A PRACTICAL PROPOSAL TO EXIT IRAQ
Oct. 2005
By Ted Pincus
We’re stumped. No way out.
We can’t stay mired in the sand for years, as the neocon hawks insist. It’s unthinkable to say we won and walk away, as the doves demand.
But there’s a third ornithological alternative. Call it The Phoenix solution.
In boxing, when there’s excessive bleeding, you separate the adversaries, especially when they were coerced into the ring together in the first place.
When you cut through all the chatter, there’s one basic reason that we face endless bloodshed that has prevented our departure: Sunni paranoia that as a 20% minority, it will be forever outvoted and dominated in any form of “free democratic” Iraq. It’s the terror of this prospect that has generated its own reign of terror and will sustain it ad infinitum. The fact is that 95% of the insurgent attacks have been initiated by Sunni Arabs, primarily against Shiite and Kurdish troops, police and civilians. Finding a way to overcome Sunni fear holds the key to a peaceful exit. And how has history shown that we resolve a bitter ethnic dispute? By separating the parties, making each feel secure, and giving the underdog a bone he can’t refuse – a portion that is more than his fair share. You pacify even the most rabid suicidal fanatic by taking away a cause to die for.
That solution could be embodied in a new strategy not yet considered by American, Mideast or world leadership: a Confederation of Iraqi States with a three way partition administered by NATO. In summary, it would create an independent Sunni state –Babylonia (20% of the population); an independent Kurdistan (Kurds, Turkomen,Chaldeans, 17% of the population); and an independent Shiite Sumeria (63% of the population), all under the continued umbrella of a joint border protection force and an oil revenue-sharing guarantee.
IS THERE A NEED FOR A NEW INITIATIVE?
Despite the Bush administration’s grasping for auspicious straws in the wind, any realistic assessment (including those by some of our own generals) is grim. Iraq has successfully elected an interim central government dominated by Shiites whom the Sunni has sworn to thwart. On Oct. 15 the Iraqi people went go back to the polls and ratified a referendum to a Shiite-drafted constitution, written over the loud objections of most Sunni leaders. The content reflects what many observers feel is a worrisome regression into a theocracy dominated by clerics administering Shariah law, rigidly restraining women’s rights and posing low tolerance for non-believers. While it does propose creation of semi-autonomous regions of the country, it still paves the way for permanent Shiite supremacy as the faction holding the overwhelming majority trump card.
Since the ratification was passed despite the violent protests of the Sunnis, the current rate of bloodshed –highest since the 2003 invasion—has continued and is predicted to intensify, perhaps provoking Lebanon-style all-out civil war. On any basis, we’re at square one, or worse.
WHY SHOULD THE PROBLEM GO AWAY?
Let’s pause and look at it from the underdog’s perspective. As an Iraqi Sunni, you’ve been on top since the Sixteenth Century when the Ottomans threw out the last of the Mongols and gave your tribes the prime position. You’ve been the elite political force, the intelligentsia, with overriding economic control, and enjoying a highly secular regime. And for 35 years, you were Saddam’s Baath brethren and beneficiaries—riding herd over the majority—until his downfall. Suddenly you’re faced with a U.S.-imposed “democracy” in which your adversaries, with a massive majority led by clerics take control. There you sit, five million surrounded by 22 million non-Sunni neighbors. You now face the prospect of being allocated the pauper’s share of government posts, top jobs, access to ports (you have none), access to oil reserves (you have almost no wells) and a legal and religious climate wholly unacceptable despite the fact that the Shiites are your Arab brothers and even the non-Arab Kurds are mostly of the same Muslim faith. To avoid this fate, you believe, may be well worth dying for. And there’s always the hope that you’ll fight and survive, grind down the Americans after 10 or 20 years of occupation, see them finally exit like the French in Algeria, and then take over the country by force.
It’s unlikely that our sheer perseverance will pay. The latest Brookings Institution report shows the insurgents growing in two years from an estimated 3,000 fighters in Aug. 03 to 18,000 as of Aug. 05. In that month there were 90 U.S. troops killed vs. 36 in the same month of 03; 608 wounded vs. 181 in the 03 month; 280 Iraqi security personnel killed vs. 50 in Aug. 03; and 600 Iraqi civilians killed vs. 225 in Aug. 03. And on this past Sept. 14 alone, there were eight separate terrorist bombings that killed 160 and injured 500, for which various Al Queda/Sunni groups took full credit, including their Abu Musab Zarqawi who brazenly declared “all-out war on Iraq’s Shiites.” One underlying tangible motivation is that the expected Sunni share of future national oil revenue was 20% in 03 and now estimated to be as low as 5%, Brookings says.
Little wonder that the Sunnis are pessimistic about a fair share, and thousands of them took to the streets in Tikrit alone on Aug. 29 and since, to denounce the draft. Sunni Alliance spokesman Adnan Muhammad Salman al-Dulaimi has urged his followers to flatly reject the constitution next month. Meanwhile, Iraq Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has turned a deaf ear.
But the sorry state of affairs should surprise no one (least of whom those CIA officials who had accurately predicted it four years ago). Iraq is an artificial land, never meant to be a united country. It was invented out of the post World War I mess inherited by Winston Churchill as British Colonial Secretary charged with making sense of the defeated Ottoman Empire. The three major ethnic groups were united by decree, with the Sunnis given the upper hand through most of the Twentieth Century. This force togetherness laid the same seeds of ultimate violence as had similar cases such as Sudan, Rwanda, Serbia and Chechnya. An age-old folly repeated once again.
HOW WOULD A PARTITION PLAN WORK?
There is every historical precedent for the potential success of a partition solution, witness the Balkans, or better yet the eminently positive separation of Slovakia from the Czech Republic in 1993. It’s notable that in the same year, Eritrea was finally separated from Ethiopia and has become the comeback story of East Africa.
Essentially, the reorganization of Iraq must be implemented not by the U.S. or Coalition Command, nor the Oil-For-Food-tarnished U.N. which has lost much credibility, but by The North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO has earned its stripes repeatedly, most particularly in the Balkans. Symbolizing Europe, it would have far greater respect in the Mideast than any other entity. Those with whom I’ve spoken who see practical sense in the idea include former U.S. Ambassador and State Dept. Director of Central European Affairs J.D. Bindinagle, and University of Chicago Professor of Near Eastern Civilization Ilai Alon.
While there would continue to be an operating umbrella government, it would serve only three purposes: 1. a joint military force to protect Iraq borders; 2. the production and distribution of all Iraqi oil and natural gas; and 3. operation of the refineries,pipelines and ocean tanker ports on the Persian Gulf, on behalf of all three states of the Confederation.Beyond this, each of the sectors would operate as an autonomous entity with total freedom to draft its own constitution, establish its own legal system government and taxation power. Each would have sovereign status and representation at the U.N.
The partitioning would be along existing ethnic population lines, with the arable land split almost evenly. The Kurdish north would be centered at Kirkuk (pop.728,000), Irbil( pop. 839,000) and Mosul (pop. 1.7 million). The Shiite south would be centered at Basra (pop.1.3 million),Karbala (pop. 549,000 ) and Amarah ( pop. 340,000). The Sunnis would occupy the central sector as most do now, anchored by Baghdad (pop.5.6 million), Hilla (pop. 524,000) and Samarra (pop.200,000).
Of Iraq’s total population of 27 million, some would be voluntarily relocated to unify them with their ethnic countrymen. There would be myriad sacrifices, but far smaller ones than the certain casualties of continued strife. Consider that the partition of India in 1947 precipitated a massive transfer of Hindus to India and Muslims to Pakistan –but with positive long term blessings, as did the transfer of populations in Post World War II Poland, Czechoslovakia and Germany, for improved quality of life.
HOW TO SELL IT?
Confronting the idea would be three major hurdles, each surmountable.
The key to the entire plan is to feed the underdog. This means a willingness by the Shiites and Kurds to hand the Sunnis more than they deserve in economic benefits, namely a 25% share of the nation’s oil and gas net revenues. With 80% of the producing oil output in the south and virtually the balance in Kurdistan, and the most gas coming from Kirkuk, Bai Hassan and other fields in the north, and the Zubair field in the south, the Shiites and Kurds have a monopoly that needs equalization. By taking slightly less than their rightful share, and providing a permanent guarantee to the Sunni, they hopefully would be buying a lasting peace.
In selling this idea to Shiite and Kurd leadership, we’re halfway home. Top Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has already gone on public record as supporting the concept of autonomy for the three regions. While some independent clerics like Moktada al-Sadr and Ayatollah Muhammad Yacoubi have opposed the concept, some of the most politically powerful Shiites in Iraq, like Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, a key mover in the influential Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, are ardent supporters.
The Kurds meanwhile have already achieved semi-autonomy and leaders like Massoud Barzani would likely be the first in line to concede oil revenues in exchange for peaceful independence and guaranteed protection on the borders of Trukey and Syria –two nations never enamored with the prospect of a free Kurdistan. And although Saddam’s “Arabization” programs forced an influx of Sunni who would now be relocated –mainly from the province of Nineveh—this once again may be a trade-off well worth the disruption.
The second hurdle will be selling the idea to Europe. Sending a NATO peacekeeping force to Iraq is no small order. But today, with the massive immigration of Muslims into Central Europe (new total: over 20 million, and in France alone representing 11% of the nation’s population) and with the London subway bombings as a clear warning, Europe may see that it has far more to lose from a sustained conflagration in Iraq. It may well have a new perspective of the return-on-investment in stepping off the sidelines and playing a key role to bring lasting peace (including the reduction of risk of oil shortages and further price inflation).
Far fetched? Bear in mind that NATO has a stellar history of successes in peacekeeping –in contrast to the U.N.’s deer-in-the-headlights paralysis that cost a half-million lives in Rwanda. NATO has acted decisively in bringing peace to Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, and now has trained,airlifted and directed 1,300 African Union peacekeepers that are bringing the Darfur genocide to an end. Also bear in mind that NATO is already actively fighting terrorism in Central Asia, where four provisional reconstruction teams are in West Afghanistan, providing security, rehab and extending the government authority beyond Kabul. Its International Security Assistance Force is now heading south to secure that area as well. Lastly, bear in mind that NATO is already in Iraq, quietly and with meager publicity. Its Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said last month that “we recognize a continuing commitment to the democratic process in Iraq,” as exemplified by NATO’s current training of Iraqi troops at Ar Rustimiyah.
