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Iraq’s Tragic Future
By Scott Ritter
07/02/08 "Truthdig" -- - -Any analysis of the current state of
the ongoing U.S. occupation of Iraq that relied solely on the
U.S. government, the major candidates for president or the major
media outlets in the United States for information would be hard
pressed to find any bad news. In a State of the Union address
which had everything except a “Mission Accomplished” banner
flying in the background, President Bush all but declared
victory over the insurgency in Iraq. His recertification of the
success of the so-called surge has prompted the Republican
candidates to assume a cocky swagger when discussing Iraq. They
embrace the occupation and speak, without shame or apparent fear
of retribution, of an ongoing presence in that war-torn nation.
Their Democratic counterparts have been less than enthusiastic
in their criticism of the escalation. And the media, for the
most part, continue their macabre role as cheerleaders of death,
hiding the reality of Iraq deep inside stories that build upon
approving headlines derived from nothing more than political
rhetoric. The war in Iraq, we’re told, is virtually over. We
only need “stay the course” for 10 more years.
This situation is troublesome in the extreme. The collective
refusal of any constituent in this complicated mix of political
players to confront Bush on Iraq virtually guarantees that it
will be the Bush administration, and not its successor, that
will dictate the first year (or more) of policy in Iraq for the
next president. It also ensures that the debacle that is the
Bush administration’s overarching Middle East policy of regional
transformation and regime change in not only Iraq but Iran and
Syria will continue to go unchallenged. If the president is free
to pursue his policies, it could lead to direct military
intervention in Iran by the United States prior to President
Bush’s departure from office or, failing that, place his
successor on the path toward military confrontation. At a time
when every data point available certifies (and recertifies) the
administration’s actions in Iraq, Iran and elsewhere (including
Afghanistan) as an abject failure, America collectively has
fallen into a hypnotic trance, distracted by domestic economic
problems and incapable, due to our collective ignorance of the
world we live in, of deciphering the reality on the ground in
the Middle East.
Rather than offering a word-for-word renouncement of the
president’s rosy assertions concerning Iraq, I will instead
initiate a process of debunking the myth of American success by
doing that which no politician, current or aspiring, would dare
do: predict the failure of American policy in Iraq. With the ink
on the newspapers parroting the president’s words barely dry,
evidence of his misrepresentation of reality begins to build
with the announcement by the Pentagon that troop levels in Iraq
will not be dropping, as had been projected in view of the
“success” of the “surge,” but rather holding at current levels
with the possibility of increasing in the future. This reversal
of course concerning troop deployments into Iraq highlights the
reality that the statistical justification of “surge success,”
namely the reduction in the level of violence, was illusory, a
temporary lull brought about more by smoke and mirrors than any
genuine change of fortune on the ground. Even the word surge is
inappropriate for what is now undeniably an escalation. Iraq,
far from being a nation on the rebound, remains a mortally
wounded shell, the equivalent of a human suffering from a
sucking chest wound, its lungs collapsed and its life blood
spilling unchecked onto the ground. The “surge” never addressed
the underlying reasons for Iraq’s post-Saddam suffering, and as
such never sought to heal that which was killing Iraq. Instead,
the “surge” offered little more than a cosmetic gesture,
covering the wounds of Iraq with a bandage which shielded the
true extent of the damage from outside view while doing nothing
to save the victim.
Iraq is dying; soon Iraq will be dead. True, there will be a
plot of land in the Middle East which people will refer to as
Iraq. But any hope of a resurrected homogeneous Iraqi nation
populated by a diverse people capable of coexisting in peace and
harmony is soon to be swept away forever. Any hope of a way out
for the people of Iraq and their neighbors is about to become a
victim of the “successes” of the “surge” and the denial of
reality. The destruction of Iraq has already begun. The myth of
Kurdish stability—born artificially out of the U.S.-enforced
“no-fly zones” of the 1990s, sustained through the largess of
the Oil-for-Food program (and U.S.-approved sanctions
sidestepped by the various Kurdish groups in Iraq) and given a
Frankenstein-like lease on life in the aftermath of the U.S.
invasion and occupation—is rapidly unraveling. Like Dr.
Frankenstein’s monster, present-day Iraqi Kurdistan has been
exposed as an amalgam of parts incompatible not only with each
other but the region as a whole.
