• U.S. Secretary of State Kerry is in the Middle East looking to jump-start peace talks (1)

Also in today’s show:

• U.S. lawmakers pledge to back Israel against Iran (2)
• Syrian refugees hunt for work in Lebanon (3)
• A look at what’s behind the drop in Syrian refugees to Jordan (4)
• An E.U. official calls for more Syria aid (5)

(To listen to select segments, click ‘play’ and drag the sound line to the appropriate bookmark)

*Middle East Monitor podcasts comprise elements featured in VOA on-air products

It would be tempting, then, to dismiss the election scheduled for June 14 as mere window-dressing or to disregard the brewing antagonisms within Iran’s political establishment as irrelevant. This would be a mistake, however, and yet another misreading of Iran’s complicated domestic dynamics. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t mean to suggest that the election will bear any resemblance to a truly democratic enterprise; even in the best of times, the Islamic Republic fell far short of meeting international standards for free and fair elections. However, while the outcome will be engineered, the element of improvisation is real, and the outcome of this latest twist in the thirty-four year power struggle within Iran will have significant implications for the future of the country and its role in the world.

If the past eight years of Ahmadinejad’s antics have taught us nothing else, they have demonstrated over and over again that Iran’s presidency matters. Despite its electoral illegitimacy, its institutional constraints, and the assiduous efforts of a system built around a divine mandate, the office of the presidency has emerged as one with real power to shape the context for domestic and foreign policy. The post exerts considerable authority over the Iranian budget, the framework for internal political activities, the social and cultural atmosphere, and even the most sensitive aspects of Iran’s security policies. Whoever assumes the office in August of this year will find himself near the apex of power, at a time of unprecedented external pressure and at the cusp of generational change within the Iranian regime. For this reason, the election and its outcome will have enormous sway over the future course of the Islamic Republic.

“[E]lections – even ones that are heavily rigged – represent critical junctures in the lifecycle of political systems, and in Iran they have repeatedly sent the revolutionary system careening in new directions.” – Suzanne Maloney, Brookings Saban Center

To appreciate the significance of the much-maligned Iranian presidency, simply consider the track records of its most recent occupants. During his two terms in office (1997-2005), reformist president Mohammad Khatami managed to curb some of the worst abuses of Iran’s own citizens and establish new avenues for political participation and speech. His tenure attracted foreign investment to Iran, unified its exchange rate, and established an oil stabilization fund to promote responsible economic stewardship. He repaired Iran’s relationships with much of the world, and even helped push through a multi-year suspension of the most worrisome aspects of its nuclear program.

An Iranian police officer guards a ballot box during Iran's parliamentary election in Tehran March 2, 2012. (Reuters)

It was not an unadulterated success by any stretch of the imagination; Khatami’s ambitions for change were inherently limited by his steadfast loyalty to the theocratic system and many of its most problematic policies, and even his mild reforms were thwarted at every turn by hardliners’ opposition. Still, compare those years to the two terms of his successor, who oversaw a crackdown against technocrats and the media, squandered an epic boom in oil revenues, and indulged in hate speech that helped alienate the world and isolate his country. It’s clear that Iranians as well as the international community were better served by Khatami’s halting moderation than by Ahmadinejad’s impetuous antagonisms.

It’s almost certain that the June election won’t produce a shocking upset or a reformist victory, and that whoever manages to secure the presidency this time around will offer continuity on the issues that matter most to Washington, particularly the nuclear issue. However, elections – even ones that are heavily rigged – represent critical junctures in the lifecycle of political systems, and in Iran they have repeatedly sent the revolutionary system careening in new directions. At times, these changes in course were deliberate, as in 1989 when Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani ran virtually unopposed in order to spearhead the country’s post-war reconstruction. At other times, the shifts have been wholly unanticipated, such as the advent of the reform movement or even Ahmadinejad himself, whose mid-term transformation from the supreme leader’s acolyte to his whipping boy has given the Iranian political establishment whiplash.

