In Suleimaniya in Iraqi Kurdistan, I first heard the news when my for- mer student, whom I brought with me to conduct research in Iraq, called on the phone. He said the stu- dents at the university where he is teaching English were celebrating ”” they had just heard rumours that Saddam had been captured in Tikrit. Then there was a great honking of car horns, louder and more insistent than the usual Middle East traffic cacopho- ny. Shop owners began firing their Kalashnikovs in the air, celebrating the news of Saddam’s capture.

Although Saddam’s final fall was good news for the vast majority of Iraqis, the event had a special resonance in the Kurdish north. The Kurds suffered geno- cide at the hands of his regime, round- ups and massacring of whole villages, and the use of chemical weapons on towns like Halabja and Khanequin. Saddam’s Kurdish victims alone out- number the dead from both sides in the whole history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

I headed to a nearby hotel with a satellite television connection. They had announced a news conference, which showed the first images of a very disheveled Saddam undergoing a med- ical examination. The Iraqi Kurds in the room burst into cries of recognition and joy, slapping each other on the back and hardly believing their eyes. The owner of a photocopy store was distrib- uting copies of a photo of the captured Saddam, printed from the Internet. Everyone from old men in their 80s, to children hardly past five years old was dancing and holding up the pitiful photo of what was once the incarnation of dread in the Republic of Fear.

Looking around at the celebrations on the streets of Suleimaniya, it seemed obvious that Iraq, eight months after the war’s end, was changing rapidly. I wondered what role, if any, Canada might play in the new Iraq. Will Iraq at this time next year be in the throes of civil war, or on the road to recovery and prosperity, busily rebuilding? Could my country, of middling international importance and currently running its embassy for Iraq out of Amman, Jordan, play a positive role here? Should most Canadians even care what happens here? This last question seemed the eas- iest to answer, with an emphatic ”œyes.”

Since 1968, Iraq has seen 35 years of Ba’athist dictatorship, three wars, count- less military campaigns against rebels within the country, and 12 years of debil- itating international sanctions. For most Canadians that I know, these are good enough reasons for trying to do our part to help Iraqis emerge from such a bitter past. Canada’s foreign policy initiatives have always been about fostering peace and devel- opment, whether through our contributions to UN peacekeeping operations, CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) programs, initiatives like the treaty to ban landmines, or our current focus on human security.

Even if Canadians didn’t care one bit about doing good abroad, however, we have a strong interest in Iraq’s future welfare for reasons of our own self-interest. From what some might consider a crass business point of view, there is a great deal of work to be done in Iraq. Canadians and their corporations can do as good a job helping to rebuild Iraq as any other country, although moving our embassy from Amman back to Baghdad might be a good first step. While in Baghdad recently, I met business people from the United States, Turkey, France, Italy, Germany, Spain and several Arab countries, all busily placing bids on various rebuild- ing contracts and sub-contracts, and making contacts with Iraqi business- people. None worried about the secu- rity situation to the point that it stopped them from going about their work. But where were the Canadians? I often felt like the only Canadian in Baghdad who was not an employee of an NGO.

We may have a more important self-interested motive than money to involve ourselves in the new Iraq, however. The mentality that spawned the September 11 attacks, the Bali bombings, the African embassy bombings, and Ahmed Ressam’s attempted Seattle Tower attack, grew out of societies in the grip of an authoritarian, illiberal yoke. That the bombers mostly came from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and flourished in Afghanistan and the Sudan, is beside the point. Like Saddam’s Iraq, none of these countries offered their people democracy or a liberal, tolerant per- spective toward diversity. The suicide bombers came from places where dis- senting thought is squashed, ruthlessly repressed by their governments. They became mirror images of these govern- ments, with the difference that the dis- senting enemy they identified was the West, liberalism, secularism, and the arch symbol of these values ”” the United States. They may have named more tangible causes in some of their pronouncements after the attacks, such as ridding Saudi Arabia of American troops, the sanctions on Iraq, or Israeli occupation ”” but these are mere details of the struggle. In the minds of the terrorists, the ”œClash of Civilizations” very much exists, and justifies targeting not only govern- ments, but synagogues in Istanbul, dance clubs in Bali, tourists visiting the Pyramids, and the UN and Red Cross facilities in Baghdad. The terror- ists may come in different stripes and colours, but their logic is uniform: the solution to differences is measured by kilos of TNT, Semtex and shrapnel.

