Iraq is dangerously close to the threshold - the point of no return at which an ideological-sectarian chain reaction is triggered and a rapidly accelerated disintegration along sectarian lines occurs. The blinding flash of Iraq's disintegration will be followed closely by a powerful shockwave radiating outward in all directions, then by an irresistible reverse force that will pull Iraq's neighbors into the vortex. That is the point at which the US begins to suffer an irreversible forfeiture in Iraq.
The political detonation described here, in which Iraq's enriched, fissionable sectarian factions or elements are rammed together forcefully by the current US-driven political process, finally reach critical mass and then detonate to cause Iraq's violent disintegration, is imminent. Consequently, not only has the US finally uncovered Iraq's political WMSD (weapons of mass self-destruction) but it is also, knowingly or unknowingly, racing toward the triggering of a political fission bomb of enormous yield with widespread regional and even global fallout.
Enrichment of ideological-sectarian fissionable elements To achieve a fission detonation you must start with highly enriched fuel in which the concentration of the radioactive elements is very high in relation to the inert elements.
Several important factors have resulted in the ideological-sectarian elements in Iraq becoming very highly enriched. When the US collapsed the entire Saddam Hussein regime, at one and the same time it removed the damper block that kept Iraq's sectarian factions under control. It removed the force of suppression that had kept Iraq's primary three disparate ideologies from becoming concentrated, potent, radicalized or enriched enough to be politically fissionable. After the removal of Saddam's regime the US replaced it with nothing to act as a suppressor or damper. Therefore, the political-ideological enrichment process, long suppressed, began to flourish out in the open as each of Iraq's sectarian factions dreamed of establishing (or, in the case of Sunnis, reestablishing) itself in a position of freedom and of control over Iraq and its oil-rich regions.
Thus, the Kurdish faction became highly enriched politically and ideologically as respects its demand for an independent Kurdistan in Iraq's north. Today, that faction proclaims that it will not compromise on its demands for Kurdish autonomy, retention of its own heavily armed militias and control of oil-rich Kirkuk. Neither will it submit to an Iraq governed by Islamic law.
Likewise, the Shi'ite faction is intent on establishing autonomous control over Iraq's south and appears determined to put forth Islamic law as the basis for Iraq's judiciary and system of laws. It is allying itself closely to Iran. The Shi'ite element has thus become very highly enriched.
Finally, the Sunni faction fears that federalism or outright autonomy in the oil-rich north and south will cause Iraq's breakup, leaving the Sunnis holding the comparatively worthless central regions of Iraq. It disdains Islamic law and has taken to violent means to try to prevent an Iraqi scenario that would leave it on the outside looking in. The Sunni element has thus become very highly enriched also.
Each of Iraq's ideological-sectarian elements increasingly displays a high concentration of radioactive elements as compared to those elements that are inert. Radicalism flourishes in an environment of instability, violence and hopelessness. Such conditions prolonged for nearly two-and-a-half years after the destruction of the Saddam regime are causing Iraqis to revert to their respective ideological-political roots, to distrust, resent and even to despise rival sectarian factions and increasingly to push for the interests of one's chosen sectarian faction to the exclusion of all others. Iraq's three-way polarization is increasing, deepening. The ideological positions of each sectarian element are acutely hardening. That is akin to the enriching of Iraq's ideological-sectarian elements, making those elements highly fissionable. Iraq does have extremely potent, highly enriched fissionable elements that have been uncovered by the US invasion and occupation. As such, Iraq already has all the elements and know-how for the production of a very potent political WMD, one that will result quickly in its self-destruction. It has only to be assembled and triggered.
However, as is often the case with the development of WMD, Iraq is receiving outside help to propel it along the destructive path. How so?
State of critical mass The achievement of an actual fission detonation occurs when highly enriched fissionable elements are quickly compressed together by outside forces to reach a state of critical mass. This can be accomplished by ramming those elements together or by spherically imploding the fissionable elements together. The result is a catastrophic fission detonation that releases far more energy than that used to achieve the initial implosion.