Iran’s revolution was the product of a deeply divided coalition that agreed on little beyond their opposition to the Shah, and throughout its history, the Islamic Republic has experienced a intense, evolving competition for influence. That contest remains as dynamic as ever, and the election will offer an opportunity for external observers to gauge the state of play. For those within the system, the campaign provides endless openings for ambitious contenders and rival factions to position themselves for future influence and reframe Iran’s political climate, just as Khatami and Ahmadinejad did.

A protester is seen at a rally contesting the results of Iran's last presidential election, in central Tehran June 17, 2009. (Reuters)

And because the legacy of the revolution and Iran’s century-old struggle for representative rule has made popular participation incumbent even upon its theocracy, the election will mobilize millions of Iranians in ways that often prove difficult to control, even with a well-orchestrated repression. Over the course of the forthcoming weeks, we’ll be watching all these factors closely and seeking to interpret what the campaign and its outcome mean for Iran’s domestic evolution and its ongoing conflicts with the international community.

This post was first published on Brookings.edu.

The views expressed in this Insight are the author’s own and are not endorsed by Middle East Voices or Voice of America. If you’d like to share your opinion on this post, you may use our democratic commenting system below. If you are a Middle East expert or analyst associated with an established academic institution, think tank or non-governmental organization, we invite you to contribute your perspectives on events and issues about or relevant to the region. Please email us through our Contact page with a short proposal for an Insight post or send us a link to an existing post already published on your institutional blog.

• U.S. secretary of state travels to Jordan to discuss Syria peace

Also in today’s show:

• Qusair fighting drives more Syrians into Lebanon
• Seven Egyptian hostages are freed in Sinai
• Turkish government says it will might tap into the Islamic financial industry
• US oil production surges create big implications for the Middle East
• Halal nail polish introduced for Muslim women

(To listen to select segments, click ‘play’ and drag the sound line to the appropriate bookmark)

Retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Morris D. Davis, who authored the online petition,  served as chief prosecutor at Guantanamo’s Office of Military Commissions for terrorism trials from 2005 through 2007.  Today, an assistant professor at Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C., Davis told VOA reporter Cecily Hilleary that he believes the prison is a blot on the American record.

Below please find transcribed highlights of the interview. You can listen to it in full using the audio player at the bottom of this post.

Col. Morris Davis, Ret. (Reuters)

Davis:  I retired from the military in October 2008, and in November of 2008 I met with members of the transition team that were working on what at that point was President-elect Obama’s effort to close Guantanamo.  And I came away with the impression that they were naïve, and grossly underestimated the complexity of it.  I mean, “Close Guantanamo” makes a really nice bumper sticker.  But the practicality of doing it is a lot more complicated than I think they envisioned.  And so when President Obama took office in January of 2009, I think actually his second official act was signing the order to close Guantanamo.  And I think what happened –  if you think back to 2008, remember, President Bush, before he left office, said he wanted to close Guantanamo, and during the campaign, you had both John McCain and Barack Obama saying they wanted to close Guantanamo.  So, for at least a period of time, it was essentially a non-partisan issue.

So I think that when [Obama] took office in January 2009 and signed the order, I think he kind of dusted his hands and thought that was it.  And then you had his opponents who were committed to try to make him a one-term president, so if he was for it, they were against it.  So I don’t think he and his administration were prepared for the blowback.  And I think it would be interesting – had John McCain won, would Guantanamo still be open?

Hilleary:  Well, we know there is an awful lot of politicking going on, but all of that apart, you have 166 men who were detained eleven years ago.  What is the concern?  Give me the statistics – how many, what, 56 have been cleared for release?

Davis:  More than that.  There have been a grand total of 779 men that were ever held at Guantanamo.  And they were the ones, remember, that [former U.S. Secretary of Defense] Donald Rumsfeld told the public were the “worst of the worst.”  And I think today – I was speaking at an event and on Twitter, somebody commented, “Hey, if these are guys that wanted to blow themselves up, then isn’t a hunger strike better than letting them kill people?”  So I think the public largely still buys into this “worst of the worst” narrative.

