Plan Z for Iraq.

• Author: Etzioni, Amitai
• Position: From Arabia to Zion - Essay

MOST DISCUSSIONS about newly liberated states, such as Iraq, Kosovo or Afghanistan, start with what outsiders consider a preferred end product--a multi-ethnic, united, democratic, rights-respecting nation-state and one that is receptive to U.S. security interests. The question is then asked: How can the United States and its allies bring about these desiderata in these countries? Often, despite considerable human and economic costs caused by such overly ambitious designs, foreign powers continue to persist in their pursuit of utopian goals.

Discourse on Iraq in particular tends to vastly overestimate what foreign powers can accomplish, even if there was better planning, more boots on the ground and so on. Furthermore, such discussions too often assume that the players involved are unitary, sovereign nations, when in reality they are increasingly non-state actors. The real power players are various ethnic militias, tribal organizations and religious sects--in short, communities.

Recent developments in Iraq (as well as those in Afghanistan) suggest that one must initially work with forces loyal to local ethnic and confessional communities rather than the nation-state. Indeed, it is useful to remember, as Peter Galbraith notes, that:

Iraq has never been a voluntary union of its peoples. Winston Churchill, as Britain's colonial secretary, created Iraq from the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire in 1921.... Churchill later described Iraq's forced unity as one of his biggest mistakes. But because there is a compelling interest in maintaining the flame of an Iraqi state (not the least of which is to ensure the territorial integrity of all the neighboring states of the region), the disappearance outright of an entity called "Iraq" would not allow us to recover from the initial mistake of putting Iraq together in the first place.

We need an approach based in reality--one that tailors the institutions of the state to fit the sociological reality on the ground, rather than trying to force that reality into an imported, precut outfit. Unfortunately, a major example of this highly unrealistic approach is the continuous attempt to convert the Iraqi militias (or Afghanistan's warlord armies) into unified national forces. This is highlighted by the folly of deliberately positioning Iraqi Shi'a militias as security units in Sunni areas and vice versa--ostensibly to build up their national identification and loyalty. The fact of the matter, though, is that the first and foremost loyalty of most Iraqis is to their ethno-religious community, not to their state.

A community-based security approach sets the conditions under which most of the work for formatting a new Iraq can be carried out by the major players in that nation--the three main ethno-religious communities. This idea was championed as early as 2003 by Leslie Gelb and recently by Senator Joseph Biden (D-DE). It would reduce the incentive for sectarian armed conflicts, provide a setting for political give-and-take and greatly curtail the need for...