The third hurdle of course would be to gain consent from the U.S. government. A year ago, the idea would have been dismissed categorically as one offering less than the president’s vision of “mission accomplished.” But today’s altered circumstances present a far more compelling incentive to consider this compromise solution as a welcome gift. In the wake of wholly unanticipated Katrina, the president’s overall approval rating has sunk to a record low of 40%, according to the latest Wall St Journal/NBC News poll, and it says 55% favor bringing our soldiers home. Meanwhile, the latest NY Times/CBS News poll shows only 35% with confidence about his ability to handle Iraq. It reported 52% of Americans call for immediate withdrawal “even if it means abandoning the president’s goal of restoring stability to that country.” An increasing number of experts are predicting that our chances of ultimately surmounting the rising, resilient, ubiquitous insurgency are no better than they were in Viet Nam, or the French experience in Algeria and Indo-China, or the Israeli experience in Lebanon. With the U.S. Army spread thin, with the National Guard unable to keep a serviceman on active duty longer than 24 months, with no chance for a draft as a congressional election year looms, The White House has few options. And on the flip side, what greater political bonanza could the GOP find in 06 than a rapid,decisive shift of our responsibilities to NATO, winning credit for implementing a peaceful solution, and bringing the boys home?
BUT COULD WE PULL IT OFF?
Follow the money. Look at the fundamental math. Iraq and the U.S.—besides offering ethnic separation and security—can virtually buy themselves a lasting peace. Consider that Iraq is sitting on 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves –the third largest known deposit in the world—and 110 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Yet its current production of only 2.2 million barrels of oil per day helps boost its gross domestic product to only $54 billion. Only 10% of the nation has been geologically explored and only 17 of 80 discovered oil fields have even been developed. Of Iraq’s 1,500 operating wells, about 1,000 are in the Shiite south (mainly the Rumaila field) with its high quality “sweet crude” that contains far lower percent of hydrogen sulfide and burns much cleaner. Moreover, most Iraqi oil in both north and south is some of the world’s least costly to extract because it lies close to the surface, with an average cost of less than $2 per barrel to produce.
But even with its present export limitations, Iraq’s 2.2 million daily barrels now enjoy record price levels of over $65 (before tanker costs), translating into projected annual gross revenues of $52 billion, not to mention natural gas and other exports. If the Sunni Federal Republic of Babylonia were handed a guaranteed 25% share or perhaps $13 billion (i.e., $2.6 million per capita), gross before transport, it would be receiving over a $2.5 billion premium per year above its proportional share. Obviously, if peace can at last permit expanded exploration and production activity, the numbers would soar.
At the same time, to fund a NATO administration of the regional separation, relocation and confederation government, would it not be a bargain for the U.S., after withdrawal, to subsidize NATO with the full $5 billion per month we now spend fighting a futile conflict? After two years of that subsidy, the cost requirement may well drop to the $1 billion monthly level, eminently affordable by our treasury.
HOW TO INITIATE?
We should launch the idea with a bold-stroke proposal placed upon the world stage by Sec. of State Condi Rice, delivered through our Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad to Iraq President Jalal Talabani and the National Assembly. It would call for a petition, signed by leaders of all three ethnic factions plus the National Assembly and President Bush, to be presented to NATO’s Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, formally requesting a NATO partnership with the Iraq legislature to create the Confederation and partition the country. The proposal would include an expeditious U.S. withdrawal and guarantee of a full 24 months subsidy followed by the reduced level of funding.The Rice manifesto would be communicated on a basis not to appear that we’re “dumping” Iraq on a NATO fall-guy, but with full recognition (and humility) that the U.S. has outlived its usefulness as chief rebuilder of that nation. It would candidly acknowledge that, mindful of the lightning rod of anti-Western resentment that we’ve become, the most constructive alternative is to shift the security and administration role to a respected neutral organization, while we continue to provide the bulk of financial support for security, humanitarian aid, and rebuilding.
Rather than earning Arab and worldwide derision and condemnation as a cut-and-run coward, we’d earn respect as an imaginative facilitator who was able to break a deadly, mindless,hopeless logjam. We’d be seen as an enlightened benefactor that truly learned lessons from history, finally realizing that if we had acted as decisively in Bosnia or Rwanda, over a million lives would have been saved. The fact is that we need this turnabout in world opinion as much as we need to stabilize Iraq and shed its burden. Harvard’s Kennedy School Professor Joe Nye, a colleague of mine on the board of Business for Diplomatic Action, said last month that the U.S. image has sunk so low that in key countries like Jordan and Pakistan, more people say they have confidence in Osama bin Laden than in George W. Bush. And even in traditionally allied nations like Sweden,Netherlands and Germany, a very recent survey showed “the arrogance of the American people,exacerbated by our current visa policies, were the key drivers of anti-American sentiment,” which is still on the rise, according to our BDA Chairman, DDB’s Keith Reinhard. Our record $700 billion foreign trade deficit this year is another painful symptom of our popularity level.
What we need most is a new mindset. We must awaken to the realities of the Iraq enigma, not spitefully throw the Sunni Babylonians out with the Baath water, and recognize that Iraq’s “successful” constitutional vote was not a triumph of freedom but only another incendiary bomb. Rethinking our hapless Mideast aspirations, we must be willing to end up with three stable, workable little democracies rather than blindly insisting on a single, flawed, fantasy democracy doomed to disintegration. In the real world of cold, corporate calculation, companies that consolidated unwisely in the 80’s and 90’s are busy spinning off and separating the misfitting parts into more sensible entities. The same logic should set a pattern for geopolitics. Blood is forever thicker than mandates.
Will the proposal fly? House International Affairs Chairman Henry Hyde reacted very positively to the idea and has turned it over to Donald Rumsfeld and John Bolton with his personal endorsement. It poses a tough question for the administration. But considering the morass engulfing us, exactly what do we have to lose in asking ?
-30-
Mr. Pincus is a columnist of The Chicago Sun Times, a Finance Professor at DePaul University, a communications consultant to Fortune 500 companies, and the former owner of the nation’s third largest independent public relations agency.
A PRACTICAL PROPOSAL TO EXIT IRAQ
Oct. 2005
By Ted Pincus
We’re stumped. No way out.
We can’t stay mired in the sand for years, as the neocon hawks insist. It’s unthinkable to say we won and walk away, as the doves demand.
But there’s a third ornithological alternative. Call it The Phoenix solution.
In boxing, when there’s excessive bleeding, you separate the adversaries, especially when they were coerced into the ring together in the first place.
When you cut through all the chatter, there’s one basic reason that we face endless bloodshed that has prevented our departure: Sunni paranoia that as a 20% minority, it will be forever outvoted and dominated in any form of “free democratic” Iraq. It’s the terror of this prospect that has generated its own reign of terror and will sustain it ad infinitum. The fact is that 95% of the insurgent attacks have been initiated by Sunni Arabs, primarily against Shiite and Kurdish troops, police and civilians. Finding a way to overcome Sunni fear holds the key to a peaceful exit. And how has history shown that we resolve a bitter ethnic dispute? By separating the parties, making each feel secure, and giving the underdog a bone he can’t refuse – a portion that is more than his fair share. You pacify even the most rabid suicidal fanatic by taking away a cause to die for.
That solution could be embodied in a new strategy not yet considered by American, Mideast or world leadership: a Confederation of Iraqi States with a three way partition administered by NATO. In summary, it would create an independent Sunni state –Babylonia (20% of the population); an independent Kurdistan (Kurds, Turkomen,Chaldeans, 17% of the population); and an independent Shiite Sumeria (63% of the population), all under the continued umbrella of a joint border protection force and an oil revenue-sharing guarantee.
IS THERE A NEED FOR A NEW INITIATIVE?
Despite the Bush administration’s grasping for auspicious straws in the wind, any realistic assessment (including those by some of our own generals) is grim. Iraq has successfully elected an interim central government dominated by Shiites whom the Sunni has sworn to thwart. On Oct. 15 the Iraqi people went go back to the polls and ratified a referendum to a Shiite-drafted constitution, written over the loud objections of most Sunni leaders. The content reflects what many observers feel is a worrisome regression into a theocracy dominated by clerics administering Shariah law, rigidly restraining women’s rights and posing low tolerance for non-believers. While it does propose creation of semi-autonomous regions of the country, it still paves the way for permanent Shiite supremacy as the faction holding the overwhelming majority trump card.
Since the ratification was passed despite the violent protests of the Sunnis, the current rate of bloodshed –highest since the 2003 invasion—has continued and is predicted to intensify, perhaps provoking Lebanon-style all-out civil war. On any basis, we’re at square one, or worse.
WHY SHOULD THE PROBLEM GO AWAY?
Let’s pause and look at it from the underdog’s perspective. As an Iraqi Sunni, you’ve been on top since the Sixteenth Century when the Ottomans threw out the last of the Mongols and gave your tribes the prime position. You’ve been the elite political force, the intelligentsia, with overriding economic control, and enjoying a highly secular regime. And for 35 years, you were Saddam’s Baath brethren and beneficiaries—riding herd over the majority—until his downfall. Suddenly you’re faced with a U.S.-imposed “democracy” in which your adversaries, with a massive majority led by clerics take control. There you sit, five million surrounded by 22 million non-Sunni neighbors. You now face the prospect of being allocated the pauper’s share of government posts, top jobs, access to ports (you have none), access to oil reserves (you have almost no wells) and a legal and religious climate wholly unacceptable despite the fact that the Shiites are your Arab brothers and even the non-Arab Kurds are mostly of the same Muslim faith. To avoid this fate, you believe, may be well worth dying for. And there’s always the hope that you’ll fight and survive, grind down the Americans after 10 or 20 years of occupation, see them finally exit like the French in Algeria, and then take over the country by force.
