Extremism and Ethnicity Part VI - Conclusion and Outlook: Addressing Ethnicity As Key Factor In Long-Term Regional Crisis
In the final part of this series, Roland Benedikter discusses how the teachings of the model of regional autonomy provided by the Autonomous Province of South Tyrol-Alto Adige could help stabilize ethnic conflicts around the globe – including Post-ISIS Iraq.
Without doubt, there are many problems and difficulties built into any such attempt to install working minority protection in post-ISIS Iraq, particularly given its current state of transition which is not comparable to that of South Tyrol in the 1970s. In particular, we have to discern at least three problem clusters with which every attempt to use the South Tyrol model or similar approaches in post-ISIS Iraq will have to deal, and for which it would need to find specific, original solutions.
First, no neighboring “protecting power” should be involved in the autonomization process of certain Sunni (and other) areas in Iraq, comparable to the role of Austria in the case of the South Tyroleans. Although Iran’s weight is considerable at the moment and will probably remain so in the near future, neither Iran nor any of Iraq’s Sunni neighbors should seek to exert influence on the domestic differentiation process, with the exception of potential financial help under certain conditions. If autonomization is the goal, the will of Iraq’s new government will be decisive and the only positive intervention from the outside—besides from the Autonomous government of South Tyrol and its former Governor (Landeshauptmann) Luis Durnwalder who has repeatedly stated his availability to share experience from 25 years (1989-2014) of leadership, as well as political scientists interested in the case—should come not from nation states but from international and global bodies like the United Nations, the Assembly of European Regions (AER), the Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN), or the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Second, Iraq has a different culture of thinking about concepts like the nation, the individual, sub-groups of society, ethnicity, and authority as compared with the democracies of the West. This is due among other factors to the lack of an integrated Islamic democracy, which doesn’t yet exist anywhere in the world. In contrast, one of the crucial prerequisites for the solution of the South Tyrol dispute was that all powers that participated in the negotiations, including in particular Italy and Austria, were working democracies. In principle subgroups in democracies don’t fight each other, they negotiate. Iraq is formally a democracy, but still a rather authoritarian one in the view of its minorities. The long and difficult construction of a different democratic culture is needed, and this is probably the main challenge for the government after the victory over ISIS; it is certainly the strongest felt problem among Iraq’s minorities, more important than most practical procedural and institutional issues.
Third and last, there is today without doubt a global trend away from group rights towards individual rights triggered by modernization, globalization and the respective growing transnational and transcultural interdependency. This trend goes against the efforts towards formalization of ethnically justified autonomies and makes the establishment of international agreements on the issue not exactly easier.
These differences in context, settings and prerequisites constitute without doubt considerable obstacles against applying the South Tyrol model to today’s Iraqi realities. In addition, any such agreement will only work if all ethnic groups show understanding and a real commitment to reconciliation. Otherwise the Shiites will continue to dominate the Sunni population on the sheer basis of numbers, and that could lead to a situation where Sunnis may see democracy to be at their disadvantage, because “individualized” democracy is about the power of numbers—thus threatening to turn the Sunnis (and other minorities) against democracy once again.
What is the outlook?
First of all, it is one of the most urgent necessities of the present to navigate towards a new pragmatism in fighting and sustainably defeating extremism. Unfortunately, the new Iraqi government hasn’t yet openly manifested the will to compromise for a solution of the ethnic issue. Yet without a constructive approach there will be no solution for the period “after-ISIS,” regardless of any “best practice” example like the South Tyrol model. What is needed now is first of all—and most importantly—a new pragmatism from all sides involved. The responsibility of the Iraqi government after the probable victory over ISIS will be to pacify its minority regions in order to change things for the better. The Iraqi government under Haider al-Abadi shouldn’t waste this chance and prepare for it in advance, because it will not be there forever, but will most probably be limited to a certain window of time. To give certain minority-populated areas of Iraq autonomy that deserve the name under federal law would liberate Iraq from a permanent spine in its flank, and prove to the many domestic and foreign critics that the new government has started a new phase of reconciliation and development. It thus would be in Iraq’s best interest.
