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description= 2 posts published by Reidar Visser on December 13, 2007;
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anuary 2012 december 2011 november 2011 october 2011 september 2011 august 2011 july 2011 june 2011 may 2011 april 2011 march 2011 february 2011 january 2011 december 2010 november 2010 october 2010 september 2010 august 2010 july 2010 june 2010 may 2010 april 2010 march 2010 february 2010 january 2010 december 2009 november 2009 october 2009 september 2009 august 2009 july 2009 june 2009 may 2009 april 2009 march 2009 february 2009 january 2009 december 2008 november 2008 october 2008 september 2008 august 2008 july 2008 june 2008 may 2008 april 2008 march 2008 february 2008 january 2008 december 2007 november 2007 october 2007 september 2007 august 2007 july 2007 june 2007 may 2007 april 2007 march 2007 february 2007 january 2007 december 2006 november 2006 october 2006 september 2006 august 2006 july 2006 june 2006 may 2006 april 2006 march 2006 february 2006 january 2006 december 2005 november 2005 october 2005 august 2005 categories basra and southern regionalism 34 de baathification 11 federalism in sunni majority areas of iraq 14 federalism in the middle east 6 iranian influence in iraq 55 iraq regionalism general 27 iraq and soft partition 39 iraq international relations 5 iraq local elections 2013 21 iraq parliament membership 13 iraq parliamentary elections 2014 26 iraq s 2010 parliamentary election 175 iraqi constitutional issues 280 iraqi nationalism 95 kirkuk and disputed territories 47 oil in iraq 46 rule of law 2 sectarian master narrative 55 shiite sectarian federalism 16 uia dynamics 133 uncategorized 59 us policy in iraq leverage issues 67 meta create account log in entries feed comments feed wordpress com my latest book on amazon com from just world books available on amazon com twitter updates tweets by reidarvisser december 2007 m t w t f s s 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 nov jan subscribe entries rss comments rss recent posts legality and constitutionality questions in iraq s reform push the federalism dimension in yemen s draft constitution federalism and decentralization in libya s constitutional proposals groundbreaking iraq supreme court ruling on the law on mp replacement after the rise of isis will iraq s shiites secede additional ministers approved for the iraq cabinet the controversial kurdish ministers in the new iraqi cabinet the iraqi parliament fails to approve new security ministers the iraqi parliament approves the abbadi cabinet haydar al abbadi is the new iraq pm candidate maliki the presidency and parliament in the iraq pm nomination battle pm nomination trouble in iraq iraq elects fuad masum as new president for the first time in iraq a large field of presidential candidates the iraqi parliament elects its new speakership archive for december 13th 2007 suffering oil and ideals of coexistence non sectarian federal trends in the far south of iraq posted by reidar visser on thursday 13 december 2007 20 22 paper presented to the mesa 2007 annual meeting montreal november 17 20 panel p099 the implementation of federalism in iraq the internal debate among the numerous fallacies that have become widespread in analyses of today s iraq is the notion that the shiites of the country are unified in demanding the establishment of a sectarian federal entity a shiite super state and even though some studies at least acknowledge the internal shiite division between anti federal iraqi nationalist and supporters of federalism few bother to examine important sub divisions inside the pro federal camp in many accounts there simply is only one shiite federal vision of the future iqlim al wasat wa al janub the region of the center and the south covering all the nine shiite majority governorates to the south of the iraqi capital 1 in reality the region of the center and the south was a latecomer to the iraqi shiite debate on federalism a few shiites tentatively grappled with federalism as early as in the 1990s but always in a non sectarian framework and when concrete plans for federalism materialized in shiite circles in late 2003 this was on the basis of a cross sectarian civic platform only in the summer of 2005 did a sectarian variant of federalism emerge but despite colossal media interest in the west it has yet to establish itself as the dominant federal project in shiite circles in iraq this paper focuses on non sectarian incarnations of federalism among iraq s shiites with a special focus on the far south of the country the triangle basra nasiriyya amara 2 since 2004 federal mobilization in this region has taken place on a political platform that can be described as non sectarian if not always directly anti sectarian three components in southern regionalist identity will be highlighted here the idea of southern suffering during the course of history the sense of special regional entitlement to the gigantic petroleum resources of the area and the tentative