An eventual US withdrawal from Iraq poses fundamental problems and desperate questions as to how to fill the vacuum.
By Dominic Moran in Tel Aviv for ISN Security Watch (16/03/07)
With its web of separate and oft intersecting conflicts Iraq poses fundamental problems for an eventual withdrawal of US-led forces and for regional players desperately seeking agreements that would avoid their being dragged into the security vacuum left by the collapse of central government authority.
According to Dr Kamil Mahdi, Director of the Center for Arab Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter, "There was an attempt to unravel the whole role of the state in society […] and to destroy the basis of any legitimacy for the Iraqi state, while attacking the idea of a nation."
"They [ministries] have been taken over and asset-stripped by Iraqi government parties," Dr Toby Dodge from London's International Institute for Strategic Studies, told ISN Security Watch. "So the ministries then become the vehicles of the parties that have been given them as part of the post-election deal."
[Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri] "Maliki is basically tied to a political system that gives him very little power beyond the ability to negotiate between the various parties," he said.
Moving heaven and earth
Kurdish areas of Iraq's north have enjoyed the greatest stability since the 2003 US-led invasion. However, a growing confrontation over the future of the oil-rich Kirkuk area and the establishment of a militant stronghold in the far north threaten this relative tranquility.
A constitutionally mandated vote on the contested Kirkuk region is scheduled to be held by November. It is likely to see a strong vote in favor of cession to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)-led Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) following the flight of many Arab, Turkomen and other minority residents from Kirkuk.
"The Kurds have been moving heaven and earth to create facts on the ground, financially encouraging and coercively scaring Arabs to move out and then shipping in wholesale, with good financial backing, Kurds, dislocated or otherwise," Dodge said. "Now the debate becomes whether Washington or Baghdad can persuade a postponement of the referendum.
"This [vote] is going to be highly problematic." Mahdi said. "There isn't an atmosphere or environment for a vote that will be considered free and fair by everyone."
Opponents of the poll fear that KRG control of the region's oil fields will give the US-allied authority the power to ignore a national oil revenues sharing bill, divesting the central government of a key source of income for reconstruction and stabilization efforts.
"The issue of oil there is exaggerated," Mahdi cautioned. "The oil fields are important, they will remain important, although they have been depleted quite considerably."
"Now the issue of Kirkuk really is the issue of coexistence between Kurds and others, and it is really much more about the future of Kurdish nationalism than it is about oil," he said.
Meanwhile, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and associated guerilla factions continue to hold out in the far north. Iran accuses the US of backing militant raids into its territory, while Turkey seems bent on further incursions into the militants' mountain retreat in coming months.
"That border is so intertwined with extended families, economy, tribal networks, smuggling networks, neither the KDP nor the Turks could control it, hence the Turks sporadic summer offensives," Dodge explained.
"I don't think the KDP or PUK can do much to either help or hinder the Turks," he added. "They can squeal when the Turks incur, they can plead with Washington, but I guess Washington won't be shouting to Ankara. It's a lawless, relatively inaccessible area that the PKK have always managed to keep alive."
Baghdad crackdown
US-led forces launched their largest security operation yet in Baghdad in mid-February after a significant rise in insurgent attacks, criminality and large-scale sectarian and ethnic cleansing in 2006. An estimated 146,000 residents of the capital have emigrated or been internally displaced.
The failure to secure Baghdad has contributed significantly to the centrifugal fragmentation of the country by bolstering a growing image of fundamental governance and military dysfunction.
"The conflict has fuelled a general lawlessness that is not in the interests of any particular group. Forces that have been engaged in this conflict are unable to contain it," Mahdi explained.
Around half of the over 25,000 US troop reinforcements ordered by the George W Bush administration have now arrived in Iraq, with most concentrated in the capital where the 80,000-strong Iraqi and US force has significantly raised its presence on the streets.
To Mahdi, "This [troop surge] is to do with Bush's internal domestic political situation more than anything else in my view. This is an occupation that has failed and the question of offering a different military strategy at this stage […] it's really a sign of desperation.
"This is a time when the US should admit its errors and the suffering it has caused and should now be seeking a solution through much more dialogue with the international community and a wide range of Iraqis," he opined.
The US has cajoled Prime Minister al-Maliki into allowing the entry of troops into sprawling Sadr City, the Baghdad heartland of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia.
"There is clearly a different atmosphere on the streets of Baghdad. It is not peace, it is not even stability, but so far it [the operation] has seemed to deliver a breathing space in notable neighborhoods which is a positive outcome," Dodge said, adding, "They've clearly pushed the Mahdi Army off the streets."
