Transcript Q&A : Searching for Stability in an Unstable Region

HE Dr Ali Al-Dabbagh Spokesman for the Iraqi Government, Republic of Iraq

Dr Toby Dodge, Reader in International Relations, School of Economics and Political Science

Emma Sky Visiting Professor, War Studies Department, Kings College, London

Chair: Sir Jeremy Greenstock Council, Chatham House; Special Envoy for Iraq (2003-2004); and Chairman, UN Association UK

19 June 2012

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Transcript: Searching for Stability in an Unstable Region

Jeremy Greenstock:

Well thank you, all three of you, for those introductory remarks. Let’s get into a discussion of this. I’m about to open the floor to questions but before I do that, Minister, I would just like to give you chance to respond to what you’ve heard from the other two because there’s a clear observation there that there is a trend back towards authoritarianism.

Many Iraqis might say, ‘You need a strong man in Iraq, we’re a divided and perhaps divisive people, our history shows that. You need somebody with a strong hand at the centre.’ Could you say a bit more about what is in the Prime Minister’s mind, what he wants to create in Iraq, and what the capacity is for coalition politics in Iraq? Because as other countries in the Middle East region begin to change their systems of government, once they’ve got rid of the previous lot, they’re finding it very difficult to agree amongst themselves where they go to next. Is that still the state of affairs in Iraq and how does the Prime Minister want to get out of that trend and bring the people’s interest into this?

Ali Al-Dabbagh:

Thank you. I almost do agree with all the presentation of our friends, what they have said. Being a Prime Minister in a country like Iraq, I think, is not an easy job. I don’t want to polish any face [sic], by the way, and I don’t want to defend the wrong policies but I do agree that a country like Iraq, which inherited huge difficulties and problems and those that live in Iraq, could understand what I mean. The additional regional influence, plus the sectarian element which we are facing now, and the regional competition, and being looked at as an Iranian [style] state, a man who is ruling Iraq or a man like the prime minister needs to have a formula and needs to make the political process inclusive of everybody, which is again with all this taking consideration, is not an easy job.

Taking consideration that in 2006, when he had been elected as the prime minister, [that the] Western side of Iraq was in the hands of Al-Qaeda. In the day time the government could make a rally in Al Anbar and even and places like Baghdad but the security was not in the hands of the government. In Basra, the people are there without the control of the government, the British were there and they could know much better the situation. The man came and he did whatever he had to do in Basra, and Baghdad and Al Anbar with the help of the Alliances and especially the Americans. Finally, the situation calms, and don’t deny that also there is

www.chathamhouse.org 2 Transcript: Searching for Stability in an Unstable Region parties, as Toby had said, and the parties know how they would rule the Ministries that they would be in charge for; it is totally like their farm. I don’t exclude any of the parties which are participating in the government.

So we end up with this situation. I do agree that Iraq needs a strong man but a strong man subjected to the rule of law. This is the very important issue.

The Prime Minister’s thinking that there is a conspiracy from neighbouring countries against him and against Iraq. Most of you are analysts and you could read that. What is this situation? Iraq is not [in] the system, Iraq is not welcomed. None of the countries are welcoming the way of governance in Iraq – maybe Kuwait is an exception – but all of the countries have a hand and especially taking now [with] a Turkish role in the region, the situation has been escalated by both the prime ministers in Turkey and Iraq.

All of this is on Maliki, to think that, you know, there is a great conspiracy by the neighbouring countries. They want to crush him and they want to destroy him. Even today [this] morning he had a meeting and he said this is a conspiracy against me and the people who want to make a no-confidence vote are a conspiracy [sic]. He is under the impression that the regional countries led by Turkey want to make this no confidence vote against him. Again you should read it in this way; that he is feeling that there is a real conspiracy to try and get him out. I’m quite sure that many of the people might know will agree with this, but again with the situation that he is running, I think he is in a very difficult situation, a very hard situation, and meeting all the demands of the services of the people, under the pressure of the election he is behaving in a way to maintain at least the unity.

