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.