Civil War in Iraq

Presumably, Daniel wants us to attempt to bring his

“I don’t think we’re making matters better by staying there”

into accord with Harry’s

“No, we can be fairly certain that they would continue to fight and seek to wipe out the democratic forces in Iraq and destroy any chance of a democratic political system in the country.”

Both seem true to me, and my calculations all indicate that the pooch is well and truly screwed.

Leslie Gelb has put forward a highly problematic and unpopular solution that might mix things up a bit – partition the mess into three more manageable states.

Any takers?

john isbell –

No occupied nation has ever been allowed to resist.

They keep doing it anyway.

yeah, the three-state solution (or loose federation thereof) has been on the table for awhile, along with the return of the (hashemite :) king! i think it was cato or brookings or whoever who were advocating that?

i think it was always difficult to avoid civil war.

the problem was that turkey wouldn’t allow an independent kurdish state. i think i remember they massed troops on the border to make sure the PKK didn’t seize kirkuk and surrounding oil fields. and that iran would try to annex the shia regions to form some kind of greater persia or something. it’s hard to deny their influence i think.

but then if you go for a centralized state, like the US is sorta trying, it’s hard not to think the sunnis wouldn’t be screwed. and i think it’s pretty obvious now that they think they indeed will be, esp w/ sistani emerging as the great legitimizer or whatever. hence, the insurgency.

i’m not sure if fareed zakaria is trying to spin things a little here (he knows way more than i do!) but it does sound like he’s sugarcoating a little bit when he sez:

In Iraq, the one truly pleasant surprise so far is that there has been little religious and ethnic bloodshed. Many of the experts who counseled against an invasion predicted that after Saddam’s fall, the Sunnis, Shias and Kurds would tear each other apart. Nothing like this has happened. The problems—of resistance, nationalism and anti-Americanism—have been quite different. But the balance is fragile. If the United States and the Iraqi government play a sectarian strategy, things could unravel.

so maybe i’m pessimistic :D

otoh, i am optimistic that if iran should get the bomb it could become a responsible member of the nuclear club. like after a bit of brinksmanship, it looks like india and pakistan are doing alright (i guess as long as musharraf can stay alive and the ISI out). nor can i begrudge them of wanting nukes — israel for one, being surrounded by US for another (it doesn’t help being labeled evil by a superpower) and not being particularly friendly with sunni arabs. having a ‘persian bomb’ would be a nice insurance policy.

and, indeed, why wouldn’t a developing country NOT want to develop nukes if it was within its power? if i was the leader of a third world country, esp in a particularly rough neighborhood, i’d think it’d make a lot of sense to pursue them. and, afterall, national defense should be the first priority of the state. one might even argue that not pursuing WMD would be an abrogration of a govt’s responsibility to its citizenry.

obviously, that’s not the ideal situation, but that is the world we live in. that is the realpolitick i guess! that’s what they would say :D

so i’m not one to think proliferation is necessarily bad, at least among states reasonably beholden to their populations (crazy non-state actors are another story :) think of it as an optimitic 2nd amendment ‘more guns, less crime’ realpolitick argument. yes it’s MAD and potentially unstable, but it’s also sobering and i think causes leaders in their possession to, for lack of a better term, grow-up.

so to sum. hate the game, not the player. be aggressive, force the hand if you have the cards (semi-bluff on our better human natures?) and risk getting blown to smithereens. all cards on the table. game over. and maybe walk away and live happily ever after.

cheers!

Here’s an idea. Let’s go with the three state system, because it’s what the Iraqis seem to want. Then the Kurds can scrap with Turkey, or stay at a U.N. enforced uneasy standoff, Iran gets Shi’ite Iraq if it wants it, and good riddance, and the Sunnis get their own state, without Kurds, Shi’ites, or any real reason to complain. What’d be the headache over the Shi’ites joining Iran if they want? They’re similar in ideals, why not? If nothing else, it’d mean that when we eventually go to war with Iran, we’re fighting in a familiar area. And in the short term, it’d let us get out of Iraq with some semblance of accomplishment. We’re already in a mess, the world is already pissed at us, if we give the Iraqis what they seem to think they want, how much more could it hurt us?

Slav,
If you don’t subcribe to the Moron Theory, which one do you subcribe to to explain failures?

John,

Implied tones can be quite difficult to get accross using this medium so: Was that irony?