I recently visited Biyara, an Iraqi Kurdish village on the Iranian border. In 1997, the Islamist Movement of Kurdistan (IMK) took control of the vil- lage by force from the secular and liberal Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). By 2001, a splinter movement of the IMK, Ansar al-Islam, had imposed its Taliban- style rule over Biyara and the surrounding villages. With Iranian support from just over the border, and possible support from Saddam’s government to the south (the evidence is still unclear about Saddam’s involvement), Ansar began a campaign of suicide bombings and assassinations in Iraqi Kurdistan. The villagers told me stories of beatings, imprison- ment and harsh rule at the hands of Ansar. Since the war last March, however, in which a joint American-PUK operation pushed out Ansar, the IMK, and the Islamic Group (another splinter from the IMK), Biyara and the surrounding villages have enjoyed freedom from this kind of extremism, and the return of the much more liberal PUK administration. In the minds of the villagers I spoke with, the War on Terrorism was quite real, and required in some cases the use of military force, followed by both political and material development.

The fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime presents us with a similar opportunity, to replace the most prevalent authoritarian governing models of the Middle East with a liberal model, tolerant of diversi- ty. It no longer even matters whether or not we agreed with the circumvention of the United Nations or the various justifi- cations for the war. What matters now is the opportunity to foster liberalism in Iraq, and make the country a kind of beacon to its neighbours. If the popula- tion in neighbouring countries comes to see Iraqis living better than they did under Saddam, under a tolerant, more liberal, and hopefully even pro-Western (but nonetheless sovereign) govern- ment, this will strike the biggest blow against the radicals of the region. Making Iraq work for Iraqis also obvi- ously necessitates developing the coun- try in a way that makes life better for the average citizen, in both material and non-material terms. The real War on Terrorism is fought by aid workers build- ing water pumps and providing advice on issues of governance and democracy. This takes longer than military cam- paigns in the desert or mountains, requires more commitment, and offers no momentous photo-op victories to announce the end of the war. We must not forget, however, that fostering liber- al governance and progressive civil soci- ety movements remains as important a part of the effort as improving the mate- rial lives of the people. With Saddam’s iron grip removed from Iraq, and the country drawing up a new constitution, political liberalism has for the first time become a real option for the whole of Iraq. As the current security problem in the mainly Sunni Arab parts of Iraq demonstrates, however, the would-be liberals in the country have a difficult task ahead of them, and some deter- mined opponents.

The Americans have begun the process of fostering civil society, decentralization, and better governance. Although delegation of authority and sovereignty problems at the top levels of Paul Bremer’s administration and the Interim Governing Council remain a problem, changes are happening at lower levels of government every day. In the Kirkuk governor’s building, occupa- tion troops share offices with the new Iraqi administration. I visited with the 173rd Airborne Infantry and 404th Civil Affairs Battalion there. When it comes to tasks that do not require the involve- ment of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, the Coalition forces in Kirkuk tend to work quite effi- ciently with the local administration. When something requires budgetary approval from the higher levels of bureaucracy, however, things slow down dramatically ”” one US major complained to me that his request for heating oil and kerosene, which he wanted to distribute to internally dis- placed people living in tent camps on the outskirts of the city, would probably be approved and acted on by Baghdad come spring, when the people would no longer need it. I met with many officers like this major, in charge of managing the return of people expelled from Kirkuk by Saddam’s regime. As we spoke, a delegation of Turkmen villagers arrived. They came to complain that the Arabs that Saddam had settled in their village after expelling the Turkmen were not respecting the agreement on land sharing that they had arrived at. The Coalition forces had essentially con- vinced the two communities to draw up an agreement between themselves that was mutually acceptable. For communi- ties that fail to arrive at such a settle- ment, the Coalition gives them two options: freezing of the land until their conflicting legal claims are settled according to Iraqi law, or an arrange- ment whereby the returning communi- ty harvests the crop that the other planted on the contested land, and the two communities share the proceeds fifty-fifty until conflicting legal claims are settled.

The US captain in charge of that area met with the delegation, discussed the problem, and arranged to have the Iraqis to whom they are turning the Kirkuk government over to in June go to the village to assess and iron out the problem. Often, the Iraqi officials who have received authority to assess a prob- lem and then act on their assessment come back and ask the Coalition Forces for permission. In the old Ba’athist sys- tem of highly centralized authoritarian- ism, government officials never took the slightest initiative without permission from the top ”” failing to get permission for even minor issues could lead to an unpleasant and brutal end to their civil service career. Now, US occupation authorities have to constantly remind their newly appointed Iraqi civil service that they should take the initiative, and use their authority, within broad policy parame- ters that are established. The idea remains revolutionary, and one US major described to me the kind of light bulb that seemed to flash in the minds of some of the Iraqi officials when they realized that they really were being given the responsibility and freedom to make decisions and carry them out, without having to seek further permis- sion at every stage of the process. This is what decentralization and good gover- nance looks like close up. Once the Coalition forces return full sovereignty to the Iraqis, they will have hopefully established a basis for a better, more democratic, less rigidly centralized gov- ernment in the country.

