The thinking needed to save Iraq

by Michael Jansen

The Bush administration is beginning to reverse itself in Iraq. George W. Bush continues to speak about completing the task of transforming Iraq into an independent democracy capable of imposing law and order within its borders. But his spokesmen suggest that as many as half the 160,000 US troops currently deployed in Iraq could be withdrawn by next fall.

This is, as usual with the Bush administration, a misleading statistics because over the past few months, the post-war level of commitment of 138,000 has been augmented by 22,000 to provide extra security for the referendum which was held on Oct. 15 and the parliamentary poll due to be conducted on Dec. 15.

Nevertheless, acceptance by the administration that a substantial withdrawal is on the cards by the end of 2006 amounts to a defeat for the US and a major victory for the Iraqi resistance and, unfortunately, also for headline-grabbing foreign militant groupings, particularly that of Abu Mussab Zarqawi, author of the Nov. 9 hotel bombings in Amman.

The administration has also admitted that it is following a policy similar to a four-point proposal put forward last week by Senator Joseph Biden, a Democrat from Delaware. Biden, a senior member of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said, first and foremost, the US should promote a compromise involving recognition by the Sunnis that they no longer rule Iraq and acceptance of power-sharing by the Shiite and Kurds. Washington should also build Iraqi "governing capacity", transfer authority to Iraq's security services, and establish a contact group of major powers which would act as a "primary international interlocutor" for the Iraqi government. By following these steps, Biden argued that the administration could gradually pull out its troops and retain some credibility - which is the aim of the exercise.

Another senator, John Murtha, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, proposed that the US stage an early unilateral withdrawal "over the horizon" with the aim of promoting stability in Iraq and protecting its neighbours from a spillover of violence and destabilisation.

Neither of these proposals are realistic or practical.

Professor Martin van Creveld, a military historian who teaches at the Hebrew University in occupied Jerusalem, argues that it will be impossible to conduct a classic withdrawal which will preserve the credibility of the US. He says that the situation is far worse than in Vietnam towards the end of the US war there. Even though the US puppet regime in south Vietnam fell two years after the US pulled out, there was a successor government in the north which was capable of running the entire country, maintaining its unity, and keeping the peace in the neighbourhood.

This is not the case in Iraq. First, there is no domestic Iraqi force which can secure the entire country. The 400,000-strong Iraqi army, which was established by the British during the period of colonial rule, was disbanded by the US occupation regime in May 2003 and the security forces (army, police and border guards) which have replaced it, now said to be some 212,000 strong, are poorly trained, poorly armed, and are loyal to ethnic and sectarian political parties and militias rather than to the state.

The Iraqi interior ministry is headed by Bayan Jabr, a former commander of the Badr Corps, the military wing of the Shiite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a pro-Tehran offshoot of the Iraqi Shiite Dawa Party. The Badr Corps was raised, financed and armed by Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Over the past year, police and soldiers operating under the command of the ministry have been operating in Sunni areas, kidnapping, torturing and killing Sunnis accused of aiding the resistance and opposing the US-installed regime. It is estimated that at least 700 Sunnis have been murdered by ministry death squads over the past four months and former premier Iyad Allawi said that the official abuse of civilians now surpasses that practised by the regime of Saddam Hussein. This being the case, the level of resistance can be expected to rise rather than diminish.

Second, no party allied to the US is really interested in ruling the whole of Iraq. The Vietnam war was fought by the north with the aim of reuniting the divided country and imposing communist rule on the entire state. By contrast, the Iraqi Kurds seek autonomy verging on independence (and, ultimately, independence) in four plus provinces in the north, and SCIRI, which has usurped the leadership of the Shiites, seeks a nine-province super-Shiite region in the south. Since the Kurds and Shiites would control virtually all of Iraq's oil resources if they were secede from Iraq, they do not really care what happens in the oil-less centre which, in theory, would be ruled by the Sunnis. But this would be a highly conflicted region because of the large number of Kurds and Shiites who live in Baghdad alongside Sunnis, as well as in other central towns and villages. Ethnic cleansing is already being carried out within Baghdad and other areas. Therefore, the dismemberment of Iraq could entail the displacement of two-and-a-half million Shiite and two million Kurds, surpassing the brutal exchange of populations between secular but largely Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan in 1947-48.

Third, in the absence of order, Iraq is certain to implode into full-scale civil war, risking regional conflict. Turkey and Iran could be drawn into fighting on their southern borders. Both reject the emergence of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq because the creation of such an entity would encourage their own Kurdish minorities to seek self-determination. Iran would also be compelled to bolster Shiite forces with arms, funds and even troops.

Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Syria and Jordan could also be threatened by spillover from the campaign of Muslim militants against the US in Iraq. These militants, emboldened by successes in Iraq, are likely to gain new recruits and expand their operations to the whole Mashreq and beyond.

Allawi summed up the situation in an interview published in London's Observer weekly when he said: "Iraq is the centrepiece of this region. If things go wrong, neither Europe nor the US will be safe."

Van Creveld was quite right when he accused Bush of "launching the most foolish war" since Augustus Caesar "sent his legions into Germany and lost them" in 9 BC. Van Creveld called for Bush's impeachment, the removal of his pro-war team of neoconservatives, their trial and imprisonment. In his view, only regime change in Washington might produce the new thinking needed to save Iraq from the cruel forces which are now destined to destroy it, the core country of the eastern Arab world.

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This article was published in the Thursday, December 1, 2005 edition of the Jordan Times. It is used here with permission.