Integral Dynamics

Newsweek International interviewed French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, freshly returned from a visit to Baghdad (link).

The following quote got the most attention in the press,

Yes. I just had Condoleezza on the phone 10 or 15 minutes ago, and I told her, “Listen, he’s [= Nuri al-Maliki] got to be replaced.”

Nuri al-Maliki was not very pleased with this remark. 

But I would ike to focus on two other quotes from the interview,

Political matters are a history of settling scores among the big families and the big parties [of Iraq]. That’s what it’s like there. They’ve had 6,000 years of violence. So, finally, the daily death toll in Baghdad and in the country doesn’t interest them so much. And if you don’t understand that, you don’t understand anything. That’s one of the mistakes the Americans made. They understood nothing about what has happened in the country over such a long period of time.

Politics means settling scores among the big families and the big parties. That is quite different from what the United States hoped for: politicians fighting for a united Iraq.

And the next quote of  Kouchner is also illustrative of the tail wagging the dog.

They’re [= Kurdish leaders] in Baghdad, and that’s really something. These are people I’ve known for 30 years, who were in the mountains fighting for independence, and now they’re defending unity as Iraqi nationalists. That’s amazing. It’s very promising and at the same time stunning.

Kouchner is stunned that the Kurdish leaders are in Baghdad in support of Nuri al-Maliki’s government.

May be it is stunning but it is also very pragmatic, strategically speaking. Give sufficient support to the central government to keep it alive but not enough to make it strong.

In the mean time, set everything in place for an, if not formal then at least practical, autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq.

The Kurdish leaders probably do realize that going to fast in the direction of a semi-autonomous region would incite Turkey and possibly the United States to invade and attack the Kurdish region.

And while the big families and big parties are settling their scores and while the Kurds are creating their semi-autonomous region, the United States force is giving their lives to buy times for the Iraqi politicians to … what was it again?

And the daily death toll (of U.S. and Iraqi people) doesn’t interest them so much.

I wonder how this will reported by David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker in their report to U.S. Congress

IDEA of Open-Ended Issues

Based on the above I see the following impact on OEIs

• Iraqi Kurds seek independence, with indicators: High Impact / Undesirable; Almost certainly.
• Iraqi Kurds support political Iraq’s central government, with indicators: High Impact / Desirable; Even chance.

This gives the following Key Global Issues Monitor …