Local Power in Iraq by Charles Tripp

Local Power in Iraq
by Charles Tripp

Now that the first phase of the Iraqi civil war seems to have ended, it is
time to consider the political processes it may have left in its bloody
wake. It is crucial for Iraqis and others to get a sense of the stability
and durability of the present arrangements. Are they a mechanism for
reconciling the ferocious enmities of the past five years in Iraq, or
likely to lead to a more violent second phase of civil war?

There have been two main patterns during these years of violence and
massive population displacement.

One is the localisation of politics, grounded in the insecurities, fears
and ambitions of ruthless local leaders across Iraq. This thrives on
community feeling, which is sometimes tribal, sometimes ethnic and
sectarian; it also springs from rivalry and jostling for power within a
provincial arena.

The other pattern is the emergence of a politics at national level under
US auspices, which has much in common with the politics of a protectorate.
Both are dangerous for the future, but both may contribute to the
emergence of a distinctive, likely troubled, Iraqi politics.

As an Iraqi put it, "The United States got rid of one Saddam only to
replace him with 50." For many people, negotiating their way around and
through the little Saddams with their militias, detention centres, local
courts and taxes has become a fact of life. Some accept this as the price
of increased security for their community, neighbourhood or even street.
Others who refused to conform, but knew the price in blood for dissent,
have fled -- abroad if they could or to a part of Iraq where they may be
less visible.

"National institutions" have little or no authority to temper the effects
of this on the lives of ordinary Iraqis. Some, such as the police, are
often enmeshed in local power and the extortion and repression with which
they are associated. Even when officers are not implicated (as with the
police chief of Basra, Major-General Khallaf) they can do nothing but
lament the fact that in the past three months some 40 women have been
killed in Basra for wearing make-up, not veiling, or otherwise failing to
observe the narrow rulings of the repressive local militias.

When national politicians do try to take on this entrenched and violent
local power, the chances are that they will lose. This was shown in a
recent account of Abu Abed's "Knights of Ameriya." He felt that the
followers of the vice-president, Tariq al-Hashemi, were trying to muscle
in on the area of West Baghdad that was his fiefdom. His local militia was
able to flex its muscles so effectively because it had been drawn into the
US plan for the pacification of Baghdad. His "knights," and other
militias, incongruously called "concerned citizens" by the US authorities,
had received US money, weapons and protection in the name of the fight
against "al-Qaida in Iraq."

No Iraqi flag

The politics of the local, however fractious, uncertain and grim for many
Iraqis, have been much encouraged by the US authorities. This may be due
in part to the example of Kurdistan, where the United States has been
intimately involved since 1991. It is now held up as the only stable and
prosperous region of Iraq, but peace there was preceded by years of
violence as the two major parties battled each other for supremacy.
Cajoled by the United States into settling their differences in 2000,
political leaders Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani soon realised there
was a greater game, and did what they could to speed the downfall of the
Baghdad regime in 2003. However, as their subsequent stance has shown,
despite Talabani's assumption of the presidency of Iraq, their politics
have remained resolutely and defiantly local, symbolised by the refusal
even to fly the Iraqi flag over official buildings.

This turning to local figures of authority and power is also the outcome
of a belief that political order, like the insurgency, must be rooted in
local communities if it is to spread. Using the language deployed over a
hundred years before by the French colonial general, Joseph Galliéni, in
his campaigns in Tonkin and Madagascar, the US high command
enthusiastically adopted his strategy of les taches d'huile (oil spots --
create many of them and they will seep outwards and eventually join
together) as a way to combat both the insurgency and the efforts by
"al-Qaida in Iraq" to create no-go areas.

But the use of local strongmen, however repellent their methods, is also
due to the illiteracy of US and allied forces in "reading" Iraqi society.
This left them relying on an assortment of exiles who inserted themselves
into new US-sponsored forms of power and who have been consistently unable
make a truly national government happen. In its absence, the United States
and its partners, having dismantled the last public vestiges of the old
centralised Iraqi state, had no choice but to work with those who could
command force on the ground, provide intelligence in specific localities
and willingly accept the sponsorship and patronage of the real power in
Baghdad, as they had always accepted it from the predecessors of the US in
the republican or royal palace.

