Foreign Affairs Roundtable: What Next in Iraq

A very interesting discussion appears in the latest Foreign Affairs on what is wrong in Iraq and, more important, what to do next. The authors presented a range of interesting scenarios, though it is hard to predict the viability of any of them. The most important point in these discussions was the observation that the US strategy of passing the baton to Iraqis does not match the Iraqi political climate. The Iraqis and their military and police forces remain divided, loyal to their respective ethnicities and religious sects, and generally unmotivated by the prospect of a unified Iraqi nation.

Chaim Kaufmann writes:

Trying to create a genuinely Iraqi security force will not work either, because there is no powerful, legitimate political movement loyal to “Iraq,” in or out of government. Nor could most members of the security forces be persuaded to identify with such a force if it did exist. Some Iraqi army units, under tight U.S. control, have been deterred from using violence for purely sectarian goals, but others are openly loyal to Kurdish or Shiite leaders. Reforming the police is a lost cause; any U.S. remark about the force’s performance is met with heated retorts from Shiite leaders. In March, UIA spokespeople demanded that U.S. forces stand aside from further involvement in internal security. Most Shiite leaders do not desire an immediate U.S. departure, but only because they hope to collect more U.S. aid before the civil war escalates further. An additional barrier to coercing Shiite leaders is the fact that Shiite militias are already receiving aid from Tehran on a moderate scale.

The gap between reality and the administration’s rhetoric could not be wider. We’ve heard every excuse in the book, but it’s asserted time and again that progress is being made, but that we should not expect miracles over night. Freedom is “on the march” in Iraq only if one considers a regime to be free where 92% of the political parties are ethnic or sectarian, where the majority party is seriously considering instituting some variant of Sharia law, and where all of the ethnic groups are taking turns committing atrocities against one another. In other words, the myth of an emerging, free, unified, stable, and democratic Iraq is preventing Americans from seeing that Iraq is, in fact, a multiethnic and divided society in the midst of a Yugoslavia-style breakup and civil war. The only unity its people can apparent muster is the ad hoc unity of various insurgent factions against American forces. When this obstacle is removed, there is little prospect of continued cooperation. (Consider the brief Croat-Bosnian alliance against Serbia in the 1990s by way of compairson).

If partition was debatable in May of 2003; the unfolding events of the last three years have demonstrated that it or something very much like it may now be the only viable option. As in Yugoslavia, faciliating this breakup in an orderly way, rather than holding on to the fiction of a multiethnic Iraqi “nation” governed democratically, is the most realistic course. A hasty withdrawal under the aegis of the newly “stood up” Iraqi security forces will likely be a diastrous option, complete with an ethnic cleansing perpetrated with US-bought weapons and US-trained forces. As with Saddam’s brutalities or the actions of US clients in South America, the US will face the prestige-damaging fact that its short-sightedness and military policies led to a human rights disaster.

Whether Bush and his bid at world-historical regional change can acquiesce to the prosaic, though sustainable, goal of a divided Iraq that would have the benefit of a US withdrawal under sustainable, defensible conditions remains to be seen.

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