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August 21, 2005

Iraq's future looks worse every day

It's becoming obvious that my August 11th post was extremely naive. Clearly, myself and most Americans just don't know enough about Iraq, and what is happening there on the ground, but we can tell it's FUBAR.

How can American soldiers keep Iraq together, when the only forces who aren't trying to kill Americans are fighting to tear Iraq apart? I guess I should have trusted that uneasy feeling in my gut when all this talk of confederations among provinces was raised. This is a sobering article indeed:

While Iraqi representatives wrangle over the drafting of a constitution in Baghdad, forces represented by the militias and the Shiite and Kurdish parties that control them are creating their own institutions of authority, unaccountable to elected governments, the activists and officials said. In Basra in the south, dominated by the Shiites, and Mosul in the north, ruled by the Kurds, as well as cities and villages around them, many residents say they are powerless before the growing sway of the militias, which instill a climate of fear that many see as redolent of the era of former president Saddam Hussein.

The parties and their armed wings are sometimes operating independently, and other times as part of Iraqi army and police units trained and equipped by the United States and Britain and controlled by the central government. Their growing authority has enabled them to seize territory, confront their perceived enemies and provide patronage to their followers. Their rise has come because of a power vacuum in Baghdad and their own success in the January elections.

Since the formation of a government this spring, Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, has witnessed dozens of assassinations, claiming members of the former ruling Baath Party, Sunni political leaders and officials of competing Shiite parties. Many have been carried out by uniformed men in police vehicles, according to political leaders and families of the victims, with some of the bullet-riddled bodies dumped at night in a trash-strewn parcel known as The Lot. The province's governor said in an interview that Shiite militias have penetrated the police force; an Iraqi official estimated that as many as 90 percent of officers were loyal to religious parties....

"There is an absence of law," said a 40-year-old Transportation Ministry official who was detained for five days in Dahuk last month. The official said a Kurdish officer had accused him of "writing against the Kurds on the Internet."

"'Freedom' and 'liberty' are only words in ink on a piece of paper," he said. "The law now, it's the big fish eats the small fish."

It seems Moqtada al Sadr is the only Shiite working for a united Iraq. Considering he and his militia are also responsible for the deaths of many Americans and Iraqi police, this is not a good sign. Nor is this commentary, which helps explain what SCIRI and Dawa might have in mind:

The Pakistani and Iranian experiments have shown that Sadr was right to treat the creation of "Islamic man" as a prerequisite for the ideal Islamic economy. These experiments also point, however, to the virtual impossibility of accomplishing a Sadrist moral transformation. If the moral fiber of Pakistanis and Iranians has not improved, as judged by Islamist leaders themselves, this is not for lack of trying.

For all the lip service Dawa's current leaders pay to Sadr's wisdom, they have given no indication of how they would succeed where others have failed. They have not elucidated what his teachings imply for wage policy or assistance to the downtrodden, to say nothing of policies on oil, the environment or foreign trade. Curiously, the Islamists among Iraq's constitutional framers are drawing moral and intellectual authority from a man whose thinking is of no practical help in resolving Iraq's vast policy challenges. The significance of Sadr's intellectual legacy lies, then, less in the particularities of its policy proposals than in the justification that it provides for giving the Dawa leadership a voice in Iraqi governance, including economic policy-making.

Notwithstanding Dawa's claim to provide a revolutionary economic agenda, as a matter of practice, Sadr's legacy serves two political goals. First, it provides a manifesto for placing a clerical seat at Iraq's national bargaining table. And second, it serves as a rhetorical device with mass resonance. At a time when most Arabs consider Islam under siege, a policy can be tainted merely by making it seem un-Islamic. A proposal categorized as un-Islamic will fail no matter how sound the utilitarian arguments in its favor.

Accordingly, secularist anxiety about Dawa goes well beyond the substance of its current policy positions. In the rough-and-tumble of Arab politics, Islamist parties will enjoy an advantage in any national debate by virtue of their ability to frame their own position, whatever its content, as uniquely Islamic and rival positions as evil.

Please notice that this is talking about Moqtada's father, not Moqtada. It would bet the son's goal of keeping Iraq united is to widen the swath of land over which Islamic rule can be established.

This account, from an American soldier who served in Sadr City, is not a good sign either:

For the most part the Iraqi's are glad america is there, but they are the silent majority. They are too scared that if they speak out for us they would be kidnapped or murdered. One Iraqi asked me why America doesn't build schools or donate cars like the Japanese did. I told him it's because every time we try to build something either the workers get scared and don't show up because they are working for Americans and scared of retribution or because it is constantly attacked by one of the various militias.

I was never once in my entire year in iraq, attacked by Saddam loyalists or Al Qaeda, I was attacked by shiite milita that was sick of the American military bullying its way through traffic, never delivering on any promises it said it would keep, and just generally sick of a foreign military presence. Yes they were also religious extremists, but most were just disillusioned with America's presence.

Just imagine if George W. was a dictator and all of a sudden Canada invaded. We would be happy at first, but after almost 2 years of them still hanging around and nothing getting done, I'm fairly certain we would rise up against them too.

Chuck Hagel had something to say about it this morning, too:

Hagel Says Iraq War Looking Like Vietnam

A leading Republican senator and prospective presidential candidate said Sunday that the war in Iraq has destabilized the Middle East and is looking more like the Vietnam conflict from a generation ago.

Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, who received two Purple Hearts and other military honors for his service in Vietnam, reiterated his position that the United States needs to develop a strategy to leave Iraq.

Hagel scoffed at the idea that U.S. troops could be in Iraq four years from now at levels above 100,000, a contingency for which the Pentagon is preparing.

"We should start figuring out how we get out of there," Hagel said on "This Week" on ABC. "But with this understanding, we cannot leave a vacuum that further destabilizes the Middle East. I think our involvement there has destabilized the Middle East. And the longer we stay there, I think the further destabilization will occur."

Hagel said "stay the course" is not a policy. "By any standard, when you analyze 2 1/2 years in Iraq … we're not winning," he said.

Posted by Mike at August 21, 2005 04:37 PM

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