Grieving the Victims of US Sanctions

Sanctions are defined as the “withdrawal of customary trade and financial relations for foreign- and security-policy purposes.” The use of sanctions against countries perceived to be a threat to American interests began soaring in popularity in the 1990s, which was known as the “sanctions decade.” Since 9/11,  sanctions have become more precise in their targeting of individuals and entities, as a way to supposedly minimize the impact on civilians. They are utilized by both major political parties in the US and are painted as a more peaceful alternative to war; physical violence is not inflicted upon these target countries and American citizens can’t even feel their reverberations. The US currently has country-wide sanctions against Iran, North Korea, Syria, Sudan, Cuba, and Venezuela; more narrowly framed sanctions against individuals and entities have also been implemented, affecting an additional 27 countries. They are seen as the ultimate tool for enacting American interest and putting pressure on regimes the US would like to see ousted, while still being able to claim that the US cares about “peace” and foreign civilians- it’s a win-win for politicians and their polling numbers. 

However, while sanctions are painted as an ideal alternative to war, as it does not produce immediate physical violence, the damage that they create cannot be understated. Former UN Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali has described economic sanctions as a “blunt instrument” that very much harms civilians and causes long-term damage to a country’s ability to function. This article’s intention is to elaborate upon this claim and analyze sanctions and their effects on various countries through the lens of Judith Butler’s grievability. This ethical position argues that every life should be worthy of grief and that this recognition serves to create a more equal society. As Butler says in The Force of Nonviolence: “To be grievable is to be interpellated in such a way that you know your life matters; that the loss of your life would matter; that your body is treated as one that should be able to live and thrive, whose precarity should be minimized, for which provisions for flourishing should be available.” Sanctions are in direct violation of this principle; their implementation suggests that the lives of certain people, i.e. foreign civilians, especially those of target countries, are not of a particular value, and therefore not worthy of grief. Additionally, sanctions maintain a certain power dynamic that produces and exacerbates the precarity of the target country’s situation. As I will attempt to demonstrate, the impact of sanctions is extremely damaging which suggests that violence does not just manifest in physical acts of war, but also in the economic, political, and social institutions of a country. 

Iraq in the 1990s

In the 1990s, the United States imposed a number of country-wide sanctions in order to pressure certain regimes- this included Iraq. The United States used the UN Security Council to implement multilateral sanctions on Ba’athist Iraq, led by Saddam Hussein. These sanctions, coupled with unilateral sanctions from the US, created the most “comprehenseive embargo of a country since at least World War II.” Though the reported intent of these sanctions was to pressure Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait and to disclose the presence of any weapons of mass destruction, the results were disproportionately felt by civilians. Instead of ahcieving the desired results, these robust sanctions decimated Iraqi society and infrastructure. Prior to the sanctions, Iraq had one of the highest standards of living in the Middle East and boasted modern infrastructure. Contrary to what one may believe about 20th-century Iraq, it had an extensive healthcare system, water treatment facilities, and a school and university system. Additionally, Iraq had a significant reliance on imported food and technology. This meant that the all-encompassing trade sanctions decimated both the Iraqi economy and basic access to necessary goods. 

The sanctions made Iraqi civilians susceptible to food and water shortages, which were accompanied by the total collapse of the healthcare system. These food shortages were a direct result of UN sanctions, as Iraq heavily relied on imports of food which were subsequently cut off by the international community. Approximately 70 percent of calories in Iraq were imported thus meaning that the sanctions severely impacted the nutrition of Iraqis. While reports of malnourishment, especially among children, conflict with one another, it can be agreed that the sanctions had a very real impact on food access which subsequently led to health problems. Water has also been in short supply; the Gulf War damaged the general infrastructure of Iraq, including water pumping and treatement facilities. The country was unable to access the technology and engineering resources needed to fix these facilities as they no longer had access to the imported technology. This made water access extremely unreliable as well as unsafe due to the fact that water could no longer be properly treated. 

Furthermore, the decline in both quality and quantity of water sources reportedly led to the spread of infectious diseases such as cholera. However, the health problems that were produced by the food and water shortages could not be treated as the health-care system collapsed during this period. Firstly, the physical hospitals and medical centers can no longer be attended to as the financial resources to fix them are simply not there; access to the technology that could have once fixed medical infrastructure was no longer present. Secondly, the sanctions completely stopped the import of medical equipment and materials which resulted in a shortage- things such as stethoscopes were in extremely limited supply. Perhaps most damning is the fact that Iraqi doctors were also operating on outdated knowledge; within the ten years of sanctions, no new medical literature entered the country as it was specifically prohibited by the sanctions. 

While the Iraqi sanctions were eventually lifted in 2003, the damage was done. Iraq’s infrastructure and economy were in ruins. Furthermore, it is up for debate as to whether the sanctions even achieved their goal. However, that point is arguably irrelevant- what matters is the very real toll these sanctions took on Iraqi civilians. The impact of these sanctions on Iraqi society demonstrates the ways in which violence can manifest. While the US and the UN didn’t drop bombs on Iraq, at least not until the invasion of Iraq in 2003, they were still inflicting great violence- the tools for doing so just simply took on another shape. How is it not violent to cut off a country’s food supply? Or their access to clean water? Or medical supplies? Oftentimes, violence is only viewed through a lens of war, when in reality it has implications that transcend this purely physical understanding. Ignoring these implications is deliberate as it allows the US, as well as the UN, to continue pursuing foreign policy interests, which are quite frankly imperialist in nature, without facing legitimate consequences. The actions of the US and the UN prove that they assigned a lesser value to the lives of Iraqis. Taking Judith Butler’s grievability into account, it is important to understand that Iraq’s civilians are worthy of grief; to acknowledge their grievability is to acknowledge their value as humans. 

Venezuela

The US has a total embargo on Venezuela, which is coupled with sanctions from the EU. The goal of these sanctions is to oust President Nicolas Maduro, which has been a bipartisan effort in the US. The sanctions were announced in 2015 by President Barack Obama; as a result, foreign companies stopped doing business and Venezuela’s foreign accounts were closed. In 2017, President Trump then imposed an oil embargo that prevented the purchase of petroleum from the state oil company, PDVSA; this came alongside the confiscation of the US subsidiary CITGO. This has had a huge impact on Venezuela’s economy and the government’s capacity to function as it gets the majority of its revenue from oil.

Once again, the very real, and violent, impact of sanctions has been felt across Venezuelan society. One report estimates that 40,000 people may have died as a result of sanctions limiting access to food and medicine. In a similar vein as Iraq in the 1990s, the sanctions on Venezuela has destabilized the country’s economy and prevented access to basic necessities. It should be noted that US sanctions don’t explicitly prevent the import of food or medicine. However, Venezuela is very much dependent on oil revenue as a source of hard currency that private and public businesses can use to import goods. Once again, the specific undermining of Venezuela’s oil industry has led to a sharp decrease in imports; the average monthly public import dropped to $500 million in 2019 and subsequently dropped to $250 million in 2020. There are approximately 300,000 people who are at risk as there is a lack of access to medicines or treatment as a result of sanctions. The health-care sector has taken a major blow mainly due to the fact that the government has reduced its expenditure for the public health-care system; this is arguably a result of the fact that the government can no longer raise the necessary revenue due to the US’s oil embargo.

The Grievability of Those Impacted

“Peace” advocate Gene Sharp defines nonviolent action as “a sanction and a technique of struggle involving the use of social, economic, and political power, and the matching forces in conflict.” However, as previously demonstrated, there is a significant issue with this definition of nonviolent action and the way the concept of sanctions is perceived. The idea that sanctions can be qualified as “nonviolent” ignores the very real history of their use. While Iraq and Venezuela are only two examples of the impact of sanctions, the fact that both countries have experienced extreme shortages in basic necessities, thus causing thousands of deaths, is not “nonviolent action.” It is very real and very violent. Violence is not just acts of warfare, but it also manifests in the way economic, social, and political power is wielded. The fact that sanctions are perceived as nonviolent allows the US to engage in imperialism without facing legitimate criticism or consequences. And it should be noted that sanctions are an example of modern-day imperialism- the US has made it clear on many occasions that they utilize sanctions in an effort to oust regimes that they deem a threat to US interests. While these regimes are certainly flawed, the idea that the US has the right to dictate the internal affairs of a country, and use the deaths of civilians to do so, is imperialism. 

Furthermore, the use of sanctions allows the US to deny their responsibility for the deaths of thousands. These deaths go ungrieved in the international community which is precisely the point. As Judith Butler says: “After all, if a life, from the start, is regarded as grievable, then every precaution will be taken to preserve and to safeguard that life against harm and destruction.” Grievability essentially assigns worth to lives that have been historically marginalized, both in domestic and international terms. The fact that lives in the Global South, especially in countries deemed enemies of the US, are not seen as worthy of grief allows the US to impose these sanctions without care for their impact. If the US did start to care about these lives and respect their inherent value, they would have to stop their use of sanctions and seek out solutions that would actively protect their lives against “harm and destruction.” That would mean that US foreign policy would have to be completely reformed. Grievability is not in the interest of the US; to embrace such an ethical position would be anithetical to the US’s commitment to safeguarding American interests, which are often rooted in imperialism. However, this makes grievability of the utmost urgency. To embrace this position would be an embrace of an entirely different world, where those in the Global South are deemed valuable and therefore worthy of protection. This would challenge pre-existing power dynamics and create the incentive for solutions that prioritize legitimate self-determination and basic human rights.

The Struggle to Accommodate Refugees in the Global South

The nations accommodating the unprecedented number of refugees in the world do not possess the resources required to adequately meet the challenge before them. The host countries of refugees face a monumental task, no matter their circumstances. Migrant networks share information about modes of transportation and border-permeability. This allows ethnic and religious communities to reunite, even after forceful displacement from their countries of origin. Once refugee communities begin to coalesce in new cities, those cities are ethically obligated to attend to the needs of the displaced population that they are now accommodating. Federal governments may develop systems to distribute these communities to different cities throughout a nation in the face of a substantial influx, but this tests cities’ public infrastructure in cases of unprecedented numbers or extended duration. Destination cities for refugees are obligated to provide vocational training, labor market integration, social housing, security for such housing, language courses, health services, and supplemental programming such as athletic and cultural events. The strain that accommodating these needs puts a government under depends on the capabilities of that government.

Meeting these needs constitutes an enormous task for any city, but this challenge is especially pronounced for governments in the Global South. While Western nations are entangled in policy debates concerning how many refugees they should allow across their borders and how to properly integrate refugee communities into society, nations of the Global South struggle to muster the financial means to materially support refugees already within their borders. Nations in the Global North have the luxury to debate their moral imperative to support refugees. Nations of the Global South are not afforded such a choice. Countries of the subaltern, meaning those pushed to the social, economic, and political periphery in postcolonial theory, already spurned by global economic systems, presently support a disproportionate portion of the global refugee population. The number of refugees in the world has increased exponentially during the 21st century, rising from 21.2 million in 2000 to 40.8 million in 2015. The weight of this substantial increase in refugees rests squarely upon the back of the already strained governments of the Global South, with the Database for Institutional Comparisons in Europe reporting that the Global South currently hosts “86 percent of all the refugees registered worldwide and 99 percent of all internally displaced persons.” The approximately 35,000,000 refugees currently accommodated by nations in the Global South mark a stark contrast to the 50,000 refugees that Donald Trump mandated be allowed to enter the United States, the lowest number since 1986. The restricted resources commanded by governments of the Global South result in initiatives that often focus solely on the immediate needs of refugees, ignoring factors that are key to fostering long term stability. It is important to explore and understand the struggles that governments of the Global South face when accommodating refugees in order formulate the policy options available to them.