Of the 779, the population is now 166, so more than 600 are no longer at Guantanamo.  Most of those were cleared and transferred out during the Bush administration.  So the underlying premise that these guys were the “worst of the worst” was just a fallacy.

Of the 166 that are still there, there are 86 that have been cleared for transfer, which means that a joint task force made up of the CIA, Department of Justice, FBI and Department of Defense unanimously agreed that these 86 men didn’t commit a crime, we don’t intend to charge them, they don’t pose an imminent threat and we don’t want to keep them.  So a majority of the people at Guantanamo are people that our government has said we don’t want.  Yet they sit there, year after year after year.

“I’ve heard talk that the administration is making a genuine effort to try to repatriate the Yemenis, but it’s one of those things where I’ve been optimistic so many times in the past that I’ll believe it when I see it.” Col. Morris Davis, Ret.

Hilleary:  But who does want them?  What are the options?

Davis:  The detainees fall into three groups:  The 86 that have been cleared for transfer is the largest group; there are about 30 that the administration has indicated they want to prosecute; and then there is a group of about 50 that are the indefinite detainees – that are neither supposed to go home or to trial.

But of the 86 that have been cleared, the majority, 56 of the 86 are Yemenis.  And we were in the process of repatriating the Yemenis that had been cleared up until the ‘underwear bomber’ on Christmas Day, 2009.  And when it turned out that the plot for the underwear bombing was hatched in Yemen, we shut off the pipeline back.  So you have men who were cleared and were headed back to Yemen who’ve been sitting there since 2009, waiting for their turn that has never come.  That’s the largest block, and the Yemen government has said they want their people back.

Hilleary:  Attorney General Eric Holder held a press conference a couple of days ago where he said, according to the Guardian newspaper — I can’t find a transcript anywhere — that the administration was going to appoint a new person to oversee the process of closing – and according to the Guardian, they were getting ready to go ahead and consider sending the Yemenis home.  Do you know anything more?

Davis:  The President two weeks ago — at the press conference when the issue came up — said all the right things about why Guantanamo is a bad idea – the costs, the blot on our reputation, the recruiting tool- all the reasons why Guantanamo makes no sense.  The Yemeni government, who has been asking for their detainees back for some period of time, I think  they felt the government was serious here and sent a representative here that the administration wouldn’t meet with and the representative went back to Yemen.

I’ve heard talk that the administration is making a genuine effort to try to repatriate the Yemenis, but it’s one of those things where I’ve been optimistic so many times in the past that I’ll believe it when I see it.

“If you look at the number of Americans killed by international terrorism since 9/11, we have a ‘9/11’ every quarter through gun violence, and we’re not willing to do a damned thing about gun violence.  But we’ll spend three quarters of a billion dollars to lock up 166 people on an 8.5 percent chance that one of them might do something stupid that could possibly involve an American.” – Col. Morris Davis, Ret.

Hilleary:  What are the chief concerns?  That these people, if they weren’t radical, militant, American-hating to begin with, that they’ve been made so?

Davis:  It was interesting… when Attorney General [Eric] Holder was on Capitol Hill getting beat up on the head and shoulders over the AP phone records and the IRS and all the other things that have happened in the last couple of days.  One of the members [of Congress] – and I forget which one it was – asked him about Guantanamo, and Holder said that Congress has put up impediments, but they haven’t made it impossible for the president to close Guantanamo.  Because you hear a lot of people say – you know, I get a lot of ‘hate mail’ on Twitter from both sides, and on the pro-Obama side, it’s ‘How dare you try to pin this on the president? Congress has made it impossible!’ But they haven’t.  Congress has made it difficult.  And what they’ve done is – in the National Defense Authorization Act, there’s a provision where the secretary of defense has the authority to certify, on a case-by-case basis, detainees – basically vouching that they are not a threat to the U.S. and they’re not going to do any harm and it’s safe to send them home.  But what the administration has actually lacked is the backbone to actually sign one of those because there is no way humanly possible to reduce the risk to zero. The fact is – it’s inevitable.  If you sent the 86 cleared detainees home, somebody in that group is going to do something stupid at some point in the future, and the president hasn’t been willing to have his name on that happening.

