Sunnis and Iraq: A Nation Built from the Ground Up

Iraq’s Sunni community lives with a painful contradiction. Generations of Sunnis were raised, in theory at least, on the idea of a national state: a state founded on the rule of law and equal citizenship, one that rises above the country’s sects and is not the preserve of any one of them. Yet for two decades they have lived in a reality that gives the lie to that idea every day, so much so that many now ask whether the national state was something real that slipped away, or an illusion that has finally been exposed.

Nor is this a passing bout of political discontent, the kind that fades with a new government or a cabinet reshuffle. It reflects a structural crisis in the political system itself, a system built on dividing the state among Iraq’s communities rather than on citizenship.

The Case for Despair

This contradiction has given rise to a school of thought that declares the national project dead and dismisses any attachment to it as nostalgia that changes nothing on the ground. Its case is not a weak one. State institutions have been captured by sectarian parties that have turned ministries into private fiefdoms, and within them a deep state has grown up, one that owes more loyalty to powers beyond Iraq’s borders than to the constitution. Large sections of the Shia community have lined up behind their religious parties at every election. And federal institutions have failed to provide even the most basic services, from electricity and water to jobs. If this is what ‘the nation’ means, by what right can anyone blame Sunnis for giving up on it?

Much of this diagnosis is accurate, and it should not be played down. But it sees only half the picture, and then builds a sweeping conclusion on that half.

The Other Half of the Picture

The failure that has brought the state to this point has not hurt Sunnis alone. It has also shaken the Shia community’s faith in its own parties. The same parties that promised their followers a just state have given them nothing but cronyism and promises that are forever postponed, and people in the south are now asking the very question being asked in Mosul and Anbar: where has the country’s wealth gone?

Corruption is no longer just a charge levelled by opponents. Those in power now admit it themselves, saying that a genuine fight against it would bring down the entire political order. That admission is more dangerous than it sounds. It means the system can no longer reform itself, because reform would spell its end. What kind of project can only survive on corruption?

Across the wider region, the Iranian influence that the armed factions relied on has ebbed everywhere from Damascus to Beirut, to the point where their patron is itself isolated and locked in open confrontation. There is simply no comparison between Iran’s reach a few years ago and where it stands today. Meanwhile, international pressure is mounting on the Iraqi state to rein in these factions and strip away the cover they shelter behind.

This is the heart of the matter. These factions were never a homegrown force in our areas, drawing their strength from local society. Their presence was an economic one, feeding off the legitimacy of the state and using its grip on security to impose its authority over border crossings, contracts and markets. Take that legitimacy away, and what is left? At that point, each group will have no choice but to pull back to its own community and seek coexistence, and a political settlement, with its neighbours, because nothing else will be possible.

A Sunni Region: Solving the Problem, or Just Moving It?

If the national project is dead, the argument goes, then a federal ‘Sunni region’ is the alternative. Yet before we ask whether to accept or reject it, we should ask whether it even exists as a project. So far there has been no serious dialogue among the main provinces concerned, not on its shape, not on its powers and not on its substance. Time and again it is brandished as a bargaining chip, only to be shelved once the haggling is over. What drives it, for the most part, is a legitimate desire to escape pressure from others rather than any clear vision of how to govern.

It is no wonder that people cling to the slogan; when you are under pressure, you look for a way out, any way out. But if we do not know where an exit leads, it may turn out to be the entrance to an even worse predicament.

There is a further problem. A sectarian region would make exactly the same mistake as its opponents, imposing a reductive model on a complex reality. The mixed provinces are not ‘Sunni’ in the way the slogan assumes. They are home to communities that do not see themselves in a project like this, and that might well prefer entirely different arrangements. Governing them calls for something fundamentally different from running a homogeneous province. On top of that, every area has its own economic interests and its own links to other parts of the country, and these pay no attention to the lines the slogan draws. None of this can be solved by glossing over it or kicking it down the road.

The people of these provinces find themselves between two projects: a local one that solves their problems, and a grand one that turns those same problems into wars and disputes without end. It does not take much thought to see which they will choose.

Patriotism from the Ground Up

The way things are going, we are heading towards a federal centre whose institutions are weaker and whose decisions carry less weight, and towards provinces where local power structures play an ever larger role in running their own affairs. This trend is not unique to Sunnis. Shia areas will move in the same direction, caught in a tug-of-war between what the armed groups demand and what outside powers impose on the government.

Some will see this as disintegration, and so it will be, if it is left to chaos. Decentralisation driven by chaos hands every area to whoever is strongest in it. Decentralisation built by design gives an area the tools to govern itself without cutting it off from its neighbours or from Baghdad. The difference between the two is the difference between shaping our own destiny and having it shaped for us.

This is where the opportunity lies. We have more influence in our own provinces than we do in Baghdad. Putting our own house in order, with all of its communities, is the first step towards the nation, not a substitute for it. In practice, that means local councils that represent everyone, services delivered without discrimination, and understandings between communities on security, land and resources.

Experience has taught us that our communities will not accept patriotic slogans that put their interests and urgent needs on hold. A patriotism that does not begin in the province will never reach Baghdad.

We are not alone on this road. On the Shia side, there are forces that have broken with the sectarian quota system and refused to let the state serve as political cover for armed groups. The Kurds understand better than anyone that the stability of the Kurdistan Region depends on the stability of the state around it. The Region as a whole is exposed to pressure from its Arab surroundings and from neighbouring states, and protecting it matters far more to them than holding on to small pockets of land beyond its borders. A fractured Iraq, buffeted by competing pressures, protects no one. This is less an alliance of slogans than a convergence of interests. Economic stakes and security challenges build relationships in a way that abstract slogans never can.

Partnership with these forces should rest on a clear standard rather than on personalities or positions that shift with circumstance. Anyone who accepts a state with a monopoly on arms, refuses to see it carved up as spoils among the sects, and recognises the right of every area to run its own affairs is a partner in the national project, wherever they come from. Anyone who rejects these principles is not a partner, however loudly they trumpet patriotic slogans.

What Is Really at Stake

The battle is not between a dead nation and a promised region. It is a battle over the shape of the Iraq now taking form. Will it be organised around shared interests that begin in every province and meet in Baghdad, or around sectarian lines that slogans draw and ordinary people pay for?

It is too early to say which areas will draw closer together, or which will carry the most weight nationally. What is certain is that whoever puts their house in order first will have the biggest say when Iraq’s political scene is redrawn.

And if our mixed provinces can only govern themselves with all of their communities on board, who exactly is served by a project that has room for only one?