Again one more issue which is Kurdistan. Kurdistan is a dispute which, I think, is more and more on hand. He will not agree that what al-Mutlaq said and what Allawi was saying because at the end they are a competitor. Because others, they would like to share his power which is defined in the constitution. With the security, he is Commander-in-Chief. This is not shared with the other parties. He should take their opinion in the national council, a security council which takes the important and main decisions of security there. There, there is a committee, like a ministerial committee. He cannot take the opinion of Saleh al-Mutlaq, Tariq al-Hashemi, Ayad Allawi or the others while taking any decision on the security. He thought that the security is not shared with the others.

The other thing is all the decisions have been taken in the cabinet and I think the cabinet proved to be out of all the problems and disputes and the differences which is going on right now. I think the Prime Minister, www.chathamhouse.org 3 Transcript: Searching for Stability in an Unstable Region remarkably, has managed to chair the cabinet in a professional way, not to politicise it, and not making it any reflection of the political disputes of the cabinet.

Thank you. Right, open to the floor. If I call you, please stand up, state your name and ask a question quite quickly. Not any statements please. I’ll move from the left at the front there and I’ll come through the hands that have been raised.

Question 1:

One of the things that Mr Mailiki said a little while ago was that one of the reasons he was unhappy with the constitution was that it had been foisted on them rather quickly and needed some adjustment. I was surprised at that because in October, November and December, way back in 2002, all the major parties in opposition met together and produced a detailed paper – you probably remember this, The Transition to Democracy in Iraq – and one of things the paper called for was a democratically and federally structured Iraq based on principles of separation of powers, the protection of individual and group human rights and setting out a road map for transition to a permanent constitution.

I’m rather worried that in fact the excuse of a slightly underdeveloped constitution is being used to actually just coalesce centralised power and I certainly reject any idea that the Kurdistan regional government isn’t particularly playing fairly. So could I ask the question, why is Mr Maliki centralising power? And, frankly, you’re making him sound paranoid.

Jeremy Greenstock:

Let’s take one or two more questions so we can see what the tone of the room is. The fourth row there and the back left.

Question 2:

My question is it seems from what Your Excellency said that what Prime Minister Maliki needs at the moment is allies and he seems to be creating enemies so do you think that there will be a solution with his confrontation with [inaudible] that is more political and do you think that any of the remaining so called ‘Resistance of Saddam’ people are still doing some of the violent acts on the Iraqi scene? Thank you.

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Jeremy Greenstock:

Thank you and thirdly before we stop for a reply. At the back there yes.

Question 3:

Thank you. My question is to Toby. Toby you set out two scenarios for Iraq very clearly. Can you tell us where Kurdistan and the Kurds fit into both scenarios and the prospects for oil exports from that region? Thank you.

Jeremy Greenstock:

Thank you very much. You’ve partly answered two of the questions; do you want to add anything to what you’ve said?

Ali Al-Dabbagh:

Yes, regarding Hashemi, the Hashemi issue is fully judicial, [there is] nothing to do now. So they were in the court and they have been postponed once more. I do agree that the way which it has been presented earlier… The Hashemi issue has been misreported, misrepresented but now totally everybody understands that the Hashemi issue, there is 150 files against Hashemi from the others, from the victims. Regarding the Resistance of Saddam people, yes, we are facing some of them still. There are people who were not happy because they lost power but it is much less than before.

Just adding on to why Maliki is centralising the power. In the absence of institutions this is what we are facing in Iraq. Iraq has [inaudible]. Democracy is not elections. Until now there are very fragile institutions in Iraq and this is ubiquitous whether Maliki is there or other persons or other prime ministers. The absences of institutions are a huge risk for our country and for democracy.

Toby Dodge:

Yes, I suppose there are three big points. I think the Iraqi constitution is unworkable. It is a dreadful document drafted in a hurry in a completely closed way. The fact that the Prime Minister wants to rework it is no surprise. I don’t think it’s a workable document. To directly address [members] point what do the Kurds want? Well the Kurds drafted that dreadful document. Bahzani and Talabani who were the key authors of it, were the advisors and

www.chathamhouse.org 5 Transcript: Searching for Stability in an Unstable Region they were striving from probably the peak of their power in 2003 through to continually limit the power of Baghdad, to federalise if not fracture the state.

