Iraq's deadlocked government

If US General Petraeus' military Surge in Iraq in 2007 was the great success claimed by its proponents, why then is Iraq more ungovernable today than it ever was?

History: Even before the Surge, Al Queda's excessive violence against the population had already provoked the Sunni tribes of Anbar province to reject them by force and persecute the remaining diehards. But the tribes could not fight El Qaeda as well as their principal enemies the Shiite militias of Bagdad (the Mahdi army) and the American army at the same time. Therefore they offered an advantageous military collaboration deal to the Americans which Petraeus accepted: In return for their cooperation with American forces he agreed paying 100.000 of their tribal militia men 330 dollars a month in addition to training and equipping them and supporting them in their struggle against the Shiite militia by using the new US surge reinforcements. Faced with such overwhelming force, Muqtada el Sadr imposed a ceasefire on his shiite militia. As a result sectarian violence decreased and the statistics of killings improved. Militairy statistics usually measure success by the numbers of things like "sectarian violence incidents" (like the "body counts" of the Vietnam war), which tend to ignore the larger picture.

In his official report of March 2008, general Odierno celebrates the succes of the Surge, attributing it to his actions and bestowing the public relations name of "Sons of Iraq" on the American subsidized Sunni militia. What he does not adress are the long term negative effects of the disastrous political choices behind the military decisions that are apparent today as the dark side of the military success story.

If Petraeus had not intervened on behalf of the Sunnis, the Shiite militias would have predominated and broken the brutal Sunni domination enforced under the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and this would have helped progress towards a more democratic division of power. Shiites form 65% of the Arab speaking population, Sunnis only 35%. Together they make up 85% of total population leaving some15% to Kurdish speaking and other minorities. As Iraqis vote on religious and tribal lines, a Shia militia predominance would have confirmed their influence in line with their electoral majority and would have helped to stabilise the country. Unfortunately the surge took the wrong strategic option.

Instead of standing aside in the local struggle, or trying to talk to Muqtada el Sadr and his Iranian sponsors, Petraeus and Odierno participated wholeheartedly throwing their entire weight with the minority Sunnis. Probably because in American folklore, Shiite Iran is always painted as the hated villain and Sunni Saudi Arabia as the favourite ally in the region. And not content with beating the Shiites in the field, they compounded their error by undertaking to restore the new Iraqi National army as it was under Saddam Hussein, with 80% of its officer corps Sunni. For good measure the new national police force, a "Shia infested organisation" in the words of Odierno, was cleansed of its Shia officers too. All these provocative measures taken in support of the Sunnis against the Shias in ignorance of local political or regional diplomatic realities, will have to be painfully undone by any elected Iraqi government.

Another main cause of the ungovernability of present day Iraq is the Kurdish bloc in the North. The Iraqi constitution of 2005 recognises a Kurdish Regional Government within the Iraqi nation. Here too: The American military, after the first Gulf war of 2001 and long before Petraeus' time, chose to sponsor, train and arm the Kurdish militia, the Peshmaran, to fight the Iraqi army, whilst protecting them by a no fly zone North of the 16th parallel. Here too, short term military expediency prevailed over long term common sense and diplomatic sensitivities by building up a far too powerful Kurdish fighting force : Iran and Turkey do not want a powerfully armed Kurdistan on their borders as a shining example for their own restive Kurdish minorities to follow. If they don't, the Iraqi army will one day have to deal with the Peshmaran, beating them or perhaps merging with them, before it can call itself a nation. The prognosis however is not good: since the second World War the two have already fought three bloody and undecisive wars against each other. The Peshmaran may wear civilian clothes when leaving their barracks, but their military strength is undeniable. The KRG may deny striving towards complete independence from Iraq, but it is uppermost in their minds.

After the first World War when states like Iraq were created and the middle Eastern frontiers were redrawn, a Kurdish nation of 35 million people was envisaged within a land locked territory including Kurdish areas that lie now inside Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq. Each of these neighbouring nations is fighting the wishes of their own Kurdish minorities and eyes a quasi independent Iraqi Kurdistan with increasing suspicion. The more so because the Iraqi Kurdistan economy is now booming with industry, construction of new buildings and hotels, smuggling and oil.

Oil will be the main source of national income for decades to come. The gigantic international efforts required to rebuild the oil export capacity of Iraq in line with its potential require a common legal framework for the companies involved. The Bagdad government has set out the legal principles, but the militarily strong Kurdish regional government denies Bagdad's institutional responsibility for oil contracts. Further conflicts and strife seem unavoidable unless the US and Iraqi governments can agree regional solutions with neighbours Iran, Turkey, Syria and Saudi Arabia.

The US military with their short term solutions and creation of militias has created major obstacles to the long term future of Iraq which can only be solved by diplomacy.

June 2011.