Transcript: Q&A Iraq: A Decade of Missed Opportunities Hayder al-Khoei Associate Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Programme, Chatham House Emma Sky Senior Fellow, Jackson Institute for International Affairs, Yale; Political Adviser to General Odierno, Commanding General of US Forces, Iraq (2008-10); Author, The Unravelling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq Chair: Mina Al-Oraibi Assistant Editor-in-Chief, Asharq Al-Awsat Newspaper 19 May 2015 The views expressed in this document are the sole responsibility of the speaker(s) and participants do not necessarily reflect the view of Chatham House, its staff, associates or Council. Chatham House is independent and owes no allegiance to any government or to any political body. It does not take institutional positions on policy issues. This document is issued on the understanding that if any extract is used, the author(s)/ speaker(s) and Chatham House should be credited, preferably with the date of the publication or details of the event. Where this document refers to or reports statements made by speakers at an event every effort has been made to provide a fair representation of their views and opinions. The published text of speeches and presentations may differ from delivery. 10 St James’s Square, London SW1Y 4LE T +44 (0)20 7957 5700 F +44 (0)20 7957 5710 www.chathamhouse.org Patron: Her Majesty The Queen Chairman: Stuart Popham QC Director: Dr Robin Niblett Charity Registration Number: 208223 2 Iraq: A Decade of Missed Opportunities Q&A Mina Al-Oraibi Okay, so I’ll open the floor for your questions and answers. If you could kindly identify yourself and try to keep it to a question rather than a comment. We have a gentleman right here. Question 1 Ronald Harrison, Chatham House. Very interesting indeed, but my questions are: to what extent are ISIS strengthened by Saddam’s army? The army that was not paid off but went home with their weapons. And to what extent are Saudi Arabia… where does Saudi Arabia stand in regard to ISIS? Mina Al-Oraibi Emma, do you want to tackle Saddam’s army? Emma Sky [Indiscernible] Hayder al-Khoei Nobody knows is the honest answer. There are theories. What we do know is that key intelligence, security, military officials, with experience, are at the very highest levels of ISIS command. This is a fact that even ISIS doesn’t hide. The question is: are the Ba’athists using ISIS as a cover. We have a colleague at Chatham House, Nadim Shehadi, who thinks the whole ISIS organization is actually a cover for a much more local, indigenous, non-Islamist movement. Once you get rid of the name or brand of ISIS, we’re going to have to deal with the Ba’athists. And others say no, that during the 1990s after the Gulf War there was a very heavy Islamization campaign in Iraq, and that many of the Ba’athists genuinely converted to more hard-line, extremist, Salafi interpretations of Islam. You’ll have to wait, I think, another 30 or 40 or 50 years to get to the bottom of this. Mina Al-Oraibi Saudi Arabians? Emma Sky Again I mean I agree with what Hayder said on this. There are obviously people who happen to be members of the former regime who are now part of ISIS. Whether they’re ideological Ba’athists, whether they’re ideological Islamists, there’s a whole variety of different people. Do they receive support from the Saudi government? I don’t think there is any evidence that that is true. Do they receive money and financing from people… private citizens who happen to be in the Gulf? I assume so. 3 Iraq: A Decade of Missed Opportunities Q&A Question 2 Thank you very much indeed. Excellent and really insightful. My main concern is that if you look to the future… my main concern to look for the future actually, and my concern is that how do you deal with the scenarios of what’s happening now and taking lessons from the past and then reflecting these on the scenarios for the US strategy and Iraqi strategy towards tackling these issues? Because I just want to ask you a question, for both of you, if you can answer me. Iraq… Mr Hayder said there are tensions and sectarian things, but what we… us Iraqis didn’t feel the tension, we feel it now, actually! And the real problem we face, the crises we feel is not really in any generation we have felt as much as we felt it now. The problem… my question is like this, do you think professionalism and national Iraqi identity has to be restored and all of the sectarian and ethnic tension has to be eliminated by new kind of options whereby Iraqis come together as integrated one body and face the problem without the intervention of external forces? Mina Al-Oraibi Can I ask if you’d identify yourself? Sorry. Question 2 My name is Dr [indiscernible], associate professor. I was previously in the [indiscernible]. I am a member of here. Thank you very much. Mina Al-Oraibi Identity. Can we bring Iraqis away from the abyss of sectarianism? Emma Sky You know people have got this memory of how Iraq was depending on when they lived there, how many years ago they lived there. I don’t think Iraqis are going to go back to how it was under the time of the monarchy, or how it was in the 1970s. I don’t think that’s going to happen. The people who run Iraq today have been running Iraq for the last decade, the same politicians. They have failed. They have been abject failures, basically. We don’t see statesmen in Iraq today. You see people with their own narrow interests representing small groups. What is Iraq’s future? I think that the most optimistic scenario that I can think of, and Hayder maybe you can think of better ones, the most optimistic scenario I can think of is confederation Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq, and in the rest of Iraq you go towards decentralization down to the lowest level, perhaps down to provincial level. Iraq doesn’t fit neatly into three groups. That would require a lot of divorces, a lot of ethnic cleansing. A lot of that ethnic cleansing has already happened. But when we got to Iraq in 2003, 30 per cent of the people living there were intermarried. So it doesn’t break down easily. I wish in 2003 we’d brought in a new form of governance that was based on geography and not based on sect and ethnicity. 4 Iraq: A Decade of Missed Opportunities Q&A I think that was a big mistake that we made, because we have exacerbated the tensions in society. So maybe at the moment where Iraq is a state of militias, maybe that will just be a bloody way of getting to a decentralized system because among the Shia there are lots of competitions and people fighting each other. The Kurds already had a civil war. Among the Sunnis there’s lots of fighting. So, it’s not just about people belonging to a different group, it’s about the systems of governance under which people can live peacefully. And until Iraq works out what those can be, this will continue. So I hope… for me the most optimistic scenario is very much a decentralized system. Give the Kurds as much autonomy as possible, but decentralize the rest of the country down to the provincial level. Hayder al-Khoei I mean I can’t add much to that, but on the point of decentralization, one of the key practical policies that the Iraqi government is working towards and what the Sunnis… the bare minimum the Sunnis in Iraq expect is to be in control of their own security. And this… I don’t believe we’re going to go back to the days of having commanders from Baghdad and the south manning checkpoints in Mosul. It’s simply not sustainable, and you’re always going to get… if it’s not ISIS, if it’s not Ba’athists, another group that is going to cause unrest. So yes, very much decentralization but specifically at a security level. And just quickly on the point of sectarianism, as I said I don’t believe it started in 2003. And, you know, in 1991 during the Intifada you had republican guard tanks roll into the Shia south with placards, ‘No more Shia after today.’ And the hundreds of thousands of Shia buried in mass graves in Iraq would be beg to tell a different story. Mina Al-Oraibi Can I ask you, I want to pick up the point of decentralization and sectarianism. Decentralization as a theory, I understand why it would be work for Iraq, the issue is it’s not so much the system is broken as if you don’t have checks and balances that will stop a corrupt local official that’s going to be in a small posting in one of Iraq’s governorates will cause as much mayhem as a corrupt official sitting in Baghdad. So how do you stop that broken down system from just moving into a decentralized basis? Emma Sky I think at the moment the way the system is set up is you’ve got an economy… 95 per cent of Iraq’s budget comes from oil, and that means that all the competition is at the centre to take control of the oil rents.