The parliament’s two big tasks—pass a budget and pass an oil law—were intertwined. And both were proxies for the limits of federalism. The relationship was this: The budget had to be based on revenue, mostly from oil. But the formula for sharing oil revenue between the Kurdish region and Baghdad was a test for the political arrangements between them.
The Iraqis were caught in an endless loop—until they could sort out revenue projections, they couldn’t pass a budget. That slowed the allocation of funds to important tasks like paying the army or letting contracts for building electricity plants. Sunni areas, largely without oil production capability, had also been promised funding for various projects.
One project, the building of a new military academy, became symbolic of the political tensions between Baghdad and its regions. On one of President Bush’s final trips to Iraq, he met with Iraqi leaders and the Sunni tribesmen who had successfully expelled al-Qaeda from Anbar. The tribesmen were a tough lot, unshaven, with rough, dark skin. I remember thinking back to the Arab diplomat’s advice. Why did we try to fight this bunch back in 2003? It was surely better to have them on our side. And now they were.
Maliki seemed more uncomfortable with these men than the Americans did. He didn’t take the center seat saved for him, but a corner chair at the end of the table. His body language was just terrible. He was almost in the fetal position. He’s just not a natural politician, I thought.
On the other hand, Jalal Talabani—a terrific politician—was in his element. “The brave sons of Anbar,” he intoned, “have played an essential role in saving Iraq. You shall have your military academy.” I remember thinking that Jalal would have been great in American pork-barrel politics. Unfortunately, the funding for the academy was not forthcoming for several more years.
The Iraqis did find other ways to appease the Sunnis, though. In 2008, large numbers of former Ba’athists were allowed back into their jobs and thousands of prisoners were granted amnesty. The country finally passed the “Law of the Supreme Commission for Accountability and Justice,” which tried to give a modicum of protection to innocent Sunnis while acknowledging the crimes of the Ba’ath Party.
Still, Iraqi leaders continued to struggle with all of the major issues of governance, and admittedly it was frustrating. Our Congress was brutal in its assessment of their incompetence. There seemed to be little sympathy for how hard it is to make democratic institutions—especially new ones—work. On one occasion, when testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I almost lost it. As one senator droned on and on about how the Iraqis still hadn’t passed a budget, it took all the self-control I could muster not to retort, And neither have you. The legislature of the mature American democracy had failed to pass an actual budget in 2003, 2005, and 2007. The Iraqis finally did so in 2008 with a budget law authorizing $48 billion in expenditures. They finessed the oil revenue question, with the Kurds agreeing to a budget formula in lieu of an oil law.
A hydrocarbon law was indeed drafted in 2007. According to the constitution, “Oil and gas are owned by all the people of Iraq,” but it does not say what the autonomous regions are and are not allowed to do. In the absence of firm rules, the Kurds have passed their own regional law and attracted considerable foreign investment, despite the jurisdictional uncertainties. The Kurdish deal terms are significantly more oriented toward the free market and thus more favorable to business.
Shia parties sometimes support the Kurds since they want to maintain some flexibility for the south—also an oil-producing region. Obviously, the big loser would be the central government and particularly the Sunni region, which has virtually no oil production.
In my class on political risk at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, we give the students a hypothetical case: whether to invest in an oil field in Kurdistan even though Baghdad objects. About 70 percent of the time, these future business leaders take the chance. That’s the sentiment the Kurds are counting on, and so far it has served them well.
