MaxedOutMama

Personally, I think Kingfish's analysis doesn't properly account for the section nature of the crisis in Iraqi governance. The southern Shi'a and the northern Kurds easily generate a "majority" of Iraqis whose interests conflict in one way or another with Sunni Arabs and Turkomen*. I don't mean to imply that the conflicts are necessarily overwhelming and intractible, but if insurgents are consistantly convincing a sufficient portion of those two minority groups that civil war and partition is preferable to the impending domination of the national government by Shi'a and Kurds, the regional insurgency could persist for quite a while. While the national government is thereby distracted and its legitimacy challenged, power stuggles within the Kurdish Regional Government and the Shi'a heirarchy could very well continue to erupt. I wish I could say more, but as MI, I'm proscribed from giving judgements heavily inflected with classified information.

None of which is to say that I think that the doomsayers are correct or that things are really awful over there. I just want to bring attention to a sorely neglected dimension of the overall scenario.
 

That wasn't my greatest comment of all time. I didn't intend to make it anonymously (though upon reflection I decided it wouldn't hurt) and my editing left a lot to be desired. In any case, the asterisk-denoted postscript was supposed to direct attention to events in Tal Afar.
 

Well, I'm very grateful for what you did say, Anon-MI. I don't want you to disclose any information you shouldn't, but can you recommend any general background sources of information that might be useful? The news coverage seems inscrutable, to say the least.

One of my brothers and I have had a long-running argument over Iraq and the situation. My hunch has been what I think you're saying - that the dominant factor might end up being the various ethnic/religious groups in Iraq, whereas he seems to think that the issue is more outsiders vs. insiders.

I know the Sunni groups want to boycott the elections, but put out a statement before the troops moved into Fallujah saying that they might cooperate given certain conditions, not that those conditions were acceptable. I didn't know that there was a brewing conflict between the Kurds and Shiites. Doesn't this provide some incentive for the different groups to cooperate in developing a type of central government that protects the various areas and groups? If they don't, surely there's going to be a civil war in a few years as the Sunnis attempt to regain control?

It's all starting to remind me of the situation once the Soviet Union broke up. With the death of a central power long-standing ethnic conflicts erupted right and left. I hate to put it this baldly, but the oil, if it can be kept flowing, should generate a lot of money.

If the oilfields and pipelines could be protected, perhaps the best way to handle it would be to apportion that money to the governments/leaders of the various factions. That would give an incentive for overall cooperation, and tend to shift conflict downwards to within the factions for control of the money flowing in, instead of shifting it upwards to the national stage. I know I've read that Saudi ruling family essentially does the same thing to gain the support of the various tribal leaders there.

Anyway, thank you very much for your comments and any insight you can give. The last election sure didn't throw any light on the situation - either way, the American public was being asked to buy a pig in a poke.
 

I don't have time to comment fully at the moment but I want to clarify a bit - the ethnic conflict in the north is between the Sunni Kurds as the ascendant figures (because of their relative prosperity and regional advantage in demographics) and the Sunni Turkomen as well as the Sunni Arabs. The ethnic conflict in south and central Iraq is between the Shi'a and the Sunni Arabs, with the Shia in the vast majority. Kurds and Shi'a rarely meet because of the geography, but are similar in that they tend to be more welcoming of the Coalition, somewhat because both fully expect to apportion among them the power once exercised by the Sunni Arab minority.
 

Hey, I can't comment on this heavy weight stuff. But thank you anyway for your visit. Cheers!
 

Personally I think that the kingfishers post is balls-on. I absolutely hate people sitting over here making judgements. I would rather get my news from those with boots-on-the-ground experience.

Thanks for turning me on to the Kingfisher. Keep up the good fight.

Kev
 

So I'm looking around to find some articles on Turkomen, but there just doesn't seem to be very many good ones available in the public press. this article, taken from the SF Chronicle and posted on a left-wing site, wants to tell a story about US policy being potentially wrongheaded and in chasing only the back-and-forth of a single irrelevant issue does a good job of boggling analysis. Here's commentary from a Turkish man and a related article from the Kurdish Regional Government. But before one gets too sanguine about the status of Iraqi Turkmen/Turkomen, think of how they would perceive the elevation of Hasso and the use of peshmerga (Kurdish paramilitaries) as related here.

