http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200512/iraq-withdrawal
The Atlantic Monthly | December 2005
The Agenda
Hypotheticals
If America Left Iraq
The case for cutting and running
by Nir Rosen
.....
A t some point--whether sooner or later--U.S. troops will leave
Iraq. I have spent much of the occupation reporting from Baghdad,
Kirkuk, Mosul, Fallujah, and elsewhere in the country, and I can
tell you that a growing majority of Iraqis would like it to be
sooner. As the occupation wears on, more and more Iraqis chafe at
its failure to provide stability or even electricity, and they have
grown to hate the explosions, gunfire, and constant war, and also
the daily annoyances: having to wait hours in traffic because the
Americans have closed off half the city; having to sit in that
traffic behind a U.S. military vehicle pointing its weapons at
them; having to endure constant searches and arrests. Before the
January 30 elections this year the Association of Muslim
Scholars--Iraq's most important Sunni Arab body, and one closely
tied to the indigenous majority of the insurgency--called for a
commitment to a timely U.S. withdrawal as a condition for its
participation in the vote. (In exchange the association promised to
rein in the resistance.) It's not just Sunnis who have demanded a
withdrawal: the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who is immensely
popular among the young and the poor, has made a similar demand. So
has the mainstream leader of the Shiites' Supreme Council for the
Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, who made his first
call for U.S. withdrawal as early as April 23, 2003.
If the people the U.S. military is ostensibly protecting want it to
go, why do the soldiers stay? The most common answer is that it
would be irresponsible for the United States to depart before some
measure of peace has been assured. The American presence, this
argument goes, is the only thing keeping Iraq from an all-out civil
war that could take millions of lives and would profoundly
destabilize the region. But is that really the case? Let's consider
the key questions surrounding the prospect of an imminent American
withdrawal.
Q. Would the withdrawal of U.S. troops ignite a civil war between
Sunnis and Shiites?
A. No. That civil war is already under way--in large part because of
the American presence. The longer the United States stays, the more
it fuels Sunni hostility toward Shiite "collaborators." Were
America not in Iraq, Sunni leaders could negotiate and participate
without fear that they themselves would be branded traitors and
collaborators by their constituents. Sunni leaders have said this
in official public statements; leaders of the resistance have told
me the same thing in private. The Iraqi government, which is
currently dominated by Shiites, would lose its quisling stigma.
Iraq's security forces, also primarily Shiite, would no longer be
working on behalf of foreign infidels against fellow Iraqis, but
would be able to function independently and recruit Sunnis to a
truly national force. The mere announcement of an intended U.S.
withdrawal would allow Sunnis to come to the table and participate
in defining the new Iraq.
Q. But if American troops aren't in Baghdad, what's to stop the Sunnis
from launching an assault and seizing control of the city?
A. Sunni forces could not mount such an assault. The preponderance of
power now lies with the majority Shiites and the Kurds, and the
Sunnis know this. Sunni fighters wield only small arms and
explosives, not Saddam's tanks and helicopters, and are very weak
compared with the cohesive, better armed, and numerically superior
Shiite and Kurdish militias. Most important, Iraqi nationalism--not
intramural rivalry--is the chief motivator for both Shiites and
Sunnis. Most insurgency groups view themselves as waging a
muqawama--a resistance--rather than a jihad. This is evident in
their names and in their propaganda. For instance, the units
commanded by the Association of Muslim Scholars are named after the
1920 revolt against the British. Others have names such as Iraqi
Islamic Army and Flame of Iraq. They display the Iraqi flag rather
than a flag of jihad. Insurgent attacks are meant primarily to
punish those who have collaborated with the Americans and to deter
future collaboration.
Q. Wouldn't a U.S. withdrawal embolden the insurgency?
A. No. If the occupation were to end, so, too, would the insurgency.
After all, what the resistance movement has been resisting is the
occupation. Who would the insurgents fight if the enemy left? When
I asked Sunni Arab fighters and the clerics who support them why
they were fighting, they all gave me the same one-word answer:
intiqaam--revenge. Revenge for the destruction of their homes, for
the shame they felt when Americans forced them to the ground and
stepped on them, for the killing of their friends and relatives by
U.S. soldiers either in combat or during raids.
Q. But what about the foreign jihadi element of the resistance?
Wouldn't it be empowered by a U.S. withdrawal?
A. The foreign jihadi element--commanded by the likes of Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi--is numerically insignificant; the bulk of the
resistance has no connection to al-Qaeda or its offshoots. (Zarqawi
and his followers have benefited greatly from U.S. propaganda
blaming him for all attacks in Iraq, because he is now seen by
Arabs around the world as more powerful than he is; we have been
his best recruiting tool.) It is true that the Sunni resistance
welcomed the foreign fighters (and to some extent still do),
because they were far more willing to die than indigenous Iraqis
were. But what Zarqawi wants fundamentally conflicts with what
Iraqi Sunnis want: Zarqawi seeks re-establishment of the Muslim
caliphate and a Manichean confrontation with infidels around the
world, to last until Judgment Day; the mainstream Iraqi resistance
just wants the Americans out. If U.S. forces were to leave, the
foreigners in Zarqawi's movement would find little support--and
perhaps significant animosity--among Iraqi Sunnis, who want wealth
and power, not jihad until death. They have already lost much of
their support: many Iraqis have begun turning on them. In the
heavily Shia Sadr City foreign jihadis had burning tires placed
around their necks. The foreigners have not managed to establish
themselves decisively in any large cities. Even at the height of
their power in Fallujah they could control only one neighborhood,
the Julan, and they were hated by the city's resistance council.
