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Ghent University

Faculty of political and social science

Literature Study

Sanders Arthur

Thesis International Political Science

Promotor: Prof. Dr. Christopher Parker

Commissaris: Prof. Marlies Casier

Academic year: 2017-2018

The United States, Sectarianism & Iraq:

An overview of US sectarian notions, origins and

implementations in Iraq during the planning and

occupation

Word count: 25.721

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Acknowledgment

First of all I would like to thank my promotor Professor Parker for the help he gave me during the difficult

quest of finding a good and realistic subject for my thesis. Without his guidance my thesis would probably

have handled a totally different, and too divergent subject. I also want to thank my friends Tillo, Taban and

George for the many study hours together and the (sometimes too long) fun intermissions. I also want to

thank my parents for their patience and constant backing. And last but certainly not least, thank you Jotka

for your constant support, affection and for everything you had to withstand during the long process of my

research and writing

Abstract

This thesis will focus on the fundamental US-assumptions that formed the basis for the implementation of

the revolutionary transformational project after the 2003 Iraqi invasion. This project was based on certain

sectarian and ethnic-based representations of what the Iraqi state and society were made up of. In this

paper we will look where these images came from and compare them to other knowledge and narratives

of Iraq and its history. We will focus how these assumptions were used and implemented. We will do this

in three parts: the actors and networks that introduced these representations in US policy circles, how they

were translated and planned into the projects that was eventually implemented in Iraq, and finally we will

look to the implementation and results of these ideas in the project of constitution writing.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgment ..................................................................................................................................... 2

Abstract ................................................................................................................................................... 2

1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 4

1.1 Contextual framework ................................................................................................................... 4

1.2 Problematique and research question. ......................................................................................... 6

1.3 Research design ............................................................................................................................. 7

2. Sectarianism as the key lens ................................................................................................................ 8

2.1 Academics ...................................................................................................................................... 8

2.2 The Iraqi Exiles ............................................................................................................................. 12

2.3 Iraq: a history of sectarianism? ................................................................................................... 17

2.3.1 Ta’ifiyya and its terminology ................................................................................................ 17

2.3.2 Iraq: a history of sectarianism? ............................................................................................ 19

2.3.3 Rejection of Sectarianism as dominant political paradigm, even after 2005 ...................... 24

2.4 Partial Conclusion: ....................................................................................................................... 26

3. The planning phase ........................................................................................................................... 28

3.1 The neoconservatives and the Straussian thought ..................................................................... 28

3.2 A Liberal “Peace” model? ............................................................................................................ 30

3.3 The planning ................................................................................................................................ 32

3.4 ORHA & Jay Garner ...................................................................................................................... 34

3.5 Paul Bremer: Chief civilian administrator (from April 2003 until June 2004) ............................. 36

4. The new Iraqi constitution ................................................................................................................ 38

4.1 The interim constitution and the making of the “Transitional Administrative Law” .................. 39

4.2 The transitional general elections of January 2005 .................................................................... 43

4.2.1 The Sunni boycott ................................................................................................................. 44

4.3 The “permanent” constitution .................................................................................................... 47

5. Conclusion: ........................................................................................................................................ 51

6. List of figures and tables .................................................................................................................... 53

7. Bibliography: ...................................................................................................................................... 55

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1. Introduction

1.1 Contextual framework

March 20 2003, the Anglo-American led coalition forces amass along the Iraqi border and commence it’s,

to put it in the words of Frederick Kagan, ‘great surge’ on Iraq. The proclaimed goal of the invasion was to

remove the Ba’ath government and its leader Saddam Hussein, who allegedly possessed weapons of mass

destruction (WMD), and bring freedom and liberal democracy to the country. Because the UN charter didn’t

–and still doesn’t- approve of pre-emptive warfare the US acted without the UN Security Council approval.

But the Bush administration, in the aftermath of 9/11, convinced a big part of the US citizens –and other

countries like Italy, the UK and Poland- that pre-emptive war was the right and noble thing to do (Packer,

2008, pp. 63-65). This idea was based on the claim that Saddam –being part of the ‘axis of evil’- supported

terrorism and could provide them with WMD’s. Because interventionism was the ‘imperial burden’ of a

superpower, the hawkish neoconservative entourage of President G.W Bush stated in its new national

security strategy document of 20021 –also known as the ‘bush doctrine’- it would take unilateral military

action against Saddam2 (Ajami, 2003). The world’s superpower would no longer be neutral when looking at

the domestic politics of other countries (Packer, 2008, pp. 63-65). The document was influenced by a

dominant feeling in the international community that liberty triumphed over totalitarianism after the

collapse of the Soviet Union3. This international optimistic feeling that ‘freedom and democracy’ should be

actively spread around the globe was translated in a more proactive and interventionist evolution confined

within the ‘liberal peace theory’ (Duffield, 2001). It was built around the belief that the “free” liberal,

representative democratic model could be ‘injected’ into countries from the outside trough interventions.

This “freedom” was also the core business of the 2002 Bush doctrine.

Despite the proclaimed noble reasons that were given in public to justify the invasion, it quickly became

clear that there was a broader project being implemented in Iraq than just the overthrowing of Saddam.

Washington had big plans for Iraq. The goal was to transform the economy, society and politics of Iraq in a

way that it would become possible to start from a ‘clean slate’ (Parker, 2006). Because there was this focus

to rebuild Iraq from a year zero, we could also call it a “forced revolution” as Chris Parker (2006) and Andrew

Arato (2007) did. The US policymakers succeeded in representing Iraq as an object ready to be ‘remade’

through a military intervention into a liberal democratic and free market model state in the region. This

representation of Iraq had to be based on certain ideas, knowledge and assumptions of what the Iraqi state

and society were made up of.

But for this project to be applicable, the Iraqi state had to be ‘deleted’ and the society remade. In

accordance with this idea the coalition forces started with a “shock and awe” bombardment on a massive

scale to overwhelm and destroy the Iraqi military and infrastructure (Klein, 2007, pp.413-490). As the

1 This document was heavily influenced by the experience of the Bush administration of the 9/11 terrorist attacks (Packer, 2008) 2Regime change in Iraq was already an official policy objective under President Bill Clinton (Packer, 2008) 3 conform to Francis Fukuyama’s ideas in “the end of history”

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government of Saddam collapsed and the state was dismantled4, the coalition forces swept through the

country, leaving a big power vacuum –ready to be filled and used -in their wake.

Paul Bremer, the civil administrator in Iraq, would fill this vacuum and would be the key executor of the

revolutionary transformational project in Iraq (Packer, 2008). It was Secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld

who chose Bremer as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), most likely because of his hardline

neoconservative profile and ideology that were better fitting for the kind of plans that Washington had in

mind for Iraq (Parker, 2006). Bremer quickly picked up the ideas surrounding Washington Policy circles

about what reconstruction model that should be followed. The CPA also eagerly picked up the assumption

that Iraq was an artificial state and had a sect-divided society, and they would govern Iraq accordingly

trough this lens. Because of the relatively small invasion force, the coalition would never succeed in fully

filling the power vacuum or provide security or stability for the Iraqi people. Because of this the Iraqi people

had to rely on other forms of protection: the militias (Crisis group, 2006). With the rise of more and more

sect-based militia groups after 2003, like the Mahdi army and the Badr Organization, the amount of intra-

groups conflicts between Iraqis skyrocketed during the occupation. The Ashoura- bombing, the raiding of

villages like Madayna, the destruction of the Shi’a shrine in Samarra in February 2006, the kidnapping and

killing of 30 Sunni Arab men from the Hurriya neighborhood in 2005 or the Kadhemiya bridge disaster (crisis

group, 2006); all these incidents facilitated and strengthened the perceptions and identifications, of the

rulers and of the Iraqi people, along sectarian lines. But the CPA and Bremer didn’t even think of shifting

anything into an alternative approach. “It was clear to all but the most diehard of the Bush Administration

supporters that the situation in Iraq was tipping towards crisis” (Parker, 2006, p82).

On May 1 2003, warrior-president George W. Bush gave his famous “mission accomplished speech” from

the USS Abraham Lincoln. He couldn’t have been more wrong when stating that this was the end to the

major combat operations in Iraq. Even Saddam himself said he expected the war to evolve from traditional

warfare to insurgency attacks, which it quickly did (Nixon, 2016). In December 2003, after his capture and

imprisonment, Saddam predicted the upcoming insurgency: “next summer when it is hot, they might revolt

against you. The summer of 1958 got a little hot. In the 1960s, when it was hot, we had a revolution” (Nixon,

2016, p23). There was truth in what Saddam had said, the real ‘clash of Iraq’ was yet to come. By

midsummer 2003 improvised explosive devices and ambushes were killing several coalition forces a week

(Packer, 2008). This mainly happened in the area that had come to be known as the ‘Sunni triangle’, the

area between Mosul, Baghdad and Ramadi in the Anbar and Saladin provinces. The terms that were used

in Washington to name the attackers quickly evolved (Packer, 2008, 296-303). First the insurgents were “a

few dead-enders”, Rumsfeld suggested it were a few Baathists with dyed mustaches waging a pathetic last

4 Next to the ministry of Oil, which was heavily protected by US forces, nearly all state institutions were completely looted (Packer, 2008). The coalition forces didn’t have to dismantle these state institutions in an active way, they just needed to let the looters do their thing

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stand on behalf of some Arab socialist idea. After that they became “former regime loyalists” (FRLs), then

“former regime elements” (FREs) and finally “anti-Iraqi forces”. In the end they were just POI’s, “Pissed –

off Iraqis”. The way many insurgent groups were framed trough these labels was very problematic since it

denounced the existence of legitimate grievances and it generalized the amalgam of reasons why people

resisted the occupation. They were all just frustrated Sunni ex-Ba’athists.

There was a willful blindness affecting the members of the administration in Washington. Because there

was no plan made for a possible insurgency during the planning of the war, and because it would change

all the calculations that were made for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, this blindness intentionally

persisted (Packer, 2008). There was no talk of guerilla war or insurgency in Washington, with big

consequences on the ground in Iraq. The military unanimously said that there were not enough troops

deployed to secure and control the country. But the insurgency didn’t give Bremer or Rumsfeldt any

incentive to rethink the taken policy direction, it only strengthened the determination to keep pushing the

sect-based transformational policies.

1.2 Problematique and research question.

Although ‘artificiality’ doesn’t make any sense from a historical point of view5, when Iraq became an

independent state under British control, it was perceived as such. It was considered a country that would

eventually disappear because of its multi ethnic, religious and tribal character (Bali, 2016). However,

research of Ash Bâli shows that during the Ottoman rule, before the Hashemite or Ba’athist period, there

was already an administrative entity “al-Iraq al-Arabia” that combined the 3 regions of Mosul, Baghdad and

Basra.

As was the case during the Ottoman time, Sunni Arabs, dominated the Iraqi political and military institutions

during the British mandate period (Bengio, 1998). However, Iraqi history shows us that the multiple

population groups succeeded to cohabit and form a nation within its borders. Sectarianism has always been

part of Iraqi society, but before the 1991 war and the 2003 invasion, it was a largely manageable social and

cultural phenomenon (Dawisha, 2008). But still, the coalition forces that invaded Iraq in 2003 used this

sectarian & ethnic “Iraq-as-artificial-state” lens as the basis to reshape Iraq from the outside. The

transitional project that had to lead to Democracy created conditions within which sectarianism became

politicized and embedded in a particular political context. Or as Adeed Dawisha wrote: “the difference

between 1933 and 2003 -and after- was not so much in the ethnic-sectarian-tribal structure of society, but

in the policies adopted by the governing elites, as well as the perceptions of these policies by the

population.” (Dawisha, 2008, p. 220). What I want to do in my thesis is to look at this specific political

context.

5 Historically speaking we need to acknowledge the fact that almost all nation states can be considered ‘artificial’ given the fact that they are almost all ‘created’ through conquest and war. A nation and National sentiments are ‘imagined communities’, as Benedict Anderson (1991) has put it.

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First I will look where these dominant sect-based narratives and representations about Iraq before the

occupation came from. How did sectarianism become the key lens, when looking at Iraq? I think it would

be interesting to map the interactions between academic, exiles and policymaking circles to see how and

what particular image of Iraqi society came to dominate. Since all these actor had to base their ideas and

assumptions on information of the Iraqi history, I will look at the history of Iraq in the second half of the

20th century to see if and how sectarianism, tribalism or sect-based policies were a part of it, as was assumed

by people in policy circles in Washington. To put it in Edward Said’s terminology: I will look at the

representation of Iraq trough knowledge production of the country.

Finally, Once these particular images -that presented the insurgency and violence as a confirmation and

reinforcement of sectarian cleavages that were already present in Iraq before 2003 (Baram, 2005)- were

produced, how were these implemented and reinforced in Iraq by the occupying authorities? I will look

at CPA policies that transformed Iraq and directed the making of the new Iraqi constitution. How did the

effort to pacify opposition against the occupation through the use of a ‘consociational democracy’ model

linked with a sect/ethnic quota system, affect the process of constitution making? Did this model live up to

its expectations of pacification? What were the implications of this new constitution on the ethnic and

sectarian cleavages?

1.3 Research design

The handled methodology is one of a literature study. I started my research by reading George Packer’s

book “the assassin’s gate”. I believed this to be a good starting point since he wrote the book based on his

own observations in the US and in Iraq during the planning phase and during the occupation itself. It gave

me a good introduction and orientation of the dynamics and facts that happened in Iraq and gave me a

focus for the problematique I wanted to look further into. From here on out I looked for other authors that

wrote about the US invasion and occupation of Iraq and who took sectarianism into account . I started

reading articles of Larry Diamond, Batatu, Lewis, Ajami, Dawisha, Baram and many more.

Although Packer had a lot of contact with people who were a part of influential networks and policy circles

in Washington and Iraq, I also wanted to read a primary work of a neoconservative who was a part of the

administration itself. Bremer’s book “My year in Iraq: the struggle to build a future of hope” was the other

major starting document for the orientation of my research. The references in Bremer’s book guided me –

mostly indirectly- to congressional reports, documents written by other neoconservatives like the “clean

break” paper and critical voices of the Iraqi invasion and occupation like Visser, Arato and Bensahel.

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2. Sectarianism as the key lens

“Our demands are directed only at the regime that enslaves them and threatens us. When these demands

are met, the first and greatest benefit will come to Iraqi men, women and children. The oppression of Kurds,

Assyrians, Turkomen, Shi’a, Sunnis and others will be lifted, the long captivity of Iraq will end, and an era of

new hope will begin.” (President W. Bush on October 7 2002, Cincinnati Union Terminal)

Instead of speaking of “the oppression of the Iraqis” in general, Bush talked about the oppression of Kurds,

Assyrians, Turkomen, Shi’a and Sunnis. This already suggests the separation of Iraqi society in different

ethnic and sectarian groups. It also entails a way of looking at the Iraqi “regime”. This regime was something

that could be treated as an object where the US could intervene into and reengineer (Parker, 2006). But

when they confronted this state power, it quickly became clear that it was actually very defuse and

relational, it doesn’t emerge from a central core (embodied by Saddam) but it emerged from relations

between multiple different agents. When the state institutions and capacity was destroyed, which removed

the ‘doing’ of the state (Migdal & Schlichte, 2005, p14-16), the Americans were confronted with a changed

Iraqi environment. An environment of deep Iraqi fragmentation where the three main sectarian and ethnic

groups were competing with one another. It was a situation that they created themselves, through their

assumptions and policy decisions, and one that they didn’t understand. They made insufficient effort to

look beyond what was immediately visible, ignoring other less visible dynamics. By doing so they further

reinforced the ascending cleavages.

The Iraqi intervention wasn’t only a failure of implementation, as Diamond implied in his 2005 piece Lessons

from Iraq, it was a more fundamental failure of thinking and representing what the state and the Iraqi

society was. But if the project was based on wrong assumptions, where did these assumptions came from?

2.1 Academics

I believe a vital moment in the period that preceded the invasion, and greatly influenced the US

administration’s vision of Iraq, was when Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami were invited to meet with Dick

Cheney in 2002 (Packer, 2008, pp50-56). Ajami and Lewis were both Middle Eastern area specialist.

However, some, like Edward Said, would rather call them “area generalist”6 (Said, 2001). Lewis was already

introduced in the Washington circles in the 1970s by Richard Perle. Ajami was later introduced by

Wolfowitz. They were friends and both active at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies

in the 1990s. Both scholars had written books on the region with a very distinct vision. Lewis wrote “What

went Wrong? The clash between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East” and “The Roots of Muslim Rage”.