You hear a variety of figures bandied about on what the recidivism rate is; there’s a new study by the New America Foundation that really dug into the numbers and the data.  And their figure – they used a really broad definition of recidivism, for instance, if a detainee goes back and produces a ‘I hate America’ YouTube video, that counts.  So it’s not just, you know, people going back and becoming suicide bombers.  But even going back and using a broad definition of recidivism, the New America Foundation found that the rate is about 8.5 percent.

Hilleary:  Well, that’s not very big, but still, if you are talking about 8.5 percent of 56 Yemenis, you’re still talking about four people doing something stupid.  So what’s the alternative?

Davis:  The alternative is to me fundamentally un-American: And that’s to say we’re willing to keep 166 people locked up for the rest of their lives on the chance that 8 and a half percent of them would do something stupid.

Hilleary:  There has been talk of transferring some of them to Supermax prisons in the United States.  Is that a plan?  Is that an alternative?

Davis:  It’s entirely do-able, and actually, you know, for the fiscal conservatives – I thought the president did a nice job in that first press briefing about two weeks ago of laying out the rationale for why Guantanamo makes no sense.  And one of the reasons is the cost, the fiscal irresponsibility of maintaining Guantanamo.  We are paying about $800,000-900,000 per man per year to keep people at Guantanamo.  When you figure that a majority of them we don’t want to keep – 86 of the 166 are men that we’ve cleared and said we don’t want – we’re wasting about $175,000,000 a year [Davis is presumed to have included in this figure planned renovation costs for Guantanamo - ed.] to incarcerate people that we say shouldn’t be incarcerated.

For the ones that need to be incarcerated, I mean there are – the description “worst of the worst” applies to some of the detainees, who should be detained and should be prosecuted.  The Supermax federal prison, I believe, averages about $32,000 per person per year.

Hilleary:  So it’s cheaper.

Davis:  Absolutely.  And you hear so many conservatives, I’ve heard them say recently, ‘Oh, we don’t want these bastards in our backyard.’  We’ve got a lot of crazy bastards that we keep incarcerated and we manage to do it safely and securely and efficiently.  We’ve got Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law.  We’ve got Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s nephew [Ali Abd al-Aziz, AKA Ammar al-Baluchi].  We’ve got hundreds of people that have been convicted or are facing trial for terrorism-related charges that we can keep safely and securely at a fraction of the cost of what Guantanamo runs.  And that’s not counting what General  John F. Kelly, Commander of Southern Command, testified at a hearing about a month ago, that he needs about a quarter of a billion dollars to rehabilitate the facilities at Guantanamo.  Because he said they were built to be temporary, not permanent, and they’ve far exceeded their life span, and if we’re  going to keep this facility open, we need a quarter of a billion dollars to renovate it.  So if President Obama doesn’t fulfill his promise to close Guantanamo, between now and the end of his administration, we will have spent another three quarters of a billion dollars to incarcerate 166 men, the majority of whom we don’t want to keep in prison.

Hilleary:  I can see the numbers – certainly – fiscally, it doesn’t make sense, but if there’s a risk of one of them doing something bad a la 9/11 again, isn’t it worth any amount of money to avoid that?

Davis:  If you look at the number of Americans killed by international terrorism since 9/11, we have a ‘9/11’ every quarter through gun violence, and we’re not willing to do a damned thing about gun violence.  But we’ll spend three quarter of a billion dollars to lock up 166 people on an 8.5 percent chance that one of them might do something stupid that could possibly involve an American.