The US-driven political process in Iraq seeks to prevent the breakup of the country by creating a new democratic Iraqi government and constitution that bind Iraq's sectarian elements together. That is a noble goal. However, the means employed by the US in an attempt to achieve that goal are very problematic and are inherently dangerous. So is the highly compressed timeframe for its achievement currently being pushed upon Iraq by the US. In effect, the US-driven means and timeframe amount to ramming or imploding Iraq's fissionable sectarian elements together, rather than carefully and methodically binding them together. The US is foolishly risking a catastrophic political, ideological-sectarian fission detonation in Iraq. It is not only assembling the political fission bomb, but it is also flicking the trigger mechanism to see if it can get a light.
The US massively over-reached in Iraq when it launched its invasion, occupation and nation-building effort (collectively, "regime change") in March 2003. Its costs (to the US) in terms of lives, money, political and diplomatic capital, global credibility and goodwill and military readiness have been colossal, and such costs continue to mount. The US is desperate, therefore, to significantly reduce its military presence and to try to put the Iraq crisis and all its implications and repercussions behind itself. That desperation is driving the extremely short, highly compressed timeframe for the achievement of political goals in Iraq. That highly compressed timeframe is entirely impractical and acutely dangerous. You simply cannot thrust Iraq's highly enriched sectarian elements together so rapidly without risking an enormous and potent detonation.
Not only that, but the actual methods being employed by the US to try to consolidate Iraq's ideological factions are far too dangerous and forceful. When the US drove the process of the drafting of the interim Iraqi constitution in 2004 when it handed sovereignty back to the interim Iraqi government, it pitted Iraq's factions against one another out of fear one faction might rise to the ascendancy. Thus the interim constitution played well to Kurdish hopes, goals and interests but it simultaneously sought to undermine those of the larger Shi'ite faction. Sunni interests were largely ignored, or at least, grossly understated. At the same time, for fear that the Kurdish faction would gain inordinate potency, the document denied certain rights and goals sought with great determination by the Kurdish faction. The US has played the Kurdish and Sunni factions against the Shi'ite in various ways for fear the Shi'ite would gain the ascendancy. Such shortsighted methods bring to birth increased frustration, resentment and violence between factions.
Additionally, US policies and actions in Iraq have all too often employed inordinate force and even cruelty. The brutal and indiscriminate siege of Fallujah and the widespread Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal are notable examples. Such methods sow the seeds of deeper and wider resistance to the presence of foreign forces and foreign influence over domestic political processes. Far too large a percentage of Iraqis view the US as the oppressor rather than the liberator, and that percentage is growing rather than declining. Consequently, attempting to promote democracy at the barrel of a gun tends to fundamentally undermine the credibility of the invading force, resulting in eventual forfeiture of that political objective as the sectarian factions succumb to deep-seated suspicion of the real motives of the occupying forces. And as Iraq's environment slides ever faster toward greater sectarian violence and less security and stability, the US-driven political processes become less and less relevant and increasingly serve merely to showcase the fundamental incompatibility between Iraq's factions. That fact greatly increases the tension and resentment between factions.
That was the case with respect to the Iraqi elections in January. Rather than serving to alleviate Iraq's sectarian rivalries as hoped, the election results announced on February 13 significantly added fuel to the already raging fire in Iraq. The prospect of Shi'ite dominance, the Sunni minority status and Kurdish strength in the north were demonstrated by those election results. The incompatible goals and ideologies of Iraq's three main factions were thus showcased. The result? Iraq's insurgency kicked into high gear, Kurdish radicals launched more deadly attacks against Turkey and Turkish interests and Shi'ite militias resorted to revenge attacks against Sunnis. Some of Iraq's most prominent leaders have recently stated without equivocation that Iraq is already descending into the beginnings of a civil war. While the political process is not dead yet, each of Iraq's main sectarian factions has moved outside that process in significant ways to secure its interests and goals as hopes for success of the political process fade into oblivion.
