Last November marked the 1245th anniversary of the construction of modern Baghdad by the Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur. During the last 13 centuries, Baghdad had been occupied 20 times before the U.S. army became its 21st foreign invader.
During the last few weeks, the U.S. government has finally announced its plans to maintain long term foreign intervention in Iraq, including leaving permanent military bases for decades to come. The majority of the Iraqi public, including myself, suspected this would happen all along. A poll conducted by World Public Opinion last year showed that 77 percent of Iraqis believe that the U.S. government is planning to leave permanent military bases in Iraq. But while the plans for leaving military bases haven’t changed during the last years, the reasons and excuses have shifted from protecting the world from W.M.D.s, to protecting Iraqis’ human rights, to protecting Kurds from Arabs, to protecting Iraqis from “foreign Jihadists”, to protecting Shias from the evil Sunni Baathists, to protecting the Iraqi democracy from insurgents, and now it is about preventing a full scale sectarian civil war where “the Sunnis” will be murdered in a horrible genocide once the U.S. troops pullout from Iraq.
Last night's state of the union speech was an example of how the same strategy "leaving troops forever" searches for different excuses. Last year, it was more about "we're loosing, we have to stay and fight", this year it's "we're winning, we have to stay and fight".
Before the illegal and immoral U.S. invasion in 2003, Iraq did not have any Sunni-Shia divisions, and there was no Al-Qaeda presence in the areas controlled by the central government. It is not a coincidence that Iraq is witnessing the current civil conflict, and that Al-Qaeda has established a foothold in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad. Civil conflicts, extremist organizations, and foreign intervention thrive in places where there is no central government to protect national sovereignty.
The former Iraqi socialist government consisted of a large public sector that ran the country. This public sector did not belong to one political leadership. It was inherited by the Baathist regime from the regime before. The U.S.-led invasion did not only destroy the Baath political regime, it also annihilated education, health care, food rations, social security, armed forces, and all other systems that were run by the public sector.
Millions of Iraqis were employed by the former government: Arabs and Kurds, Sunnis and Shias, Muslims and Christians, religious and secular. The myth that the former Iraqi government was a “Sunni-led dictatorship” was created by the U.S. government at one convenient political moment. Even the Iraqi political regime was not “Sunni-led,” let alone the rest of the public sector. A good way to debunk this fairy tale is through a close look at the famous deck of cards of the 55 most wanted Iraqi leaders. The cards had the pictures of Saddam, his two sons, and the rest of the political leadership which most Iraqis would recognize as the heads of the political regime. What is noteworthy is that 36 of the 55 were Shias. In fact, the two vice presidents were a Christian, and a Shia Kurd.
Unfortunately, after almost 5 years of U.S. occupation, there is now growing sectarian tension in Iraq. Even people who are half Sunni and half Shia, like myself, feel this newly imposed tension. But unlike other countries in the region like Lebanon, Iraqi sectarian tensions do not translate into the political map.
Sometimes I feel like Iraqis and U.S. Americans are analyzing two different wars, in two different countries. In one narrative, there is a civil war based on ancient sectarian hatred and where a U.S. withdrawal will be cause the sky to fall. In the other there is a country struggling under occupation to get its independence back and where the occupation is causing political, not sectarian, splits steering internal violence.
According to the Iraqi mainstream narrative, the foreign occupation is the major reason and cause for violence and destruction. Foreign intervention is not only destroying Iraq’s infrastructure, but it is also splitting Iraq’s formerly integrated society. In addition, Iraqis are fighting among each other over fundamental questions about the future of their country, but the central conflict is not between Sunnis and Shia, it is between Iraqi separatists and nationalists.
Loosely speaking, separatists favor a "soft partition" of Iraq into at least three zones with strong regional governments, similar to the semiautonomous Kurdish "state" in Northern Iraq; they are thriving on foreign intervention (Iranian, U.S. or other powers' influence); they favor privatizing Iraq's massive energy reserves and ceding substantial control of the country's oil sector to regional authorities. Nationalists reject any foreign interference in Iraq's affairs, they favor a strong technocratic central government in Baghdad that's not based on sectarian voting blocs. They favor centralized control over the development of Iraq's oil and gas reserves while keeping them nationalized.