Listen to Cecily Hilleary’s interview with Col. Davis in full, below:

For an alternative view, check our interview with Bush administration Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

• Russia calls for the involvement of Iran in Syria peace talks

Also in today’s show:

• Fighting escalates in a strategic town on the Lebanese-Syrian border
• Turkey’s peace initiative with Kurds meets resistance
• The secret life of pigs in Egypt

(To listen to select segments, click ‘play’ and drag the sound line to the appropriate bookmark)

Judge Alberto R. Gonzales served as United States attorney general under and counsel to President George W. Bush.  Today he holds the Doyle Rogers Distinguished Chair of Law at Belmont University and serves as counsel at the Weller law firm in Nashville, Tennessee.  VOA reporter Cecily Hilleary spoke to him by phone and asked him whether he agrees with President Obama on the need to close down Guantanamo.  Below please find the transcribed interview. You can also listen to it using the audio player at the bottom of this post.

Alberto R. Gonzales

Gonzales: I disagree with many of the president’s statements, but I do agree with the fact that we need to close down Guantanamo.  The problem the United States has, of course, is that there is not a viable alternative at this moment, and because the need continues to detain captured enemy combatants somewhere, we need to continue to have Guantanamo open.

You know, in my recent Hill column, I wrote about the fact that President Bush was likewise desirous of closing Guantanamo, and I talked about the fact that Don Rumsfeld, our former secretary of defense, he didn’t want the military to be the world’s jailor.  So there was a great desire by the Bush administration to also close Guantanamo, but again, because there wasn’t a viable option that we could identify, it continued to remain open.

And the same is true for President Obama’s administration.  There’s a desire to close Guantanamo.  But what is a better option than Guantanamo?  And apparently, like us, the Obama administration has struggled to find a viable alternative.

President Bush made the calculation – when the war on terror began – that our number one priority would be to prevent another attack, prevent another loss of lives, and that secondary to that would be bringing people to justice… that’s the balance that he believed was appropriate and necessary.

Hilleary:  You have said that you oppose  some of the things that the president has said.  He has said that Guantanamo casts America in a bad light – how do you feel about that?

Gonzales:  I think that probably in the beginning there was a lot of misinformation about what was going on at Guantanamo, but anyone who’s been there today, the facilities are as good if not better than some of the state and local facilities in the United States, and so many of the Military Commission procedures are very similar to Article 2 procedures in the United States, and so I think people have a perception of Guantanamo perhaps the way it used to be.  I think the conditions there are much better today.

I think another reason that people might have concern about Guantanamo – or simply have a sort of a knee-jerk reaction against Guantanamo – is because they simply don’t agree with the notion that a country should be able to detain people that it captures indefinitely without charges.  And I think for some people, they react negatively to that and view Guantanamo as a symbolic event.  Of course, that ignores a long-standing tradition, long-standing tenet of international law that under the laws of war, countries who capture people fighting against them can detain them indefinitely, without charges, for the duration of hostilities, which is what’s ongoing now at Guantanamo.  So I understand that people don’t like Guantanamo.  I don’t like Guantanamo.  But again, it continues to exist because of a need for it, and I think a lot of the negative reaction is a negative reaction is a misunderstanding of the way conditions are today.  And also I think a reaction to this notion that we are continuing to hold people that have been captured, that we continue to hold them indefinitely without charges – which we are allowed to do under international law.

“I continue to believe that right now these prisoners are receiving all the rights that they are entitled to. They are receiving good treatment – certainly the treatment that they are entitled to under international and domestic law.” – Alberto R. Gonzales

Hilleary:  We may be allowed to do it, but why haven’t we prosecuted those that we have deemed prosecutable?

Gonzales:  Well, that’s a question that you will have to ask the government and the prosecutors.  Obviously there are issues. There are always going to be issues relating to what evidence can you introduce at trial without jeopardizing sensitive sources and methods, and these are all issues that are weighed in making decisions about prosecutions.  Do we provide, for example, a platform for these detainees to put the United States on trial for the war on terror?  You know, these are all things that have to be weighed in connection with the decision to move forward with the prosecution.