That said, they did very nicely out of Baghdad. I think they get $14 billion a year without having to do much for it: they don’t pay tax to Baghdad, they don’t give control over their military forces to Baghdad. If one goes to Baghdad you find a certain frustration about the Kurdish region and government, you want your cake and eating it too, or you want to be half pragmatic or whatever the metaphor would be [sic]. ‘We want to complain, we want to keep Baghdad as weak as possible but we’ve not really got around to plucking up the courage to move towards independence because we get $14 billion a year from the central government.’

I think that situation will stumble on. I can very much see Massoud Barzani’s worries about the F15s or the planes being bought from the United States and I think ironically [President Jalal] Talabani has proved this. The only way to shape an Iraq you want is to be down there in Baghdad fighting, negotiating and being forceful with unvarnished tongues about what they want. I think this constant threat which is at the moment completely unrealistic and I think should not be taken very seriously. To secede is the theatre, it’s a pantomime, it’s to do with politics.

On centralising power and Hashemi: I don’t know if Hashemi is guilty or not and I suspect no one else does because under torture, his security guards when they were locked up by Iraqi state, died. I very much agree with his Excellency that we should aspire to the rule of law, especially when the rule of law doesn’t exist in Iraq, especially where people are charged under torture in prisons and no one is punished for it. So I think the guilt or innocence of Hashemi may or may not come out – I suspect we will want to come back – but what has come out from the incident is, firstly, that his bodyguards were tortured to death in order to extract their confessions and, secondly, when the tanks were surrounding his house they were also surrounding the Deputy Prime Minister’s house and the Minister of Finance’s house. That leaves me very worried that it was not actually Hashemi’s crimes but it was a larger power play that may well come to destabilise Iraqi politics.

Dr Al-Dabbagh:

Is it necessary that you should know if Hashemi is guilty or not? It is not our job that you or I should know. There is a court there. There is an investigation. There are 150 victims and there are fires [sic] against him. Now I can’t defend how those people tortured that guy [inaudible] today, as the report said, I www.chathamhouse.org 6 Transcript: Searching for Stability in an Unstable Region don’t want to defend that issue but this will not clear the responsibility of Hashemi being guilty and is involved. I don’t want to give any sort of final verdict on Hashemi that’s not our job. The court is doing this and the justice authority is doing that and saying whether Hashemi is guilty or not and it’s not necessary that everybody should know if he is guilty or not. His lawyer is there and he is enjoying the full right to defend himself and to put it right.

Toby Dodge:

One does wonder what type of defence he will get when the witnesses were tortured to death when they were under arrest.

Ali Al-Dabbagh:

Well, that didn’t clear the problem and difficulties that Hashemi and the victims and all the crimes which he did. Even though this guy is a criminal, we can condemn it and it is wrong, but this will not clear the responsibility of Hashemi.

Sir Greenstock:

Ok, let’s cover other issues. Emma you haven’t commented yet on this. We are where we are on the state of evolution in Iraqi politics. What do you think the Iraqi people are looking for?

Emma Sky:

I think more than anything the Iraqi people fear a return to violence again. They saw the abyss. They don’t want to go back to that. And I think when they look at the squabbling going on among the politicians a lot of them think they’re all bad, they think everybody’s corrupt, everybody’s taking money, and I think they just yearn for stability and normality and a return to normalcy again.

Jeremy Greenstock:

So what you’re painting is a potential picture for Iraq to return to the queue of the Arab Spring under that sort of scenario. So this may go round more than once.

Let’s go to this side of the hall, we’ll take some questions going back. We haven’t got very much time left. Second row, here please. www.chathamhouse.org 7 Transcript: Searching for Stability in an Unstable Region

Question 4:

Do any of you envisage the re-politicization of the armed forces?

Question 5:

Thank you. I’m told by my contacts in Baghdad that the National Security Council is about to embark on a national security review in order to rationalise the mission’s roles and architecture of the various security forces. I wonder if any of the panel has heard such a thing and can confirm or deny the likelihood of a new national security review to develop a new national security strategy and rationalise the security forces?