Draft constitution as the final trigger? Against that background the US is driving Iraq's factions hard to complete by the August 15 deadline the drafting of Iraq's new constitution. The US has openly entered the fray, pushing hard to ensure the document reads as it wishes. But such political pressure merely amounts to more of the same - a forced imploding together of Iraq's highly enriched sectarian elements, elements that are now easily fissionable. The US is playing with nuclear fire in a political sense, therefore.
In the current situation in Iraq it will not require much additional in the way of outside pressure and force to finally implode Iraq's highly enriched sectarian elements into a state of critical mass, resulting in a detonation no sane person wants. The imminent end of the process of the drafting of Iraq's new constitution, or the failure of that process, is very likely to constitute the trigger for the detonation of Iraq's political WMD. Whether that process of drafting a new constitution "succeeds" (highly unlikely) or fails, it will signal Iraq's arrival at the threshold of an ideological-sectarian state of critical mass and a resulting detonation. How so?
The process of drafting Iraq's constitution is ramming, or imploding together its fundamentally incompatible, highly enriched, fissionable sectarian factions. No workable solution to Iraq's sectarian divisions exists – at least not in the acutely accelerated timeframe being pushed hard by the US.
On the issues of autonomy and federalism, the role of Islamic law, survival of Iraq's sectarian, heavily armed militias and a number of other important issues Iraq's factions have hardened their respective positions, are far apart, and are getting even further apart. Any "breakthrough" that might be achieved in the foreseeable future will be nothing more than an attempt to paper over such fundamental differences. Such a breakthrough will do nothing to alleviate Iraq's volatile sectarian tensions. In fact, it would likely accomplish the precise opposite, outraging each faction because cherished, non-negotiable interests and goals of the respective factions would be watered down for the sake of an agreement that satisfies few if any fundamental goals and demands of those respective factions. Such an agreement would most likely be seen merely as an attempt to pacify the US occupier. Subsequently, abandonment of the US-driven political process in favor of strident self-interest would be the most likely course for each of the three main factions. In effect, a political fission detonation in the form of a breakup of Iraq, likely under conditions of a full-blown civil war, would quickly ensue.
If, as is most likely, Iraq's factions come to the conclusion by the August 15 deadline that the political process is dead or dying and that the drafting of a new constitution has failed or is in serious trouble, then what? US pressure for the Iraqi representatives to go back to the table to iron out their differences and complete the drafting of the constitution will be enormous, but also very counter-productive, again amounting to a dangerous ramming or imploding together of Iraq's fissionable elements. Such US pressure could actually trigger a nationwide political detonation.
As the August 15 deadline approaches Iraq is nearing the threshold, the point of no return, when a political chain reaction starts under rapidly building US pressure and moves quickly to a full-blown detonation. The US has removed all the safety mechanisms and is going for broke, as it were, with respect to Iraq's political process. Iraq is therefore like a nuclear weapon that is already fully armed, and the countdown to detonation begins when parliament receives word on the state of the draft constitution. Iraq, as a nation, cannot survive the coming detonation.
Repercussions for Iraq, the US and the region A breakup of Iraq along sectarian lines, most likely violent and bloody, is becoming ever more likely as the political process advances. That is because Iraq is itself an artificial creation composed of sectarian factions that are fundamentally incompatible with each other. And as the political process advances those fundamental incompatibilities are brought painfully to the surface to be showcased for all to see. The participants in that process are becoming ever more convinced that their future lies along the path of regional autonomy, or even secession.
However, a Kurdish-dominated autonomous or independent Kurdistan in the north that lays claim to Kirkuk will spark intervention by Turkey and perhaps Syria. Against the backdrop of increasing terrorist attacks on Turkish interests, ongoing ethnic reconfiguration of north Iraq in favor of the Kurdish faction but detrimental to Turkomen and Arabs, and the growing restiveness of Kurdish minorities inside Turkey, Syria and Iran, Turkish-Syrian intervention is imminent. It could occur at any time.
