"There is no way out of this burning circle but one: Only
by announcing immediately the total and unconditional
withdrawal of U.S. troops can a decisive step be taken
toward putting out the fire."
The Situation in Iraq
by Gilbert Achcar
[The following excerpt is from the Epilogue to Perilous Power: The
Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy, by Noam Chomsky & Gilbert Achcar,
edited with a Preface by Stephen R. Shalom, to be published by Paradigm
Publishers September 15, 2006.]
Q: The past few months in Iraq have seen widespread sectarian attacks.
How do you assess the evolution of the situation? In particular, do you
believe that a civil war is going on? Is the sectarian turmoil a reason
to extend the stay of U.S. troops?
Gilbert Achcar: In the past six months, the situation in Iraq has
deteriorated in a truly frightening manner, proceeding inexorably
toward the actualization of the worst-case scenario -- the worst for
Iraq, that is, which is not necessarily the worst for Washington, as I
shall explain.
The outcome of the December 2005 parliamentary election was quite bad
for U.S. plans in Iraq. The official results confirmed that the United
Iraqi Alliance (UIA) once again secured a major voting bloc in the
parliament (128 seats out of 275), although they did not get the
majority that they enjoyed in the previous assembly. That was foreseen,
however, as the January 2005 election had been boycotted by most Arab
Sunnis and its outcome was accordingly quite exceptional. Nevertheless,
the loss of 12 seats by the UIA was rather less than the 22-seat loss
by the Kurdish Alliance, while the coalition list headed by
Washington's henchman, Iyad Allawi, suffered a very serious decline,
falling to 25 seats from 40, which had already been a poor showing.
These results meant that, had any of the "Sunni" coalitions -- whether
the Iraqi Accord Front (44 seats), which is a coalition between the
Islamic Party (i.e., the Iraqi "moderate" branch of the Muslim
Brotherhood [the Association of Muslim Scholars being the "hard-liners"
originating in the same tradition]) and traditionalist Arab Sunni
tribal forces; or the Iraqi National Dialogue Front alone (11 seats), a
motley Arab nationalist coalition including present or former Baathists
who disavow Saddam Hussein's leadership -- agreed to join an alliance
with the UIA, they would have secured together an absolute majority in
the parliament. For that, the UIA needed only 10 more votes, or even
fewer if one takes into account the 2 seats won by a small Shiite
grouping close to the Sadrists, which joined the UIA. Such an extended
cross-sectarian bloc would thus have been able to counter political
pressure exerted by Washington through its Kurdish allies and Allawi's
group and whoever else might have joined with them.
Yet, both "Sunni" coalitions proved more interested in doing business
with Washington, believing that getting U.S. support against the Shiite
UIA would put them in a better overall position than allying with the
latter. They were thus keener on playing a petty sectarian political
game than on speeding national liberation from the occupation. On the
other hand, many Arab Sunnis consider Iran's hegemony -- of which, they
believe, the UIA is but a tool -- to be a greater threat than U.S.
hegemony, thus justifying politically that kind of behavior.
The Arab Sunni parliamentary coalitions entered into an alliance with
Allawi to dispute the electoral results. Last January, I commented that
their objections to the election results were not sincere, but aimed
only at exerting political blackmail on the UIA. What happened
afterward proved this assessment correct: When they -- and U.S.
proconsul Zalmay Khalilzad -- got what they wanted with regard to the
government, they just ended all their clamoring about "rigged
elections."
