State Failure Behind Iraqi Sectarian Violence
Failures in post-invasion state-building are fueling ongoing sectarian strife in Iraq, writes Narav Salahaddin.
An uptick in sectarian violence erupted in Iraq on April 23, when army forces attacked and killed Sunni protesters in Hawija in Kirkuk province. At a media conference on April 27, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki blamed and denounced the Syrian civil war for his country’s sectarian problems, including the current strife. In this Maliki failed to see or acknowledge the bigger picture and the major miscalculation in terms of his policy of concentrating power, which has led to the political alienation of Iraq’s minorities during his two mandates.
In an interview on the PBS NewsHour on May 2, Feisal Istrabadi, Iraq’s former deputy ambassador to the United Nations, observed that violence in Iraq has been a constant, “percolating along” for quite some time, and disagreed with Maliki’s assertions on Syria. A few weeks after the US military withdrawal, Ayad Allawi, a Shiite and leader of the majority-Sunni Iraqi National Movement, had claimed on Dec. 28, 2011, on Al Arabiya that Iraq was transforming into a “sectarian autocracy” with enough hostility involved to trigger a civil war. In other words, Allawi foresaw the sectarian violence that flared up after Maliki’s request to arrest Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, a Sunni, on charges of terrorism. The crisis provoked by Maliki's action threatened the coalition government, an alliance of Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis. One and a half years later, these same unsettled sectarian issues appear to be the precursors of the current strife.
The pro-federalist Kurds advocate and have realized decentralization and control over territory of their own. The Sunnis, however, only reconsidered federalism after the US withdrawal in 2011, after which they became increasingly targeted politically.
In the meantime, the Iraqi government has failed to design the second chamber of parliament, the Federal Council, which is supposed to represent the different interests of Iraqis premised on territorial authority. Instead of a federation, the absence of the Federal Council and other designated autonomous regions has made Iraq a unitary state with only one confederated area, which is ruled by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).
