Iraq’s internal wars and American troop surge or withdrawal
Â
The chief premise underlying George Bush’s new policy of surge and benchmarks for Iraq is that absent military security, the Baghdad government will fall and the entire country will collapse into unrestrained civil war that could seed wider regional conflict.
The core argument is, “If we do not make sacrifices now we will have to return there later under much worse conditions and after much more Iraqi suffering. We may also be attacked in the homeland.�
These opinions deserve review in light of facts on the ground in Iraq. The country is already enmeshed in multiple and unrestrained civil wars; its government is ineffectual in every sense and regional powers are already interfering.
Currently, American military presence is not a factor creating restraint or order, whether regarding the intensity of violence or the political positions of the factions in government. American political advice gets little respect in Iraq despite the heavy military presence already there.
Against this backdrop, adding American troops or withdrawing them will not affect the violence or the political maneuvering within Iraq.
In actual practice on the ground, the violence in Iraq reflects the determination of Kurds, Arab Sunnis and Arab Shiites to secure power and wealth for their kin. The Kurds and Shiites have historic opportunity to snatch redress for long oppression by Sunnis and ensure that it occurs never again. Additionally, the Kurds are so different from other Iraqis that they prefer to keep both Arab Sunnis and Shiites at arms length.
If those were the only factors, finding solutions might be easier. But a layer of chaos is added by fighting among factions within the Shiites to gain ascendancy over all other Shiites. Similar factions are at work within the Sunnis. The Kurds, who have fought among themselves for decades, have put their infighting on hold temporarily. They await the outcomes of the final balance of power between Shiites and Sunnis.
The current fighting is less against Americans and more among Iraqis factions. Americans are being killed as far as they intervene on the side of one or other faction. At this time, very few Iraqi warriors are fighting to push Americans out of their country. Most of that is done by non-Iraqi imports from al Qaeda. The Iraqis expect the Americans to leave anyway at some point so they are fighting one another to reach strong positions to grab the spoils.
Adding or removing American troops in this situation changes little for the Iraqi fighters because their war goals are not peace based on the common Iraqi good. They are fighting for settlements that redress historical grievances and secure power for their own factions.
Washington is justifying military intervention in Iraq based on a legalistic and linear American-style thought process. It is behaving as if the Baghdad government has the democratic legitimacy of those in London, Paris or New Delhi. Thus, it is argues that the multiple civil wars in Iraq will become worse if the government falls. In fact, those wars are as bad as they can get with the weapons available to the warring groups. They will become worse only if the Pentagon pours a higher level of lethal weapons into the government’s hands.
The issue here is not a traditional one of helping a legitimate government to defeat rebellions against its authority. No faction in Iraq is rebelling against a government’s authority. Each faction is trying to fill a power vacuum within its own community and, eventually, a power vacuum in the entire country.
The fact that the current government is a coalition elected by democratic process means little to both Iraqi parliamentarians and voters. In their eyes, elections have not vested the coalition government with monopoly over the bearing of arms. Iraq’s tribes, whatever their religious or ethnic affiliation, have rarely recognized Baghdad’s authority over the entire country. Saddam Hussein’s totalitarian state imposed that authority using tanks, the secret police and brutal suppression of Kurdish and Shiite resistance.
Using the British model in Malaysia and the Israeli model in the occupied territories, Washington is treating the multiple civil wars as rebellions that, when suppressed militarily, can be ended through political compromises and power sharing. It is further using the Vietnam dominos theory to predict drastic regional power shifts if American troops leave.
These are serious misunderstandings of how non-Americans think and approach both conflicts and resolution of conflicts. The misunderstandings would be trivial, if they did not cause young Americans to die in defense neither of the US nor Iraq nor democracy.
Â
Â
4 Responses to “Iraq’s internal wars and American troop surge or withdrawal”
It seems we will have troops in Iraq for decades, no matter what happens with the surge. You are exactly right in assessing the messiness of Iraqi internal struggles for power, something that our leaders don’t seem to understand. These struggles will not be resolved any time soon, considering how long they have been festering and how much is at stake for each faction. The trouble is that each faction has good reasons for mistrusting the others, and without trust, unity is impossible.
We are truly stuck. We can’t leave, and we can’t stay.
And the onlookers in other nations are glorying in our predicament – the price for our arrogance.
I think the second statement here kind of contradicts the first. I think a more accurate way to phrase that first part would be “Each of the various factions is rebelling against a government’s authority.” The central govt is weak and each faction is trying to fill that power vaccuum, as you said, but in doing so they are fighting against the govt authority (weak though it is.) In point of fact, they’re fighting against the IDEA of a central govt authority- or at least the model of a central govt that unifies all of the factions.
This is getting boring, but I agree with C.S. Filling a power vacuum is rebelling against the government when that same government tries to fill the vacuum. One of the main reasons that the Iraqi government cannot excercise its authority is because of the militias.
The militias are fighting each other, they are fighting against the government and they are fighting against the coalition troops in Iraq.
Also, this:
contradicts this:
as well.
They should be trying to “secure power for” the government.
Not for their own factions.
The surge is three years late and 50,000 to 100,000 short. When the looting and inital insurgenct started was the time for a surge. Instead we get”Mission Acomplished”. But a swift Rummy advance gets better Mathews Bush Luv than house to house fighting on Haifa street.