You know, President Bush made the calculation – when the war on terror began – that our number one priority would be to prevent another attack, prevent another loss of lives, and that secondary to that would be bringing people to justice.  And he understood that because of some of the measures that we took, which were successful in protecting American lives, that it would present additional challenges for prosecutors in terms of bringing them to justice at a later date.  He understood that, but that’s the balance that he believed was appropriate and necessary.  Because, again, as far as he was concerned, we were going to do everything necessary, lawful  under the law to protect against another attack.

Hilleary:  There have been some options that have been proposed, such as moving the – to use the old phrase, “worst of the worst” – to, for example, supermax prisons [i.e. super-maximum security prisons”].  Do you find that to be a viable option or not?

Gonzales:  Well, I think some people have said, ‘Gosh, what about the security of the guards, the security of the other prisoners?’  I think that we have the capability to provide for the safety of these individuals and to provide for the safety of the surrounding communities.  But the truth of the matter is that if you move them to one facility like supermax, the supermax will become the next symbol of American oppression.  Because I think the enemy has shown that it will use anything that we do as a recruiting tool, as a way to criticize the United States.

The other concern is of course that once you bring them into the United States, they very well may have additional constitutional plans against this country, and I talked to you earlier about the very real possibility that these terrorists will put the United States on trial in connection with any kind of subsequent criminal proceedings.

My own sense is that is certainly an option. It was something that we considered when Guantanamo was being considered at the outset.  We believed then, since it was only weeks and months after 9/11, that Americans would not tolerate the United States bringing terrorists into this country.  I believe that today, that continues to be the opinion of the majority of American people and also certainly a majority of people in Congress that we just don’t want to do that.  We don’t want to bring them into this country.

Hilleary:  Well, certainly it seems to be for now an unanswerable problem.

Gonzales:  It’s something, again, that we wrestled with in the Bush administration.  It’s something that sort of bedevils the Obama administration.  Obviously, I understand the frustration.  And President Bush was frustrated – I saw it; I sensed it.  I’m sure President Obama is frustrated.  You know – hopefully there will be an appropriate solution to this at some point, but I continue to believe that right now these prisoners are receiving all the rights that they are entitled to. They are receiving good treatment – certainly the treatment that they are entitled to under international and domestic law.  You’re right, it’s a serious problem.  Hopefully, the administration will continue to work on it, hopefully work with Congress, to try to find a solution that’s best for the national security of our country, quite frankly.

Listen to Cecily Hilleary’s interview with Alberto R. Gonzales:

For an alternative view, check our interview the former Guantanamo chief prosecutor, Col. Morris D. Davis, Ret.

• A series of bombings cause terror in Iraq

Also in today’s show:

• The U.S. secretary of state heads back to the Middle East for Syria talks
• Challenges in the Syrian refugee camp Zaatari in Jordan
  (Interview with Uma Kandalayeva, International Relief and Development)
• A former weapons inspector sees a disturbing trend in Syria
• Syria’s craftsmen turn their skills to making weapons
• A flare-up of violence in Tunisia causes concern

(To listen to select segments, click ‘play’ and drag the sound line to the appropriate bookmark)

*Middle East Monitor podcasts comprise elements featured in VOA on-air products.

• The U.N. secretary general visits Russia to discuss Syria (1)

Also in today’s show:

• Analysts express pessimism about a June international conference on Syria (2)
  (Interviews with Andrew Kutchins, CSIS, and Helle Dale, Heritage Foundation)
• Syrian strife is reported infecting the region (3)
• The U.S. and Turkey downplay their differences over Syria (4)
• The U.S. continues diplomatic efforts on Syria & the Middle East (5)
• Palestinians use tunnels into the Gaza Strip to deliver KFC chicken (6)
• Lawlessness  abounds in Egypt’s post-revolution Sinai  (7)

(To listen to select segments, click ‘play’ and drag the sound line to the appropriate bookmark)

*Middle East Monitor podcasts comprise elements featured in VOA on-air products.

