by Emile Nakhleh
Much blame could go around regarding the current chaos in Iraq and the recent territorial gains of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Four contributing factors stand out:
The 2003 decision by the Bush administration to dissolve the Iraqi army and “debaathify” the country (ban the Baath [...]]]>by Emile Nakhleh
Much blame could go around regarding the current chaos in Iraq and the recent territorial gains of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Four contributing factors stand out:
Senior US diplomat Paul Bremer’s decision in 2003 to dissolve the Iraqi army and to debaathify the country, with the approval of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, was disastrous. Overnight, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and thousands of officers, many of whom were Sunni Muslims, found themselves on the streets without a job and with a debilitating loss of influence and status. Their anger fueled the first insurgency.
Most Iraqis were expected to hold Baath party membership under Saddam Hussein if they desired a position in the government and in the private sector, including education, health services, and corporations. Bremer’s decision to lay off these people because of their party affiliation produced millions of unemployed Iraqis — angry, alienated, desperate, and willing to carry arms against the new Shia-dominated power structure and the US occupation.
According to media reports and published memoirs, Vice President Cheney and his top advisers, including David Addington and Scooter Libby, believed on the eve of the invasion that Iraqis would view the US military as liberators, not occupiers.
They failed to realize at the time that Iraqis’ dislike for Saddam did not automatically translate into love of foreign occupation. Debaathification and dissolving the army created a “perfect storm,” which explains what’s happening in Iraq today.
Prime Minister Maliki has pursued a narrow-minded partisan policy, which excludes anyone — Sunni and Shia — who does not belong to his Dawa Party. Visitors to his office would be hard-pressed to find any senior employee without party affiliation.
Contrary to American advice, Maliki refused to keep thousands of Sunni tribesmen, who were involved in the “Awakening,” on the government payroll. Here again, thousands of these tribesmen who received regular incomes from the American military became unemployed.
Not surprisingly, they became the backbone of the second insurgency against the Maliki government.
Maliki misjudged his countrymen thinking that they would tolerate a regime based on divisiveness, sectarianism, systemic corruption, and a budding dictatorship. He promoted sectarianism even among the senior military officer corps and promoted party allegiance over competence and experience.
He thought mistakenly that for geopolitical reasons, both the United States and Iran would continue to support him despite his poor policies. This support is now tepid at best; even mainstream Shia political leaders are calling for his removal.
Maliki has clearly reached a dead end and should be replaced. Following the US departure, he failed to lead Iraq into a more inclusive and stable country. Key regional and international actors no longer believed his accusations that his critics were “terrorists.”
ISIS’ territorial advances, as were dramatically depicted on television screens around the world, highlight the disintegration of some divisions within the Iraqi army. It’s an embarrassment not only for the Iraqi army, but also more significantly for the US military, which trained these units.
Depicting ISIS’ sudden success as another case of “intelligence failure” is tempting. In reality, the US military had inadequate knowledge of the loyalties, commitment, professionalism, and sectarianism of the Iraqi military. Abandoning their uniforms and weapons and refusing to fight for their country meant Iraqi officers did not believe in what they were fighting for or their mission. Billions of dollars spent by the US on training these units went to naught.
Washington’s failure to bring about the fall of Assad early on has also emboldened Sunni militants to fight in Syria. “Jihadists” from across the globe, including from Western countries, descended on Syria for the same cause. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, and other Gulf countries have funded these groups.
Bashar al-Assad’s self-fulfilling prophecy that terrorism is the main enemy in Syria has come home to roost, not only in Syria, but also in Iraq.
The way forward
A failed state in Syria and a dismembered Iraq could push the entire Middle East toward sectarian wars and instability, which could in turn unsettle oil markets and rattle the global economy. Before the 2003 invasion, former Secretary of State Colin Powell warned President George W. Bush of the Pottery Barn rule. The United States pushed Iraq into this mess; it’s time Washington owns what it broke.
This article was first published by LobeLog and was reprinted here with permission. Follow LobeLog on Twitter and like us on Facebook.