Context: Refugee Support in the Global North

The intense fiscal challenge of supporting refugees is best illustrated by an examination of the systems used by Western nations, such as Germany, to properly support their refugee population. The German model of refugee accommodation is highly bureaucratic, which, although providing some of the most comprehensive care for refugees, also comes with high administrative costs. This intense institutional support relies on Germany’s economic strength and rigorous tax structure, thus inhibiting nations of the Global South from replicating the system. Germany became an ersatz-haven for Syrian refugees in 2015 after invoking the “sovereignty clause” of the European Union’s 2013 Dublin Regulation (Regulation No. 604/2013, Dublin III Regulation) to opt out of relocating asylum seekers to their country of first entry into the EU. This was enacted to ease the challenges that accommodating the influx of Syrian refugees placed on EU border nations such as Greece and Italy.

Germany’s economic strength allows it to finance multiple levels of government agencies responsible for supporting its refugee population. Upon arrival, Germany’s Federal Office of Migration and Refugees (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge) allots refugees to different states, and then municipalities, depending on the local tax revenue and population. State governments cover the costs of schooling, initial registration, and the creation of reception centers. Municipal governments provide for long-term housing, health care, and integration measures. This spurred some municipalities to create their own further municipal offices to attend to such needs, such as Freiburg’s “Office of Migration and Integration” (Amt für Migration und Integration), which handles issues such as social welfare, volunteer coordination, and labor market integration. Immediately after applying for asylum in Germany, refugees are issued identification paperwork (Aufenhaltsgestattung), and receive social housing, government welfare, and employment assistance while their application are processed. During their first months after arrival, refugees live in a reception center where food and clothing is provided for, and they receive an additional roughly €150 per month for living expenses. Soon after, refugees move into social housing (Wohnnheime) with social workers on site, and can receive roughly €350 per month to cover all of their living expenses. If their application for asylum is accepted, Germany issues refugees a residence permit (Aufenhaltserlaubnis), allowing refugees to continue to receive government welfare funds for more than a year. Even if a refugee’s application for asylum is rejected, Germany does not deport them from the country. Instead, refugees receive toleration papers (Duldung) that allow them to remain in the country, still residing in social housing and receiving welfare funds, but for a more limited amount of time. This highly bureaucratic system adeptly attends to the needs of refugees arriving in Germany, yet it relies on strong federal and local governments supported by an impressive economy. This model of refugee accommodation cannot be replicated by countries of the Global South that do not have the same immense resources at their disposal, and thus a different approach is necessary.

The number of Asylum-Seeker welfare recipients per 1,000 inhabitants, demonstrating the strength of the German government support system. From the Brookings Institution.

Iraq: Supporting Internally Displaced Persons while in Conflict

The challenges that Iraq’s government faces diverge sharply from those supported by the well-funded German system, with the colossal challenge of supporting an internally displaced population resulting from decades of conflict and exacerbated by the emergence of Daesh in recent years.  Iraq’s history with internally displaced persons (IDPs) can be divided into three separate phases. Phase One encompasses the roughly 1.2 million people displaced by nearly four decades of Saddam Hussein’s rule in Iraq. Beginning as early as 1974, Hussein engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing and intentional displacement that was primarily enacted against the Kurdish population in the country’s north and the Marsh Arabs in the country’s south, in an attempt to homogenize and Arabize the nation. Phase Two of Iraq’s IDP struggle coincides with the United States’ invasion of Iraq in 2003 and Hussein’s departure from power. During this time, the American invasion displaced 200,000 new Iraqis, while another 500,000 simultaneously returned to their former homes following the end of Hussein’s rule. The majority of new IDPs created during this phase resulted from the sectarian violence between 2006 and 2008, ignited by the bombing of the sacred Shi’a Two Askari Imams in Samara. Retributive violence against Sunni Muslims increased the number of new Iraqis displaced during the second phase to 1.6 million people by the middle of 2008. After this new swath of sectarian-provoked displacements, the International Organization for Migration estimated that the total number of IDPs in Iraq reached 2.8 million. Finally, Phase Three of displacement in Iraq began with the fall of Fallujah to Daesh in 2014 that displaced more than half a million people in Iraq’s Anbar province, after which the number of IDPs skyrocketed due to the prolonged conflict with the terrorist organization. That same year, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reported that Iraq suffered the greatest number of new displacements in the world, with at least 2.2 million new displaced persons. The crisis has not relented in recent years, with the current IDPs numbering 3.2 million Iraqis, roughly one in ten people in the nation. The number of IDPs in Iraq reached an all-time high around June 30th, 2017, as the military effort to retake the city of Mosul in the Ninewa province concluded. More than one million people were displaced in the Ninewa province in total, and the same number of people in the Mosul area were estimated to be inaccessible to humanitarian aid. The Iraqi government is ill-equipped to support such a large internally displaced population while simultaneously fighting Daesh.

During the summer of 2017, an amalgamated 7.3 million people in Iraq were vulnerable and in need of required assistance across the country. Currently, in the Salahuddin province, municipal authorities have evicted nearly 600 families of Daesh militants from their homes. Despite condemnations from Iraqi politicians across the country, the policies of the Salahuddin province only exacerbate the problem of IDPS within their own country. Children comprise half of the recently expanded displaced population, with more than half a million forced to miss more than a year of education as a result of their displacement. In refugee camps, a scant 50 percent of children are attending school, and that number drops to 30 percent outside of refugee camps. Missing crucial education and at risk of physical harm, sexual violence, and radicalization, the situation of these children creates yet another challenge for the success of an Iraqi state in the future. In 2015, only 9 percent of Iraqi IDPs lived in refugee camps in Iraq, with between 60 and 90 percent living in private accommodations such as rented rooms and host families, and the rest in critical shelter arrangements such as former schools and hospitals. The large population of IDPs in Iraq living in private accommodations is characteristic of the distinctly different struggle of refugees in the Global South, for this population faces eviction if they are unable to pay for their accommodations. The Iraqi government attempts to mitigate the costs of such accommodations, providing an initial cash payment of 1 million Iraqi dinars (approximately $850) for each displaced family. However, this amount can only cover the cost of a meager few weeks of food and shelter, and this hardship is intensified by the fact that 40 percent of the new IDPs in Iraq have not received this payment. A large amount of the IDPs moved to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, due to the region’s more stable economy and a history of accepting religious minorities, causing the population of the region to swell by 30 percent. This unprecedented increase in population puts host families under intense strain, leading to negative coping mechanisms such as child labor and early marriages. The tenuous status of IDPs in Iraq and the lack of reliable infrastructure to support the displaced community resulted in a paucity of necessary health care resources, culminating in a cholera outbreak that pervaded 15 of the 18 governorates in 2015. The protracted nature of conflict in Iraq destroyed local infrastructure and created successive waves of IDPs that the state government is unable to adequately support.

The displaced persons of Iraq who fled the country overwhelmingly reside in other nations of the Global South that have similarly scarce means of supporting them. In 2008, there were roughly 1.5 million Iraqi refugees living in Syria, 500,000 in Jordan, and 250,000 more in other countries. Syria was the primary destination for Iraqi refugees due to its close geographic proximity, which allowed Shi’a Iraqis to avoid the majority-Sunni Anbar province when fleeing sectarian violence after 2006. Furthermore, the Syrian government allowed Arab nationals, including Iraqis, three months’ stay without documentation, during which time they could apply for residence permits. Syria, as a whole, had a history of accepting the Shi’a population and had a more established health and education infrastructure. Syria also possessed a larger informal economy than other destinations, which afforded greater work opportunities to displaced Iraqis. But as civil conflict flared in Syria, the Iraqi refugee population was displaced once again, with the UNHCR reporting only 44,000 Iraqi refugees still in Syria as of 2013.

In Jordan, the 500,000 Iraqi refugees face an even more difficult struggle to achieve legally recognized residency. The two most common ways of attaining stable status in Jordan are to either receive a residency permit (iqama) or a work contract. Yet to receive a residency permit in 2003, Iraqi refugees were required to deposit $150,000 into a Jordanian bank account. Although this amount was later lowered to $20,000, only 25,000 Iraqi refugees acquired a residency permit by 2011. Attaining a work contract is an even more arduous process, as it requires mobilizing significant social capital (wasta) such as familial and political connections, such that only 2,000 Iraqis have received work contracts. These struggles resulted in 80 percent of the wealthiest bracket of Iraqis receiving residency permits, as opposed to 22 percent of the poorest bracket, further stratifying an already divided community. Between the conflict in Syria and a regressive residency system in Jordan, the governments of the Global South are ill-equipped to accommodate the refugee populations that they are forced to support.

The government of Iraq is unable to support the vast internally displaced population within its borders due to the ramifications of decades of conflict, such as eroded public infrastructure, significant brain-drain, and inadequate documentation. The capacity of the state in Iraq has been under assault since the time of Saddam Hussein, who expelled all non-Ba’athist government officials. This problem was further aggravated by the de-Ba’athification enacted by the American government after its ouster of Hussein that removed most remaining experienced government officials from power, compounded by American efforts undertaken to decentralize the Iraqi government. During this time, opportunistic militias emerged and seized the assets of institutions and extorted the local population. As these militias looted both hospitals and universities, the system of rentierism that had prevailed under Hussein collapsed, leaving the government unable to repair the devastated public infrastructure. What remains of the oil industry that previously supported the government is wrought with rampant corruption, further hampering state capabilities. The middle class of Iraq is disappearing, resulting from hyperinflation and targeted attacks. In 2007, a New York Times report expounded that 26 out of 30 students surveyed at the University of Baghdad intended to leave the country to start their careers. The militias took advantage of the state’s weakness and specifically targeted the middle class for kidnappings, believing that they would be more able to pay a ransom. In 2006, there were more than 30 kidnappings a day in Baghdad, and the majority of those targeted were academics, lawyers, and media professionals. The shrinking intellectual community and middle class in Iraq poses a direct threat to state capabilities in the future, for it is this population’s skills and tax dollars that are key to rebuilding a stable state. The health infrastructure in the country is similarly eviscerated, with many hospitals ransacked indiscriminately. The Iraqi Red Crescent reported that more than half of the nation’s doctors fled the country between 2003 and 2007. Daesh’s rise both contributed to the further destruction of state infrastructure, and prevented the repair of infrastructure previously damaged in sectarian violence. What remains of the state operates on a basis of innate discrimination, with the occupying Kurdish forces in Ninewa and Diyala preventing Sunni Arabs from returning to their homes. In Baghdad, security forces are equally suspicious of Sunni Muslims and even ignore crimes perpetrated against them. According to victims’ reports, Sunni homes have been burned, and eight Sunni men were blindfolded and executed behind a school in 2015 without any official investigation. Even when operating as intended, the government faces the obstacle of a dearth of documentation among IDPs, which prevents IDPs from utilizing what services do exist. The Iraqi legislation (Resolution No. 36, 1994) guarantees and protects citizens’ right to their property, yet without any documentation verifying their right to their property, IDPs may be unable to reclaim their homes. Government policies that diverge from the priorities of IDPs exacerbate this problem. While the International Organization for Migration reports that 87 percent of IDPs experiencing extended displacement hope to integrate in the communities that they were displaced to, government policy offers better financial support for IDPs returning to their homes and de-registering as IDPs. Thus, due to its lack of financial means, collapsing social infrastructure, and improper policy priorities and implementation, the Iraqi government requires new policy options to adequately support its internally displaced population.

Internally Displaced Persons in Iraq, as of June 2015, demonstrating the scale of the internally displaced population Iraq is supporting while still in conflict. From the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center.

Syria: Unprecedented Scale

Governments accommodating the Syrian refugee population face a struggle that similarly diverges from those faced by Western governments, due to the enormity of the displaced population in need of assistance. Currently, more than half of Syrians are displaced. The displaced population consists of 6,300,000 IDPs within Syria and 5,500,000 refugees who fled the country. Of the refugee population, one million have applied for asylum in Europe, with the two largest host nations, Germany and Sweden, respectively receiving 300,000 and 100,000 applications for asylum. Yet, the number of refugees in Germany and Sweden combined is still less than the number of refugees hosted individually by Turkey, Lebanon, or Jordan.

