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March 25, 2008
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Philosophical failure of US and Britain in Iraq - PART 3
Kurdishaspect.com - By Dr Kamal Mirawdeli
Part III: Superpower Surge and Tribal Awakening!
“BAGHDAD, March 24 -- A roadside bomb killed four U.S. soldiers on patrol in southern Baghdad late Sunday, the military said in a statement Monday, taking the overall U.S. death toll in the five-year Iraq war to at least 4,000. Earlier, mortar and rocket attacks pounded the Green Zone, the heavily fortified U.S.-Iraqi military and government complex, on a day when more than 60 people were killed in violence across the country. “
Stephen Freeman, Washington Post, March 24, 2008
Before moving to more analytical issues, let us have a look at Iraqi politics since the launch of Mr Bush’s ‘troop surge”’. On January 10, 207, President Bush announced a new military strategy in the Iraq War during a national television speech broadcast.
The speech and underlying strategy had been crafted under the working title "The New Way Forward." In the address Bush stated “. Mr Bush said “The new strategy … will change America's course in Iraq, and help us succeed in the fight against terror….will help the Iraqis carry out their campaign to put down sectarian violence and bring security to the people of Baghdad. This will require increasing American force levels.”
[President George W. Bush. "President's Address to the Nation ", Office of the Press Secretary, January 10, 2007. Retrieved on Jan. 13, 2007]
Bush committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq. The vast majority of them -five brigades – were deployed to Baghdad.
What was the result of the Surge? Isn’t it working? Death is decreasing. Baghdad is buoyant. There is more optimism: BBC says 51 per cent of the Iraqis. What do you say about this?
Philosophy has not proved that anything human or what is humanely perceived and proved is absolutely permanent (perhaps apart from Rumsfeld’s unknown unknowns); everything must have a natural period even irrational violence. The most ferocious floods and grim gales must eventually abate as many tsunamis and hurricanes do. The most violently raging fires, like those in Greece and Australia, must eventually subside. This is at least the course of nature. The dance of death and the brook of blood on the boulevards of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities are no different. At some stage fatigue, exhaustion and too-late apprehension of absurdity must do the trick. Five years is not a short time to allow nature to function in this direction.
Of course I am not denying the surgical impact of the Surge. Human will often has a decisive role if it can sustain its strength in the face of the challenges of its surroundings. Yes, the surge had some effect. There are more people walking safely on Haifa Street in Baghdad. Less suicide bombers and bombs in crowded markets. To some extent. But what has made what is described as ‘considerable improvement of security’ is not just the surgical surge of American militarism, for the simple reason that no military power can always subdue what I have called ‘the simple realism’ of Iraq. The surge is based on more of the same: military solutions that aim at achieving wrong political solutions. But even in military terms the Surge cannot have long-term achievements because of the nature of the fighting and the nature of the sectarian and foreign forces involved in the battle of Iraq. If, the so-called al-Qaida are driven by American soldiers out of Haifa or Baghdad as a whole, then they go to Diyala, where the surge was more problematic and less successful because of the intricacy of Shia-Sunni interplay there. If al-Qaida, terrorists or insurgents, are driven out of Diyala, they go to Tikrit and Mosul. The Mosul bloodbath has not seriously started yet. No one can predict what would happen. Perhaps the insurgents would fight as viciously as they can, then they would just come back, grown in numbers and notoriety, to Baghdad via Tikrit and Diyala!
But you cannot deny that there is a considerable improvement in the security situation in Baghdad. Just yesterday “Dick Cheney used words like "phenomenal" and "remarkable turnaround" to describe a drop in violence in Iraq, and he hailed recently passed legislation aimed at keeping Iraq on a democratic path.”
Yes, let us agree. There is less death in Baghdad and south. But why?
- Surge had an initial boosting impact just like a bitter medication with immediate direct result and later side effects.
- Fighting fatigue and temporary short supply of human bombs had more sober effect.
- Success of sectarian-cleansing: Battle for Baghdad, the main core of actual possible intermixed civil war, has been won by the Shias to a large extent, and also by the Sunnis in some of their areas, through reciprocal bloody sectarian cleansing. Baghdad just like Jerusalem, or Lebanon, or former East and West Berlin, is now a divided city of, in Patrick Cockburn’ words “ a collection of hostile Sunni and Shia ghettoes divided by high concrete walls.” That is why perceived improvement of security and the trumpeted Justice and Accountability Law, that allows partial amnesty for former Ba’thists, have not led to the return of over 2 million of Iraqi displaced people and refugees, the majority of whom are former Ba’thists, other Sunnis and Christians.
- Surprise, surprise, not just once but twice, Muqtada al-Sadr suspended the activity of his extremist anti-American, anti-Sunni Mahdi army. But this act he has only delayed a looming violence that is blooming between Mahdi militia army, on behalf of the Shias, and al-Sahwa militia army, on behalf of the Sunnis!
- Iran’s skilful wait-and-act political game. Iran has a direct role in deactivating the lethal rhetoric of Muqtada Sadr, who will soon graduate as Ayatullah in Iran, for the time being.
