Patrick Cockburn: A stable Iraq is still a very long way off
[Patrick Cockburn is a columnist at the Independent who won the 2009 Orwell journalism prize.]
Seven years after the US and Britain invaded Iraq, the country remains highly unstable and fragmented. So divided are parties and communities that no government has emerged from the general election three months ago, which was intended to be a crucial staging post in Iraq's return to normality. Political leaders have not even started serious negotiations on sharing power.
"I have never been so depressed about the future of Iraq," said one former minister. "The émigré ruling class which came to power after 2003 is terrible. They have no policy other than to see how far they can rob the state."
None of this is very apparent to the outside world, because US policy since 2008 has been to declare a famous victory and withdraw its troops.
This week the US troop level drops to 92,000, lower for the first time than the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan. The US military wants to maintain the myth that it somehow turned round the war in Iraq by means of "the surge" and emerged successfully from the conflict.
This claim was always exaggerated. The insurgency against the US occupation was rooted in the Sunni Arab community, and when this was defeated by Shia government and militia forces in 2006-7, the Sunni had little choice but to look for an accommodation with the Americans. The most important change in Iraq was more to do with the outcome of the Shia-Sunni struggle than US military tactical innovations. This is why American generals are finding that the "surge" in Afghanistan this year, supposedly emulating success in Iraq, is showing such disappointing results.
The foreign-policy dominance of the military over civilian arm of the US government was reinforced by the Iraq war. Only this week the US Senate voted an extra $33bn for the military "surge" in Afghanistan, while the State Department gets only an extra $4bn. This is on top of $130bn for Iraq and Afghanistan this year already voted by Congress.
In Iraq, violence is far less than three years ago, and in this sense the country is "better" than it was when 3,000 bodies of people killed in the sectarian slaughter were being buried every month. But periodic al-Qa'ida attacks are still enough to create a sense of unease. To prevent them, the streets of Baghdad are so clogged with checkpoints and concrete blast walls that it is difficult to move through the city.
It is not so much the continuing, though much diminished, level of violence which worries Iraqis. The failure to replace the lame-duck government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki highlights the depth of sectarian and ethnic divisions between Shia, Sunni and Kurd. It was easy enough to forecast the outcome of the election by assuming that most voters would vote according to their communal loyalties.
These divisions, exacerbated by recent massacres, are not going to go away...
Read entire article at Independent (UK)
Seven years after the US and Britain invaded Iraq, the country remains highly unstable and fragmented. So divided are parties and communities that no government has emerged from the general election three months ago, which was intended to be a crucial staging post in Iraq's return to normality. Political leaders have not even started serious negotiations on sharing power.
"I have never been so depressed about the future of Iraq," said one former minister. "The émigré ruling class which came to power after 2003 is terrible. They have no policy other than to see how far they can rob the state."
None of this is very apparent to the outside world, because US policy since 2008 has been to declare a famous victory and withdraw its troops.
This week the US troop level drops to 92,000, lower for the first time than the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan. The US military wants to maintain the myth that it somehow turned round the war in Iraq by means of "the surge" and emerged successfully from the conflict.
This claim was always exaggerated. The insurgency against the US occupation was rooted in the Sunni Arab community, and when this was defeated by Shia government and militia forces in 2006-7, the Sunni had little choice but to look for an accommodation with the Americans. The most important change in Iraq was more to do with the outcome of the Shia-Sunni struggle than US military tactical innovations. This is why American generals are finding that the "surge" in Afghanistan this year, supposedly emulating success in Iraq, is showing such disappointing results.
The foreign-policy dominance of the military over civilian arm of the US government was reinforced by the Iraq war. Only this week the US Senate voted an extra $33bn for the military "surge" in Afghanistan, while the State Department gets only an extra $4bn. This is on top of $130bn for Iraq and Afghanistan this year already voted by Congress.
In Iraq, violence is far less than three years ago, and in this sense the country is "better" than it was when 3,000 bodies of people killed in the sectarian slaughter were being buried every month. But periodic al-Qa'ida attacks are still enough to create a sense of unease. To prevent them, the streets of Baghdad are so clogged with checkpoints and concrete blast walls that it is difficult to move through the city.
It is not so much the continuing, though much diminished, level of violence which worries Iraqis. The failure to replace the lame-duck government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki highlights the depth of sectarian and ethnic divisions between Shia, Sunni and Kurd. It was easy enough to forecast the outcome of the election by assuming that most voters would vote according to their communal loyalties.
These divisions, exacerbated by recent massacres, are not going to go away...