Displacement in Syria began with a drought that lasted from 2006 to 2010. According to Francesca de Chatel in Middle Eastern Studies, “the government’s failure to respond to the ensuing humanitarian crisis…formed one of the triggers of the uprising, feeding a discontent that had long been simmering in rural areas.” Fifty years of poor water management combined with aggressive agricultural development efforts plunged the northeast region into poverty as groundwater reserves emptied. Syria suffered drought during almost half of those fifty years. This drought caused 800,000 people to lose their jobs, sparking widespread displacement. The drought also heightened the pressure on the central government and exacerbated pre-existing tensions. In 2011, civil war broke out after the Syrian public learned of the government’s torture of peaceful protesters and Syrian government forces responded to massive protests by laying siege to Dara’a. As opposition forces dissolved into hundreds of groups, the constantly shifting frontlines of battle displaced constantly growing segments of the local population. The civil conflict lengthened and was complicated by the emergence of Daesh and the fracturing of opposition forces. As a result, repeated displacements became commonplace, with some refugees forcefully displaced up to 25 times before they could finally find refuge. Due to the devastated social services and quickly depleted personal resources, displaced persons entered into a destructive pattern of cyclical displacement, forcing refugees to rely entirely on scarce international aid. Refugees are sheltered in woefully inadequate camps, where the International Displacement Monitoring Center reports that “fifty-seven per cent of collective centres do not have sufficient water, 50 per cent lack sufficient sanitation facilities, and 54 per cent are overcrowded.” Early in the conflict, restrictions prevented external humanitarian access. Even now, it is difficult to obtain reliable data due to intentional inaccuracies from Syrian authorities, contrasting figures from independent sources, and vast areas controlled by violent insurgents where data collection is impossible. This lack of reliable information is especially pronounced for the population of ar Raqqa, where military operations to liberate the city from Daesh control have recently concluded. The population of ar Raqqa, however, is in critical need of help. More than half of the city’s population was displaced and the majority of the city was destroyed by the relentless shelling of American and Syrian forces. The size and extent of conflict in Syria has created the largest humanitarian crisis of our time, with governments of the Global South supporting the majority of the refugees created by the conflict.

The Syrian refugee population in other countries of the region has tested government institutions within the Global South. An examination of these governments’ successes and failures to provide services is essential to recommending the best policy options for the future. In Jordan, official numbers report around 650,000 Syrian refugees reside. This number is likely incomplete, for King Abdullah II declared at the Plenary Session of the United Nations’ 70th General Assembly that Syrian refugees compose 20 percent of Jordan’s population. Syrian refugees in Jordan utilize health services at a high rate and, when combined with the number of refugees in the country, Jordan’s public health infrastructure is under dangerous duress. A survey by UNHCR found that 86.6 percent of families who needed health care in the month prior to their survey sought care. The high cost of these health services, however, inhibits some refugees from utilizing them. Further refugees are precluded from receiving the care they need after the government of Jordan responded to the heightened pressure on their health infrastructure by terminating free access to health services for refugees in 2014. The switch to subsidized health services in Jordan has contributed to the deterioration of the economic status of refugees in Jordan. This results from inadequate international support for the Jordanian government, for while supporting a refugee population that accounts for 20 percent of their population, the Jordanian government has footed the $53 million bill for refugee care, while only $5 million in support was provided by UN agencies. The congestion of health facilities became a source of social tension in Jordan, with 60 percent of Jordanians and 39 percent of Syrians reporting it as the main source of tensions between the groups. This overcrowding is exemplified by the situation in the Mafaq Government Hospital in close proximity to the Za’atari refugee camp, wherein of the 16 neonatal incubators, 12 are used by Syrian refugees, two are used by Jordanians, and the final two are used other foreign nationals. Such struggles make it clear that Jordan’s current policies are inadequate to support the large number of Syrian refugees within the nation.

In Lebanon, the situation of Syrian refugees is similarly fragile. Official numbers report 1 million Syrian refugees in the country, yet the number could be as high as 1.5 million. The small nation is struggling to support the refugee population it now hosts. The nation suffers from a marked decline in trade and tourism due to the Syrian conflict, with its national debt totaling 141 percent of GDP in 2013, and annual GDP growth plummeting from 10 percent in 2010 to 1 percent in 2014. Rent in the country skyrocketed due to limited supply and increased demand from the refugee population, causing a 44 percent increase in rent between 2012 and 2013. This increase in rent has proven catastrophic for both Syrian refugees and poor Lebanese. Within the refugee population, roughly one third do not have the proper documentation to stay in the country, and 92 percent are working on the black market, subject to exploitative underpay and devoid of state regulated labor protections. The Lebanese government uses the financial support it does receive “to directly provide immediate needs to the affected populations, contributing to their dependency and not using their inherent capacities,” according to scholars in the Risk Management and Health care Policy journal. This further prolongs the damaging circumstances for refugees by offering no mode of exit. By failing to offer opportunities for refugees to secure upward mobility, Lebanon’s policies fail to adequately address the problems refugees face.

In Turkey, close proximity and positive border policies have contributed to the formation of the largest Syrian refugee population, numbering approximately 3,250,000. The undocumented incorporation of Syrian laborers into the Turkish economy has forced refugees into chronic poverty, putting them in an acutely precarious position with ever decreasing means of returning home. Despite collaborative efforts by the Turkish government and the European Commission, Syrian refugees living in Turkey are not offered the capability to support themselves. The support provided by the European Neighborhood Policy intends to assuage migration into the European Union, but this results in international support operating on skewed priorities. There are efforts to house Syrian refugees within Turkey, yet there is a paucity of adequate efforts to legitimately integrate these refugees into the Turkish economy.

Information insecurity is widespread throughout the Syrian refugee populations in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. The International Red Crescent administers a phone calling program in refugee camps that it operates in, allowing refugees a three minute call home every two weeks, but these services are underutilized due to the necessity of NGO supervision and the limitations imposed on topic of conversation. Refugees thus resort to alternative practices to mitigate their informational insecurity, such as calling home on private cellphones to verify any information from news sources. Problematically, practices such as this incur new costs for refugees, such as the need for a SIM card from the country they are residing in as well as one from Syria, and payments to marketplace vendors to charge their phone or download an app. The lack of reliable sources of information for refugees forces them to expend limited financial resource.

In summation, the Syrian refugee community demonstrates concerning signs of chronic poverty due to their protracted displacement. Endemic indebtedness and asset selling signifies decreasing welfare and inhibits long-term self-reliance. Given the overtaxed governments of the Global South’s dearth of fiscal means, policies priorities must be developed to enable limited government resources to better support the Syrian refugee community, so that refugees are not compelled to engage in activities such as under the table labor to offset medical and housing expenses.

Statistics demonstrating the immense scale of the Syrian refugee population. From the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The Rohingya: Little Hope to Return Home

The government of Bangladesh faces a unique challenge as it struggles to support the displaced Rohingya population of Myanmar, given this population’s diminished possibility of ever returning to their homes in Myanmar. Myanmar is 90 percent Buddhist, with small Muslim and Christian minority populations numbering roughly 4 percent each. The majority of the Muslim Rohingya minority community resides in the northern Rakhine State of Myanmar, yet they are the subjects of a targeted, intentional displacement campaign by Burmese authorities. This state is one of the poorest and least literate in the country, with the Rohingya Muslim community therein facing institutionalized discrimination such as restricted movement and limited access to education.

The state justifies its discrimination against the Rohingya community by propagating the false narrative that the Rohingya are illegal immigrants from the Myanmar’s majority Muslim neighbor, Bangladesh. Since the 1990s, extremist and ultra-nationalists Buddhist organizations, such as the Organization for the Protection of Race (MaBaTha), have spread hateful propaganda against the Rohingya and the Muslim community in Myanmar as a whole. These groups portray the Rohingya as a “threat to race and religion” who threaten to destroy the Burmese “Buddhist state.” Even politicians in Myanmar have mobilized hate against the Rohingya population to garner support, with one politician in 2015 calling for his cheering crowd to “kill and bury” all Rohingya.

The greatest threat to the Rohingya population of Myanmar is the government enacted displacement campaign that UN Human Rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein has called “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” Government forces, primarily the military (known as the Tatmadaw) and the Border Guard Police Force of Myanmar (BGP), have undertaken extensive “area clearing operations,” which became especially egregious following attacks perpetrated by Rohingya militants’ on security forces on August 25, 2017, which killed 12 members of the security forces. These forced displacements are undertaken on the premise that the Rohingya villagers are hiding or supporting members of the Rohingya Solidarity Organization, a small rebel group that has fought for Rohingya rights since the 1980s. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reports that local Buddhist villagers have been given military uniforms and armaments to assist in the brutal forceful displacement of Rohingya Villagers. It is also common place for local Buddhist Rakhine villagers to participate in the looting of villages, as well as the beating and sexual assault of Rohingya villagers. It is hypothesized that these civilians are a part of the Burmese “969 movement” which opposes the expansion of Islam into Myanmar. As a result of such forced displacement efforts, more than 1,200,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh, paying smugglers and boatmen exorbitant fees, or holding on to plastic gasoline containers and attempting to float across the border if they cannot afford the price of a boat. These refugees have been subjected to some of the most heinous violations of human rights and dignity of our time at the hands policies officially sanctioned by the Government of Myanmar.