In the meantime, intensive tugs-of-war took place in Iraq between
several forces. The main contest pitted, on one side, the UIA, backed
by Iran, and on the other side, a broad coalition of the Kurdish
Alliance, the "Sunni" electoral parties, and Allawi, backed by
Khalilzad and by regular statements and high-ranking visitors from
Washington insisting hypocritically on the need to give Arab Sunnis an
important share of power. As after the January 2005 election, the Bush
administration tried to dictate not only its own conditions on the UIA
but also Allawi's participation in the government, despite Iran's and
the UIA's red line. Washington finally conceded this last point, but
only after they managed to get rid of the candidate designated by the
UIA to head the first "regular" Iraqi government under the new
constitution -- the same man who headed the provisional government
based on the Constituent Assembly: Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
The other major contest took place within the UIA itself, pitting
against one another the two major blocs: the SCIRI and the followers of
Muqtada al-Sadr. The SCIRI wanted the premiership for their own man,
Adel Abdel- Mahdi, an ex-Maoist turned fundamentalist in both Islamic
and neoliberal religions. Despite the fact that the SCIRI is the
closest of all Iraqi groups to Iran and despite its advocacy of a
super-federal state in southern Iraq, an idea that is resented by the
United States (and rejected by all other Arab Iraqi forces, including
Muqtada al-Sadr's followers), Washington backed Abdel-Mahdi, hoping
that he would help the United States lay its hands on Iraq's oil in the
name of free marketeering. Khalilzad, chiefly obsessed with reducing
Muqtada al-Sadr's clout, was also trying in this way to fan the
dissension within the UIA. For his part, Sadr strongly backed his
friend and leader of the Dawa Party, Jaafari, whom he deemed closer to
his political stance (Jaafari had subscribed without reservation to the
"Pact of Honor" that Sadr tried to get all major Iraqi forces
independent of Washington to sign [1]) and more open to his pressure.
Tension might have arisen between the two factions, but Tehran -- which
invited Muqtada al-Sadr for a visit after the December election -- was
certainly instrumental in preventing the UIA from splitting and urging
the SCIRI to consider the UIA's unity as a priority. The issue of the
UIA's candidate for premiership was thus decided democratically by a
vote within the alliance, which gave a narrow majority to Jaafari.
Washington's "democracy promoters" did their best thereafter to prevent
the constitutional mechanism from getting under way: Normally, the
Assembly would have convened and elected among others a president who
would have been required to designate the candidate put forward by the
largest bloc in parliament -- Jaafari, in this case -- to try to form a
government. This position would have enabled Jaafari to maneuver
between the other blocs and try to win over enough Arab Sunni
representatives to secure a parliamentary majority, thus forcing the
Kurdish Alliance to join lest they be excluded from the government.
Obviously, such a scenario was out of the question for Washington: The
result was a very tense and highly dangerous standoff, until a
compromise was reached whereby Jaafari agreed to be replaced with his
second-in-command in the Dawa Party, Nouri al-Maliki. The latter was
presented as being less sympathetic to Iran and more flexible and
amenable than Jaafari. As a matter of fact, Maliki seems more compliant
than Jaafari in his relations with the United States. The difference
between the two men, leaders of the same party, was nonetheless not
such as to warrant Washington's and London's indecent
self-congratulation after Maliki's designation, as if Allawi himself
had been anointed again prime minister of Iraq.
The whole situation was clearly a setback for Sadr, however. As I
mentioned earlier, he had tried hard to convince the Sunni Arab
parliamentary and extra-parliamentary groups to join in an
anti-occupation alliance. He failed totally in that respect: The Arab
Sunni parliamentary groups rejected his advances, and stuck to their
alliance with the Kurdish parties and Washington's proconsul. On the
other hand, the Association of Muslim Scholars, which is very close to
the Arab Sunni insurgency, disappointed Sadr bitterly: He couldn't get
them to condemn Zarqawi and his al-Qaeda branch in strong terms (Sadr
even wanted them to excommunicate Zarqawi's group), and his radical
anti-Baathist attitude was equally a stumbling block in his relations
with Sunni Arab nationalists. He has complained that of the Sunni
groups he approached before the December election and asked to adhere
to his "Pact of Honor," none have signed it.