In late April of 2003, I was asked by the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade to partic- ipate in a roundtable of experts, which would provide advice to the Canadian government about policy toward a post- Saddam Iraq. As someone who had researched and traveled to Iraqi Kurdistan a number of times, my role involved adding expertise regarding Iraqi Kurds to the discussion. Naturally, I immediately brought up the issue of fed- eralism and autonomy, key demands of Iraq’s Kurdish minority. Some of my aca- demic colleagues at the roundtable, however, countered that federalism would exacerbate centrifugal tendencies in Iraq, and lead to the break-up of the country. They insisted that Iraq needed a strong central government, and a strong army and security apparatus to maintain stability. Although it seemed to me that this system had already been tried in the country for some 35 years, I held my peace for the next few hours of the roundtable. By late afternoon, however, a few of my colleagues, most of whom were specialists on the Arab world, had pushed their discourse about ”œthe Arab state of Iraq,” ”œthe importance of Iraq in the Arab world,” and ”œthe need to keep Iraq within the Arab fold” further than I could stand. Perhaps the meeting had gone on too long, or not enough people in it shared my opinions, or both, but in any case I decided to stir things up some- what: when my turn came to speak again, I argued that ”œCanada is an English country, and should stick with the leaders of the Anglo-Saxon world, Britain and the US, when it comes to for- eign policy ”” nor should we be expect- ed to adopt policies that upset the Anglo-Saxon world.” Not everyone had caught on to my real point, luckily, and immediately a francophone member of the roundtable jumped to the attack and objected. Of course, it so happens that around 23 percent of Iraq’s population is not Arab, but Kurdish, which is not a far cry from the percentage of francophones in Canada.

Essentially, for democracy and political liberalism to even have a small chance of taking root in Iraq, the country must be federal. The Kurds in the north have enjoyed autonomy since Operation Provide Comfort first removed them from Saddam’s control in 1991, and they have been fighting for at least autonomy since Iraq was created by the British in the 1920s. From then until the 1960s, the Iraqi army could not even control the rebel- lious Kurdish parts of the country without direct British military assis- tance. By the 1970s, however, income from newly nationalized oil wells cou- pled with Soviet assistance allowed Baghdad to wrap the whole of the country in an iron, centralized fist. In the 1980s, the West also eagerly sold Saddam all the weapons his petrol dol- lars could buy. Today, however, the new Iraqi army is still being trained, and the most organized fighting force in the country, apart from the Americans, are the peshmerga militias of the Kurds in the north. The Kurds now even have tanks, taken from Saddam’s forces at the end of the war ”” I passed a military camp with at least 30 T-62s on my way down to visit Halabja a few weeks ago. Halabja, where Iraqi troops bombed civilians with chemical weapons in 1988, has become to the Kurds what the Holocaust was, and is, to the Jews. From 1987 to 1988, Saddam’s forces massacred 180,000 Kurdish civilians, as part of the ”œpacification” program in which Halabja was gassed.

Despite all this, Iraqi Kurdish leaders remain quite aware of the current dangers of declaring an independent state, and have announced their willing- ness to be part of the new Iraq. They even put the Iraqi flag back up on their official buildings, where it waves side by side with the Kurdish flag. Their participation in the new country comes with certain demands, however, the most central of which is federalism. Denying them some kind of federal autonomous status at this point in time in fact guarantees a civil war, as soon as most of the American forces withdraw and sovereignty is trans- ferred back to Iraqis””by July, according to the current timetable. It’s a depressing thought, but a minority group that suf- fered through Halabja and other genoci- dal campaigns, then achieved autonomy for 12 years, can not possibly be expect- ed to go back to being at the mercy of the majority without a fight. Even more depressingly, Shiite leaders I spoke with in Baghdad do not seem to have much patience for the idea of federalism. They are Arab Iraqi nationalists, and the majority in the country, and they’re anx- ious to control the whole pie for the first time in their history. Some of them even complained to me that there are too many Kurds in the Interim Governing Council and administration, shortly after having assured me that they do not dif- ferentiate between Kurdish, Arab, Sunni, Shiite and Christian Iraqis. A cultural rift also forms part of the problem, as Arabs in Iraq often feel superior to their Kurdish citizens, and Sunnis often feel themselves above Shiites. When an asso- ciate of mine working on civil society issues in Mosul and I tried to arrange for Kurdish students from Suleimaniya, who had experience running student elec- tions, to come and advise students at the predominantly Sunni Arab University of Mosul on how to do the same, we dis- covered that ”œArabs did not want to be lectured by Kurds.”