The actions taken by the Tatmadaw and BGP to forcefully displace the Rohingya population make it clear that the Rohingya population’s return to Myanmar is impossible without total regime change. The Tatmadaw locks down villages prior to clearing them, preventing villagers from leaving for up to ten days, thus closing off all access to food and forcing the local population into starvation. Once the actual clearing is underway, the atrocities escalate. Men are killed indiscriminately, beaten, and shot at close range. Grenades and random gunfire are used to torment the local population, and helicopters are often used to drop grenades and fire on civilians. Rohingya refugees report the military using long butchering knives to cut the throats of elderly relatives attempting to flee. Widespread reports tell of houses set on fire with families still inside of them, villagers pushed back into burning houses, and grass set alight around Rohingya villagers who have been beaten.  Rocket propelled grenade launchers are widely used to set homes on fire. Social and religious leaders have been the targets of forced disappearances, and are suspected to have been killed. Children are similarly attacked, with reports of babies being stabbed to death with knives and newborn children being stomped to death with heavy military boots. One woman recounts how her baby was torn from her arms and thrown into a fire, after which she and her two sisters were raped, with her two sisters murdered and her mother and 10-year-old brother shot. The majority of women interviewed in an OHCHR report experienced sexual violence, with instances of gang rape being reported by the majority of the victims. The women and girls who are the victims of such sexual violence do not have access to medical services in the northern Rakhine State, due to a dearth of doctors, high health care costs, and the social stigma tied to the sexual violence they have experienced. The material situation of the Rohingya population is being intentionally, irreparably eroded by government forces. Elderly members of the population report being beaten and then forced to give their personal belongings to Buddhist Rakhine villagers. In locked-down areas, schools and mosques are occupied by security forces. Food and cooking utensils such as pots and pans are destroyed, and livestock is killed to destroy potential food sources for any surviving villagers. Religious violence, such as the forced shaving and burning of the beards of religious leaders, is prevalent. Holy Qurans have been desecrated and burnt in public spaces. Women and girls have been deliberately raped inside of mosques. The intentionality of the government of Myanmar is clear, given that humanitarian aid is banned inside the Rakhine state. These atrocities are perpetrated before the Rohingya population leaves their own borders, which is exceedingly difficult to do as the journey to Bangladesh costs roughly $120 and a significant portion of the local population lives on less than $1 per day. These numerous atrocities leave the Rohingya population a nearly stateless people, compounding the difficulties for the large Rohingya refugee community living in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh faces a challenge that differs from those faced by most Western nations, for the refugee population it is accommodating is unlikely to ever return home. Thus, in addition to supporting the refugee population, Bangladesh must develop a plan for the Rohingya population’s future in the nation. The Burmese Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement Minister cited the nation’s Natural Disaster Management Law to argue that any burnt land becomes the government’s land, thus robbing Rohingya refugees whose homes were burned by the Tatmadaw and BGP of their property in Myanmar. Official figures from the government of Myanmar report that of the nation’s 471 Muslim villages, 176 have been entirely vacated, with more than 7,000 homes burned down. The Rohingya forcefully displaced by these actions walk up to 14 days to reach Bangladesh, and the sanctuary they find there is piecemeal. The government of Bangladesh relies heavily on the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to support the Rohingya refugee population, with the Bangladeshi Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commission providing derisory support such as basic first aid and water stations for new arrivals. The Rohingya refugees fleeing to Bangladesh arrive in Cox’s Bazar, which is one of Bangladesh’s poorest districts, with 33 percent of the population living beneath the poverty line. The refugees fleeing violence following the August 25th incident often bring few possessions with them, and exhaust what savings they do have to travel to Bangladesh and construct rudimentary shelters made of bamboo and thin plastic once they arrive. This forces Rohingya refugees that have recently arrived in Bangladesh to rely exclusively on government and humanitarian aid for subsistence. Already strained prior to August 25th, institutional support in Bangladesh fails to keep pace with the rapidly growing Rohingya refugee population following the Tatmadaw’s intensified village clearing operations. The majority of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh live in makeshift settlements and spontaneous settlements, such as sprawling tent cities. This lack of adequate accommodations is a self-perpetuating problems, for the vast makeshift communities are not conducive to developing infrastructure, such as clean water and food distribution sites. While new refugee sites are constantly being planned to accommodate the influx, refugees arrive to new sites before any humanitarian support infrastructure is established, and a critical lack of roads within these new sites inhibits the construction of such infrastructure.  Refugees react to the lack of clean water and sanitation facilities by resorting to drinking stagnant water from nearby paddy fields. Humanitarian interventions primarily target refugee camps and makeshift communities, yet the United Nations Development Programme reports that before August 25th, 76 percent of refugees in camps and makeshift communities had no access to clean drinking water. This number rises to 92 percent in host communities, due to the lack of humanitarian assistance. Such precarious conditions leave the population severely vulnerable to a diarrheal epidemic. A lack of space for health and sanitation facilities in makeshift settlements is an acute problem. Women and girls among the Rohingya refugees, who constitute 65 percent of all new arrivals following August 25th, are especially vulnerable. The lack of sanitation facilities forces many refugees to bathe and defecate in the open. This causes women and girls to combat the lack of proper sanitation facilities by limiting the amount they eat and drink, and by rarely leaving shelters during their menstrual cycles in order to preserve their privacy. Children represent a large portion of the refugee population, and more than 400,000 Rohingya children do not have access to education. Child labor is becoming more prevalent due to the dire conditions refugees face. Such insufficient accommodations clearly demonstrates that the Rohingya population in Bangladesh requires more proficient aid efforts.

International aid works to offset the duress that the government of Bangladesh is subjected to, yet such efforts are not entirely successful. Aid is constrained by the lengthy process that obtaining approval for humanitarian projects entails. The government of Bangladesh is inundated with project approval (FD-7) requests, and does not have the capacity to respond to them quickly enough. More than 80,000 refugees did not receive their full food rations due to this lengthy and time-consuming application process. In October, 2017, twice as many government counterparts applying to provide water, sanitation, and hygiene resources awaited clearance paperwork than received it. The United Nation’s priorities include the installation of shelter, water, and sanitation facilities, such as well and latrines. The United Nations also hopes to strengthen the capacities of local communities, but aiding local communities in accommodating refugees is not synonymous with providing refugees the means to succeed within such communities. Both the United Nations and the government of Bangladesh foresee the repatriation of Rohingya refugees as the solution to the crisis. Yet while the United Nations Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, Mr. Volker Türk, discussed facilitating the voluntary and sustainable repatriation of refugees with state officials in Myanmar, the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network reports that there is “a growing realization that repatriation is unlikely in the short-term.” The government of Bangladesh and international nongovernmental organizations must recognize that the Rohingya population’s stay in Bangladesh is unlikely to be brief, and develop policy options that respond accordingly.

Bangladesh’s infrastructure is subjected to such strain because Rohingya refugees have few options but to relocate to Bangladesh. Other neighboring nations in the Global South, such as Thailand, have enacted policies mandating that the boats of Rohingya refugees be pushed back away from their shores, fearing that they could not handle an influx of refugees. Thai efforts to eliminate people-smuggling have also created further problems for Rohingya refugees, for smugglers now abandon boatloads of people at sea. Even if the Rohingya in Bangladesh desired to return to Myanmar, security forces have laid landmines along the border to Bangladesh, inhibiting the return of refugees. Within Myanmar, the displaced population is not supported, but instead imprisoned. The official government spokesperson Zaw Htay expounds that the camps where the displaced Rohingya reside are actually “for Bengalis,” thus supporting the government narrative that all Rohingya in Myanmar are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The camps in the Rakhine State are far from adequate refugee camps, likened to “open-air prisons” by commentators as they are little more than areas surrounded by barbed wire and security forces to confine the detainees. The government of Myanmar’s rejection of aid agencies prevents any support that might allow the refugee population to regain self-sufficiency, demonstrating that it has no intention of ever allowing a Rohingya population in the country again. While refugees’ stays in Western nations are often confined to the duration of conflicts in their nations of origin, the Rohingya population’s eventual withdrawal from states in the Global South such as Bangladesh is unlikely. Efforts that allow Rohingya to succeed in their new communities must be planned in response.

A small sample of the total number of Rohingya villages destroyed by government forces in Myanmar, demonstrating the implausibility of Rohingya repatriation. From the Myanmar Information Management Unit.

Policy Discussion

There are clear disparities in the challenges faced by governments in the Global North and Global South when supporting refugee populations, thus necessitating the advancement of new policy priorities for governments of the Global South. Raphi Rechitsky of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies elucidates that governments of the Global North often invoke policies that deter refugees from reaching their borders and therefore confine refugees to the Global South. This puts governments of the Global South under increased strain when attempting to accommodate the refugee populations they host with already limited resources. The divide is most prominent when comparing the singular $850 initial cash payment that the Iraqi government gives to each internally displaced family to the more than €5,000 euros that refugees can receive in Germany over the course of 15 months. While refugees living in Jordan combat information insecurity by paying market vendors to charge their mobile phones, the ‘taschengeld’ given to refugees in Germany can be used to pay for mobile phone services. Feasible policy options must be developed for governments of the Global South such as Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and Bangladesh that currently support significant refugee populations. If these governments solely focus on providing for the immediate needs of refugees without providing means of status improvement, the cycle of poverty is perpetuated. Successful refugee support in the Global South requires identifying clearly delineated and achievable policy goals so that governments can focus their limited capabilities where they will be most impactful.

One of these crucial policy goals for supporting refugees in the Global South is providing opportunities for upward mobility. This is attainable through a commitment to education, labor market integration, and cash assistance programs.

Education is crucial to giving refugees opportunities to find employment in the local economy of their host country, as well as providing better opportunities for voluntary repatriation in the future. Education also can help mitigate the effects of displacement on refugee children, providing an increased likelihood of stability in their countries of origin after repatriation. The Sri Lankan refugee population living in India has found exceptional success after they lobbied the Indian government to allow them to attend public schooling even without documentation from their schools at home. The Sri Lankan refugees also organized their own higher education and vocational schooling programs. The upwards mobility that this schooling provides helps to allow refugees to overcome the psychological ramification of their protracted displacement. One key component of such upward mobility is offering education in the local language of refugees’ host nations. Proficiency in the local language drastically improves refugees’ labor market access, allowing them to better provide for themselves in the long term. Education also alleviates the burden on local governments by enabling upward mobility, combatting both the material and psychological ramifications of forced displacement.

Another key component of upwards mobility is local labor market integration. Compensating for the situation of refugees by providing work permits at a low cost and with a decreased amount of required documentation allows refugees to begin to work and provide for themselves, further reducing the strain on government support institutions. Relaxed regulations on refugees entering the labor market has positive effects for refugees by providing a source of income and workplace protections, and for the local economies by taking advantage of the proficiencies that refugees bring with them.

Prioritizing cash assistance programs enable an increased concentration on the needs of each individual refugee. In Lebanon, each dollar of cash assistance spent by Syrian refugees resulted in $2.13 created in the local economy. When combined with access to bank accounts, cash assistance provides greatly increased stability in the lives of refugees. Paul Spiegel of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees writes that “cash assistance has the potential to transform aid effectiveness, support local economies, improve relations between refugee and host communities, and provide more choice and dignity.” In isolation, cash assistance programs only succeed in reducing the risk of poverty for refugees, but do not eliminate the risk of poverty in the future. When combined with other enablers of upward mobility, however, cash assistance can make a difference. Education, labor market integration, and cash assistance programs are all components of a broader prioritization of enabling refugees’ upward mobility that should be a focus of governments in the Global South.

Creating sustainable health care systems is the second policy goal necessary for governments of the Global South supporting refugee populations. The eroding capabilities of states’ health infrastructures poses an acute risk to human security. A widespread respect for refugees’ right to health is critical to protecting human security, which includes actively removing barriers to refugees’ health care access, such as cost. Instead of adhering to a single parallel program of health services, nations of the Global South must prioritize developing migrant sensitive health services. Migrant sensitive health services entail accounting for the unique health needs of the disparate refugee populations that nations accommodate. Even in areas still embroiled in conflict, where state governments have little capacity to support their internally displaced populations, humanitarian and government efforts are best served by identifying populations’ precise needs. This allows the resources mobilized to create the largest impact possible. Adequately adapting existing health services to the needs of specific populations necessitates broader public health assessments. Thereby, services offered align with the needs of the populations that they are serving. Health care can also provide a form of cursory documentation that can be key to allowing refugees to utilize greater segments of the services available. While Syrian refugees utilize health services at high rates, it must be destigmatized for the victims of sexual violence within the Rohingya refugee population. If differences in health seeking are identified by public health assessments, services that specifically accounting for such differences can be offered. Such services may include offering intercultural mediation and building health literacy. Initial health screenings are often lauded as essential to refugee health, yet the epidemiological vulnerability of populations must first be accounted for. If populations are sufficiently vaccinated and at low risk of communicable disease, resources used for health screenings are better spent improving living conditions. While Jordan’s initial health screenings of Syrian refugees diagnosed Tuberculosis at an incredibly high success rate before the disease could spread to larger segments of the population, health services must not be limited to health assessments. Such health screenings are key to reducing the strain on local health institutions in populations at specific risk of communicable diseases, yet health care must go beyond initial screenings by offer treatment for diseases and injuries identified in such screenings. The emphasis on initial health screenings dominates discussions of refugee health, problematically enabling governments to lackadaisically attend to refugee health needs by singularly providing such screenings. Wider public health assessments allowing for the more educated coordination of humanitarian actors, preventing oversights that result from an ad hoc approach to refugee health care. When screenings are necessary, they must holistically address the needs of refugee communities, including providing psychosocial services and care for noncommunicable diseases. Expending resources to improve refugees’ living conditions can dramatically reduce the strain on health care systems in the Global South, for a lack of clean drinking water and adequate shelter in refugee accommodations are notable sources of refugees’ health instability. Creating health care systems that can endure the strain of large refugee populations and protracted displacements must be a specific policy goal for governments of the Global South, and is achievable by assessing the unique needs of refugee communities and preventing the causes of health insecurity.

Finally, government leaders in the Global South must create sufficient institutional support for refugees in the key areas of combatting human trafficking, providing reliable information systems and forms of documentation, and providing support for voluntary repatriation.