The next major blow to Sadr's strategy of trying to build an anti-U.S.
alliance with anti-occupation Arab Sunni forces was the single event
that contributed most to fueling the sectarian tension between Arab
Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq -- I mean, of course, the attack against the
Al-Askari Mosque in Samarra on February 22, 2006. This sectarian attack
unleashed reprisals on a large scale by Shiite militants infuriated by
the unending series of murderous sectarian attacks to which their
community had been subjected ever since the occupation started. In
these reprisals, Sadr's ragtag "Mahdi Army" was apparently very much
involved. Not that Sadr gave a green light for this -- on the contrary,
like most other Shiite leaders, he tried his best to cool things down
-- but since his militias are much less centralized than the
quasi-military SCIRI Badr militia, Sadrist militiamen obeyed their
impulses before considering any other option and before getting to
listen to the voice of political rationality.
At any rate, these unfortunate events were hugely exploited by an odd
array of forces -- including U.S. friends, pro-Zarqawi Sunni
fundamentalists, and pro-Saddam Baathists -- in order to discredit
Muqtada al-Sadr among Arab Sunnis and to destroy any appeal he might
have had for both his uncompromising anti-occupation stance and his
reputation for being very much independent of Iran. All that Sadr had
achieved politically in the previous period, in terms of building his
influence on a pan-Arab (Sunnis and Shiites) Iraqi basis, was thus
shattered along with the dome of the Al-Askari Mosque. To be sure, he
retains formidable clout among the Shiites -- above all, among the
downtrodden layers of the Shiite community, a clout that very likely
has been enhanced by the role of his "army" in embodying the armed wing
of the community more than any other group. But the fact remains that
he is further from imposing himself as a leader of both Arab
nationalist Shiites and Sunnis than he has ever been since he clashed
with occupation troops in 2004.
Despite these developments, Iraq has not yet reached a state of
full-fledged civil war. Indeed, what I characterized a year ago as a
"low-intensity civil war" [2] had not ceased increasing in intensity
throughout 2005 and early 2006, even before the sudden and most serious
flare-up provoked by the Samarra attack. Nevertheless, drawing on my
own Lebanese experience, I would say that there are two elements that
at this moment still stand between the present situation in Iraq and a
full-scale civil war. The first is the persistence of a unified Iraqi
government and the existence of still-unified Iraqi armed forces: In
Lebanon, it was the split-up of the government in early 1976 and the
disintegration of the Lebanese army that signaled the shift to a
full-fledged civil war. The second element is the existence of foreign
armed forces playing the role of deterrent and arbiter, like the role
that the Syrian army used to play -- but only intermittently -- in
Lebanon from 1976 onward.
To say this is to point to what I hinted at already, namely that the
slide of Iraq toward the worst-case scenario for its population does
not necessarily represent the worst-case scenario for Washington.
Actually, most of what has happened in recent months in Iraq, except
for the publicity surrounding U.S. troops' criminal behavior, has
suited Washington's designs. The sharp increase in sectarian tensions
as well as the defeat of Muqtada al-Sadr's project played blatantly
into Washington's hands. Along with many others, I have warned for
quite a long time that, when all is said and done, Washington's only
trump card in Iraq is going to be the sectarian and ethnic divisions
among Iraqis, which the Bush administration is exploiting in the most
cynical way according to the most classical of all imperial recipes:
"Divide and rule." This is what Washington's proconsuls in Baghdad,
from L. Paul Bremer to Khalilzad, have tried their best to put in place
and take advantage of.
Seen in this light, the present flare-up in sectarian tensions is a
godsend for Washington, to the point that many Iraqis suspect that U.S.
and Israeli intelligence agencies stand behind the worst sectarian
attacks. Note how the occupation seems now "legitimized" by the fact
that many Arab Sunnis in mixed areas, who feel threatened, request the
presence of foreign troops to guarantee their safety as they have no
confidence in Iraqi armed forces. [3] What a paradox, when you think of
the fact that Arab Sunnis were and are still the main constituency of
the anti-occupation armed insurgency -- though surely not the only one:
There has been a growing pattern of anti-occupation armed actions in
southern Iraq that is hardly reported, if at all, in the Western media,
or even in the Arab media for that matter.