Now we know – and to be honest, the answer is hardly a surprise. Iraq is a basket case these days, and none of its problems came out of the blue. In the latest bout of sectarian and ethnic bloodletting, coordinated bomb attacks ripped through Shi’ite neighborhoods in Baghdad and also northern Iraq, killing more than 30 people. The spasm of violence followed clashes between the Iraqi army and Sunni protesters and insurgents last month, where the federal government temporarily lost control of some town centers and urban neighborhoods in Kirkuk, Nineveh, and Diyala provinces.

Negative indicators abound: Armed civilian militias are reactivating, tit-for-tat bombings are targeting Sunni and Shi’ite mosques, and some Iraqi military forces are breaking down into ethnic-sectarian components or suffering from chronic absenteeism. Numerous segments of Iraq’s body politic – Kurdish, Sunni Arab, and Shia – are exasperated over the government’s inability to address political or economic inequities, and are talking seriously about partition.

On April 23, the federal military miscalculated when its raid on a protest site in the northern town of Hawija turned into a bloody firefight, and scores of civilians were killed. This event has the potential to become an iconic rallying call for insurgent groups such as al-Qaida in Iraq and the neo-Baathist Naqshbandi movement, which can fit it into its calls for ongoing resistance against a “Safavid occupation” of Iraq – a reference to the Persian dynasty that evokes Sunni Arab fears of the Shia-led government in Baghdad.

The resurgence of violence since 2010 is shown very clearly in the metrics used to gauge the strength of the insurgency. The Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Iraq Violence Database has tracked violence since 2004, drawing on both open-source and privileged information provided by security forces in Iraq. In the first quarter of 2011, monthly attacks bottomed out at an average of 358 reported incidents – the lowest quarterly average since 2004. By the first quarter of 2012, the average monthly attacks had risen to 539. By the first quarter of 2013, it was 804. These figures not only provide evidence of an increasingly active insurgency, but one that has more than replaced anti-U.S. targeting with Iraqi-on-Iraqi violence.

“[Iraq's] executive branch is rapidly eclipsing all checks and balances that were put in place to guarantee a new autocracy did not emerge.” – Michael Knights, The Washington Institute

So what happens next? Some veteran observers, like former U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, view the current period as a return to the conditions of 2006 and 2007, when Iraq plunged into civil war-like violence. But there is an alternative comparison that may hold at least as much weight – namely, the period beginning in 2003, when the international coalition’s mistakes created the opening for Iraq’s insurgent groups to grow in the first place. The Iraqi government is now making many of the same mistakes the United States made back then: It is alienating the Sunnis and occupying their communities with a heavy-handed, military-led approach that doesn’t differentiate between diehard militants and the mass of peaceable civilians.

An Iraqi policeman and residents are seen gathered at the site of a car bomb attack in Baghdad's Sadr City May 16, 2013. (Reuters)

The Iraqi government has tried to deflect blame for its own failing on the Syrian uprising, arguing that it was suffering from the spillover of violence next door. But that excuse doesn’t hold weight – security improvements had already ground to a halt before the Syrian crisis began in spring 2011. Nor can the upswing in violence be ascribed solely to ancient Sunni-Sh’a hatreds: The embers of sectarianism were stoked back into life by the Baghdad government’s unwillingness to meet demands for an end to the collective punishment of Sunnis for the crimes of the Baathist regime.

But the real driver of violence in Iraq is arguably Baghdad’s over-centralization of power, which came too soon and was infused with sectarian paranoia. The United States was initially wary of this danger: The formula of all-inclusive power sharing – muhasasa in Arabic – was a cornerstone of U.S.-led policy in Iraq until 2008, and the United States also made sure that the principle of administrative decentralization was baked into the Iraqi Constitution. This policy reflected a powerful truth – that post-Saddam Iraq was not ready for a political system with absolute winners and absolute losers.

But starting in 2008, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki re-centralized power, leaning on an increasingly narrow circle of Shia opponents of the previous dictatorship. And like all successful revolutionaries, this clique is paranoid about counterrevolution and has set about rebuilding a version of the authoritarian system it sought for decades to overthrow. Maliki’s inner circle dominates the selection of military commanders down to brigade level, controls the federal court, and has seized control of the central bank. The executive branch is rapidly eclipsing all checks and balances that were put in place to guarantee a new autocracy did not emerge.

