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Peter W. Galbraith, an Iraq expert who was instrumental in the establishment of the autonomous Kurdish zone in 1991, puts little faith in the idea that Iraq can evolve into a truly united country. The Coalition Provisional Authority, he says, has been proceeding on a false premise, “namely, the idea of Iraq as a unified country populated by people who think of themselves primarily as Iraqis.” The more practical option, he says, is a “loose federation” that allows each of Iraq’s main groups— the Shiites, Kurds, and Sunnis— to build “the system it wants.”

Galbraith, U.S. ambassador to Croatia from 1993-98, says the break-up of the former Yugoslavia affected his views of Iraq’s political future. “It’s almost impossible to have a unified and democratic state,” he says, “when people in a geographically defined part of it almost unanimously don’t want to be a part of it.” Galbraith is currently senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, D.C. He was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on May 18, 2004.

What’s the best approach for the United States and the Iraqis in the coming months?

Well, 45 days before the [June 30] handover we still don’t know to whom power will be handed over. In fact, it’s yet to be shown whether this is going to be a political administration or a technocratic administration or some combination thereof. But there is, in my view, a larger problem, which is that the Coalition [Provisional Authority] has been operating on an idea of Iraq that does not exist: namely, the idea of Iraq as a unified country populated by people who think of themselves primarily as Iraqis.

Other students of Iraq say there’s a very strong Iraqi nationalism, even in the Kurdish areas in the north. You dispute that, obviously.

One has to make a distinction between Kurdish Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq. I’ve traveled to every corner of Kurdistan over the last 20 years and know most of its leaders well. I’ve never met an Iraqi Kurd who would prefer to be part of Iraq if he thought independence was a realistic option. It’s my judgment, partly based on my experience in the Balkans in the 1990s, that it’s almost impossible to have a unified and democratic state when people in a geographically defined part of it almost unanimously don’t want to be a part of it.

The Kurds don’t want to be part of Iraq for very good reasons. Any of us in their shoes would feel exactly the same way. In Iraq, there have been 80 years of oppression culminating in genocide. But in the past 13 years, Kurdistan has been a de facto independent state and it has been very successful. Now, in the Arab parts of Iraq you do find some Iraqi nationalism, principally among the Sunni Arabs but also among some Shiites, but nationalism and identity are not necessarily the same thing.

Among the Shiites, I think there’s an overwhelming sense of their Shiite identity as opposed to their Iraqi or Arab identity. If you talk to them, what comes across is that their Shiite identity is most important to them, along with their sense that they have been a repressed group in the past but now, by applying principles of majority rule, ought to be ruling all of Iraq.

With regard to the Sunni Arabs, what the coalition did was destroy a system in which Iraq was ruled by a Sunni Arab strongman, and that can’t be put back together, nor should it. The Sunni Arabs have been more than compensated for their minority status by looking to connections with the [predominantly Sunni] larger Arab world. This is the basic premise of Baathism. I think what you see now is that they also look for connections with the world of Sunni Islam, which includes Islamic radical groups in the Sunni heartland.

As you wrote recently, the reality is that there isn’t going to be an independent Kurdistan, given the strong opposition of Iranians, Turks, and Syrians. So there has to be some kind of federalism?

Precisely. Independence is not a realistic option largely because of the opposition of Turkey, but to a lesser extent that of Syria, Iran, and the Arab world. Also, if you wanted to break Iraq up into three separate, independent countries, the territorial issues would become mutually divisive and, quite possibly, a source of conflict. I think the better alternative is a loose federation.

This means, in essence, to allow each of the groups the system it wants. In the case of Kurdistan, which has had 13 years of quasi-democracy and which aspires to be something akin to a Western-style secular democracy, allow it to have that system. In the south, I think the religious groups predominate. If in fact they prevail in the elections and want to create an Islamic state, then let them do so, but only in the south. And in the center, hope that, by having some kind of Sunni Arab state, this will provide sufficient security to the Sunni Arabs that a responsible leadership will develop. But I have to admit that, at least in the case of the Sunni Arab heartland, that’s a hope and there’s no reason to think that it will necessarily happen.

When you talk to Iraqis, does this idea resonate with anyone except the Kurds?

I think this is an approach that would be almost unanimously endorsed in Kurdistan. Among the Shiites, there’s some division of opinion. The Shiites asked for the possibility of creating a southern region that would have the same powers as the Kurdistan region, and that was incorporated in Iraq’s interim constitution, which allows any three governates to form a region. In the opposition period, that is, before the U.S. invasion, the Shiites also spoke of creating a separate Shiite entity. So there is some appeal to that. On the other hand, you have people like [Grand Ayatollah Ali al-] Sistani who insist on majority rule and who oppose provisions in the interim constitution that would give the Kurds or the Sunni Arabs a veto over the permanent constitution.

Please clarify. As I recall, the constitution says that any three governorates, or provinces, could veto some provision of the constitution?

Basically, if the constitution is rejected by any three governorates, it doesn’t come into effect. But this is a very standard, super-majority provision for constitutions. It existed for the U.S. Constitution, which came into effect only when ratified by nine of the thirteen states and only among the nine so ratifying. And, of course, amendments need [the approval of] two-thirds of each house of Congress and three-quarters of the states. But more importantly, an Iraqi constitution that is unacceptable to the Kurds or the Sunni Arabs is a formula for renewed conflict. So clearly, it must be acceptable to all three groups if it’s going to work.

