Iraq: what next?

S P SETH

Where will Iraq go from here? During his recent parleys with Iraqi and regional leaders, as well as western allies, the US secretary of state, John Kerry, sought to convey US thinking on it. The first and the foremost message was that the US wouldn’t let Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) run havoc with Iraq and become the hub of terrorism in the region posing a threat not only in the Middle East but also to the United States. As President Obama told the West Point military academy graduates in a recent address, “…for the foreseeable future, the most direct threat to America at home and abroad remains terrorism….” But to confront this, the US would like to “more effectively partner with countries where terrorist networks seek a foothold.” At the time of his address, the ISIL’s advance into northern and western Iraq hadn’t been envisaged. And now that it has happened, and considering that terrorism is a major threat, the US would need to tailor its counterterrorism strategy to deal with, perhaps, the greatest terrorist threat that might emerge over time. We are talking here of the potential of a vast swathe of Iraq and Syria becoming the operational headquarters of a movement that even the al Qaeda regards as vicious.

The new caliphate and the Islamic caliphate, as proclaimed by its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, if it manages to consolidate and expand its hold, and with its own economic and military assets, might become the magnate of militants from all over the world. Baghdadi has indeed asked Muslims all over the world to rally around the new caliphate as the dawn of a new Islamic era in which they can hold their heads high. He personally gave a sermon to this effect at a Mosul mosque to this effect.

Not surprisingly, with the ISIL challenge and a good part of Iraq and Syria under their control, the Iraqi government approached the United States for military help. But in the light of its past bitter experience, Washington apparently is not keen to rush in, though they have sent a small contingent of special troops reportedly to evaluate the Iraqi military and protect the US embassy in Baghdad. Whatever the role of this new contingent, said to be between 300-500 strong, the US would seek to rally regional countries in its efforts to contain and isolate the ISIL. But there are some problems here. First, some of the regional countries, like Saudi Arabia and Gulf kingdoms, have been funneling money and arms to different militant outfits in Iraq and Syria, including the ISIL operating on both sides of the Iraqi and Syrian border. After the proclamation of the Islamic state and the caliphate and Baghdadi’s direct appeal to the Muslim masses, the ISIL is now emerging as a possible threat to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies. No wonder that Saudi Arabia has reportedly moved 30,000 troops to its border with Iraq. The threat from the new Islamic state should become the basis for a regional coalition.

But it is easier said than done. Because, ever since the clerical revolution in Iran in 1979, these countries have regarded Shia Iran as their major threat and enemy, sharing this perception and strategy with the US.  And suddenly to change that course and focus on ISIL as their primary concern and threat will not be easy. Saudi Arabia and its regional allies have been nurturing these militant outfits from, at least, the time of the Syrian insurrection, if one discounts the original al Qaeda. A good number of original al Qaeda operatives had their baptism in or from Saudi Arabia. Much of the money to propagate and fund madrassas, where some of the hard line militants have emerged from, has come from Saudi Arabia and its fellow Gulf neighbors. And now all this might come to haunt the Saudi kingdom.

While regional cooperation/collaboration to confront ISIL is yet to emerge, pressure has been mounting for Maliki’s replacement as Prime Minister and the formation of an inclusive unity government. That would mean sharing power with the Sunnis, who have been at the receiving end of sectarian killings by the Maliki government. Indeed, the Sunni tribal militias, mobilized and financed by the US in 2007 and 2008, played an important role in crushing the then-powerful al Qaeda insurrection in Iraq. And there was an expectation that they would be integrated into the new Iraqi national army. Maliki saw to it that this wouldn’t happen. His removal as Prime Minister will be a step in the right direction. It is not just the Sunnis but the Kurds also have found him an obstacle in the way of their political aspirations.

The Kurds already have virtual autonomy but are now heading for separation. The Kurdish army has occupied much of the oil rich Kirkuk region and plans to keep it. Maliki is also facing a call for his replacement from some within the Shia ranks, as from Muqtada al-Sadr who has emerged from political hibernation, as if, calling for for the inclusion of Sunnis in a new unity government. Even as all this was going on, the ISIL upped the ante by declaring an Islamic caliphate. This declaration of the new caliphate is designed, among other things, to create a global centre for Islamic militants to supersede al Qaeda’s role as the legitimate authority for such groups around the world. The point to make is that the situation in Iraq is highly complex and not given to any easy solution, if there is a solution at all.

To further complicate the picture, there are all sorts of external factors. The US is already there in a limited role, so far. The Iraqi government is seeking further US involvement by way of air strikes on ISIL positions. They want American military hardware and equipment. The Maliki government has also bought some Russian military aircraft for aerial strikes on the ISIS territory, and Russian technicians are reportedly training the Iraqis to operate them. Maliki welcomed the bombing of ISIL positions across the Syrian border by the Bashar regime. Iran undoubtedly will play an important role against the ISIL.  How will all this play out in the end is anybody’s guess? But to think that the removal of Maliki, and the formation of a unity government, will be a game changer is an oversimplification. The fault lines in Iraq between the Shias, Sunnis and Kurds are too deep to be bridged with political games.

Saudi Arabia, other Gulf monarchs and Turkey must be deeply worried about the turn of events in Iraq, and likely will make their own moves at some point of time. Whatever the internal and external permutations and combinations against the ISIL, it has established strong roots in both Iraq and Syria. Any aerial bombardment will certainly do some serious damage to the ISIL, but the resultant civilian casualties, mostly of the Sunni population, is likely to make them even more popular. The mess in Iraq is not easy to fix and likely will make the region even more combustible. 

