EUROPE TURKMEN FRIENDSHIPS

Ottoman Provincial Boundaries, Shiite Federalism, and Energy Conflict in Iraq

Ottoman Provincial Boundaries, Shiite Federalism, and Energy Conflict in Iraq

By Reidar Visser (http://historiae.org)

[This is the English version of an article which appeared in Turkish in Stratejik Analiz (Ankara), November 2006, originally titled "Osmanli eyalet sinirlari, Sii federalizmi ve Irak’taki enerji anlasmazligi" and available as PDF file.]

Among the internal provincial borders of the eastern Ottoman lands, the old boundary between the vilayets of Mosul and Baghdad has historically been the most momentous one in international affairs. But the line that divided Baghdad from Basra could in the future become equally important – as a factor in Iraqi politics, in wider regional power struggles, and not least in geopolitical conflicts over energy resources. Already today, the heated debate about new federalism legislation in the Iraqi parliament has shown that this ancient border relates to regional sentiments that on certain issues pit Shiites against Shiites.

The unknown boundary
Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect about the old Ottoman Basra–Baghdad frontier is that surprisingly few contemporary Iraq analysts are aware of exactly where it was. That certainly is the case in Europe and the United States, where even experts seem locked in a belief that the Basra vilayet covered approximately the area of Iraq where today there is a Shiite majority. Western maps purporting to show the administrative divisions of the Ottoman Empire often use a rough line drawn just to the south of Baghdad to mark the border; even prestigious academic publishers and news media tend to reiterate this fallacious image.

The old vilayet of Basra bordering on Arabia (west), Baghdad (north) and Persia (east). The border with Baghdad sliced the Shiite areas in the region in two; note the location of Karbala in the upper left corner, in the centre of the Baghdad vilayet. Taken from an Ottoman atlas dating from the early twentieth century

In reality, most Shiites in the Ottoman Empire lived in the vilayet of Baghdad. The boundary between Basra and Baghdad ran much further to the south than is commonly thought: for long periods it extended roughly from north of Nasiriyya to north of Amara. As a result of this, the majority of Shiite regions in today’s Iraq – including such key Shiite shrine cities as Najaf and Karbala – have historically had their fortunes intimately connected with Baghdad rather than with Basra as “their” centre.
Since the early days of Islam, “the province of Basra” – when it existed – had tended to denote the Gulf city plus its immediate tribal hinterland, rather than any larger unit extending northwards in the direction of Baghdad. In classical times Basra formed an opposite pole to the province of Kufa (where the holy cities of the Shiites would later emerge). When on a few occasions Basra was enlarged to a greater area, this tended to be in the southerly direction along the Arabian shores of the Gulf, or, alternatively, to the northeast along the Tigris. The often inaccessible Euphrates districts, on the other hand, tended to remain within Baghdad’s sphere of influence, if not actual control. There was really only one substantial historical attempt at combining the central areas of Iraq and Basra in the south in a single polity; this project, led by the semi-autonomous Hilla-based Mazyadid Bedouin emirate in the early twelfth century, met with considerable opposition in urban Basra and collapsed shortly after its inception.(1)
These geographical–political patterns were perpetuated during the first centuries of Ottoman rule after their conquest of the region in 1534, when the principal dynamic in the affairs of the Basra vilayet was the struggle between the established urban centre of Basra and tribal forces in the Jaza’ir and Muntafiq tribal regions to the immediate north. Rarely was any internal regional harmony achieved, but there were short periods in the seventeenth and eighteenth century when semi-independent principalities based on this delta region emerged, under such local rulers as the urban Afrasiyab dynasty (who contemplated severing all links with the Ottomans in favour of ties with European powers) and tribal rulers of the Muntafiq Sa‘dun clan (who repeatedly sought to impress on the urban population of Basra that they alone could guarantee tranquillity and a safe trading environment).(2) However, none of these entities extended much further northwards than the junction of the Tigris and the Euphrates at Qurna, and this tradition of a small-scale Basra province was reproduced by Ottoman administrators in the 1880s when they gave the Basra vilayet its final shape by formally designating it as a triangle from Nasiriyya on the Euphrates via Amara on the Tigris and down to Basra at the head of the Gulf (and with an extension, of a decidedly more theoretical nature, southwards to Hufuf in present-day Saudi Arabia).