It’s unlikely that our sheer perseverance will pay. The latest Brookings Institution report shows the insurgents growing in two years from an estimated 3,000 fighters in Aug. 03 to 18,000 as of Aug. 05. In that month there were 90 U.S. troops killed vs. 36 in the same month of 03; 608 wounded vs. 181 in the 03 month; 280 Iraqi security personnel killed vs. 50 in Aug. 03; and 600 Iraqi civilians killed vs. 225 in Aug. 03. And on this past Sept. 14 alone, there were eight separate terrorist bombings that killed 160 and injured 500, for which various Al Queda/Sunni groups took full credit, including their Abu Musab Zarqawi who brazenly declared “all-out war on Iraq’s Shiites.” One underlying tangible motivation is that the expected Sunni share of future national oil revenue was 20% in 03 and now estimated to be as low as 5%, Brookings says.
Little wonder that the Sunnis are pessimistic about a fair share, and thousands of them took to the streets in Tikrit alone on Aug. 29 and since, to denounce the draft. Sunni Alliance spokesman Adnan Muhammad Salman al-Dulaimi has urged his followers to flatly reject the constitution next month. Meanwhile, Iraq Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has turned a deaf ear.
But the sorry state of affairs should surprise no one (least of whom those CIA officials who had accurately predicted it four years ago). Iraq is an artificial land, never meant to be a united country. It was invented out of the post World War I mess inherited by Winston Churchill as British Colonial Secretary charged with making sense of the defeated Ottoman Empire. The three major ethnic groups were united by decree, with the Sunnis given the upper hand through most of the Twentieth Century. This force togetherness laid the same seeds of ultimate violence as had similar cases such as Sudan, Rwanda, Serbia and Chechnya. An age-old folly repeated once again.
HOW WOULD A PARTITION PLAN WORK?
There is every historical precedent for the potential success of a partition solution, witness the Balkans, or better yet the eminently positive separation of Slovakia from the Czech Republic in 1993. It’s notable that in the same year, Eritrea was finally separated from Ethiopia and has become the comeback story of East Africa.
Essentially, the reorganization of Iraq must be implemented not by the U.S. or Coalition Command, nor the Oil-For-Food-tarnished U.N. which has lost much credibility, but by The North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO has earned its stripes repeatedly, most particularly in the Balkans. Symbolizing Europe, it would have far greater respect in the Mideast than any other entity. Those with whom I’ve spoken who see practical sense in the idea include former U.S. Ambassador and State Dept. Director of Central European Affairs J.D. Bindinagle, and University of Chicago Professor of Near Eastern Civilization Ilai Alon.
While there would continue to be an operating umbrella government, it would serve only three purposes: 1. a joint military force to protect Iraq borders; 2. the production and distribution of all Iraqi oil and natural gas; and 3. operation of the refineries,pipelines and ocean tanker ports on the Persian Gulf, on behalf of all three states of the Confederation.Beyond this, each of the sectors would operate as an autonomous entity with total freedom to draft its own constitution, establish its own legal system government and taxation power. Each would have sovereign status and representation at the U.N.
The partitioning would be along existing ethnic population lines, with the arable land split almost evenly. The Kurdish north would be centered at Kirkuk (pop.728,000), Irbil( pop. 839,000) and Mosul (pop. 1.7 million). The Shiite south would be centered at Basra (pop.1.3 million),Karbala (pop. 549,000 ) and Amarah ( pop. 340,000). The Sunnis would occupy the central sector as most do now, anchored by Baghdad (pop.5.6 million), Hilla (pop. 524,000) and Samarra (pop.200,000).
Of Iraq’s total population of 27 million, some would be voluntarily relocated to unify them with their ethnic countrymen. There would be myriad sacrifices, but far smaller ones than the certain casualties of continued strife. Consider that the partition of India in 1947 precipitated a massive transfer of Hindus to India and Muslims to Pakistan –but with positive long term blessings, as did the transfer of populations in Post World War II Poland, Czechoslovakia and Germany, for improved quality of life.
HOW TO SELL IT?
Confronting the idea would be three major hurdles, each surmountable.
The key to the entire plan is to feed the underdog. This means a willingness by the Shiites and Kurds to hand the Sunnis more than they deserve in economic benefits, namely a 25% share of the nation’s oil and gas net revenues. With 80% of the producing oil output in the south and virtually the balance in Kurdistan, and the most gas coming from Kirkuk, Bai Hassan and other fields in the north, and the Zubair field in the south, the Shiites and Kurds have a monopoly that needs equalization. By taking slightly less than their rightful share, and providing a permanent guarantee to the Sunni, they hopefully would be buying a lasting peace.
In selling this idea to Shiite and Kurd leadership, we’re halfway home. Top Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has already gone on public record as supporting the concept of autonomy for the three regions. While some independent clerics like Moktada al-Sadr and Ayatollah Muhammad Yacoubi have opposed the concept, some of the most politically powerful Shiites in Iraq, like Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, a key mover in the influential Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, are ardent supporters.
The Kurds meanwhile have already achieved semi-autonomy and leaders like Massoud Barzani would likely be the first in line to concede oil revenues in exchange for peaceful independence and guaranteed protection on the borders of Trukey and Syria –two nations never enamored with the prospect of a free Kurdistan. And although Saddam’s “Arabization” programs forced an influx of Sunni who would now be relocated –mainly from the province of Nineveh—this once again may be a trade-off well worth the disruption.
The second hurdle will be selling the idea to Europe. Sending a NATO peacekeeping force to Iraq is no small order. But today, with the massive immigration of Muslims into Central Europe (new total: over 20 million, and in France alone representing 11% of the nation’s population) and with the London subway bombings as a clear warning, Europe may see that it has far more to lose from a sustained conflagration in Iraq. It may well have a new perspective of the return-on-investment in stepping off the sidelines and playing a key role to bring lasting peace (including the reduction of risk of oil shortages and further price inflation).
Far fetched? Bear in mind that NATO has a stellar history of successes in peacekeeping –in contrast to the U.N.’s deer-in-the-headlights paralysis that cost a half-million lives in Rwanda. NATO has acted decisively in bringing peace to Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, and now has trained,airlifted and directed 1,300 African Union peacekeepers that are bringing the Darfur genocide to an end. Also bear in mind that NATO is already actively fighting terrorism in Central Asia, where four provisional reconstruction teams are in West Afghanistan, providing security, rehab and extending the government authority beyond Kabul. Its International Security Assistance Force is now heading south to secure that area as well. Lastly, bear in mind that NATO is already in Iraq, quietly and with meager publicity. Its Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said last month that “we recognize a continuing commitment to the democratic process in Iraq,” as exemplified by NATO’s current training of Iraqi troops at Ar Rustimiyah.
The third hurdle of course would be to gain consent from the U.S. government. A year ago, the idea would have been dismissed categorically as one offering less than the president’s vision of “mission accomplished.” But today’s altered circumstances present a far more compelling incentive to consider this compromise solution as a welcome gift. In the wake of wholly unanticipated Katrina, the president’s overall approval rating has sunk to a record low of 40%, according to the latest Wall St Journal/NBC News poll, and it says 55% favor bringing our soldiers home. Meanwhile, the latest NY Times/CBS News poll shows only 35% with confidence about his ability to handle Iraq. It reported 52% of Americans call for immediate withdrawal “even if it means abandoning the president’s goal of restoring stability to that country.” An increasing number of experts are predicting that our chances of ultimately surmounting the rising, resilient, ubiquitous insurgency are no better than they were in Viet Nam, or the French experience in Algeria and Indo-China, or the Israeli experience in Lebanon. With the U.S. Army spread thin, with the National Guard unable to keep a serviceman on active duty longer than 24 months, with no chance for a draft as a congressional election year looms, The White House has few options. And on the flip side, what greater political bonanza could the GOP find in 06 than a rapid,decisive shift of our responsibilities to NATO, winning credit for implementing a peaceful solution, and bringing the boys home?
BUT COULD WE PULL IT OFF?
Follow the money. Look at the fundamental math. Iraq and the U.S.—besides offering ethnic separation and security—can virtually buy themselves a lasting peace. Consider that Iraq is sitting on 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves –the third largest known deposit in the world—and 110 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Yet its current production of only 2.2 million barrels of oil per day helps boost its gross domestic product to only $54 billion. Only 10% of the nation has been geologically explored and only 17 of 80 discovered oil fields have even been developed. Of Iraq’s 1,500 operating wells, about 1,000 are in the Shiite south (mainly the Rumaila field) with its high quality “sweet crude” that contains far lower percent of hydrogen sulfide and burns much cleaner. Moreover, most Iraqi oil in both north and south is some of the world’s least costly to extract because it lies close to the surface, with an average cost of less than $2 per barrel to produce.
But even with its present export limitations, Iraq’s 2.2 million daily barrels now enjoy record price levels of over $65 (before tanker costs), translating into projected annual gross revenues of $52 billion, not to mention natural gas and other exports. If the Sunni Federal Republic of Babylonia were handed a guaranteed 25% share or perhaps $13 billion (i.e., $2.6 million per capita), gross before transport, it would be receiving over a $2.5 billion premium per year above its proportional share. Obviously, if peace can at last permit expanded exploration and production activity, the numbers would soar.
At the same time, to fund a NATO administration of the regional separation, relocation and confederation government, would it not be a bargain for the U.S., after withdrawal, to subsidize NATO with the full $5 billion per month we now spend fighting a futile conflict? After two years of that subsidy, the cost requirement may well drop to the $1 billion monthly level, eminently affordable by our treasury.
HOW TO INITIATE?
We should launch the idea with a bold-stroke proposal placed upon the world stage by Sec. of State Condi Rice, delivered through our Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad to Iraq President Jalal Talabani and the National Assembly. It would call for a petition, signed by leaders of all three ethnic factions plus the National Assembly and President Bush, to be presented to NATO’s Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, formally requesting a NATO partnership with the Iraq legislature to create the Confederation and partition the country. The proposal would include an expeditious U.S. withdrawal and guarantee of a full 24 months subsidy followed by the reduced level of funding.The Rice manifesto would be communicated on a basis not to appear that we’re “dumping” Iraq on a NATO fall-guy, but with full recognition (and humility) that the U.S. has outlived its usefulness as chief rebuilder of that nation. It would candidly acknowledge that, mindful of the lightning rod of anti-Western resentment that we’ve become, the most constructive alternative is to shift the security and administration role to a respected neutral organization, while we continue to provide the bulk of financial support for security, humanitarian aid, and rebuilding.
