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The governor of Erbil: If the U.S. leaves,
we must leave with them
27.8.2007
By Maggy Zanger
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U.S. Troops must not withdraw
August 27, 2007
Erbil-Hewler, Kurdistan region (Iraq), -- In
the run-up to the mid-September progress report on
Iraq, pundits, military commanders, presidential
candidates, and seemingly every member of Congress
who ever spent a few hours in the Green Zone, have
weighed in on the efficacy, or not, of withdrawing
U.S. troops from Iraq. Missing from the debate,
however, is one of the most crucial voices: the
Iraqi people.
"If they leave, it will burn like hell," says Abdul
Karim Khalil Malallah who once translated for the
U.S. military police, but fled the violent chaos of
Baghdad with his family last summer for the safer
environs of Iraqi Kurdistan.
In dozens of interviews in several cities, Iraqi
Muslims and Christians, Arabs, Kurds and Assyrians —
people who would argue endlessly on other points of
the U.S. occupation of Iraq — are in unanimous
agreement on one point: U.S troops should not
withdraw from their country.
"It will be a real civil war," says Asos Hardi,
editor in chief of Awene (The Mirror), a leading
independent Kurdish newspaper in Sulaimaniyah. "It
will leave the country in chaos."
The governor of Erbil province, site of the
Kurdistan regional capital, agrees. "If the U.S.
leaves, we must leave with them," says Nawzad Hadi
Mawlood. "It will be a tragedy if they go."
Many fear that if the U.S .military leaves, the
government in Baghdad would collapse — if it doesn't
before that — and Shia militias, Sunni insurgency
groups and foreign jihadis, each backed by
neighboring countries, will scramble to divide Iraq
into bloody cantons of control.
"The U.S. at least controls the situation now," says
Imad Marbeen Yacoub,who fled Baghdad after paying
jizyah, a "Christian tax," of hundreds of thousands
of Iraqi dinars demanded by men he assumed to be
Shia militia members. If the U.S. pulls out, "the
civil war will be more and more," he says.
Shrine bombing
While instability has marked the country since the
U.S. invasion, the violence greatly increased after
the February 2006 bombing of the Al-Askari Shia
shrine in Samarra.
Shia militias, including those attached to political
parties participating in the government and
generally seen as backed by Iran, abandoned their
prior restraint and unleashed a bloody spasm of
sectarian violence on the streets of Iraqi cities.
In response, Sunni Arab Iraqi and foreign jihadi
groups, generally seen as backed by Saudi Arabia and
Syria, escalated the hostilities. The neighborhoods
of urban centers in particular became battlegrounds
of unbridled thuggery.
Kidnapping, extortion, car bombings, mortar attacks,
torture and murderous acts became the norm and left
the civilian population huddled in their homes
fearing for their lives. Since the Samarra bombing
more than 1 million Iraqis have felt compelled to
lock their doors and steal away in the night,
leaving behind their furnished homes, schooling,
businesses and other property, and are living
elsewhere in Iraq.
Another 1.2 million were already displaced. And 2
million have abandoned the country altogether,
according to the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees.
"The government will withdraw with the Americans,"
says Farhad Daoud, who fled Baghdad and now lives in
the Kurdistan region. Analysts fear that as well,
and point immediately to the repercussions.
"It will be a disaster," says Muhammed Tofiq of
Wusha, a Kurdish research organization. He points
out that the Kurdistan Regional Government, for
example, now depends on Baghdad for 96 percent of
its annual budget. While most Iraqis agree that the
central government is barely functioning now, there
is at least a structure in place that might allow
for political reconciliation and a cessation of
sectarian violence.
If that structure collapses, which people fear will
happen without American support, there is no hope
for a political solution. Various militias and armed
groups and their supporters in neighboring countries
will vie to divide the country into spheres of
control and the ethnic cleansing terrorizing urban
centers will expand to all of Iraq.
"It would be World War III, and divided by Iran,
Turkey, Saudi Arabia … ," says Shmael Benjamin of
the Assyrian Democratic Movement, which has one
member in the Iraqi parliament.
Iraqis repeatedly point to Iran, Turkey and Saudi
Arabia as "neighbors" who seek to destabilize Iraq.
These Persians, Turks and Arabs view Iraq as a
potentially powerful regional competitor spinning
within the U.S. orbit and fueled by huge oil
reserves.
Saudi Arabia fears another Shia Muslim-dominated
country on its borders and supports Arab jihadis who
fight to establish a Salifist Islamic state in Iraq
from which they can base further expansion.
Iran supports Shia groups to further their reach in
the country and solidify a larger Shia presence in
the region. At the
same time, it backs radical Sunni groups in northern
Iraq to destabilize Kurdistan.
Turkey, with a Kurdish population of perhaps 15
million — 20 percent of its population — fears the
successful "Iraqi model" of Kurds will embolden its
own oppressed Kurds to seek an autonomous region.
Should the central Iraqi government fail, Turkey
already has some 140,000 troops poised to invade
Iraqi Kurdistan.
One nation, many groups
Some Iraqis think that, aside from subversive
neighboring interference, the current violence is
the natural outgrowth of the historical processes
that forced into one nation disparate ethnic and
religious groups: Arabs, Kurds, Assyrians and
Turkomen; Shia and Sunni Muslims, Christians and
various smaller sects.
"Iraq became a state by force and when you release
that force, this is what happens," says Hardi, the
newspaper editor. "There is no Iraqi identity. Just
slogans."
Lacking a sense of Iraqi identity, the country's
various sectarian groups compete to grab the biggest
piece of the pie for themselves and are vulnerable
to the exploitation of neighboring countries that
see a "divide and conquer" strategy in their best
long-term interests.
Which is why Iraqis not involved in the sectarian
violence feel the U.S. bears major responsibility to
make sure that doesn't happen.
"America removed the statue (of Saddam Hussein) but
they should stay until the end," says Paul Shamoun
Ishaq of the Chaldean Cultural Center in Ankawa.
"America should finish what it started."
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