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Facing defeat in Iraq (20 January 2007) The Bush administration is causing the war in Iraq
to escalate by throwing more troops to the front line, argues Glen Rangwala. Published in Labour Left Briefing (Febuary 2007) Towards the end of 2006, it had become clear to the neoconservatives – who had previously and disastrously steered US policy in invading and occupying Iraq – that they were in danger of losing all influence over the White House. The US electorate had voted against Bush in November’s Congressional elections in large part because of their opposition to the war, and previously keen supporters were breaking ranks. Perhaps even more damagingly, the Iraq Study Group, set up under James Baker, to provide recommendations on Iraq policy, had grabbed the limelight and the initial endorsement of the White House. Its report in December acknowledged how US policy in Iraq had gone badly wrong, and recommended shifting the role of US forces away from engaging in combat with Iraqis and towards embedding them inside the Iraqi army and police units. It also proposed diplomatic moves to Iran especially in the belief that this could help rescue the US from total defeat inside Iraq. For neocons, who are fervent believers in the value of demonstrating military dominance and for whom Iran remains the single greatest enemy, these proposals were wholly anathema. Vice-president Dick Cheney fingered an old partisan of the neocons, Frederick Kagan, to write a detailed counter-report which was released in early January, and which formed the basis of President Bush’s new strategy announced a few days later. The two major planks of this new strategy are more US troops in Baghdad, and a more “aggressive” stance taken by these troops. Kagan is an historian of early nineteenth century Russian military policy who has no expertise in the Middle East or in analysing civil wars or insurgencies. He based his stance that Iraq needed more US soldiers, not less, upon his view – contradicted by all surveys of Iraqi public opinion – that Iraqis didn’t actually dislike having troops of a foreign occupier on their streets. For Kagan, Iraqi opposition arose because these troops weren’t doing enough to protect them. From this perspective, US forces should act as peacekeepers between the opposing sects, especially in Baghdad, to stop them killing each other. The new “strategy review” released by the White House explained that the major problem faced by the US was no longer a Sunni Arab insurgency against their troops, but violent sectarianism between different Iraqi groups. For Cheney and Bush, Kagan’s plan was appealing not because they had suddenly developed an interest in Iraqi well-being, but because it justified their position of refusing to back away from military aggression in Iraq out of concern for appearing weak. As Bush said in announcing the new strategy, “Islamic extremists would grow in strength and gain new recruits” if the US is seen to fail in Iraq, and this could lead to pro-US governments being toppled around the Middle East. The prospect of reducing antagonism in the Muslim world towards the US through making rational and diplomatic decisions does not seem to have occurred to the President. Nevertheless, many casual observers of the bloodshed in Iraq could have sympathy for a position that promised to protect the security of the Iraqi people. It is also a position that some Sunni Arabs, thousands of whom have been driven from their homes in Baghdad by Shia militias, could support, in contrast to the intense hostility previously shown by this community to the US occupation. More cynically, the Sunni political parties saw it as their chance to break apart the alliance between the US and the Shia parties that has stopped a full-scale insurgency against the US from breaking out in most of southern Iraq. Iraq’s Sunni vice-president Tariq al-Hashimi (by the constitutional arrangement, one of the two vice-presidents must be a Sunni Arab) told a meeting in London in mid-January that President Bush had told him that US forces would take on the Shia militias, particularly the militia of Muqtada al-Sadr. The problem with these positions is that the US won’t act as a neutral peacekeeper in the conflict between Iraqis because it has already taken sides. The plan drawn up by Kagan acknowledges that they can’t take on the Shia militias, as most of these militias have representation in the Iraqi government, and so a US assault on them would cause the Iraqi government to collapse – taking away the only ally the US has. So Kagan proposed stationing the new US troops only in Sunni and mixed areas of Baghdad, where their role would be to “clear enemies from urban areas”. In other words, the new strategy will be to further suppress people from those areas that have already shown most opposition to the occupation. As almost four years of the Iraq war have demonstrated, this policy will only increase that opposition, as the insurgency draws ever greater numbers of recruits to fight against the US. The result will be that there will be even less reason
for Iraqi groups to reach a political compromise with each other. The
Shia groups that control the Iraqi government know that the US military
will be fighting its battles on its behalf, and see no need to give up
a share of their power to their opponents. Equally, those hostile to the
current Iraqi government know that Coalition forces will leave Iraq within
a few years under the weight of US casualties and ebbing US domestic support,
and so can afford to lie low during the periodic assaults. They see no
need to make a deal with the government, as they know they cannot extract
many concessions now from it, but will be able to when the US army eventually
pulls out. And so the killing continues, with none of the key actors seeing