Rather than earning Arab and worldwide derision and condemnation as a cut-and-run coward, we’d earn respect as an imaginative facilitator who was able to break a deadly, mindless,hopeless logjam. We’d be seen as an enlightened benefactor that truly learned lessons from history, finally realizing that if we had acted as decisively in Bosnia or Rwanda, over a million lives would have been saved. The fact is that we need this turnabout in world opinion as much as we need to stabilize Iraq and shed its burden. Harvard’s Kennedy School Professor Joe Nye, a colleague of mine on the board of Business for Diplomatic Action, said last month that the U.S. image has sunk so low that in key countries like Jordan and Pakistan, more people say they have confidence in Osama bin Laden than in George W. Bush. And even in traditionally allied nations like Sweden,Netherlands and Germany, a very recent survey showed “the arrogance of the American people,exacerbated by our current visa policies, were the key drivers of anti-American sentiment,” which is still on the rise, according to our BDA Chairman, DDB’s Keith Reinhard. Our record $700 billion foreign trade deficit this year is another painful symptom of our popularity level.
What we need most is a new mindset. We must awaken to the realities of the Iraq enigma, not spitefully throw the Sunni Babylonians out with the Baath water, and recognize that Iraq’s “successful” constitutional vote was not a triumph of freedom but only another incendiary bomb. Rethinking our hapless Mideast aspirations, we must be willing to end up with three stable, workable little democracies rather than blindly insisting on a single, flawed, fantasy democracy doomed to disintegration. In the real world of cold, corporate calculation, companies that consolidated unwisely in the 80’s and 90’s are busy spinning off and separating the misfitting parts into more sensible entities. The same logic should set a pattern for geopolitics. Blood is forever thicker than mandates.
Will the proposal fly? House International Affairs Chairman Henry Hyde reacted very positively to the idea and has turned it over to Donald Rumsfeld and John Bolton with his personal endorsement. It poses a tough question for the administration. But considering the morass engulfing us, exactly what do we have to lose in asking ?
-30-
Mr. Pincus is a columnist of The Chicago Sun Times, a Finance Professor at DePaul University, a communications consultant to Fortune 500 companies, and the former owner of the nation’s third largest independent public relations agency.
A PRACTICAL PROPOSAL TO EXIT IRAQ
Oct. 2005
By Ted Pincus
We’re stumped. No way out.
We can’t stay mired in the sand for years, as the neocon hawks insist. It’s unthinkable to say we won and walk away, as the doves demand.
But there’s a third ornithological alternative. Call it The Phoenix solution.
In boxing, when there’s excessive bleeding, you separate the adversaries, especially when they were coerced into the ring together in the first place.
When you cut through all the chatter, there’s one basic reason that we face endless bloodshed that has prevented our departure: Sunni paranoia that as a 20% minority, it will be forever outvoted and dominated in any form of “free democratic” Iraq. It’s the terror of this prospect that has generated its own reign of terror and will sustain it ad infinitum. The fact is that 95% of the insurgent attacks have been initiated by Sunni Arabs, primarily against Shiite and Kurdish troops, police and civilians. Finding a way to overcome Sunni fear holds the key to a peaceful exit. And how has history shown that we resolve a bitter ethnic dispute? By separating the parties, making each feel secure, and giving the underdog a bone he can’t refuse – a portion that is more than his fair share. You pacify even the most rabid suicidal fanatic by taking away a cause to die for.
That solution could be embodied in a new strategy not yet considered by American, Mideast or world leadership: a Confederation of Iraqi States with a three way partition administered by NATO. In summary, it would create an independent Sunni state –Babylonia (20% of the population); an independent Kurdistan (Kurds, Turkomen,Chaldeans, 17% of the population); and an independent Shiite Sumeria (63% of the population), all under the continued umbrella of a joint border protection force and an oil revenue-sharing guarantee.
IS THERE A NEED FOR A NEW INITIATIVE?
Despite the Bush administration’s grasping for auspicious straws in the wind, any realistic assessment (including those by some of our own generals) is grim. Iraq has successfully elected an interim central government dominated by Shiites whom the Sunni has sworn to thwart. On Oct. 15 the Iraqi people went go back to the polls and ratified a referendum to a Shiite-drafted constitution, written over the loud objections of most Sunni leaders. The content reflects what many observers feel is a worrisome regression into a theocracy dominated by clerics administering Shariah law, rigidly restraining women’s rights and posing low tolerance for non-believers. While it does propose creation of semi-autonomous regions of the country, it still paves the way for permanent Shiite supremacy as the faction holding the overwhelming majority trump card.
Since the ratification was passed despite the violent protests of the Sunnis, the current rate of bloodshed –highest since the 2003 invasion—has continued and is predicted to intensify, perhaps provoking Lebanon-style all-out civil war. On any basis, we’re at square one, or worse.
WHY SHOULD THE PROBLEM GO AWAY?
Let’s pause and look at it from the underdog’s perspective. As an Iraqi Sunni, you’ve been on top since the Sixteenth Century when the Ottomans threw out the last of the Mongols and gave your tribes the prime position. You’ve been the elite political force, the intelligentsia, with overriding economic control, and enjoying a highly secular regime. And for 35 years, you were Saddam’s Baath brethren and beneficiaries—riding herd over the majority—until his downfall. Suddenly you’re faced with a U.S.-imposed “democracy” in which your adversaries, with a massive majority led by clerics take control. There you sit, five million surrounded by 22 million non-Sunni neighbors. You now face the prospect of being allocated the pauper’s share of government posts, top jobs, access to ports (you have none), access to oil reserves (you have almost no wells) and a legal and religious climate wholly unacceptable despite the fact that the Shiites are your Arab brothers and even the non-Arab Kurds are mostly of the same Muslim faith. To avoid this fate, you believe, may be well worth dying for. And there’s always the hope that you’ll fight and survive, grind down the Americans after 10 or 20 years of occupation, see them finally exit like the French in Algeria, and then take over the country by force.
It’s unlikely that our sheer perseverance will pay. The latest Brookings Institution report shows the insurgents growing in two years from an estimated 3,000 fighters in Aug. 03 to 18,000 as of Aug. 05. In that month there were 90 U.S. troops killed vs. 36 in the same month of 03; 608 wounded vs. 181 in the 03 month; 280 Iraqi security personnel killed vs. 50 in Aug. 03; and 600 Iraqi civilians killed vs. 225 in Aug. 03. And on this past Sept. 14 alone, there were eight separate terrorist bombings that killed 160 and injured 500, for which various Al Queda/Sunni groups took full credit, including their Abu Musab Zarqawi who brazenly declared “all-out war on Iraq’s Shiites.” One underlying tangible motivation is that the expected Sunni share of future national oil revenue was 20% in 03 and now estimated to be as low as 5%, Brookings says.
Little wonder that the Sunnis are pessimistic about a fair share, and thousands of them took to the streets in Tikrit alone on Aug. 29 and since, to denounce the draft. Sunni Alliance spokesman Adnan Muhammad Salman al-Dulaimi has urged his followers to flatly reject the constitution next month. Meanwhile, Iraq Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has turned a deaf ear.
But the sorry state of affairs should surprise no one (least of whom those CIA officials who had accurately predicted it four years ago). Iraq is an artificial land, never meant to be a united country. It was invented out of the post World War I mess inherited by Winston Churchill as British Colonial Secretary charged with making sense of the defeated Ottoman Empire. The three major ethnic groups were united by decree, with the Sunnis given the upper hand through most of the Twentieth Century. This force togetherness laid the same seeds of ultimate violence as had similar cases such as Sudan, Rwanda, Serbia and Chechnya. An age-old folly repeated once again.
HOW WOULD A PARTITION PLAN WORK?
There is every historical precedent for the potential success of a partition solution, witness the Balkans, or better yet the eminently positive separation of Slovakia from the Czech Republic in 1993. It’s notable that in the same year, Eritrea was finally separated from Ethiopia and has become the comeback story of East Africa.
Essentially, the reorganization of Iraq must be implemented not by the U.S. or Coalition Command, nor the Oil-For-Food-tarnished U.N. which has lost much credibility, but by The North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO has earned its stripes repeatedly, most particularly in the Balkans. Symbolizing Europe, it would have far greater respect in the Mideast than any other entity. Those with whom I’ve spoken who see practical sense in the idea include former U.S. Ambassador and State Dept. Director of Central European Affairs J.D. Bindinagle, and University of Chicago Professor of Near Eastern Civilization Ilai Alon.
While there would continue to be an operating umbrella government, it would serve only three purposes: 1. a joint military force to protect Iraq borders; 2. the production and distribution of all Iraqi oil and natural gas; and 3. operation of the refineries,pipelines and ocean tanker ports on the Persian Gulf, on behalf of all three states of the Confederation.Beyond this, each of the sectors would operate as an autonomous entity with total freedom to draft its own constitution, establish its own legal system government and taxation power. Each would have sovereign status and representation at the U.N.
The partitioning would be along existing ethnic population lines, with the arable land split almost evenly. The Kurdish north would be centered at Kirkuk (pop.728,000), Irbil( pop. 839,000) and Mosul (pop. 1.7 million). The Shiite south would be centered at Basra (pop.1.3 million),Karbala (pop. 549,000 ) and Amarah ( pop. 340,000). The Sunnis would occupy the central sector as most do now, anchored by Baghdad (pop.5.6 million), Hilla (pop. 524,000) and Samarra (pop.200,000).
Of Iraq’s total population of 27 million, some would be voluntarily relocated to unify them with their ethnic countrymen. There would be myriad sacrifices, but far smaller ones than the certain casualties of continued strife. Consider that the partition of India in 1947 precipitated a massive transfer of Hindus to India and Muslims to Pakistan –but with positive long term blessings, as did the transfer of populations in Post World War II Poland, Czechoslovakia and Germany, for improved quality of life.
HOW TO SELL IT?
Confronting the idea would be three major hurdles, each surmountable.
The key to the entire plan is to feed the underdog. This means a willingness by the Shiites and Kurds to hand the Sunnis more than they deserve in economic benefits, namely a 25% share of the nation’s oil and gas net revenues. With 80% of the producing oil output in the south and virtually the balance in Kurdistan, and the most gas coming from Kirkuk, Bai Hassan and other fields in the north, and the Zubair field in the south, the Shiites and Kurds have a monopoly that needs equalization. By taking slightly less than their rightful share, and providing a permanent guarantee to the Sunni, they hopefully would be buying a lasting peace.