Photo: Demonstrators carry al-Qaeda flags in front of the provincial government headquarters in Mosul, 225 miles (360 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad, Iraq on June 16, 2014.
The event [...]]]>
The event was co-sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation, two U.S. think tanks that have taken hawkish positions on a variety of U.S. foreign policy issues. The “questions from the audience” were in fact provided by think tank members such as Bush Administration neoconservative Paul Wolfowitz, and David Addington, one of the authors of the infamous “torture memos”.
There were a number of serious fact check moments, such as Rep. Michele Bachmann’s declaration that President Obama has “essentially handed over our interrogation of terrorists to the ACLU” and the “CIA has no ability to have any form of interrogation for terrorists.” Read about some of them here. Also following are some points worth noting about the candidates’ positions on U.S.-Pakistan and Mideast policy.
Pakistan: Texas Gov. Rick Perry said the U.S. shouldn’t be writing “blank checks” to Pakistan because it has been uncooperative with regard to U.S. military initiatives on its territory. While calling Pakistan “a nation that lies” and “does everything possible that you can imagine wrong”, Bachmann said U.S. aid to the country “is helping the United States.”
Iran: All candidates accepted a question from the Heritage Foundation that cited Ehud Barak’s claim that Iran is “less than a year away” from creating a nuclear weapon and apart from congressman Ron Paul, no one took issue with the U.S. supporting “regime change” or using military force against the country. Leading candidate Newt Gingrich said war should be a “last recourse” to bring about regime change, an outcome which he strongly endorsed. He said the U.S. “could break the Iranian regime” in a year by “cutting off the gasoline supply to Iran and then, frankly, sabotaging the only refinery they have.”
Perry called for sanctioning Iran’s central bank to “shut down that economy” but his most important statement about Iran came later on when he asserted twice that the reason the U.S. should intervene in Syria is not because of the massive human rights violations that are taking place, but because taking out Bashar al-Assad’s government would weaken Iran and strengthen Israel:
I think you need to leave [a no-fly zone] on the table to make sure, because this is not just about Syria. This is about Iran and those two as a partnership, and exporting terrorism around the world. And if we’re going to be serious about saving Israel, we better get serious about Syria and Iran, and we better get serious right now.
There is no evidence to back up Bachmann’s claim that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran will attack Israel with a nuclear weapon. Even the Atlantic’s anti-Iran agitator Geoffrey Goldberg tweeted that “Ahmedinejad has not stated that he would use a nuclear weapon to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. Just sayin.’”
Former U.S. ambassador to China Jon Huntsman criticized Obama’s Iran sanctioning policy, stating that “the Chinese aren’t going to play ball. And the Russians aren’t going to play ball, and I believe the mullahs have already decided they want to go nuclear.”
Businessman Herman Cain said he would support an Israeli attack on Iran as long as they had “a credible plan for success.” He also seemed fixed on the fact that Iran is a “mountainous region” and stressed that its terrain should be calculated into any attack plan.
Israel: Mitt Romney declared that his foreign trip as president would be to Israel “to show we care about them.” Paul reminded everyone that former Mossad leader Meir Dagan said attacking Iran would be “the stupidest thing to do in the world” and argued Israel is “not about to do this.” Paul added that
Israel has 200, 300 nuclear missiles, and they can take cares of themselves. We don’t even have a treaty with Israel. Why do we have this automatic commitment that we’re going to send our kids and send our money endlessly to Israel? So I think they’re quite capable of taking care of themselves.
Huntsman tried to outdo Romney’s declaration of allegiance to the Israelis by saying that “our interest in the Middle East is Israel.”
Obama’s Foreign Policy: Obama’s foreign policy record was consistently bashed but Huntsman essentially argued that he would continue his policy in Pakistan by using special operation forces along with drone bombing campaigns:
]]>Pakistan is a concern. That’s the country that ought to keep everybody up at night…It’s a haven for bad behavior, it’s a haven for training the people who seek to do us harm. And an expanded drone program is something that would serve our national interests.