Both books, respectively published in 2002 and 1990, describe a “surge of hatred” rising from the Muslim

world which rejected Western civilization as such (Lewis, 1990). According to him, the lack of modernity in

6 Said accused Lewis of being an ‘Orientalist’. He was someone who used generalizing tendencies when looking at the Middle East (Said, 2001)

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the Islamic world made conflict with the historical West inevitable. In spite of the belief that Huntington

came up with ‘the clash of civilizations’, it was actually Bernard Lewis who first used this vision and

terminology. Edward Said called the whole idea of a Clash of Civilizations an orientalist “prescription for

war” in his lecture on the Myth of the clash of Civilizations in 1998 (MEF, 1998). I believe the following quote

from Huntington’s paper “The Clash of Civilizations?”7 from 1993 is clarifying why Said claimed this: “The

West must exploit differences and conflicts among Confucian and Islamic states to support other civilization

groups sympathetic to western values and interests” (Huntington, 1993, P49). It would of course go to far

as to say Huntington or Lewis prescribed the Iraqi invasion, but I believe they did forecasted it in a way.

Their thinking certainly gave an incentive –and an indirect legitimization of the invasion- to the idea that

the US was under threat of Muslims and amplified the dichotomous thinking of us (who are western and

modern) and them (who are Muslim and backwards).

Another supporter of this thinking was Fouad Ajami. He wrote “The Dream Palace of the Arabs”. In his book

he tried to tell the history of disappointments of the Arabs from the inside trough prose and poetry (Ajami,

1999). However, this so called ‘inside look’ into the psyche of the Arabs was produced in the United States,

where Ajami8 lived. Both Lewis and Ajami made claims about “the Islamic Community” as if the people who

lived in this huge region between Senegal and Iran or between Indonesia and Bangladesh were the same

and shared the same characteristics and anger towards Western ideas.

These three ‘Middle Easter experts’ saw the Arab world as a region in decay, inhabited by people with an

aversion towards modernity and who were divided over sectarian and ethnic disputes. A region with a

history of disappointment characterized by cultural and economic backwardness. Because the Arabs could

or would not reverse this decay themselves, they needed foreign “assistance”. So it was no surprise that

Ajami and Lewis supported the invasion in Iraq. The removal of the Saddam regime would only be the

starting point. It would be the necessary shock to launch the whole region into modernity (Packer, 2008).

While Lewis, Huntington and Ajami mostly affected the gaze towards the Muslim world more in general, an

influential academic on the US vision of Baathist Iraqi was Israeli scholar Amatzia Baram.

Baram, a Professor at the Department of the History of the Middle East and Director of the Centre of Iraq

Studies at the University Of Haifa, was born in 1938 in a Kubbutz in Southern Israel, where he worked on

the Kibbutz farm and graduated in Biology (USIP, 2003). After the Six Day War in 1967 he decided to start

his education on history of the modern Middle East and Islam, in which he was awarded a Ph.D in 1986 for

his work on Baathist Iraq. He continued his research on Tribal Iraq with publications like “Neo-Tribalism in

Iraq: Saddam Hussein’s Tribal Policies 1991-96” and “Victory in Iraq, One Tribe at a Time”, respectively

written in 1997 and 2003. He served as a member of profound American research institutions such as the

U.S. Institute of Peace (in 1997-1998, 2003-2004). He advised the Israeli government since 1980 and the US

7 Interestingly, Huntington removed the question mark in his later book “the clash of civilizations”(1996) 8 Ajami is Arabic for “non-Arab”

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administrations of Reagan, Bush, Clinton and G.W Bush on Iraqi society and the Gulf region. He lectured

and wrote pieces on Iraqi society and the (Sunni) insurgency for the American military in the period starting

from 2005 until 2009. He always kept the focus on the influence of tribal structures in Iraq more in general,

but mostly wrote about the (neo-) tribal policies of the Baath party under Saddam Hussein (Baram, 1997).

Baram looked at Iraq as a country that was primarily defined and governed through its tribal and sect-based

identities and policies.

What were the characteristics of this Iraqi-tribal sectarianism according to Baram?

Most of the tribal interactions in Central and northern Iraq (Baram calls this the “Sunni-Arab center-north”)

had to do with landownership (Baram, 1997, pp.1-7). The tribal system in Southern Iraq (Baram calls this

the “Shi’a-Arab south”) was slightly different. The southern tribal system was presented as being more

fragmented and Shi’a tribal Shaiks were under more influence of clerics, who were called ‘Sâdâh’ (or ‘holy

men’). Baram considered tribal and sectarian identities as being mutually overlapping.

The position and power of tribal Shaikh’s started to erode when General Abd al-Karim Qasim and the free

officers toppled the Hashemite Monarchy in 1958. Qasim’s government removed the 1924 Tribal

Regulations law, abolished the 1933 Law on the duties of cultivators to their landlords9 and implemented

an agrarian reform. The Qasim regime made these choices to try to separate the peasants from their

(feudal) tribal landlords (mostly in central and northern Iraq) and/or Sâdâh influence (in Southern Iraq).

Saddam Hussein defended these policies in one of his first public appearances, advocated that the land

reform was for the “cheated poor” in the villages and against the “reactionaries” (read: Shaiks) who

promoted “tribalism, regionalism and religious fanaticism” (Baram, 1997, p3).

However when the Baath party came to power, rather than ruling out the tribal ‘Shaikh’ as political power

holders, as Qasim had done before him and as the Baath party doctrine mandated, Baram claims that a

process of incorporating certain tribes into the service of the regime was initiated (Baram, 1997). Saddam

took actions to reintroduce or reawaken long-suppressed or forgotten tribal and sectarian affiliations.

Efforts were made to push people back towards their tribes and families. These policies already started in

1968, when the Baath party came to power, but were strongly accelerated in the 80’s and 90’s under

Saddam’s rule. He calls this the “Ba’thization” of the Iraqi tribes. Baram claimed that there was a reversed

process going on, an effort by Saddam to tribalize the party itself. Tribal roots and honor became more and

more an important guiding principle. Once, Saddam called the Baath party itself “a tribe”. It is only after the

Gulf War that Saddam’s policies brought tribal, ethnic and religious elements together in a consistent policy

(Baram, 1997).

9 The 1933 law was primarily removed by the Qasim regime to motivate peasants to go and settle in the cities. (Tribalist structures and affiliations have always been stronger in the agrarian regions of Iraq)

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It is remarkable that Baram stated that Saddam was mainly concerned and aware of the dangers of

competing power elites10, regardless of its tribal, religious or sectarian sympathies and at the same time

makes the claim that tribal and/or sect-based considerations were the determining factor of the policy

decisions made by the regime (Baram, 1997).

During Saddam’s rule a new hierarchy of tribes, individuals and families that were part of ‘the regime11’

took form. As already noted, this was not primarily bases on sectarian or ethnic identity but on loyalty.

Cooptation based on individual segments was more important than cooptation of tribes as a whole. There

were Christians, Kurds, Shi’a and Sunnis who remained loyal to the regime and were a part of its power and

patronage networks. There were parts of multiple tribes, Sunni and Shia, that didn’t utter loyalty to the

Baathist regime. Baram claims that it was mostly during and after the Iran-Iraq war that Saddam expanded

the policy of cooptation within the regime towards other tribes and sectarian groups (Baram, 1997, p5).

Saddam, and the Baath party, followed a double path when it came to tribal policy’s that aimed at

incorporating and strengthening certain tribes, while excluding or weakening others (Baram, 1997, pp4-5).

Just as Bengio (1998) explained, these practices weren’t part of a one way consistent policy towards a

particular tribe or sectarian group; they were used for certain political goals. The Baathist regime was quite

flexible, and changed its ‘loyalty politics’ in different situations. Tribal policies in the 80’s and 90’s were

aiming to weaken the strongest tribes, mostly those close to Baghdad, to assure the regime’s power. This

was done through expropriation of large areas of land (Baram, 1997).

For example, most of the Sunni Jubbur tribe’s land, west of the Tigris near the South of Baghdad, was taken

and given to different tribes (Baram, 1997, pp4-5). The same was done to the Sunni Shammar Jarba clan

just north of the capital. On 17 May, 1995, there was a revolt of Al-Bu Nimr of the Sunni Dulaym federation

in and around Ramadi. Although the revolt was contained after just three weeks, it showed that by 1996

Saddam had bad relations with three major Sunni tribal groups.

As we have seen Saddam did indeed base some of his policies on tribal and/or sect-based elements and

considerations, but it wasn’t as coherent as perceived by Baram. I believe these tribal or sectarian policies

by the regime were part of a certain political agenda one day, while other non-tribal or non-sectarian trade-

offs and considerations were made another day.

We can conclude that A. Baram handled a certain degree of deterministic and generalizing thinking on Iraqi

society and state by pointing at “Tribalism” as the source of the power and inspiration for the policies of

the regime. He brought this generalizing thinking –together with Lewis, Ajami and the Iraqi exiles (see

below)- with him to Washington. His matched with the mental habits of the neoconservatives, who

practiced a constant reflex of diminishing the complexity of things. We will look further into this way of

10 a statement that I personally support after the reading of Nixon’s book “debriefing the president” 11“The Regime”, as it is often used in a negative and generalizing way, is actually something very diffuse and not always concentrated around one person, party or movement as is often perceived (Parker, 2006, p.97)

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thinking in part 3.1, and also on Baram’s contribution in framing the Iraqi (Sunni) insurgents within a

particular profile.

2.2 The Iraqi Exiles

The US State department already initiated contacts with Iraqi exiled opposition groups during the Clinton

administration in the 1990s, and after the signing of the Iraqi liberation Act12 of 1998 (Packer, 2008, pp.23-

24). Bush and his neoconservative team stepped up this effort considerably.

Certain Iraqi exiles –like Ajami, Makiya and Chalabi- had a significant influence on the knowledge, processes,

dynamics and the state of mind prior to the 2003 invasion.

Before the 2003-Iraq war, at least three million Iraqis lived in exile (Packer, 2008, pp.66-99). While the

pentagon was already working on the planning of the war itself, the state department was realizing that it

better started thinking what had to be done after Saddam was removed. So the department’s Bureau of

Near Eastern Affairs started looking for people with knowledge of Iraq. In April 2002, they started recruited

Iraqi exiles with expertise in various fields and organized them into seventeen committees. They had the

task to draft reports on subjects that were seen as important to govern Iraq after the removal of Saddam,

such as electricity13, policing and justice. One of the figures that the state department wanted to recruit

into the bureau, who publicly called for the overthrowing of Saddam since the gulf war of 1991 and who

would later on become the leading person amongst the Iraqi exiles, was Kanan Makiya.

Makiya left Baghdad in 1967 to study in the US. He never returned to his native country. In his first years in

the United states he joined left-wing revolutionary socialist groups (Packer, 2008, pp. 66-99). He was a

member of the “Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine”. In London he and his Iranian

wife were militant critics of the Western Powers, especially the US. But events like the civil war in Lebanon,

the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq war changed Makiya’s thinking: “I could no longer blame it on the

US” he said (Packer, 2008, pp. 69-70). To him, what the Middle East needed was Enlightenment. The crucial

issue was no longer national liberation, but liberal democratic reform.

He wrote Republic of Fear (1989) before the Gulf war and cruelty and silence (1993) after the war. The latter

was a bundle of stories of Iraqis and Kuwaitis who shared their experience during the war. He wanted the

reader to look beyond the Arab world’s own concealment behind the victimhood of a Western (cultural)

imperialism (Makiya, 1993). Makiya wanted to show that the things that happened in the Middle East were

not the result of external interferences, but internal Arab flaws. This sparked a heavy debate with another

Arab-born scholar who lived in the US, Columbia professor Eduard Said. Said saw the Arab world as the

victim of an age-old western cultural imperialism in his groundbreaking study Orientalism. Said called

12This law made it the official policy of the US to support the efforts to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq (Packer, 2008). 13 Two very interesting articles by Nida Alahmad on this are: “Rewiring a State: The Techno-Politics of Electricity in the CPA’s Iraq” (Middle East Report Spring 2003) and the slightly longer “illuminating a State: Statebuilding and Electricity in Occupied Iraq”(2016)

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Makiya a “posturing man living between countries and cultures with no visible commitment to anyone,

except his own upward career” (Packer, 2008, p. 73). There was a tone of conspiratorial thinking in Said’s

attack. For him, it was enough ask “Min warrah?” -Who’s behind him? When answering this question

himself, Said saw Perle, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. Makiya defended himself by claiming that Said only used

rejectionist political arguments, without coming up with real solutions to make things better (Karsh &

Miller, 2008, pp. 13-21). Makiya didn’t look for hidden agendas or irrational motives as Said did, he took

people at face value. Or to put it in Said’s words: he is an “intellectual who serves power unquestioningly;

the greater the power, the fewer doubts he has” (Karsh & Miller, 2008, p16). Makiya was only interested

what American power could accomplish in Iraq on behalf of his liberal ideas (Packer, 2008, p.73-74). He

presented himself as the father of what he called a “non-Arab” and decentralized post-Ba’athist country

(Said, 2002). Said claimed that Makiya was so committed to his “theoretician” view that he consequentially

ignored history, people, communities and reality so that he could make this claim.

This naïve attitude, as Packer noted, was very worrying given the scale of the Iraqi project he was about to

sign on for (Packer, 2008, p70-75). This willful blindness, as we will see, was a recurring element through

the Iraqi project. I quickly came to see that his so called simplistic ‘expertise’ knowledge on Iraq must have

sounded like music in the ears of the Neoconservatives who were planning the first stages of the invasion.

It was no surprise that he was quickly integrated within the counseling entourage of the Bush

administration.

When the state department wanted to recruit him into the Bureau, he first declined the offer (Packer, 2008,

pp. 70-75). To Makiya, the state department were the ones who defended the status quo in the region and

they were the ones who left Saddam in power after the first gulf war for the sake of “stability”. Only when

he got the impression that the rhetoric was changing in Washington, when officials were really talking about

democratic change, he eventually agreed to join the project’s “Democratic Principles Working Group”14

(DPWG). This committee consisted of thirty-two Iraqi exiles who were mostly members of exiled political

groups who were organized along sectarian lines. Many of them brought sect-based politics to the talking

table. They got the assignment to write a report about the blueprint for Iraq’s transition from Saddam’s

totalitarianism to democracy titled “The Transition to Democracy in Iraq”.

Makiya and Ahmed Chalabi (see below) quickly took over the writing of the document, giving the other

members little input (Packer, 2008, pp. 75-96). The leading figures weren’t really interested in complying

with the pressure from the state department to write something politically neutral or inclusive, they clearly

pushed their personal vision. The “transition to Democracy Report”, written in the autumn of 2002, focused

on transitional issues, human rights, the rule of law, civil society and Federalism (DPWG, 2002, p.3). I believe

14 Regrettably the Group only gave broad information on the participants and didn’t give specific information on their ideas or input. The only information that is given is: “The report embodies inputs from members of the working group, Iraqis outside the working group and non-Iraqi experts… the coordinating committee has avoided naming the authors of the various ideas contained in it.” (The future of Iraq project, p. 3)

14

it was primarily the commitment to introduce a Federal structure in Iraq combined with exiled Iraqi

participants, who were organized along sectarian lines, that reinforced sectarianism as the key lens and

made a consociational democratic model as the way to a ‘representative’ democratic government. The

document they wrote wanted an election for a transitional authority from the community of Iraqi exiles

and of the parts in Iraq that were under control of the two main Kurdish parties (Packer, 2008). They

advocated a geographic Federal structure so Iraq would no longer be an official Arab country, a

demilitarization along Japanese lines and a debaathification along German lines (Packer, 2008, p.80). Since

we now know that Iraq was in fact debaathified and a federalization process was set in motion after the

invasion, we can see that this group in fact had some profound influence on the policy choices during the

occupation. Makiya didn’t ask the question if they would be actually capable of achieving these goals. His

firm grip on the Democratic Principles Working Group affected his relations with his fellow Iraqi exiles in a

negative way, so he eventually made the choice of linking himself with the most debatable exile of them

all, Ahmad Chalabi.

