[Peace-discuss] The Middle East Firestorm Ahead

[Morton K. Brussel]

Wallerstein is usually interesting to read. He has a Nostradamus  
quality, liking to set the scenario.  --mkb

The Middle East Firestorm Ahead
There is a firestorm ahead in the Middle East for which neither the US  
government nor the US public is prepared. The storm will go from Iraq  
to Afghanistan to Pakistan to Israel/Palestine, says Immanuel  
Wallerstein.
by Immanuel Wallerstein
There is a firestorm ahead in the Middle East for which neither the US  
government nor the US public is prepared. They seem scarcely aware how  
close it is on the horizon or how ferocious it will be. The US  
government (and therefore almost inevitably the US public) is deluding  
itself massively about its capacity to handle the situation in terms  
of its stated objectives. The storm will go from Iraq to Afghanistan  
to Pakistan to Israel/Palestine, and in the classic expression "it  
will spread like wildfire."

Let us start with Iraq. The United States has signed a Status of  
Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Iraq, which went into effect on July 1.  
It provided for turning over internal security to the Iraqi government  
and, in theory, essentially restricting US forces to their bases and  
to some limited role in training Iraqi troops. Some of the wording of  
this agreement is ambiguous. Deliberately so, since that was the only  
way both sides would sign it.

Even the first months of operation show how poorly this agreement is  
operating. The Iraqi forces have been interpreting it very strictly,  
formally forbidding both joint patrols and also any unilateral US  
military actions without prior detailed clearance with the government.  
It has gotten to the point that Iraqi forces are stopping US forces  
from passing checkpoints with supplies during daytime hours.

The US forces have been chafing. They have tried to interpret the  
clause guaranteeing them the right of self-defense far more loosely  
than the Iraqi forces want. They are pointing to the upturn in  
violence in Iraq and therefore implicitly to the incapacity of Iraqi  
forces to guarantee order.

The general commanding the US forces, Ray Odierno, is obviously  
extremely unhappy and is patently scheming to find excuses to  
reestablish a direct US role. Recently, he met with Prime Minister  
Nouri al-Maliki of Iraq and President Masoud Barzani of the Kurdish  
Regional Government. Odierno sought to persuade them to permit  
tripartite (Iraqi/Kurdish/American) joint patrols in Mosul and other  
areas of northern Iraq, in order to prevent or minimize violence. They  
politely agreed to consider his proposal. Unfortunately for Odierno,  
his plan would require a formal revision of the SOFA agreement.

Originally, there was supposed to be a referendum in the beginning of  
July on popular approval of the SOFA agreement. The United States was  
afraid of losing the vote, which would have meant that all US forces  
would have had to be out of Iraq by Dec. 31, 2010, one full year  
earlier than the theoretical date in the SOFA agreement.

The United States thought it was very clever in persuading al-Maliki  
to postpone this referendum to January 2010. Now it will be held in  
conjunction with the national elections. In the national elections,  
everyone will be seeking to obtain votes. No one is going to be  
campaigning in favor of a "yes" vote on the referendum. Lest this be  
in any doubt, al-Maliki is submitting a project to the Iraqi  
parliament that will permit a simple majority of "no" votes to annul  
the agreement. There will be a majority of "no" votes. There may even  
be an overwhelming majority of "no" votes. Odierno should be packing  
his bags now. I'll bet he still has the illusion that he can avoid the  
onset of the firestorm. He can't.

What will happen next? At the present, but this may change between now  
and January, it looks like al-Maliki will win the election. He will do  
this by becoming the number one champion of Iraqi nationalism. He will  
make deals with all and sundry on this basis. Iraqi nationalism at the  
moment doesn't have much to do with Iran or Saudi Arabia or Israel or  
Russia. It means first of all liberating Iraq from the last vestiges  
of US colonial rule, which is how almost all Iraqis define what they  
have been living under since 2003.

Will there be internal violence in Iraq? Probably, though possibly  
less than Odierno and others expect. But so what? Iraqi "liberation"  
-- which is what the entire Middle East will interpret a "no" vote on  
the referendum to be -- will immediately have a great impact on  
Afghanistan. There people will say, if the Iraqis can do it, so can we.

Of course, the situation in Afghanistan is different, very different,  
from that of Iraq. But look at what is going on now with the elections  
in Afghanistan. We have a government put into power to contain and  
destroy the Taliban. The Taliban have turned out to be more tenacious  
and militarily effective than any one seemed ever to anticipate. Even  
the tough US commander there, Stanley McChrystal, has recognized that.  
The US military is now talking of "succeeding" in perhaps a decade.  
Soldiers who think they have a decade to win a war against insurgents  
have clearly not been reading military history.

Notice the Afghan politicians themselves. Three leading candidates for  
the presidency, including President Hamid Karzai, debated on  
television the current internal war. They agreed on one thing. There  
must be some kind of political negotiations with the Taliban. They  
differed on the details. The US (and NATO) forces are there ostensibly  
to destroy the Taliban. And the leading Afghan politicians are  
debating how to come to political terms with them. There is a serious  
disjuncture here of appreciation of realities, or perhaps of political  
objectives.

The polls -- for what they are worth -- are showing that the majority  
of Afghans want the NATO forces to leave and the majority of US voters  
want the same thing. Now look ahead to January 2010, when the Iraqis  
vote the United States out of Iraq. Remember that, before the Taliban  
came to power, the country was the site of fierce and ruthless  
fighting among competing warlords, each with different ethnic bases,  
to control the country.

The United States was actually relieved when the Pakistani-backed  
Taliban took power. Order at last. There turned out to be a minor  
problem. The Taliban were serious about sharia and friendly to the  
emergent al-Qaeda. So, after 9/11, the United States, with west  
European approval and United Nations sanction, invaded. The Taliban  
were ousted from power -- for a little while.

What will happen now? The Afghans will probably revert to the nasty  
continuing inter-ethnic wars of the warlords, with the Taliban just  
one more faction. The US public's tolerance for that war will  
evaporate entirely. All the internal factions and many of the  
neighbors (Russia, Iran, India, and Pakistan) will remain to fight  
over the pieces.

And then stage three -- Pakistan. Pakistan is another complicated  
situation. But none of the players there trust the United States. And  
the polls there show that the Pakistani public thinks that the  
greatest danger to Pakistan is the United States, and that by an  
overwhelming vote. The traditional enemy, India, is far behind the  
United States in the polls. When Afghanistan crumbles into a full- 
fledged civil war, the Pakistani army will be very busy supporting the  
Taliban. They cannot support the Taliban in Afghanistan while fighting  
them in Pakistan. They will no longer be able to accept US drones  
bombing in Pakistan.

So then comes stage four of the firestorm -- Israel/Palestine. The  
Arab world will observe the collapse of US projects in Iraq,  
Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The US project in Israel/Palestine is a  
peace deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians. The Israelis are  
not going to budge an inch. But neither now, and especially after the  
rest of the firestorm, are the Palestinians. The one consequence will  
be the enormous pressure that other Arab states will put upon Fatah  
and Hamas to join forces. This will be over Mahmoud Abbas's dead body  
-- which might literally be the case.

The whole Obama program will have gone up in flames. And the  
Republicans will make hay with it. They will call US defeat in the  
Middle East "betrayal" and it is obvious now that there is a large  
group inside the United States very receptive to such a theme.

One either anticipates firestorms and does something useful, or one  
gets swept up in them.

This article was distributed by Agence Global.

© 2009 Immanuel Wallerstein
Immanuel Wallerstein, Senior Research Scholar at Yale University, is  
the author of The Decline of American Power: The US in a Chaotic World  
(New Press).

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