Three Views on Iraq, Three Years Later

History has shown that outside powers may indeed tilt the Middle East kaleidoscope. But the many tiny pieces of colored glass promptly fall into a new configuration that looks very different from what the tilter expected. The ousting of Saddam Hussein from power, for example, is creating an environment in the Middle East in which nationalism, religious extremism, and tribal warfare are becoming the central driving forces. Consider the dilemmas the U.S. faces in finding the right balance in its relations with Israelis and Palestinians, and multiply that again and again, and you will get a sense of the enormous problems Washington will be facing in Iraq and its peripheries in the coming years.

Americans should recognize that their interests in the Middle East are not only not being advanced; they are actually harmed by pursuing a hegemonic policy there. Americans should regard the Islamic Green Crescent of Instability ranging from the Balkans to the borders of China with a sense of benign neglect coupled with effective security measures to contain the destructive effects of the political chaos and violence that will probably dominate that region for years to come. Constructive disengagement from the Middle East—“We’ll leave, and you’ll let us live”—needn’t be seen as a sign of weakness. Not if it’s bolstered by an active containment policy that makes it clear that those who dare harm us will be punished.

Those involved in the formulation and implementation of U.S. policy in the Middle East assume that people in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Afghanistan think like them and want the same things they do. At a 2004 conference at the Pentagon, a U.S. Army colonel asked Thomas Barnett, a strategic thinker at the U.S. Naval War College who was trying to convince a group of military officers that American power could be used to democratize the Middle East, whether that assumption was justified. “Everyone wants a better future for their kids,” Barnett said. “I’ve been around a lot of people who don’t think like us,” the colonel replied.

In the Middle East, Americans are encountering a lot of people who don’t think like us and who see U.S. power as an obstacle to achieving their goals or as a tool to advance their own tribal, ethnic, religious, and national interests. We should—for our good, not theirs—remove that obstacle, reclaim that tool, and advance our own interests.

Six Facts About Iraq

Tom G. Palmer

I’ve been to Iraq three times since the fall of Baghdad, and I expect to be back soon. I’ve learned a few things there that I probably wouldn’t have learned had I not gone. Based on those lessons and the kind of information that’s available to anyone who takes the time to read, here are six theses about the future of Iraq.

1. Anyone who is certain about how things are going to turn out doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The number of variables is simply too great to foresee the outcome, even in broad terms. The political and military conflicts take place along religious fault lines (Sunni, Shiite, secular); ethnic fault lines (Arab, Kurd, Turkmen); tribal fault lines (too numerous to mention); the fault lines of personal ambition (Moqtada al Sadr vs. Abdel Aziz al Hakim for leadership of the religious Shiite bloc, for example); and regional fault lines (with oil-poor western Iraq pitted against relatively oil-rich northern and southern Iraq). The international situation complicates matters further, with Turkey ready to intervene (with at least tacit Iranian and Syrian support) if the Kurdish autonomous area declares its independence, and with Iranian agents spreading walking-around money throughout the country, but especially among the Shia factions in the south.

Further, as the recent bombing of the Golden Mosque of Samarra shows, the role of contingency and accident is enormous. A gap in security that allows in a suicide bomber or the direction of a single mortar shell could completely change the direction of events. For example, were the Sunni insurgents or Shiite rivals able to assassinate Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, it’s impossible to predict the consequences, other than to say that they likely would be horrific, since al-Sistani has been a prominent voice for restraint among the Shiites.

In short, it’s impossible to predict Iraq’s future.

2. The war being fought in Iraq is unlike any other. Parallels with Vietnam are of limited use for the simple reason that the Communists were seeking to kick out the Saigon government and replace it, not to create a firestorm that would engulf the region. For Al Qaeda in Iraq, it won’t be over if the U.S. and allied forces withdraw, or the U.S.-backed government falls. In fact, many of those fighting the U.S. and the elected government don’t want the U.S. to withdraw. They want to draw us in further, hoping, as Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri recently put it, to “make the West bleed for years.” Nor is World War II a useful comparison: Once the Fascists and Nazis were beaten, they were beaten. They didn’t go underground and wage a war of destruction; their ideology was effectively defeated with their armies.

The goal of at least a large faction among the insurgents is to create maximum chaos and maximum bloodshed. They account for a tiny fraction of the Iraqi population, and no one really knows what percentage of them are foreigners, but they are ruthless and determined. They will also be very difficult to defeat. No accommodation is possible with them. The existence of an armed faction that is dedicated to destruction per se makes the job of defeating the insurgency all the more difficult.

3. Kurdistan is radically unlike the rest of Iraq. When I drove around Suleimani, the major city in eastern Kurdistan, I saw new buildings with plenty of plate glass windows. That’s a sign of a city that has little fear of suicide bombers or random gunfire. The feeling of relative freedom you get in Kurdish cities is remarkable. The security checkpoints around every city are efficient, and the security forces arrive promptly when they’re called.

The Kurdish region presents an interesting case for political scientists, because it offers a chance to test the relative significance of intentions and of institutions. On the one hand, most everyone seems intent on having a liberal, at least quasi-capitalist democracy. On the other hand, the Kurds have weak civil society institutions and a history of one-party rule; they suffer from the curse of oil (which has been shown time and time again to make the emergence of liberal democracy and free markets improbable, since efforts are devoted to dividing up resource rents rather than to productive activities); and they are surrounded by hostile or potentially hostile parties (a situation that tends to produce an atmosphere of groupthink).

Politics in Kurdistan is dominated by two parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (PDK) in the west and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in the east. I got a sense of their influence when I went to one of the universities to give some lectures. I was told that no weapons could be taken in. This did not sit well with some of my friends, who demanded to know who had decided that. They were told, “It’s been decided by the party.” They didn’t like that, either, and we kept our weapons. What was remarkable was that the answer wasn’t “the dean decided it” or “the city council decided it” but “the party decided it.” Still, the PDK and the PUK have agreed to allow offices of each party (and of other Iraqi parties) to exist throughout Kurdistan, and there is real debate in Kurdish political life and institutions. There are independent media outlets, and in the libraries of the universities one can find newspapers for every political party. The general direction is promising, but it’s hard to overcome years of clan rule, which has been solidified by the organization of parties.

I am optimistic about Kurdistan, but the obstacles to a free society there are still enormous.

4. The police are substantially unreliable, whereas the army may be the only authentically Iraqi institution in the country. During a recent briefing with some senior Pentagon officers about the progress of the war in Iraq, I asked about the problem of the infiltration of many police forces by militias, most important among them Moqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army, which has made inroads in the south. The response was that Sadr is now a part of the political landscape of Iraq and that he will have to be accommodated, as was shown by the renomination of Ibrahim Jafari for the post of prime minister by one vote, which was undoubtedly due to Sadr’s influence.

More interesting has been the contrast in training and performance between the police forces and the army. The police forces have been largely ineffectual at stopping the insurgents and are, it seems, often controlled or intimidated by sectarian militias; even the security forces from the Ministry of the Interior are substantially controlled by sectarian forces, notably the Badr Brigades allied with Abdel Aziz al Hakim’s Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq party. Meanwhile, the army increasingly has been taking on greater responsibility, accompanied by U.S. advisers, for combat operations in crucial areas of Iraq.