Self-Determination? In Iraq?
Self-Determination? In Iraq?
By Joe Bob Briggs
May 9, 2003
It's got that air of the New Age about it, like books sold in the Hallmark store at Christmas time: "Self-Determination: How to Have the Country You Deserve, and Have It Now," by Ariella Le Blanc.
What exactly do they mean by self-determination? If you really had self-determination, you would have to divide Iraq into at least three separate countries. The Kurds would want an independent Kurdistan; that would be self-determination for them. The Shias would want a theocratic enclave in the south. And all those guys who have been in exile for 30 years would want some kind of oil-baron oligarchy in Baghdad.
Haven't we proven over and over again in the last century that self-determination doesn't work? As soon as you say "All people have the right to rule themselves," you have to decide what "people" are. Is it a race? Is it a nationality? Is it a religion? Is it people that happen to be living within certain boundaries that were imposed on them eighty years ago? Iraq, after all, was just penciled onto a map in London and declared a country in 1921. All the reasons that was a bad idea in 1921 are still true today.
Cries of "self-determination" are literally like yelling fire in a crowded theater. Somebody yelled "Self-determination!" in Yugoslavia and look what happened. Somebody forgot to tell the Abhkazians that self-determination didn't include them, so they should stop killing Georgians. The Congo is on the brink of genocide again because someone is enforcing their "self- determination" with machine guns and machetes.
Every time you think you've discovered what the "self" is in "self-determination," history peels back another layer to expose yet another minority group that doesn't have self-determination. Should the Navajo have self-determination? "Tribal sovereignty" is just another phrase for the same thing. If they tried it-- really tried it--we'd probably react along the same lines the Russians did when Chechnya claimed self-determination.
But back to Iraq. If you assume that self-determination in Iraq means majority rule within the current boundaries, with no new fiefdoms, independent provinces or countries-within-a-country being drawn, then you have to assume that, if everyone votes, we're going Shiite. The Shias not only have 60 percent of the population, but they have the only legitimate leader: Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al-Hakim, who just arrived from Iran and is pretty much ready to boogie.
So that would be what happens if you just call elections and let the majority rule. But apparently "majority rule" is not part of the Bush vocabulary right now. The New York Times yesterday quoted "Bush administration insiders and military chiefs" as saying they want "a strong Sunni center that keeps the Shiite Muslim majority under control."
The funny thing is, that's the same thing Saddam Hussein wanted!
In other words, they want minority rule. But what do they mean by keeping Shiites "under control"? Usually getting clerics involved in new governments is considered a good thing. After all, the reason the people trust the Ayatollah in the first place is that he's a holy man, so he's less likely to steal the oil, hand out tobacco monopolies to his friends, or throw soccer players into prison.
The problem, of course, is that Shiites--within Islam--are the equivalent of Pentecostal snake-handlers in Appalachia, with the big difference that there are a lot more of them. Sometimes people try to explain the difference between Sunnis and Shiites as the difference between traditional Catholics (Sunnis) and renegade Protestants during the Reformation (Shiites). Not even close. A more accurate parallel would be comparing Catholics to Mormons in the 19th century, when the followers of Joseph Smith were still wandering polygamists trying to reestablish the Lost Tribes of Israel.
The Shiites are way past Lost Tribes. They've got an actual messiah who has been hiding in a cave somewhere in Iraq since 878, ready to come back at any moment and declare the end of time. (This is why Shiite-dominated Iran is so interested in Iraq.) There was a time when this was considered just a quirky offshoot of mainstream Islam, like Jehovah's Witnesses, but that all changed when Shiism became the state religion of Persia in 1502--about the same time the warfare between Catholics and Protestants broke out, now that I think about it.
So to put it in American terms: It's as though 60 percent of the country thinks the president of Bob Jones University should occupy the White House and rid the country of corruption, godlessness and foreigners. The Kurds, on the other hand, are the equivalent of Louisiana Cajuns who still speak French and just want to be left alone to do whatever ethnic cleansing they think necessary for the future of southern Louisiana. Then you have the "Sunni middle" that the White House is talking about, as though there's a large contingent of Kiwanis Club members who want to rebuild Baghdad to resemble Houston.
Does anybody really believe this is gonna end up as "self- determination"? The United States is in the same position the British were a hundred years ago, and there's no reason to believe our own viceroys will act any differently than the foreign service of the Empire. And what did they do?
They cheated. They identified "volatile" groups and limited their power. They gave money and authority to bland peacemaking types, even if they occasionally had to look the other way when those leaders turned out to be naughty. (One of the power brokers who's shown up lately is Saad al-Janabi, leader of something called the Iraqi Republican Group and a favorite of the CIA. He's best known for having the national cigarette monopoly in the 1990s, thereby forcing an entire nation to smoke his dreaded Somar brand.)
Then you've got the whole Ba'ath Party question. How far down the ladder of authority do you have to go before a Ba'athist ceases to be a Saddam Hussein henchman and becomes a mere bureaucrat who might be valuable to the new government?
We're going to find out, aren't we, starting with the 350 members of the "interim national assembly" that's been cobbled together to write a new constitution, among other things. Fortunately we don't have to worry about whether the Sunnis think it's a Shiite constitution, or the Shiites think there's too much Kurdish stuff in there, or that anyone thinks the other side is cheating or making it too religious or too irreligious. That's because the principal constitutional advisor, sent from New York University's law school to propose various drafts of this historic document, is Noah Feldman--an Orthodox Jew.
This is gonna be fun.
Joe Bob Briggs writes a number of columns for UPI and may be contacted at joebob@upi.com or through his website at www.joebobbriggs.com. Snail mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, TX 75221.
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