The Iraqis have made some progress on other sticky problems as well. One ticking time bomb for Iraq was the status of Kirkuk—a region that sits partly in Kurdish territory but has a very large Sunni population. The Kurds had routinely threatened to annex it, giving provincial elections added importance. The passage of a 2008 provincial electoral law was hailed as a milestone. And at the end of 2009, the Iraqis passed a critical national elections law, stepping back from a constitutional crisis that threatened to delay balloting. Dr. Haider Ala Hamoudi, an expert on Iraq, has noted that the United States did not draft any of the amendments. The Iraqis managed to do so in a process that he said was “messy but worked.”9
When the Bush administration left office in January 2009, Iraq had been the most trying and the most dominant issue. But in the end, despite all the trials and sacrifices, I felt that the Iraqis were ready to embrace their chance at democracy. Sometimes they should have taken our advice—but often things worked out even when they didn’t. President Bush had met weekly with Maliki by video, elected leader to elected leader. It was affirming for the Iraqi prime minister and a good way to gently prod him in the right direction. Now it was up to him.
The country had come a long way—it was more secure, and for that I was grateful. I had personally experienced some scary times in Iraq. I always flew to a U.S. military base, usually in Turkey. From there I would take a C-130 to the Baghdad airport, sitting in the cockpit with the young pilots, who were often members of the National Guard. Then we would take a Black Hawk helicopter, machine gunners hanging out of the windows, into the Green Zone, the protected enclave for the international community and a number of high-ranking Iraqi officials.
On one trip, as we were about to land, the plane suddenly pulled up. “What just happened?” I asked, hoping that my heart rate would come down so that I could breathe.
“Oh, ma’am, there was some mortar fire. But we’re not sure if it was just random or meant for you,” the young man said.
“I guess it doesn’t matter,” I replied.
Another time, a sandstorm prevented me from taking a helicopter into the Green Zone. We had to drive along what had been dubbed the “highway of death,” because explosions along it were frequent. We made it without incident, but as the car moved slowly among stalled trucks and automobiles, I tried not to focus on the stricken faces of my security guards.
My last trip to Iraq showed me just how much had changed. I made the rounds with the politicians and joined them for lunch at Talabani’s house. But Hakim was ill and asked if I would come to see him. He lived in the “red zone.” I would travel into territory where a year before I could not have gone.
As we slowly made our way to the cleric’s home, signs of conflict were everywhere. The streets were pockmarked with holes made by mortar fire, and there were more than a few bombed-out buildings. Iraqi soldiers patrolled on foot, and helicopters appeared above periodically. But things were finally quiet and people went about their daily tasks—shopkeepers selling goods and customers buying them, and youngsters playing in the streets.
As my armored motorcade passed those places and people, I felt a surge of satisfaction and hope. Perhaps one day the Iraqis who had endured so much chaos would enjoy a peaceful and democratic future. I felt that we had given them a chance.
After the Islamic State Is Defeated
In 2011, President Obama fulfilled his campaign promise to pull all American forces out of Iraq. The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that we had signed in 2008 was set to expire. In truth, the firm 2011 date had been a compromise with Maliki, who wanted to show that Iraq could stand on its own two feet. Elections were coming up in 2009, and he thought that it would be a popular move. Everyone, including Maliki, thought that the SOFA would be renegotiated or extended. He told President Bush that he would be able to do so after the elections—he meant his, not ours.
The Obama administration did not succeed in extending the SOFA. The same terms that had been acceptable to the Pen
tagon in the prior agreement should have been acceptable in a new one. Bob Gates, secretary of defense for both Presidents Bush and Obama, said the following: “The only chance we would have had for an agreement would have been with [President Obama’s] intensive involvement personally, and that didn’t happen.”10
It is a pity, because Iraq was on its way to a better future. The American sacrifices—and those of Iraqis—were beginning to pay off. Whatever one’s view of the decision to invade Iraq in 2003, the hardest work had been done and the ground was prepared for a decent outcome for Iraq and the region. In 2010, in the final elections before American forces left, Iraqi voters delivered a remarkable result: Iyad Allawi, a Shia, won the largest share of the vote as the head of an avowedly non-sectarian party, with considerable Sunni support. The political system was beginning to mature and the violence had subsided.
