Constitutional change the only hope for a united Iraq – and defeating ISIS
Radical reform of Iraq’s political structure is the only way to keep the country together – and defeat ISIS – claims a new study.
Radical reform of Iraq’s political structure is the only way to keep the country together – and defeat ISIS – claims a new study.
Writing in National Identities, Shamsul Khan (University of South Australia) and Sherko Kirmanj (University Utara Malaysi) propose a radical plan to tackle Iraq’s dysfunctional governance and never-ending ethnic and sectarian conflict – a situation currently being exploited to the full by ISIS.
While the consequences of the removal of Saddam Hussein, the war in neighbouring Syria and wider Middle East tensions have all contributed to creating and perpetuating Iraq’s dysfunctional state, other factors, including ‘a prevailing sense of marginalization and disenfranchisement among various groups of Sunnis, lingering frustrations among many Kurdish leaders … and the complete breakdown of law and order in Baghdad and other major cities’ also play their part.
Authors Khan and Kirmanj write that the root cause of Iraq’s current troubles is deep and historic: the highly centralised nature of its governance, with little delegation of authority to smaller, ‘sub-national’ units, and a high degree of sectarianism present from Iraq’s foundation.
Despite attempts to reform Iraq’s government in the early 2000s, with no constitutional or legal framework for the devolution of power across regions or branches of government, ‘a composite Iraqi identity never took shape’. As a result, they conclude: “The foremost reason for redesigning Iraq’s political structure is to ensure, to the extent possible, the equal representation of different ethnic and sectarian groups and power sharing among them ... The need for power sharing and consensus must be intertwined directly into the constitutional fabric of the political structure.”
To achieve this, Khan and Kirmanj propose a confederal structure along Sunni-Shiite-Kurdish ethnosectarian lines: three confederal states, plus the Baghdad Metropolitan Region, would constitute the Republic of Iraq. Political power would then be dispersed across all Iraq’s regions and branches of government.
If the current structure is maintained, they warn, the Shiites will continue to view themselves as the ‘legitimate claimant’ of political power, the Sunnis will continue to struggle with Shiite rule, and the Kurds will continue to be dissatisfied over issues related to territory and revenue sharing.
But would it work? Khan and Kirmanj suggest that ‘there is every reason to be optimistic’ that Iraq’s major political actors, facing what they call the ‘existential threat of the ISIS onslaught’, would be able to leave their ethnic and sectarian divisions behind in a new, confederate structure. Indeed, the proposals outlined in this paper might be the only chance to build a new, vibrant and strong Iraq that can function in ‘unity through diversity’ – before it’s too late.
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