Iraq and Afghanistan

Latest report is that the Kurds are pressing their advantage very hard. They want to increase their territory considerably beyond the three provinces they controlled under Saddam. They want to keep their peshmerga military and forbid any other military forces from entering their area. They want all ministries of the central government in Kurdistan to be Kurdish, with only loose connections to the central government. They want to be able to veto any taxes that the central government might levy on Kurdistan or their citizens. They want control of the Kirkuk oil fields, etc. etc. More generally, they demand that the federal state organized under the new constitution should be a secular state. The Kurds are demanding that one of their leaders should be the new President of Iraq. If this is not done, they assert, they will feel they are being treated as second-class citizens. Some Shi'a leaders are beginning to say that the Kurds are demanding too much, as well they might say.

Apparently, the Kurds want to be independent in all but name. They do not want the "name" because they fear invasions by the Turks or Iranians who are not likely to allow an independent Kurdistan. The trouble is that the level of regional independence they are demanding is unlikely to work for very long. There are few if any examples of such a loose relationship lasting. The United States before the Civil War and Switzerland before the Sonderbund War of 1847, were not as loose confederations, yet both ended with a war. If a nation cannot exist "half-slave and half-free" perhaps it also cannot exist "half-religious and half-secular".

The logic of the situation if they keep pushing this hard is that the Shi'a will end up with little reason not to have an Islamic state if that is what they want. He may not want it, but with the Kurds living in a world of their own, there will be little in the way of political power to block Ayatollah Sistani from seeing to the writing of a Shi'a-centric constitution. Thus, by demanding separation in most of political life, the Kurds will have cut themselves off from having a role in determining the position of Islam in the state. They will then be even less likely to play a constructive role in Iraq than they are prepared to play now. This downward spiral may lead to a complete breakup and/or Civil War. Meanwhile, the Sunni Arab insurgents, no matter how religious some of them are, will not be drawn into cooperation by the vision of an Iraq even more dominated by Shi'a than it would be if the Kurds played a more active role. Without the peshmerga, the Shi'as and the governmental forces will be less able to fight Sunni insurgents — even assuming all is quiet on the Kurdish border.

What role the United States will or should play in all this is hard to say. Negroponte must be happy he is coming home.

Iran and Syria have grown closer together as American pressure on both countries has increased. It appears, however, that the new strategic alliance just announced between the two countries is hardly new. They maintained this alliance during the Iran-Iraq war although Syria was too weak to really help Iran. They have also worked together in supporting Hezbollah, the Party of God, both to strengthen its role in the multiethnic politics of Lebanon and in the struggle against Israel. It is important to realize that unlike Hamas with its Sunni affiliations, Hezbollah has Shi'a affiliations, hence its support from Iran.

What has not been mentioned recently in the press is the fact that Syria is actually run politically by a heterodox Shiite minority (the Alawites) within the Baath party (originally the same party as that in Iraq). The present ruler and his father, both Assads, have led this faction since the 1970s. The most dramatic event in their rule was the attempt of the Muslim Brotherhood (a Sunni group incidentally related to Hamas) to throw off Alawite rule in 1982. The revolt started in the Sunni stronghold of Hama. Al-Assad decided to put down the revolt in Hama by leveling the city. It is estimated that he killed at least 30,000 people. There have been few attempts at revolt since.

The Alawites, or followers of the Prophet Ali, are related historically to the Ithna Ashariya or twelver sect of Shiism, the sect dominant in Iran and among the Shi'a of Iraq. The Alawites are one of the surviving sects from a splintering of groups in the Middle Ages that also produced the Ismaili of Aga Khan fame and the Druze of Lebanon. Many Muslims regard them as heretics and hardly Muslim (as extremist Sunnis also regard the Ithna Ashariya of Iran and Iraq). But they are actually much more heterodox than traditional Shiites. They seldom attend mosques and often drink wine, even as a ritual. They also preserve Iranian customs such as the celebration of Nowruz (New Years). Like the Baath of Iraq, they are very secularist (which has a better fit with their religious traditions than the Iraqi Baathists who are mostly Sunnis, or at least from Sunni families).