Chalabi, a member of a wealthy and politically powerful Shiite family, had left Baghdad after the 1958

Baathist coup and studied in England and the US (Packer, 2008, pp.75-99). He became active in the

Jordanian banking sector and had close relations with the Hashemite royal family. After the collapse of the

Petra Bank in 1989 he became known for financial scandals and had to flee from a conviction by a Jordanian

military tribunal. Chalabi always claimed that the convictions were politically motivated because of his

opposition to Saddam. When the Iraqi National Council (INC) was created after the Gulf war, Chalabi

became chairman of the organization. The INC was a “catch all” exile organization. It included Communists,

monarchists, Islamists, Kurds, ex-Baathists and liberals. The CIA played a key role in the creation and

financing of this body of Iraqi exiles. The agency helped Chalabi in becoming one of the leading figures of

the Iraqi opposition in exile, this while even Makiya admitted that Chalabi had not even a little experience

when it came to democratic politics. The question how someone without any political experience could

lead a transition to this democracy, was apparently never asked and seemed not relevant to Makiya at the

time. It was only after the failed coup attempt of 1995 that Chalabi lost his support in Washington and

started looking for other supportive networks of power and resources (Packer, 2008, pp. 77-82). He found

this all centralized in one person, Richard Perle. He introduced Chalabi to supporters and institutions like

the American enterprise institute and the Project for the New American Century. He met with key players -

like Cheney, Wolfowitz- of what would later become the bush administration. Chalabi made himself the

favorite Iraqi of the Republicans. At a meeting of the Israeli based group that issued the ‘Clean Break paper:

a new strategy for securing the realm’15 in 1996, he told the audience that the INC could take control of Iraq

15 This paper, full of determinist thinking illustrates the Neocons thinking, was written for Israeli Prime minister Netanyahu and explained a new approach to Israeli’s security problem. The main message involving Iraq was that Saddam had to be removed and that the Hashemite rule in Iraq should be restored. They believed that the Shi’a

15

with modest US help and lead the transition to a democratic Iraq with good ties with Israel. The INC was

also very effective in the finding (or producing) of Iraqi defectors with top-secret information about

Saddam’s WMD program. This all played a role when the Iraqi liberation act was signed in 1998. This signing

had very positive financial effect on the INC, which became the recipient of millions more in government

funding.

Some US observers, such as Peter Galbraith, wrote that the role of Chalabi couldn’t be overstated. He even

claimed that if it weren’t for him, the US military wouldn’t have invaded Iraq because Chalabi made a

“convincing case for a Democratic Iraq and Arab Democracy” in Washington (Biggar, 2013, p. 303).

Makiya’s naïve universalist thinking convinced him that the years the Iraqi citizens lived under Saddam’s

rule made Iraq an exception and more receptive of Western ideas (Packer, 2008, p.81). He claimed that

while all the other Arab countries in the Middle East were clearly dominated by anti-western ideologies,

the Baathist period made the Iraqis hungry for something new. If only new leadership would show them

the way, they would support the same ideas he had on the new “non-Arab” Iraq. Makiya saw Chalabi as

this new leader: “He doesn’t think like an Arab or a Shiite or a religious person. He’s the most likely of all

those capable of leading Iraq to go in a democratic direction” (Packer, 2008, p.77). Makiya saw “the Arabs”

in the same way that Ajami and Lewis did, as backward people. Since Chalabi and Makiya only lived in Iraq

the first decades of their lives, I think we could say that they both didn’t think like Iraqi’s or as Arab’s, but

as universalist Americans.

But the main question here is what vision these people, who hadn’t been in Iraq for 4 or more decades,

bring to the table in Washington? On December 2002 there was a meeting in the London Hilton Metropole

where a lot of the Iraqi exile organizations and individuals were present (those that were recognized and

accepted at least) (Packer, 2008, pp. 88-99). Nearly all of them were divided along ethnic or sectarian lines.

The topics of discussion and friction were roughly a reflection of how and over what cleavages Iraqi politics

would be practiced and divided in the future. Everybody talked about the “Kurds, Sunnis and Shi’a” during

the meetings. The Kurdish groups were against non-ethnic federalism, the Sunnis were unhappy because

there had been a lack of inclusiveness, and the Shiite parties were grumbling because the section dealing

with religion and the state had not been solicited before the negotiations started.

Makiya talked about the need to move beyond the “old politics” of the ethnic parties. The use of the word

‘old politics’ shows us that Makiya also saw Iraqi society and politics based on sectarian and ethnic

identities. But this was also motivated because he knew that some of the bigger parties –such as the Shi’a

groups- would vote against his proposal and would come up with one of their own. He tried to convince

Condoliza Rice, who was monitoring the process, that the traditional ethnic and sectarian parties were

overrepresented, and that members of his INC were the true representatives of the ideas of the Iraqis inside

population would follow King Hussein, since the same blood of the Prophet flowed through his veins (Perle et al., 2000).

16

the country. Feisal Istrabadi, who was deeply involved in the writing of the Iraqi transitional constitution

during the occupation (See below) said this about the exiles: “I knew nobody who spent four decades in

exile knew what was going on in Iraq. I didn’t and Kanan didn’t. The only difference was that I was a hell of

a lot more cautious”(Packer, 2008, p 98). Regrettably, nobody in Washington had the same suspicion.

David L. Phillips from the council of foreign relations, who was in contact with the state department during

the whole process, summed it up with the words: “Iraqis aren’t quite ready for the new politics. The tribal

structures, the ethnic groupings, they matter to Iraqis.” (Packer, 2008, p.96). It entails a quite resembling

way of looking at Iraqi society as Baram did. He also considered the sectarian & tribal nature of Iraqi society

as being omnipotent. The new political structure of Iraq should resemble these tribal and ethnic cleavages

according to him.

In December 2002, Makiya reflected on the whole process with the words: “it’s the architect in me” (Packer,

2008, p78). It was also the (Ex-) Trotskyist and Straussian in him, for he still owned the idea’s he had in the

past. Ideas of an intellectual vanguard, forcing history to move in a certain direction. This was an attribute

he shared with many of the Neoconservative policymakers in Washington.

On January 10 2003, after the convention in London, Makiya, R. Rahim and Hatem Mukhlis were invited

into the Oval office to meet the president (Packer, 2008, pp.96-99). Bush asked them about their personal

stories, but the exiles used most of their time to explain to the President that there were Sunni and Shi’a

Arabs living in Iraq. In this meeting the exiles strengthened the sect-based approach in the circles of the

President and State department. Just as the academics Lewis and Ajami, the exiles Makiya and Chalabi had

a significant impact on the vision that was being formed in the minds of the policymakers.

17

2.3 Iraq: a history of sectarianism?

2.3.1 Ta’ifiyya16 and its terminology

Before we look into the question whether Iraqi history is a communal and/or sectarian one, I believe it is

important to look at the wide spectrum that “sectarianism” covers. What does it actually mean?

While I was reading various articles and books about Iraqi sectarianism, or sectarianism more in general, I

saw that none of the authors clearly defined what sectarianism mend for them. They all seemingly assumed

that the reader already knew what sectarianism was. The terminology of the concept “sectarianism” is

largely left undefined. Is sectarianism a social, religious or political issue? Is it a policy that is instituted and

practiced, or is it something that is felt? Does it necessarily imply hatred towards ‘the sectarian other’?

Because of these questions, and the fact that one has to be mindful of the political consequences of using

sectarianism as a catch-all concept, I decided to dedicate the following part to the terminology of

sectarianism.

There are multiple ways, with multiple connotations, in which the term “sectarianism” is used. I will follow

the way in which Haddad differentiates between the different terminologies of sectarianism (Haddad, 2017,

pp. 101-122). He distinguishes four different ways of usage.

The first category is a very broad and generalizing one and focusses on the difference of sectarianism and

the utterance of sectarian identities. Some use “sectarianism” as a catch-all concept to refer to much –if

not all- that is related to the uttering of sectarian identities without explaining what the difference is

between legitimate assertions of sectarian identities and those that utter –illegitimate- “sectarianism”.

Some, even reduce the terminology of sectarianism to any kind of antagonism –be they religious, ethnic,

regional or even class based- between sub-national identities. Without such a clarification, the risk exists of

criminalizing otherwise legitimate manifestations of sect based identities by inherently linking them with a

negative and vague nation of sectarianism. Secondly, scholars like Sluglett, use “sectarianism” in a way that

it means varying forms of “sect-centricity” (Sluglett, 2010, pp257-273). Here sectarianism refers to a state

of mind in which religious or sectarian affiliations have come to dominate one’s identity. In order to obtain

political representation people group together with ‘co-religonists’ against members of the other religion

or sect (Sluglett, 2010, p258). However, the use of sect-centricity as a criteria seems unpractical since it

covers a too broad spectrum. It can go from forms of social or, intellectual group forming or interaction to

mobilization against the “sectarian other”. Third, in many works “sectarianism” is approached as

synonymous for the political system in Lebanon, or any other form of political institutionalization of sect

based identities.

16Arabic for sectarianism

18

With their study on sectarianism and racism in Northern Ireland, McVeigh & Rolston (2007) are an example

of this institutionalized approach:

There is no area of social life in Northern Ireland which is nog sectarianized (…) sectarianism

continues to profoundly structure where people are born, where they go to school, where they live,…

(McVeigh & Rolston, 2007, p16)

The main problem, according to Haddad, with this approach could be that it focusses to narrowly on the

political and institutional aspect of sectarianism, losing sight of sectarian dogma, society or religion17.

However, by studying (institutional) sectarianism and racism together, McVeigh and Rolston look how the

former affects the latter and include society, religion and dogma.

A fourth and final approach is one that sees and uses sectarianism as the sect-based equivalent of racism

(Meijer & Wagemakers, 2012).

As we can see, the notion “sectarianism” doesn’t have a clear definition. Because of this, it makes the study

and understanding of what the dynamics and motivations of sectarian identities or relations are difficult.

The only consensus I could find that exists on “sectarianism” is that it is commonly regarded with negativity.

This indefinability and negativity have big practical implications. The lack of clear contours of the term can

make the analytical focus drift away from the real underlying economic, class or political (f)actors of which

sect-based identities can be an expression (Haddad, 2017, p.101-122). The boundless way in which

“sectarianism” is used becomes dangerous when it is coupled with its commonly accepted negativity. The

term “sectarianism” is being used as an instrument for conservative political and social actors to exclude

perceived threats, this was the case in Baathist Iraq (see below) (Bengio, 1998). The brand and/or stigma of

“sectarianism” is often intentionally given to movements, individuals or even large-scale protest to

delegitimize and isolate them or to draw away their support.

Just as Al-Alawi blamed the Iraqi Baathists of restricting the concept of loyalty to the regime by excluding

the Shia population from it, the readymade charge of sectarianism is in practice often just a reference to

the “sectarian” otherness of political or social rivals (Bengio, 1998, p.106-107). The dangerous part is that

the charge of “sectarianism” often finds a receptive audience, which means that there is a significant part

of society that is ready to believe that the sectarian others are guilty of an ill-defined and incoherent

“sectarianism”.

To me personally, the best way to look at the relevance of “sectarianism” is not by looking how many Sunnis

or how many Shia are part of a society, but by examining how social and political issues can be translated

(or ‘sect-coded’ (Haddad, 2017)) at a given time.

17 Theological sectarian disputes are an example of this

19

Building further on the previous part, I want to put the emphasis on the dangers of looking at pre-2003 Iraq

as a “a-sectarian”18 or “non-sectarian”19 society. As noted above, nuance is very important when studying

sectarian or ethnic self-identification and identity (Haddad, 2017, pp. 101-122). If this is not done, it entails

the risk of repeating the mistakes made in the past. Brubaker & Cooper, in their work on ethnicity and group

dynamics, explained this analytical risk with the following words: “Analysis should carefully avoid

unintentionally reproducing or reinforcing reifications by uncritically adopting ‘categories of practice’ as

categories of analysis” (Brubaker & Cooper, 2000, p.5). I believe the most important point of attention on

this matter is the fact that analytical practices can’t create their own reality when they are used. For an

interpretation of a situation can sometimes cause the effects20.

If we limit our approach on sectarianism to something only linked with violent conflict, hatred towards the

other sectarian group(s) and the emergence of political actors who primarily stress the sectarian divisions,

then 2003 becomes a clear breaking point that shows a shift from a non-sectarian Iraq towards a sectarian

Iraq (Haddad, 2017). But if we would make such a distinction we would wield a narrow meaning of

sectarianism, which is in practice something much more complex. When we use a wider conception of

sectarianism, one that includes the fluidity of identity, prejudices, institutional discrimination and

stereotypes that are sect-based, we can say that sectarianism was something very present in Iraq before

2003. If we use this wider conception of sectarianism, the important question is: in what kind of form did it

manifest itself before 2003?

2.3.2 Iraq: a history of sectarianism?

Because of the importance and personal influence that was assigned to Saddam and his regime in the

structuring and shaping of the Iraqi state and society in the second half of the 20th century by people who

were a part of the Neoconservative entourage like Baram and Makiya, I believe that the Baathist period

(1963-2003) is the most relevant for my research when looking at the question: “was sectarianism

something preexisting in Iraq and how did it manifest itself before 2003?” But the era before Saddam, the

Ramadan Revolution of 196321 and even the Monarchical Hashemite period should not be considered as

irrelevant.

As Bâli showed in his research, and as I mentioned in my ‘problematique’ on the Sykes-Picot agreement,

Iraq was already an entity with which people identified themselves during the Ottoman rule in the region

(Bali, 2016). Iraq very much existed in the minds of the people. After 1920, the Iraqi territorial space was

the dominant political paradigm of national citizenship. Batatu gives an example of these tendencies in the

first part of the 20th century that also acknowledges the notion of an Iraqi territorial identity. During the

period of the British mandate (1920-1932) the Iraqi people revolted against the British mandate power.

18 As Baram (2005) did 19 As Visser (2007) did 20 In sociology when the analysis becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, it is called a ‘thomas-theorem’. 21It was during this revolution that Abd al-Karim Qasim was killed and the Baathist party came to power in Iraq

20

They were united regardless of sectarian and tribal fractures (Batatu, 1981). Batatu argued that the 1920

revolt brought tribal groups, who still had great influence and power, together. This transcendence of

differences added to the potential of the formation an ‘Iraqi nation-state’ when the British mandate was

abolished.

“Iraqiness” was also the dominant political framework for certain groups with aspirations of some kind of

federalism. Separatist groups, for example a group of Basra notables who wanted to separate coastal

enclaves of Basra from the areas located more to the north in 1921, demanded this within a confederal

(nonsectarian) Iraqi formula instead of a pure independent one (Visser, 2007). In fact, if there was a demand

for territorial change after 1920, it was almost exclusively based on a non-sectarian basis. The only

separatist claim that was based on sectarian elements in the first part of the 20th century was in 1927. It

came from a small part of the Shi’a population of Basra, but their support diminished fast and they didn’t

demand a form of territorial change that threatened Iraq. They demanded a undefined form of

decentralization. In fact, uprisings after 1920 were considered more as local tribal revolts than full-on ethnic

or sectarian conflicts, as was the case with the Kurdish uprisings after the 1920s.

Although there weren’t any real political demands solely based on sectarian identities, there were a lot of

imbalances between the different sectarian groups within Iraq throughout the 20th century (Dawisha, 2008,

pp.136-147). For instance, a majority of the higher positions in the army corps and within the state were

filled by Sunni Arabs during the Monarchial period, during the rule of Qasim and also during the Baathist

period.

There was also a socio-economic imbalance. Of the 32 largest businesses in the country, which controlled

the state’s economic projects, 31 were property of Sunni Arabs (Dawisha, 2008, p.221). Politically, by the

end of the monarchical period, about 60 percent of the members of the chamber of Deputies were Sunnis,

while they only constituted 20 percent of the population.

But according to Dawisha, this (sectarian) imbalance in the access to power didn’t lead to direct or mass

sect-based resistance simply because sectarian identities were generally considered as dismissive. Haddad

also uses this argument (Haddad, 2016, p.147). Bengio explained it in the way that Wataniyya primed over

Qawmiyya (see below). Bengio explained that: “the Sunni Arabs (…) are pragmatic and practical enough to

always adapt their political discourse to the requirements of changing circumstances. The ensuing

vagueness (…) results from a method of trial and error in the search for a formula that would at last be all

things to all people.” (Bengio, 1998, p. 97). The social mobility and an improved political status of the Shi’a

also abraded some of the ethno sectarian divisions and tensions, primarily in the urban city centers

(Dawisha, 2008).

During the rule of King Faisal II we can see an increase of Shi’a political representation. Iraqi Shi’a were still

underrepresented, but between 1947 and 1954, they held four prime ministerial positions. While they only

held 18 percent of the ministerial positions in the first decade of the Monarchy, they held 35 percent in the

last years of it. King Faisal I wrote in 1932 that the disadvantage that existed among the Shi’a was the result

21

of historical and structural reasons rather than pure sectarian considerations, but that this had nevertheless

led to the (majority) Shi’a population to claim that they continued to be oppressed simply for being Shi’a

(Haddad, 2017, p.114-115). The fact that King Faisal felt the need to write about sectarian imbalances shows

that it was indeed a significant political and social topic at the time. However, I believe it would go too far

as to say that these sectarian imbalances among the Iraqi elites, were characteristic or representative for

the Iraqi society as a whole at the time.

