Make All of Iraq a No-Fly, No-Tank Zone

With virtually no warning, Saddam Hussein has managed to restore his de facto control over northern Iraq, a major setback in Washington’s long effort to contain him. Our Iraq policy is in tatters.

We must get back to basics: Saddam is the problem and must be publicly identified as such. As long as his regime rules, the region will never be stable; Saddam’s insatiable drive for both power and revenge will never diminish. Yet for a variety of political reasons, the Clinton administration has shrunk from explicitly identifying the toppling of Saddam as the essential goal, thereby confusing the picture and causing people in the region to believe that the U.S. actually prefers to keep Saddam in power, as a bogeyman to justify the American military presence and arms sales.

But world opposition to U.S. Iraq-bashing has been growing. We should consider a new two-faceted strategy to remove Saddam and protect the Iraqi people. The stick: Paralyze Saddam’s military power. He must not be allowed to use it to start further regional wars, kill his own people or stop coup attempts. All of Iraq should be a no-fly, no-drive zone. Movement of his tanks and armored personnel carriers and use of air defense would be unacceptable. Tank killing was impressively accomplished by allied aircraft during the Gulf War. Denied use of his military, Saddam is deprived of his basic instrument of repression and coercion and becomes far more vulnerable to overthrow.

The carrot to the people and to the region: Lift the sanctions, permit Iraq to sell oil and the economy be restored. Allow the French, Russians and others who yearn for business in Iraq to do it--except for military equipment. This denies Saddam further opportunity to cynically transfer the considerable pain of the sanctions directly to the Iraqi people, who suffer from insufficient food, a crippled private economy and lack of medicine. Iraqis must be relieved of this burden, which has raised widespread humanitarian concern even among Saddam’s enemies. Dwindling Turkish support for U.S. policy in the region would be strengthened if Turkey is no longer deprived of the many billions in lost oil revenues and trade with Iraq.

Not all states, especially sensitive Arab allies, will like stepped-up U.S. military pressure on Saddam, but they will be more accepting if the goal is explicit and action is swift; nothing has been more debilitating to our Iraq policy than unclear goals dragged out over five years, permitting maximum division and quarrels over aims and tactics among our many allies.

Bringing down Saddam is the priority, but we must also look beyond to laying a foundation for genuine regional stability, which will not happen until the Kurdish problem is dealt with. In our modern era, any state that cannot minimally meet the cultural and political aspirations of its minorities to enjoy basic security and autonomy is doomed either to perpetual civil insurrection and chaos or to being “held together” by the likes of Saddam Hussein. Yes, we favor Iraq staying together, but it is certain to collapse if it cannot achieve some semblance of decent governance in which Kurds, the majority Shiite population and the Sunni Arabs all have a proper voice and basic security.

In Iraq, only some kind of federal solution can likely provide this, yet many Iraqis erroneously see this as “partition.” Federalism--or else a Saddam--is the only way to keep multireligious, multiethnic societies together. We cannot otherwise hold failing states together. Similarly, Turkey needs to abandon its disastrous search for a military solution to its own Kurdish problem and permit its existing democratic institutions and free press to debate this taboo issue and find solutions that meet basic Kurdish needs there: the right to free expression of language, culture and regional self-rule. Most Kurds in Turkey do not want to secede--but they may do so in the future if their legitimate aspirations are treated as a security problem to be solved by military means. Turkey’s basically successful society is better equipped than any other state in the Middle East to peacefully resolve its minority problem within existing borders.

Of course it cannot be the U.S. role to “solve” the Kurdish problem, but we must be honest and forthright about what we believe the basic components of a successful solution might be: increased representative and democratic governance. Excuses not to do so abound. Some Gulf states are fearful that if representative institutions are reintroduced into Iraq, “democracy may spread” or the “Shiites may become stronger” or “Iran will move in.” We cannot allow these largely exaggerated concerns to dominate and paralyze clearsighted and principled handling of Saddam’s Iraq, which is hands down the biggest threat to stability and peace in the Middle East.