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au  

Iraq: a rolling tragedy

S P SETH

Iraq is one rolling tragedy after another. A hodgepodge of a country created by the British, after the First World War, out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire to serve their own economic and strategic interests, Iraq has struggled to find its new national identity. And this is not surprising because it was and has been an artificial creation clubbing together disparate regions, tribes, ethnicities, superimposed with the oldest sectarian schism in Islam between the Sunnis and Shias. Out of a welter of bloody power struggles, Saddam Hussein finally prevailed and went on to build a state of fear with all power virtually invested in him. After consolidating his power by eliminating all his real and imagined enemies, he sought to terrorize the country’s Shia majority and Kurdish minority, fearing them as his natural enemies. He was a feared leader at home and was not much of a hit with most of his Arab neighbours.

But following the 1979 revolution in Iran, he was increasingly seen as a useful counterweight to Iran’s new clerical regime that was on a political warpath with the United States. The US embassy and its personnel were under siege, regarded as ‘a nest of spies’ working for the now toppled Shah of Iran who was the US’ trusted ally in the region. The new political order in Iran led by its supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, was also causing nervousness in the Sunni Arab world. At the same time, Saddam’s Iraq had its own scores to settle involving maritime and territorial disputes with Iran. The US seemed more than happy to help Iraq with weapons and intelligence to start and prosecute its war against Iran. The long war that ensued between the two countries, with Iran suffering tremendous loss of life, was fought to a stalemate and ended after eight years of carnage (1980-88).

Even though Iran suffered heavy losses, it was Saddam who emerged from it considerably weakened. He had got much encouragement and help from the US and funding from the Gulf monarchs as they all wanted the new Iran contained, if not destroyed. But they didn’t have much sympathy for him when he failed so badly in his and their shared objective. His Arab creditors, the Gulf rulers, wanted their money back as they had liberally advanced him loans, but Saddam’s treasury was virtually empty after the long and disastrous war with Iran. He, therefore, sought to retrieve and even benefit from his planned invasion of the oil rich Kuwait. A successful military invasion and occupation of Kuwait would give Saddam’s Iraq all the oil revenue from that oil rich country, strengthening his position in the Arab world and in the regional oil cartel. He apparently raised the issue with the then US ambassador and heard no specific objections to his ambitious plan to invade Kuwait. And it was only when his forces were in Kuwait with its annexation, more or less, accomplished that the US realized the enormity of the Saddam adventure that could change the regional geostrategic situation to its detriment and that of its regional allies like Saudi Arabia and other Arab monarchs.

The resultant Gulf War (1990-91), under the US leadership, was disastrous for Saddam and he would have been easily toppled but for the then President George Bush senior’s decision to instead strangulate Iraq politically and economically. In the decade or so that followed the first Gulf war, Iraq bled under UN sanctions with its children and sick suffering the most. A number of powerful Republicans thought that Bill Clinton’s presidency, that followed Bush senior’s electoral defeat, had wasted America’s unparalleled opportunity as the world’s only superpower to expand its horizon and power. In 1997, a small group of them, that included Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, promulgated the “The Project for the New American Century” for doing just that keeping in view the 2000 presidential elections. Its wide-ranging agenda included encouraging an invasion of Iraq to restructure the Middle Eastern geostrategic map to strengthen the US and Israeli power. And as it happened George Bush junior, their own man, won the 2000 presidential election presenting opportunities to roll out their plans.

Even as the Republicans were relishing their election victory, the country was unexpectedly hit by the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. While the US went after Afghanistan to hunt out the al Qaeda leadership, the blueprint for the new American century as it related to Saddam’s Iraq appeared tantalizingly promising. Iraq seemed to fit neatly into the larger al Qaeda picture and was also accused of producing weapons of mass destruction. The US cobbled together a ‘coalition of the willing’ to get rid of Saddam. Whether or not Saddam’s Iraq was guilty as charged was immaterial. The act of toppling Saddam was considered good enough to ‘liberate’ Iraq and usher in ‘democracy’ in that country that would serve as an example for the entire region.

The tragedy now being enacted in Iraq, with the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) militants rushing in to turn much of Iraq and the neighbouring region of Syria into a terrorist haven, might prove more lethal than Afghanistan. All this follows from the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Having announced the ‘mission accomplished’ following Saddam’s fall and the US occupation, the next blunder was the dismantling of the Baath party and all the existing state structures, including the Iraqi army. This turned the country into a veritable state of anarchy. And when the US occupation sought to create some semblance of order, there was no effective leadership material at hand. They chose Nouri al-Maliki to run the country. This selection process is a story by itself as recounted by Dexter Filkins in a recent issue of the New Yorker. And Maliki became Iraq’s Prime Minister (American support helped him elected by the new parliament) and still continues in that position, though his position seems increasingly shaky.

Maliki is an unreconstructed die-hard politician with scores to settle with the country’s old Sunni establishment—what is left of it.  Maliki was one of the targets of Saddam’s megalomania and power craze but he managed to escape to Iran to live another day to even become Iraq’s Prime Minister. Unlike Saddam who was no sectarian zealot but a tyrant with an eye on power, Maliki has been determined to exclude Sunnis from any power sharing. When the US was the occupying power they had, at one point, largely succeeded in defeating the al Qaeda insurgency with the help of Sunni tribal militias they had created, mobilized and financed. And these militias were supposed to be integrated into the new Iraqi national army. But Maliki would have none of it. He not only excluded Sunnis from power sharing, but his new regime went on a killing spree targeting Sunnis. No wonder that many Sunnis are sympathetic, if not collaborating, with ISIL. And we now have the spectacle of regional and international intervention to further fuel an already burning fire.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushipseth@yahoo.com.au