[Peace-discuss] If America left Iraq

Sun Dec 11 18:23:56 CST 2005

*he Atlantic Monthly | December 2005*

*If America Left Iraq*

*by Nir Rosen*

Nir Rosen, a fellow at the New America Foundation, spent sixteen months
reporting from Iraq after the American invasion.
  If you like this piece, check out James Fallows' cover story on the Bush
failures to develop an Iraqi army, which appears in the same issue of *The
Atlantic Monthly*, under the title: "Why Iraq Has No
Army."<http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200512/iraq-army>(subscription
required)

At some point—whether sooner or later—U.S. troops will leave Iraq. I have
spent much of the occupation reporting from Baghdad, Kirkuk, Mosul,
Fallujah, and elsewhere in the country, and I can tell you that a growing
majority of Iraqis would like it to be sooner. As the occupation wears on,
more and more Iraqis chafe at its failure to provide stability or even
electricity, and they have grown to hate the explosions, gunfire, and
constant war, and also the daily annoyances: having to wait hours in traffic
because the Americans have closed off half the city; having to sit in that
traffic behind a U.S. military vehicle pointing its weapons at them; having
to endure constant searches and arrests. Before the January 30 elections
this year the Association of Muslim Scholars—Iraq's most important Sunni
Arab body, and one closely tied to the indigenous majority of the
insurgency—called for a commitment to a timely U.S. withdrawal as a
condition for its participation in the vote. (In exchange the association
promised to rein in the resistance.) It's not just Sunnis who have demanded
a withdrawal: the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who is immensely popular
among the young and the poor, has made a similar demand. So has the
mainstream leader of the Shiites' Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution
in Iraq, Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, who made his first call for U.S. withdrawal as
early as April 23, 2003.

If the people the U.S. military is ostensibly protecting want it to go, why
do the soldiers stay? The most common answer is that it would be
irresponsible for the United States to depart before some measure of peace
has been assured. The American presence, this argument goes, is the only
thing keeping Iraq from an all-out civil war that could take millions of
lives and would profoundly destabilize the region. But is that really the
case? Let's consider the key questions surrounding the prospect of an
imminent American withdrawal.

*Would the withdrawal of U.S. troops ignite a civil war between Sunnis and
Shiites?*

No. That civil war is already under way—in large part because of the
American presence. The longer the United States stays, the more it fuels
Sunni hostility toward Shiite "collaborators." Were America not in Iraq,
Sunni leaders could negotiate and participate without fear that they
themselves would be branded traitors and collaborators by their
constituents. Sunni leaders have said this in official public statements;
leaders of the resistance have told me the same thing in private. The Iraqi
government, which is currently dominated by Shiites, would lose its quisling
stigma. Iraq's security forces, also primarily Shiite, would no longer be
working on behalf of foreign infidels against fellow Iraqis, but would be
able to function independently and recruit Sunnis to a truly national force.
The mere announcement of an intended U.S. withdrawal would allow Sunnis to
come to the table and participate in defining the new Iraq.

*But if American troops aren't in Baghdad, what's to stop the Sunnis from
launching an assault and seizing control of the city?*

Sunni forces could not mount such an assault. The preponderance of power now
lies with the majority Shiites and the Kurds, and the Sunnis know this.
Sunni fighters wield only small arms and explosives, not Saddam's tanks and
helicopters, and are very weak compared with the cohesive, better armed, and
numerically superior Shiite and Kurdish militias. Most important, Iraqi
nationalism—not intramural rivalry—is the chief motivator for both Shiites
and Sunnis. Most insurgency groups view themselves as waging a muqawama—a
resistance—rather than a jihad. This is evident in their names and in their
propaganda. For instance, the units commanded by the Association of Muslim
Scholars are named after the 1920 revolt against the British. Others have
names such as Iraqi Islamic Army and Flame of Iraq. They display the Iraqi
flag rather than a flag of jihad. Insurgent attacks are meant primarily to
punish those who have collaborated with the Americans and to deter future
collaboration.

*Wouldn't a U.S. withdrawal embolden the insurgency?*

No. If the occupation were to end, so, too, would the insurgency. After all,
what the resistance movement has been resisting is the occupation. Who would
the insurgents fight if the enemy left? When I asked Sunni Arab fighters and
the clerics who support them why they were fighting, they all gave me the
same one-word answer: intiqaam—revenge. Revenge for the destruction of their
homes, for the shame they felt when Americans forced them to the ground and
stepped on them, for the killing of their friends and relatives by U.S.
soldiers either in combat or during raids.

*But what about the foreign jihadi element of the resistance? Wouldn't it be
empowered by a U.S. withdrawal?*

The foreign jihadi element—commanded by the likes of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi—is
numerically insignificant; the bulk of the resistance has no connection to
al-Qaeda or its offshoots. (Zarqawi and his followers have benefited greatly
from U.S. propaganda blaming him for all attacks in Iraq, because he is now
seen by Arabs around the world as more powerful than he is; we have been his
best recruiting tool.) It is true that the Sunni resistance welcomed the
foreign fighters (and to some extent still do), because they were far more
willing to die than indigenous Iraqis were. But what Zarqawi wants
fundamentally conflicts with what Iraqi Sunnis want: Zarqawi seeks
re-establishment of the Muslim caliphate and a Manichean confrontation with
infidels around the world, to last until Judgment Day; the mainstream Iraqi
resistance just wants the Americans out. If U.S. forces were to leave, the
foreigners in Zarqawi's movement would find little support—and perhaps
significant animosity—among Iraqi Sunnis, who want wealth and power, not
jihad until death. They have already lost much of their support: many Iraqis
have begun turning on them. In the heavily Shia Sadr City foreign jihadis
had burning tires placed around their necks. The foreigners have not managed
to establish themselves decisively in any large cities. Even at the height
of their power in Fallujah they could control only one neighborhood, the
Julan, and they were hated by the city's resistance council. Today foreign
fighters hide in small villages and are used opportunistically by the
nationalist resistance.