In the south of Iraq the Shi'ite faction already is moving much closer to Iran. It also is prepared for Shi'ite autonomy, or even secession, if it deems that action to be in its best interests. It has Iran's promise of economic, energy and security assistance. Thus, the formation of a new Islamic state governed by Shi'ite ideology is becoming a very high probability, whereas not long ago that eventuality was considered somewhat unlikely.
In the Sunni triangle the anger, frustration and violence is the greatest, and that will only worsen as the Sunni faction becomes ever more disenfranchised and isolated from Iraq's oil wealth potential. With all three factions heavily armed and intent on preserving their respective interests at all costs, a full-blown civil war simultaneous with Iraq's breakup is a high probability.
The US will either be stuck in the middle with the Sunnis, trying in vain to keep the warring factions separated or it will be forced by events to withdraw its forces under fire, letting Iraq go in whatever direction it may go. Either way, the US loses in a colossal way. Its democratic goals and energy security interests in the entire region will be forfeited as Iraq disintegrates and its neighbors (Turkey, Syria and Iran) rush in to pick up the pieces, discounting completely US interests in the process.
The rise of Turkey, of Syria, and most notably of Shi'ite Iran allied closely with a new Shi'ite Islamic state in south Iraq will receive a giant push forward. The rise of Iran in particular will have far-reaching consequences for the US and the world. And insurgents and terrorists now operating in Iraq will be flung far outside Iraq, region-wide, to threaten the safety and stability of oil-rich pro-US regimes in Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. These developments and others like them will constitute the toxic fallout of Iraq's political fission detonation.
The US considers this to be the true nightmare scenario, and for very good reason. However, not only it is now powerless to stop that scenario from coming true, it is foolishly helping to bring it about! The US cannot possibly face a withdrawal of its forces from Iraq under fire in the scenario detailed above and at the same time leave Iran intact, enabling it to be catapulted to the status of the new Islamic nuclear superpower at the head of the Persian Gulf. However, the risks of hitting Iran militarily on the way out of Iraq are enormous, even colossal. The after-effects of such a strategy are almost too terrible to consider when one looks at the political, ideological and economic repercussions. Yet, the Bush administration will soon have to choose which of its self-made evils is the lesser, and it is not yet safe to conclude there will be no US or Israeli military hit on ascendant Iran.
The imminent forfeiture and disintegration of Iraq will live up in every way to the analogy used here of a detonation of a weapon of mass self-destruction. The approaching August 15 deadline for the completion of Iraq's draft constitution will likely be an important marked point in time, when the shortened countdown to that detonation begins.
W Joseph Stroupe is editor in chief of Global Events Magazine at www.GeoStrategyMap.com, and online magazine specializing in strategic analysis and forecasting.
US gives up hope of militarily defeating Iraqi insurgents
Reality check for Bush administration in Iraq
posted August 15, 2005 at 1:00 p.m.
White House wants to lower expectations about model democracy, US military victory in Iraq.
By Tom Regan / csmonitor.com
The Bush administration is "significantly" lowering expectations about what it can achieve in Iraq, finally admitting that its prewar plans were "unrealistic," the Washington Post reported on Sunday.
The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry, or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, US officials say.
Meanwhile on Friday, in an analysis for the Post, Peter Baker wrote that "Administration officials have given up all hope of militarily defeating the insurgents with US forces, instead aiming only to train and equip enough Iraqi security forces to take over the fight themselves."
While the Post article notes that the White House still feels it has accomplished a great deal in Iraq, Senator Joseph Biden (D) of Delaware, Sunday accused the Bush administration of trying to lower expectations as part of an exit strategy. "They have squandered about every opportunity to get it right," Sen. Biden told NBC's "Meet the Press".
