www.fpa.org info@fpa.org Unedited transcript created by closed captioning service: Great Decisions Television 2004 Election Year Special Topic 5: Iraq s Political Future Krogh: America is fighting for a unified, democratic, and secular Iraq, but what kind of outcome is most likely? Coming up next on a Great Decisions special 2004. Announcer: Great Decisions is produced by the Foreign Policy Association. Funding for Great Decisions is provided by the Citigroup private bank, one of the largest private banking businesses in the world. The Citigroup private bank provides personalized wealth management services for clients globally. Captioning and audio description provided by the U.S. Department of Education. Announcer: And now, in our New York studio, here is Peter Krogh. Krogh: Iraq has been singled out as a frontline on the war against terrorism and as a test case and hopefully a showcase in the campaign to spread democracy in the Middle East. A short war which toppled a brutal dictator has been followed by a protracted insurgency, widespread destruction, and mounting civilian and military casualties. Economic and political reconstruction efforts are sabotaged by diverse forces with multiple agendas and sources of support. Most conspicuously, the war in Iraq has thrown into sharp relief the religious and tribal divisions within the country. With everything now up for grabs, each faction scrambles for power, with the U.S. too often caught in the middle. Iraq is a proud and potentially rich country. It was once the glorious capital of the Muslim world. Its oil reserves are second only to those of Saudi Arabia. It is a prize worth fighting over. What and who will win the fight and how? What outcome would be in our best interest? Realistically, what outcome is most likely? Joining me to discuss the U.S. and the future of Iraq are Ambassador Richard Murphy, former assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs, and Dr. Phebe Marr, senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Welcome, Ambassador Murphy, Dr. Marr, to this special edition of Great Decisions 2004. We don't want to rehash the past on this show. That has been done amply and perhaps excessively. What we want to do is look to the future. But before we go there, we want to touch base with the present, late fall 2004, with an assessment of the situation in Iraq on the ground. Richard, what is your assessment of the conditions there at this point in time? Richard Murphy: You don't want to talk about the past, but the past is still with us. We went into Iraq ignorant, with a capital I. We'd had an embassy in Iraq only six years from 1967 until this year. No time, particularly under the strict surveillance of Saddam's security forces, to build a network of contacts between political officers, politicians in Iraq, economic officers with the business community, military intelligence with their counterpart, so we've been trying to fill in the gaps, and I think it's a great idea of this program to help all of us see where we are in Iraq because we remain pretty ignorant of the dynamics of Iraq. We're very fortunate with Dr. Marr here. Few could match her knowledge.
Krogh: Richard, your former department, the Department of State, had a plan for the future of Iraq that was apparently scuttled going in, so the State Department did some pretty serious work on what this ought to be looking like. Richard Murphy: They did serious work but work at a distance and work heavily relying on the very few academics who had been knowledgeable about Iraq here and in Europe and heavily dependent on exiles from Iraq, some of whom brought their own agendas. Krogh: Maybe excessively dependent upon them. Richard Murphy: Well, perhaps of necessity. There was no one else to turn to. Krogh: Dr. Marr, what would you say is the situation on the ground in Iraq today? We seem to have a situation of endemic and escalating violence. Is this an accurate picture, or are things better there than the media represent them to be? Phebe Marr: Even today, we don't have a lot of people on the ground, for reasons that are perfectly clear. And so any opinions or interpretations you hear from here or elsewhere must be taken with a degree of skepticism because the truth is, we really don't know. It's very difficult to get good information. When we went in, we destroyed a great deal. We destroyed the Ba'ath party and the upper echelons of the administration. We disbanded, or the army melted away, so there is no army. And it was hoped that the bureaucracy would quickly reassemble and sort of take over administration. That didn't happen. So what we're in the process of seeing is the creation of something new, a new Iraq. However, we do have a serious, growing insurgency, increasingly coordinated. We have an insurgency which is very nationalist, also a resurgence of religion. This is kind of a witch's brew, which is against--the new Iraq is against the United States and so on. On the other side, we have a population that wants normalcy and a number of political figures and political groups who want power. I believe we have two struggles going on in Iraq today: a struggle for power and a much more important long-range struggle for identity. Is Iraq going to hold together as a nation-state, and if so, what kind of an Iraq is that going to be? Krogh: Isn't the main problem a security deficit, Richard? I mean, without security, you can't achieve your other goals. You cannot have a state. You cannot have a democracy. You cannot have a functioning economy. Security trumps everything, right? Richard Murphy: How can we turn over, as we will want to do as soon as possible, real authority to the Iraqis if there isn't security established in the interim? How can they achieve legitimacy as leaders if they cannot be part and then fully playing the role of guaranteeing the security of their state? And security is still elusive. But you're absolutely right. It does trump everything. Krogh: Phebe, you posed the question of whether Iraq will hang together. A recent article pointed out that the really unique thing about Iraq is that there are no Iraqis. Think about that for a moment.
