Post-Bush Iraq Remains
Military Stage for Others (Epoca, Brazil)
"There are
still no concrete signs of any lasting gains from the overthrow of Saddam. After
a new wave of fighting, massacres and war crimes of every description, Obama
and the entire Middle East face the prospect that Iraq will fragment. Incapable
of walking on its own two feet, Iraq seems chained by internal divisions and an
unending cycle of interventions. … A victim of intervention, Iraq remains a testing
ground for foreign ideological practices, whether American democracy or Saudi
fundamentalism."
The progress of an
international jihadi movement shows that 11 years
after the U.S. invasion, Iraq continues to be a target of foreign interests
"The future of Iraq is now in the hands of its people."
Stated in December 2011, these words from U.S. President Barack Obama sounded
triumphant. Obama closed out America's military presence in Iraq more than eight
years after the invasion that toppled the dictator Saddam Hussein. A critic of
the war of his predecessor George W. Bush, Obama hoped to stay far away from
Iraq. His gamble carried the faint hope that, even if by a crooked path, the
theories of the Bush Administration neoconservatives were correct. Obama was an
optimist.
The ideologues of the Bush government said that democracy
could be imposed from without. Exporting it was based on a principle [liberal
interventionism] immortalized by President Woodrow Wilson
(1913-1921) - as an obligation of a liberal and democratic superpower. In the
hope that Iraq would finally stabilize, Obama trusted that something good could
still result from the 2003 Iraq invasion. Given recent events, with Iraq being
overrun by the fundamentalist Sunni militia ISIL (Islamic
State of Iraq and the Levant), such confidence has rapidly diminished. There
are still no concrete signs of any lasting gains from the overthrow of Saddam. After
a new wave of fighting, massacres and war crimes of every description, Obama
and the entire Middle East face the prospect that Iraq will fragment. Incapable
of walking on its own two feet, Iraq seems chained by internal divisions and an
unending cycle of interventions. A few weeks ago, the now-former prime minister,
the Shiite Nouri al-Maliki, asked Washington to strike ISIL
from the air. The Americans are again on their way to Baghdad.
Despite the suggestion in Obama's 2011 speech, - the Iraqi "people"
are not as one. Under the firm hand of Saddam, the Shiite majority, repressed
by the regime, lived in relative harmony with Sunnis, while the Kurds already
enjoyed significant autonomy in the north. Saddam oversaw a kind of monopoly of
atrocities in Iraq. Without him, starting in 2003, everything changed. The market
for murder expanded - on an infinitely larger scale. The government, Sunni
militias, Shiite paramilitaries and Kurdish forces, all tried to secure their own
areas. Shiites and Sunnis began an exchange of endless atrocities. The only
regulatory agencies with some power of persuasion, military of course, were the
American forces. They did as much good as evil. They supported the new,
recently-trained local Army and combated insurgents. The occupation also served
as a factor of instability, fueling movements demanding sovereignty. Without it,
though, the new Shiite regime was unable to pacify domestic relations. It was
accused of marginalizing Sunnis and serving the interests of Iran. Iraq's
future is far from being in the "hands of its people," as Obama had
dreamed.
The events in Iraq over the last 11 years have shaken the
belief in liberal interventionism advocated by the Wilsonians.
In the Bush government, these principles were based on a military doctrine, popularly
known as the Bush
Doctrine, transformed into an
official document in 2012 and abandoned by the Obama Administration.
According to it, in the face of new threats around the world, the United States
should act preventively, even before such threats materialize. This notion has
been shaken by the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2012, Obama backed away
from a possible intervention against dictator Bashar al-Assad in Syria. He became
convinced by arguments from Russian Vladimir Putin, according to whom any external
action would strengthen the same radicals who terrorize Iraq today.
ISIL was born out of the division
of al-Qaeda in Iraq in April 2013, and as a direct result of the civil war in
Syria, where foreign jihadists organized themselves to oppose Assad and out of
which ISIL obtained the funds to finance their struggle.
The group advocates the creation of an Islamic Sunni state in a region that
encompasses mainly northern Iraq and eastern Syria. At first they were a disorganized
group. They grew in size and strength in December, when they occupied the Sunni
city of Ramadi. The center of Iraq, represented by
Anbar Province and a good portion of the north, has lived under ISIL command for months. There is no official data on its actual
size, but the Iraq Interior Ministry estimates that its members number in the
thousands. In January, military leader Abu Bakr
al-Baghdadi declared the independence of these regions under their control. Since
the organization marched toward Baghdad a month ago, panic has taken hold.
Three important cities, Fallujah, Mosul and Tikrit, were
taken by militiamen in a few days. Tal Afar also succumbed. Cornered, the Iraqi
Army abandoned Kirkut, a major oil producer, which
was then taken by the Kurds. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis fled their homes
and cities. Reports of the cold-blooded assassinations of ISIL
opponents have spread worldwide.
Posted By Worldmeets.US
It is hard to deny that ISIL is just
the latest incarnation of the effects of the disastrous occupation 11 years
ago. Not only for what it provoked, but for having opened the doors to other
interventions. Iraq, like Syria, became a field of action for foreign jihadi fighters - Saudis, Libyans, Tunisians, but also
Europeans. Peter Neumann, a researcher at King’s College in London, confirmed
to the BBC that 80 percent of the thousands of foreigners who went to Syria to
fight in the civil war had joined ISIL. A victim of intervention,
Iraq remains a testing ground for foreign ideological practices, whether American
democracy or Saudi fundamentalism.
The Iraqi irony seems to be the incapacity of the country to
walk alone, trapped in a vicious cycle of interventions. Paul Bremer, an
American diplomat during the invasion years, wrote
in The Wall Street Journal that
Obama was wrong to withdraw the United States from Iraq.
So is the solution for the country, already taken over by
jihadists of various nations, be an even bigger
international intervention? Washington is considering its options, having
already returned via air. Iran is determined to protect Shiite holy sites, and its
neighboring government. Saudi Arabia, accused by Iran of inciting instability
in Syria and Iraq with its export of jihadists, will continue to be active in
the region. Far from being a free and democratic nation, Iraq remains a
battlefield.