A survey on the Middle East called: ‘ The Middle East: A political and economic Survey’, published in 1958

by the Oxford University Press, also gives us relevant information on that period (Bullard, 1958, pp.237-

273). I believe this work is relevant and interesting because of two reasons. It gave me an insight on the

dominant socio-economic problems of Iraq seen by the external observers, and the date of publication is

also interesting since the book was published before the 14th July revolution and the overthrowing of the

Hashemite kingdom. The main argument that is put forward by the author is the fact that the political

stability in Iraq before world war II was mostly threatened by division within the ruling elites, while after

world war II it was mostly opposition from other social and economic strata that challenged the elites in

power. But this work was relevant because of the things it didn’t (or scarcely) mention. The survey, and its

external observers, didn’t claim that the ethnic or sectarian cleavages of Iraq were one of the main political

issues at that time. It is mentioned once that Iraq consists of a Muslim majority combined with Christians,

Jews Yazidis, Shabak’s and Sabaeans. Only one sentence refers to sect/ethnic based divisions: “The Sunnis

and Shiis are mutually distinguishing and to some extent mutually suspicious sections of the Moslem

majority, as are also the Arab and Kuridish sections of the Sunni group” (Bullard, 1958, p241).

The two main elements that formed the main identity of the Iraqi’s through its history were one that

recognized the many different ethno sectarian groups, and one that focused on the Iraqi nation as a leader

in the Arab world (Dawisha, 2008, pp.136-147). So the main shapes of identification –besides local ones-

were one of being part of a sectarian or ethnic group and/or one of having the Iraqi nationality and being

part of a bigger ‘Arab world’. Ofra Bengio, who studied political discourse in Iraq under the rule of Saddam

and the Baath party, mentions wataniyya and qawmiyya as these two forms of loyalty of the individual to

a larger frame (Bengio, 1998, p.89-97). The former refers to ‘patriotism’ or loyalty to a territorial unit, here

the Iraqi state. The latter, by contrast, refers to loyalty to a community or sect of people; qawm originally

meant tribe or faction. Bengio explains that these two conceptions form a dilemma to each of the rulers of

the modern Iraq, but that they were not necessarily always mutually exclusive. At certain time they

coexisted; at other times they competed with each other. She writes that the Baath party evidently did try

to carry “the two watermelons in one hand”22 (Bengio, 1998, p.97). They saw that the domestic

22 This was an expression Baathist used themselves to explain the link between Wataniyya and Qawmiyya

22

consolidation of Iraq and the link to the Arab world were requirements to maintain Ba’thi power. They

considered Shia, Sunnis and Kurds to be part of the “Iraqi Arab tent23” (Bengio, 1998, p.89).

Dawisha claimed that loyalty to the Iraqi state in a Arab world (wataniyya) was more present in Iraqi society

in the period after the Hashemite Monarchy was overthrown and Abd al-Karim Qasim took over power

(Dawisha, 2008, pp.136-147). Pan-Arabism, and the Arab identity more in general, were strong at the time.

It was not a coincidence that the revolution of 1958 that deposed of the monarchy happened at the apex

of pan-Arabism, the United Arab Republic of Egypte and Syria in February 1958, and the rise of Nasserism

(Stork, 1981, p. 28).

It was during the war with Iran (1980-1988), during the 1980s, that Saddam focused more and more on

Iraqi Nationalism as a political discourse since “exaggerating the qawmi approach would antagonize the

non-Arabs” (Bengio, 1998, p7). The war wasn’t framed by the Iraqi regime, and wasn’t perceived by most

Iraqis, as a sectarian struggle (Haddad, 2016, p.149). It was framed as a national war, not one of Arabs

against Persians.

However, the Sunni feeling of isolation, because of their declining numerical strength24 and the emergence

of a Shia beacon state at its borders, fed the restrictive nature of the regime towards the non-Sunni part of

the population (Bengio, 1998). The perception of hostility by the other (non-Sunni) components grew in the

wake of the gulf war. This was also the period that the opposition in exile became more vocal. Hasan al-

Alawi, a Shia journalist who was a loyal Iraqi court writer until he left Iraq in the early 1980s, wrote about

this growing exclusion and that it was in fact the Sunni Arab leadership who turned Iraq away from pan-

Arabism (Bengio, 1998, pp.99-107). According to him, it were the Baathist themselves who practiced

sectarianism, not the Iraqi people. The constant increase in Iraqi (state) authoritarianism in the 80’s and

after the gulf war was accompanied by intensification in Shi’a sect-centric movements, identifications and

activism (Baram, 2014, p.125). There was a growing differentiated group of Shia, mostly those who were

embedded in Shia social and religious structures, who struggled for inclusion or autonomy opposed to the

state’s homogenizing tendencies of a non-sectarian national project (Haddad, 2016, p.147-148). This

stressed the state’s suspicion on the mobilization of Shi’a identity, which in turn broadened the base of

Shi’a-centric movements and identity. So it was a circular mutually intensifying dynamic of an issue of state-

Shia relations, rather than an issue of Sunni versus Shia. Haddad even claims that : “prior to 2003, (…) there

was no such thing as a Iraqi Sunni identity in any meaningful sense. In the 20th century, many Sunni Arab

Iraqis saw themselves as ‘simply Iraqis’” (Haddad, 2016, pp.147-148). Because Sunnis didn’t see themselves

as a sectarian group as much as the Shia did; hence, the fact that the state censored expressions that were

based on sectarian notions was perceived as more coercive to Shia than to Sunnis.

23 “the expression “tent” in the political context, apparently first used by Husayn himself, stems from the Bedouin tradition and was intended to convey the sense of a common fate and feeling of togetherness” among the different segments of the Iraqi population (…) (Bengio, 1997, p. 91). 24 In 1931 22% of the population was estimated to be a Sunni Arab, in 1982-83 this diminished to 15-11%. The Shia population, respectively, augmented from 55% to 56-60% (Bengio, 1997, p.229).

23

An example of this a-sectarian approach of the state and Shia suppression in 1985: “the extent to which the

regime has suppressed the (Shi’a) issue can be gathered from the fact that the term Shi’i itself has become

almost taboo in the Iraqi media” (Bengio, 1985, p.13). But some scholars, like Haddad, see the Iraqi taboo

and abstention to use terms like “Sunni” and “Shi’a” in the Iraqi media as an indication that these

“sectarian” terms were regarded as condemnable rather than a sign of sectarian based oppression (Haddad,

2017, p.112).

It was after the war with Iran, and the UN economic sanctions of 1991 as a result of the invasion of Kuwait,

that the economic situation was deteriorating quickly and more and more individuals turned to their tribal

and/or sectarian identity for security and economic survival. It was in the 90’s that hatred towards the ‘new

(Sunni dominated) privileged class’ took clear regional and sectarian forms (IGC Middle East Report N°52,

2006).

Saddam Hussein was commonly seen as the executioner and oppressor of the Shi’a and Kurds, but Saddam

was actually more of an ‘equal-opportunity’ killer according to some (IGC Middle East Report N 52, 2006).

Sectarian political trade-offs were no goal on their own, they were functionally deployed in different

political projects. But as I already mentioned, Kurds and Shi’a were indeed systematically under-

represented in positions of power such as the security apparatus during the Baathist period. A lot of the

high executive positions were filled by Arab Sunni tribe members, some of Saddam’s own Albu Nasir tribe

(Baram, 1997). But, the main criterion for cooptation was loyalty to the regime, not someone’s ethnic or

religious background an-sich. The Sunni population had indeed great political –and economic- power but it

didn’t completely control the government on its own (Baram, 1997, p.5). Other (non-sectarian) criteria for

inclusion into the state power structures were also used. For example, during the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam

expanded the recruitment for the security apparatus to other Arab tribes, of which most were Sunni but

also included Shi’a. In 2003, Saddam admitted that he indeed did distrust the Shi’a population, as he said

himself when he was captured by American troops during the occupation: “you must understand: Iraqis are

always plotting against you—especially the Shi’a!” (Nixon, 2016, p.43).

Visser claims in his article “ethnicity, federalism and sectarian citizenship in Iraq” that the tendencies on

Iraqi territorial identity that existed after 1920 re-emerged after the 2003 invasion (Visser, 2007). Just like

before 2003, loyalty to the Iraqi frame was still dominant and a substantial part of the Iraqi population still

considered themselves as being an Iraqi. Just like what happened in the 20s and 30s, the plan to create a

Shi’a “region of the south” in 2005 struggled heavily to find supporters among the Iraqi population other

than the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (Visser, 2007). Even the planned name indicated a persistent link

with Iraq as a whole. It was above all the Shi’a clergy who were confronted with internal controversy when

it came to their connection with sectarian state-building projects. Unlike Christianity, which has been the

basis of many state-building efforts throughout history, Islamic ideology considers Sectarianism as a sinful

24

activity. Before the Iranian revolution of 1979, the trend was not to be associated with any state structure.

But this doesn’t mean that Sect-based nation building didn’t occur at all25.

Contrary to what people like Robert Wright claim, we could say that the sectarian groups in Iraq don’t have

a delineated region or “homeland”. Wright made the claim that the Syrian conflict would have a spillover

to Iraq and that the country would fall apart because of sectarian and ethnic conflicting identities: “In the

simplest of several possibilities, northern Kurds join Syrian Kurds. Many central areas, dominated by Sunnis,

join Syrian Sunnis. And the South becomes Shiitestan” (Wright, September 28, 2013).

I don’t believe there is a “Sunnistan” or “Shiistan” in Iraq. Historically, the suffix “stan” doesn’t even have

relevance to Arabic-speaking countries according to some scholars because it is a non-Arabic Persian word

(Marvin, 2013).

But most importantly, I believe that sectarianism and Nationalism are not inevitably tied to each other. I

support the argument of Visser that non-Iraqi academics –and alleged Iraqi scholars like Ajami- and other

actors too eagerly made the claim that the desire to transform sectarianism into Nationalism was a present

political demand in Iraq, or that a (federal) partition of Iraq along sectarian lines would be the easiest way

to pacify the country (Visser, 2007). I believe Wright his new map of the Middle East is an illustration that

Orientalist tendencies, that represent things in a generalizing determinist and simplistic way, are still

commonly used. This way of thinking, that is based the belief that external observation can lead to reliable

knowledge and that this knowledge can be used to come up with ideas how things should be done in the

post-colonial world, are still there. I believe this analysis this a clear example of the analytical errors that

Brubaker and Cooper (2000) warned us for.

2.3.3 Rejection of Sectarianism as dominant political paradigm, even after 2005

I think it is interesting that after the elections results of 2005 -results that mirrored the major ethnic and

sectarian cleavages (see below)- still a lot of academics like Dawisha and Visser26 supported the claim that

sectarianism wasn’t the core business of Iraqi politics.

Visser’s main argument for this was the continuing public rejection of Sectarianism since the fall of Saddam

and the Baathist government (Visser, 2007). In Baghdad, the city that was plagued the most by

ethnic/sectarian killings, the people referred to death squads as “Safaids” (Iranian Shiites), “Al Qaeda” (non-

Iraqi foreign fighters) or “Wahhabis” (to make the association with Saudi Arabia). It was pictured as

something imported from the neighboring countries. Everyone in the Shi’a cleric & confessional community,

like Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani condemned sectarianism. Even political parties like SCIRI, whose measures

25 Examples are: the Persian Shiite Safavid empire, the Ibadis of Oman or the Zaydis of Yemen (Visser, 2007, p.814) 26Dawisha does this in “Iraq a Vote against Sectarianism” and Visser in “Etnicity, federalism and sectarianism in Iraq, a critique”

25

were highly sectarian27 did deny that their actions had any ideological sectarian dimension or inspiration.

The fact that the sectarian squads who wanted to create “sectarian spaces” by removing all the members

of other sects failed to receive public support or even support by the most sectarian parties show the limits

of sectarianism as an ideology in Iraq according to Visser. “If sectarianism is really such a powerful force in

Iraq, why do they not go all the way?” (Visser, 2007, p.816)

Dawisha looked at the dynamics and results of the 2010 general elections to detect anti-sectarian notions.

He saw in the March 2010 elections “a vote against sectarianism” by the Iraqi electorate (Dawisha, 2010).

In this election the secular Iraqiya list got the largest share of the votes (see figure 3 below). They won from

the more Sunni sect-based Tawafuq list in the Sunni regions, and did well in Baghdad and even got some

support in the Shia-majority provinces of the South. Nuri al-Maliki’s list, the Dawlat al-Qanun28, finished

second just after the Iraqiya list. Maliki had left the UIA out of discontent with its sectarian message and

used a strictly Iraqi-nationalist platform. It was mainly the Iraqi National Alliance (INA) that was seen as

‘the’ Shia party in the 2010 elections (Dawisha, 2010, p.37).

If the (majority) Shia population wanted to vote according to their sect identity, the INA would have been

their choice. But the INA ended up in third place with 19 percent of the votes. This was less than half of the

votes that its predecessor, the UIA, had received in the 2005 elections.

A similar shift happened between the –more sect based- Tawafuq party and the secular Iraqiya list. The

voters no longer blindly followed the sect-based parties, as many had done in 2005 elections.

This shift in the preferences of the voters in the 2010 elections can be traced back to the period between

200629 and 2008 (Dawisha, 2010, p.27). In this period Sunni and Shia militias turned Iraq into a lawless land

where the state could do almost nothing to protect its citizens. The Maliki government had become

irrelevant so the Iraqi citizens looked for other references for politics and protection: their sectarian

identity.

Interestingly, there was a near-absence of topics like Federalism, the occupation and religion in the 2010

electoral campaigns; topics that had dominated the Iraqi political landscape in the 2005 campaign. And as

soon as these topics came up, Iraqi’s were no longer interested and stopped listening according to Dawisha

(Dawisha, 2010). Even the new leader of SCIRI, who was interested in some regional autonomy for the

Southern regions, Ammar al-Hakim said they believed in a “strong government in Baghdad”. The value of

‘Arabism’ was something that endured in Iraq. This affected Sunni-Shia relation in a way that Iraqi unity still

was an ideal for some. Most of the Iraqis didn’t want sectarian based citizenship to become part of their

political system. Contrary to the claims of people like Peter Galbraith, history shows that it was not desired

before 2003, and it still wasn’t popular after 2003.

27 SCIRI wanted to combine nine Shi’a-majority governorates into a single federal entity. But they publicly chose a utilitarian justification (“security for the Shi’a”) instead of creating an ideological structure that could focus on cultural differences with the Sunnis (Visser, 2007, p.6) 28The english translation is “State of Law Coalition” 29Beginning from 22 February 2006, when Sunni insurgent bombed the Shia Golden Mosque of Samarra

26

2.4 Partial Conclusion:

After we have looked into the history, we can’t deny the presence of sectarianism and tribalism in Iraq

before 2003, but it was not omnipotent. In an interview with the Crisis Group in Amman, 30 November

2005, a middle aged Iraqi talked about sectarianism: “It was always there. Everybody knew what everybody

else was. After leaving a Sunni home, the Shiite visitor would wash his mouth. If you, as a Shiite, had a bad

dream, you would say this was because you had eaten at a Jew’s or a Sunni’s house” (crisis group, 2006).

Sect-Centricity in Iraq became more relevant for some Iraqis as a political force after the demise of Arab

Nationalism and the war with Iran (Dawisha, 2008). The contestation of political power wasn’t just a battle

of suppressed Shia versus dominant Sunnis. The regime considered all Iraqis as a part of the “Iraqi-tent”

and as long as the Shia didn’t oppose the national project of the Baathists, the regime didn’t want to

antagonize the Shia population (Bengio, 1998). Sectarianism in Iraq before 2003 was more an issue of the

marginalized versus the state than just the Shia versus the Sunnis (Haddad, 2016, p.147-148). The Shia

population of Iraq have always had a more developed image of themselves as being a sect-based group

than the Sunni population. It were mostly those Shia whose identities were firmly embedded within Shia

social and religious structures who opposed the nation-state’s homogenizing policies. Sequentially, the

subject of “sectarianism” was mostly associated with the Iraqi Shia before 2003. This increased after the

Iran-Iraq war and the emergence of Iran as a Shia ‘core-state’30. The growing perception of isolation felt by

the Sunni Baathists, reinforced by the numerical decline of the overall Sunni population of Iraq, drove the

regime to focus more on National unity and to fight any kind of division, including sectarianism (Bengio,

1998). Given the stronger embeddedness of the Shia population in religious identities than Sunnis, it is quite

clear that the struggle to contain sectarianism by the state was perceived as oppressive and directed against

their Shia sectarian identity.