I wish I could comment especially on the Chronicle article, which gets some really important things right and then fouls it up with others. An exercise: how many reports of VBIED attacks in the Shi'a south can you find? Also, look for the original reason the Coalition wanted to arrest Sadr.

In any case, the succession of votes and elections coming in the next 18 months or so really is the make-or-break period in Iraq. A fairly elected, stable government will be dominated by those groups whose members populate the mass graves, so there's no convincing the population of the Sunni triangle that they'll be on equal footing if they merely vote. They have the two distasteful choices of continued insurgency in hopes of fatally destabilizing any national government or of peaceful participation in the hope that their old victims will forgive and forget. As time goes on and it becomes increasingly clear that the best way to defend their regional interests is to participate as a minor player rather than to forfeit by rebellion what political capital remains to them, I expect their support or tolerance of other problems such as foreign fighters and criminal gangs to evaporate.

Of course, that assumes that the Shi'a and Kurds do express forgiveness in their choice of national representatives and that national government control will prove relatively implacable.

Related to that will be how soon Sunni Arabs embrace their natural Kurdish allies. Sunni Arabs can only aspire to regional power, so they should join the Kurds in supporting federalism that allows a lot of regional autonomy. That may require painful compromises on the fate of historically Kurdish cities like Kirkuk and Mosul, but it's the smart way to go. Turkmen in Tall Afar are largely Shi'a (as opposed to most Turkmen who are Sunni), and instead of throwing in their lot with Arab insurgency to resist Kurdish hegemony, they might be advised to seek protection the Shi'a Arab majority of the south. In disputed cities like Mosul, they might find friends in fellow minorities like the Assyrian Christians.

So once again, there are plenty of possibilities for alliances of mutual protection if we can prove to the various small factions that the political process is less dangerous than continued resistance thereto.
 

THANK YOU. Those links are fantastic gateways to some sort of perspective. I will be reading them, hunting through those sites and thinking for quite a long time. Not that I feel enlightened, but I suddenly realized massive areas of my ignorance, and that's always a step forward.

Abruptly, the issue of who is now backing Turkey for EU membership becomes relevant, and I guess I need to spend some time with maps. Shades of Czechoslovakia. That pipeline goes through Turkey, doesn't it? Well I'm going to be looking it up.

If what I'm thinking is even remotely correct, we are going to be stuck in Iraq for a minimum of 7 years, probably more like 12 to 15.
 

I've been looking at Anon-MI's links and hunting up some other ones. Interesting that China is talking turkey with Turkey and that supposedly in December Turkey's going to get the official okay to start the process of EU membership.

OF COURSE all of that would have absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Turkey believes it has a sound historical claim to Kirkuk and sees a pressing humanitarian crisis forming with the poor Turkmen in northern Iraq. And of course it would have nothing to do with that Iraq-Turkey oil line. Right now I'm trying to hunt up what the pipeline fees were during the UN Oil for Food era.
 

I'm not aware of Turkey speaking seriously of a claim to Kirkuk, but they are very serious about preventing a Kurdish claim. The oil fields there would fund Kurdish nationalism quite alarmingly from their perspective. That said, their rapprochement with the KDP and PUK (the constituent factions of the KRG) in conjunction with capturing Ocalan has very much drawn the fangs of their PKK-cum-Kongra Gel antagonists for the last several years. While I've mentioned Turkey's apprehensions on that score I should add that Iran, amongst others, is also home to a sizable number of ethnic Kurds which have historically been prone to Kurdish nationalism.
Anon-MI
 

Well, Anon-MI, then you would be almost as surprised as I was to find out that they claim Kirkuk was 95% Turkoman up until around 1960. After that it was 75% Turkoman. It's a tragic story of repetitive ethnic cleansings. It is a good thing that the ITF has come forward to be the sole legitimate political representation of this majority ethnic population in Baghdad, Kirkuk, Mosul and so on.