Question 6:

When I was in Iraq last year the place was summarised to me as being 10% illiteracy, 1% internet penetration and eight hours per day electricity, so I think Dr Dodge agrees with me. I think there is also a drought in the country and an impending riparian dispute among Syria, Turkey and Iraq along the Euphrates and the Tigris. Listening to the description of the squabbling of the politicians I’m wondering to myself, what is preventing the establishment of a layer of technocrats who would actually address these problems which need to be addressed no matter who is running whatever ministry?

Jeremy Greenstock:

Minister, do you want to go first?

Ali Al-Dabbagh:

Politicising the military. I don’t want to defend some of the wrong and negative things but I don’t think that we have a politicising of the military forces. The military forces are built in in a good way compared with the Ministry of the Interior. I think this is remarkable. Everybody knows and I do agree that we are trying our best to protect the military from any penetration from the parties, which is again the competition. I could also say that Maliki is trying his best not to allow parties, even his party. Again I don’t say it is an ideal situation for that.

The technocrats, we are facing a problem with the parties. The parties are doing destruction in the country in bringing non-efficient, deficient people, [who have] got no skill management, no technical skill and they keep them

www.chathamhouse.org 8 Transcript: Searching for Stability in an Unstable Region not only on the ministerial level; even if you go down below to the [inaudible] and everyone dumping people, efficient people in the ministry that you could find. Now we have a problem. Since ten years we couldn’t solve the difficulties that couldn’t be solved for those not connected with the security situation. I can’t find any justification for why we are not getting good rice or good sugar for the poor people. It’s not connected with the security or Al- Qaeda stopping the government providing good ration cards for the people.

So this is the problem. We have technocrats and a good level of technocrats in Iraq and we have a party which never gave a chance to those people who are independent, unless you become a party member he has no chance to get any posts in the government. And this is one of the negative things which is going to influence the progress and the development of the country.

Jeremy Greenstock:

Do either of you want to comment on that? Toby?

Toby Dodge:

Yeah, a couple of things. I think the great heroes of Iraq are indeed the director generals His Excellency mentioned. These are kind of senior permanent civil servants, a lot of them educated in the 60s and 70s and a lot of them educated in Britain who went back and who held the Iraqi state together on a whim and a prayer. Now think about what these senior aged civil servants went through: the Iran- [in] 1980-88; then the invasion of Iraq over a decade of crippling sanctions; when that finished in 2003 they’re catapulted into civil war; in the midst of the civil war they are deliberately targeted by Al-Qaeda amongst others. These people have been through hell and the result is an incredibly weak Iraqi state.

What do the Iraqis want? Of course they want order. They’ve had more order than they’ve had recently. They want electricity – eight hours is very optimistic and, I think, eight hours would be the peak of the average – clean running water and things. And the Iraqi state targeted under sanctions, under a civil war and under war is incredibly weak.

Now there is a problem with the politics that links directly back to the civil servants. As a minister comes in, as this system of national governments come in, she or he purges or simply adds on to the payroll of the ministry, to the series of hires that are directly to do with the party political loyalty. The state’s payrolls have massively expanded, not with technocrats, [but] with

www.chathamhouse.org 9 Transcript: Searching for Stability in an Unstable Region party functionaries because the state has become a way of funding party loyalty. That has directly undermined and inhibited the state’s ability. So we have a huge state.

One thing that was built under occupation very quickly was the security services. The Iraqi army was continually expanded under American orders; the Americans built the Iraqi Special Operation Forces [with] 4200 generally considered to be the best special forces in the region. What happened was when the Americans handed it back to the Iraqis, the Prime Minister set up a separate ministry to run the Special Forces. They are now called the ‘Jaish al-Maliki’ [The Army of al-Maliki] in a historical and an ironical reference to the impression that they’re used as a prime ministers dirty squad to do stuff that he needs to be done, sadly, beyond the rule of law.

So the Iraqi armed forces have been highly politicised but, that said, and everyone’s always asking for light at the end of the tunnel, they can impose a rough and ready order across the country. So Iraq isn’t heading back to civil war; quite where it is heading we don’t know.

Emma Sky:

On the issue of services I think many Iraqis look at all that money – Iraq is an incredibly wealthy country, why have public services not improved, why do people have so few hours of electricity a day – and I think that most Iraqis believe it’s due to corruption. Every time the contracts go out to approve something, those contracts are never delivered. They are skimming off the contracts.