This increase in sect-centricity was also visible in the ‘opposition-in-exile’ groups. They were heavily

dominated by Shi’a and Kurdish ethnocentric and sect-centered movements who opposed the regime and

were considered as ‘unpatriotic’. Many Iraqis, including Shia and Kurds, who supported the homogenizing

and state centric vision of Iraqi Nationalism in one way or another, looked at these exiles with great

suspicion (Visser, 2007). This ethnic and sect-centric characteristic of the exiled groups was something that

also became clear within the exile groups that were involved in the planning phase of the 2003 Iraqi invasion

in Washington.

Sects have indeed always existed in Iraq throughout its history. But violent sectarianism didn’t, certainly

not in the way it did after 2003. It arises when it gets politicized, when religious or ethnic identities are

exploited, mobilized and used as a political instrument. I believe we can see that the potential for the

outbreak of ethnic or sectarian violence was certainly present in Iraq before the removal of Saddam, but

30 In the meaning that Huntington writes of ‘core states’ of certain cultural civilizations in ‘clash of civilizations (1993)’

27

nothing pointed out that this was the inevitable outcome of the removal of the Baathist regime. It was the

fact that the American invasion provided the political vacuum and opportunity for actors who identified

themselves on the basis of sectarian and ethnic identities to make a move. It were the exiled political parties

like SCIRI and the Da’wa party, just like the Iraqi exiles in Washington did during the planning of the war

(see below), who called on sectarianism as the basis for their political agenda. But still, as Visser showed,

centripetal forces that play a moderating role on sectarian identities have always been, and still are, present

in Iraq (Visser, 2007). Even after the removal of Saddam we can see a lot of indications of the endurance of

“national unity”. Examples are the continued use of Iraq as a concept of territorial identity and the

denouncing of sectarianism by Iraqis as a political force.

After putting the influence of the exiles and academics together with the history of Iraq it becomes even

more difficult to understand the decisions that the US made during the occupation and governing of Iraq.

But we can also clearly see the power of representing reality in a particular way. Just as Said would say, the

power of representation is not something neutral, it is heavily political and dependent on external

approaches and power relations. As we will see below on the ‘liberal peace’, it was this representation of

Iraq as an oppressed people based on sectarian identities that partly opened up the door for the

intervention. The Bush administration saw what they wanted to see to make an invasion possible and

justifiable within their framework of morals. I believe that the neoconservative self-confirming in-group

dynamics were so strong that any historical information that didn’t fit into the picture of the revolutionary

transformational project that the neocons had, was simply ignored or branded as ‘irrelevant’.

How were these images and representations of Iraq as an oppressed sect-divided society and an object of

intervention translated and planned into a particular project that had to transform Iraq after 2003? The

next chapter will go deeper into this after looking at the neoconservatives and their way of thinking.

28

3. The planning phase

In this part I will address the questions how the United States administration made the preparations and

planning for the Iraqi invasion itself and the planning for the period after the toppling of Saddam and the

occupation of Iraq.

But, If we really want to understand the broader revolutionary project, the shared mental habits of the

neoconservatives as a vanguard of democracy, liberal peace and the way they thought about changing a

country through a forced revolution using military means, we need to go further back in time. We need to

look at the influence of Leo Strauss.

3.1 The neoconservatives and the Straussian thought

Leo Strauss was a professor in Political philosophy at the University of Cambridge and Chicago. He is often

seen as one of the major influential academics on the Neoconservative movement in the 70’s.

Strauss claimed in the 70’s that the very basis of the liberal idea, the belief in individual freedom, was

causing the failure of the optimistic liberal policies themselves (Strauss, 1957, pp.343-368). The

philosophical grounds for liberal democracy had been weakened. Individuals who pursued their own selfish

materialistic interests undermined the existence of shared moral ideas that held society together, this was

the main source for potential conflict in a society. The American society was a society that was ‘rotting’ of

relativism, secularism and a lack of belief in itself (Packer, 2006, pp.54-56).

Paul Wolfowitz, Francis Fukuyama and others had been taught the ideas of Strauss at the University of

Chicago and Harvard. But the academic world wasn’t very welcoming for people who had a conservative

profile at that time. Many of them had no academic prospects and ended up in Washington (Curtis, 2004).

Some of these men would later become the group known as the ‘neoconservatives’. They believed that

something had to be done to stop the social disintegration that liberal freedom had started in the US. A

shared purpose was needed. They would eventually translate this purpose into the myth of America as a

unique nation with a duty to fight evil in the world. Because of the global revolutionary purpose that they

gave America as the nation who had to spread democracy globally, and the leftist sympathies that some of

the neoconservatives had in the past, some called them “neo-Trotskyists” (Packer, 2006, pp.57-60). A

permanent democratic revolution was something that could be achieved through the use of American

power. Some of them, like Berman, believed that Totalitarianism was a reaction of the people against

liberalism and it’s ideas. They saw Baathist ideology and Islamism as the two forms of “Muslim

totalitarianism”. The answer, according to him, lay within the idea of liberalism itself. But within a liberalism

without dreams of a paradise, it had to be an armed liberalism (Packer, 2006, p.48).

The opportunity for the neoconservatives to pursue this project came with the diminishing of American

political power abroad after the defeat in Vietnam and after the resignation of realists politicians like Nixon

and Kissinger (Curtis, 2004). To Neoconservatives, realists were to relativistic when speaking of right and

wrong (Owens, 2007, p.265). Straussians enhanced their field of influence throughout the 1970s and 1980s

29

through the networks of conservative publications, think tanks, advocacy groups and foundations. But their

real influence on the decision-making in Washington started with Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, both

powerful members of the later Bush administration, being members in the Ford Government31 in the 1970s

(Curtis, 2004). After the years of détente, Rumsfeld started a media campaign to reestablish the Soviet

Union as the big threat of the US. Because, for the people to pick up the Straussian idea of a common moral

project, a nightmarish bogeyman was needed. The problem was that even the CIA stated that there was no

proof whatsoever of the allegations that Rumsfeld made about the military buildup of the Soviet Union in

1974. In 1976, Rumsfeld convinced President Ford to set up an independent inquiry, Team B, to investigate

the military activities of the Soviet Union. This inquiry would be led by neoconservatives such as Wolfowitz

and Professor Richard Pipes32. What they really wanted was to create a much more severe view of the

Soviets and their weapon developments. The neoconservatives would later form a lobby group, with Ronald

Reagan as a member, called “the committee on the present danger” to publicize the findings of Team B.

Just as in 1975, the CIA could find no evidence for their claim of the military buildup of the Soviets.

The way this (non) evidence was used can be seen as an example of the self-confirming way of information

usage by the neoconservatives. Because they could find no proof of the new Soviet weapon developments,

team B made the assumption that the Soviets had developed systems so sophisticated that they were

undetectable. “The fact that a weapon doesn’t exist doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist”, they claimed (Curtis,

2004). They claimed that the US was under threat of hidden forces that could strike the US anytime and

anywhere. It was exactly this battle between good and evil that Leo Strauss thought would be necessary to

rescue the country from moral degradation. It was necessary to reengage the public in the messianic destiny

of the US whatsoever.

I believe we can clearly see a lot of similarity with the (false) allegations of the WMD program of Saddam

after 9/11. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq, the

Neoconservatives needed a new enemy (Curtis, 2004). They began to depict Saddam Hussein as the next

tyrant. He was the one who replaced the personification of evil once held by the Soviet Union. Wolfowitz

saw the removal of Saddam as a key element in the project of removing evil from the world (Packer, 2006).

He had hoped that the war in Iraq in 1991 wouldn’t just be about the liberation of Kuwait, but that it would

be taken further by taking Baghdad and removing Saddam Hussein from power. The same neoconservative

men (Perle, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz) who were in power during the Reagan period, and who

believed their own myth that they destroyed the Soviet Union by aggressively engaging it in Afghanistan,

came back to power after 9/11 in the Bush administration with the same beliefs and convictions they once

had.

31President Gerald Ford succeeded Nixon in 1974 after the Watergate scandal 32 Pipes was a historian who believed that the main objective of the Soviet Union would always be the overthrowing and

conquering of the US

30

Before the attacks on the World Trade center, and the other events that day, President Bush was not a

Hawkish interventionist (Curtis, 2004). But the events of 11 September were a changing shock for G.W.

Bush; they changed the way he looked at direct American interventionism abroad. Richard Perle explained

this shift with the following words: “Nine-eleven had a profound effect on the president’s thinking. It wasn’t

the arguments or the positions held by me, or Paul, or anyone else before that. The world began on nine-

eleven. There’s no intellectual history (Packer, 2006, p41).”

A passage that illustrates Strauss his vision on truth, and suggested that doubts about this truth should be

concealed to sustain certain functional myths: “those who possessed wisdom about the natural

(hierarchical) order of social and political life must be cautious about the diffusion of this knowledge; for

the sake of the people and for the sake of the philosopher’s safety” (Owens, 2007, p. 267). Earl Shorris, a

critic of the Iraq war, explained: “Strauss and his neoconservative followers provided the Bush

administration with the politically useful ‘philosophy of the noble lie, the conviction that lies (…) are instead

virtuous and noble instruments of wise policy’ (Owens, 2007, p.266).” These lies opened the gates to an

Iraqi invasion.

3.2 A Liberal “Peace” model?

Although the invasion of Iraq was publicly defended around the argument that it was a war on terrorism

and against the proliferation of WMD, it was a war for peace. However, it was also quite clearly shaped

around the ideas confined in the ‘liberal peace theory’ (Chandler, 2007, p.74). Both David Chandler (2007)

and Mark Duffield (2001) claim that the ideas and practices confined in the liberal peace theory have been

the dominant international framework since the end of the Cold War in international interventions33. State

security and State-sovereignty were the predominant paradigms during the Cold war, but the ‘right of

intervention’ by other states within the bounds of ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P), upholding liberal

internationalist claims34 of individual rights and protection, have become the new norm in what Duffield

calls ‘the New Wars’ in the post-Cold war era (Duffield, 2001). Duffield sees liberal peace mostly as a practice

which: “(…) lays the emphasis on such things as (…) reconstructing social networks, strengthening civil and

representative institutions, promoting the rule of law, and security sector reform in the context of a

functioning market economy. Liberal Peace reflects a radical developmental agenda of social

transformation” (Duffield, 2001, p.11). I believe it would be accurate to put that ‘liberal peace’ is rooted in

Western, liberal and non-local understanding of the state and society has to be. We can also see a clear link

to liberal economic thinkers such as Hayek. Hayek claimed that democracy and a functioning free market,

both core elements of ‘liberal peace’ thinking) are obstacles for tyranny and the suppression of freedom

(Hayek, 1945, pp.31-32).

33 Peacebuilding & peacekeeping operations 34 Such as ‘the Responsibility to protect’ principle of the US (Chandler, 2007, p. 74)

31

There was a common consensus and optimism that the international community had to intervene in a

proactive way to guarantee order and peace around the globe in the 90s. There was an feeling of a unified

international community, articulated in the UN “agenda for peace” (UN, 1992). Interventions were

prolonged in time and linked with notions such as ‘post-conflict’. The reconstruction efforts and the

rebuilding of societies during Peace-interventions became more important. The main target was no longer

to end violence, but to ‘remake’ societies with the organization of representative elections as the end goal

(UN, 1992). This was all very clearly imbedded within the exportation of Liberal-democracy as the state

model, Democratic Peace theory, open liberal market as the state model and the building of classic

Weberian states. Duffield called this change in international interventions a “radicalization of interventions”

Duffield, 2001). It was based on a universalistic approach of rebuilding societies in conflict zones in a Liberal

democratic way. This, however, leaves little room for “the local” and has a clear external imposing tendency

(Lederach, 1998).

An illustrative case, with a resembling approach to the one applied in Iraq, is the 1999 UN-intervention in

East-Timor. A very distinctive top-down approach was used with a focus on the diplomatic & elitist level of

representation (most Timorese who had a voice and who were incorporated in the reconstruction process

lived in exile before the 1999 intervention) and a similar ‘clean slate’ thinking was used. “Reconstruction,

in everything, had to commence literally from scratch” (UNDP, 2002, p4). J. Morrow also pointed at the

similarity of dangers of constitution-making in a too narrow timeframe: “Those familiar with recent

postconflict constitution-making processes, including in East Timor and Afghanistan, are all too aware of

the price- paid in stability, legitimacy and the rule of law- when constitution discussions are rushed”

(Morrow, 2005, p21).

Although the preemptive 2003-Iraqi invasion wasn’t undertaken by the international community or UN35 at

first, the many similarities suggest that we should also put the invasion within the paradigm of the ‘liberal

peace’ theory.

Chandler saw a visible growth in the use of moral arguments when politicians, such as Tony Blair, failed to

legitimate the Iraqi invasion using just legal arguments (Chandler, 2007, p76). Liberal peace filled the gap

between what was ‘morally legitimate’ and what was accepted under international law.

Just as was the case with the Straussians, this liberal peace model is accompanied by a certain way of

thinking that is important to understand the Neoconservative’s psyche. As mentioned above, they

optimistically believed in the potential of ‘freedom & democracy’ allied with American power to change the

world (Owens, 2004, p266). President Bush stated in his New Year message of 2003: “should we be forced

to act… (US troops) will be fighting not to conquer anybody, but to liberate people” (Chandler, 2004, p75).

Rather than using terminology of traditional warfare, the military intervention was framed within the ‘duty

35 In the face of the small amount of countries who were willing to participate in the US-led “coalition of the willing”, and the open disapproval of France and Germany, this may be an understatement

32

of care’ and the ‘responsibility to protect’ the Iraqi people from the Baathist regime that was “repressing

its own people, including the systematic repression of minorities” (Chandler, 2007, pp74-75).

Regrettably, I lack the space to go further into detail on what different features and critiques have been

formulated on the Liberal peace theory. But, we will look further into the link between the emphasis on the

building of representative political institutions confined within ‘Liberal peace’, Brubaker’s ‘groupism36’ and

the way the Iraqi elections and writing of the new Iraqi constitution were organized. We will do this below

in part 4 on the elections and the new Iraqi constitution.

3.3 The planning

The military planning started on November 27, 2001 (Bensahel, 2006, pp453-473). Bush asked secretary of

Defense Donald Rumsfeld and General Franks37to study the already existing plans of an Iraqi war. Rumsfeld

gave Franks the instructions to rethink the plans so they would be less based on ‘heavy force’ and with a

faster ‘deployment timeline’. The major plans for the Iraqi invasion were ready by august 2002. But,

contrary to the military planning, it seemed far more difficult for the Bush administration to make up its

mind on the civil planning.

The reasoning in Washington before the 2003 war was a combination of optimism and pessimism (Ricks,

2006, pp58-84). The policymakers were pessimistic on the Iraqi threat, but optimistic about the possibilities

that after the war Iraq would be ‘liberated’. We know that the US policymakers relied on a “worst-case

scenario” regarding the WMD story. The idea that Saddam had these WMD in his possession, and the fact

that he would share these with terrorists, was a dominant perception in policy circles and in the mainstream

media38. Amatzia Baram, a active in several American think tanks, said that young Saddam owned a

handgun and would brandish it if he felt threatened (Nixon, 2016, p46). This would become a –quite silly-

metaphor for why Saddam pursued WMD and why he would never give up this quest of obtaining them.

The optimistic part of the reasoning in Washington was that the coalition forces would be welcomed with

open arms as liberators39 and a democratic Iraqi government would be formed very quickly (Packer, 2008).

This would make it possible to quickly withdrawal the coalition forces, leaving behind a Democratic Iraq; a

Iraq that was a, consociational, liberal democracy. So the optimism that controlled the minds of the

policymakers, similar to the liberal peace discourse, was one that agreed upon the fact that Iraq could be

transformed into something new from the outside.

36 The tendency to reify groups as if they were internally homogenous, externally bounded groups, even unitary collective actors with common purposes (Brubaker, 2010, p. 164). 37 Franks was the commander of United States Central Command (CENTCOM) 38See for example: “Oorlog Irak: Blair: eerst regimewissel, dan WMD opsporen” (Belga, 25 maart, 2003) 39 This was also a common perception among the Iraqi exiles in Washington (Packer, 2008)

33

This mix of optimism and pessimism would have a great impact on the phase of planning. Larry Diamond

showed in his 2003-research rapport “in search for a plan” that the US invaded Iraq with a plan to militarily

occupy the country, but without a coherent plan to win the peace after that (Diamond, 2006, pp. 25-55).

Packer also explained in his book that in the end no one took the real decisions when it came to the planning

of postwar Iraq (Packer, 2008, pp100-148).

However, the absence of a plan doesn’t necessarily imply that there weren’t any preparations made by the

United States. They did gather information on Iraq and made preparations. The problem was that the

gathering of information, and how this information was eventually used and put into practice, was biased

and partial. A lot of the problems that the “coalition of the willing” faced in Iraq after the invasion were

predicted by experts at the CIA, Army, USAID, State department and other actors like the United Nations

(Packer, 2008, pp100-148). But the policymakers selectively filtered out this information by labeling it

pessimistic or irrelevant.