Senator John McCain (R) of Arizona also told NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday that any talk of a significant US troop withdrawal from Iraq is premature.
"The day that I can land at the airport in Baghdad and ride in an unarmed car down the highway to the Green Zone is the day that I'll start considering withdrawals from Iraq," said McCain, referring to the heavily fortified area where US and Iraqi government headquarters are located. "We not only don't need to withdraw, we need more troops there," he said on Fox News Sunday.
But in an interview late Sunday on CNN, Senator Richard Lugar (R) of Indiana, the head of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, said that even while there are not enough US troops in Iraq to keep insurgents out, it was extremely unlikely more soldiers would be sent there. "We have to train the Iraqis faster and harder," said Sen. Lugar. John Farmer, the national political correspondent of the Newark Star-Ledger, writes in an opinion piece on Monday that the White House's decision to lower expectations in Iraq and float talk of troops withdrawal has more to do with the 2006 midterm elections in the US than the reality of the situation on the ground in Iraq.
A clear GOP defeat next year would constitute a repudiation of Bush's Iraq policy. Congressional Republicans, especially in the House, have the jitters. They've seen the polls and fear they'll get caught in any backlash against the war. Cindy Sheehan, the Gold Star mother camping outside the ranch to protest the war while Bush hides within, is their worst nightmare. The word in Washington is that the same House Republicans who only yesterday were the war's chief cheerleaders are now said to be pressuring Bush to throw them a rope – something that can pass for an exit strategy or, failing that, a commitment to bring at least some of the boys home before the 2006 elections.
Kevin Hassett, director of economic policy studies at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, writes in an opinion piece for Bloomberg News that public pessimism about Iraq is having another effect – depressing optimism obout the positive news about the US economy. The explanation I favor is that the negative news about Iraq and the failure to stop the attacks in London have overwhelmed the good economic news. It's easy to assert that, but the fact is the data resoundingly support this view, poll data concerning attitudes toward President Bush's foreign policy and his handling of the economy. There is clearly a striking positive (and statistically quite significant) relationship between the two. Even the blips move together. While correlation is not causality, the strong common down trend during a period of economic expansion convincingly supports the view that the turmoil in Iraq is affecting answers to economic questions. It's hard to imagine the effect going the other way.
Knight Ridder reports on the changing public attitudes towards the war in Iraq and how that is being handled by the Bush administration. Meanwhile, CNN reports that Henry Kissinger, an "architect of the US war in Vietnam more than 30 years ago," says that he has an "uneasy feeling" that some of the same factors that undermined support for that war are beginning to surface in relation to the war in Iraq. Kissinger said the US should remove any troops that are not nececessary for stabilizing Iraq, but that "we cannot begin with an exit without having first defined what the objective is."
"If a radical government emerges in Baghdad or if any part of Iraq becomes what Afghanistan used to be, a training ground for terrorists, then this will be a catastrophe for the Islamic world and for Europe, much as they may – reluctant as they may be to admit it – and eventually for us." Finally, The Los Angeles Times reports on another issue that confronting the Bush administration – the establishment of permanent US bases in Iraq, requiring as many as 50,000 US troops for not just years, but perhaps decades. And experts say it's likely that while the establishment of US bases in Iraq will stoke the fires of the insurgency, it's "probably too much to hope that it will burn out without them."
In early July, Iraq's former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi told the media that Iraq was "practically in stage one of a civil war". There is no known calculus for determining what level of violence qualifies as the initial stage of a civil war, so we cannot know if Allawi was correct.
There has certainly been a rise in inter-communal killings, particularly between Arab Sunnis and Shi'ites, to go with the deadly battle between occupation and government forces and the insurgents. But we have not yet seen the kind of sustained military engagements, a la Lebanon, the Balkans or Sierra Leone, nor the specter of large-scale ethnic cleansing that would put Allawi's claim beyond doubt.