Sunni Arabs:
As I just saw JIm say, the Sunni Arabs would want to have oil, so you can expect heavy fighting around Kirkuk. The Sunnis would be even more pissed off, you’d have a lot of Al-Qeada possible recruits ( since they’re Sunnis ) who used to be in a military and have no prospect for the future while they used to be priviledged.

Kurds:
You say “the Kurds can scrap with Turkey” like it’s nothing. Don’t forget that two of Israel’s regional allies would be going to war. How likely AIPAC would let a policy that would lead to such a result happen?

Shi’ites:
Allow Iran to get bigger and more populous with more oil. Doesn’t seem smart. Also, doing that with Iraq would lead to results that would awaken even the most uninformed and jingoistic Americans ( or so I hope ) and put invading Iran beyond the pale in most circumstances.

If I understand correctly, the Sunni Arabs would get another Saddam or Saddam-lite, the Shi’ites would join a theocracy and Iraqi Kurdistan would be invaded by Turkey, leading to a long guerilla warfare.

See my name? Yeah, we ( Westerners ) are safer and they ( Iraqis ) are healthier.

Why is short term semblance something to aim for?

How could it hurt you: A bigger Lebanon. While many hate the US now, they would not only hate the US more but look down on it, think the US is not only stupid and incapable and won’t take responsability for its mistakes. Maybe it’s accurate.

Sidney Blumenthal, in Salon, wades in with the words of many military commentators:

Gen. Odom remarked that the tension between the Bush administration and senior military officers over Iraq is worse than any he has ever seen with any previous U.S. government, including during Vietnam. “I’ve never seen it so bad between the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the military. There’s a significant majority believing this is a disaster. The two parties whose interests have been advanced have been the Iranians and al-Qaida. Bin Laden could argue with some cogency that our going into Iraq was the equivalent of the Germans in Stalingrad. They defeated themselves by pouring more in there. Tragic.”

One of the problems with this war is that it is impossible to tell just from the text whether John (not Q) is being ironic. From some his comment would be heavy sarcasm from others it would be the latest successor to the flypaper hypothesis.

Juan Cole has some quite convincing reasons why the three state solution won’t work. It looks more attractive from 40,000 feet than on the ground as the plight of the Christian and Turkmen communities has recently demonstrated.

I don’t think that “Islamist” presents a very different proposition than “Marxist”. Sure it gets used too much and is an excuse for people to switch off their brains at a certain level of resolution. On the other hand, as originally intended and explained by Daniel Pipes, for it is he, seems helpful in naming an important phenomenon and helping to distinguish between the religious beliefs of a billion people and a radical and revolutionary tendency hiding among those same people. I suggest that it would be good to find some alternative phrase to use where an unhackneyed “Islamist” wold be appropriate. By the Pipes defintion Al-Sadr is, Sistani is not and SCIRI are probably up for grabs but are not primarily so.

It is quite fun to compare Pipes prescriptions with current policies. In particular he says:

It requires 10, 20, 30 years of evolution before full-fledged democracy can come into existence.

I can’t imagine he is a happy camper at all.

Kill God and let them all sort it out.

If the Bush administration was really interested in democracy and self-rule, it could start by not hand-picking transitional body after transitional body. The hand-picking confers an appearance of illegitimacy on the present Iraqi administration, which lends greater credence to the insurgents.

Clearly, therefore, we must conclude that democracy and self-rule is not the US’s primary objective here. Otherwise, it would behave differently.

There are noo good points to be made by the pro-war left. They weren’t serious about the war BEFORE the war, they just thought it would be cool to sing their johnsons around for a bit. They aren’t serious now, they are too concerned with saving face to do what has to be done. Plus, these people treated us like crap when we tried to make valid points. F**k em, they don’t deserve to be listened to. Make no mistake, if they had to do it over against they would still not listen to a damn thing we had to say.

“the uselessness of the term ‘Islamist’”

Well, of course, it’s a very useful term if your goal is to derail rational analysis of the Middle East. The point of “Islamist” and the similar term “Islamofascist” is that we refuse to recognize any distinction between Baathists like Saddam or the rulers of Syria, Shiites like Sadr and the rulers of Iran, and Wahabi Sunnis like Osama and his gang. Thus an attack on Iraq, and increased tensions with Iran and Syria, are made to look like a rational response to 9/11 . . .

…I don’t think we’re making matters better by staying there…

What ‘matters’ – isn’t “staying there” what this whole thing is all about?

D-squared: “it makes a number of good points which need to be taken seriously.”

This is Milton Friedman again, right? Zero is a number.

