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Five years of war: Let the country divide,
and get out
26.3.2008
By Ivan Eland
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March 26, 2008
As the fifth anniversary of the United States´
second-longest (next to Vietnam) and
second-costliest (next to World War II) war passes,
the good news is that the counterinsurgency strategy
of Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno
seems to be working. The bad news is that it will
probably not save Iraq.
Although the U.S. troop "surge" has had some effect,
it is probably not the most important factor
dampening violence back down to the levels of
mid-2004. The United States had comparable force
levels in Iraq (about 155,000 troops) in 2005, but
the mayhem was worse than now and was increasing.
Furthermore, the carnage in Iraq started dropping
even before the United States began the surge (and
temporarily increased again as U.S. troops were
being added). In part, prior ethnic cleansing that
had more cleanly separated hostile Shiite and Sunni
populations has likely caused the reduction. Even
more important was probably Petraeus´ and Odierno´s
exploitation of the fissure between mainline Sunni
insurgents and al-Qaeda in Iraq. |
Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the
Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent
Institute. |
Al-Qaeda in Iraq´s blindingly incompetent slaughter
of fellow Muslim civilians, which brought rebuke
even by al-Qaeda´s central leadership, caused Sunni
insurgents to get fed up and turn against the group.
Petraeus and Odierno cleverly exploited this fissure
by driving a wedge between the two factions.
Although guerrilla operations are the most
successful form of warfare in human history and
counterinsurgency forces seldom win over the long
term, they do best when they can divide the rebel
movement.
The United States was able to defeat the Greek
communist insurgents during the 1947-49 period and
Filipino rebels from 1900 to 1902 by splitting the
insurgencies. In the latter case, the United States
was able to persuade Emilio Aguinaldo, the most
prominent rebel commander—perhaps by a cash
payment—to surrender his forces. In Iraq, the United
States is now essentially paying off former Sunni
guerrillas in the "Awakening Councils" by funding,
equipping and training them to fight al-Qaeda in
Iraq and working with the formerly hostile Shiite
Mahdi militia.
Although this strategy has merits by attenuating
violence in the short term, it will likely
exacerbate Iraq´s larger problems, thus eventually
leading to a full-blown civil war. The Petraeus and
Odierno strategy makes sense if the objective is to
keep a lid on the violence until President Bush
leaves office. When the tar baby is successfully
passed onto the next president,www.ekurd.net
Bush can then rerun the
"Kissinger" argument from Vietnam. That argument
goes something like this: "The United States would
have won the Vietnam War if the Democratic Congress
hadn´t cut off funding for it." In Iraq, the similar
Bush administration refrain will be: "The situation
in Iraq was improving until we left office and
handed over to power to President X."
But Bush´s short-term strategy would likely
aggravate Iraq´s central underlying
problem—ethno-sectarian hostility. Had the Bush
administration made a serious effort to consult
experts on the Arab world before invading Iraq, it
would have discovered that the country was one of
the most fractured in the Arab world and would be
one of the least likely to support and sustain a
liberal democratic federation. Prior to supporting
former Sunni guerrillas, the administration was only
funding, equipping and training two sides—the Kurds
and Shiites—in the ongoing civil war. Now the
administration is supporting all three sides. The
Shiite/Kurdish-controlled government is opposed to
the U.S. program to support the Sunnis and has been
reluctant to let them in the security forces.
Such deep underlying ethno-sectarian suspicions and
fissures have been around for centuries in what is
now Iraq and are unlikely to be rectified by passing
a few benchmark laws. Given the history of Iraq—in
which one group controlled the central government
and oppressed the other groups—all groups, even
including the formerly ruling Sunnis, are suspicious
of central authority and will fight for control of
it. Thus, societal cooperation, of which Iraq has
little, must precede legislation or the laws will be
disregarded. Even less credibility will accrue to
laws passed under pressure from an outside occupying
power.
The only way the United States can pull its finger
out of the dike without the dam crashing down is to
use the threat of withdrawal—pulling the backstop
out from the corrupt Shiite/Kurdish government—to
get the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds to agree to
formally decentralize the country. If the central
government has only limited power, the groups would
fear its potential oppression less and attenuate
their fight for control of it. In a decentralized,
loosely confederated Iraq, their militias could
provide security over members of the their own
groups in new autonomous regions (the country would
probably have three or more of these regions based
on ethno-sectarian or tribal affiliation). Also,
judicial, resource (oil) management and most other
government functions could reside at the regional
level. The central government would be responsible
only for diplomatic representation overseas and
negotiating trade agreements with other countries
and among regions.
Heretofore, the major sticking point in getting the
three groups to support such a decentralization
scheme was Sunni worries about meager oil resources
in their region. The Kurds have had a de facto state
in northern Iraq since the end of the Persian Gulf
War in 1991. Many Shiite leaders also favor setting
up an autonomous region, the possibility of which is
guaranteed in Iraq´s constitution. Even the Sunnis,
finally disabused of the fantasy that they are
strong enough to once again rule all of Iraq, and
having tasted oppression at the hands of the
Shiite-dominated security forces, are becoming more
favorable to decentralization.
To push the Shiite/Kurdish-dominated Iraqi
government into gerrymandering regional
borders—giving territory containing oil to the
Sunnis to ensure their acceptance of
decentralization—any new U.S. president must
establish a timetable for the rapid withdrawal of
U.S. forces, which prop up that dysfunctional
government.
Because the Shiite have roughly 60 percent of the
oil and about 60 percent of the population, the only
border that might need to be gerrymandered is near
the northern oil fields by Kirkuk between Kurdistan
(about 20 percent of the population and
approximately 40 percent of the oil) and
Sunni-dominated areas (roughly 20 percent of the
population and little oil).
The historical record on partitions illuminates dos
and don´ts for any soft partition of Iraq into a
loose confederation—the most important of which is
that the Iraqis must do the dividing themselves for
it to have crucial legitimacy in their eyes. In
1947, in partitioning India and Pakistan, Britain
found out the hard way that the location of the
partition line is vitally important and that an
outside power drawing such a border arbitrarily can
have disastrous and violent consequences.
Thus, the United States should avoid getting
involved in the details of creating borders between
regions, but some general lessons can be learned
from past partitions. First, regional boundaries
don´t have to exactly mirror ethno-sectarian areas,
but they should come as close as possible. The case
of Northern Ireland shows that a large minority
(Catholics), which could be perceived as a threat by
the majority (Protestants), should not be stranded
on the other side of the borderline. A small
minority on the other side of the line will probably
experience little violence (Protestants in Ireland).
Second, the case of Kosovo demonstrates that
boundaries must consider ethno-sectarian or tribal
shrines and sites. Third, although drawing borders
along ethno-sectarian divides should minimize
population movements, some migration will likely be
necessary. Such movements must be voluntary, can be
encouraged through incentives and must be protected
(as the violence in Indian-Pakistan in 1947 showed).
Although a U.S. withdrawal and soft partition is not
a perfect solution, Iraq is in some sense already
partitioned, with forces primarily loyal to
ethno-sectarian groups providing security. U.S.
policy training of such armed organizations is
merely reinforcing this de facto partition. Such an
unratified partition is very dangerous and will
likely lead to a full-blown civil war. Only a new
American president signaling a rapid U.S. withdrawal
could motivate the parties to formalize, adjust and
make permanent the decentralized Iraq that already
exists.
Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the
Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent
Institute.
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
americanchronicle com
The contents of this article reflect the author's
personal opinions
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