This Iraqi-Iraqi conflict is in many ways similar to the U.S. civil war: Iraqis who are for keeping a central government are fighting against other Iraqis who want to secede. But the major difference is that the U.S. was not under a foreign occupation that was destroying nationalists and funding and training separatists. The numerous polls that were conducted during the last years in Iraq show that a majority of Iraqis from all different backgrounds tend to be more nationalist than separatist. Around three fourth of the population are for a complete U.S. withdrawal, for keeping a strong central government in Baghdad, and against privatizing and decentralizing Iraq’s natural resources.
More surprisingly to U.S. audiences, this nationalist-separatist conflict is apparent inside the Iraqi government itself. The Iraqi executive branch (the cabinet and the presidency) are completely controlled by separatists (including Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, seculars and others). But the legislative branch (the parliament) is controlled by nationalists (including Sunnis, Shias, seculars, Christians, Yazidis, etc.) who enjoy a small but crucially important majority.
The last couple of years witnessed numerous examples of how the Bush administration systematically took the side of separatists in the Iraqi executive branch against nationalists in the elected legislative branch, repeatedly bypassing the Iraqi parliament. There was always the potential for reaching compromises that would satisfy both nationalists and separatists. However, the aggressive support of the U.S. government for the unelected minority against the elected majority has made it impossible for Iraqis to settle their differences.
Understanding the nuances of the Iraqi-Iraqi conflict will show how it is a political struggle that will end as soon as the U.S. withdraws, not a religious war that will intensify after Iraqis take their country back. The U.S. is not playing the role of a peace-keeping force, or a convener of reconciliation. It is seen by a majority of Iraqis as one side of the conflict, and will never be a part of the solution.
On this side of the ocean, the U.S. government has managed to convince large portions of the “right” that the war and occupation of Iraq is “good for our safety” because it’s better to “fight the terrorists overseas so we do not have to face them here at home”. Simultaneously, the same government managed to manipulate many people in the “left” into believing that a prolonged U.S. occupation is “good for the Iraqis”, and that a U.S. withdrawal would cause an unprecedented bloodshed. “The invasion was not a good idea” some would say, “but now that we are there, let’s fix it before we leave”.
From an Iraqi perspective, both groups promote interventionist foreign policies that have no respect for sovereignty, independence, or international law. On the one hand, the best way to guarantee that no al-Qaeda or other extremist organizations will exist in Iraq is to let Iraqis rule the country by themselves. They have been living in Iraq and ruling it for the last thousands of years, and unlike the occupation authorities, they have been successful in protecting Iraq from the intervention of foreign countries and organizations. On the other hand, Iraqis don’t need someone to go half the way across the globe to protect them from their neighbors and cousins; they know how to deal with their problems by themselves.
While many Iraqis appreciate the sense of responsibility to fix what the U.S. invasion has broken in Iraq, and it has broken a lot, I don’t think there is any possible way to make it up to the Iraqis through prolonging the occupation. There are other appropriate venues to support Iraqis after the last U.S. soldier and the last mercenary leave Iraq. This might include paying compensation, the same way Iraq has been compensating Kuwait and its people for the last 17 years through the United Nations Compensation Committee.
The best way to help Iraqis is to end the occupation of their country, and to believe in their right and capacity for self-rule and self-determination. Setting a timetable for a complete withdrawal is the first and key step for helping Iraqis begin the long process of reconciliation and reconstruction. Robert Fisk noted in one of his articles that in 1920 David Lloyd George, the prime minister of Britain, was facing similar calls for a military withdrawal. "Is it not for the benefit of the people of that country that it should be governed so as to enable them to develop this land which has been withered and shriveled up by oppression? What would happen if we withdrew?" Lloyd George would not abandon Iraq to "anarchy and confusion". The time is different now, but the policies still sound the same.