“But here I’d second Daniel’s other remark, that it isn’t helpful to see the anti-US forces as monolithic and undifferentiated “terrorists.””

This will sound snarky but it isn’t meant to be. I wish that instead of decrying how unhelpful it is to make undifferentiated lumps that such people would draw a distinction and show how the distinction is helpful.

For example Islamist: I think it makes a useful distinction between the large group of ‘Muslims’ who don’t advocate bloody jihad in order to (at a minimum) establish a fundamentalist Muslim power (state? empire? something else?) as the sole influence in the Middle East. It doesn’t cover every possible distinction in the Middle East, but it covers an important one. It doesn’t cover every actual problem that we have to deal with in the Middle East either, but it covers an important one. And it is a distinction which avoids a comprehensive ‘Clash of Civilizations’ which is good to avoid.

Sebastian–I meant to be distinguishing these two groups:

(1) people who engage in jihad for the sake of jihad–whose goal is to kill Americans and Westerners, be it in Iraq or wherever they may be found (“Islamists,” if you will; I don’t mind that distinction)

(2) people who are killing Americans and Westerners in Iraq but don’t aspire to kill Americans and Westerners outside of Iraq, and do not aspire to kill Americans outside of Iraq yet.

It sounded to me as though Harry was saying that (2) doesn’t exist, because everyone knows that killing Americans and Westerners inside Iraq won’t actually get them to leave. I was disputing that.

I think Harry’s insight may be in part that group (2) isn’t going to stop killing people if the coalition leaves–they’re interested in prolonging the civil war. But it seems to me that (and I think Daniel agrees here) the coalition isn’t actually stopping anyone.

So–s_bethy is right, both those points add up to the fact that the pooch is screwed.

It’s simple: they just want foreign troops out of their cities and foreign military copters out of their airspace. They are sick of it. Once the foreign troops are gone, they aren’t going to care about Americans and Westerners anymore. That’s certainly a majority.

But if the Americans kill someone’s child, there is a chance he’ll want to come to America and kill someone’s child there.

My personal (inexpert) view on the Iraqi Civil War is that on one side, you have two factions and on the other at least three.

On the coalition side, you have a) Iraqis fighting for a vision of Western-style democracy and independence, plus b) chancers and kleptocrats who don’t really want the Americans out because they suspect they will be able to steal more if they are there.

On the other side, you have a) nationalists fighting a nationalist war of independence with no religious agenda, b) Islamic nationalists (I’d put Sadr in this category) who want to fight to set up an Islamic state and c) jihadists who want to pursue a wider anti-Western project. I’d suspect that b) and c) come in Sunni and Shi’ite versions, and that the Sunni versions might come in al-Quaeda and non-al-Quaeda versions.

On the coalition side, you have a) Iraqis fighting for a vision of Western-style democracy and independence

I’ve recently heard a couple of these guys interviewed on the radio. Yes, they are pretty much what a different chris described above. But also: they don’t seem to be on the coalition side at all. In fact, their position is: resistance fighters who kill Iraqis (including Iraqi police) are wrong, but attacking American occupation forces is good and legitimate.

Harding:

“But [the police station attack] reveals a grim truth about the nature of Iraq’s evolving insurgency: Iraqis are killing Iraqis. In recent months, and especially since the handover of “power” to the unelected interim government, Iraq’s resistance has concentrated its efforts on killing those who collaborate with the Americans – the police officers, would-be police officers, translators, governors and government officials. It is beginning to look like, and feel like, civil war. “

Harry:
“Indeed. But is it not the case that the struggle in Iraq has been of that character for quite some time?”

I never heard of the development that Harding describes-“In recent months, and especially since the handover of “power”, Iraq’s resistance has concentrated its efforts on killing …collaborat[ors].”I made a perfunctory search and couldn’t find any other mention of this concentrated effort. Harding doesn’t say how he figured this out or who he got it from. Perhaps I missed the stories that made what he’s claiming common knowledge. Two trends I was aware of because they’ve been mentioned so often in the news:

1)US is taking casualties at an increasing rate,

2) more and more of Iraqi territory is becoming no-go for occupying forces.

But what Harding reports is news to me. I’d appreciate it if anyone could direct me to some other source(s) referring to this phenomenon.

All the best

The situation in Iraq is not going to improve now even if there is a complete withdrawal of the coalition forces. Anti Americanism is now a full fledged civil war and it can be controlled only when the international community acts responsibly. The UN has a very important role to play at this juncture. Please strengthen the hands of the United Nations.