Iraq exit strategy – the ‘long’ war
Historical perspective on the Middle East is often forgotten and frequently underrated. If we think that the current US embroilment in Iraq is a new phenomena, we can correct this with a visit back to 1922. Winston Churchill, then the Minister with responsibility for the British presence in Iraq, wrote a letter home to his Prime Minister, David Lloyd George. An excerpt of the letter has echoes of our modern problems:
“I am deeply concerned about Iraq. The task you have given me is becoming really impossible…there is scarcely a newspaper…which is not consistently hostile to our remaining in this country. I think we should now put definitely, not only to Feisal (then King of Iraq – Daily Clarity note) but to the Constituent Assembly, the position that…if they are not prepared to urge us to stay, and to co-operate in every manner, I would actually clear out. That at any rate would be a solution…At the present we are paying eight million dollars a year for the privilege of living on an ungrateful volcano of which we are in no circumstances to get anything worth having.”
The US finds itself in a similar predicament today. It appears the lessons that history offers are difficult to hear and hard to learn. Why the US went into Iraq is not so germane today, as how they get out. Part of the problem of exiting Iraq is policy objective confusion, and the other, equally important, element is a fundamental misunderstanding of the Middle East. The current US Middle East policy is in large part driven by the findings of a 2002 report on National Security Strategy. The report concluded, and then accepted as a Bush Administration contextual world view, that “…given the role of rogue states and terrorists, the United States can no longer solely rely on a reactive posture as we have in the past. The inability to deter a potential attacker, the immediacy of today’s threats, and the magnitude of potential harm that could be caused by our adversaries choice of weapon, do not permit that option. We cannot let our enemies strike first.”
From this largely policy philosophical point, President Bush forged the backbone of his Middle East foreign policy. What shapes Bush’s view of a valid exit strategy, is what he saw as a potential outcome of the exercise, and what drove his reasoning for entry. He said of the Iraq war, albeit rather inelegantly, “Saddam Hussein was dangerous with weapons. Saddam Hussein was dangerous with the ability to make weapons. He is a dangerous man in a dangerous part of the world. (Daily Clarity emphasis)..and I believe it is essential…that when we see a threat, we deal with those threats before they become imminent. It’s too late in this kind of war, and so that is why I made the decision I made.” He made another fundamental mistake in his understanding of the region, in his identification of the enemy confronting the US in a post 9/11 world. He assumed that all militant Islamic factions were united in their agenda towards the US. He grouped Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Saddam Husein’s followers, the Iranian Mullahs, Hezbollah and Hamas as one grouping, despite the fact that in many cases these are mortal enemies, with incompatible beliefs and conflicting interests.
Bush imagined that by military intervention, he could create in Iraq a united and homogeneous nation that would rally to the greater good of Iraq. What is critical is that the US exit strategy is predicated on this objective and in practical terms it is totally unrealistic. Iraq is a nominal country, with a border drawn by the British in the 1930′s and without local consultation. The factions within those borders were not then, and are not now, governed by a national identity but rather by a historic, religious and ethnic tribal history. The US is attempting to drive a Western concept of a democratic state in a maelstrom of conflicting factional interests in a country made rel only in the West’s imagination, and by a brief, bloody and tormented history. There is no consensus in Iraq, and exit will be impossible while that is the measurement of success by the US government. Iraq was long held together by the dictatorship strategies of Saddam Hussein. There was no voice of dissension, there was no democratic process – there was only obedience. Along comes the US government, attempting to create a unified country under democratic process, and the whole house of cards imploded.
Given that the objective of the Bush Administration in undertaking the Iraq war is unachievable, what then could be a viable exit strategy? Some commentators realizing late the factional partisanship of Iraq, call for creating a nation structured around autonomous factional regions. They suggest ceding the South to the Shiites, the North to the Kurds and letting the Sunnis find a position somewhere in the middle. There are two fundamental errors in this strategy. Firstly, is the hegemony that Iraq is willing to let the Western nations determine what it will become. They are not willing to follow the West’s directions and the US desires of a particular outcome are of no cultural importance to them. In fact, given the history in the region, they are more unlikely to follow direction than to accept it as a matter of principle. In They see themselves as free and proud people, and as such want to do what free nations do, which is to control their own destiny. Secondly, there are many other minority factions not represented in such a ‘three state solution’ such as the Jews, Christians and Turkmen. A Western conceived and mandatory set of divisions are doomed to fail.
While the underlying intent of the ‘three state solution’ is the probable best outcome, a declaration by the West of what it is Iraq will become is not the answer. The US should reduce its influence on the political process, and instead focus only on the security issues within the country that it created by entering in the first place. Left to their own devices, the factional divides will happen organically as ethnic and religious interests align in a natural process. The US can at best let this process happen with the minimum of bloodshed. As the US withdraws, leaving this shaky new free country/countries it then needs to focus its attention on Iraq’s neighbors. it needs to, through diplomacy and trade, make sure that no neighboring power moves in to fill the void as Syria did in Lebanon. If the US is then desirous of a larger Middle Eastern policy platform, it needs to focus on the war it should have prosecuted instead of Iraq, namely Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is an enemy to many Arab nations and to Islam. Its justification in the Arab world at present, is to position itself against the “Great Satan of America”. If the US plans its withdrawal from Iraq carefully and builds its mutual interest alliances with neighboring countries Al Qaeda will become increasingly marginalized. It needs to act consistently, morally and in accordance with international law. That is how to make progress in the war against terror in the Middle East. The US has lost at least 6 years by moving away from this strategy,but now has the chance to move towards a multi-generational resolution of the ‘long’ war against terror.