Two years ago, Arab League secretary general Amr Moussa predicted ominously that an invasion would "open the gates of hell" in the region. At the time, Western ears heard melodrama in that warning, the bombastic rhetoric of an out-of-time Arab nationalist.
In retrospect, of course, it was nothing if not prescient. The invasion unleashed unspeakable horrors - cities bombed to ruin, gritty urban combat, gruesome beheadings, apocalyptic car bombings. Civil war, however, would truly complete Moussa's prophecy. It would be a tragedy to dwarf Iraq's current blood-soaked chaos, ushering in not only a paroxysm of internecine killing, but perhaps a regional conflagration that would send ripples of instability far beyond.
Iraqi nationalism now appears to be dissolving as fearful Iraqis seek safety in confessional bonds. Patrick Cockburn has written vividly in the London Review of Books of Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad living in terror of Shi'ite death squads that operate with apparent government sanction, and of Shi'ite neighborhoods traumatized by the unending wave of suicide bombers. "The bodies of Sunnis are being found in rubbish dumps across Baghdad," wrote Cockburn, "... the commandos rarely try to conceal their responsibility for killings. They arrive in full uniform, a garish green and yellow camouflage, at the homes of former Sunni officials and arrest them. A few days later the bodies - sometimes savagely tortured, with eyes gouged out and legs broken - turn up in the morgue."
One of the more recent suicide bombings in Baghdad killed 43 people on August 17; the targets were Shi'ite travelers headed to the southern cities of Najaf and Basra. Laith Kubba, a spokesman for Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, speculated about the agenda behind such apparently arbitrary slaughter. "They want a reaction against Sunnis to therefore deepen the sectarian crisis in the country," he said. There are also reports of Sunnis trying to drive Shi'ites from Ramadi (and Baghdad, according to Kubba), allegedly in retaliation for similar Shi'ite actions against Sunnis in the south.
With the future of Iraqi Kurdistan up for grabs in the current effort to draft a permanent constitution, the always tense relationship between Kurds and Arabs is nearing its moment of truth. Veteran Kurdish leader Masud Barzani nearly set fire to straw when he said on August 4 that "the Kurdish people have the right to secede". Barzani may well have been angling for concessions on the status of Kirkuk, the oil-rich northern city that is caught in a deadly tug-of-war between Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen. "We are encouraging our people to claim their rights peacefully," a Turmken leader told the media. "But if talks with the Kurds break down, that will be the beginning of the civil war."
It is telling that even the new US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, who is paid to be optimistic, recently broke a self-imposed American taboo by speaking openly of the possibility of civil war. But Joost Hiltermann, Middle East project director for the International Crisis Group, emphasizes that the die is not yet cast. "There are the signs of civil war, but it's not inevitable that civil war will come," Hiltermann told Asia Times Online. "Steps can still be taken to prevent it." Hiltermann stressed the importance of training the Iraqi security forces and bringing Sunni Arabs fully into the political process. "If things get out of control here it's going to be a bloodbath that will be something we cannot imagine, of a scale we cannot imagine," he said.
The deepening tensions between Iraq's basic communities are being played out in the constitutional deliberations. The divisive debate about federalism is perhaps most troubling. With the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), Iraq's most powerful Shi'ite political party, now demanding an autonomous Shi'ite region in the south to mirror the Kurdish region in the north, the battle lines for a civil war may literally have been drawn. SCIRI's demand constitutes the sum of all Sunni Arab fears - the threat of exclusion from Iraq's oil wealth (which is buried in the north and south) and the possibility that perceived Western plots to divide Iraq will succeed. "We hoped this day would never come," said Sunni negotiator Saleh al-Mutlak on learning of SCIRI's demands.
With heavy US pressure being exerted on the constitution negotiators, there may well be an agreement on at least the framework for a charter. But major disputes - over federalism, what role Islam should play in shaping Iraq's laws, how oil wealth will be distributed - are profound, and a document that papers over these questions could be worse than none at all.
