But what do the experts say on withdrawal?
The WaPo has a frontpage piece looking at what the wargamers and experts not politically involved in the Iraq propaganda see as the likely outcome of a US withdrawal.
Generally speaking, yeah, but frankly, there seems to be no likelihood that the US is looking at total withdrawal anytime soon. Consensus seems to be gathering around some sort of downsized redeployment focusing on borders, training, and Al Qaeda. (I would ask that someone look to see if this downsized mission is any more achievable than the overreach we're currently on.)
The real questions going forward revolve around future foreign involvement. If the US backs off, will the Shia factions need to rely on Iran as much? Or will one faction turn to Iran to win the intraShia disputes (and would that work over Iraqi nationalism?)
The Sunni will be unable to win this war no matter how much outside support they receive, so will the Saudis, Jordanians, and Syrians, pump in support to maintain a bloody stalemate, tying up Iran?
The Kurds, of course, will secede during the chaos creating complications with the Turks and Iranians.
It's going to be bloody, but everything we're talking about represents long built up tensions that were resisted only by the brutality of Saddam. These forces are going to play out sooner or later.
(Note: In my opinion, these forces of "sectarian" conflict are still a late resolving remnant of colonialism. The policies of late colonial style control often involved promoting a minority group into a country's leadership leaving them reliant on an outside power to help them maintain control. When this situation reverses itself, it can be either relatively peaceful (often through transitionary period of military control ) or as bloody as Rwanda.
This "snap back" to majority Shia control in Iraq is bound to be fairly violent as the savagery of Saddam's majority suppression is recent enough to still reside pronouncedly within living memory.
I don't know if this side note is relevant, it's just something that's been on my mind lately.)
(Second note: I think the Iraqi endstate will end up being something resembling the chaos of the current Lebanon. The religious and factional alliances will be markedly different, but the same sorts of destabilizing, outside supported, minority groups will be maintained in Iraq.)
If U.S. combat forces withdraw from Iraq in the near future, three developments would be likely to unfold. Majority Shiites would drive Sunnis out of ethnically mixed areas west to Anbar province. Southern Iraq would erupt in civil war between Shiite groups. And the Kurdish north would solidify its borders and invite a U.S. troop presence there. In short, Iraq would effectively become three separate nations.....
What is perhaps most striking about the military's simulations is that its post-drawdown scenarios focus on civil war and regional intervention and upheaval rather than the establishment of an al-Qaeda sanctuary in Iraq.
Generally speaking, yeah, but frankly, there seems to be no likelihood that the US is looking at total withdrawal anytime soon. Consensus seems to be gathering around some sort of downsized redeployment focusing on borders, training, and Al Qaeda. (I would ask that someone look to see if this downsized mission is any more achievable than the overreach we're currently on.)
The real questions going forward revolve around future foreign involvement. If the US backs off, will the Shia factions need to rely on Iran as much? Or will one faction turn to Iran to win the intraShia disputes (and would that work over Iraqi nationalism?)
The Sunni will be unable to win this war no matter how much outside support they receive, so will the Saudis, Jordanians, and Syrians, pump in support to maintain a bloody stalemate, tying up Iran?
The Kurds, of course, will secede during the chaos creating complications with the Turks and Iranians.
It's going to be bloody, but everything we're talking about represents long built up tensions that were resisted only by the brutality of Saddam. These forces are going to play out sooner or later.
(Note: In my opinion, these forces of "sectarian" conflict are still a late resolving remnant of colonialism. The policies of late colonial style control often involved promoting a minority group into a country's leadership leaving them reliant on an outside power to help them maintain control. When this situation reverses itself, it can be either relatively peaceful (often through transitionary period of military control ) or as bloody as Rwanda.
This "snap back" to majority Shia control in Iraq is bound to be fairly violent as the savagery of Saddam's majority suppression is recent enough to still reside pronouncedly within living memory.
I don't know if this side note is relevant, it's just something that's been on my mind lately.)
(Second note: I think the Iraqi endstate will end up being something resembling the chaos of the current Lebanon. The religious and factional alliances will be markedly different, but the same sorts of destabilizing, outside supported, minority groups will be maintained in Iraq.)
posted by mikevotes at
7:40 AM
6 Comments:
Geopolitics abhors a vacuum. Iraq is largely an "artificial" nation created by the British with no regard for ethnic boundaries. The idea of Iraqi "nationhood" was a fiction created by Saddam and enforced by the Baath Party. If the US were to withdraw, IMHO, we would see Saudi Arabia taking the East, Iran taking the West, and Turkey taking the North, in accordance with the ethnic divisions.
By
Todd Dugdale , at 9:04 AM
In a broad sense, you're right, but I do believe there would be some Iraqi resistance to any of these moves. I don't think the relationships would be that clear cut.
It's my sense that the Shia, for example, would accept Iranian assistance and be sympathetic to the Iranian cause, but to say Iran will take over I think is n oversimplification. Same for the Sunnis.
The Turks would try to push back diminish the Kurds, but it's a question of how free a hand they're allowed on the world stage. They would like to invade and occupy, but I don't think they could stay.
Just my opinions.
By
mikevotes, at 11:27 AM
There was a lot of integration and intermarriage under Saddam. I don't think the Sunni Shia divide is as vast as we are lead to believe. And I don't think the Turks want more Kurdish citizens. Thay have enough problems with the ones they've got.
By
Anonymous, at 1:28 PM
Anon, you're right regarding the Sunni/Shia divide at the level of the people, but, I would argue that there's a different relationship up the power structure.
At the higher level, I don't really see religion as playing too big a part in the sectarian issues except as it acts as a dividing line between competing interests.
What we've got is powerful people masked in Sunni/Shia constituencies competing for power, economics and control.
By
mikevotes, at 1:53 PM
The Lebanon analogy is a pretty good one (though the central government might be even more feeble than Lebanon's.) It's hard to see Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Turkey actually seizing large parts of Iraq, but it's a given that each will try to manipulate the situation to its own liking.
The best-case scenario is that the Kurds don't provoke the Turks into an invasion, and that the seemingly inevitable Sunni/Shia ethnic cleansing is more migration than genocide. I actually think that the Iranians and Saudis (other than Ahmadinejad and Prince Bandar)can be a restraining influence on their Iraqi proxies. An all-out civil war in Iraq does not help either regime, unless they win it very quickly.
By
Anonymous, at 4:35 PM
I think you nailed that one on every point.
By my nature I'm a contrarian and have a near compulsion to say "yes, but....", but not here.
By
mikevotes, at 9:06 PM
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