Iraq in the Light of Population Movement
April 22, 2008, 5:30-7:00PM
Cabot Intercultural Center, 7th Floor
Speaker: Noah Feldman, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
Part of the Myron Weiner Seminar Series on International Migration, organized by the Inter-University Committee on International Migration and cosponsored by the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies and the Tufts University Department of History

Summary

Noah Feldman, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, attempted to understand the situation in Iraq through the study of the various population movements. He described it as a story in three parts; the run-up to the invasion, what is happening on the ground now, and what is likely to happen in the future.

The run-up to the war in Iraq was unique in important ways. There was no discernable provocation towards the United States on the part of Iraq, and the US did not intend to colonize the country, for there was a plan for what was to come after the invasion. This odd set of dynamics was heavily influenced in important ways by Iraqi exiles. These influential exiles left Iraq principally in the 1960s and 70s because of the increasing totalitarianism of the Ba'ath party. While elites nearly always flee during periods of crisis what was unique about the Iraq situation was the role that they came to play after their departure. The central figure in the exile drama was Ahmed Chalabi. Through the course of twenty five years of exile politics Chalabi finally finds himself close to several members of the Bush administration. However, Feldman remained skeptical that he could really have proven to be decisive in this regard.

This exile community consisted of disparate groups. There were the Shia religious elite who spent their exile principally in Iran. They represent the core of what used to be SCIRI (Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq), now ISCI. Even in exile, they refused to betray Iraq, something demonstrated by their refusal to fight against Saddam during the Iran-Iraq war. This was important in maintaining their legitimacy.

How did this complex coterie of exiles come to influence US foreign policy? In short, it took 9/11 and what was seen as success in Afghanistan. While there were two camps in the Bush administration, roughly represented by Secretary of State Colin Powell counseling caution and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld counseling action, the latter held the bureaucratic momentum. There was an acknowledgement in the Bush administration that they didn't have the expertise needed to do everything that would be needed on the ground. They did however have Chalabi and a group of exiles who could offer that expertise. Chalabi had successfully made the argument that "Iraq is not like the Middle East, they have a real middle class, civil society, what they need to succeed. I am an Iraqi! I can be democratic!" Perhaps more importantly Chalabi offered the Bush administration his rolodex, which gave them access to exiles in Iran and the Kurdish exiles which allowed them to build a unified exile front arguing for invasion. These people were to become the political leadership.

The second act in Feldman's telling has been the war itself and the resulting occupation. One of the shocking developments was how quickly and how completely the Iraqi state collapsed. Part of the problem in reinstituting stability is that there was a tremendous disconnect between the leadership in Washington and the Coalition Provisional Authority under Paul Bremer. Where the administration had envisioned the exiles as constituting the backbone of any future Iraqi government, Bremer was dismissive of that notion, as he saw them as not having any legitimacy. Within a couple months he was begging them to be a part of the governing council. The delay helped create a situation in which violence spiked and a low level civil war took root. At this point there are two million internally displaced individuals within Iraq, with a very numbers of refugees in Syria and Jordan as well; which has created its own set of dilemmas in these countries from rising housing prices, to the other humanitarian problems.

While this is the situation now, Feldman attempted to look to what the future might look like. As far as he can tell all of the countries in the region have an interest in stability in Iraq. This wasn't true initially, especially in Syria and Iran, who felt the crosshairs on their backs after the initial invasion. Now Iran is sending half a million pilgrims to Iraq every year with the goal of upping that number to three million. The large number of Iranians is having a significant impact. Iran is however, more hesitant to allow Iraqis in as they fear that they will be saddled with the poorest Iraqis should the violence get worse. This reality creates an Iranian interest in at least a modicum of calm. The same can be said of Syria, where there is a desire to see Iraqi refugees repatriated. The larger message in Feldman's telling was that there can't be a brokered deal without the involvement of all of the nations in the region. This reality is sealed because of the significance of the movement of populations throughout the regions.

~ By Chris DeVito (F '09)

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