efforts to provide these sentiments with a pluralistic ideological superstructure the main conclusion is that among iraq s shiites the non sectarian approach to federalism has firmer historical roots than the sectarian one but is increasingly coming under pressure not least due to a strange convergence of interest among three major external players in iraq the united states the united kingdom and iran non sectarianism in the iraqi federalist tradition federalist pioneers have been present in shiite political circles since the early 1990s when a select few began toying with the idea of extending the idea of decentralization beyond the traditional concept of kurdish autonomy in the north but throughout that decade and into the period leading up to the 2003 iraq war these pro federal attitudes were consistently focused on schemes for avoiding any sectarian definition of federal entities such sectarian units should be avoided at all cost it was maintained because they threatened to derail the entire federal project fulfilling scaremonger prophecies about federalism being the equivalent of partition 3 such attitudes continued to prevail also after 2003 when the debate about federalism in iraq heated up in early 2004 prior to the adoption of the transitional administrative law tal even shiites who were sympathetic in principle to federalism maintained that sectarian entities should be avoided for example qasim al sahlani of the tanzim al iraq faction of the daawa party maintained that whereas the principle of federalism might well be extended beyond the kurdish areas it should not be applied on an ethnic or communal basis 4 similarly ahmad al barrak a shiite member of the governing council was positive to a federation built on administrative and geographical criteria but rejected one where sectarian or ethnic identities would be involved 5 in fact the first specific model of iraqi federalism outlined in the 15 november 2003 deal between the coalition provisional authority and the iraqi governing council stipulated a form of federalism that would comprise the governorates wa tashmalu al muhafazat a considerable step towards a non sectarian 18 governorate federal model of iraq but one that was subsequently torpedoed by kurdish nationalist demands 6 even if a few shiites were now beginning to look with greater interest at possible shiite parallels to the kurdish situation members of the supreme council for the islamic revolution in iraq sciri were particularly prominent in this regard an overwhelmingly negative attitude to sectarian expressions of federalism persisted in shiite circles this was reflected in institutional developments in 2004 and 2005 although the pro sectarian sciri dominated the shiite delegations both in the february 2004 tal negotiations as well as during the work with the iraqi constitution in the summer of 2005 even they did not venture to try to impose sectarian federalism from above the tal had a ceiling of three existing governorates as the maximum size of future federal entities thereby preventing any purely shiite region from being formed the 2005 constitution did not impose any such specific limits but neither did it give political elites the opportunity to dictate the demarcation of new federal regions instead iraq s new federalization framework emerged as a remarkable syncretism combining ideals dating from spanish nineteenth century anarchism and brought to the table by the un and international experts involved with the demands of the more sectarian shiite political leaders for some kind of parity with the kurds 7 in an interesting testimony to the strength of non sectarian attitudes among shiite iraqi federalists resistance to sectarian variants of federalism has persisted beyond the adoption of the iraqi constitution in october 2005 in the first place it seems very likely that federalism was involved in some of the unspecified weaknesses of the constitution that sistani mentioned when grudgingly according his approval to it a few days before the october 2005 referendum 8 moreover in october 2006 some political parties like the fadila explicitly rejected the procedures for implementing federalism on the grounds that the absence of size limitations would alienate the opponents of federalism who were particularly worried about the emergence of sectarian federal entities 9 problematic as they may be in terms of methodology public opinion polls have quite consistently reported a strong shiite desire to restrict federalism and even to move back to a unitary state formula an interesting indication of the general level of ignorance about federalism that must have prevailed during the october 2005 referendum 10 in fact even sciri has been at pains to present its scheme for a nine governorate shiite federal entity south of baghdad as a non sectarian one based on the amalgamation of governorates which just happen to be shiite in demographic composition although this would seem rather disingenuous in his propaganda talks in favor of the projected region abd al