it in their interests to make concessions or compromise. Interview (conducted on 14 January 2007; printed in Labour Left Briefing, February 2007) Q: The public perception of Iraq at present is one of several conflicts, the two most important of which are the anti-Occupation resistance and sectarian killing. In his recent book, Patrick Cockburn argues that Iraqi exiles have tended to underestimate the importance of sectarian divisions in the country, whereas yours cites evidence of how little significance Iraqis attached to religious labels in the early days of the Occupation. How far do you think US policy deliberately set out to foster these divisions - and how can they be overcome? Perhaps the most serious misunderstanding of what is happening in Iraq today is the widespread belief that the origins of the sectarian conflict are entirely independent of the presence of an army of occupation. Much of the public debate about the way forward seems to take place between those who think that the US should strengthen its role in quelling the violence between the Sunni and the Shi'a, and those who think that the violence is unstoppable and the US shouldn't risk the lives of its soldiers to mediate in animosities between Iraqis. In essence, the first of those is the public position of the Bush administration. The second is that of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group, whose report in December was widely praised, but seemed to me to be of little value. Both positions don't appreciate the extent to which sectarianism, and especially violent sectarianism, in Iraq is a new phenomenon, and one that is crucially linked to the US role there. Some of this was a deliberate result of early US strategy: there was a divide-and-rule approach that tried to make the Shi'a-led parties compete with Sunni-led parties for a seat at the top table. Some of it was actually a result of the politics of exile, in which some Iraqi dissidents abroad found it easier to recruit financial and practical support from outside powers - Iran and Saudi Arabia primarily - by playing the sectarian card. After all, SCIRI, the most influential party in the Iraqi government, was created by Iran in 1983 in an unsuccessful effort to recruit Iraqi Shi'a to fight alongside Iranian soldiers in the Iran-Iraq war. But the most important single factor has been the extent to which the US has aligned itself with Shi'a sectarian parties, to use them as its agents in perpetuating the occupation. Many Iraqis - including the mainstream of the insurgency - see the US as have given the Iraqi state to those Shi'a with sectional interests, that the US army is fighting for those interests, and the Shi'i who have lined up with them in the Iraqi government and its new security forces are the tools of a foreign occupier. Thus the fight against the occupation, for them, also becomes the struggle against Shi'a sectarian domination. Many Sunni Arabs have calculated that the best way to stop the US propping up the Iraqi government is by causing large-scale instability, and so hasten a US withdrawal. Some Shi'i want to prevent the US changing its alignments in Iraq, and so see it as useful to cause the Sunni Arabs to be further alienated from the US; others want to demonstrate to the US that they can help rout the Sunni insurgency, and so be a useful ally. Both therefore have realised, cynically, that there are political gains to be had by attacking the civilians of other sectarian groups. But this is directly connected to the role of the US: they are positioning themselves in a struggle for local pre-eminence in which the ultimate power over the state is held by an external power. Without the US occupation, the incentives for each side would be to strike a deal between themselves; with the occupation, the incentives are to turn the US against the other side through provoking civil unrest.
Possibly, though the economic and geostrategic significance of Iraq also can count against US control. The insurgency in Iraq is, I suspect, far more able to generate revenue (through oil smuggling) and draw in external support than the Viet Minh ever were. But I doubt ending the occupation of Iraq will be a sudden moment as was the case with the fall of Saigon and the evacuation. More likely, if the anti-occupation movement continues to build in strength and especially when the latest Bush plan fails, the US administration will try to take a gradually more hands-off approach, rather than suddenly stop all efforts to control Iraq. In turn, events will slip more and more out of the influence of the US until the point at which a combination of American public rejection of the Bush line combines with the ability of Iraqi groups to marginalise the US role inside their country. We're still a long way from that, true, but I think it's already clear to many US politicians that few political, economic or strategic interests are being served by the occupation as it stands, and that there is little prospect of that changing. Q: The book's analysis is extremely rich. Do you see it as a tool in the campaign to end to Occupation - or is it too sophisticated for the mainstream media? How can its ideas reach a wider audience? So much of what is said at the moment about the conflict in Iraq and the role of the US in it is badly thought out, and it enables the British government to get away with its nonsensical support for the Bush doctrine. I sense that much public sentiment is in a state of despair about Iraq - seeing one bomb, one massacre after another. I don't see the book as too sophisticated for anyone: it does require you though to step back for a moment from today's news and to think more seriously about what has turned Iraq into the battleground it is at the moment. The book does attempt to give the bigger picture, as without that you can't think through the likely consequences of an end to the occupation. |
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Author: Glen Rangwala Back to the Index of Writings |
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