One key areas of institutional support is the fight against human smuggling, although policy responses must be carefully designed so that they do not exacerbate problems for refugees. Often, victims of human trafficking who have been forced into sex-work are deported back to their countries of origin. As previously discussed, current initiatives fail to protect the refugee populations exploited by trafficking networks. Instead of focusing on the results of human trafficking such as sex work, law enforcement agencies must focus on preventing the networks that force refugees into this situation in the first place. Furthermore, corruption must be combatted, for reports of police warning community leaders before raids and traffickers bribing police illustrate the threat that corruption poses to anti-trafficking efforts. Within legal structures, policies that stratify the victims of human trafficking into separate categories can result in institutions only focusing on the victims whose situation they deem more egregious, resulting in institutions overlooking victims of labor trafficking in favor of aiding the victims of sex trafficking. The rights of all victims must be prioritized, including efforts to protect victims’ identities, and the provision of additional support to victims post liberation. One major component of preventing human trafficking is educating refugees and government agents alike on the rights that are endowed to refugees.

The institutional support of refugees also entails maintaining reliable information systems. Refugees in poverty should not be forced to expend what little financial resources they have to obtain reliable information through expensive phone calls home or hard-to-find internet access. In addition, the majority of refugees lack official documentation verifying their identity, education level, employment history, and even country of origin. Governments of the Global South must prioritize providing such documentation to refugees so that they are not precluded from accessing the services available to them. Such documentation is also key to enabling entrance to the local labor market, which promotes self-sufficiency within refugee populations. Where possible, governments of the Global South must also mobilize legal aid to give refugees adequate asylum support. Without achieving the administrative classification of "refugee status," refugees are left open to deportation, prevented from working, and may even be inhibited from accessing health care services.

Once conflicts pacify in refugees’ countries of origin, repatriation support must be offered for refugees who choose voluntary repatriation. While refugees’ intent to repatriate is debated, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees reports that “Voluntary repatriation…is the solution of choice for a vast majority of refugees.” Indeed, between 19998 and 2008 fourteen times as many refugees chose repatriation over permanent resettlement in their host countries. The United Nations designates four key areas of focus necessary to ensuring repatriation success, including physical safety, legal safety, material safety, and reconciliation. The word “voluntary” is crucial to successful repatriation, and to make a fully informed and uncoerced choice, refugees require information on their home countries, legal aid, and peace and reconciliation efforts in their home countries. The choice to repatriate must be fully agentive. In the past, Bangladesh has avoided accusations of refoulment, or forcefully returning refugees to their countries of origin, by withdrawing food rations from refugees, thereby replacing their agency to choose to repatriate with necessity.  Successful repatriation support further entails ensuring a source of livelihood through labor market access in refugees’ country of return, as often their home governments provide little support. Governments must also ensure that refugees can attain equal citizenship status in their home countries, with respect to the differences between their culture and the predominant culture in their home nations. The protection of refugee rights, provision of reliable information systems and adequate documentation, and attention given to asylum and repatriation support can all work to minimize the strain on governments of the Global South.

Conclusion

As has been argued, the governments of the Global South face challenges that can confound even Western governments. These challenges are exacerbated by the fact that 86 percent of refugees and 99 percent of internally displaced persons remain within the Global South. This dichotomy between challenge and resources necessitates the creation of policy goals that appropriately respond to the struggles that governments of the Global South face in supporting their refugee populations. Iraq is supporting a vast internally displaced population while simultaneously rebuilding state institutions and combatting active conflict. The governments of Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey are supporting the largest refugee population in the world, with a Syrian refugee population numbering upwards of five million. Bangladesh must prepare to accommodate the Rohingya refugee population that is unlikely to ever return to Myanmar. To successfully support these and other refugee populations in the Global South, local governments must focus their efforts on providing means of upward mobility, sustainable health care services, and institutional support in critical areas. By adopting these clear policy goals, governments in the Global South will be able to utilize their limited resources where they will be most effective, thereby creating the greatest positive effect for the refugee populations that they support.

The Kurdish Predicament; A Policy Prescription for a Fractured KRG

Introduction

For nearly a century, Turkish government officials and Erdogan nationalists have been overwhelmed by “Sevres syndrome” — a nationalist paranoia that ethnic Kurds, inspired by miscalculated borders and ethnic nationalism, would pursue separatism. The short-lived Treaty of Sevres and the central powers that signed the agreement laid the foundation for future treaties, such as the Sykes-Picot Agreement and the Treaty of Lausanne, to determine the fate of the regional order. Yet, unlike Sykes-Picot’s British and French zones of imperial ‘influence’, Sevres was much more self-deterministic; the treaty’s Section III, Articles 62-64, offered ethnic Kurds to conduct a referendum to chart their own course as a nation.

In 2017, the Kurdish nation is fragmented across Turkish, Syrian, and Iraqi state lines. While the Kurds have created a transnational identity, their statehood objectives differ across Syrian, Iraqi, and Turkish governmental constraints. A year ago I remarked how a unified Kurdistan in the Levant was nearly impossible — how the Syrian, Iraqi, and Turkish identities intercepted any uniform statehood strategy among the Kurds, and in many ways, complicated the chances for Iraqi independence. This is a truth that still stands. A year ago, Kurdish statehood, of any kind, was a near-impossible phenomenon — even with international recognition, thriving oil exports, and an Islamic State exterminated from Northern Iraq. Kurdistan’s geopolitical position— straddled between the crossfire of Syria’s civil war, Iraq’s battle against Daesh, and Turkey’s illiberal presidential republic — seemed too costly to pursue separatism.

The Kurdish President Masoud Barzani shocked the international community when he announced Iraqi Kurdistan would conduct an independence referendum on September 25, 2017. The announcement was met with rhetorical caution, derision, and even interventionist threats from Kurdish neighbors, Turkey, Iraq, and Syria, while the United States encouraged a delay so that war-torn Iraq would first be unified. Even though the referendum was non-binding and implicated no blueprint for negotiations, the international community perceived statehood as Barzani’s absolute objective. This is not the case; President Barzani recognizes Kurdistan’s internal setbacks and has crafted the referendum to achieve autonomy within the Iraqi government, not secession. Even if the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) can achieve greater leverage with the Iraqi government, the referendum has caused a schism in Kurdish theaters of trade, politics, and civil society. The very act of conducting the referendum has resurfaced many tensions, inequities, and setbacks that the Kurdish nation must face before pursuing concrete separatism. 

Photo: A worker in an oil field in Kirkuk

Obstacles in the Oil Sector

Despite the strides Kurdistan has made towards democratization and de facto control of disputed territories, there remain many signs of political immaturity and economic stagnation. While Kurdistan has operated a bustling crude oil industry and expansive network of international oil companies (IOCs), it’s economic output has been reliant on what Denise Natali deemed“political limbo.” The KRG has been able to operate under the Iraqi government’s radar through leaving trade agreements, territorial boundaries, and revenues ambiguous — leaving ample leverage for a bustling oil trade. The Kurdish government has been able to sell nearly half their crude oil in 2017 to Israeli private firms— recipients that cannot be legally targeted by the Iraqi government for violating trade agreements. The ambiguity that has surrounded the oil-abundant province of Kirkuk, Nineveh, and Diyala, has enabled the Kurds to produce as much medium-grade crude oil necessary for economic independence. Yet, these blurred lines of legal uncertainty and the anagram of the ‘correct’ territorial perimeter with Iraq, are only temporary fixes. Post-secession, an independent Kurdistan may find it challenging to retain many of its valuable trade partners, no longer free-riding on Iraqi revenues and unable to offer attractive rates per barrel. Furthermore, while the KRG regards Kirkuk as an incredible geopolitical and economic asset to their road to independence, the province is aligned with the ruling party’s rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), and is deeply fragmented along sectarian and ethnic lines. It is challenging for the KRG to even negotiate with Baghdad while the ruling party, the KDP, struggles to retain political control in Kirkuk. Kurdistan, while economically independent, is geo-economically splintered; the KRG should craft policy to appease the PUK in the Kirkuk province and confer with key trade partners — well before approaching the negotiating table in Baghdad.

Disappearing Political Unity

The Iraqi Kurdish government has been hailed as one of the most pro-democratic forces in the Levant, a stark contrast to Kurdish neighbors Iran and Turkey. The Kurdish parliament houses a plurality of factions, with the ruling Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), opposed by the PUK, the Movement for Change (Gorran), and Kurdistan Islamic Group (KIG), and have pursued a special experiment in direct democracy.

While a large majority of elected officials support the objective of independence, the Kurdish parliament clash’s over the timing, process, and prerequisites are a reflection of the deep schism in Kurdish political unity. The very idea of the referendum was met with disdain by many parties that opposed the PUK, encouraging the Kurdish government to focus on democratic reform at home before pursuing a controversial road to separatism. Even a bi-partisan negotiation to determine the referendum’s date and conditions was boycottedby major elected officials in the Gorran party and the KIG, leaving KDP and PUK majorities to mitigate some of the most important conditions for Kurdistan’s fate. The Kurdish Parliament has not met as a body since

PHOTO: The entryway of the Iraqi Kurdish Parliament

October 2015, nor does the nation have a constitution to guide it. In 2009, the KRG’s parliament drafted a national constitution, yet did not ratify, rendering any referendum laws, parliamentary rules, and legislative procedures nonexistent in Kurdistan.

President Barzani’s KDP party shares a strained relationship with many of its rivals. Barzani and his supporters are perceived as opportunists, conducting a swift referendum for political support and re-election while gambling with the Kurdish nation’s fate. Furthermore, Barzani has presided the executive office for more than four years and has delayed the next election, stating the nation needs political consistency during their fight against the Islamic State (ISIS). Despite the 2005 decision to limit the presidency to two terms and require the speaker of parliament to succeed, the KRG extended Barzani’s term by two years in 2013. It will be increasingly difficult for any KRG delegation to represent the national interest with no blueprint, conditions, or terms approved by parliament, and will undoubtedly increase frustration among Kurdish officials and civil society.

Projections

As Kurdistan strategizes to contend with Baghdad across the negotiating table, the KRG should first establish definitive plans for the presidential election and a possible referendum for the 2009 constitution. Parliamentary elections are scheduled to take place on November 1, 2017, however, Barzani’s seat of power continues to be unrivaled. The KRG should also first assess their most paramount trade partners, such as Israel and Italy, to establish newfound conditions under different commercial routes, national taxation and revenue systems, and state alliances. Kurdistan is in dire need of economic diversification, and only its trade partners and few regional allies can aid such an endeavor. The political schism in Kurdistan is detrimental, but can only be remedied if the KRG reverses its autocratic tendencies, revives a dormant constitution, and re-calls parliament into session to discuss the conditions of separatism.

The Case for the Iraq War

“Nation-building” is often considered a loaded term in our modern lexicon that sets political pundits and experts alike off on riffs and rants that coalesce around how it has been done incorrectly. Talk of the continuing instability in post-Cold War attempts to assist in the emergence of democratic states in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria dominates the conversation surrounding nation-building. This stigma suggests that nation-building is nearly always a recipe for disaster undertaken with foolish expectations in mind for the host nation. However, nation-building can be done with great success—exemplified no better than the postwar reconstruction of Germany and Japan—and carries with it lessons to be learned for future U.S. foreign policy initiatives. In this article, I will discuss three major points about U.S. nation-building efforts in Germany and Japan, the failure to emulate those efforts during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and how the situation in Iraq can still be improved and serve as a point of improvement:

Planning for the occupations of Germany and Japan was meticulous, whereas the Iraqi plan was undercut by a lack of consensus. Advanced planning for the reconstruction of Germany and Japan began before World War II had even ended. This comprehensive approach allowed the U.S. to create hierarchical and sensible command structures, and American generals were cautious to revert power back to the postwar nations. Iraq’s management was far less detail-oriented. A failure to understand cultural and economic intricacies undoubtedly caused tensions between different religious and ethnic groups to spiral into intense struggles that threaten the stability of the country to this day.