However, Washington is playing with fire: The sectarian feud suits its
designs, but only provided that it is kept within limits. It is not in
the United States' interests for Iraq to be carved up into three
separate parts, as has been advocated cynically in the U.S. media by
self-proclaimed "experts" and as neocons and friends believe is the
second-best outcome, short of safe U.S. control over a unified Iraq.
Not only would that actually be a recipe for a protracted civil war,
but it would make U.S. control over the bulk of Iraqi oil that is
located in the Shiite-majority South even more uncertain. Washington's
best interest is therefore to foster the sectarian feud at a
controllable level that suits its "divide and rule" policy, without
letting it get out of control and turn into a most perilous civil war.
A federal Iraq, with a loose central government, could fit neatly with
this design, provided it were accepted by all major Iraqi actors (which
is quite difficult), but an Iraq torn apart could be a disaster -- all
the more so that it could trigger a dangerous regional dynamic. (Think
of the Shiite-populated eastern province of the Saudi kingdom where the
bulk of oil reserves is concentrated.)
Now, if U.S. forces in Iraq are to be compared to a firefighting force,
the truth of the matter is that they are led by highly dangerous
arsonists! Ever since the occupation started, the situation in Iraq has
steadily and relentlessly deteriorated: This is the undeniable truth,
which only blatant liars like those in Washington can deny, insisting
that the situation is improving in the face of glaring evidence to the
contrary. Iraq is caught in a vicious circle: The occupation fuels the
insurgency, which stirs up the sectarian tension that Washington's
proconsul strives to fan by political means, which in turn is used to
justify the continuing occupation. The latest major way in which U.S.
occupation authorities are throwing oil on the Iraqi fire, according to
Shiite sources, is by helping the Islamic Party -- the Iraqi Arab Sunni
group closest to Washington and to the Saudis -- build an armed wing
that is already taking part in the sectarian feud.
There is no way out of this burning circle but one: Only by announcing
immediately the total and unconditional withdrawal of U.S. troops can a
decisive step be taken toward putting out the fire. This would cool
down the Sunni insurgency that the Association of Muslim Scholars has
repeatedly pledged to call to a halt as soon as a timetable for the
withdrawal of occupation troops is announced. It would dampen as well
the sectarian tension, as Iraqis will then look squarely at their
future and feel compelled to reach a way to coexist peacefully. And if
ever they came to the conclusion that they needed a foreign presence
for a while to help them restore order and start real reconstruction,
it should definitely not be one composed of troops from countries that
harbor hegemonic ambitions over Iraq, but one that is welcomed by all
segments of the Iraqi people as friendly and disinterested help.
-- July 20, 2006
Notes
1. See Gilbert Achcar, "A Pan-Iraqi Pact on Muqtada Al-Sadr's
Initiative," ZNet, December 9, 2005.
2. "The only hope one could have of avoiding the slide into a
full-blown, devastating civil war -- if Sistani were to be assassinated
-- is [not the presence of U.S. troops, but] if the forces involved in
the political process, i.e. those not already involved in the
low-intensity civil war going on in Iraq, were successful in achieving
control over their constituencies after an inevitable first outburst of
anger, by emphasizing that the perpetrators are either the Baathists or
Zarqawi's followers or the like, that their objective is exactly to
ignite a civil war, and that the best reply to that is precisely to pay
heed to Sistani's insistence on the necessity of avoiding any kind of
sectarian war." See "Achcar on Cole Proposals for Withdrawal of US
Ground Troops," posted on August 23, 2005, on Juan Cole's blog,
Informed Comment, and on ZNet.
3. This analysis was confirmed by Edward Wong and Dexter Filkins's
edifying story published in the New York Times on July 17, 2006, under
the title "In an About-Face, Sunnis Want U.S. to Remain in Iraq." '
[source: http://www.juancole.com/]
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