In selling this idea to Shiite and Kurd leadership, we’re halfway home. Top Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has already gone on public record as supporting the concept of autonomy for the three regions. While some independent clerics like Moktada al-Sadr and Ayatollah Muhammad Yacoubi have opposed the concept, some of the most politically powerful Shiites in Iraq, like Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, a key mover in the influential Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, are ardent supporters.
The Kurds meanwhile have already achieved semi-autonomy and leaders like Massoud Barzani would likely be the first in line to concede oil revenues in exchange for peaceful independence and guaranteed protection on the borders of Trukey and Syria –two nations never enamored with the prospect of a free Kurdistan. And although Saddam’s “Arabization” programs forced an influx of Sunni who would now be relocated –mainly from the province of Nineveh—this once again may be a trade-off well worth the disruption.
The second hurdle will be selling the idea to Europe. Sending a NATO peacekeeping force to Iraq is no small order. But today, with the massive immigration of Muslims into Central Europe (new total: over 20 million, and in France alone representing 11% of the nation’s population) and with the London subway bombings as a clear warning, Europe may see that it has far more to lose from a sustained conflagration in Iraq. It may well have a new perspective of the return-on-investment in stepping off the sidelines and playing a key role to bring lasting peace (including the reduction of risk of oil shortages and further price inflation).
Far fetched? Bear in mind that NATO has a stellar history of successes in peacekeeping –in contrast to the U.N.’s deer-in-the-headlights paralysis that cost a half-million lives in Rwanda. NATO has acted decisively in bringing peace to Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, and now has trained,airlifted and directed 1,300 African Union peacekeepers that are bringing the Darfur genocide to an end. Also bear in mind that NATO is already actively fighting terrorism in Central Asia, where four provisional reconstruction teams are in West Afghanistan, providing security, rehab and extending the government authority beyond Kabul. Its International Security Assistance Force is now heading south to secure that area as well. Lastly, bear in mind that NATO is already in Iraq, quietly and with meager publicity. Its Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said last month that “we recognize a continuing commitment to the democratic process in Iraq,” as exemplified by NATO’s current training of Iraqi troops at Ar Rustimiyah.
The third hurdle of course would be to gain consent from the U.S. government. A year ago, the idea would have been dismissed categorically as one offering less than the president’s vision of “mission accomplished.” But today’s altered circumstances present a far more compelling incentive to consider this compromise solution as a welcome gift. In the wake of wholly unanticipated Katrina, the president’s overall approval rating has sunk to a record low of 40%, according to the latest Wall St Journal/NBC News poll, and it says 55% favor bringing our soldiers home. Meanwhile, the latest NY Times/CBS News poll shows only 35% with confidence about his ability to handle Iraq. It reported 52% of Americans call for immediate withdrawal “even if it means abandoning the president’s goal of restoring stability to that country.” An increasing number of experts are predicting that our chances of ultimately surmounting the rising, resilient, ubiquitous insurgency are no better than they were in Viet Nam, or the French experience in Algeria and Indo-China, or the Israeli experience in Lebanon. With the U.S. Army spread thin, with the National Guard unable to keep a serviceman on active duty longer than 24 months, with no chance for a draft as a congressional election year looms, The White House has few options. And on the flip side, what greater political bonanza could the GOP find in 06 than a rapid,decisive shift of our responsibilities to NATO, winning credit for implementing a peaceful solution, and bringing the boys home?
BUT COULD WE PULL IT OFF?
Follow the money. Look at the fundamental math. Iraq and the U.S.—besides offering ethnic separation and security—can virtually buy themselves a lasting peace. Consider that Iraq is sitting on 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves –the third largest known deposit in the world—and 110 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Yet its current production of only 2.2 million barrels of oil per day helps boost its gross domestic product to only $54 billion. Only 10% of the nation has been geologically explored and only 17 of 80 discovered oil fields have even been developed. Of Iraq’s 1,500 operating wells, about 1,000 are in the Shiite south (mainly the Rumaila field) with its high quality “sweet crude” that contains far lower percent of hydrogen sulfide and burns much cleaner. Moreover, most Iraqi oil in both north and south is some of the world’s least costly to extract because it lies close to the surface, with an average cost of less than $2 per barrel to produce.
But even with its present export limitations, Iraq’s 2.2 million daily barrels now enjoy record price levels of over $65 (before tanker costs), translating into projected annual gross revenues of $52 billion, not to mention natural gas and other exports. If the Sunni Federal Republic of Babylonia were handed a guaranteed 25% share or perhaps $13 billion (i.e., $2.6 million per capita), gross before transport, it would be receiving over a $2.5 billion premium per year above its proportional share. Obviously, if peace can at last permit expanded exploration and production activity, the numbers would soar.
At the same time, to fund a NATO administration of the regional separation, relocation and confederation government, would it not be a bargain for the U.S., after withdrawal, to subsidize NATO with the full $5 billion per month we now spend fighting a futile conflict? After two years of that subsidy, the cost requirement may well drop to the $1 billion monthly level, eminently affordable by our treasury.
HOW TO INITIATE?
We should launch the idea with a bold-stroke proposal placed upon the world stage by Sec. of State Condi Rice, delivered through our Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad to Iraq President Jalal Talabani and the National Assembly. It would call for a petition, signed by leaders of all three ethnic factions plus the National Assembly and President Bush, to be presented to NATO’s Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, formally requesting a NATO partnership with the Iraq legislature to create the Confederation and partition the country. The proposal would include an expeditious U.S. withdrawal and guarantee of a full 24 months subsidy followed by the reduced level of funding.The Rice manifesto would be communicated on a basis not to appear that we’re “dumping” Iraq on a NATO fall-guy, but with full recognition (and humility) that the U.S. has outlived its usefulness as chief rebuilder of that nation. It would candidly acknowledge that, mindful of the lightning rod of anti-Western resentment that we’ve become, the most constructive alternative is to shift the security and administration role to a respected neutral organization, while we continue to provide the bulk of financial support for security, humanitarian aid, and rebuilding.
Rather than earning Arab and worldwide derision and condemnation as a cut-and-run coward, we’d earn respect as an imaginative facilitator who was able to break a deadly, mindless,hopeless logjam. We’d be seen as an enlightened benefactor that truly learned lessons from history, finally realizing that if we had acted as decisively in Bosnia or Rwanda, over a million lives would have been saved. The fact is that we need this turnabout in world opinion as much as we need to stabilize Iraq and shed its burden. Harvard’s Kennedy School Professor Joe Nye, a colleague of mine on the board of Business for Diplomatic Action, said last month that the U.S. image has sunk so low that in key countries like Jordan and Pakistan, more people say they have confidence in Osama bin Laden than in George W. Bush. And even in traditionally allied nations like Sweden,Netherlands and Germany, a very recent survey showed “the arrogance of the American people,exacerbated by our current visa policies, were the key drivers of anti-American sentiment,” which is still on the rise, according to our BDA Chairman, DDB’s Keith Reinhard. Our record $700 billion foreign trade deficit this year is another painful symptom of our popularity level.
What we need most is a new mindset. We must awaken to the realities of the Iraq enigma, not spitefully throw the Sunni Babylonians out with the Baath water, and recognize that Iraq’s “successful” constitutional vote was not a triumph of freedom but only another incendiary bomb. Rethinking our hapless Mideast aspirations, we must be willing to end up with three stable, workable little democracies rather than blindly insisting on a single, flawed, fantasy democracy doomed to disintegration. In the real world of cold, corporate calculation, companies that consolidated unwisely in the 80’s and 90’s are busy spinning off and separating the misfitting parts into more sensible entities. The same logic should set a pattern for geopolitics. Blood is forever thicker than mandates.
Will the proposal fly? House International Affairs Chairman Henry Hyde reacted very positively to the idea and has turned it over to Donald Rumsfeld and John Bolton with his personal endorsement. It poses a tough question for the administration. But considering the morass engulfing us, exactly what do we have to lose in asking ?
-30-
Mr. Pincus is a columnist of The Chicago Sun Times, a Finance Professor at DePaul University, a communications consultant to Fortune 500 companies, and the former owner of the nation’s third largest independent public relations agency.
A PRACTICAL PROPOSAL TO EXIT IRAQ
Oct. 2005
By Ted Pincus
We’re stumped. No way out.
We can’t stay mired in the sand for years, as the neocon hawks insist. It’s unthinkable to say we won and walk away, as the doves demand.
But there’s a third ornithological alternative. Call it The Phoenix solution.
In boxing, when there’s excessive bleeding, you separate the adversaries, especially when they were coerced into the ring together in the first place.
When you cut through all the chatter, there’s one basic reason that we face endless bloodshed that has prevented our departure: Sunni paranoia that as a 20% minority, it will be forever outvoted and dominated in any form of “free democratic” Iraq. It’s the terror of this prospect that has generated its own reign of terror and will sustain it ad infinitum. The fact is that 95% of the insurgent attacks have been initiated by Sunni Arabs, primarily against Shiite and Kurdish troops, police and civilians. Finding a way to overcome Sunni fear holds the key to a peaceful exit. And how has history shown that we resolve a bitter ethnic dispute? By separating the parties, making each feel secure, and giving the underdog a bone he can’t refuse – a portion that is more than his fair share. You pacify even the most rabid suicidal fanatic by taking away a cause to die for.
That solution could be embodied in a new strategy not yet considered by American, Mideast or world leadership: a Confederation of Iraqi States with a three way partition administered by NATO. In summary, it would create an independent Sunni state –Babylonia (20% of the population); an independent Kurdistan (Kurds, Turkomen,Chaldeans, 17% of the population); and an independent Shiite Sumeria (63% of the population), all under the continued umbrella of a joint border protection force and an oil revenue-sharing guarantee.
IS THERE A NEED FOR A NEW INITIATIVE?
Despite the Bush administration’s grasping for auspicious straws in the wind, any realistic assessment (including those by some of our own generals) is grim. Iraq has successfully elected an interim central government dominated by Shiites whom the Sunni has sworn to thwart. On Oct. 15 the Iraqi people went go back to the polls and ratified a referendum to a Shiite-drafted constitution, written over the loud objections of most Sunni leaders. The content reflects what many observers feel is a worrisome regression into a theocracy dominated by clerics administering Shariah law, rigidly restraining women’s rights and posing low tolerance for non-believers. While it does propose creation of semi-autonomous regions of the country, it still paves the way for permanent Shiite supremacy as the faction holding the overwhelming majority trump card.