The oil boundary
The Ottoman boundary line between Basra and Baghdad did more than creating internal splits between the Shiites in the region. It was not known at the time, but the line that separated the two vilayets also correlated closely to geological patterns, which meant that almost all the hydrocarbon reserves in this region fell to Basra. However, in twentieth-century history this remained largely irrelevant. After Basra, Baghdad and Mosul became administratively amalgamated under a British mandate in 1920, the population of the oil-bearing regions of this country – the Shiites of Basra included – embraced the new Iraqi nationalist ethos and its unitary state paradigm with remarkable ease. By the time oil exploration started in Basra in the 1930s (and certainly before actual drilling commenced in the 1950s) Iraq had a firmly unitary state tradition – and oil was widely considered a common national resource, especially in the Arab areas, whether Shiite or Sunni. Whereas Kirkuk oil would sometimes be claimed as “Kurdish”, there emerged no parallel particularistic demands on Basra oil, which was consistently referred to as a common national good, by regime and oppositionists alike.(3)
Since the Gulf War in 1991, there has been increased focus on the connections between Iraq’s oil resources and identity politics. But in this regard another unfortunate media simplification has emerged, quite similar to the one that habitually equates the “vilayet of Basra” with “the Shiites”. Thus, in much reporting from Iraq today, it is widely assumed that every square inch of territory downstream of Baghdad is overflowing with oil and gas. Journalists are often content to speak of the “the vast energy resources of Shiite Iraq” and tend to overlook how most of the oil is really in the “far south” – and not in any sense distributed evenly across the Shiite-dominated territories. All the key existing fields, as well as important future ones, can in fact be found within short distance of Basra, Amara and Nasiriyya.(4)

Shiite federalism and the boundary question
The reason why the Basra vilayet boundary is again becoming relevant is quite simple: despite the long-standing unitary state tradition in Iraq, after 2003 the people living in what was the old Ottoman vilayet of Basra have shown an increasing interest in the geology of their patria. Back in 2004 they were the first Shiites to launch a bid for a federal region, when the governorates of Basra, Dhi Qar and Maysan combined in a bid to unite as a single southern federal region. Named the Region of the South or iqlim al-janub, this project aimed at restoring a high standard of living to the long-neglected southern region, not least by securing a local share of the enormous proceeds of the oil industry. At first, the idea of a federal unit in these three governorates attracted interests from both secularists and Islamists, but since 2005 the chief protagonists for a small-scale “southern” region have been from the Fadila Party (who are particularly strong in Basra) and from tribal blocs in all three governorates.(5) (Additionally, independent-minded Sadrist factions, who control the Maysan governorate, have at least been flirting with regionalist schemes.)
It is important to distinguish between this regional variant of federalism, and a sectarian competitor which emerged in August 2005. At that point, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) launched the idea of creating a much bigger entity that would cover all the Shiite-majority governorates south of Baghdad – nine altogether – in a single unit. (This project has been named iqlim al-wasat wa-al-janub, partly to distinguish the scheme from its “southern” competitor, but also a reflection of native Iraqi discourse where the Euphrates region around Najaf is usually referred to as the “centre” and not as the “south”.) The principal propaganda element in SCIRI’s vision of a Shiite federal state has been the idea that federalism could serve as a check on anti-Shiite terrorism by Sunni extremists.(6)

       
Left, the Region of the South (iqlim al-janub); centre, oil fields of Iraq (in black); right, the Region of the Centre and the south (iqlim al-wasat wa-al-janub)

Continued …

Continue Reading Ottoman Provincial Boundaries, Shiite Federalism, and Energy Conflict in Iraq…