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Splintering of Iraq
8.9.2006
By Robert Stiles
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Friday, September
8, 2006
Iraq, -- As a nation, Iraq has a profoundly troubled
history and likely an equally troubled future.
Straddling the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the
modern nation of Iraq was once the site of ancient
Mesopotamia, one of the cradles of civilization. The
ancient era saw a succession of Middle Eastern
empires rise and fall, before the rise of Islam in
the early seventh century. During the medieval era,
Iraq was the heart of the Abbasid caliphate, with
Baghdad serving as the cultural and political
capital of a realm extending from North Africa to
the Indian subcontinent. Its fortunes waned after
the Mongols conquered the region in 1258.
In time, the Ottoman Turks would become the
pre-eminent power of Islam and take control of
modern Iraq, but during the 19th century went
through a long decline which eventually led to the
Turkish entry into World War I on the side of
Germany. With Germany’s defeat, the Ottoman Empire
was carved up by the victors. The British, in a
decision that has had dire consequences for American
policy today, cobbled Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs and
Kurds in an artificial nation and helped the Amir
Faisal Ibn Hussein become King Faisal I of Iraq. His
dynasty would rule for nearly four decades before
being overthrown in a 1958 military coup. After
years of political unrest, the Baath Party would
rise to power and Saddam Hussein would begin his
horrific 24-year reign.
This legacy of a lack of national cohesion and
political unrest is badly undercutting American
foreign policy today. It seems an age ago that
President Bush was promising a true democracy in the
Middle East to bring the unquestionable blessings of
free government to a region largely ruled by
despots. Now, we might be fortunate if Iraq
continues to effectively exist. What is happening in
Iraq is increasingly described as civil war, but it
is even more multifaceted than the term suggests.
Iraq’s war has evolved from a Sunni-led insurgency
against American forces and later a Shiite-led Iraqi
government into a civil war along Iraq’s sectarian
divisions. Now, it is entering an increasingly
localized phase. Local politicians, gang leaders and
aspiring warlords are emerging around the
beleaguered nation and taking up arms to serve local
ambitions outside of Iraq’s religious carnage.
The Kurds, an ethnic group in the north of Iraq who
comprise the world’s largest ethnic group with no
nation of their own, have effectively established an
autonomous state in the north of Iraq, even going so
far as to replace Iraq’s national flag with a
Kurdish one. They alone seem to enjoy a degree of
stability, with tens of thousands of Sunni Arabs
fleeing southern Iraq for Kurdistan.
The civil government, which American troops are in
Iraq to protect, increasingly rules its nation in
name only. Iraq’s defense network, which has been
touted as the means to restore order to the nation,
is also fractured by regional and sectarian
loyalties. Even as Iraq’s security forces grow in
number, security conditions continue to deteriorate.
The key threat to the government’s authority is the
growth of militias across the beleaguered nation,
most infamously the Mahdi Army led by firebrand
cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who espouses a potent
combination of militant Shiite Islam and calls for
Iraq’s traditional underclass to rise up and take
power. This rhetoric has helped make the 33 year-old
al-Sadr one of the most powerful men in Iraq.
In the Shiite south, less militant, middle-class
Shiite parties prevailed in the 2005 elections, but
the lack of basic services and unemployment hovering
around 60 percent have since ravaged the area. Thus,
southern Iraq has seen a sort of class war with
Sadrists holding very great public support but
little power in local government. Militias help to
provide not only security, but basic social
services. The south has also seen Shiite religious
courts taking root, sometimes cooperating with the
Mahdi Army.
The Mahdi Army itself seems to reflect the state of
Iraq. While al-Sadr commands thousands of armed men,
but may have increasingly little control over them.
Thus, local commanders of Iraq’s most powerful
militia are increasingly free to do as they please.
The Mahdi Army plays a major role in Iraq’s
sectarian carnage, carrying out extrajudicial
killings and enforces a harsh version of Shiite law
upon portions of Iraq, holding trial courts and
carrying out executions. The Mahdi Army and other
militias have become so worked into the civil
government and have carried out religious killings
under the cover of law enforcement.
The religiously and politically moderate Grand
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who the Americans once
hoped would guide Iraq into a peaceful future, once
held great authority over Iraqi Shiites. Now, his
authority has eroded greatly and with it, American
hopes for the troubled nation. Radical Shiite
clerics and militia leaders like al-Sadr have
thrived in amid the atrocities Sunni radicals have
committed against Shiites.
Baghdad was once a city where Sunnis and Shiites
mixed freely and with many mixed religious
neighborhoods, but many people have been forced to
relocate for fear of sectarian violence. This has
led to fears of a religiously segregated and
embittered Baghdad emerging in the future.
Thus, not only is Iraq seeing conflict between its
three major groups, but it is seeing increasingly
localized and violent struggle between myriad
factions. In spite of all the rhetoric from the
government about victory, the situation does not
seem to be improving at all. Our leaders should keep
in mind that rhetoric and sloganeering might impress
some American voters, but they will not impress
Moqtada al-Sadr.
There have been myriad problems with our campaign in
Iraq: there were likely too few troops in Iraq to
achieve our goals, a lack of international support
and too little planning for postwar Iraq. But I
believe the most serious problem with our efforts in
that troubled nation is the simple fact that we
attempted to bring about democracy in a nation that
is too deeply divided by ethnicity, religion and
history.
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