For these reasons Canada has a potentially important contribution to make to the new Iraq, but limited time to make it. We need to offer Iraqis our expertise on federalism and multicul- turalism, perhaps along with Belgium, Spain, Switzerland and similar coun- tries. As I write, Andre Poupard, a pro- fessor from the Université de Montréal, is in Erbil speaking with the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iraq about Canadian federalism. Anne Legaré, a professor from the Université du Québec aÌ€ Montréal, also visited Iraqi Kurdistan last year to speak about the same subject. They were here as aca- demics rather than a government dele- gation, and speaking to a converted audience, of course ”” the Kurds are already pushing hard for federalism. What the Canadian government needs to do is consult extensively with Iraqi Shiite and Sunni leaders about federal- ism, multiculturalism, and liberal democracy, before it is too late. Our diplomatic corps should also speak with neighbouring countries such as Turkey, which rattles its sabre and threatens to intervene in Iraq if Iraqi Kurds get autonomy. With their own Kurdish minorities, Iran, Syria and especially Turkey are not keen on see- ing a new federal Iraq. These countries need to be encouraged to let Iraqis determine the structure of their new government, and Iraqis need to be encouraged not to impose a tyranny of the majority on the Kurds or other minorities. It should seem obvious that the only way to avoid a tyranny of the majority in Iraq, or a return to tyranny of the Sunni minority, involves adopt- ing something like the Canadian state model ”” including a respect for diver- sity and multiculturalism, significant regional autonomy, and defence of civil and human rights. While opponents of federalism in Iraq criticize any attempt to ”œdivide the country along ethnic lines,” a regionally based federalist system, wherein the regions largely (but not completely) coin- cide with linguistic, ethnic, or religious groupings, would resemble the system already in place in countries such as Canada, Belgium and Switzerland.

Of course, this approach comes with certain risks. Canada nearly ceased to exist during the last Quebec referen- dum in 1995. I asked Sarhang Salar Hama-Sa’eed, a Kurdish translator for a major American NGO, to write a few sentences about what he thought Canada should contribute to Iraq, since he already had a good idea of what the United States was doing. I discovered that, like a lot of Iraqi Kurds, he knew a good deal about Canada and Quebec’s 1995 referendum.

He wrote:

What I would like to see the Canadian government do in Iraq is to participate in rehabilita- tion/rebuilding of the Iraqi citi- zens rather than the physical rehabilitation of the country. To obtain the best control, the for- mer government did its best, and was successful to a large extent, to destroy the concepts of citi- zenship, coexistence and accept- ance of others and worked on forming a being that is a slave, afraid, unproductive, and vio- lent. What I mean is on a human basis away from politics. As a Kurd, I would like to see a twin/sister relation between Kurdistan and Quebec; their ref- erendum to be repeated here, and the rest of Iraq would view Kurdistan as Quebec. I wish the Canadian government would provide assistance to the Kurds to replicate the Quebec form of (adherence to) federalism here, promote democracy, peace, and regional characteristics.

Of course, holding a referendum today in Iraqi Kurdistan would proba- bly hasten the onset of civil war in Iraq, and invite Turkish military interven- tion in the country as well. But apply- ing the rough outlines of the Canadian federal model does not have to include a mechanism to break it up. Few, if any, constitutions do. And once again shackling Iraqi Kurds to a centralized Iraqi state, against their violent objec- tions, should not be an option either. The Shiites might even come to accept the federalist idea. For now they are patiently waiting for the Americans to leave, so that they can use their major- ity to win a direct national election and take control of the country. But after so many wars and years of bloodshed, during which the south of Iraq suffered terribly as well, they might just decide to make some concessions for the sake of peace. Several Shiite clerics made vis- its to Iraqi Kurdistan during the last few months, and from pulpits at the new memorial in Halabja and other locales, they shared a very liberal view of the future. Several even accepted the federalist idea wholeheartedly. Finally, Arab Sunnis in Iraq might also come on board the liberal, federalist project, if their region were offered a guaranteed share of oil revenues from the north and south of Iraq (where the oil fields are), for instance. After all, the Sunnis need to see that they have something to gain in the new Iraq, if we ever want to see a stop to the ”œresistance.”

In any case, these are the kinds of details that Canadian government dele- gations could suggest, together with all the technical expertise garnered from long years of federalist compromises. I hope Canada will get more involved soon, and begin by moving the embassy back to Baghdad. After having spent most of the last several months in Iraqi Kurdistan, I remain an optimist about the future. After all, despite a past drenched in blood and repression, this part of Iraq has enjoyed an autonomous, liberal, and semi-democratic government for the last twelve years, since the area was removed from Saddam’s control.

 

David Romano acknowl- edges the research assistance of Michael Boag and Karim Khallaayoun in the development of this article.

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