There are Kurds, there are Sunnis, there are Shiites, but there are no Iraqis. Could you just kind of go over the players for us, briefly? The Kurds--what do they want? The Shiites--what do they want? The Sunnis and that famous triangle--what's their agenda? Phebe Marr: I want to disagree with the statement, if I may. Krogh: Well, you've written a book on it, so I know you believe there are Iraqis. Phebe Marr: Most Iraqis that I talk to do want their state to hold together, and you might be surprised at how much Iraqi identity there is, although I agree that it's very weak. I think Iraq is a mosaic. It's easy to divide it into three--kurds, Sunnis, and Shi'a--but it's much more diverse than that. Kurds constitute 17% to about 20% of the population. They speak a distinct language, Kurdish, which is different from Arabic, and they inhabit the northeast portion of the country. And since 1991, they've been essentially governing themselves up in the north. Krogh: Which we have facilitated. Phebe Marr: Which we have facilitated, which we protected. And frankly, many--the younger generation is growing up without speaking Arabic, so they're going to be difficult to reintegrate into an Iraqi state. The Shi'a are a majority in Iraq. They are Arab. They, I think, do identify with Iraq because they've been living there for centuries, constituting roughly, let's say, 60% of the population, inhabiting Baghdad and the south for the most part. They are very diverse. Some are secular. More are religiously oriented. But the one thing they understand is, they are a majority, and in any government, they want to see themselves in the majority of seats. The Sunnis, inhabiting what we tend loosely to call a triangle from Baghdad up to the north to Mosul and over to the border of Syria and Jordan, is essentially Sunni. For various reasons, they were the ones that Saddam relied on in his power structure, and they're the outs. They're the losers. And whether or not they would side with an Iraq is a question, but they know they've lost out. They're alienated. And so they constitute a large part of this insurgency. Krogh: Richard, this is the internal picture. What is the external picture? Who are the major regional external players? Richard Murphy: Regionally, it's the neighbors: the Iranians, the Turks, the Syrians, the Saudis, and to a lesser extent, the Kuwaitis. Geographically, they're the major players. Krogh: And what are they up to? Richard Murphy: Well, let's start by having to admit it's their backyard. We talk about them often with resentment: How dare they interfere with our plans for the future of Iraq? Well, they happen to see it as very much affecting their future, and they're going to continue to play. The Iranians? They're a mixed lot. As one observer of Iran has said, "Never forget there's a light and a dark side to Iran." Some of them are bound and determined to do everything they could to expel the Americans with the maximum humiliation. They would all like to see us out of there, but there are those who have no illusion that Iraq is different from Iran and who do not intend to install the
theocracy along the style of the Iranian. But they're very concerned that we will try to put roots down there. They see themselves surrounded in the region, and they're bound and determined to find a way to get us out. Krogh: But their natural orientation would be to identify with the Shi'a in the south and promote their interests. Richard Murphy: But the Iranians also are very cognizant of the fact that the Shi'a are only 60%, as compared to 95 plus in Iran. So they're interested in stability in Iraq, and that isn't going to come from an Iranian-style theocracy in Iraq. Krogh: And let's move on to the Kurds and the Turkish interests. Their interests would not be a highly autonomous Kurdistan, or even Kurdistan. That's the last thing they'd want. Richard Murphy: For national reasons of Turkey, they have gone out of their way in the last few years to acknowledge the distinctiveness of their Kurds. You can now hear Kurdish language on the radio in Turkey. You can find classes taught in Kurdish, and they are no longer called simply mountain Turks. But they're very apprehensive that the Kurds in Iraq could get the bit in their teeth and want something more than the autonomy we have fostered ever since '91, and that could suck them into the Iraqi politics in the way they don't want to be. Krogh: And Syria too because Syria's got some Kurds. Well, as the Iranians do. Richard Murphy: Syria, there are some 200,000 Kurds, probably of Turkish origin, asking for Syrian citizenship, who are not documented as Syrians today, so Syria is involved as well. Krogh: And the Saudi interest? Richard Murphy: Saudi interest is in stability. There are Saudis who have been trying to propagate the Salafi, the extremist radical interpretation of Islam, in Iraq, and they have followers in Iraq, but the Saudi state is interested in that country staying together, not turning into an Islamic Shiite republic, for instance, and being able to coexist side by side because they have their eyes on Iran, and they don't want to see Iran become any more powerful in the region. Krogh: Phebe, you have a new book or a new edition out on the recent history of Iraq, in which you must recount the cobbling together of Iraq post-world War I. As I understand it, under the Ottoman Empire, the Sunnis, the Shiites, the Kurds were administered autonomously, separately, and the country was kind of cobbled together in the aftermath. Well, what makes us think that it won't just revert to an earlier form? In other words, it'll be back to the future in Iraq. Phebe Marr: It was never governed by Shi'a, Sunni, and Kurd under the Ottomans. They had provinces which-- the Mosul Province in the north, the Baghdad Province in the center, and the Basra Province, which, from time to time, included Kuwait--and whoever lived there was governed by the Ottomans. It was sort of cobbled together, but Iraq is over 80 years old. When people live together, when they share the wealth-- the oil wealth--when they have the potential for power and