aziz al hakim has spoken about the holy goal hadaf muqaddas of implementing this project also emphatically sectarian are the signals sent by joint conferences of governors from all eleven shiite governorates where shiites have a substantial presence including baghdad which is constitutionally barred from becoming part of a larger entity and diyala where shiites are in a minority but in control of the provincial government 11 this leaves sciri as the most important promoter of sectarian federalism for the shiites but at the same time it underlines the relatively vulnerable position of this project among the shiite community as a whole non sectarian federalism in the far south the chronology of the emergence of specific non sectarian variants of federalism in the far south of iraq is a straightforward one pro federal ideas were current by late 2003 when the then basra governor wail abd al latif a shiite secularist promoted the vision of basra as a wealthy mercantile single governorate federal unit later shortly after the tal had been adopted governors in neighboring amara and nasiriyya were the moving forces behind a slightly larger project that would combine basra maysan and dhi qar into a three governorate federal entity to be known as the region of the south iqlim al janub this idea was supported by the next governor of basra sciri s hasan al rashid when he assumed office in august 2004 and it soon achieved a remarkable degree of cross party support in basra it was adopted by fadila and their coalition partners who sidelined sciri in local government after the january 2005 elections and was enthusiastically supported in conferences arranged by secular and religious leaders during the spring of 2005 12 the pro federal spring of 2005 culminated in southern demands that the central government should act on the provisions in the tal for creating a federal region of basra maysan and dhi qar this was however aborted in what appears to have been an act of internal shiite sabotage against the non sectarian federal aspirations of the far south in the first place it was the shiite dominated jaafari government that failed to act on the southern demands for a mechanism for forming a federal region secondly by removing the maximum limit on the size of federal entities in the constitutional drafts shiite legislators themselves overwhelmingly from the central parts of iraq effectively deprived the southerners of an obvious legal rationale for their project and finally sciri launched its competing project of a single sectarian federal region south of baghdad in august 2005 none of this served to obliterate the plans for a small scale federal entity in the far south however the fadila party in particular has continued to promote a small scale southern region although the idea of basra as a federal region of its own has apparently replaced the three governorate scheme but also tribal forces in maysan and dhi qar have expressed similar variants of opposition to sectarian federalism in the shape of non sectarian federal plans for the far south even some sciri leaders in basra remained more focused on basra than on the shiite super region as late as the summer of 2005 when the more sectarian plans of the party s politburo were well underway 13 and despite the combined efforts of sciri and the maliki government to remove the regionalist fadila from power in basra the non sectarian federalist theme has persisted even at the height of his confrontation with maliki in the summer of 2007 basra governor muhammad al waili emphasized the idea of a basra federal entity during a meeting with tribal sheikhs 14 whereas members of other parties within the fadila coalition that apparently had defected during the vote of no confidence against the governor earlier in the year also resumed propaganda with a clear basra regionalist dimension for example in the form of complaints that the central government had not given basra a sufficient quota during the annual distribution of pilgrimage permits 15 southern suffering with regard to the contents of the non sectarian federalism of the south one of its main characteristics has been a sense of a common destiny defined by historical experience and in this historical experience the theme of suffering takes center stage rather than being defined by any shared ethnic or sectarian heritage iraqi southerners claim uniqueness on the basis of a common myth of deprivation they hold that their fate has been different from that of all other iraqis including the shiites of central iraq and while this is often portrayed as a general historical trend most southerners point specifically to the recent experience of living in the battleground of two bloody wars the iran iraq war from 1980 to 1988 and the gulf war in 1991 as the formative experience that entitles them to special political demands examples of this sense of suffering are widespread in southern political rhetoric typical are the words of baqir yasin al tamimi a...
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