I have been asked repeatedly, “Knowing today what you do, would you still counsel the invasion of Iraq?” Well, of course, what you know today cannot affect what you did yesterday. That said, had I known that we would not be prepared to keep forces in the country—in small numbers—to help the Iraqis find democratic stability, the decision would have been much harder for me.
When U.S. forces departed, Vice President Joe Biden declared Iraq stable and free. He was right about half of it. Within a year, the civil war in Syria became a new front against stability and peace. The remnants of al-Qaeda that the surge had defeated in Iraq regrouped across the border. Now, with the chaos that obliterated national lines, they came back and eventually formed the core of a new menace—the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS. Our intelligence agencies have admitted that they did not see the threat emerging. And the Iraqis were ill-prepared to handle the challenge on their own. ISIS poured into the vacuum.
Without the steadying hand of American influence, Maliki gave way to his own worst instincts. He was a proud and prickly man who cataloged every slight, perceived or real. In a matter of months, he was using his power to go after his enemies, particularly Tariq al-Hashemi, whom he accused of trying to overthrow him. That alienated Sunnis, and increasingly he gave in to his sectarian streak—firing competent commanders in the security forces and the police and replacing them with those loyal to him. They were mostly Shia, of course, exacerbating tensions between the sectarian groups.
After almost a decade in office, Maliki was a spent force. Despite his success in the 2014 elections, many Iraqis no longer trusted or respected their prime minister. He had lost the confidence of the United States too, especially after the Iraqi army lost control of Mosul. Reminiscent of Jaafari years before, at first he tried to hang on. He threatened to take his supporters to the streets. But the ploy didn’t work and he soon stepped down, saying that he would return to the parliament and work for the causes that mattered to him. He was given a ceremonial title of vice president and accepted the face-saving compromise. It was a mature response from a mercurial man. Arab strongmen didn’t usually step down. This was a sign that something had changed in Iraq for the better.
The country continues to function in a quasi-democratic fashion—the institutions are weak but at least present. The parliament meets and then disbands due to boycotts by one group or another. Then they reconvene, unable to do much work, but they do keep trying. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has survived multiple no-confidence measures. And he keeps at it, re-forming his cabinet and shaking up his government in hopes of finding a workable formula. The people protest the incompetence of their leaders, and—after one bloody incident a year or so ago—the state no longer interferes.
The government respects the basic rights of Iraqi citizens, according to Freedom House. There are a dozen private television stations in addition to 150 print publications. The Internet is not restricted and Arab satellite TV is readily available, though journalists have complained more in recent years about harassment from sectarian groups. Iraqi athletes participate in world competitions like the Olympics. They no longer fear reprisals from a brutal dictator if they lose.
Women make up 25 percent of the parliament thanks to a formula passed in the 2009 electoral law. Iraq is a conservative society and women still face obstacles, but they are not legal, governmental restrictions. Forty-five percent of university students are women, as are one in three university professors.11 That is a step forward.
Freedom of religion is guaranteed and there is no official religious body to interfere. Yet religious minorities are being driven out of the country. This is not due to policy but because the government cannot protect them from sectarian militias and terrorists. And, sadly, the Iraqi state cannot yet secure its citizens more generally. Bombs go off with regularity in the streets of Baghdad—the work of ISIS, which still occupies a swath of the country’s territory.
Slowly, though, ISIS is being beaten back by Iraqi security forces, the Sunni tribes, Kurdish peshmerga, and American airpower and advisers. As of late 2016, the United States has more than five thousand troops in Iraq—about half the number the generals wanted to leave behind in 2011 when Iraq was stable.
A positive outcome in the war against ISIS is by no means assured. But there is a good chance that the so-called Caliphate they hoped to establish will fail and that the extremist group will be defeated. The larger question is whether a unified Iraq will survive. When the war is over, the Kurds will most assuredly push for greater autonomy. They have expanded their territory by about 40 percent since 2014 and taken a number of villages around Mosul, as well as Kirkuk. Barzani has taken a tough line rhetorically, saying that land won with Kurdish blood should never again be ruled by Baghdad. Many observers think that he is staking out ground from which to bargain when the war ends. Others take him at his word. One thing is clear: The Kurds have built a relatively peaceful and prosperous region within an unstable Iraq. It remains to be seen whether they will demand distance from Baghdad or a divorce.
