Made in USA - Another Failed State

Not that the concept of “Iraq” as a country was in any way our fault, but when we took power away from a controlling minority (the 20% of the country that are Sunnis who were headed by ousted leader Saddam Hussein) and handed it to a new majority (60% Shiites), who (i) resented the Sunnis and (ii) found a strong bond with Iran, where over 90% of that country is Shiite, the laws of unintended consequences kicked in.

Three factions (the third: the Kurdish north) were blended in an artificial country by outside powers, and the unnatural borders just stuck. Back in 1916, France and Britain signed the Sykes Picot accord that carved up the fragmenting and post WWI Ottoman Empire’s Arab holdings into arbitrary nations and spheres of influence for these two colonial powers. Iraq was a nation where these three incompatible factions were just shoved together.

After the U.S. invaded Iraq, Sunnis slid from power. The new majority – Shiites – ran roughshod over everyone else (although the Kurds did manage to isolate themselves a bit in their northern enclave but are fighting with Shiites over oil-producing lands). Shiites set out arrest warrants for popular Sunnis leaders (including an elected Vice President of the country) and invited Shiite militias (like the Mahdi Army) to participate in governance. Sunnis blasted back. IEDs and shootings in Shiite areas of Baghdad became and are now commonplace.

Sensing an opportunity, Sunnis Jihadists (including al Qaeda and worse) waded into the country, often resented by local Sunnis, and began to fuel the fire of hatred between Sunnis and Shiites, a long-standing feud over the interpretation of the Qur’an. Sunnis (a minority in Iraq but a majority in the Muslim world) believe in a literal interpretation of the holy book, while Shiites believe it is a mystical tome that only senior clerics can read and explain to the masses. Putting it mildly, the Sunnis (who once lived peacefully side-by-side with Shiites until we intervened) now hate the Shiites in control, the Kurds want nothing to do with the factionalism in the south, and Shiite anger against Sunnis grows with every explosion.

In Sunni strongholds, the majority Shiite government is hardly in control, and Shiites enter at their extreme peril. Extremists have moved up to the top of the Sunnis power ladder in some of these provinces. “Falluja — and the rest of Anbar Province — perhaps more than any other locale in Iraq, embodies the lengths the United States went to tame a bloody insurgency unleashed by its invasion. But now, much of the region is again beyond the authority of the central government and firmly in the control of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a jihadist group that is so radical it has broken with Al Qaeda, in part because it insisted on being allowed to indiscriminately kill Shiites.

“That reality, which the government appears powerless to remedy, offers a sobering postscript to the American war and a volatile backdrop to [the April 30th] elections... The vote [is] Iraq’s first nationwide election since the withdrawal of United States forces at the end of 2011, and it is clear[ly] … held amid rapidly growing violence and sectarian bloodletting. On [April 28th], six suicide bombers struck polling sites around the country as security force members voted in advance, killing at least 27 people, officials said.

“The greater fear, though, is that there is no way back this time, that the sectarian division of the nation will become entrenched as the government concentrates its forces on protecting its seat of power in Baghdad. With fighting in Abu Ghraib, on the western edge of Baghdad and less than 20 miles from the city center, the government recently shut down the local prison. Insurgents have gained strength in Salahuddin Province, to the north of Baghdad, and in Diyala Province, northeast of the capital…

“Iraq’s security forces, trained by the United States at a cost of billions of dollars, have been unable to dislodge the militants. In trying to help, the United States may unwittingly have made matters worse when it pressed the government to arm tribes in the area to fight the radicals, a strategy that worked the first time the United States struggled to restore order in the region.

“Since January, Washington has rushed guns and bullets to the fight — including 14 million rounds of ammunition and more than 250,000 grenades. But arming the tribes did not work, and some of those American-supplied weapons are now in the hands of militants, having been captured during clashes, officials and tribal leaders said.” New York Times, April 28th. Many voters had to brave snipers and bomb risks, as they crossed danger zones to reach polling stations.

Iraq is a mess. But then, so is that other regional nation where the United States also imposed a new governmental structure. As we watch the Taliban lurking in the background as Afghan runoff elections move forward – while wreaking havoc in neighboring Pakistan – the world is watching to see if that completely-out-of-control country will ever settle down and if Afghanistan will remain one of the three most corrupt nations in the world (according to Transparency International).

Post-Eisenhower America has continued to build the most powerful military on earth with one of the least sensitive and experienced international expertise to use that military remotely effectively. We either withdraw and occasionally rattle sabers or we dive head-first into a war in a region we do not remotely understand! With power comes the need to understand the ramifications of having and using that power. Too many nation-states (from ancient Sparta, the Ming Dynasty to the modern era with the Soviet Union) have died from the economic burden having a huge military without remotely understanding of how to use it effectively. Are we next?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I guess reading history books is just not a pastime enjoyed by many in Congress.