Embracing Solomon’s baby

As the Americans prepare to leave Iraq, most of the journalistic focus–insofar as it exists at all–is on the security situation there, which is far from completely calm.  But that is not what most people who know Iraq well are most concerned about.  They worry mainly about Kurdish-Arab disputes, which take many forms:  quarrels about distribution of oil revenue, the authority of Baghdad’s government and courts, the degree of Kurdish control over oil development and the extent of the territory under the control of the Kurdistan Regional Government, a sub-national entity with a wide degree of autonomy.  It is all inter-connected.  Whichever one you start with, you’ll end up discussing the others in due course.

Sean Kane at the United States Institute of Peace has chosen to take up Iraq’s “disputed territories,” arguably the toughest of the Arab-Kurdish issues, first.  In a long and detailed disquisition, he demonstrates assiduously that quite a few of the territorial disputes are resolvable on the basis of voting patterns since 2005 as well as historical/cultural antecedents. The report will be presented and discussed at a webcast event this morning featuring also Emma Sky and Joost Hiltermann.  One unusual feature of the report is the posting online of several Iraqi reactions to it.  They make interesting reading.

Having disposed of some of the “easier” problems, Sean comes to the difficult core issue:  Solomon’s baby in this context is Kirkuk, which is the object of Arab, Kurdish and Turkomen ambitions that appear irreconcilable.  Here he proposes that either the entire province be given a “special” status (allowed under the Iraqi constitution) and shared between Erbil and Baghdad, or that much of the province be divided between the two and only Kirkuk City become a “common” city.  These solutions bear a distinct resemblance to the so far successful effort to share the town and county (opstina) of Brcko in Bosnia between the two constituent entities of the Bosnian state.  In practice, this has meant a special status now recognized in the Bosnian constitution.  Something like this for either all of Kirkuk province or the town of Kirkuk would allow both sides to claim victory and neither to enjoy all of the spoils.  In due course, the solution might be ratified, along with mutually agreed divisions of territory, in a referendum provided for in the Iraqi constitution.

All of this is eminently reasonable and notably helpful.  Where things get more problematic is in drawing conclusions for American policy.  There is the great temptation to condition American security assistance to the Kurds and Arabs on their respective good behavior with regard to their dispute.  On some level, this will surely be the case:  the United States will not want its materiel deployed in an intra-Iraqi dispute and will likely tie some strings to the relevant agreements to try to prevent that from happening.  But it would be hard for the U.S. to yank its training of the Iraqi army, navy or air force in response to developments between Erbil and Baghdad.  Washington sees that training–and the ample armament that goes with it–as vital to Iraq’s regional role, especially vis-a-vis Tehran.  Washington is not going to cut off its nose to spite its face, or throw Baghdad into Tehran’s arms.

More promising is the positive incentive approach Emma Sky says has been used in the past to encourage peshmerga integration.  She has proposed in the same paper (also published by USIP) conflict resolution, management and prevention mechanisms that merit more attention than they have so far gotten.  As Emma knows better than most civilians, wishful thinking is not a plan.

But that does not mean the internationals necessarily need to keep their hands on this problem either–it could be that leaving the Kurds and Arabs to manage it themselves is not only feasible but preferable.  What I haven’t seen is a careful, independent assessment of the different options.  The U.S., UN and Iraqis need to get their heads together sooner rather than later on how to handle Arab-Kurdish disputes, especially as resistance to a continuing U.S. troop presence after the end of this year seems to be strengthening.