Ongoing Kurdish disdain for the central authority in Baghdad has
led to the Kurds declaring their independence from Iraqi law
(especially any law pertaining to oil present on lands they
control). The reality of the Kurds’ quest for independence can
be seen in their support of the Kurdish groups, in particular
the PKK, that desire independence from Turkey. The sentiment has
not been lost on their Turkish neighbors to the north, resulting
in an escalation of cross-border military incursions which will
only expand over time, further destabilizing Kurdish Iraq. Lying
dormant, and unmentioned, is the age-old animosity between the
two principle Kurdish factions in Iraq, the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP). As
recently as 1997, these two factions were engaged in a virtual
civil war against one another. The strains brought on by the
present unraveling have these two factions once again vying for
position inside Iraq, making internecine conflict all but
inevitable. The year 2008 will bring with it a major escalation
of Turkish military operations against northern Iraq, a
strategic break between the Kurdish factions there and with the
central government of Baghdad, and the beginnings of an all-out
civil war between the KDP and PUK.
The next unraveling of the “surge” myth will be in western Iraq,
where the much applauded “awakening” was falling apart even as
Bush spoke. I continue to maintain that there is a hidden hand
behind the Sunni resistance that operates unseen and uncommented
on by the United States and its erstwhile Iraqi allies operating
out of the Green Zone in Baghdad. The government of Saddam
Hussein never formally capitulated, and indeed had in place
plans for ongoing active resistance against any occupation of
Iraq. In October 2007 the Iraqi Baath Party held its 13th
conference, in which it formally certified one of Saddam’s vice
presidents, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, as the supreme leader of the
Sunni resistance.
The United States’ embrace of the “awakening” will go down in
the history of the Iraq conflict as one of the gravest strategic
errors made in a field of grave errors. The U.S. military in
Iraq has never fully understood the complex interplay between
the Sunni resistance, al-Qaida in Iraq, and the former
government of Saddam Hussein. Saddam may be dead, but not so his
plans for resistance. The massive security organizations which
held sway over Iraq during his rule were never defeated, and
never formally disbanded. The organs of security which once
operated as formal ministries now operate as covert cells,
functioning along internal lines of communication which are
virtually impenetrable by outside forces. These security organs
gave birth to al-Qaida in Iraq, fostered its growth as a proxy,
and used it as a means of sowing chaos and fear among the Iraqi
population.
The violence perpetrated by al-Qaida in Iraq is largely
responsible for the inability of the central government in
Baghdad to gain any traction in the form of unified governance.
The inability of the United States to defeat al-Qaida has
destroyed any hope of generating confidence among the Iraqi
population in the possibility of stability emerging from an
ongoing American occupation. But al-Qaida in Iraq is not a
physical entity which the United States can get its hands
around, but rather a giant con game being run by Izzat al-Douri
and the Sunni resistance. Because al-Qaida in Iraq is derived
from the Sunni resistance, it can be defeated only when the
Sunni resistance is defeated. And the greatest con game of them
all occurred when the Sunni resistance manipulated the United
States into arming it, training it and turning it against the
forces of al-Qaida, which it controls. Far from subduing the
Sunni resistance by Washington’s political and military support
of the “awakening,” the United States has further empowered it.
It is almost as if we were arming and training the Viet Cong on
the eve of the Tet offensive during the Vietnam War.
Keeping in mind the fact that the Sunni resistance, led by al-Douri,
operates from the shadows, and that its influence is exerted
more indirectly than directly, there are actual al-Qaida
elements in Iraq which operate independently of central Sunni
control, just as there are Sunni tribal elements which freely
joined the “awakening” in an effort to quash the forces of al-Qaida
in Iraq. The diabolical beauty of the Sunni resistance isn’t its
ability to exert direct control over all aspects of the
anti-American activity in Sunni Iraq, but rather to manipulate
the overall direction of activity through indirect means in a
manner which achieves its overall strategic aims. The Sunni
resistance continues to use al-Qaida in Iraq as a useful tool
for seizing the strategic focus of the American military
occupiers (and their Iraqi proxies in the Green Zone), as well
as controlling Sunni tribal elements which stray too far off the
strategic course (witness the recent suicide bomb assassination
of senior Sunni tribal leaders). 2008 will see the collapse of
the Sunni “awakening” movement, and a return to large-scale
anti-American insurgency in western Iraq. It will also see the
continued viability of al-Qaida in Iraq in terms of being an
organization capable of wreaking violence and dictating the pace
of American military involvement in directions beneficial to the
Sunni resistance and detrimental to the United States.
One of the spinoffs of the continued success of the Sunni
resistance is the focus it places on the inability of the
Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad to actually govern. The
U.S. decision to arm, train and facilitate the various Sunni
militias in Iraq is a de facto acknowledgement that the American
occupiers have lost confidence in the high-profile byproduct of
the “purple finger revolution” of January 2005. The sham that
was that election has produced a government trusted by no one,
even the Shiites. The ongoing unilateral cease-fire imposed by
the Muqtada al-Sadr on his Mahdi Army prevented the outbreak of
civil war between his movement and that of the Iranian-backed
Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), and its
militia, the Badr Brigade.