Since the ratification was passed despite the violent protests of the Sunnis, the current rate of bloodshed –highest since the 2003 invasion—has continued and is predicted to intensify, perhaps provoking Lebanon-style all-out civil war. On any basis, we’re at square one, or worse.
WHY SHOULD THE PROBLEM GO AWAY?
Let’s pause and look at it from the underdog’s perspective. As an Iraqi Sunni, you’ve been on top since the Sixteenth Century when the Ottomans threw out the last of the Mongols and gave your tribes the prime position. You’ve been the elite political force, the intelligentsia, with overriding economic control, and enjoying a highly secular regime. And for 35 years, you were Saddam’s Baath brethren and beneficiaries—riding herd over the majority—until his downfall. Suddenly you’re faced with a U.S.-imposed “democracy” in which your adversaries, with a massive majority led by clerics take control. There you sit, five million surrounded by 22 million non-Sunni neighbors. You now face the prospect of being allocated the pauper’s share of government posts, top jobs, access to ports (you have none), access to oil reserves (you have almost no wells) and a legal and religious climate wholly unacceptable despite the fact that the Shiites are your Arab brothers and even the non-Arab Kurds are mostly of the same Muslim faith. To avoid this fate, you believe, may be well worth dying for. And there’s always the hope that you’ll fight and survive, grind down the Americans after 10 or 20 years of occupation, see them finally exit like the French in Algeria, and then take over the country by force.
It’s unlikely that our sheer perseverance will pay. The latest Brookings Institution report shows the insurgents growing in two years from an estimated 3,000 fighters in Aug. 03 to 18,000 as of Aug. 05. In that month there were 90 U.S. troops killed vs. 36 in the same month of 03; 608 wounded vs. 181 in the 03 month; 280 Iraqi security personnel killed vs. 50 in Aug. 03; and 600 Iraqi civilians killed vs. 225 in Aug. 03. And on this past Sept. 14 alone, there were eight separate terrorist bombings that killed 160 and injured 500, for which various Al Queda/Sunni groups took full credit, including their Abu Musab Zarqawi who brazenly declared “all-out war on Iraq’s Shiites.” One underlying tangible motivation is that the expected Sunni share of future national oil revenue was 20% in 03 and now estimated to be as low as 5%, Brookings says.
Little wonder that the Sunnis are pessimistic about a fair share, and thousands of them took to the streets in Tikrit alone on Aug. 29 and since, to denounce the draft. Sunni Alliance spokesman Adnan Muhammad Salman al-Dulaimi has urged his followers to flatly reject the constitution next month. Meanwhile, Iraq Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has turned a deaf ear.
But the sorry state of affairs should surprise no one (least of whom those CIA officials who had accurately predicted it four years ago). Iraq is an artificial land, never meant to be a united country. It was invented out of the post World War I mess inherited by Winston Churchill as British Colonial Secretary charged with making sense of the defeated Ottoman Empire. The three major ethnic groups were united by decree, with the Sunnis given the upper hand through most of the Twentieth Century. This force togetherness laid the same seeds of ultimate violence as had similar cases such as Sudan, Rwanda, Serbia and Chechnya. An age-old folly repeated once again.
HOW WOULD A PARTITION PLAN WORK?
There is every historical precedent for the potential success of a partition solution, witness the Balkans, or better yet the eminently positive separation of Slovakia from the Czech Republic in 1993. It’s notable that in the same year, Eritrea was finally separated from Ethiopia and has become the comeback story of East Africa.
Essentially, the reorganization of Iraq must be implemented not by the U.S. or Coalition Command, nor the Oil-For-Food-tarnished U.N. which has lost much credibility, but by The North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO has earned its stripes repeatedly, most particularly in the Balkans. Symbolizing Europe, it would have far greater respect in the Mideast than any other entity. Those with whom I’ve spoken who see practical sense in the idea include former U.S. Ambassador and State Dept. Director of Central European Affairs J.D. Bindinagle, and University of Chicago Professor of Near Eastern Civilization Ilai Alon.
While there would continue to be an operating umbrella government, it would serve only three purposes: 1. a joint military force to protect Iraq borders; 2. the production and distribution of all Iraqi oil and natural gas; and 3. operation of the refineries,pipelines and ocean tanker ports on the Persian Gulf, on behalf of all three states of the Confederation.Beyond this, each of the sectors would operate as an autonomous entity with total freedom to draft its own constitution, establish its own legal system government and taxation power. Each would have sovereign status and representation at the U.N.
The partitioning would be along existing ethnic population lines, with the arable land split almost evenly. The Kurdish north would be centered at Kirkuk (pop.728,000), Irbil( pop. 839,000) and Mosul (pop. 1.7 million). The Shiite south would be centered at Basra (pop.1.3 million),Karbala (pop. 549,000 ) and Amarah ( pop. 340,000). The Sunnis would occupy the central sector as most do now, anchored by Baghdad (pop.5.6 million), Hilla (pop. 524,000) and Samarra (pop.200,000).
Of Iraq’s total population of 27 million, some would be voluntarily relocated to unify them with their ethnic countrymen. There would be myriad sacrifices, but far smaller ones than the certain casualties of continued strife. Consider that the partition of India in 1947 precipitated a massive transfer of Hindus to India and Muslims to Pakistan –but with positive long term blessings, as did the transfer of populations in Post World War II Poland, Czechoslovakia and Germany, for improved quality of life.
HOW TO SELL IT?
Confronting the idea would be three major hurdles, each surmountable.
The key to the entire plan is to feed the underdog. This means a willingness by the Shiites and Kurds to hand the Sunnis more than they deserve in economic benefits, namely a 25% share of the nation’s oil and gas net revenues. With 80% of the producing oil output in the south and virtually the balance in Kurdistan, and the most gas coming from Kirkuk, Bai Hassan and other fields in the north, and the Zubair field in the south, the Shiites and Kurds have a monopoly that needs equalization. By taking slightly less than their rightful share, and providing a permanent guarantee to the Sunni, they hopefully would be buying a lasting peace.
In selling this idea to Shiite and Kurd leadership, we’re halfway home. Top Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has already gone on public record as supporting the concept of autonomy for the three regions. While some independent clerics like Moktada al-Sadr and Ayatollah Muhammad Yacoubi have opposed the concept, some of the most politically powerful Shiites in Iraq, like Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, a key mover in the influential Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, are ardent supporters.
The Kurds meanwhile have already achieved semi-autonomy and leaders like Massoud Barzani would likely be the first in line to concede oil revenues in exchange for peaceful independence and guaranteed protection on the borders of Trukey and Syria –two nations never enamored with the prospect of a free Kurdistan. And although Saddam’s “Arabization” programs forced an influx of Sunni who would now be relocated –mainly from the province of Nineveh—this once again may be a trade-off well worth the disruption.
The second hurdle will be selling the idea to Europe. Sending a NATO peacekeeping force to Iraq is no small order. But today, with the massive immigration of Muslims into Central Europe (new total: over 20 million, and in France alone representing 11% of the nation’s population) and with the London subway bombings as a clear warning, Europe may see that it has far more to lose from a sustained conflagration in Iraq. It may well have a new perspective of the return-on-investment in stepping off the sidelines and playing a key role to bring lasting peace (including the reduction of risk of oil shortages and further price inflation).
Far fetched? Bear in mind that NATO has a stellar history of successes in peacekeeping –in contrast to the U.N.’s deer-in-the-headlights paralysis that cost a half-million lives in Rwanda. NATO has acted decisively in bringing peace to Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, and now has trained,airlifted and directed 1,300 African Union peacekeepers that are bringing the Darfur genocide to an end. Also bear in mind that NATO is already actively fighting terrorism in Central Asia, where four provisional reconstruction teams are in West Afghanistan, providing security, rehab and extending the government authority beyond Kabul. Its International Security Assistance Force is now heading south to secure that area as well. Lastly, bear in mind that NATO is already in Iraq, quietly and with meager publicity. Its Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said last month that “we recognize a continuing commitment to the democratic process in Iraq,” as exemplified by NATO’s current training of Iraqi troops at Ar Rustimiyah.
The third hurdle of course would be to gain consent from the U.S. government. A year ago, the idea would have been dismissed categorically as one offering less than the president’s vision of “mission accomplished.” But today’s altered circumstances present a far more compelling incentive to consider this compromise solution as a welcome gift. In the wake of wholly unanticipated Katrina, the president’s overall approval rating has sunk to a record low of 40%, according to the latest Wall St Journal/NBC News poll, and it says 55% favor bringing our soldiers home. Meanwhile, the latest NY Times/CBS News poll shows only 35% with confidence about his ability to handle Iraq. It reported 52% of Americans call for immediate withdrawal “even if it means abandoning the president’s goal of restoring stability to that country.” An increasing number of experts are predicting that our chances of ultimately surmounting the rising, resilient, ubiquitous insurgency are no better than they were in Viet Nam, or the French experience in Algeria and Indo-China, or the Israeli experience in Lebanon. With the U.S. Army spread thin, with the National Guard unable to keep a serviceman on active duty longer than 24 months, with no chance for a draft as a congressional election year looms, The White House has few options. And on the flip side, what greater political bonanza could the GOP find in 06 than a rapid,decisive shift of our responsibilities to NATO, winning credit for implementing a peaceful solution, and bringing the boys home?
BUT COULD WE PULL IT OFF?
Follow the money. Look at the fundamental math. Iraq and the U.S.—besides offering ethnic separation and security—can virtually buy themselves a lasting peace. Consider that Iraq is sitting on 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves –the third largest known deposit in the world—and 110 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Yet its current production of only 2.2 million barrels of oil per day helps boost its gross domestic product to only $54 billion. Only 10% of the nation has been geologically explored and only 17 of 80 discovered oil fields have even been developed. Of Iraq’s 1,500 operating wells, about 1,000 are in the Shiite south (mainly the Rumaila field) with its high quality “sweet crude” that contains far lower percent of hydrogen sulfide and burns much cleaner. Moreover, most Iraqi oil in both north and south is some of the world’s least costly to extract because it lies close to the surface, with an average cost of less than $2 per barrel to produce.