A sense of national identity in Germany and Japan served as a benefit to the occupation.  The relatively singular cultures of German and Japanese nationals benefitted American planners by only having to consider each culture on its own. Economic and governmental stability were the major focal points of the U.S. nation-building effort after WWII. In Iraq, the U.S. occupation turned chaotic rather quickly due to the neglect of internecine struggles between various ethnic and religious groups. Because there was no singular Iraqi identity, failure to acknowledge these social hierarchies ultimately fostered an environment where open hostility could not be prevented.

There is still a means of achieving Iraqi stability, but the window is closing. As Iraq is mired by internal conflict, a glimmer of hope remains from the examples of Germany and Japan. America’s role as an advisory power may still serve to mediate discussion between different swathes of Iraqi culture, and complete detachment from their political sphere should be weighed by their readiness to govern. Lessons in planning and execution from Germany and Japan should dictate future U.S. policy, and Iraq now serves as a benchmark for improvement for future nation-building efforts.

Nation-building, as a general term, is often interpreted as the occupation and reconstruction of one nation—the host nation—by another with the end goal of making the host country resemble the occupying nation. In the United States, this definition is often associated with the effort undertaken by the U.S. to democratize the dictatorship led by Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion. The lack of anticipation of cultural and economic challenges created a stigma that nation-building is nearly always a recipe for disaster undertaken with foolish expectations in mind. However, nation-building can be done with great success, exemplified no better than the postwar reconstruction of Germany and Japan. American generals overseeing the postwar reconstruction of Germany and Japan had a detailed command structure in place working in tandem with experts on the host countries; the absence of familiarity with Iraqi political culture would hobble American attempts at nation-building after the 2003 invasion just as the proficiency of German and Japanese political culture had benefitted the American proconsuls in the aftermath of World War II. In addition to the rigidly planned and long-spanning implementation of nation-building efforts in Germany and Japan, the homogenous cultural and societal trends in the host countries also served as a boon to U.S. efforts that was not present during the occupation of Iraq. These diverging strategies ultimately caused two nation-building efforts to chart different courses, but lessons learned in both post-WWII Germany and Japan and post-invasion Iraq now serve as benchmarks of improvement for future U.S. endeavors in nation-building.

Before World War II had officially ended, the United States government had already been hard at work on three stages of preparation that were identical for German and Japan. This period consisted of “the first stage, 1942-43, a time of research and preliminary position papers, the general framework for a new world order and basic principles for the treatment of defeated enemy countries,” “the second period of more advanced work,” and “the third stage of planning [when] political solutions of the Japan specialists had gained wide acceptance.” This punctilious approach was designed in order to create an environment where experts on both host nations would draw upon knowledge of their cultures meant to be incorporated into the framework set up by the postwar governments. In the specific case of Germany, the U.S.-led allied powers “pursued nation-building in Germany by demobilizing the German military, holding war crimes tribunals, helping construct democratic institutions, and providing substantial humanitarian and economic assistance,” and the democratization effort was made easier due to consideration by American experts that Germans of the Weimar Republic had a basic understanding of democratic systems of government. The effort by American planners to create democratic nations that would resemble American structures was expert-driven and required a commitment in time and resources by U.S. military governors in order to keep economic and civil operations stable. Iraq would begin with similar goals of democratization, with Andrew J. Bacevich summarizing the American invasion of Iraq “as the initial gambit of an effort to transform the entire region through the use of superior military power, [and] it not only made sense but also held out the prospect of finally resolving the incongruities bedeviling U.S. policy.” While Iraq had the same general end goals of the postwar occupations of Germany and Japan, the results could not have been more different in Iraq due to inadequate preparation on the part of the U.S. that had been so heavily relied upon in Germany and Japan.

Operation Iraqi Freedom started in 2003 with the primary goal of unseating Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, in an attempt to create a democratic Iraq that would serve as a benchmark for other countries in the region and encourage them to follow suit. American interests in Iraq were nearly indistinct from the interest in creating stable nations of Germany and Japan, yet Germany and Japan are currently stable democracies and two of the world’s foremost economic powers while Iraq remains mired in intense regional conflict with a weak central government. In the post-9/11 world, there was certainly a desire to see the unpredictability of Saddam Hussein and his threats of possessing WMDs neutralized as quickly as possible. As the arguments of “no blood for oil” also arose in the lead-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom, economist Gary S. Becker dismisses this claim with the fact that “the U.S. would be better off if it encouraged Iraq to export more, not less, oil because that would lower oil prices.” In short, if the U.S. wanted oil from Iraq, war would be incredibly destructive to this objective. However, the Bush administration’s handling of the subsequent occupation of Iraq, according to Michael E. O’Hanlon, “surely includes the administration’s desire to portray the Iraq war as a relatively easy undertaking in order to assure domestic and international support, the administration’s disdain for nation-building, and the Pentagon leadership’s unrealistic hope that Ahmed Chalabi and the rather small and weak Iraqi National Congress might somehow assume control of the country after Saddam fell.” Juxtaposed to the time and resource commitment and intense knowledge of host nations by the American military governments present in Germany and Japan, the effort to nation-build in Iraq was negatively impacted by a less precise and incredibly blunt military intervention that dissolved the current structure without a suitable replacement. The failure of the Bush administration to enact a fully developed strategy only exacerbated the potential for chaos in a host nation O’Hanlon concludes as “still plagued by the continued presence of thousands of Baathists from Saddam’s various elite security forces who had melted into the population rather than fight hard against the invading coalition.” Germany and Japan had robust military governments that sought to create stability before turning power over to the host nation, but their homogenous cultural makeup was another major benefit that the Bush administration did not possess and failed to explore during the occupation of Iraq.

Economic and governmental factors played a large role in the bifurcated end results of post-WWII Germany and Japan and Iraq. U.S. proconsuls’ awareness of the need for a stable governing structure in the former cases and the intelligence gap in the latter case was paramount in determining the differences in end result. In post-WWII Germany, “the occupying powers continued to allow the German central bank to operate, but they, rather than the Germans, exercised control over it,” and “in the U.S. sector, General Clay devoted substantial effort and resources to restarting German factories and mines.” The American nation-building effort had taken great care in ensuring an economically stable system would be in place once occupation of Germany came to an end. This was undoubtedly due in part to the fact that economic blight had crippled Germany in the aftermath of World War I and made the people of Germany susceptible to authoritarianism. American proconsuls were right to address this as a primary component of their nation-building efforts as a means of preventing another politically gifted figure from demagogically exploiting the postwar disarray to promote their own ends in the way Adolf Hitler did during the Weimar period. For this reason alone, economic stability was a driving force for American planners during the reconstruction of Germany. Governance in Germany was also tempered, and American generals were cautious to introduce immediate German rule because of concerns that “a civilian would be lost that quickly after the close of hostilities.” American military governors had a command structure in place, and turning control over to the host nation too soon had the potential of resulting in a breakdown of the fledgling democratic system the U.S. was trying to build if pressured too soon. The invasion of Iraq proved to be a nearly polar opposite approach to the one taken in postwar Germany.

After the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the presence of U.S. troops in Baghdad, the politics surrounding economic structures in Iraq immediately came to the fore. Unlike in Germany, socio-economic development was undermined due to a lack of American knowledge of the major economic resource of Iraq—oil—as Anthony H. Cordesman of CSIS points out:

Iraq’s oil wealth has not been used to create the economic conditions for unity, and is a critical underlying problem in trying to heal its sectarian and ethnic divisions. The [Iraqi Prime Minister] Maliki regime strongly favored itself and Arab Shi’ites over Arab Sunnis, and wavered between efforts to bribe the Kurds and force them to put all petroleum development under central government control.

The failure to understand cultural ties to economic resources in Iraq meant that the United States was already at a disadvantage. Unlike in Germany, American forces had no reliable source to turn over economic control to in Iraq, and the lack of cultural ties to Iraqi economic resources almost ensured sectarian conflict would arise in the absence of the American military. The governing system of Iraq did not fare much better due to the lack of democratic foundation in the country. The nation-building effort in Iraq had the potential to see the new Iraqi government accommodate the multiple sects of its society by “endowing those institutions with popular legitimacy and widespread participation, not merely shifting power and access from one group to another.” Compounded by the insufficient amount of time spent integrating the civilian population into a democratic framework after the military intervention, murky American understanding of the multiple identities of Iraqi society did little to help an increasingly unstable environment.

A clear example of such murky understanding of the Iraqi political structure came from the slash-and-burn approach coalition forces took in the form of de-Ba’athification, or the dismantling of the Ba’ath Party in Iraq that espoused the principles of socialism and Arab nationalism under Saddam Hussein’s authoritarian regime. Any restructuring of the Iraqi political environment would require some degree of de-Ba’athification, but the American approach saw an abrupt shift for a nation that was not united under one national identity in the way the Germans or Japanese were and had deep-seated sectarian struggles. The goal of de-Ba’athification was, according to the Coalition Provisional Authority Order 1, “eliminating the party’s structures and removing its leadership from positions of authority and responsibility in Iraqi society” in order to ensure “representative government in Iraq is not threatened by Ba`athist elements returning to power and that those in positions of authority in the future are acceptable to the people of Iraq.” In doing so, the U.S. comprehensively rebuilt the Iraqi government on a foundation rooted in—among other things—sectarian struggles that would boil over under the Premiership of Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite Muslim. As Prime Minister of Iraq, al-Maliki set the stage for the current volatility in the region due to what Council on Foreign Relations fellow Max Boot deemed the “victimisation of Sunnis [and] made them receptive to Isis, which was being reborn in the chaos of Syria.” Swaths of Iraqi Sunnis who were suddenly found out of the job as a result of de-Ba’athification were targeted by mass arrests and suppression tactics under al-Maliki that made them feel isolated and under attack. In 2011, AEI scholar Frederick W. Kagan and Institute for the Study of War President Kimberly Kagan wrote that “Maliki is unwinding the multi-ethnic, cross-sectarian Iraqi political settlement” in part due to his exploitation of the effects of de-Ba’athification. Such a comprehensive reorganization of the host nation’s government with no apparent sensitivity to centuries-long sectarian struggles was a major contributor to the failure to achieve political stability in Iraq.

While Germany and Japan had fairly simple ethnic and cultural breakdowns largely due to a sense of national identity, Iraq was unique in this case due to the fact that “oil, ethnicity, religion, tribes, militias, the insurgency, the Sunni Arab boycott of January 2005 elections, and old-fashioned power struggles combined for volatile post-Saddam politics” that had not been accounted for in Iraq. These cultural intricacies led to complications that were less contentious in the examples of Germany and Japan, and the lack of anticipation on the part of the U.S. for these factors made for a messy reorganization of post-intervention Iraq. In his reflections on the Iraq War, Robert Kaplan surmises that “better generalship and logical command chains would likely have improved the security situation, leading to less financial cost, less loss of human life, less opportunity for Iranian meddling, and thus a better geopolitical outcome.” The U.S. benefitted from a stringent chain of command and more homogenous host country in the case of Germany and Japan, but the inadequate anticipation for the dynamics of Iraqi culture and elite structure threaten to put the entire undertaking in severe jeopardy. There was no clear evidence that Bush administration officials were prepared to grapple with the competing sectarian interests present in Iraq that were absent from the nation-building effort in postwar Germany and Japan, and herein lies the issue. The central key to success for any nation-building effort is that the host nation is capable of creating a unified government, and Professor James M. Quirk appropriately observes that “for Iraq, that included Shiites confident that Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath Party would not return to repress them, minority Sunnis that they would not be repressed by the rise of Shiites to power, and Kurds that much of their autonomy (and oil assets) would be preserved.” Being attentive to this dynamic was crucial at the time of the invasion, and not having a strategy in place to deal with the intricacies of Iraqi culture ultimately led to intense sectarian violence.

