Center for a New American Security

Iraqologist has noted with interest Greg Gause's recent essay on Maliki the strongman and Abu Aardvark's commentary on it. As Abu Aardvark points out, Gause is making a similar argument to the one Iraqologist's alter ego made a few months ago about the aspiring authoritarians of the Powers that Be and the disenfranchised Powers that Aren't (the PTB and the PTA).

First, just to get it out of the way, the PTB/PTA terminology has received some criticism, some legit (it is kind of corny) and some not so legit (it's not as simple as "government vs. opposition"--see footnote). Iraqologist is not a political scientist--he's an iraqologist. As such, he is perfectly willingly to scrap this terminology in favor of a more sophisticated and accurate alternative. But for now, anyway, until something better comes along, he will stick with the basically adequate PTB/PTA.

The PTB--ISCI, Da'wa, the two Kurdish parties, and the IIP (a very junior and exploited partner)--have their differences, to be sure. As indicated in the original PTB/PTA post, these primarily stem from the Kurdish desire for autonomy. A number of important issues revolve around this: Kirkuk and the other "disputed" territories, oil legislation, and constitutional revision. Accordingly, the Kurds want more territory, more control over oil in their territory, and maximum legal autonomy for the Kurdistan region. Of these three, Kirkuk and the disputed territories are by far the most important. The Kurds' Arab partners in the PTB have no interest in giving them much (if any) of this, since it's effectively a zero sum game. What the Kurds get, for the most part, the central government must give up.

For some time, these issues never really came to a head among the PTB, because they all benefited too much from their alliance to stir the pot. The much more critical priority for the PTB was shutting down the political process and locking out the PTA in order to keep maximum power for themselves. Specifically, this has taken the form of delaying elections; avoiding integration of the Sons of Iraq into the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF); building up the security apparatus to crack down on the Awakenings, the Sadris, and other political opponents; slow-rolling amnesty; and preventing the meaningful reentry of former regime stakeholders into government positions. In short, this is the political continuation of the insurgency, both the Sunni and Shi'a members of which now want a seat at the table.*

It may seem to some like these are primarily Arab issues, but they're not. The Kurds stand to lose much of their representation in elections in critical provinces like Kirkuk and Mosul. They also have a vital interest in preventing national elections that would produce a government not as friendly about long-term Kurdish priorities as the PTB have been up to now, especially not before they get Kirkuk and whatever other territory they can. A similar logic undergirds their support for the Maliki government's other efforts to keep the PTA down and out.

The question remains: "Is the PTB alliance built to last?" The Arab PTB, now that ISCI's regional-forming ambitions appear to have faded, have mostly a near-term tactical interest in the alliance with the Kurds. They have been weak and fragmented, and the Kurds have played a critical role in shoring them up in parliament, maintaining the illusion of a "national unity" government, providing governance expertise to the GOI, and keeping things nice with the Americans. Barham Salih's high-visibility role in Baghdad has been a good example of the last two factors. More knowledgeable readers can confirm, but Iraqologist has also heard that the peshmerga units that were re-hatted to be part of the Iraqi Army have played an important security role for the PTB.

But at some point, once the central government gets strong enough and the PTA are sufficiently neutralized, the Arab PTB's dependence on the Kurds starts to decrease. The Arab PTB have less and less interest in guaranteeing Kurdish autonomy or even paying lip service to it.** This is arguably what we're seeing the beginnings of now. Hence Maliki's famous confidence and the Kurds' growing anxiety that Kirkuk is going to slip away from them. In response, as Joost Hiltermann has pointed out, the Kurds stonewall everything they can in Baghdad until they get Kirkuk, and Maliki, in turn, rattles the saber in Khanaqin and cuts Hoshyar Zebari and Barham Salih out of the SOFA negotiations.

It's natural to conclude from this, as Gause appears to, that Maliki is making a bid to be a strongman. The big problem with this argument, as Abu Aardvark points out, is that 1) the PTA are down but not out and 2) Maliki is not strong enough yet to be a strongman. In other words, the PTB still need each other and Maliki still needs the PTB. The reason they need each other is that there is not yet a real "national" security force that is both strong enough and loyal enough to any one group or person for any one of them to emerge dominant. When it comes to beating down the PTA, the PTB and their armies are unified and all on the same side. But if the PTB try to go after each other, it would be a total bloodbath, especially with the rest of the country not pacified yet. Gause's strongman theory and the implications he draws from it are correct, if instead of a single strongman you think of the PTB as an emerging authoritarian regime but one that, at least for now, depends on the alliance of the PTB.

At the very least, based on Iraqologist's very limited understanding of the ISF, Mallki unquestionably still needs ISCI, if not the Kurds, and will continue to for the foreseeable future. This is the real nail in the strongman theory coffin. ISCI's attitude toward this whole situation remains mysterious, and will be the subject of Iraqologist's next post. Adil Abd al-Mahdi's recent warnings of a coup are certainly interesting in this context. Though ISCI's definitely not as on board with the Kurds as they used to be, and though they are expressing more interest in a strong central government, it's hard to imagine their endorsing Maliki's current erratic and risky behavior.

However clear Malki's actual position might be to us, he sure is acting like he's a lot stronger than he is. Maybe the attaboy VTC's really have gone to his head. Maybe he's just waiting for the Americans to reign him in--the Kurds probably are! (Although apparently they went to Tehran to try to get Maliki to back off in Khanaqin. Tells you something about the new Iraqi order.) Ultimately, though, all this is idle speculation unless you know which of the PTB armies are loyal to whom. Much Iraqi politics is just the outward manifestation of that fundamental truth.

*Finally--Iraqologist's first point on AM that is remotely COIN-related!

**Incidentally, you can see from all this why the Kurds had such an interest in getting ISCI to go for a southern federal region. A "symmetrical federalist" system of three regions plus Baghdad would create a balance of power and distribute interests in such a way that the central government could never pose much of a threat to the Kurds. If indeed ISCI has given up on this initiative and thrown its lot in with the central government, the balance of power is much more uneven, and thus raises the stakes on Kirkuk, oil and constitutional reform. Thus Hiltermann's line, "The Kurds have seen the future and they don't like it."