But even with its present export limitations, Iraq’s 2.2 million daily barrels now enjoy record price levels of over $65 (before tanker costs), translating into projected annual gross revenues of $52 billion, not to mention natural gas and other exports. If the Sunni Federal Republic of Babylonia were handed a guaranteed 25% share or perhaps $13 billion (i.e., $2.6 million per capita), gross before transport, it would be receiving over a $2.5 billion premium per year above its proportional share. Obviously, if peace can at last permit expanded exploration and production activity, the numbers would soar.
At the same time, to fund a NATO administration of the regional separation, relocation and confederation government, would it not be a bargain for the U.S., after withdrawal, to subsidize NATO with the full $5 billion per month we now spend fighting a futile conflict? After two years of that subsidy, the cost requirement may well drop to the $1 billion monthly level, eminently affordable by our treasury.
HOW TO INITIATE?
We should launch the idea with a bold-stroke proposal placed upon the world stage by Sec. of State Condi Rice, delivered through our Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad to Iraq President Jalal Talabani and the National Assembly. It would call for a petition, signed by leaders of all three ethnic factions plus the National Assembly and President Bush, to be presented to NATO’s Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, formally requesting a NATO partnership with the Iraq legislature to create the Confederation and partition the country. The proposal would include an expeditious U.S. withdrawal and guarantee of a full 24 months subsidy followed by the reduced level of funding.The Rice manifesto would be communicated on a basis not to appear that we’re “dumping” Iraq on a NATO fall-guy, but with full recognition (and humility) that the U.S. has outlived its usefulness as chief rebuilder of that nation. It would candidly acknowledge that, mindful of the lightning rod of anti-Western resentment that we’ve become, the most constructive alternative is to shift the security and administration role to a respected neutral organization, while we continue to provide the bulk of financial support for security, humanitarian aid, and rebuilding.
Rather than earning Arab and worldwide derision and condemnation as a cut-and-run coward, we’d earn respect as an imaginative facilitator who was able to break a deadly, mindless,hopeless logjam. We’d be seen as an enlightened benefactor that truly learned lessons from history, finally realizing that if we had acted as decisively in Bosnia or Rwanda, over a million lives would have been saved. The fact is that we need this turnabout in world opinion as much as we need to stabilize Iraq and shed its burden. Harvard’s Kennedy School Professor Joe Nye, a colleague of mine on the board of Business for Diplomatic Action, said last month that the U.S. image has sunk so low that in key countries like Jordan and Pakistan, more people say they have confidence in Osama bin Laden than in George W. Bush. And even in traditionally allied nations like Sweden,Netherlands and Germany, a very recent survey showed “the arrogance of the American people,exacerbated by our current visa policies, were the key drivers of anti-American sentiment,” which is still on the rise, according to our BDA Chairman, DDB’s Keith Reinhard. Our record $700 billion foreign trade deficit this year is another painful symptom of our popularity level.
What we need most is a new mindset. We must awaken to the realities of the Iraq enigma, not spitefully throw the Sunni Babylonians out with the Baath water, and recognize that Iraq’s “successful” constitutional vote was not a triumph of freedom but only another incendiary bomb. Rethinking our hapless Mideast aspirations, we must be willing to end up with three stable, workable little democracies rather than blindly insisting on a single, flawed, fantasy democracy doomed to disintegration. In the real world of cold, corporate calculation, companies that consolidated unwisely in the 80’s and 90’s are busy spinning off and separating the misfitting parts into more sensible entities. The same logic should set a pattern for geopolitics. Blood is forever thicker than mandates.
Will the proposal fly? House International Affairs Chairman Henry Hyde reacted very positively to the idea and has turned it over to Donald Rumsfeld and John Bolton with his personal endorsement. It poses a tough question for the administration. But considering the morass engulfing us, exactly what do we have to lose in asking ?
-30-
Mr. Pincus is a columnist of The Chicago Sun Times, a Finance Professor at DePaul University, a communications consultant to Fortune 500 companies, and the former owner of the nation’s third largest independent public relations agency.
A PRACTICAL PROPOSAL TO EXIT IRAQ
Oct. 2005
By Ted Pincus
We’re stumped. No way out.
We can’t stay mired in the sand for years, as the neocon hawks insist. It’s unthinkable to say we won and walk away, as the doves demand.
But there’s a third ornithological alternative. Call it The Phoenix solution.
In boxing, when there’s excessive bleeding, you separate the adversaries, especially when they were coerced into the ring together in the first place.
When you cut through all the chatter, there’s one basic reason that we face endless bloodshed that has prevented our departure: Sunni paranoia that as a 20% minority, it will be forever outvoted and dominated in any form of “free democratic” Iraq. It’s the terror of this prospect that has generated its own reign of terror and will sustain it ad infinitum. The fact is that 95% of the insurgent attacks have been initiated by Sunni Arabs, primarily against Shiite and Kurdish troops, police and civilians. Finding a way to overcome Sunni fear holds the key to a peaceful exit. And how has history shown that we resolve a bitter ethnic dispute? By separating the parties, making each feel secure, and giving the underdog a bone he can’t refuse – a portion that is more than his fair share. You pacify even the most rabid suicidal fanatic by taking away a cause to die for.
That solution could be embodied in a new strategy not yet considered by American, Mideast or world leadership: a Confederation of Iraqi States with a three way partition administered by NATO. In summary, it would create an independent Sunni state –Babylonia (20% of the population); an independent Kurdistan (Kurds, Turkomen,Chaldeans, 17% of the population); and an independent Shiite Sumeria (63% of the population), all under the continued umbrella of a joint border protection force and an oil revenue-sharing guarantee.
IS THERE A NEED FOR A NEW INITIATIVE?
Despite the Bush administration’s grasping for auspicious straws in the wind, any realistic assessment (including those by some of our own generals) is grim. Iraq has successfully elected an interim central government dominated by Shiites whom the Sunni has sworn to thwart. On Oct. 15 the Iraqi people went go back to the polls and ratified a referendum to a Shiite-drafted constitution, written over the loud objections of most Sunni leaders. The content reflects what many observers feel is a worrisome regression into a theocracy dominated by clerics administering Shariah law, rigidly restraining women’s rights and posing low tolerance for non-believers. While it does propose creation of semi-autonomous regions of the country, it still paves the way for permanent Shiite supremacy as the faction holding the overwhelming majority trump card.
Since the ratification was passed despite the violent protests of the Sunnis, the current rate of bloodshed –highest since the 2003 invasion—has continued and is predicted to intensify, perhaps provoking Lebanon-style all-out civil war. On any basis, we’re at square one, or worse.
WHY SHOULD THE PROBLEM GO AWAY?
Let’s pause and look at it from the underdog’s perspective. As an Iraqi Sunni, you’ve been on top since the Sixteenth Century when the Ottomans threw out the last of the Mongols and gave your tribes the prime position. You’ve been the elite political force, the intelligentsia, with overriding economic control, and enjoying a highly secular regime. And for 35 years, you were Saddam’s Baath brethren and beneficiaries—riding herd over the majority—until his downfall. Suddenly you’re faced with a U.S.-imposed “democracy” in which your adversaries, with a massive majority led by clerics take control. There you sit, five million surrounded by 22 million non-Sunni neighbors. You now face the prospect of being allocated the pauper’s share of government posts, top jobs, access to ports (you have none), access to oil reserves (you have almost no wells) and a legal and religious climate wholly unacceptable despite the fact that the Shiites are your Arab brothers and even the non-Arab Kurds are mostly of the same Muslim faith. To avoid this fate, you believe, may be well worth dying for. And there’s always the hope that you’ll fight and survive, grind down the Americans after 10 or 20 years of occupation, see them finally exit like the French in Algeria, and then take over the country by force.
It’s unlikely that our sheer perseverance will pay. The latest Brookings Institution report shows the insurgents growing in two years from an estimated 3,000 fighters in Aug. 03 to 18,000 as of Aug. 05. In that month there were 90 U.S. troops killed vs. 36 in the same month of 03; 608 wounded vs. 181 in the 03 month; 280 Iraqi security personnel killed vs. 50 in Aug. 03; and 600 Iraqi civilians killed vs. 225 in Aug. 03. And on this past Sept. 14 alone, there were eight separate terrorist bombings that killed 160 and injured 500, for which various Al Queda/Sunni groups took full credit, including their Abu Musab Zarqawi who brazenly declared “all-out war on Iraq’s Shiites.” One underlying tangible motivation is that the expected Sunni share of future national oil revenue was 20% in 03 and now estimated to be as low as 5%, Brookings says.
Little wonder that the Sunnis are pessimistic about a fair share, and thousands of them took to the streets in Tikrit alone on Aug. 29 and since, to denounce the draft. Sunni Alliance spokesman Adnan Muhammad Salman al-Dulaimi has urged his followers to flatly reject the constitution next month. Meanwhile, Iraq Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari has turned a deaf ear.
But the sorry state of affairs should surprise no one (least of whom those CIA officials who had accurately predicted it four years ago). Iraq is an artificial land, never meant to be a united country. It was invented out of the post World War I mess inherited by Winston Churchill as British Colonial Secretary charged with making sense of the defeated Ottoman Empire. The three major ethnic groups were united by decree, with the Sunnis given the upper hand through most of the Twentieth Century. This force togetherness laid the same seeds of ultimate violence as had similar cases such as Sudan, Rwanda, Serbia and Chechnya. An age-old folly repeated once again.
HOW WOULD A PARTITION PLAN WORK?
There is every historical precedent for the potential success of a partition solution, witness the Balkans, or better yet the eminently positive separation of Slovakia from the Czech Republic in 1993. It’s notable that in the same year, Eritrea was finally separated from Ethiopia and has become the comeback story of East Africa.
Essentially, the reorganization of Iraq must be implemented not by the U.S. or Coalition Command, nor the Oil-For-Food-tarnished U.N. which has lost much credibility, but by The North Atlantic Treaty Organization. NATO has earned its stripes repeatedly, most particularly in the Balkans. Symbolizing Europe, it would have far greater respect in the Mideast than any other entity. Those with whom I’ve spoken who see practical sense in the idea include former U.S. Ambassador and State Dept. Director of Central European Affairs J.D. Bindinagle, and University of Chicago Professor of Near Eastern Civilization Ilai Alon.