The politicians of the national government, desperate to replace the
United States as chief patrons of Iraq's politics, but divided among
themselves and uncertain of their power beyond the Green Zone, have
embodied sectarian and communal politics. They believe these can be a way
of connecting with many Iraqis and can provide an escape from a
domineering US presence. To resist US demands in the name of an Iraqi
sovereignty to which the United States pays only lip service has proved
fruitless and humiliating. However, communal politics, with all its
complexities, networks and layers, has proved impenetrable to the United
States, and to the secular Iraqis whom the US has favoured.

Communalism and sectarianism became a bulwark against an overbearing
patron, but as the events of 2006-7 showed they can carry terrible risks.
They do not lessen the dependency of these recently promoted elites upon
the power of the United States in Iraq. This applies to the Kurdish
leaders, who need it to protect them from Turkish intervention, as well as
to the insecure leaders who came to office as a result of the victory of
the United Iraqi Alliance in the elections of 2005.

These elections produced the formal institutions of representative life --
parliament, elected offices of state, constitution -- but, as most Iraqis
are well aware, real power lies elsewhere. Unresponsive to the concerns of
many, used to passing laws that confirm the privileges of those who have
succeeded in manipulating the system, the Iraqi parliament is losing
whatever authority it had. For many, cynicism has replaced the enthusiasm
generated by the elections. In its place is a recognition that it is
helping to entrench an order of privilege, a new class-based dispensation,
which is a driving force behind the politics of communities across the
country.

To join up the spots

This too is part of a strategy designed to reinforce the hold of favoured
leaders over the economy, providing them with the means to service their
client followings, and to encourage the "spots" to join up, driven by the
common economic interests of the powerful. Competition for these resources
is more troublesome than this picture of progressive pacification might
suggest. But it could be argued that the oil law currently before the
parliament is, at least in its distributive clauses, an attempt to address
this, since it seeks a formula for the distribution of Iraq's oil revenues
to make it acceptable to all those in a position to profit, whatever their
regional or communal base.

The intention in the long run is not to let "a thousand flowers bloom,"
but to bring the many forms of local power into the orbit of those with
major resources at the centre. This could recreate a national politics in
Iraq. It might not reproduce the old centralised state, but it would
establish a clear hierarchy, from the provinces to the "club of patrons"
who will determine the future from Baghdad. Much about this model
resembles the imperial protectorates that shaped the politics of the
Middle East for much of the first half of the 20th century.

Al-Maliki heads an insecure, dependent government, resentful of foreign
protection but unable to survive without it; this government protests
feebly at repeated infringements of Iraqi sovereignty and is subjected to
the patronising imposition of benchmarks by the US Congress as part of a
domestic political game within the United States. Meanwhile the protecting
power, as well as sponsoring local militias and asking few questions if
they seem to be keeping the supposed threat from al-Qaida in Iraq at bay,
is also forging a close relationship with the Iraqi armed forces.

This is reminiscent of the close and often sinister relationship between
Latin American military institutions and the US military, and is set
against a backdrop of insecure and corrupt political elites, sham
representative institutions, restive provinces, and the potentially
violent politics of a class-divided society. Some may use anti-Americanism
to overcome these differences, particularly if this can be focused on the
continued presence of US military bases. This has the potential to set up
a dangerous schizophrenia within the Iraqi armed forces -- a recent report
on the rebuilding of the ministry of the interior described it as "a
heavily-muscled and well- armed individual with extremely poor physical
coordination who suffers from multiple personality disorder."

Any officer wanting to get ahead must play by US rules, at the same time
negotiating with local political elites eager to exploit the force that
the army will represent in domestic politics. Yet he is almost certain to
come to resent all of these external demands, laying the groundwork for a
politics of the military and of military assertion, which may be
nationalist, contemptuous of civilian politics, and ruthless in its
methods. Iraq, like many other states, has been here before.

These potentially troubling trends may be a basis for the emergence of
Iraqi politics, rather than the collapse and disintegration of the state.
However, given the passions, the interests at stake and the vulnerability
of Iraqi politics to regional influence and intervention, there is
fragility. It comes from the realisation that all parties have no
intention of renouncing violence as a means of realising their aims. And
the local leaderships may not have as strong a hold over their
constituencies as they would want others to believe. A second phase of the
civil war is easily imaginable therefore, especially if critical regional
events, such as a US-Iran confrontation, are replicated through clients
and protégés in Iraq.


Charles Tripp is professor of Middle East politics, School of Oriental and
African Studies, University of London, and author, among other works, of A
History of Iraq (Cambridge, new edition 2007) and Islam and the Moral
Economy: the challenge of capitalism (Cambridge, 2006).

© 2007 Le Monde diplomatique