The Shia in the south will have to find a way to resist the pull of the “Iranian crescent.” Iranian-backed militias will claim—with some justification—that they too contributed to the defeat of ISIS. Tehran will be influential, but how influential? As one former ambassador said, “If Iran were really calling the shots, the Iraqis wouldn’t be pumping four million barrels of oil a day—and keeping the price of oil low when Tehran needs the revenue.” Iran could not have wanted to see American forces, even in limited numbers, back in Iraq. The Iraqi Shia are Arab, not Persian, and that has always been a limiting factor in Tehran’s influence. The Iranians will have free rein if there is no American counterweight. The scale of Tehran’s writ will be determined by policy choices—ours as well as theirs.
Iraq’s institutions will bear the mark of what the country has gone through to defeat ISIS. Perhaps there will be a new “Articles of Confederation” that reflects the geostrategic reality of the country. As long as it is a democratic one, something will have been gained. And at this moment, Iraq and Tunisia are the only Arab countries that have quasi-democratic institutions on which to build. When the Middle East settles down, there may be a new democratic opening. This time there will be something there that was absent before—political institutions, weak though they may be—that might be able to mediate differences between peoples, peacefully.
Egypt and Tunisia: When Old Men Fail
It had been a really strange trip. I slept fitfully that September night in 2008 after my visit with Muammar Qaddafi in the Libyan capital. My meeting with “the Leader” had gone later into the night than planned—my security detail sitting anxiously outside the door, banned from joining me in the room. I had arrived in Tunis well after midnight. Now, startled by my alarm, I awoke with that sensation one has after a bizarre dream. Did I really just sit in his kitchen and have dinner with his female security guards who many believe are also his daughters? Did he really give me a video—with pictures of me set to music—called Black Flower in the White House? Okay. Whatever his weird affection for you, thank the Lord, that visit is over. Time to mov
e on. Get your mind around what you need to say to Ben Ali.
The meeting room in Tunis was palatial, as they all are in the Middle East. There was enough malachite and gold to make the Russian Winter Palace seem modest by comparison. The Tunisian president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, hair dyed jet-black, was cordial but distant, and I quickly realized that the longer I talked, the less he engaged. I was trying to make several points about cooperation in fighting terrorism and the more contentious one that Tunisia had a responsibility to take back some of its citizens who were prisoners at Guantánamo. Ben Ali kept insisting that it had already done so. But they hadn’t, and none of his entourage seemed anxious to tell him that he was wrong. He was befuddled and slow, slipping in and out of genuine attention to what I was saying. This reminds me of meeting with Hosni Mubarak, I thought. He always told those tired stories—sometimes repeating the same one within a matter of minutes in the same meeting. These are failing old men who are out of touch and shielded by those who won’t tell them what is going on. It really is sad.
Three years later, as I watched the events of the 2011 “Arab Spring” explode into the world’s consciousness, I thought back on those meetings with Mubarak and Ben Ali. They never saw it coming, but they should have. The level of discontent in their countries was high. Unemployment and corruption and a sense of powerlessness oppressed the populations as much as the brutality of the security forces. A citizen could largely avoid the ire of the police by keeping his mouth closed. The daily humiliations—hopeless poverty, imperious bureaucrats, and the anger they engendered—could not be ignored.
“Mr. President, Reform Before Your People Are in the Streets”
As we have noted, authoritarian regimes do not dominate all of society in the way that totalitarian/cult-of-personality rulers do. There is space for independent organizations—business groups, universities, and civil society. And the size and robustness of that space varies from country to country and at different times within a country. The chance for reform is present because there is a nascent infrastructure on which to build.
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