While there would continue to be an operating umbrella government, it would serve only three purposes: 1. a joint military force to protect Iraq borders; 2. the production and distribution of all Iraqi oil and natural gas; and 3. operation of the refineries,pipelines and ocean tanker ports on the Persian Gulf, on behalf of all three states of the Confederation.Beyond this, each of the sectors would operate as an autonomous entity with total freedom to draft its own constitution, establish its own legal system government and taxation power. Each would have sovereign status and representation at the U.N.
The partitioning would be along existing ethnic population lines, with the arable land split almost evenly. The Kurdish north would be centered at Kirkuk (pop.728,000), Irbil( pop. 839,000) and Mosul (pop. 1.7 million). The Shiite south would be centered at Basra (pop.1.3 million),Karbala (pop. 549,000 ) and Amarah ( pop. 340,000). The Sunnis would occupy the central sector as most do now, anchored by Baghdad (pop.5.6 million), Hilla (pop. 524,000) and Samarra (pop.200,000).
Of Iraq’s total population of 27 million, some would be voluntarily relocated to unify them with their ethnic countrymen. There would be myriad sacrifices, but far smaller ones than the certain casualties of continued strife. Consider that the partition of India in 1947 precipitated a massive transfer of Hindus to India and Muslims to Pakistan –but with positive long term blessings, as did the transfer of populations in Post World War II Poland, Czechoslovakia and Germany, for improved quality of life.
HOW TO SELL IT?
Confronting the idea would be three major hurdles, each surmountable.
The key to the entire plan is to feed the underdog. This means a willingness by the Shiites and Kurds to hand the Sunnis more than they deserve in economic benefits, namely a 25% share of the nation’s oil and gas net revenues. With 80% of the producing oil output in the south and virtually the balance in Kurdistan, and the most gas coming from Kirkuk, Bai Hassan and other fields in the north, and the Zubair field in the south, the Shiites and Kurds have a monopoly that needs equalization. By taking slightly less than their rightful share, and providing a permanent guarantee to the Sunni, they hopefully would be buying a lasting peace.
In selling this idea to Shiite and Kurd leadership, we’re halfway home. Top Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has already gone on public record as supporting the concept of autonomy for the three regions. While some independent clerics like Moktada al-Sadr and Ayatollah Muhammad Yacoubi have opposed the concept, some of the most politically powerful Shiites in Iraq, like Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, a key mover in the influential Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, are ardent supporters.
The Kurds meanwhile have already achieved semi-autonomy and leaders like Massoud Barzani would likely be the first in line to concede oil revenues in exchange for peaceful independence and guaranteed protection on the borders of Trukey and Syria –two nations never enamored with the prospect of a free Kurdistan. And although Saddam’s “Arabization” programs forced an influx of Sunni who would now be relocated –mainly from the province of Nineveh—this once again may be a trade-off well worth the disruption.
The second hurdle will be selling the idea to Europe. Sending a NATO peacekeeping force to Iraq is no small order. But today, with the massive immigration of Muslims into Central Europe (new total: over 20 million, and in France alone representing 11% of the nation’s population) and with the London subway bombings as a clear warning, Europe may see that it has far more to lose from a sustained conflagration in Iraq. It may well have a new perspective of the return-on-investment in stepping off the sidelines and playing a key role to bring lasting peace (including the reduction of risk of oil shortages and further price inflation).
Far fetched? Bear in mind that NATO has a stellar history of successes in peacekeeping –in contrast to the U.N.’s deer-in-the-headlights paralysis that cost a half-million lives in Rwanda. NATO has acted decisively in bringing peace to Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, and now has trained,airlifted and directed 1,300 African Union peacekeepers that are bringing the Darfur genocide to an end. Also bear in mind that NATO is already actively fighting terrorism in Central Asia, where four provisional reconstruction teams are in West Afghanistan, providing security, rehab and extending the government authority beyond Kabul. Its International Security Assistance Force is now heading south to secure that area as well. Lastly, bear in mind that NATO is already in Iraq, quietly and with meager publicity. Its Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said last month that “we recognize a continuing commitment to the democratic process in Iraq,” as exemplified by NATO’s current training of Iraqi troops at Ar Rustimiyah.
The third hurdle of course would be to gain consent from the U.S. government. A year ago, the idea would have been dismissed categorically as one offering less than the president’s vision of “mission accomplished.” But today’s altered circumstances present a far more compelling incentive to consider this compromise solution as a welcome gift. In the wake of wholly unanticipated Katrina, the president’s overall approval rating has sunk to a record low of 40%, according to the latest Wall St Journal/NBC News poll, and it says 55% favor bringing our soldiers home. Meanwhile, the latest NY Times/CBS News poll shows only 35% with confidence about his ability to handle Iraq. It reported 52% of Americans call for immediate withdrawal “even if it means abandoning the president’s goal of restoring stability to that country.” An increasing number of experts are predicting that our chances of ultimately surmounting the rising, resilient, ubiquitous insurgency are no better than they were in Viet Nam, or the French experience in Algeria and Indo-China, or the Israeli experience in Lebanon. With the U.S. Army spread thin, with the National Guard unable to keep a serviceman on active duty longer than 24 months, with no chance for a draft as a congressional election year looms, The White House has few options. And on the flip side, what greater political bonanza could the GOP find in 06 than a rapid,decisive shift of our responsibilities to NATO, winning credit for implementing a peaceful solution, and bringing the boys home?
BUT COULD WE PULL IT OFF?
Follow the money. Look at the fundamental math. Iraq and the U.S.—besides offering ethnic separation and security—can virtually buy themselves a lasting peace. Consider that Iraq is sitting on 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves –the third largest known deposit in the world—and 110 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Yet its current production of only 2.2 million barrels of oil per day helps boost its gross domestic product to only $54 billion. Only 10% of the nation has been geologically explored and only 17 of 80 discovered oil fields have even been developed. Of Iraq’s 1,500 operating wells, about 1,000 are in the Shiite south (mainly the Rumaila field) with its high quality “sweet crude” that contains far lower percent of hydrogen sulfide and burns much cleaner. Moreover, most Iraqi oil in both north and south is some of the world’s least costly to extract because it lies close to the surface, with an average cost of less than $2 per barrel to produce.
But even with its present export limitations, Iraq’s 2.2 million daily barrels now enjoy record price levels of over $65 (before tanker costs), translating into projected annual gross revenues of $52 billion, not to mention natural gas and other exports. If the Sunni Federal Republic of Babylonia were handed a guaranteed 25% share or perhaps $13 billion (i.e., $2.6 million per capita), gross before transport, it would be receiving over a $2.5 billion premium per year above its proportional share. Obviously, if peace can at last permit expanded exploration and production activity, the numbers would soar.
At the same time, to fund a NATO administration of the regional separation, relocation and confederation government, would it not be a bargain for the U.S., after withdrawal, to subsidize NATO with the full $5 billion per month we now spend fighting a futile conflict? After two years of that subsidy, the cost requirement may well drop to the $1 billion monthly level, eminently affordable by our treasury.
HOW TO INITIATE?
We should launch the idea with a bold-stroke proposal placed upon the world stage by Sec. of State Condi Rice, delivered through our Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad to Iraq President Jalal Talabani and the National Assembly. It would call for a petition, signed by leaders of all three ethnic factions plus the National Assembly and President Bush, to be presented to NATO’s Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, formally requesting a NATO partnership with the Iraq legislature to create the Confederation and partition the country. The proposal would include an expeditious U.S. withdrawal and guarantee of a full 24 months subsidy followed by the reduced level of funding.The Rice manifesto would be communicated on a basis not to appear that we’re “dumping” Iraq on a NATO fall-guy, but with full recognition (and humility) that the U.S. has outlived its usefulness as chief rebuilder of that nation. It would candidly acknowledge that, mindful of the lightning rod of anti-Western resentment that we’ve become, the most constructive alternative is to shift the security and administration role to a respected neutral organization, while we continue to provide the bulk of financial support for security, humanitarian aid, and rebuilding.
Rather than earning Arab and worldwide derision and condemnation as a cut-and-run coward, we’d earn respect as an imaginative facilitator who was able to break a deadly, mindless,hopeless logjam. We’d be seen as an enlightened benefactor that truly learned lessons from history, finally realizing that if we had acted as decisively in Bosnia or Rwanda, over a million lives would have been saved. The fact is that we need this turnabout in world opinion as much as we need to stabilize Iraq and shed its burden. Harvard’s Kennedy School Professor Joe Nye, a colleague of mine on the board of Business for Diplomatic Action, said last month that the U.S. image has sunk so low that in key countries like Jordan and Pakistan, more people say they have confidence in Osama bin Laden than in George W. Bush. And even in traditionally allied nations like Sweden,Netherlands and Germany, a very recent survey showed “the arrogance of the American people,exacerbated by our current visa policies, were the key drivers of anti-American sentiment,” which is still on the rise, according to our BDA Chairman, DDB’s Keith Reinhard. Our record $700 billion foreign trade deficit this year is another painful symptom of our popularity level.
What we need most is a new mindset. We must awaken to the realities of the Iraq enigma, not spitefully throw the Sunni Babylonians out with the Baath water, and recognize that Iraq’s “successful” constitutional vote was not a triumph of freedom but only another incendiary bomb. Rethinking our hapless Mideast aspirations, we must be willing to end up with three stable, workable little democracies rather than blindly insisting on a single, flawed, fantasy democracy doomed to disintegration. In the real world of cold, corporate calculation, companies that consolidated unwisely in the 80’s and 90’s are busy spinning off and separating the misfitting parts into more sensible entities. The same logic should set a pattern for geopolitics. Blood is forever thicker than mandates.
Will the proposal fly? House International Affairs Chairman Henry Hyde reacted very positively to the idea and has turned it over to Donald Rumsfeld and John Bolton with his personal endorsement. It poses a tough question for the administration. But considering the morass engulfing us, exactly what do we have to lose in asking ?
-30-
Mr. Pincus is a columnist of The Chicago Sun Times, a Finance Professor at DePaul University, a communications consultant to Fortune 500 companies, and the former owner of the nation’s third largest independent public relations agency.
posted by ted pincus @ 1:19 PM
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