prosperity and so on, they find more in common with each other than their neighbors. Iraqis know they're Iraqi. They're not Syrian, they're not Saudi, they're not Iranian, and this sense of being under a single government, sharing the wealth, began to take root in this 80 years, but it was delivered a very bad blow under the last--under Saddam's regime. He did more to divide up Iraq than anyone else, and now that the central government has, you know, almost gone, many of these disparate identities are emerging. Incidentally, there's another identity we haven't talked about, and that's tribal. The sense of clan, tribe, family, your identification with your extended family is extremely strong, and this cuts across these other ethnic and sectarian identities. Krogh: Richard, given this enormously complex array of actors, both internal and external, with the U.S. coming into it not well informed, without a plan for the aftermath of the war, a viable plan, evidently, what do you think is the best we can salvage from this now? Richard Murphy: In the coming year, if the master plan holds that there will be elections next January and a final set of elections on the original plan a year from then, January '06, that there will be a government which has managed to achieve legitimacy in the eyes of its own people, that has not seen as just an American creation, an American puppet, and at the moment, our fingerprints are all over the Iraqis in high office, and they have to build a credibility with their own people because otherwise, they're not gonna be able to control security. They're not going be able to enlist the energies of their people to get to a situation where the radicals are squeezed down, if not out, of Iraqi life. Krogh: Phebe, are you running into a lot of people that you circulate in the think-tank community who are optimistic, that are objective of a unified, stable, and democratic Iraq, and pro-western? Is it achievable? Phebe Marr: Well, when you throw that string of adjectives in, no. The best that I think could be hoped for in the near term, in this period that Richard is talking about, is stability, if we can get stable government which can get some control over the security situation, and that is going to require training Iraqis, and the loyalty of those Iraqis has to go to the new government, not necessarily to the United States. We also have to be able to get some economic development, some prosperity, some jobs. So far, this operation has had very high costs but few benefits, as far as the Iraqis are concerned. Krogh: Maybe as far as we're concerned. Phebe Marr: As far as we're concerned. I would agree. I would agree. Krogh: Richard, we're admonished with some frequency that we must stay the course. What's the course? What are we staying? And do we have to? Richard Murphy: We don't know what we mean by that. You know, I'm not an expert in American public opinion, but I will give you my sense, that our public is not going to want to stay, see our folks, our forces stay around there if the casualties continue, even if they're at a level which no way approaches Vietnam. But these days, every death and every casualty is getting publicity,
which didn't happen in Vietnam for almost a decade. That's got to be kept in mind by whoever is president over these next four years--the limits of our public opinion, the limits that they will tolerate our presence. We know what we would like to see. I don't know if it's achievable. Perhaps Phebe has a view on this: whether a relatively loose federal system of government in Iraq is possible. There is no precedent in Arab history that I'm aware of, but I can't conceive of a type of government, or governmental structure, which would be acceptable to the Kurds, to the Shi'a, and to the Sunni, that is a restoration of the iron hand of Baghdad over everyone's fate. Krogh: Phebe? Phebe Marr: The Iraqis next year are going to be engaged in a number of great decisions. They're going to presumably elect some kind of a parliamentary body, and that group, or a portion of them, is going to have to sit down and draw up a new constitution. And then we're going to find out whether the major players there--the main Kurdish parties, the main Shi'a parties, and some of the Sunnis--are going to be able to compromise-- that is something else that isn't too strong in the Middle East--and reconcile these divergences so that they can share the oil, get back to normalcy, and create a government which undoubtedly will be fragile and weak but will be able to provide some services to the population: security, protection of the borders, getting the oil started again and the economy going. That's probably the minimum of the best that could come out of this. Krogh: But we all thought we would be there by now. Is there any limit to the price we should pay to, quote, "stay the course"? At some point, do we just develop some fig leaf Iraqification, internationalization, and just pick up our marbles and come home? Phebe Marr: Well, I think we're moving in that direction, certainly Iraqification. I would add to what Richard said, that the tolerance of the American public may be limited. The tolerance of the Iraqi public toward occupation and continuance of American forces is going to be even more limited, so the situation is going to be squeezed from both ends, and I wouldn't want to place any bets, but a couple of years is probably the most