A government supporter holds a poster of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki during a rally in Basra, 420 km southeast of Baghdad. (Reuters file)

The root of Iraq’s violence is thus not ancient hatreds between Sunni and Shia or Kurd and Arab, but between decentralizers and recentralizers – and between those who wish to put Iraq’s violent past behind them, and those determined to continually refight it. The demands that have been consistently stated by the Kurdish and Sunni Arab anti-Maliki opposition could not be clearer. First, the opposition demands devolution of fiscal authority to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the provinces, encapsulated in a revenue-sharing law that will provide a formula for the proportion of the budget allocated to the KRG and provinces. Second, it demands the implementation of the system of checks and balances on the executive branch – particularly by empowering parliament and ensuring an independent judiciary. Third, it calls for a comprehensive truth and reconciliation process that provides justice for those damaged by Saddam’s regime, but stops short of collectively punishing Sunnis.

The United States laid the foundations for these democratic traditions and can still be a powerful voice in getting Iraq back on track. There are some encouraging signs on this front. Secretary of State John Kerry has begun engaging directly and firmly with Maliki, and puts Iraq in the top tier of challenges to be addressed. Washington has been active in bringing Iraqi and Turkish officials together to discuss their long-term energy interests, encapsulated in the prospect of a strategic pipeline corridor that could see more Iraqi oil flowing through Turkey and less through the chokepoint of the Strait of Hormuz close to Iran. Facing Sunni militancy and growing internal challenges from within his own Shi’ite community – as shown by unimpressive provincial election results – Maliki may be unusually open to taking conciliatory steps to mend his relations with the Kurds, the Sunni Arabs, and the Turks.

Men brandish weapons during an anti-government protest in Ramadi, 100 km west of Baghdad, April 29, 2013. (Reuters)

Violence in Iraq is likely to continue to worsen as long as the recentralization of power is taken to extremes. The Sunni Arab and Kurdish communities now need a compelling reason to stay inside the unraveling framework that is today’s Iraq. The 2014 national elections offer a potential restart button for this nation-building process, but replacing Maliki cannot be the precondition for a new strategy for saving Iraq. The premier could very well win: He holds many advantages heading into the polls, including control of most key ministries, the security and intelligence apparatus, and the federal courts. The key is to ensure that whoever rules Iraq after the 2014 elections feels maximum pressure from the international community and Iraq’s factions to return to a looser, freer national construct.

If Washington chooses to back Iraq’s decentralizers, it will not be alone. For their own diverse reasons, almost every actor working in Iraq today – the opposition, the Turks, even the Iranians – would welcome a less divisive government in Baghdad. In other words, the effort stands a chance of success.

The experiment of building a new strongman in Baghdad has not yielded a more stable Iraq. Loosening the ties that bind Iraq together is a risk, but holding too tightly is the greater danger.

This post was previously published on WashingtonInstitute.org. ©2013 The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Reprinted with permission.

The views expressed in this Insight are the author’s own and are not endorsed by Middle East Voices or Voice of America. If you’d like to share your opinion on this post, you may use our democratic commenting system below. If you are a Middle East expert or analyst associated with an established academic institution, think tank or non-governmental organization, we invite you to contribute your perspectives on events and issues about or relevant to the region. Please email us through our Contact page with a short proposal for an Insight post or send us a link to an existing post already published on your institutional blog.

• The international community urges a political transition in Syria (1)

Also in today’s show:

• Iran says it’s willing to hold nuclear talks before its election (2)
• Suspected militants in Egypt reportedly abduct six security agents (3)
• The White House releases Benghazi e-mails (4)
• Israeli students show their skills in a $4 million science competition (5)
  (Interview with budding scientists Nicolas Marone and Aviv Rabinovich)

(To listen to select segments, click ‘play’ and drag the sound line to the appropriate bookmark)

*Middle East Monitor podcasts comprise elements featured in VOA on-air products.