On September 2002, the Office of Special Plans was being set up at the Pentagon. Paul Wolfowitz came up

with the idea to create an administration that would accommodate the people who were being brought in

to work on the planning of Iraq. But the actual main purpose of the office was gathering information

concerning WMD and Saddam’s link with terrorism. Douglass Feith, who was brought in by Richard Perle,

was in charge of this crucial administration working on postwar Iraq. Feith was known to be a supporter of

hardline Israeli Likud party policies. So, it wasn’t a coincidence that David Wurmser, who also helped write

the “clean break” paper, was one of the operations co-leaders.

The Office started recruiting Middle East experts to start thinking on policy options in postwar Iraq. Two of

them were Michael Rubin and Harold Rhode, both members of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and

close contacts of Chalabi and the INC. Rhode had close ties with Princeton professor B. Lewis and some of

his ideas contain a similar degree of determinism that we also find in Lewis his work. For example, one of

Rhode his ideas was to transform the Middle East by changing the Iranian Farsi alphabet to a Roman

alphabet, as Atatürk had done in Turkey (Packer, 2008, pp.100-148).

After starting his study of Islam with Sunnism, Feith quickly decided that it had no room for intellectualism

or progressive original thinking. When he met Shi’a Muslims like Fouad Ajami, who had approximately the

same vision on Sunnism, he started to study Shiite theology. He saw Shiite Islam just as he saw Judaism, a

religion for intellectuals.

For George Packer, the convergence of American Jewish interest and those of Iraqi Shi’a was one of the

most curious things he observed on the Iraq war. He wrote: “Shiite power became the key to the whole

neoconservative vision for Iraq” (packer, 2008, p.108). Feith said to Makiya: “You Shi’a in Iraq have a

historical opportunity. Do whatever you can –but don’t speak about it” (Packer, 2008, p.108). The fact that

they shouldn’t talk about it was in accordance with the taqiya principle, which made it acceptable in Shiism

to lie to outsiders in defense of the faith in a climate of oppression or persecution. Taqiya, lying for the

34

greater cause, also applied to the neoconservatives in Washington. But rather than some Shia principle, it

was Leo Strauss who was talking to them.

An interagency working group, joined by several think tanks, came together on a regular basis under the

surveillance of the national Security Council but there was still no postwar policy or plan. Eventually the

decision was made that the Heritage foundation and the Center for Strategic and International Studies,

would gather experts and form a panel that would formulate options on postwar Iraq (Packer, 2008, pp.100-

148). But because The Heritage foundation had been critical on a war with Iraq, the decision was made to

replace the organization with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an organization that was more

embedded within the Neoconservatives in the administration (a lot of them were recruited from the AEI).

Or we should maybe put it the other way around; the AEI was embedded in the Bush administration.

This interagency group was clearly biased. A meeting on 15 November 2002 is illustrative: the

representatives of the think tanks met with Condoliza Rice in the White House, and it was as if the White

House was trying to sell something to the AEI instead of the other way around, said John Hamre of the

Centre of Strategic and International Studies (SCIS) (Packer, 2008). But eventually nothing was decided

because some members of the AEI claimed that the proposals from the Council of Foreign relations, were

coming to close to “nation building”, which was a no go area for the AEI and the Bush administration. No

decisions would be made without having the AEI on board.

Eventually, a maze of foreign policy and military think tanks wrote multiple reports with a striking amount

of overlap (Packer, 2008). Some of the participants were: the Rand Corporation, the Army War College, the

United States Peace Institute, the National Defense University’s institute for National strategic studies. They

all came up with the conclusion that a large number of troops and international cooperation would be vital

for the reconstruction and transformation of Iraq into a representative Democracy. Regrettably none of

these vital recommendations reached the oval office or the Pentagon. Where it could have made a

difference, or would have mattered, the critical opinions and analysis of experts were excluded (once again)

from the gaze of the Neoconservatives.

Based on the unilateral actors who were involved in this process, and the fact that every critical voice was

ignored, I believe biased knowledge and understanding was the only possible outcome.

3.4 ORHA & Jay Garner

On January 20, 2003, President Bush signed National Security Presidential Directive Number 24 (Packer,

2008, pp120-148). NSPD 24 was written by the Office of Special Plans, and gave control of policy-making &

implementation in post-Saddam Iraq to a body being set up by the Pentagon, the ‘Office of Reconstruction

and Humanitarian Assistance’ (ORHA). Jay Garner, a retired general of the ‘operation Provide Comfort’

mission to protect the Kurds (and gave them de facto autonomy from the central government in Baghdad)

at the end of the Gulf War of 1991, was appointed as the head of the ORHA (Diamond, 2006, pp.25-52).

35

This body would be the administration of Iraq for a undetermined time. It operated under the Office of

Special plans and it was supposed to rapport directly to Donald Rumsfeld.

The invasion was only two months away when Garner was appointed chief of the ORHA, so time was vital.

Because it was his specialty, he concentrated his efforts during the few months of time that he had on

reconstruction and human assistance (Packer, 2008, pp.100-148). As was the case during the planning

phase of the Iraqi invasion, coordination and clarity weren’t the strongest asset of the US policy makers.

The ORHA received almost no instructions and had almost no contact with Rumsfeld or the Office Of Special

Plans. Garner –and his entourage- had to come up with policy plans themselves. Because of the intense

battle over influence between the state department and the defense department, and the fact that the

personnel of the ‘future of Iraq Project’ and the state department were being rejected, the ORHA had an

acute lack of employees and expertise just before the US would go to war..

Although the ORHA hadn’t the capacity and time to build up a coherent post-war planning, Feith and others

in the defense department told a completely different story to the Congress. By the end of February it was

clear for everyone who was keeping up with the process of planning that the Bush administration wasn’t

ready, or thoughtful, to what had to be done after Saddam was removed. A few weeks before the invasion

of March 20 2003, there was no planning for “Phase IV40” (Packer, 2008, p147). The military did not have

any further instructions what had to be done after the fall of Baghdad. Gregory Gardner, a colonel in the

US army, said this about the planning: “The reason for this omission was that it was seen as unnecessary.

Politically, we’d made a decision that we’d turn it over to the Iraqis in June of 2003. So why have a Phase

IV”? (Packer, 2008, p147).

Just before Garner was leaving to go to Baghdad he announced his transitional plan for introducing

democracy in Iraq (Packer, 2008, pp.139-148). The first step would be to appoint an Iraqi interim-

government. Second, a selected Iraqi constitutional convention would receive the task of writing a

democratic constitution, which eventually would be ratified. In the final step elections would be held and

the sovereignty would be transferred to the Iraqi government. He wanted to do this all within five or six

months. This timeframe was in accordance with the instructions he had received from the pentagon. The

pentagon wanted a plan that made it possible to withdrawal the troops in August 2003. Garner’s plan

actually had a lot of resemblance with the way that the CPA would later handle things regarding the

constitutional process (see below).

Garner would eventually enter Baghdad on April 21, 2003. But when he was standing in the sacked palace

of Saddam Hussein on April 24 2003 in Baghdad, Rumsfeld approached him and said that he would be

replaced by former diplomat, counterterrorism expert and neoconservative hard-liner L. Paul (Jerry) Bremer

(Packer, 2008, pp.139-148). So Jay Garner was the civil, non-military administrator in Iraq for a full three

days in total. The little planning that had been done for Phase IV by the ORHA was pointless. It had no

40Phase III was the actual invasion itself (Packer, 2008)

36

weight or meaning for the capricious Bush administration and it would not be implemented in Iraq, at least

not by Garner.

During the debriefing of Garner in the oval office neither the president, nor one of three present officials

asked how things were in Iraq. Garner later told that he left with the feeling that the president only knew

the situation in Iraq through the information that Cheney or Rumsfeld told him. This is just another example

of how things concerning Iraq were handled in policy circles in Washington. There was a strong dynamic of

a self-confirming gaze and groupthink present using biased information when it came to the project that

was being implemented in Iraq.

3.5 Paul Bremer: Chief civilian administrator (from April 2003 until June 2004)

The pentagon would always keep saying that the changeover from Jay Garner to Paul Bremer had been

planned from the beginning (Packer, 2008, p144-146). But we know now that Bremer only had ten days to

prepare himself to go to Baghdad and to be in charge of the huge task of transforming Iraq from a one-

party dictatorship to a liberal democracy. Bremer did have a lot of diplomatic experience, but very scarce

knowledge of Iraq or the Mashrek region more in general.

A lot of US officials in Iraq openly admitted that they used the rebuilding-experiences that the US had in

Japan and Germany after World War II as an example (Packer, 2008). Paul Bremer was no different. When

Packer met Bremer in 2004 in Iraq, he saw that Bremer was reading a book about state building efforts in

Germany after WWII. This was remarkable since the situation in Iraq was totally different from post-World

War II Germany. One of the big difference between the Iraqi case and Germany or Japan was the fact that

the US primarily aimed to transform Japan and Germany into rich capitalist allies, not to introduce

democracy an sich.

Larry Diamond and Arato compared the arrival of Bremer in Iraq (12 May) with the arrival of MacArthur in

Japan after the Japanese capitulation. They were both determined to exercise direct control over the

country (Diamond, 2006, pp.25-52) (Arato, 2004, p1). Bremer did this, after being just three days in Iraq, by

abruptly dissolving the 400.000 men strong Iraqi army (CPA order number 2) and by expelling all top four

level members of the Baath Party (about 50.000 Iraqis) from government service as part of the ‘de-

baathification program’ (CPA order number 1). The formation of an interim government that was initiated

by the ORHA was stopped at once. The pentagon also extended indefinitely the deployment of army

divisions (Packer, 2008, pp.120-148). The plans to start pulling back troops starting from August 2003, was

abandoned. The decisions taken in these first days by Bremer would have far-reaching consequences for

the further evolution of the occupation and stability in Iraq. Bremer changed the plans from a ‘swift

liberation’ to a‘ prolonged occupation’ (Packer, 2008, p146).

CPA order 1 and order 2 were part of the intentional aim to be able to start to remake Iraq from scratch.

But the CPA and Bremer ignored the complexity and history of the Iraqi state and society during the

planning and occupation. Power in Iraq was actually more diffuse than perceived by some ‘experts’ on Iraq.

37

It was right to see Saddam as a central person, but he was the central person holding together multiple

pyramid power structures instead of just one. The occupation authorities believed that Saddam was at the

top of a pyramid representing the whole ‘regime’ with Sunni at the top and Kurds and Shi’a at the bottom.

This model of ‘one pyramid of power’ was embedded in the post-cold war UN peacebuilding projects and

imposing of the ‘liberal peace’ (Cooper, Turner & Pugh, 2011). Most analysts made the comparison that the

invasion in Iraq (just like East Timor, Afghanistan and Kosovo) was equally a peacebuilding mission just like

the missions after the end of the Cold War.

In the chapter below we will see how the CPA’s and Neoconservative’s blind willfulness, their revolutionary

way of thought and biased information on Iraqi society was being put together and implemented into

practice through the constitutional process.

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4. The new Iraqi constitution

Because one of the reasons given to justify the 2003 invasion was that Iraq was under the rule of Muslim

Totalitarianism and lacked Liberalism and all its accompanied ideas. The writing of a new Iraqi constitution41

after the fall of Saddam and the destruction of the Iraqi state was a key element of the revolutionary

transformational project of the US to bring Democracy to the country (Arato, 2007).

The big and swift military success of the invasion gave the US the confidence that their occupation of the

country wouldn’t be challenged. But the quick Iraqi resistance to the occupation, with high US casualties,

made the occupier push everything in a tighter time schedule. The US would eventually push through the

drafting of the new Iraqi constitution in only a few months (Diamond, 2004). Many authors like Larry

Diamond and Noah Feldman, who were both actively involved in the writing process, would later claim that

this small timeframe was the main cause for the problems and shortcomings that have arisen afterwards

(Feldman, 2004, p7). It made real inclusiveness impossible (Diamond, 2004).

If this process had been built around real debates that had time to include representatives of multiple Iraqi

groups and build a consensus, where the decisions about the real design of this text were made by Iraqi’s

themselves, it could have worked as something stabilizing. However, in a country with almost no civil society

after three decades of autocracy and where all the state capacity was destroyed by the 2003-invaders, it

was easier said than done to create or select a group of people that would draft a new constitution that

would bring the different Iraqi political groups together into one nation.

Others observers who supported the claim that Iraq was an artificial state, like Peter Galbraith42, didn’t look

at the lack of inclusiveness or the short timeframe as the main shortcomings in the rewriting process. He

saw the “imposed unity” of Iraq by the US, as the main destabilizing factor. For him, the new political order

in Iraq should have been built around what was already occurring in his eyes: “the separation of Iraq into

independent ethnic and religious regions” (Galbraith, 2006, p1). Galbraith is one of the actors who utilized

a very ahistorical and ‘fixed’ approach when looking at the identities of Iraqis. It was impossible in his vision

for the Kurds, Sunnis and Shia to cohabit in the same nation. He also claimed that the US undertook a war

“without an adequate understanding of the country’s internal divisions” (Galbraith, 2006, p.1). As was

shown above and as we will see below, I think it would be accurate to say that the actual facts were quite

different. I believe the Bush administration was quite aware of the ethnic and sectarian differences, they

were even too aware of it in my opinion.

But what kind of model did the occupiers follow when it came to the rewriting of the constitution and what

were the main topics of concern? The main issues discussed concerning the constitution were what kind of

federal/regional model Iraq should be pursuing, the relation between state & religion and what had to be

done with multiethnic, and oil rich, cities like Kirkuk (Arato, 2007). A consociational federal democracy, with

41Although the occupying forces had no right what so ever to change the constitution (Saad, 2013, p7) 42 Galbraith advised the two main Kurdish political parties (PUK and KDP) and their leaders before and during the occupation (Galbraith, 2006)

39

a quota-system based on the “ethnic-sectarian citizenships” of Iraqis (Visser, 2007), was the model that

was perceived as the one with the highest pacifying potential.

Not only the final document is a measure of success of a national constitution making process. In a non-

homogenous ethnic country like Iraq, the way the document was written and produced is maybe even more

relevant to measure success (USIP, 2005). So in the following part of this paper we will be focusing on the

interim and permanent constitutional process, the criteria used to select a representative sectarian group

of Iraqi’s, the dynamics of Sunni Arab opposition and the “Sunni Boycott”, the actors that had a significant

influence in it and the divisive/uniting content of the permanent constitution.

4.1 The interim constitution and the making of the “Transitional Administrative Law”

After the fall and destruction of the Saddam regime two sets of laws ruled Iraq: laws that were issued by

Paul Bremer and laws that were part of the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), issued by the CPA

(Istrabadi, 2005). But in fact all legislative power, consolidated by Security Council Resolution 1843, was

concentrated in the hand of Bremer. The resolution made sure that no law could be approved without

Bremer’s approval. One of Bremer’s deputies illustrated this: “the powers the Security Council gave us are

mind-boggling” (Istrabadi, 2005, p.270). This was contradictory to the principle of international

humanitarian law that occupiers were not allowed to change a country’s legal system, with the exception

to defend the occupier’s troops. This last part was eagerly used by the occupiers.

Although Bremer knew nothing about Iraq, he immediately started issuing orders –that were in practice

equal to laws- and rules (Bremer, 2006). But Bremer quickly realized that the CPA couldn’t push their agenda

of radical reform without some kind of local Iraqi support. He needed the kind of support that exceeded

the already existing cover by the Iraqi Leadership Council that was set up by Garner (Parker, 2006). In the

Summer of 2003, a CPA official stated in the Washington Post:

“On balance, we believe it’s better to have a representative group of experts instead of a bunch of people

with no credentials other than the fact that they won an election” (Washington Post, 21 October 2003).

So the first CPA-proposal, after they radically stopped the first (already initiated) ORHA-initiatives to form

an interim government, was one of making a constitutional conference of a selected group of 25 Iraqis that

would form “the Iraqi Governing Council” (IGC). They were selected by the CPA, after consultations with

the favored exiles such as Chalabi and Makiya, based on their sectarian & ethnic identities and loyalty to

the US (Arato, 2008, pp135-203). The search for a so called ‘representative group of experts’ had some

curious results regarding its members. If we wouldn’t take the Kurdish members of the IGC into account,

only five members were living in Iraq before 2003. Also, it is important to note that the quote mentioned

above doesn’t talk of the fact that this “representative group of experts” had to be Iraqis. Consequentially,

40

65% of the IGC members held non-Iraqi nationalities. The members of this group were invited to approve

the draft of the transitional constitution that would be named the “Transitional Administrative Law” (TAL)

as quickly as possible. By selecting this group of participants themselves, and giving them so little time, the

CPA could assure more power and influence to US clients than they could have done after democratic

elections.