When Saddam’s security forces dissolved on the eve of the fall
of Baghdad in March 2003, the security organs which had been
tasked with infiltrating the Shiite community for the purpose of
spying on Shiites were instead instructed to embed themselves
deep within the structures of that community. Both the Mahdi
Army and the Badr Brigade are heavily infiltrated with such
sleeper elements, which conspire to create and exploit fractures
between these two organizations under the age-old adage of
divide and conquer. A strategic pause in the conflict between
the Mahdi Army and the U.S. military on the one hand and the
Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade on the other has served to
strengthen the hand of the Mahdi Army by allowing time for it to
rearm and reorganize, increasing its efficiency as a military
organization all the while its political opposite, the SCIRI-dominated
central Iraqi government, continues to falter.
Further exacerbating the situation for the American occupiers of
Iraq is the ongoing tension created by the war of wills between
the United States and Iran. The Sunni resistance has no love for
the Shiite theocracy in Tehran, or its proxies in Iraq, and
views creating a rift between the Mahdi Army and the Badr
Brigade as a strategic imperative on the road to a Sunni
resurgence. Any U.S. military strike against Iran will bring
with it the inevitable Shiite backlash in Iraq. The Shiite
forces that emerge as the most independent of the American
occupier will be, in the minds of the Sunni resistance, the most
capable of winning the support of the Shiites of Iraq. Given the
past record of cooperation between the Mahdi Army and the Sunni
resistance, and the ongoing antipathy between Sunnis and SCIRI,
there can be little doubt which Shiite entity the Sunnis will
side with when it comes time for a decisive conflict between the
Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade, and 2008 will be the year which
witnesses such a conflict.
The big loser in all of this, besides the people of Iraq, is of
course the men and women of the armed forces of the United
States. Betrayed by the Bush administration, abandoned by
Congress and all but forgotten by a complacent American
population and those who are positioning themselves for national
leadership in the next administration, the soldiers, sailors,
airmen and Marines who so proudly wear the uniform of the United
States continue to fight and die, kill and be maimed in a war
which was never justified and long ago lost its luster. Played
as pawns in a giant game of three-dimensional chess, these brave
Americans find themselves being needlessly sacrificed in a game
where there can be no winner, only losers.
The continued ambivalence of the American population as a whole
toward the war in Iraq, perhaps best manifested by the
superficiality of the slogan “Support the Troops,” all the while
remaining ignorant of what the troops are actually doing, has
led to a similar amnesia among politicians all too willing to
allow themselves to seek political advantage at the expense of
American life and treasure. January 2008 cost the United States
nearly 40 lives in Iraq. The current military budget is
unprecedented in its size, and doesn’t even come close to paying
for ongoing military operations in Iraq. The war in Iraq has
bankrupted Americans morally and fiscally, and yet the American
public continues to shake the hands of aspiring politicians who
ignore Iraq, pretending that the blood which soaks the hands of
these political aspirants hasn’t stained their own. In the sick
kabuki dance that is American politics, this refusal to call a
spade a spade is deserving of little more than disdain and
sorrow.
While the American people, politicians and media may remain mute
on the reality of Iraq, I won’t. There is no such thing as a
crystal ball which enables one to see clearly into the future,
and I am normally averse to making sweeping long-term
predictions involving a topic as fluid as the ongoing situation
in Iraq. At the risk of being wrong (and, indeed, I hope very
much that I am), I will contradict the rosy statements of the
president in his State of the Union address and will throw down
a gauntlet in the face of ongoing public and media ambivalence
by predicting that 2008 will be the year the “surge” in Iraq is
exposed as a grand debacle. The cosmetic bandage placed over the
gravely wounded Iraq will fall off, and the damaged body that is
Iraq will continue its painful decline toward death.
If there is any winner in all of this it will be the Sunni
resistance, or at least its leadership hiding in the shadow of
the American occupation, as it continues to exploit the chaotic
death spiral of post-Saddam Iraq for its own long-term plan of a
Sunni resurgence in Iraq. That the Sunni resistance will
continue to fight an American occupation is a guarantee. That it
will continue to persevere is highly probable. That the United
States will be able to stop it is unlikely. And so, the reality
that the only policy direction worthy of consideration here in
the United States concerning Iraq is the immediate and
unconditional withdrawal of American forces continues to hold
true. And the fact that this option is given short shrift by all
capable of making or influencing such a decision guarantees that
this bloody war will go on, inconclusively and incomprehensibly,
for many more years. That is the one image in my crystal ball
that emerges in full focus, and which will serve as the basis of
defining a national nightmare for generations to come.
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