Victory in Ramadi City against ISIS by the Iraqi Army, despite ISIS holdouts, has given a shot in the arm to the Iraqi government and to Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. Strengthening Iraq’s political institution is not only essential to the fight against ISIS but also for larger regional objectives. This will not be easy, however, given the government’s problems beyond ISIS, ranging from a desperate budgetary crisis to Iranian encroachment.
In a December article for The Cipher Brief, I described the diplomatic steps necessary to defeat ISIS and stabilize Iraq. Such an effort, however, requires a complementary focus on the internal problems that endanger the fight against ISIS and challenge the stability of the Iraqi state. Assuming America can make progress with Iran on its destabilizing actions within Iraq, the two most important internal problems for Abadi are finances and his ‘minority’ ethnic/religious groups, the Sunni Arabs, many of whom still sit on the fence between Baghdad and ISIS. Then there are the Kurds who, once again, are rhetorically calling for independence. The U.S. can play a role here and thereby help defeat ISIS but only if Washington engages more and accepts greater risks.
The immediate crisis is the budget. As the New York Times reported last month, Iraq is on the verge of a financial crisis. The country’s hard currency reserves are predicted to dry up within 18 months and Iraq’s total oil income has dropped from almost $8 billion monthly to less than $3 billion. As oil income makes up the lion’s share of the national economy (and over 90 percent of government revenues), ‘large scale social unrest’ looms. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in the north is in even more dire shape, crushed under a flood of internally displaced persons (IDP’s) and costs of the war against ISIS. The international community is pitching in with loan discussions and other measures, and Iraq has substantial private sector sources to be tapped and government inefficiencies that could be rectified. Nevertheless, this crisis will strain the country’s social fabric and unity.
This unity, politically long under pressure, requires not only new funding sources but political reform. Prime Minister Abadi is working to arm the country’s Sunni Arabs—incorporating up to 40 thousand of them into the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) advocated by Grand Ayatollah Sistani 20 months ago. While usually identified with Shi’a forces, that was not Sistani’s specific intent. Just as the “Sons of Iraq” Awakening in 2007-8 was associated with Sunni Arabs but eventually counted many Shi’a fighters, the incorporation of Sunnis into their own militia to augment the predominately Sunni Arab police forces of the three Sunni provinces—Ninewah, Salladin, and Anbar—would go far to reassure Sunni populations of Baghdad’s intentions, and give them some control over their own territory.
Once ISIS is driven out of an area, however, two additional steps are required to stabilize newly liberated territories and provide Sunni Arabs more autonomy. First is reconciliation, both between predominantly Shi’a Arab Iraqi army forces, Shi’a PMF, and in some areas Shi’a populations, and with the predominantly Sunni Arab population of these three provinces. Government reconciliation initiatives which were taken after the liberation of Tikrit in late 2014, including programs supported by the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP), can help calm local populations. This has to be followed by the restoration of services and the empowerment of local political institutions, such as governorships, and provincial and city councils. The central government and Iraqi parliament should encourage rather than hinder exploration of ‘regional status,’ as authorized by the Iraqi constitution, for one or more of these provinces. The final shape of these Sunni provinces’ political model is less important than a popular effort to explore options that could be accepted by Baghdad. With these steps, institutional and legal problems that have bedeviled the Baghdad-Sunni Arab population relationship since 2003, such as detainee releases, amnesty, and de-Baathification, could be resolved.
Likewise, the relationship between the KRG in Erbil and the central Iraqi government could be improved by implementing the December 2014 oil export/payments agreement between Erbil and Baghdad, expediting Baghdad’s handling of weapons requests from the KRG, and supporting international funding of the KRG’s extraordinary efforts to house and feed refugees and IDP’s. Erbil could help by toning down its incendiary threats to declare independence in the midst of this national crisis.
Aside from leading the fight against ISIS and managing regional diplomacy, the U.S. can assist these efforts by leveraging support against ISIS to promote the above reform agenda and by pressing international institutions to support Baghdad and Erbil’s generosity towards refugees and internally displaced people. If necessary, the U.S. should up its own military, humanitarian, and financial assistance. A stable Middle East is simply not possible with a dysfunctional, disunited Iraq in its middle. Washington’s ‘business as usual’ is not sufficient to stem this danger.