So we see that sectarianism was already part of the constitutional process, through the selection process

of the CPA, from the beginning. The approach was focused on finding communal representatives instead of

overcoming communal divisions (Al-Qarawee, 2014, pp.3-6). This is clearly contradictory to the claim that

Galbraith made about the fact that the US didn’t focus enough on the sect/ethnic differences.

Unsurprisingly, the parties and groups who worked with the Americans also used this communal lens when

looking at Iraq.

The TAL was the first provisional constitution after the 2003 invasion, but also the first Iraqi constitutional

text that mentioned the word “Sect” 43(Arato, 2009, pp.135-203). The fact that the word was mentioned in

the constitution, later became an argument for supporters of sect-based politics to further institutionalize

the use of sectarian quota systems. It was made by four actors: the ten-member Drafting Committee of the

Iraqi Governing Council, the Iraqi Governing Council itself, the American drafters and the two expatriated

Iraqi (non-constitutional) lawyers Feisal Istrabadi and Salem Chalabi44 (Arato, 2009, pp.135-203). The

committee that had to draft the permanent constitution was formed in June 2005, giving them only two

months to write the document that had to rewrite the basic rules of Iraqi politics and state structure.

According to Larry Diamond, who also helped write the document, it were the last two actors who were

the most important and basically wrote the texts (Diamond, 2006). The interim constitutional process was

almost exclusively controlled and managed by the CPA from the beginning (Arato, 2007). The fact that the

TAL was not written in Arabic, but first in English and later translated in Arabic for approval is an illustration

of who had the most influence and power during the drafting of the document. It was the CPA who mainly

monitored and directed the whole process.

The US was unshakable. It wanted to show the world and the Iraqi insurgents that it was determined to

bring democracy to Iraq before the end of 2005, no matter what.

During the run-up to the first negotiations of the TAL Bremer made this statement at the end of 2003:

43Example are article 12: “all Iraqis are equal before the law without regard of gender, sect, opinion (…) and discrimination against an Iraqi based upon these characteristics is prohibited” (Istrabadi, 2005, p. 281) Article 20: “prohibits the discrimination in the voting process based upon gender, sect, creed, and the like” (Istrabadi, 2005, p. 286) 44Salem Chalabi was the nephew of Ahmad Chalabi, the exiled Iraqi who lived in the US and played a significant role during the post-war period

41

“We’re going to follow two parallel tracks: the Governance Team will continue to work on details with the

Arabs on the (I)GC while I tackle the difficult issues directly with the Kurds. Then all the parties will get

together to hammer out an interim constitution that would withstand the stresses of sovereignty beset by

stubborn insurgency. And we need to do all this by March 1…” (Arato, 2009, p.135).

-L. Paul Bremer, late December 2003

Bremer’s quote shows even more clearly that the CPA knew from the beginning that they would start the

bargaining –or imposing- of the TAL using the ethnic and sectarian prisms, giving the Kurds significant

(over)weight in the process.

The Kurds insisted on a decentralized- nearly confederal-model in combination with the guaranty of the

preservation of their autonomy and veto rights (Arato, 2009, pp.135-203). This was a problem since most

Kurds wanted more independence than given under a federal system, but most other Iraqis seemed to want

a more centralist model. The TAL accommodated these demands of the Kurds by stating that all decisions

made by the IGC would need unanimity, and that no decisions would be taken that threatens the existence

of the regional Kurdish government. This regional government was also given more power compared to the

other Iraqi regional governments. Article 61c of the TAL entailed that any three provinces (Iraq has three

Kurdish provinces) got the right to reject the final constitution in a referendum (Saad, 2013). So this gave

the Kurds actual veto power over the final constitution. Article 53, 54 and 58 were also included to

accommodate the Kurdish demands, further weakening the central government in Baghdad. The Kurdish

regional administration also gained the authority over the disputed areas of Kirkuk, Mosul and Diyala in

addition to Dohuk, Erbil and Sulaimaniyya (the three Kurdish provinces).

When the TAL was finished, the CPA presented it as a historical compromise between Iraqi Arabs and Iraqi

Kurds (Arato, 2013, pp. 135-203). But in fact, the results of these negotiations were not the result of fair

negotiations. They were the result of bargaining with the only real united agent -along ethnic lines- at the

table, the Kurdish parties who controlled the Kurdish Regional Government in Northern Iraq. Arato called

the interim constitution a fair bilateral “American-Kurdish bargain” instead of a multilateral “Arab-Kurdish

bargain”. The direct negotiations between Bremer and the Kurds happened while the other Iraqi Arab

groups had to negotiate with the CPA technicians, with a lot of drafting but few concrete conclusions as

results. Because of the disparity of expertise and knowledge between Bremer and the Kurds on issues like

Federalism, resource-allocation and government structure, Barzani & Abd-al-Rahman of the KDP and

Talabani of the PUK could push their interests more compared to the other Iraqi actors involved in the TAL-

making process. Contrary to the drafting Committee or the IGC, the Kurds were successful in coinciding

power, expertise and issue compromise. The Draft Committee and the IGC either didn’t have the power,

the time or the necessary expertise to decide on certain issues which gave the united Kurds a great

opportunity to claim a bigger piece of the cake and push their demands. Because of this lack of togetherness

42

and decision power of the other actors, and for pretty obvious demographic reasons, the Kurds consistently

kept supporting a selected instead of a elected body to draw up the constitution.

On March 8, 2004, the “Transitional Administrative Law45” (TAL) was signed (Arato, 2009). After it’s signing

by the Governing Council, it came into effect on June 28 2004 following the transfer of the official

sovereignty from the CPA to the Iraqi government. The IGC approved the TAL with only minor modifications.

The main objection of the Council was that the new law didn’t refer to Islam as the official religion. Article

7, that stated that “no law that contradicts the universally agreed tenets of Islam (…) may be enacted during

the transitional period”, was included on their urgency (Saad, 2013, p.8). The TAL also contained the rules

that Iraq was a bilingual state (article 11), recognizing Kurdish as an official language (Saad, 2013, pp. 7-10).

It declared Iraq as a federal state (article 4), prohibited militias (article 27) and decided that 30% of the Iraqi

national parliamentary seats had to be filled by women (article 30).

Because the TAL wasn’t subjected to any public debate or consultation it was immediately met by popular

discontent after the signing (Diamond, 2004). Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani even issued a fatwa

demanding that the constituent be selected by a democratic referendum consulting the Iraqi people46. The

most recurring question was how such a document could be adopted without any public debate or

consultation and why one section of the country (read: the Kurds) was given so much power?

For the CPA, the TAL was mainly drawn up as an outline to direct the making of the future permanent

constitution (Arato, 2006, pp.185-188). Although it were the government and the state structures that

regulated the transitional period, the TAL did regulate the making of the permanent constitution through

its rules of change, amendments and the passing of the final constitution. Formally interim constitutions

have two main goals: first, to impose constitutional restrictions on the government and secondly to make

a process of learning and amendments possible during the period of transition. The Americans could have

maximized their input into the permanent constitution by making the TAL unamendable, which they didn’t

do. But this would have sacrificed the second goal for the first one. The Americans did however secure their

input on the permanent constitution by making the type of amendment rules one of the most difficult sets

among the world’s constitutions. The major parts of the TAL rules were amendable by three quarters of the

votes of the National Assembly and the consent of the three-member Presidential Council. This Presidential

Council was assumed to be one Shia Arab, one Kurd and one Sunni Arab. In relation to sectarianism, this

last part is very important. If an amendment was to be accepted, a member of all the three major sectarian

groups had to agree with the proposal. Regarding the rules of passing the final constitution the TAL only

stated this: “the National Assembly shall write a draft of the constitution of Iraq and this draft will be

45 full term: the “law of administration for the state of Iraq for the transitional period” 46 other motivations should also be taken into account here. The Shi’a clergy, who refused imposed constitution-making could also be driven by the hope to benefit more from democratic consultation, given their demographic advantage.

43

presented for approval in a popular referendum” (Arato, 2006, pp.188-189). It was not specified by what

kind of vote the assembly had to agree on the draft.

The TAL also did set out a specific timetable for the IGC to write this permanent constitution. It stated that

the new National Assembly, appointed by the CPA, had to draft a permanent constitution before 15 august

2005. This draft would be presented for approval in a referendum no later than 15 October. However some

Iraqi politician openly rejected this time flame as being too quick to make an inclusive and well considered

document, all the demands to delay any phase of the process were rejected by the IGC and the CPA.

Because of the ethnic and religious diverse character of Iraq the difference off approaching the

constitutional process by looking primarily at the three dominant communal Iraqi groups -a conception that

is rooted within Orientalist, generalizing thinking according to some scholars (Visser & Stansfield, 2011)- or

instead, looking at Iraq as a blend of regions was decisive for the outcome of the transitional and permanent

constitutional text itself, but also for the process and the positions of the participants (Davis, 2007). US

officials actively pushed sectarian and ethnical logic as the building blocks of the new Iraq (Parker, 2006,

pp. 81-101). We could sum up the making of the TAL with the words of J. Morrow: “the TAL process was

notoriously, if unintentionally, hasty and secretive, and was heavily influenced by US political interests”

(Morrow, 2005, p.5).

4.2 The transitional general elections of January 2005

By the time the first general elections were held in January 2005, the perception of the CPA that Iraq was

populated by three homogenous communities –Shi’a, Kurds and Sunnis- was deeply rooted in its way of

thinking and governing. This unitary and homogenizing way of looking at the Iraqi population using

sectarian/ethnic differences was exactly what Brubaker called “groupism” (Brubaker, 2002). The structure

in which the 2005-elections were held were no different.

On January 30, 2005, general elections were held for the transitional National Assembly (275 seats), a

Kurdish regional assembly (111 seats) and a provincial assembly in each of the 18 Iraqi provinces (41 seats

each, 51 for Baghdad) (Katzman, 2006). The CPA executed two laws that were the primary regulatory bodies

for these elections (Arato, 2009, p.200). Order 96 (June 7, 2004) was the electoral law itself, so it stated

who, how and where could be voted. Order 92 (May 31, 2004) formed the Electoral Commission of the 2005

elections. All voters could vote based on a closed list system combined with proportional representation.

The closed list system meant that voters could only give their vote to a political party. They had no say in

the decision who would eventually fill up the seat in the Constituent Assembly. Any entity who received

about 31,000 votes (1/275 of the votes) won a seat. CPA order 96 decided that the whole country would be

treated as one single countrywide electoral district with Proportional representation (PR).

There were two main reasons for this. First, because it was perceived as a more proportional system than

plurality electoral systems (Arato, 2007, pp.203-249). And the perception among the CPA actors was that,

44

for a constitutional assembly that will rewrite the outline and structure of the country, the political issues

should recede on a fair representation of the population. If the country would have been divided in many

small lists, it would have had the effect of excluding the smaller parties.

Secondly, and I believe this to be the main motivation, the CPA chose this electoral system to try and limit

the votes for the larger Islamist Parties and to give smaller parties an advantage (Arato, 2007, pp.203-249).

Single-country-district PR does have the potential to produce extreme party fragmentation. But it is also

more dependent on the turnout results than multidistrict PR is. As we will see below, this last element

would greatly affect the results of the elections.

Iraq was a country in uprising. The insurgency was mostly concentrated in central Iraqi provinces of Anbar

and Saladin, with a Sunni-majority. Electoral turnouts would be low in the areas where it was raging and

parties who had strong support in these areas would be disadvantaged by the low turnouts. Their actual

support would be higher than the percentage of votes they got on a national comparison. In a multidistrict

PR system the insurgency and low turnout would have affected all the parties in each district equally and

the results would have corresponded more to the percentages of actual support.

As the results in figure 1 (see ‘figures and tables’) show, it were mostly the Kurdish parties (the PUK and

KDP formed a joint list of 165 candidates) and the Shiite Islamist parties (SCIRI and Da’wa as the most

prominent ones) who won the most seats (Diamond & Dawisha, 2006). This was no surprise since each

electoral alliance focused on getting the support of its own sectarian base. This further entrenched the idea

of electoral politics as being identity referenda.

The secular list, with the interim Prime Minister Allawi of the Iraqi National Accord party (INA) as its leader,

ended as third. Besides some members in the INA list, the Sunni population had almost no elected

representatives. This was the outcome of a combination of the electoral formula and the very low electoral

turnout in the provinces with a Sunni majority. The turnout was so dramatically low that it was even called

a genuine “Boycott” by the CPA (Bremer, 2006).

4.2.1 The Sunni boycott

The Sunni Iraqis only won 17 seats in the January elections, dispersed over multiple parties. Because of the

electoral system, the Sunni parties had the choice between underrepresentation or no representation at

all (Arato, 2007, pp.210-218). When none of the demands on more representation of the Sunni Iraqi Islamist

Party were met before the 2005-elections because of a convergence of US, Shia and Kurdish views, they

joined with the more radical Associations of Muslim Scholars and Sunni groups in their persistence on going

through with the electoral Boycott. However, most of the US and EU analysts claimed that the main

motivations for this January-boycott from the population living in the “Sunni Triangle47”was the forecast of

47 Some US officials also called it “the triangle of Death” after the Insurgency started to intensify; it was the region between Baghdad, Tikrit and Ramadi.

45

electoral defeat, intimidation by Sunni insurgents and the conviction that the draft constitution did not

serve their interests (Eisenstadt & White, 2005). When we look at the amount of insurgent attacks in Iraq

between April 2003 and January 2005 (See figure 2), we can see a constant increase of attacks until the

elections of December 2005. There could have been truth to the claim of US authorities and analysts that

the Sunni boycott could partly be explained because of the intimidation by insurgent attacks. But the

turnout results of the December elections contradict this. Why didn’t the Sunni voters stay at home in the

December elections, when the amount of attacks was almost five times as high as in January?

What were the reasons or motivations for the low turnout in the provinces with a Sunni majority? We can

see roughly two main narratives that dominated the analysis of the Sunni insurgency and the low Sunni

turnout in the 2005 elections. The first is based on a very clear notion that Iraq was sectarian before 2003,

the latter is more nuanced and doesn’t consider sectarianism as a fixed identity.

The first one looked mainly at the roots of Sunni rage in the era before 2003, and the privileged position of

the Sunni community as a whole. According to authors like Amatzia Baram, the heavy Sunni opposition to

the constitutional process and the occupation as a whole could partly be explained because of the

Islamization of the Regime and Baathist party48 in the last decade of its rule (Baram, 2005). He points at

mutually reinforcing mix of Saddamism, tribalism and radical Islamism. After 2003, this narrative was

functionally used by “bitter and frustrated” Sunnis, who lost their privileged status, as ideological legitimacy

for “a sectarian quest to reverse the ascendancy of the Shi’a and Kurds following the war” (Baram, 2005,

p3). Deep Sunni humiliation, both individually and collectively, because of the loss of lucrative jobs as a

result of the de-Ba’thification process in the ‘more representative’ and Shi’a-controlled state were the main

grievances of the Sunni population. Because of the deprivation of advantageous positions, the Sunni Arab

resentment was perceived as unavoidable (Baram, 2005). Tribal cultural values, norms and “warrior”

traditions also formed a set of motivations in this analysis. The “occasionally insensitive” behavior of the

coalition forces led to a deterioration of the relations between the occupier and local population. “America

has invaded us and insulted us and so it is legitimate for us to fight. It is our honor and our duty” (Baram,

2005, p.7). I believe that because Baram points at ‘tribal honor’ and revenge as the motivation of the use

of violence by the Sunni insurgents, he refutes the legitimacy of their grievances. He even insinuated that

the tribal violence could only have been stopped if the US paid traditional ‘blood money’ to the tribal leaders

to prevent revenge actions. His simplistic ‘groupist’ analysis of the insurgents is further illustrated by two

things. Firstly, the fact that he insinuates that nearly all the insurgents were former Ba’athists, who looked

at their mosques for guidance after 2003 because the party centers were no more. It is true that a lot of

Iraqis were member of the Party, but to claim that they all had the same degree of support or the fact that

they all identified themselves primarily as being ‘Baathists’ is absurd. Secondly, because he divides the

insurgents into two opposed categories: “those who are candidates for a rapprochement with the Iraqi

48 Baram points at the al-Hamlah al-Imaniyyah, the Faith Campaign, instituted in 1993 by Saddam to illustrate this (Baram, 2005, p10)

46

government, and those who are not” (Baram, 2005, p16). In the latter he includes ultra-radical Islamist, ex-

Ba’thists and criminals. The former were ‘all other’ secular/ideological, tribal and Islamist groups. He

concludes that all the insurgents have the same concern: “the place of the Sunni Arab community within

the new Iraq” (Baram, 2005, p17).