It should therefore not be surprising that the Syrian government, dominated by what is in effect another Shiite sect, should feel an affinity for the Iranians that they may not feel for the rest of the Muslim world. Right now there is an important cleavage (not often mentioned by their leaders) between the conservative, ostensibly highly religious Iranian governing class and the heretical, secular leadership group in Syria. However, if Iran moves in the secular direction a large percentage of its young people would like to see, one can imagine even closer ties between Damascus and Tehran in the future. On the other hand, if democracy actually breaks out in Syria, the Alawites will be thrown out and the relations of the two societies will sour. We shall see.

The Spanish foreign policy association (FRIDA) has published a short discussion of the structure of the Iranian foreign policy decision-making apparatus, particularly as this relates to the question of nuclear weapons and/or power. It points out that:

"There are several governmental bodies within the Iranian political system with influence over foreign policy design, including 1) the Velayat al Faqih – Spiritual Leader and Chief of State (Khamenei), 2) the President (Khatami) and the Minister of Foreign Affairs (Kharrazi); 3) the National Security Council (headed by Rowhani), 4) the Expediency Discernment Council (headed by Rafsanjani), and 5) the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of the Majlis, or Parliament. Furthermore, both the Islamic Revolutionary Guard or Pasdaran and the Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance have the ability to influence the decision-making process."

The recent negotiation have been led by Rowhani instead of Kharrazi, reflecting once again the relative weakness of the President and the ministers under him. However, the author suggests that Rowhani is actually representing the "Servers of Reconstruction", which is a party answerable to Rafsanjani. This is a reasonably pragmatic group, even though they, Khomenei, and even Khatami have been forced by events, such as the bellicose statements of Americans and the apparent overflights by American spy planes, to talk a tough line for the benefit of the media.

Khatami's weakness is partially the result of his lame duck status. Elections in June will bring in a new president. He will have completed the maximum of two terms. It is unlikely that anyone more liberal will be elected, unless it be his brother who nominally heads the Islamic Participation Front that brought Khatami to power. A better possibility as far as the nuclear negotiations are concerned might be a return of Rafsanjani to the Presidency. He has more stature than the alternatives and is considered a pragmatist by all concerned. He would have enough status to actually work out a deal with the Europeans and Americans in regard to nuclear energy or weapons that would be less likely to be criticized by Khamenei or the radical Islamists and extremists.

What is notable on a meta level about this analysis is its picture of a relatively open and many-layered Iranian governing system. Although not a fully functioning democracy, this picture is about as far as we can get from what we understand of North Korea. We can and should work with, and respond to, the possibilities. The advice for our policy vis-à-vis North Korea is less clear.

The elections results are not that different from what had been predicted. Perhaps 58% of eligible voters voted. The United Iraqi Alliance (Shiite grand alliance promoted by Ayatollah Sistani) received 48%, the Kurdistan Alliance received 26%, and the Iraqi List (non-ethnic, secular, Allawi's party) received 14%. A variety of other parties took the rest. The Kurds did somewhat better than expected simply because a higher percentage of Kurds voted than any other group. The Sunnis did poorly because their voting percentages were so low. In Anbar province west of Baghdad only 2% of eligible voters voted. The only place with significant Sunni voting was probably Baghdad itself. The President, Yawar, a Sunni received 5% of the vote.

The analysis coming out, generally based on Iraqi sources, suggests that the United Iraqi Alliance is going to have to compromise a good deal to be able to govern. It also must be remarked that the Alliance includes groups with widely varying agendas (for example from secular to fundamentalist). It could easily break up.

But what is most worrying this writer is the evident feeling of the Kurds that they won the election. They are demanding that the head of one of their two factions, Talabani, be made President. They are also sure to renew their demand for the Kirkuk area and its oil wealth. Their demands may be justified, but whether or not, it implies that if they are not met, the Kurds will simply pack their bags and draw their own borders for a new state. Not a bad outcome in theory. But if this means real division of the state, it could mean war. The Shiites are likely to fight to retain Kirkuk and a unified country.

Another worrying aspect of what is happening is the fact that the resistance, the insurgency, is still active. Only now it is more than ever concentrating on killing Shiites and Kurds. Americans seem to be less important targets. It is deliberately trying to enflame an ethnic war because it evidently feels it can win on the battlefield. Where this goes I do not know. But all these strands and possibilities are likely to place coalition forces in some nasty and dangerous situations. They do not want to find themselves fighting Kurds or Sunnis, or vice-versa.