After the fall of the Ottoman Empire the Turks in what was the Mosul district of the Empire were harassed by the Arabs to the point that they became depressed and withdrew from public life: "Turkmens, resenting this fait accompli, seemed too strongly traumatized to think. They became inward looking." In addition, their schools forced the Arabic language on them. One gathers this would account for so many of them not quite realizing they were Turks.

"Under the monarchic rule that began with the establishment of the Iraqi state the Turkmens in Kirkuk were subjected to massacres known as the “Gavur Bagi” incidents in 1924 and 1946. These incidents further traumatized Turkmens, pushing them into further political isolation. They became more inward looking.[2] The massacre staged against Turkmens in Kirkuk in 1959, that is, after the end of monarchy, can be considered the most significant event for Turkmens. After the fall of the monarchy Turkmens had become more aware of the political issues at state. They had started to think that they should regain their political influence and start playing a role in the country. Due to the realization that Turkmens were suffering losses in the political arena due to political and social isolation, Turkmen leaders had been stirred into action. However, the 1959 incidents were a big blow. Significantly, almost all major incidents that affected Turkmens’ political role throughout Iraq’s history occurred in Kirkuk. The 1959 massacre --perpetrated in Kirkuk, a town that had been predominantly Turkmen until a time not so distant—for example was aimed at reducing the Turkmen population and influence in Kirkuk."

And so forth. It's a long article that also references several books that have been written on the subject. Naturally the Kurds have a slightly different view, and I'm sure the Arabs have yet another.

What is significant to me is that Turkey has begun protesting to the UN regarding the dire plight of the oppressed Turkmen in Iraq and warning of the terrible possibility of another Tal Afar, with all of its dire humanitarian implications. Think about it - anyone could understand if the ITF, the sole legitimate representative of the Turkoman ethnic group in Iraq were to appeal to Turkey for succor.

It is very interesting to contrast the first article with this one, written before the war:
"Since 1991, Washington has been making the same mistake of looking for a possible replacement for Saddam Hussein instead of focusing on the political and constitutional structure of the post-Baathist Iraq. The time has come for Washington to direct her attention from who should rule Baghdad to how Iraq should be governed in the post-Baathist era. The new political structure of Iraq cannot be founded on democratic principles. There are too many obstacles that hinder such an option in the near future. Firstly, pro-American states in the Middle East would not support a democratic regime in Iraq perceiving it as a threat to the future of their monarchical regimes. In addition to this, it would be unrealistic to envisage a rapid transition to democracy in a country like Iraq which lacks the necessary experience of a democratic government and which will most probably face a period of long lasting instability as a consequence of invasion of its territories by foreign powers. Furthermore, the remaining elements of the Baath Part would most likely resist the new regime.

"Efforts to establish new political parties should be encouraged whilst organizing the political structure around the dominant party model with a Sunni-Arab leader from a military background who is capable of co-operating with the Western world to replace the Baathist regime. Such efforts would mark the first steps in the path to a democratic system. A realist evaluation of the facts shows that the restructuring of Iraq would be a long-term project that will have to be shaped according to the needs of not only Iraq, but also neighboring countries such as Turkey."
 

Turkmen and Turkey are definitely two different animals, though it's not necessarily the case that the ITN's goals are entirely seperate from those of Ankara. The 95% and 75% population figures are, I think, dramatically inflated by the authors of the boosk in question, usually justified by a mixture of taking Ottoman-era census figures at face value and counting the products of Turkmen-Kurd intermarriage as Turkmen. To throw out numbers that I believe approximate the cultural truth, I'd estimate something like 35% of Kirkuk is Kurd, 40% is Arab, 20% is Turkmen, and 5% is Assyrian.

Still, that the proponents of the ITN are adopting such dramatic claims is significant.

Re: the period of time necessary to transition to democracy, I hope you're wrong, but I think you're right. Of note is the article in the Fall 2004 issue of Independent Review by Erich Weede called "The Diffusion of Prosperity and Peace by Globalization" in which Weede, amongst other things, attempts to link the level of wealth in the country and its ability to sustain liberal democracy.
Anon-MI