Likewise with the security problems. A lot of people believe that security officials are bribed to allow people through checkpoints with, well, with bombs.

In terms of the armed forces, these armed forces have been built up very quickly to large numbers in a very short period of time. There are almost one million people who are in the security forces. There are some very good security forces and there are security forces which are not so good. The question of course is how they are used? And you can think of certain circumstances where there will be no problems but if tensions escalated in the north between KRG and the central government, if that deteriorates, if security forces are used then there really will be a problem in the security forces and who remembers loyalty.

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Jeremy Greenstock:

Thank you. Chatham House is introducing a new feature in these discussion groups where it remains online and people send in their questions online. So I’m going to end with an online question for the Minister of State, which is about Syria. Dr Ali, Iraq’s view, the official government, the Prime Minister’s view about what was happening in Syria seemed to evolve as things moved. What are the main features of the Iraqi view about what is happening in Syria and where do you think this will go?

Ali al-Dabbagh:

As I explained we never supported the present regime of Bashar al-Assad. We suffer from Syrian government much more than the Lebanese suffered from Syria. Everybody knows this. We said more than 50… the Prime Minister said 80% of the terrorism is coming from Syria. This is the fact and we had an issue with the United Nation against the Syrian government.

So we never supported the way Syria was being ruled. But it’s not our job, it’s the Syrian people. But we know very well the things that are going on. All the arrangements and support against whatever is going, we are not part of it. We are officially supporting the Arab initiative by the Arab League and the others under Kofi Annan. We understand that you could ignite the forest fire by a small match and what is going on in Syria is this but nobody could control the fire. We are a country who will suffer. Not others who suffer, we in Iraq suffer.

We could understand and justify how soon the Arab League and the Gulf Sates control the issue and solve the problem in Yemen. We could understand that because Yemen is directly influencing the security of . So we have the same right to look after our security and at the same time for the freedom of our brothers in Syria. Not in this way, which is igniting the fire in Syria. We are warning everybody that the thing which is going on in Syria and the way which it is being managed is not going to lead in any way to the unity of the Syrian people and Syria is a country and getting the full freedom of the Syrian people. In contrary, it will ignite a big fire in the region and we are warning everybody and we are trying peacefully and with the old, what limited draw on the Syrian issue we have, are trying to do something.

Hopefully people will understand at the end that this is not the right way because massive killings are going on and day after day we could see horrific killings and attacks on Syrians. We don’t know its source is from where [sic] but the presidents are fully responsible for the blood which has been the Arab spring. www.chathamhouse.org 11 Transcript: Searching for Stability in an Unstable Region

Jeremy Greenstock:

Egypt is going through an agony, Libya is going through an agony Syria is going through an agony, and Yemen is going through an agony. Iraq has not completed its agony just because its transition started nine years ago and we’ve heard in this hour about the features of what is constituting the present period in Iraq. There remains something of a vacuum in terms of a collective spirit, in terms of true security, in terms of coalition government and in terms actually of realising the rights of the people and what they were expecting when Saddam was removed.

And there is to some extent a vacuum in terms of the implementation of the constitution that you’ve heard described as inadequate in certain ways but into which a lot of work has gone in a country where actually the history of preparing constitutions goes back a long way. The Iraqis know what they want to write down in their constitution and what they want. There is a long way to go, it takes time for these transitions to produce an ordered society with the people judging what they want under the rule of the institutions and until the institutions are more powerful than the individuals there is going to continue to be trouble.

But, Minister, I think we can say from this house that there remains in this country a tremendous sympathy for the transition that Iraq is going through, but it remains a sympathy for the people in Iraq and not necessarily for any particular leader in Iraq. It’s the people who come first. If the leaders of Iraq don’t understand what’s happening in other parts of the Arab World, that the voice of the people is now of greater political force then it used to be, they will be making a very big mistake.

Thank you to all three of you for what you have contributed to this session. Thank you in the audience for listening patiently and producing your own comments on what’s going on and a particular thank you for His Excellency for taking his time off to join us.

Thank you all very much.

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