Iraq's descent into zero-sum sectarianism has increased fears in the Arab world that it will become another Lebanon, where a gruesome 15-year civil war tore that country's intricate sectarian mosaic asunder. The denominational map in Iraq is not as maddening as it is in Lebanon, but the grievances of Iraq's three major communities are becoming ever more intractable. And Iraq's population of 25 million, 10 times larger than Lebanon's, clearly has a stellar per capita rate of martial acumen to go with an apparently endless reservoir of arms. An all-out conflict in Iraq would therefore make Lebanon seem quaint.
It is a pretense of many in Lebanon that their civil war was actually a proxy war fought on Lebanese soil. In reality the war had its roots deep in Lebanese domestic politics and history. But to some degree Lebanon did eventually become a battleground for competing regional interests. Unfortunately, there is vastly more at stake in Iraq, the most blessed Arab country in terms of natural resources and strategic geography. Iraq shares long borders with Turkey, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, all of whom it has had at least contentious relations with previously. In a civil war, the temptation for Iraq's neighbors to forcefully assert their interests would be irresistible.
Given all this grist, how might the dark mill of civil war begin turning in Iraq? It might simply develop out of a continuing, steady rise in the vicious cycle of revenge killings. Alternatively, a sudden breakdown of the political process could lead each sect to quickly assert its interests by force: the Kurds attempting to seize Kirkuk, for example, or Arab Sunnis and Shi'ites fighting for control of the mixed Sunni-Shi'ite towns south of Baghdad - all of which would entail ethnic cleansing. Further ideological and interdenominational divisions would also arise. Inter-Shi'ite rivalries were recently on display in the southern town of Samawa, where supporters of SCIRI and influential cleric Muqtada al-Sadr clashed. Muqtada espouses a brand of Iraqi and Islamic nationalism that could lead his Mehdi Army to side with those opposed to federalism if civil war did erupt.
And then there are the neighbors. As professor Juan Cole, an expert in Iraq and Shi'ism, recently wrote in the Nation: "If Iraq fell into civil war between Sunnis and Shi'ites, the Saudis and Jordanians would certainly take the side of the Sunnis, while Iran would support the Shi'ites." In essence, a civil war would see the eight-year Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s replayed on Iraqi territory. To complicate matters, any Kurdish success would draw in Turkey. Beyond Iraq, a civil war could destabilize the Gulf, and thereby the world economy. Sunni-Shi'ite tensions could be kindled in states like Bahrain, Kuwait and most importantly, Saudi Arabia , where an occasionally restive Shi'ite population forms a majority in the eastern part of the country (where all the oil is).
This situation presents the US with an unenviable quandary. If civil war does break out it will be blamed regardless - either because of the provocation of its enduring presence or the vacuum left if it withdraws precipitously. To an extent, the Bush administration has only itself to blame for Iraq's simmering sectarian tensions. Iraq was hardly a model of communal harmony under Saddam Hussein. But US support for sectarian political parties and the creation of a political system centered around confessional quotas has significantly elevated identity politics. If the administration intended to divide Iraq's communities in order to make them more malleable, its success could come at a very high price.
The joke in Iraq before the invasion was that Iraqis actually wanted the gates of hell to be opened so they could get out. But even Iraqis' stubborn gallows humor is fading as the prospects for a better future after Saddam diminish. Every hour the violence continues there are countless new scores to be settled, new hatreds born and old ones reinforced, and a greater likelihood that Iraq will disintegrate.
Yet there are slivers of light amid all this darkness. Reports out of Ramadi tell of Sunni Arab tribesmen bravely fighting off insurgents who had come to drive away their Shi'ite neighbors. In the testing days ahead, that kind of unity will have to be the rule rather than the exception if Iraq is to survive.
Ashraf Fahim is a freelance writer on Middle Eastern affairs based in New York and London. His writing can be found at www.storminateacup.org.uk
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