The future of Iraq is one that now seems uncertain with the rise of ISIS and internecine conflict between different regions of the country that are at odds due to their competing identities. While it is uncertain what, if anything, the U.S. can do to turn the deteriorating situation in Iraq around, a suggestion by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)—a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Senate Select Committee on Intelligence—takes sectarian relations into account in order to “negotiate a power-sharing deal that will give predominantly Sunni provinces, such as Anbar and Nineveh, assurances that their rights will be respected by Baghdad.” Though this is imperfect as a sole solution due to the fact that sectarian divides are not the singular cause of Iraq’s current political instability, Sen. Rubio offers a perspective that incorporates sectarian conflict in a way not seen in the planning for post-invasion Iraq. Future U.S. sensitivity to the cultural identities and awareness of the power dynamics at play are paramount to establishing governmental structures that will in turn function constructively with respect to Iraqi culture. As with Germany and Japan, the U.S. withdrawal of forces in 2011 does not mean an end to advising, but the Iraqis are now—whether they were ready to in 2005 or not—beginning to govern themselves. For the future of Iraq to regain stability despite the instability in the region, the current U.S. nation-building effort should be conscious of the fact that “early difficulties, and even early failures, will not indicate long-term disorder as long as the key representative interests remain committed to this kind of politicking instead of retreating to coups, secession or open advocacy of violence.” The best course of action for U.S. planners in Iraq is to be cognizant of competing sectarian interests while allowing these differences to be dealt with politically as opposed to violently and facilitate discussion where need be.

The post-WWII German and Japanese nation-building efforts succeeded because of a logical chain of command and significant time and resource investments that sought to steadily revert power back to the host countries; Iraq’s failures resulted from a loosely-defined command structure after regime change and a lack of understanding by U.S. planners of the rudiments of Iraqi cultural diversity in a way not seen in the German or Japanese examples. Though the results of poor foundational handling after regime change are seen in modern-day Iraq, there are still lessons that can be gleaned from previous nation-building successes in Germany and Japan. Future U.S. foreign policy—if it is to still be one of championing democratization abroad—would do well to observe the future of Iraq and remember the lack of foundational planning as a benchmark for improvement if future nation-building efforts are to be beneficial to U.S. foreign interests.

The Middle East and the U.S. Invasion of Iraq: What Does Theory Tell Us?

The study of international relations presents a multitude of opportunities to make sense of the world through a variety of lenses; each lens is a different theoretical perspective. Neorealism is time and time again regarded as the most useful theoretical perspective through which to understand the international relations of the Middle East. This paper argues that while neorealism is one of the most prominent theories through which scholars can make sense of the Middle East, it is not a total prescription. The discussion will address what neorealism is, the role it plays in understanding the Middle East, as well as the underlying weaknesses of the theory. Through a case study analysis, this discussion will highlight existing gaps in the neorealist interpretation of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 and suggest additional theoretical perspectives to consider for understanding the international relations of the Middle East.

The theory of neorealism offers a framework for understanding the system of international relations by analyzing recurring patterns of state behavior and interactions among states. Coined in 1979 by Kenneth Waltz in Theory of International Politics, neorealism addresses the biggest issues in international relations, including, but not limited to war and the avoidance of war, power balancing and seeking, the death of states, security competition, and alliance formation. The effects of the structure of neorealism serve as the distinctive element between this theory and others.

Neorealism is best understood in two parts. The first is that of the ordering principle of the international system—anarchy. Anarchy in a neorealist context implies that there is no authority higher than the states; states are autonomous, individualist in origin, and embedded in a “self-help” system where the fundamental objective is survival. Involvement in the system of international politics is dependent solely on the state best serving its national interests. The problem Waltz associates with this line of thought is the need to conceive of an order without an orderer. The second part of the theory is in relation to the structure of international politics. Each state structure is definedby its distribution of capabilities, or power. According to neorealists, the structure of anarchy is exogenous to statehood. In other words, states seek to maximize their power relative to others, precisely because there is no higher authority. Therefore, the balance of power of the system changes as the distribution of capabilities of each state change. Despite this, there is a system of checks and balances in place that is useful for understanding the changes observed throughout history in alliances across the international political system.

Neorealist theory can be used to understand the Middle East—a region of volatile politics and constant shifting of alliances to achieve a specific set of domestic economic goals. The historical record of the Middle East discloses four key areas of focus with regard to the origins of alliances. First, Middle Eastern states, as a part of the international system, face external threats. And, these threats most frequently are the cause of international alliances. Second, balancing is more common than bandwagoning. Balancing refers to the allying of states against prevailing threats; bandwagoning is defined as the alignment of states with the source of danger, or threat. Recognizing this, it is important to draw attention to the neorealist framework’s contention that as hegemons overextend themselves, their misuse of power provokes a balancing act against them. Third, states go beyond balancing against power to balance against threats. Simply put, in the same way that states are differentiated by how much power they possess, states are differentiated by the threats they emanate and those they overcome. Fourth, the likelihood of states joining forces is intensified as offensive capabilities and intentions increase. It should be noted that neorealist theory is not the first to draw attention to the study of alliances in the Middle East, particularly those founded in the premise of protection against threats. The Eastern Question, termed in 1820, refers to the study of the interrelationships between two unequal power systems: The European Great Powers and the Ottoman Empire. The Eastern Question is significant because the penetration of the Middle East’s involvement with Europe is understood to have affected the nature of politics in the region today. In a broader scope the diplomacy of the Eastern Question refers to the political considerations and strategic competition that reflects a self-help system characterized by the distribution of capabilities and national interests. As this analysis moves forward, the four key areas of the origins of alliances will be applied to the case study under examination—the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

It must be clearly articulated that there are weaknesses pertaining to neorealist theory. Realism which predated neorealism serves as a foundation for the latter theory and contends that states are interested in security and the maximization of power. When applying this line of thought to the Middle East, one limitation is particularly evident: this is a misrepresentation of the region. This is true for two reasons. First, the Middle East’s geopolitics differ from other regions of the world, given its territorial vastness and proximity to natural resources. The ideological perspective used to understand Middle Eastern geopolitics, and what is often times called the “anti-hegemonic approach,” stresses examining the interests, as well as the social and political composition of the region and states. A perspective grounded in ideology is necessary for obtaining a holistic understanding of how Middle Eastern states and the people within them regardinternational relations and the choices they make.

Second, there exists a variety of cultural perspectives that have proven useful in analyzing the Middle East—something neorealism does not account for. A constructivist perspective makes evident that state behavior and interaction is based on cultures in the sense of ideas, norms, and experiences. In examining that neorealism emphasizes motives of national security, power, and resources, a certain blindness is made apparent: there are culturally embedded aspects to these motivations. This will be further explained when assessing the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. For now, the takeaway from this discussion of the remaining weaknesses in neorealist theory is that due to analytic uncertainty and varying conceptual weaknesses neorealism cannot fully explain the international relations of the Middle East.

To evaluate why neorealism is not a full prescription of the politics of the Middle East this analysis focuses on the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. The discussion will shift to an examination of the existing gaps that can be corrected by alternative international relations theories after illustrating the neorealist interpretation of the motivations behind the invasion. The complexity of the case study merits an analysis that engages critically with the scholarship of the politics of the region.

Principally, a brief history of the role of the states involved in this case study will aid in the interpretation of the theoretical perspectives outlined below. Iraq’s role and influence in the Middle East is rooted in geography given the state is at the crossroads of the two principal population fault lines in the region. Moreover, the demographics of Iraq are significant due to the fact that the state lies between its smaller oil-rich Gulf neighbors and Iran. Economically, Iraq’s oil reserves were among the top-five largest in the world prior to the U.S. invasion. Collectively, autonomy of the Iraqi state to secure dominance over its population and its interest in extending its power to project it onto the Gulf area was evident. Therefore, regardless of which theoretical perspective is being considered, this paper contends that the 2003 invasion was focused on breaking the domestic and regional autonomy of the Iraqi state.

The political instability of Iraq did not emerge overnight. In the years leading up to the invasion of the Iraqi state, the authoritarian Ba’athist government marked Iraq with a narrative of “exclusivity, communal mistrust, patronage, and the exemplary use of violence.” In August of 1990, Saddam Hussein orderedIraqi forces to invade Kuwait with the purpose of achieving nationalist goals. The U.S. viewed this encroachment as problematic and committed itself to reinstating the status quo in Iraq. As a means of achieving the status quo, the international political system sought to impose order and limit the Iraqi states’ capabilities. Two U.N. Security Council Resolutions are important—687 and 688, both of which forged international alliances, while rendering the most intense imposition of sanctions against one state in history. Saddam Husain’s failure to comply with these resolutions, among others, led the U.S. to assume a military role in the international political system. The U.S. invasion of Iraq was in an attempt to rectify one of the central drivers of instability in the Middle East.

According to neorealism, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 can be interpreted as follows. As a global hegemon, the U.S. similar to any other state was in search of power and security. Given the recent events of September 11, 2001, the U.S. was in desperate need of avoiding decline. As a means of maintaining global hegemony, the U.S. demonstrated its will to use force by disregarding the lack of approval on behalf of the U.N. Security Council and invading Iraq in March of 2003.

The national interest for the U.S. of invading Iraq can be summed up with three objectives: territorial, economic, and military. In this case, the U.S. was interested in: (1) gaining regional military bases; (2) securing its access to oil resources; and (3) avoiding the nuclear proliferation of Iraq as a means of eliminating a prevailing threat to the U.S. and its allies. But there remain other interests that were of importance to the U.S. that led to the invasion of Iraq. The neorealist theory creates a gap, an inability, to explain these interests.

The reasons as to why neorealism is not a total prescription of the international relations of Middle East is twofold. First, there is a noteworthy identity politics component that led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Second, in order to understand alliances in the international political system during this time, identity must be first considered. Alternative international relations theories will be useful for the discussion of the aforementioned reasons.

Identity politics offers a good starting point. The events of September 11, 2001 left the U.S. in a state of “vulnerability, victimization, and national desire for revenge.” These three aspects of national and cultural identity should be regarded as a part of the Bush Administration’s decision for the invasion. When these ideological influences are coupled with the Orientalist images that flooded the media after the September 11 attacks, it becomes clearer that the differentiating between Arab and Muslim states and assessing their immediate threat became less of a necessity and more of a tool of deception. What was believed as an imminent Iraqi threat to U.S. security attributed to the suspected evidence of the Iraqi state manufacturing weapons of mass destruction, resulted in the unveiling of a fallacy. If not of most importance, however, was President George W. Bush’s “vendetta against Saddam Hussein” and personal desire to be “greater” than his father ever was. As the Bush Administration constructed interests and threats to mislead public opinion, the identity politics of the U.S. prevailed—decisions were made on the premise of emotions, actions were taken on the belief in fabricated evidence, and the distribution of capabilities among states became a personal matter.

Second, to warrant the argument in the context of the international political system, it is significant to consider state identity in alliance formation; identity being a moot point in neorealist theory and alliances being at the core of the international political system and a pillar of neorealism. Critics of neorealism explain that while neorealism focuses on the capabilities of the state in determining alliance formation, it fails to consider state identity as a factor that shapes the choice of alliance partners. In particular, when it comes to strategic association in the interest of the state, a shared interest is simply not enough. Instead, it is a shared identity that encourages attraction and mutual identification. It is the “language of community rather than the contractual language of alliance” that captures strategic association. In the case of the Middle East, generally speaking, inter-Arab politics are driven by ideational rather than materialist forces, but more specifically in alliance formation.

Thus, it is the politics of identity, more so than the logic of anarchy, that offers a stronger conceptualization of which states are viewed as a threat to the security of other states. Neoconservative U.S. President George W. Bush, at the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, adhered to the principal that democracies fear attack from non-democracies. Therefore, when considering alliances and the identity politics of strategic association, neoconservative theory should be applied to the analysis of the U.S.’s invasion of Iraq; neoconservatism is a factor that contributed to the West’s perception of Iraq as a threat. While this consideration too is not a complete prescription of the international relations of the Middle East, it is a necessary point of contention when analyzing the international political system.