Journalists on the ground confirm military reports that the current operation has improved the security situation but caution that recent days have again seen a rise in insurgent attacks. There are also reports of a sharp increase in violence in nearby Diyala Governate as insurgents shift their attention to regions unaffected by the security operation.
According to Dodge, "If you look closely at counter-insurgency doctrine and 'ink-spot theory' - that you concentrate and then expand - the fact that violence goes elsewhere is not necessarily negative, you are postponing dealing with that violence until after you have expanded your ink-spot of security and stability."
Asked if either Shia or Sunni could end up dominating Baghdad, Dodge replied, "No, because both communities are deeply divided."
"If and when the US completely draws down their influence in the center and the south there will be an increasing conflict between Sadr's Mahdi Army and SCIRI's [The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq] Badr - that's been ongoing," Dodge said, referring to rival Shia groups.
"What we are seeing is not a neat civil war but a war of all against all."
The heartland of the Sunni insurgency
The western al-Anbar province is the heartland of the Sunni insurgency and has seen the worst violence of the uprising. Around 4,000 US reinforcements are expected to arrive in the restive region in coming weeks.
The insurgency is made up of a variety of Sunni nationalist, tribal, Baathist and religious factions in a constant state of flux, with mergers and breakaways making the nature and scope of the uprising difficult to quantify or address.
"There have been constant [US government] contacts with insurgent groups and other armed groupings within what could be broadly called Sunni society," Dodge explained, "but they have delivered very little: One, because the Maliki government, and the Jaafar government before them have been hostile to them; two, the basis for Sunni negotiations has been an American withdrawal."
As in other areas, responsibility for local security has often been foisted onto militias whose tribal and political leaders bear only nominal allegiance to the central government.
It is one such group of tribal leaders, Sheikh Abdul Satar's Awakening Council, that the US has sought to promote as a breach in the insurgent front in the public relations campaign accompanying the current troop surge.
The Awakening Council, claims to have taken control of security in its area of influence and to have arrested around 100 high-profile members of al-Qaida.
"I believe it is a significant development," Mahdi said. "I don't believe necessarily that the issue is of a particular tribal grouping in association with the government. […] The issue is the total lawlessness and the total chaos that will emerge out of the continuing situation including internal conflicts within each of the areas and population groups."
"There is evidence that radical, non-Iraqi jihadists have been murdered and that Anbar chiefs have been encouraged to set up militias." Dodge said. "That doesn't bring peace by the way, it just makes it a hotter territory for non-Iraqi jihadis to work in."
"I think you have seen in the past that when al-Qaida jihadis focus on one area they can bring to bear enough capacity to beat indigenous militias," he added.
Saudi Arabia and Syria will likely seek to extend their influence in the province through providing further political and financial support to competing Sunni factions. This raises the possibility of an internecine proxy Sunni conflict that would exacerbate and outlive an expected confrontation with Iranian-backed Shia militias.
Fingers in the dyke
Little appeared to be achieved in Saturday's international conference in Baghdad on stabilizing Iraq. In a sign of mounting concern, US and Iranian representatives met directly for the first time at the meeting since the collapse of planned bilateral negotiations on Iraq last year.
"My understanding is that the conference was not initiated by the US," Mahdi said. "It was not initially welcomed by the US but it joined when it became a reality - in which case I am not optimistic."
The US attendance at the conference was a move to appease Saudi Arabia and other regional allies.
Saudi and Iranian officials have been engaged in intensive shuttle diplomacy in recent weeks in an effort to forestall a fast-approaching crisis over the two country's support for rival Iraqi Shia and Sunni political blocs.
Asked if regional states could be pulled into the Iraq civil war, Mahdi said, "They would be engaged indirectly. I don't believe that there would necessarily be massive troop involvement from regional states. It is just that Iraq is going to be a very destabilizing force in the region."
Dodge agreed that "Iraq will be a cockpit for wider regional conflicts. That is not to say that they [regional states] will be drawn in directly, but increasingly drawn in through proxies."
Iraq's multiple, intersecting conflicts make it difficult to envisage the reestablishment of meaningful central government authority or the future peaceful delineation of federal borders envisaged in the constitution amidst border disputes and regional power bids.
"There won't be a form of federal state because there is no state. There is a constitution that mandates federalism but you can't cut a state up or decentralize in a state of almost pure anarchy," Dodge opined.
"So I think the central government, as represented by the ministry buildings in and out of the Green Zone [Baghdad administrative zone], will rough and readily survive," he said. "But the central government finds it preciously difficult to project its influence into Baghdad let alone the rest of Iraq and I see no reason for that changing in the near future."