Concerning the low turnouts of the elections, he doesn’t speak of a Sunni boycott as an expression of

grievances or a feeling of illegitimacy or unfairness towards the elections. The low turnout was the result

of the fact that safe and fair elections in the Sunni Triangle were simply impossible because of the violence.

A second approach used a more historical narrative to analyze the Sunni opposition and insurgency to the

post-2003 Iraqi order and looked at the main roots in the events after 2003. It considers sectarianism not

just as an issue between Sunni and Shia, but as an issue of the marginalized, it was more a state-Shia relation

before 2003 (Haddad, 2016). In contrast to the Shia, there was no Iraqi Sunni identity before 2003 in the

sense of an autonomous social or religious structure, so the state never had to compete with it (al-Qarawee,

2014). A very interesting parallel is made by Haddad on the importance of power relations on identity and

inter-group relations (Haddad, 2016, pp.148-149). He compares the emergence of the European

“whiteness” identity, because white people became the standard when differentiated to other races

(before that they were “just people”), to the emergence of an Iraqi “Sunni identity”. Before 2003, Sunni

Arabs barely perceived themselves as a sectarian group, they were “simple Iraqis”. But because of the

institutionalization of identity politics and the strength of Shia-centric political actors, the Sunni Arabs

“awoke one day and suddenly discovered that we are all Sunnis” (Haddad, 2016, p151). The –still fluid-

Sunni identity was formed around a sense of (real or perceived) victimhood and a general rejection of the

legitimacy of the post-2003 order, that was perceived to exist at their expense. There was a common sense

of illegitimacy, but a division on the question whether participation in the new political order was the best

way to go or an overall rejection and boycott was needed. Haddad points at a vicious cycle: anti-state

sentiments arose out of the question “how do you seek greater representation or fairer treatment from a

state that is deemed illegitimate (…)?” (Haddad, 2016, p155). This anti-state sentiment fed Sunni anti-state

insurgency, which nourished the discrimination and sect-centric approach of the post-2003 political order.

The composition of the IGC, based on ethno-sectarian quota, is an example. This strengthened the anti-

state sentiment among Sunnis and the sense of victimhood.

However, authors at the ICG49 and others such as S. Wicken50 and Visser, pointed at the heterogeneity

among Sunnis and the fact that a lot of them still held to their sect-averse political frames and tried to “de-

confessionalize the political system” while others tried to catch up with the Shias by building a sect-centered

political identity (Haddad, 2016).

49 “Make or Break”, ICG, pp. 5 50 Stephen wicken, “iraq’s Sunnis in crisis,” Institute for the Study of War, middle east Security report ii, may 2013, pp. 36.

47

4.3 The “permanent” constitution

On 13 June 2005, a 55 member committee started its work on the writing of the permanent constitution

(Saad, 2013). The participants were appointed by the General Council according to a quota system based

on their ethnic and sectarian identity. 28 members came from the Shia coalition list, 15 from Kurdish lists

and 8 from the ‘al-Iraqia’ list of Alawi (mostly Shia Arabs). The General Council also added one member of

the –what they called- “minority groups” of Christians, Turkoman and one Sunni Muslim. This was done to

make the committee more inclusive. But after strong criticism from the Sunni community, and the CPA, the

Council added 14 Sunni members to the drafting Committee. So the constitutional committee had 69

members in total when it started working.

From the beginning of the drafting process it was quite clear that each group would focus mainly on its own

sect-based group objectives and turn a blind eye to the divisive dangers of some of the clauses in the draft.

This had as a result that even the outline of the permanent constitution, drafted in the TAL, wasn’t discussed

(Saad, 2013). This was an objective of the Kurdish groups, who had a team of EU and US legal experts

supporting them during the bargaining (Arato, 2006, p.142). As shown above, many of their demands were

already met within the TAL, so they successfully tried to derive any debate on the TAL itself to other topics

of discussion.

Although the Iraqi government stated that it had drafted the constitution on its own, the discussions and

bargaining efforts were not restricted to the 69-member committee. Other actors such as Peter Galbraith51,

Noah Feldman52 –who both had a big impact on the writing of the prior TAL- and Zalmay Khalilzad53 were

present as ‘advisors’ during the permanent constitution-making process (Packer, 2008, pp.180-223). It was

not surprising that the US advisors, and other policymakers from neighboring countries, had very big impact

on the content and process since no one of the 69 member Iraqi committee was a law expert or had any

experience in constitutional designing (Saad, 2013, pp.1-14). This created a big dependency on external

help. The lack of internal legal expertise and the fact that a majority of the Iraqi population was unaware of

the content of the discussions or the document–due to the very few reports in the media- made counter

criticism from the inside and from the outside almost impossible during the outline of the document. The

few critics who spoke publicly about the divisive dangers of certain clauses of the document were pursued

by militia members54. Only a few days after the committee started its work, three Sunni members, who had

critical voices on the proposed draft and who were concerned about the Arab identity of Iraq, were

assassinated. The Sunni representatives were vigorously intimidated and halted their participation for 10

51Galbraith, an US diplomat, advised the Kurdish parties during the drafting of the TAL and permanent constitution 52 Feldman served as senior constitutional advisor to the CPA 53The US ambassador to Iraq 54 See for example the case of Dr Mundher al-Shawi, who worked with law experts to create some awareness. After his arrest and exile, the group felt intimidated and stopped its work

48

days. On the 8th of august the committee was suspended. But the Shia and Kurdish groups continued

working without the Sunni delegation. In the end, Sunnis were only part of the process for three weeks.

There were four main topic of discussion during the drafting of the permanent constitution (Arato, 2006,

pp 200-218).

The first one was the TAL itself and its amendments. Above all the concessions to a quasi-confederal

structure made things more difficult and dangerous. It was not clear how the Sunnis, who were most

committed to Iraqi unity, could change anything about the decentralization that was conceded to the Kurds

in the TAL. They knew that if they couldn’t change it, and the Kurds kept their “federacy”, the Shia would

eventually ask for the same, adding to the potential of territorial disintegration of Iraq.

The second one had to do with Sunni inclusion. The new Shia UIA majority opposed anything that was more

than a symbolic representation or inclusion of unelected Sunni members. As mentioned above, after

pressure from the CPA, Sunnis were given extra representatives in the council but played a small roll for

only 3 weeks.

The third problem –related to the second problem of Sunni inclusion- was the tight TAL-timetable. An

unusual short time, too short to make real inclusiveness possible, was foreseen to make the permanent

constitution, only seven months. A Iraqi politician illustrated this: “we’re short of time- it’s the fault of the

Americans,” Kurdish politician Mahmoud Othman Said. “They are always insisting on short deadlines. It’s as

if they’re making hamburgers and fast food.” Another man added: “if we’d had more time, it would have

been possible to get Sunni participation. When October 15 comes, many won’t even have seen the

constitution” (Arato, 2007, p. 205).

The fourth big problem had a link to Bremer’s statement on the insurgency: “in democracy you don’t shoot

your way into power” he said in 2004 (Arato, 2009, pp. 215-216). The problem was that the small group of

Sunni representatives, who were mainly included in the process by the CPA to pacify the insurgency

violence, weren’t shooting. They would prove useless in moderating the uprising since they brought the

less radical parts of the insurgency to the bargaining table. Regrettably, if these co-opted Sunni members

had a soothing purpose towards the insurgents, it was crucial that the more radical actors were invited as

well. But this was unthinkable since the US presented these, more radical actors, as Salafist/Baathist

terrorist groups without any legitimate grievances. This labeling of the insurgents in a particular way by

Bremer was similar to the analysis of Baram (2005).

When, on 23 August 2005, a partially complete draft was submitted to the national assembly it was met

with strong Sunni opposition (Saad, 2013, pp.1-14). To make sure that the draft wouldn’t be shot down or

blocked in the public referendum of 15 October, the US suggested adding a part (article 142) to the

submitted draft that stated that the parliament could form committees from its members to present

amendments. As a result of the addition of this article to the draft, a lot of Sunni groups decided to halt

their opposition and to participate in the process. They drastically changed their mind on the constitution

49

draft just 48 hours before the referendum. US pressure and the desire to be in the new government were

most likely the vital motivations to do so. It was spearheaded by the Islamic Party of Tariq al-Hashimi who

advised the Sunni community to vote in favor of the constitution.

Officially 78% of the voters approved the draft on 15 October 2005 (Saad, 2013, p.14).

For the constitution to be blocked, three provinces had to vote against it, each with two thirds of the voters

(as was stated in the TAL). But only the central Iraqi provinces of Salah al-Din and al-Anbar, both with great

Sunni majorities, voted against it. The province of Nineveh also voted against the draft, but they lacked a

two third majority of the voters to prevent the draft’s passage. So despite all the objections, the fact that

Iraqis were voting on a document which they hadn’t seen, debated or studied, the constitution was declared

as “approved” by a popular majority of the voters.

What was the content of the New Constitution?

Indeed, the new Iraqi constitution did contain progressive elements and articles. For example: no law

should be drawn that contradicts the principles of democracy and the rights and liberties of the citizens,

the people are the source of power and its legitimacy, the prohibition of torture, and the independency of

the legal system (Saad, 2013, pp13-18). But it did also contain more controversial and even clear divisive

articles. As noted above, sectarian conceptions were never mentioned in any other Iraqi constitution in the

past, for their aim was to strengthen the Iraqi unity. The new 2005 constitution mentioned “sects” at least

twice. One article, number 43, even explicitly mentions one sect’s practices55 to affirm the freedom of

religious ceremonies. Another divisive part was Article 41. It allows the creation of Sunni and Shia personal

status courts, reintroduced the description of Iraqis according to their sectarian identities (Arato, 2009,

p.237). This was a practice that was prevented in the past by the “unified personal status law” ordered

under abd al-Karim Qassim in 1959. Article 41 cancelled the progressive personal status law, and its later

amendments56.

The hierarchy between the central and regional governments was rather radical compared to the

constitutions of other federal countries. In most federal countries the central government holds the

decision power when a conflict occurs between the different government levels (Saad, 2013, pp.14-19). In

case of contradiction between local and central laws, the authority of a final decision was admitted to the

Iraqi regional administrations. The Kurdish federal region used this to issue its own regional constitution

immediately after the approving of the constitution. Article 126 also gave the Kurdish region veto power.

The article states: “articles of the constitution may not be amended if such amendments take away the

power of the regions that are not within the exclusive power of the federal authorities, except by the

approval of the legislative authority of the concerned region and the approval of the majority of its citizens

55 The article literally contained the religious ceremonies of the Husseini (Shia) 56women’s organizations strongly rejected this

50

in a general referendum” (Saad, 2013, p16). The Shia population was also given such rights since their sect

dominated most of the southern provinces. We can see that the federal administration was clearly

excavated by the new Iraqi constitution.

By stating: “Iraq is a country of multiple nationalities, religions and sects. (…) and it is part of the Islamic

world” (Saad, 2013, p. 17), article 3 stressed the sectarian and Islamic nature of the Iraqi state.

Because two or more sides are never completely equal and there will always be issues of which one will not

be able to persuade the other into a compromise, imbalance is always present in political negotiations. But

for the process to be considered legitimate, it should –as much as possible- be based on persuasion instead

of pure fear or dictation (Arato, 2009, pp135-203). But in the Iraqi case, the presence of US military force

and the insistence of the CPA that the process should be done on an accelerated pace made sure the

elements for a legitimate process were not there.

The main purpose of a constitution was overlooked. A constitution should work like glue; it should have the

purpose to bring diverse communities together into a unified state. The, a historic, US approach started a

sectarianization of Iraqi politics, which was adopted by the new ruling elites of Iraq. Because of this, the

new constitution emphasized the sectarian differences instead of the togetherness of the ethnic and

sectarian groups within the Iraqi state.

51

5. Conclusion:

What does the Iraqi case teach us about sectarian politics and the limits of our understanding of Middle

Easters Politics?

Academics and policymakers have put a lot of effort into presenting a society or a country as an object that

can be (re)shaped or molded into something different during interventionist projects like the one in Iraq.

However, a long time ago, even Machiavelli warned us that the effort of creating a completely new order

has its limitations: “To make in cities new governments with new names, new authorities, new men; to

make the rich poor, the poor rich … to build new cities, to take down those built, to exchange the inhabitants

from one place to another; and in sum, not to leave anything untouched … I do not know whether this has

ever occurred or whether it is possible” (Bhuta, 2008, pp.1-28). The political and social historical space of

any country or society is never transparent or completely observable. They are defined by countless forces,

making it impossible to take them all into account. According to Machiavelli, successful political actions can

only be achieved when the political agent applies a limited approach of its own potential of transforming

reality. Regretfully such a limited attitude was nowhere to be found in the ambitions and actions of the

United States in Iraq. Reality was completely alterable to them:“The US is an empire now, and when we act,

we create our own reality” (Parker, 2006, p.98). However, the US quickly felt the shackles of reality in Iraq.

Oddly enough, rather than ascribing their failure to Machiavelli’s logic and the limits of forcefully changing

reality, US technicians like Diamond pointed at a failure of planning and implementation by the Pentagon

and CPA officials (Diamond, 2005). But by blaming wishful thinking, implementation and blunders in the

transitional design, Diamond left the limitations of a wider narrative of global transition out of account

(Parker, 2006, p.97). This dominant narrative contains techniques to view and organize our thinking of the

political world and projects that want to “make true” a certain vision of this political world. I believe that it

was this deterministic “true making” narrative that formed the real basis of the failure of the

Neoconservative their revolutionary project. The Iraqi case particularly shows us the limits and dangers of

liberal interventionism and ‘liberal peace’ when ignoring ‘the local’, especially when it is accompanied by a

‘true making’ deterministic gaze.

Concerning the democratization we can see that the whole effort of ‘democratization from above’ was

perceived by the Iraqis as undemocratic, which it absolutely was since even the TAL wasn’t submitted to

any public consultation. Strangely enough, the project to bring democracy to Iraq was in fact totally un-

democratic.

Because it was based on one-sided deterministic knowledge’s, the characteristics of the electoral

framework that created an incentive for mobilization through sectarian cleavages, the fact that

sectarianism was literally written into the new Iraqi constitution (making it a part of new political order) the

52

process of democratization through constitution-making set in motion an irreversible dynamic of ethnic &

sect-based politics, with long lasting consequences we can still see today.

While the existence of sectarianism in Iraq before and after 2003 can’t be denied, and it were in fact Iraqis

themselves who were the ones who were a part of –and mobilized based on- this sect-based

identifications57, I want to note that I believe that this “Sectarianization” (Haddad, 2017) as a political and

violent phenomenon has mostly been a projection of the narrative of external actors which set in motion

the whole dynamic.

Just as Polanyi explained on capitalism, once a society expects a certain behavior to be part of its members,

and prevailing institutions become roughly capable of enforcing that behavior, opinions on human nature

will tend to mirror the ideal whether it resembles actuality or not (Polanyi, 1947, p. 114). It was like a

Thomas-theorem, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Because, as Said has explained, the sense of ‘belonging’ to something of people becomes more important

under foreign occupation (Said, 1998). In Iraq this ‘belonging’ was filled in by sectarian identities since most

other manners of identification melted away or became politically irrelevant after 2003. The State-vacuum

and the incapability of the post-2003 order to provide stability and security, pushing the Iraqis to other

sources of security, strengthened this sectarianization. 58

I hope that there will be real lessons learned from Iraq, that it isn’t just considered a foolish project of a

previous US-administration, but that it is remembered as the case that shows that the reshaping of

societies, countries and regions through external influence has its limits and can lead to unforeseen and

destabilizing outcomes. Unfortunately, people like R. Wright show us that the way of thinking that formed

the basis of projects like the Iraqi invasion still are present today.

57 A criticism that is used to push responsibility away from the coalition forces 58 The dismantling of the Iraqi army and state capacity, and the fact that the invasion army was too small to secure the country or prevent looting, pushed the Iraqis to the sectarian militias for security and protection (Parker, 2008). In the Weberian sense, there was no state left.

53

6. List of figures and tables

Figure 1. Iraqi election results January & December 2005 (p.)

Source: Katzman, K., (June 15 2006). CRS Report for Congress: Iraq: Elections, Government, and

Constitution. P.7

Figure 2: Reported Insurgent Attacks in Iraq

Source: Eisenstadt, M., White, J. (December 2005). Assessing Iraq’s Sunni Arab Insurgency. Washington: The

Washington Institute for Near East Policy. (P. 38)

54

Figure 3: Iraqi election results 2010

Source: Dawisha, A., July 2010. Iraq A vote against sectarianism. (P. 26) Journal of Democracy Volume 21,

Number 3: John Hopkins University Press.

55

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