This essay challenges the notion that neorealism is considered to represent the most useful theoretical perspective through which to understand the international relations of the Middle East. At its root, neorealism is a competition of power among states in the international political system by which the ordering principle of anarchy explains outcomes in international politics. The criticism of this theoretical perspective is made clear—ideology and identity are disregarded. For while each state is autonomous, its demographic makeup, institutional policies, and national interests may vary in relation to other states. Each of these variables aid in the understanding of capability, and also action. To illustrate the diversity of the international political system, given that there are many explanations and variables regarding the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the discussion above emphasizes that one single analysis is not a total prescription due to gaps within a neorealist theoretical perspective. Theories such as constructivism and neo-conservativism, respectively offer an ideological and identity based approach to international politics and the actions of independent states within the system. In so far as the basis for international relations is to take into account multiple points of view; indeed, all situations will require a blending of theories and perspectives.

Saddam Hussein: Was He the Totalitarian We Were Led to Believe?

Introduction and Operationalization

In 2002 State of the Union address, then-President George Bush accused three states of forming a new “axis of evil.” Saddam Hussein, then leader of Iraq and a member of the “axis of evil,” soon became one of the United States’ chief enemies. In order to juxtapose the United States with Iraq, much of the American political discourse framed Saddam Hussein as a totalitarian leader. Dr. Ahmed Chalabi, a member of the three-man council leading the Iraqi National Congress, an opposition group to Hussein’s Ba’ath Party, labeled Hussein a totalitarian. However, as Peter Grieder notes, one of the criticisms of totalitarianism as an effective model to understand government is that it is often used as a normative label. Much of the rhetoric surrounding the use of totalitarianism as a label is itself politically charged and used to generate a specific response, making it difficult to understand exactly how accurate of a label it is.

Before exploring the efficacy of totalitarianism as a model for understanding Hussein’s government, some explanation of the term must be given. Friedrich and Brzezinski’s definition of totalitarianism will be used for this paper. For Friedrich and Brzezinski, totalitarianism has six components: An official ideology geared toward a perfected state of mankind that demands complete adherence; a mass party led by one person; a system of terror, which could be physical, psychological, or both; a monopoly of control by the government of all means of mass communication; a similar monopoly of control by the government of the military and weapons; and finally, a centralized command economy. Their definition, Grieder notes, achieved consensus in scholarly circles. Friedrich and Brzezinski’s definition is used because it reaches an appropriate equilibrium between specificity and generalizability. Theories in political science are usually too specific or not specific enough, but Friedrich and Brzezinski’s theory is balanced since it allows for unique examples within the regime of study, but is also broad enough to allow comparative analysis. Thus, it presents the best model to assess the extent to which the Hussein regime could be considered totalitarian.

Totalitarianism is a very specific system of governance. Many states that are labeled as totalitarian are, in fact, authoritarian. Because totalitarianism is a political extreme—meaning that it is the zenith of authoritarianism—and thus requires total adherence to Friedrich and Brzezinski’s formula, it is imprecise to place that moniker on regimes that do not meet all its requirements. The two regimes that are most often correctly labeled totalitarian, Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, met all of these requirements. Hussein’s regime, however, did not. Although Hussein’s government comes quite close to totalitarianism, its allowance of private gun ownership precludes it from truly being totalitarian. Despite the fact that Hitler only removed the right to gun ownership from “undesirables” and Stalin also allowed private gun ownership for hunting and self-defense, the extent to which other totalitarian institutions were utilized more than made up for this. Hussein, on the other hand, never had a military as strong as Nazi Germany’s, and never had a security apparatus as robust as the Soviet Union’s. Therefore, Hussein’s regime can correctly be called near totalitarian, rather than truly totalitarian.

Regime Analysis

The first of the six points is that a totalitarian regime will establish an official ideology geared toward a perfect state of mankind that demands its subjects’ complete adherence. Hussein’s party subscribed to Neo-Ba’athism, which is a splinter faction of the socialist, secular, and pan-Arab Ba’ath party. After the original Ba’ath party split in 1966 due to factionalist infighting and ideological differences, it began to seize power in Iraq. Iraqi Neo-Ba’athism, which is also called Saddamism— the ideology followed by Hussein—stipulates that Arab states should look to Iraq as the leader of the Arab “nation;” and invokes militarist and nationalist rhetoric and policies. It diverges from traditional Ba’athism by placing a single state as the leader of the Arab “nation,” as well as rejecting notions of class conflict, arguing that Arab states do not have similar class structures to the West. Lastly, Saddamism maintains a strong link between ancient Mesopotamian civilizations and modern Arab nationalism. Political dissidence in Saddamist Iraq was crushed; Hussein frequently orchestrated brutal purges and jailed political dissidents on often-imagined charges. At one point, Hussein gassed the Kurdish village of Halabja in 1988, killing 5,000 and injuring 10,000, all on suspected beliefs of disloyalty. When considering Friedrich and Brzezinski’s first point of totalitarianism, Hussein forced adherence to a supremacist political ideology, which demands a perfected Arab world, so it applies.

The second point of totalitarianism, that there is a mass party led by one person, is also true of Hussein’s regime. Although the Iraqi Ba’athist party had leaders before Hussein, once he came to power, the party was completely controlled by the dictator. A coup orchestrated by Hussein in 1968 installed him as vice president, which he used to develop a robust national security apparatus. In 1979, Hussein won an internal power struggle over his brother, allowing him to come to the presidency, after which he instituted the first of his purges. From this point onwards, Hussein led the Iraqi Ba’athist party, frequently purging opponents within government as well as ethnic and cultural minorities in Iraq to further consolidate power. Two other states that can be considered totalitarian, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, instituted frequent purges of undesirables to allow further consolidation of power around a single leader, such as Hitler or Stalin. Purges as tools of political consolidation, are frequently used by totalitarian leaders, and allow for one person to lead the mass party. Friedrich and Brzezinski’s second point of totalitarianism applies to Hussein’s regime as well.

The third point, that a totalitarian state possesses a system of state led physical and/or psychological terror is true for Hussein’s regime. The common facilitator for state led terror is a secret police force. The Iraqi Intelligence Service, also called the Party Intelligence (which is important to know because it demonstrates the allegiances of the secret police), was Iraq’s version of the secret police. The Party Intelligence orchestrated the Dujail massacre, killing between 142 and 148 Shiites in a reprisal attack for an assassination attempt against Hussein by Iranian backed militias. The massacre at Dujail was but one of many state sponsored attacks against civilian populations. Totalitarian leaders frequently play up biases among ethnic groups to help facilitate purges and state attacks. The Nazi party blamed Jews for Germany’s problems, and state intelligence services like the Gestapo would take them to concentration camps. Stalin would call his enemies capitalists or traitors to the communist cause, and would murder them. In Iraq, the major cleavages were along ethnic and religious lines, between Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis. Hussein would plan and would execute state attacks on Shiites and Kurds in order to sow fear into the minds of the population. The third point of totalitarianism, state sponsored terror, also applies.

The fourth point, a state monopoly on means of mass communication and media was present as well under Hussein’s regime as well. Article 36 of the 1990 Iraqi constitution stipulated that the national government, led by Hussein, had the right to prevent production or dissemination of anything harming “national unity” and the “objectives of the People.” Freedom of the press was nonexistent under Hussein, and the state possessed the right to both pre-hoc and post-hoc prevention and cancelation of materials they found disagreeable. This is a strategy used by totalitarian regimes to eradicate civil society. With weakened press, entertainment, and scholarly sectors, materials critical of Hussein’s regime would not be allowed to exist. By preventing alternative discourses on Iraqi politics, Hussein could spout his propaganda, indoctrinating the population. The sole news network under Hussein was the Iraqi News Agency, which functioned as a propaganda tool for the regime. According to a 2002 report by the United States’ Department of State, “The government restricts severely freedoms of speech, the press, assembly, association, religion, and movement.” By preventing people from freely expressing themselves, Hussein’s regime could spread their political ideology unimpeded, further allowing the regime to maintain total control. The fourth point of totalitarianism, government control of mass communication applies to Hussein’s Iraq.

The fifth point of totalitarianism, a state monopoly on weapons and soldiers, somewhat breaks with the trend in this analysis. While the military was controlled and used as a tool of state oppression, individuals were curiously allowed to possess firearms. According to a 2003 New York Times report, “Most Iraqi households own at least one gun.” Totalitarian leaders, by definition, possess monopolies on force; otherwise they could be contested violently. Hussein’s regime allowed households to own a firearm for self-defense, breaking lockstep with his other more totalitarian policies. Logically, a person attempting to establish a totalitarian regime would not want widespread individual gun ownership, but Hussein likely would have wanted individuals to own guns to deter invasion by his enemies, such as Iran or the United States. So, in one way, this could be seen as a nationalistic tool. On the other hand, however, Hussein is lucky an armed uprising did not occur to the extent that he could have been overthrown.

This paper takes the position that private gun ownership presents a flaw in connecting Hussein’s regime to totalitarianism, as it left political stability up to the ability of the regime to carefully maneuver itself politically. Additionally, Hussein’s totalitarian institutions were not nearly as robust as other totalitarian regimes. The Party Intelligence could hardly be compared to the Soviet Union’s secret police force, the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, and Hussein’s propaganda machine lacked its own Goebbels. While other totalitarian regimes allowed gun ownership, Hussein’s totalitarian institutions lacked the robustness to deter and prevent real armed opposition, and thus, gun ownership precludes true totalitarianism in this case.  

The other aspect of the use of force in Hussein’s regime was the role of the military. The military under Hussein’s regime, expectedly, was under his direct control. The most important part of the military under Hussein was the Republican Guard, which constituted the elite paramilitary troops of the Iraqi Army. Formed in 1969 as the Presidential Guard, the role of this organization was to maintain state stability against perceived internal and external enemies, essentially, guaranteeing Hussein’s regime power.  A report from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy labeled the Republican Guard as an integral structure in Hussein’s regime.

Point five of totalitarianism only half applies. The military institutions necessary for a successful totalitarian regime were present, but Hussein’s allowance of private gun ownership prevents his regime from truly reflecting this aspect of totalitarianism.

Point six, the final point, stipulates that a totalitarian state runs a command economy; in other words, a highly centralized, state run economy. According to a 2003 report from ReliefWeb, a human rights organization, Hussein’s economy was a highly centralized command economy. Nationalization of oil, prohibitions against foreign ownership of businesses—leading to state owned enterprises as the primary form of big business in Iraq—and high tariffs on foreign goods were all policies implemented by Hussein’s regime. Because the state runs the economy, individuals are inherently linked to and dependent on the state, helping to strengthen and maintain the low levels of personal agency of the regime’s subjects. By weakening individual agency, political opposition is limited. Command economies allow the totalitarian leader to build high levels of capital for their endeavors, and prevent political opposition. Hussein used his command economy policies to reach these goals. Point six, that is a command economy, applies to Hussein’s government.

Conclusion

By using Friedrich and Brzezinski’s conceptual framework for a totalitarian government, we can say that Hussein’s regime is more “totalitarian lite,” rather than a completely totalitarian system. Iraq under Hussein met most of the requirements laid out by Friedrich and Brzezinski: The ideology advocated for an ideal state and opposition to said ideology was crushed; the Iraqi Ba’athist party was led by Hussein once he swiftly gained power and not relinquished until the United States invaded Iraq; a state led system of terror facilitated by state intelligence agencies was present; the state heavily censored forms of media and communication, and ran the only legitimate avenues for media and communication; while there was no monopoly on guns, the state did have its own paramilitary force and was in control of the rest of the army; and there was a command economy. If it were not for provisions allowing for private ownership of guns, Hussein could be considered a true totalitarian leader; instead, he should only be taken as a brutal dictator.