When the Americans depart and Sunnis join the Iraqi government, some of the
foreign jihadis in Iraq may try to continue the struggle—but they will have
committed enemies in both Baghdad and the Shiite south, and the entire Sunni
triangle will be against them. They will have nowhere to hide. Nor can they
merely take their battle to the West. The jihadis need a failed state like
Iraq in which to operate. When they leave Iraq, they will be hounded by Arab
and Western security agencies.

*What about the Kurds? Won't they secede if the United States leaves?*

Yes, but that's going to happen anyway. All Iraqi Kurds want an independent
Kurdistan. They do not feel Iraqi. They've effectively had more than a
decade of autonomy, thanks to the UN-imposed no-fly zone; they want nothing
to do with the chaos that is Iraq. Kurdish independence is inevitable—and
positive. (Few peoples on earth deserve a state more than the Kurds.) For
the moment the Kurdish government in the north is officially participating
in the federalist plan—but the Kurds are preparing for secession. They have
their own troops, the peshmerga, thought to contain 50,000 to 100,000
fighters. They essentially control the oil city of Kirkuk. They also happen
to be the most America-loving people I have ever met; their leaders openly
seek to become, like Israel, a proxy for American interests. If what the
United States wants is long-term bases in the region, the Kurds are its
partners.

*Would Turkey invade in response to a Kurdish secession?*

For the moment Turkey is more concerned with EU membership than with Iraq's
Kurds—who in any event have expressed no ambitions to expand into Turkey.
Iraq's Kurds speak a dialect different from Turkey's, and, in fact, have a
history of animosity toward Turkish Kurds. Besides, Turkey, as a member of
NATO, would be reluctant to attack in defiance of the United States. Turkey
would be satisfied with guarantees that it would have continued access to
Kurdish oil and trade and that Iraqi Kurds would not incite rebellion in
Turkey.

*Would Iran effectively take over Iraq?*

No. Iraqis are fiercely nationalist—even the country's Shiites resent
Iranian meddling. (It is true that some Iraqi Shiites view Iran as an ally,
because many of their leaders found safe haven there when exiled by
Saddam—but thousands of other Iraqi Shiites experienced years of misery as
prisoners of war in Iran.) Even in southeastern towns near the border I
encountered only hostility toward Iran.

*What about the goal of creating a secular democracy in Iraq that respects
the rights of women and non-Muslims?*

Give it up. It's not going to happen. Apart from the Kurds, who revel in
their secularism, Iraqis overwhelmingly seek a Muslim state. Although Iraq
may have been officially secular during the 1970s and 1980s, Saddam
encouraged Islamism during the 1990s, and the difficulties of the past
decades have strengthened the resurgence of Islam. In the absence of any
other social institutions, the mosques and the clergy assumed the dominant
role in Iraq following the invasion. Even Baathist resistance leaders told
me they have returned to Islam to atone for their sins under Saddam. Most
Shiites, too, follow one cleric or another. Ayatollah al-Sistani—supposedly
a moderate—wants Islam to be the source of law. The invasion of Iraq has led
to a theocracy, which can only grow more hostile to America as long as U.S.
soldiers are present.

*Does Iraqi history offer any lessons?*

The British occupation of Iraq, in the first half of the twentieth century,
may be instructive. The British faced several uprisings and coups. The Iraqi
government, then as now, was unable to suppress the rebels on its own and
relied on the occupying military. In 1958, when the government the British
helped install finally fell, those who had collaborated with them could find
no popular support; some, including the former prime minister Nuri Said,
were murdered and mutilated. Said had once been a respected figure, but he
became tainted by his collaboration with the British. That year, when
revolutionary officers overthrew the government, Said disguised himself as a
woman and tried to escape. He was discovered, shot in the head, and buried.
The next day a mob dug up his corpse and dragged it through the street—an
act that would be repeated so often in Iraq that it earned its own word:
sahil. With the British-sponsored government gone, both Sunni and Shiite
Arabs embraced the Iraqi identity. The Kurds still resent the British
perfidy that made them part of Iraq.

*What can the United States do to repair Iraq?*

There is no panacea. Iraq is a destroyed and fissiparous country. Iranians
and Saudis I've spoken to worry that it might be impossible to keep Iraq
from disintegrating. But they agree that the best hope of avoiding this
scenario is if the United States leaves; perhaps then Iraqi nationalism will
keep at least the Arabs united. The sooner America withdraws and allows
Iraqis to assume control of their own country, the better the chances that
Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari won't face sahil. It may be decades before
Iraq recovers from the current maelstrom. By then its borders may be
different, its vaunted secularism a distant relic. But a continued U.S.
occupation can only get in the way.

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