The picture we have of North Korea is turned on its head by the internal propagandists of the DPRK. Before we discuss in what respects, readers need to recall that the people of the North are completely barred from receiving any information from the outside. All electronic means of communication, such as radios and televisions (few) are preset to bring in only government stations. The police regularly check to see whether users are altering their equipment to evade this ban. There are essentially no private organizations, schools, or churches in the country. People are not allowed to leave the country. Penalties are severe. If a person is apprehended for evading such laws, he may be tortured and killed, and his entire extended family may be sent to prison for life. (A recent article in the Observer summarizes the more general human rights situation.) Of course, in spite of this, some information gets through. If this were not so, we would not have the phenomenon of thousands risking everything to get across the river into China (and thence if lucky to South Korea). Many have tried this route more than once, thereby providing even more information.

This post is inspired by a recent Op-Ed pointing out that the people in the DPRK are given a propaganda line quite different from that beamed to the outside world. What they hear is not so much that the North is seeking peace while the rest of the world seeks war (the external line), but rather that the rest of the world is scared to death by the power and vigor of the DPRK. Both the envoys of Clinton and Bush are shown in North Korean media as groveling before the representatives of the DPRK, admitting to them that "you are also a mighty superpower". North Korea's representatives are shown receiving food aid from the outside as "atonement" for the crimes of the capitalist states. The North Koreans were certainly not surprised about the recent announcement that the country has nuclear weapons. They have been told for years that they have weapons that can destroy any foreign nation in a day. Propaganda outlets repeatedly show the U.S. Capitol under missile attack. The people are proudly told that DPRK representatives signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty in 1985 for diplomatic reasons and then "simply ignored it". In a self-congratulatory pose, they have labeled this strategy as "attack diplomacy". Whatever else this means, there is no reason to believe that the North Koreans leave an opening in their own view of the world for meaningful concessions.

We are faced then with even more of a puzzle than we may have thought. In the 1990s after years of famine many experts were writing that the North was about to collapse. The question became what to do when it happened. (Many alternatives did not look too pretty.) Today, there is less talk of this. There have been some economic developments in North Korea in special zones close to the borders using outside money (and even labor — partly because Northerners simply are not well enough educated for a modern work force and partly because the North wants to avoid the ideological infection of having Northerners work alongside people from outside.) The hope is that this investment and opening will eventually change the North. But at the same time, by reducing the seriousness of the economic problems facing Pyongyang, it takes off some of the pressure that might otherwise cause it to break up. There is no way to know if the country actually has a nuclear weapon. By this point in weapon development, most "nuclear states" have had a test that was recorded elsewhere. As far as I know there is no record of a nuclear explosion in North Korea.

Today's paper tells us that the United States is well on its way toward developing a diplomatic strategy meant to strangle the DPRK if it does not cooperate. Many other countries are evidently willing to cooperate with us in this effort. A main area of interest is how to cut off the country's role as a supplier of drugs and arms to world, partly through increasing control over its ability to have banking and exchange facilities available to it. Japan is passing a law that requires all ships to carry liability insurance against spills and other accidents. No DPRK ships have such insurance and may be unable to obtain it. This would severely constrict trade. We are speaking in other venues of a general quarantine, often as related to the unwillingness of North Korea to accept international rules in relation to nuclear weapons. Whatever approach, when another famine occurs, we must be prepared for the same kind of criticism that accompanied similar efforts in regard to Iraq. The trouble with these programs is that absolute governments see to it that the people at the top are not affected, while the millions down below suffer. Yet in my mind, we must develop an action strategy. We say we are not pushing for regime change; perhaps we should be; certainly Pyongyang says we are. The human rights case here is much stronger than in Iraq, and unlike what the actual situation was in Iraq the ticking of the time bomb on the festering sore of this regime is much louder.

What happens if in spite of all this we succeed? If we succeed through a "Prague Spring" scenario, then we and the South can negotiate with the ones who replace the Juche regime. But if the result is civil war between progressive and conservative elements of the regime, and the bulk of the country becomes a revolutionary and humanitarian disaster, then who will come in? Ideally, the South Korean army would come in and reunify the country. They are a tough bunch and there would be brutality, but their invasion might be the best alternative for everyone concerned. South Korea is a modern and democratic country. But just for this reason, would China acquiesce? It invaded once before in the bad old Cold War days. Times have changed. Yet would it want a democratic, potentially much more powerful Korean state on its border? One way to avoid the problem would be with a United Nations force. But this would have to be a large force with a long-term, Bosnia-like mandate, and I do not see the United Nations stepping up to the plate.