Second, while such a “grand solution” will not be fully satisfactory for either party involved, because it necessarily relies on compromise from all negotiating partners, it could provide a rational model of renewal and progress in order to become an at least temporary win-win arrangement for all sides. The South Tyrol autonomy model may provide proven steps to move the situation forward in the Sunni and other ethnic areas of post-ISIS Iraq. The new heads of the Iraqi government are, we may assume, not dreamers but inclined toward realistic models of pacification and joint development. While the Shia, Sunni, Kurd, and other representatives of ethnic groups continue to be under strong pressure not to compromise from their respective constituencies, progress will be made only by negotiating arrangements more likely to foster peace than the existing ones. As the reality on the ground teaches, the old model of “pacification through force” is inadequate for dealing with the deep and complex ethnic divisions we find in contemporary Iraq. Given that the South Tyrol model allows cautious progress based on compromise, “tolerance by law” and justice based on realism, the new Iraqi government should study it, and consider it as a viable path to a better future for post-ISIS Iraq.
What is the (intermediate) conclusion? It is threefold.
First, the dimensions where ISIS connections must be cut off must include ethnicity in the first place. Terrorist groups rely on networks. In the case of ISIS, besides economic, financial and political ones, they are ethnic. Cutting these networks off is crucial. It requires in-depth knowledge of the ethnic situation on the ground, and strategies to undermine the respective relationships. To effectively counter the bases of ISIS, a strategy to address the ethnic problem is needed that will require years to be effective. This strategy should include the implementation of ethnic and cultural autonomies in Iraq (and potentially also Syria, where ISIS dominance remains almost unaltered despite the loss of 25% of its territories in Iraq between the end of 2014 and April 2015) for example according to the proven model of South Tyrol territorial autonomy. To integrate ethnicities in Iraq and Syria, i.e. in core areas of the Muslim world, is crucial not only for the region, but increasingly also for world politics as Islam will continue to be the fastest growing religion; according to a Pew Research Center Study of April 2015, it will “leap from 1.6 billion (in 2010) to 2.76 billion by 2050 worldwide... At that time, Muslims will make up nearly one-third of the world's total projected population of about 9 billion people.”
Second, it was an error of the West not to push toward institutionalized autonomies for Iraq’s ethnic minorities right from the start and instead trust a weak arrangement based on the alleged good will of the “political process” which has proven to be unreliable in the Iraqi situation. Participation in the political process as envisaged by many Western strategists will not suffice without constitutional laws that fix rights and duties of ethnic minorities within and beyond federalization.
Third: Fighting extremism will require new task forces on ethnicity in the Western (and global democratic) command centers—not only for Iraq and Syria, but in a worldwide perspective. It will require a new inter- and transnational framework of military, political and economic experts to differentiate between nation and ethnicity, which in many cases don’t overlap, and to study the new amalgamation between ethnicity and religion which is becoming a driving force of anti-globalization in order to avoid new failures in nation-building. As of today, working groups on ethnicity are still tightly confined and have restricted influence. They have to be upgraded and interdisciplinarily enlarged, and they have to be situated in a more international and policy-oriented perspective, including best practice examples from Europe which remains the continent with the most concretely working examples in the field.
Modern democracies and international bodies like the U.N. are well advised to work more intensively on the topic, which may contradict to some extent the basic democratic mindset and (political) culture. But it is imperative in developing areas like Iraq in order to avoid the return of ISIS or anti-democratic movements like it. To restrict the growing influence of Iran in the country (already manifest in the recapture campaign of Tikrit which has strengthened the “Iran faction” and threatens to further shift balances in the region), the ethnic mosaic in Iraq has to be reordered and plurality has to be better institutionalized including tribal and ethnic groups. Legal and institutional measures aligned to local and regional contexts are required. They must be able to regulate the ethnic differences in the region, as related to some extent to religion, if the foreseeable victory over ISIS shall not become the source of new conflicts between the country’s ethnic groups.
Roland Benedikter is Research Scholar at the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies of the University of California at Santa Barbara. The author thanks Victor Faessel, Phd, Program Director of the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies of the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), for advising on this text. Read part V here.
Photo credit: Kurdistan Photo كوردستان / Source / CC BY-SA