That requires a certain amount of negotiation.

Absolutely. The fundamental problem, to make this very clear, is that not only is there a significant part of the population of Iraq that does not want to be Iraqi, namely the Kurds, but there are also very different visions of what Iraq should be, from the secular, more democratic, Kurdish vision in the north, to the Shiite, Islamic vision that seems to be predominate in the south. They are irreconcilable in the context of a unitary state. But they can work in the context of a very loose federation in which each can have what it wants.

What about control of oil revenues? The oil fields are located primarily in Shiite areas in the south and near Kirkuk in the north, which is outside the Kurd-administered zone.

There are really two issues: oil and security. With regard to oil, what both the Kurds and the Shiites proposed during the course of the debate over the interim constitution is that the oil should be owned and managed by the regions, but that there should be a mechanism for sharing the revenue in an equitable way. In effect, what this would mean is a redistribution of revenue from the south to the Sunni Arab territories and also to Kurdistan, at least depending on what happens to the Kirkuk oil field.

How can the issue of control of the Kirkuk oil field be resolved?

It ought to have its own special status, in which there’s power-sharing among the four communities there: the Kurds, Turkmen, Arabs, and the Christians who are Chaldean and Assyrians. If you bring Kirkuk into Kurdistan, which may be the decision that the majority of Kurds would like, you risk importing into Kurdistan a lot of trouble both with Turkey over the Turkmen and the Iraqi Arabs over the Arabs.

And the security issue?

The coalition has had this idea of creating a single Iraqi national army and other security institutions, but it’s unworkable. It demonstrably has failed as it did in Falluja and the south, where the army either refused to fight or melted away or in some cases joined the insurgents. But there are local institutions that are capable of providing security. In Kurdistan, the security is provided by the pesh merga, who are not a militia but an organized and effective military force. They were major American allies in the war. And as a result of their presence, Kurdistan is the most secure and peaceful region of Iraq, with just 300 coalition troops. Why would anybody want to change that?

If you try to bring the Iraqi army to Kurdistan, the Kurds will never accept this because they associate the Iraqi army with the repression of 80 years and the genocide of the 1980s. And frankly, administration [officials are] now facing up to this reality. They have agreed that Kurdistan will continue to have a very substantial internal security force, which will be responsible to the Kurdistan government. The reality is that the Iraqi army will never return there. The agreement on the internal Kurdistan security forces has already been reached, and the Kurds said that they will never accept the Iraqi army back and nobody is going to force them to do it.

There won’t even be a fig leaf of them being part of the army?

No. Actually, the Kurds proposed the creation of an Iraqi-Kurdistan national guard, which they would have created, officered, and appointed a commander [to lead], but which would have been under the control of Iraq’s national civilian military command. The administration rejected that idea and has now agreed to something that would be purely under the control and command of the local government.

What’s critical for the Kurds is security. Having their own military is not a first step to independence; it is a way to guarantee the security of their region. First, because they have no confidence in the effectiveness of central government institutions, and second, because they fear the central government institutions will be new engines of repression. Now in the south, the Shiite religious institutions have been providing security and other services from April of 2003. And it seems to me that if you allow the creation of a southern region and convert some of the militias associated with moderate Shiite leaders, like the Badr Brigade [the military wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI)], into the military force of the southern region, then they too can provide security and, under those circumstances, might be more likely to take on the likes of [rebel cleric] Muqtada al-Sadr.

That’s one of the weaknesses: Sistani has no troops, right?

Yes, but [the head of the SCIRI, Abdul Aziz al-] Hakim does. But as long as it’s a war between the United States and al-Sadr, al-Sadr gets new recruits and the influence of the moderates diminishes.

And the Sunni Arabs?

The first point I’d make is that we Americans like to think there’s a solution to every problem, and that isn’t necessarily so. The problem in the Sunni area is that there are no visible leaders who have a constituency, as best we can tell. And with the insurgency, which has both elements of regime dead-enders and now, increasingly, Sunni Islamic fundamentalists, it’s very hard for an indigenous leadership to develop. But what I would say is that if you had a Sunni entity, this provides some chance that some leadership will develop, but there’s no guarantee. But the other side of my argument is that even if that doesn’t happen, you would have limited the area the coalition needs to focus on to three places: the Sunni triangle, Baghdad, and Kirkuk.

Have you talked about your ideas with the administration? What kind of response did you receive?

No. I can say that the ideas have attracted a lot of interest in the uniformed military, in the Pentagon, who I think are desperate for some way out. I tried to talk about this a year ago to people like [Deputy Defense Secretary] Paul Wolfowitz, whom I’ve known well, but it was nothing they wanted to hear at that time.

Do you have any thoughts as to who would be a good head of the government during the interim period after June 30?

If you have one president, two vice presidents, and a prime minister, and the prime minister has almost all the power, close to a dictator, I would have thought you would want to have a Shiite prime minister, whether it’s somebody more technocratic or one of the more political Shiite leaders. In some sense, it would be better if it were somebody with more political clout; I don’t think Iraq is well-suited to a technocratic government. But whether consensus could be formed around Hakim or [Ibrahim al-] Jafari, the head of the Da’wa Party, I don’t know. It’s easier to see who the Kurdish vice president would be, if he would take it, which is [President of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan Jalal] Talabani. [The Leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party Massoud] Barzani doesn’t want it. And then, [former, pre-Baathist Foreign Minister Adnan] Pachachi is either the overall president or the Sunni vice president.