that we're going to have this tolerance on the Iraqi side. Richard Murphy: Who wants us to stay there today, though, Phebe? Phebe Marr: The government in power, which is to a large extent exiled Iraqis; the Kurds, who feel they may need some protection; and I would say-- I'm just going to throw this out as an idea-- that a silent majority of Iraqis who want us to go soon but not before a new government and security is set up. They may not say it publicly, but a precipitous withdrawal now really frightens a lot of people in Iraq. Krogh: Richard, what would be the worst-case scenario from our perspective, form the perspective of U.S. interests in the region and in the world at large? What would be the worst-case scenario? Richard Murphy: That hand in hand with the Iraqis, we are still unable to break the backs of people like Muhammad Sadr and... yeah, the Sunni and the Shi'a extremists. If we can't do that,
then the prospects are very dim indeed, in my opinion, for us getting out with any sense of honest success in what we went in to do. Krogh: Well, suppose that's the case: We're out without any sense of honest success in what we set out to do. What would be the implications of that for the region and for our standing in the world? Richard Murphy: Very destabilizing in the region, I think. Would make the credibility of the United States, which is already at a low. We didn't mention one other external factor, which is the Arab-Israeli peace process. Our image has blended with that of Israel to an extent I have never seen before, as the American soldier kicks open the door in an Iraqi home. Krogh: The imagery is almost exactly the same. Richard Murphy: Exactly the same, and it's picked up by Arab cameramen and in every Arab living room that night. So we've got to be much more active on that front to build the credibility, rebuild the credibility we had until a few years ago. Krogh: Phebe, what do you think would be the impact of the worst-case scenario that Richard just described? I know you're for us staying in there to restart the economy and rebuild the government and keep the place from collapsing, prevent it from becoming a failed state, from rogue state to failed state. But suppose we can't achieve that. Phebe Marr: Incidentally, I'm not so sure that we can do that, or my patience would last too long, either. Well, two things I think would happen. If you see violence now, you would see a lot more of it when we left, and Iraq would break down. I don't think it would break up nicely into three easy parts-- Kurds, Sunni, and Shi'a-- but it would break down into locales. Fallujah and the insurgency would be a group of warlords there, taking over. Muqtada al-sadr, for example, in Sadr City, in Baghdad, and the Kurds, of course, would go their own way. And all along the margins, you would have fighting. You'd have, you know, civil war. This would be a failed state. And maybe we could walk away from a failed state, despite what it did to our credibility, but I think the big issue here is that for us, it would also attract terrorists. The failed state in Afghanistan not only brought the Taliban, but it brought Bin Laden, and we have some of those folks in Iraq. And the violence would spill over into the region and would afflict Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and most of the neighbors. So it does behoove us to say, not forever, for sure, but at least make a good-faith effort to set up a government which has some degree of legitimacy and can take over so we can get out, because the longer we stay, the more opposition we're going to get. Krogh: Richard, why do we have so much trouble implementing our grand strategies in the part of the world that you were assistant secretary of state for? For six years, we seem to have these strategies. They kind of run up against a stone wall, and we fall back and regroup and develop another one. Is this Mission Impossible in the Middle East? Richard Murphy: They didn't run up against a stone wall. They run up against reality. The Middle East is not as some, at least, in Washington would like to imagine it. You know, if we had only had
leadership ready to read even one chapter of Churchill's memoirs, where he talks about-- after all of his efforts to build the new state, put it together Krogh: The new state of Iraq. Richard Murphy: "Those Mesopotamians," as he called them, "were acting like an ungrateful volcano." They just didn't realize the good that Britain was doing, he was doing, and in fact, working in a way to try to save Britain money and get the troops out, but they didn't realize the character of the Iraqis. Krogh: Phebe, we just have a few seconds left, but what would you say we've run up against in the Middle East in trying to advance our agenda there? Phebe Marr: Dislike of imperialism and colonialism. And over the last decade or so, a rising Islamist tide, both of which are uniting to push us out of Iraq. Krogh: Thank you, Ambassador Murphy, Dr. Marr, and you, our audience for Great Decisions Special 2004. I'm Peter Krogh. Announcer: To learn more about topics discussed on Great Decisions, visit our website at: To order a Citizen's Guide to U.S. Foreign Policy, a nonpartisan guide to election 2004, or a DVD set of this series or to join a Great Decisions discussion group, contact the Foreign Policy Association. Great Decisions is produced by the Foreign Policy Association. Funding for Great Decisions is provided by the Citigroup private bank, one of the largest private banking businesses in the world. The Citigroup private bank provides personalized wealth management services for clients globally. Captioning and audio description provided by the U.S. Department of Education. Captioning and audio description by CaptionMax www.captionmax.com