- The role of Sahwas, the American-made Awakening tribal militias numbering about 80,000 now! Without al-Sahwa, al-Qaida insurgents would have just taken hibernating holidays to prepare themselves for next rounds of hellish dues especially in Baghdad including a real threat to the Green Zone itself. The continuation of this truce –in Iraq everything is either trouble or truce, nothing permanent- depends on how al-Sahwa, the Tribal Awakening Councils, will view their role and relationship with both the US and the Shia-dominated government in Baghdad. The emerging of al-Sahwa was more as a result of the Shia’s winning the battle of Baghdad than a desire to fight al-Qaida, Patrick Cockburn writes:
“The Shia won this civil war. By the end of 2006 they held three quarters of Baghdad. The Sunni rebels, fighting the Mehdi Army Shia militia and the Shia, dominated the Iraqi army and police, and also under pressure from al Qa'ida, decided to end their war with US forces. They formed al-Sahwa, the Awakening movement, which is now allied to and paid for by the US. In effect Iraq now has an 80,000 strong Sunni militia which does not hide its contempt for the Iraqi government, which it claims is dominated by Iranian controlled militias. The former anti-American guerrillas have largely joined al-Sahwa. The Shia majority, for its part, is determined not to let the Sunni win back their control of the Iraqi state. Power is more fragmented than ever.
Isn’t it another positive outcome of the Surge that it stopped the sectarian cleansing in Baghdad and the imminent civil war between the Sunnis and the Shia?
Not quite. As I said, without al-Sahwa the fragile achievements of the Surge would have been (and possibly still are) short-lived and reversible. It all depends on the development of al-Sahwa politics within the arena of sectarian struggle, and by extension the wider regional struggle involving Iran, Syria and Sunni Arab countries, in Iraq. Al-Sahawa has not prevented civil war. In fact, it is part of the process of civil war, past, present and future:
A - It came to existence as a result of the Shias winning civil war in Baghdad as Cockburn has explained in the above quoted statement.
C - Al-Sahwas have already led to a small-scale Sunni-Sunni civil war. Many Sunnis are still reluctant or hesitant between accepting a compromise the US army for strengthening their position vis-à-vis the Shias or continuing with al-Qaida-inspired and backed extreme violence for an overall victory in the sectarian struggle. Pro-Qaida Sunnis have reacted very ruthlessly against Sahwa groups and their leaders, fighting and assassinating scores of them. Many are suspicious of al-Sahwa because of its US connection. Pro-Qaida militias accuse al-Sahwa of weakening the Iraqi resistance by targeting and arresting their fighters.
C - The connection with Americans is real and the support is mutual. It is the existence of American army that has so far prevented the settling of civil war for the benefit of the Shia, backed by Iran, in Diyala governorate. But how al-Sahwa and Sunni Arab countries would react to the expected Mosul bloodbath, this is yet to be seen.
D - The political self-perception of al-Sahwa is implicitly anti-Shia and loudly anti-Iranian. This gives more active role to Iran in enticing a future civil war to ensure the persistence of a Shiite dominated Iraq essential for its own national security. A principal founder of the tribal "Awakening Councils", Abu Azm, told Al Jazeera on 26 December 2007, “that the main goal of al-Sahwa is to stem growing Iranian power in Iraq.”
He portrayed their position in a wider regional conflict saying that “"Regional forces like Iran and Syria target our forces because they know if our forces bring stability to Iraq, the US would turn its attention on them. And that is the last thing they want.”
D. The Shias view the 80-000 strong al-Sahwa militia as practically a separate Sunni army. There are even “divisions among Sunni leaders over the militias and fears that they could form the nucleus of a separate Sunni army that could perpetuate the territorial break up of the country.”
On the other hand the Shiite Iraqi National Police go further. They are “accusing the Awakening of being a front for terrorists” and that "the Ba'th Party and Al Qaeda have infiltrated Sahwa”.
Shia-dominated government of Nuri al-Maliki is reluctant to respond to the persistent demands of the Sahwa Tribal Councils to incorporate their militia within the Iraqi army, police and security forces for fear of losing the present Shia hegemony over the armed forces.
No one can predict how will the Iraqi government, on the one hand, and the Americans, on the other, will deal with the increasingly serious dilemmas and dangers poised by al-Sahwa militias and councils. It is unlikely, due to the continued threat of Sunni insurgents that the Iraqi government will be, in a near future, willing or able to use the Iraqi army to disarm the Sahwas, a move that will inevitably trigger civil war. But with the increasing threat and power of al-Sahwas, especially if the conflict between Sunni factions is resolved, both Iraqi government and Iran might be willing to mobilise the Mahdi army, or whoever might fight in their name, to face the threat of Sunni tribal awakening. Inevitably the US will be entangled in this mess too.
Conclusion:
The Surge, besides making Baghdad streets relatively quiet, helped to win the Baghdad battle for the Shias. This frightened the Sunni tribes to compromise with the Americans and set up Awakening Tribal Councils, Sahwas, to fight Qaida-backed Sunni insurgents and establish their own military and political base. This has created a relative military balance, at least making the Sunnis less at risk of sectarian cleansing in their own areas. But this might change with the withdrawal of American forces in governorates such as Diyala unless alternative regional backers, such as Saudi Arabia and Jordan, for the Sunnis are found. Thus, in effect, by supporting the Sahwas the Americans have paved the way for a serious phase of civil war which has not been possible before due to imbalance of forces. On the other hand, if the Sahwa experiment succeeds in satisfying the demands of the Sunnis to have sectarian control in their own areas and some political influence in Baghdad, this means that after five years of unnecessary blood, destruction and financial costs, the Americans are accepting “ the simple realism of Iraq” and allowing the emergence of three distinctive political realities, cultures and territories but in a much more risky, messy and still potentially lethal way than could have been done if they had accepted this simple reality in the beginning year or years of the war. Influencing either of the two solutions: civil war or territorial hegemony is not entirely in the hands of the Americans. Iran remains a big player.
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