Today foreign fighters hide in small villages and are used
opportunistically by the nationalist resistance.
When the Americans depart and Sunnis join the Iraqi government,
some of the foreign jihadis in Iraq may try to continue the
struggle--but they will have committed enemies in both Baghdad and
the Shiite south, and the entire Sunni triangle will be against
them. They will have nowhere to hide. Nor can they merely take
their battle to the West. The jihadis need a failed state like Iraq
in which to operate. When they leave Iraq, they will be hounded by
Arab and Western security agencies.
Q. What about the Kurds? Won't they secede if the United States
leaves?
A. Yes, but that's going to happen anyway. All Iraqi Kurds want an
independent Kurdistan. They do not feel Iraqi. They've effectively
had more than a decade of autonomy, thanks to the UN-imposed no-fly
zone; they want nothing to do with the chaos that is Iraq. Kurdish
independence is inevitable--and positive. (Few peoples on earth
deserve a state more than the Kurds.) For the moment the Kurdish
government in the north is officially participating in the
federalist plan--but the Kurds are preparing for secession. They
have their own troops, the peshmerga, thought to contain 50,000 to
100,000 fighters. They essentially control the oil city of Kirkuk.
They also happen to be the most America-loving people I have ever
met; their leaders openly seek to become, like Israel, a proxy for
American interests. If what the United States wants is long-term
bases in the region, the Kurds are its partners.
Q. Would Turkey invade in response to a Kurdish secession?
A. For the moment Turkey is more concerned with EU membership than
with Iraq's Kurds--who in any event have expressed no ambitions to
expand into Turkey. Iraq's Kurds speak a dialect different from
Turkey's, and, in fact, have a history of animosity toward Turkish
Kurds. Besides, Turkey, as a member of NATO, would be reluctant to
attack in defiance of the United States. Turkey would be satisfied
with guarantees that it would have continued access to Kurdish oil
and trade and that Iraqi Kurds would not incite rebellion in
Turkey.
Q. Would Iran effectively take over Iraq?
A. No. Iraqis are fiercely nationalist--even the country's Shiites
resent Iranian meddling. (It is true that some Iraqi Shiites view
Iran as an ally, because many of their leaders found safe haven
there when exiled by Saddam--but thousands of other Iraqi Shiites
experienced years of misery as prisoners of war in Iran.) Even in
southeastern towns near the border I encountered only hostility
toward Iran.
Q. What about the goal of creating a secular democracy in Iraq that
respects the rights of women and non-Muslims?
A. Give it up. It's not going to happen. Apart from the Kurds, who
revel in their secularism, Iraqis overwhelmingly seek a Muslim
state. Although Iraq may have been officially secular during the
1970s and 1980s, Saddam encouraged Islamism during the 1990s, and
the difficulties of the past decades have strengthened the
resurgence of Islam. In the absence of any other social
institutions, the mosques and the clergy assumed the dominant role
in Iraq following the invasion. Even Baathist resistance leaders
told me they have returned to Islam to atone for their sins under
Saddam. Most Shiites, too, follow one cleric or another. Ayatollah
al-Sistani--supposedly a moderate--wants Islam to be the source of
law. The invasion of Iraq has led to a theocracy, which can only
grow more hostile to America as long as U.S. soldiers are present.
Does Iraqi history offer any lessons?
The British occupation of Iraq, in the first half of the twentieth
century, may be instructive. The British faced several uprisings
and coups. The Iraqi government, then as now, was unable to
suppress the rebels on its own and relied on the occupying
military. In 1958, when the government the British helped install
finally fell, those who had collaborated with them could find no
popular support; some, including the former prime minister Nuri
Said, were murdered and mutilated. Said had once been a respected
figure, but he became tainted by his collaboration with the
British. That year, when revolutionary officers overthrew the
government, Said disguised himself as a woman and tried to escape.
He was discovered, shot in the head, and buried. The next day a mob
dug up his corpse and dragged it through the street--an act that
would be repeated so often in Iraq that it earned its own word:
sahil. With the British-sponsored government gone, both Sunni and
Shiite Arabs embraced the Iraqi identity. The Kurds still resent
the British perfidy that made them part of Iraq.
Q. What can the United States do to repair Iraq?
A. There is no panacea. Iraq is a destroyed and fissiparous country.
Iranians and Saudis I've spoken to worry that it might be
impossible to keep Iraq from disintegrating. But they agree that
the best hope of avoiding this scenario is if the United States
leaves; perhaps then Iraqi nationalism will keep at least the Arabs
united. The sooner America withdraws and allows Iraqis to assume
control of their own country, the better the chances that Prime
Minister Ibrahim Jaafari won't face sahil. It may be decades before
Iraq recovers from the current maelstrom. By then its borders may
be different, its vaunted secularism a distant relic. But a
continued U.S. occupation can only get in the way.
______________________________________________________________
Nir Rosen, a fellow at the New America Foundation, spent sixteen
months reporting from Iraq after the American invasion. His book In
the Belly of the Green Bird: The Triumph of the Martyrs in Iraq
will be published in February.
______________________________________________________________
Copyright © 2005 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights
reserved.
The Atlantic Monthly; December 2005; If America Left Iraq; Volume
296, No. 5; 42