Iraq
Faces Civil War
And Sectarian Partition
By Julie Hyland
05 August 2006
World
Socialist Web
Iraq
is sliding into civil war and sectarian partition. That is the view
of leading personnel in the British foreign service, the US military
and the government of Iraq itself.
A leaked diplomatic brief
from William Patey, Britain’s outgoing ambassador to Iraq, revealed
his assessment that the country was more likely to descend into civil
war and sectarian division than evolve into the stable democracy claimed
by Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George Bush.
Extracts from the brief,
which was sent to Blair, senior government officials and military commanders
in Iraq and Afghanistan, were published by the BBC. In it Patey warns
that “the prospect of a low intensity civil war and a de facto
division of Iraq is probably more likely at this stage than a successful
and substantial transition to a stable democracy.
“Even the lowered expectation
of President Bush for Iraq—a government that can sustain itself,
defend itself and govern itself and is an ally in the war on terror—must
remain in doubt.”
Patey’s brief was intended
as friendly advice to the government. But it flatly contradicts the
efforts by London and Washington to dismiss concerns over the extreme
dangers facing not merely by US and British troops, but by the Iraqi
people as a result of the invasion of their country.
In his speech to the Los
Angeles World Affairs Council earlier this week, Blair claimed that
the invasion of Iraq was crucial for ensuring global security and in
helping moves “towards democracy in the Arab world.”
Patey’s memo warns
of the growing resistance faced by the occupation forces in Iraq. The
major priority now is to prevent militia organizations, such as the
Mahdi Army led by the Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, becoming “a
state within a state, as Hezbollah has done in Lebanon,” he cautions.
This requires the more effective use of Iraqi troops as British forces
are unable to “confront the militias alone.”
Referring to British and
US claims of an early “handover” to Iraqi security forces,
the dispatch states that “too much talk of an early exit from
Iraq” will only “weaken our position.”
Hours after the brief was
leaked, Patey’s assessment was validated by two senior US generals.
Questioned on their response
to Patey’s views by the US Senate Armed Services Committee, General
John Abizaid, the leading US commander in the Middle East, said, “I
believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I have seen
it in Baghdad in particular, and that if not stopped, it is possible
Iraq could move towards civil war.”
General Peter Pace, chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, concurred, stating, “We do have
the possibility of that devolving into civil war.”
Especially since the bombing
of the Shiite Al-Askariya mosque in February, sectarian violence has
escalated. An average of 100 Iraqis per day are now estimated to be
killed in bombings and shootings and 40 are kidnapped daily.
In March, Iraq’s former
prime minister, Iyad Allawi, said, “We are losing each day as
an average 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this
is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is.”
Iraq was moving towards a
“point of no return,” he continued, when the country would
inevitably fragment. “It will not only fall apart but sectarianism
will spread through the region, and even Europe and the US will not
be spared the violence that results.”
At his monthly press conference
Thursday, Blair attempted to ward off questions on Patey’s memo,
telling reporters, “However difficult it is, [we must] stay the
course.”
But there is no question
that a civil war is already under way. Moreover, it is not simply the
unintended or unforeseen consequence of the invasion.
In its efforts to stamp out
resistance to its illegal occupation of the country, the US has consciously
pursued a “divide and rule” strategy, promoting Kurdish
and Shiite organizations at the expense of Sunni Arabs.
Much of the US-recruited
Iraqi army is drawn from Kurdish nationalists and Shiite fundamentalists
who are being employed to suppress the largely Sunni-based resistance
movement alongside American forces. Sunni groups have launched sectarian
attacks on Shiites and Shiite militias have in turn targeted the Sunni
population.
The Independent newspaper
acknowledged that “the Iraqi government ... does not really control
its own armed forces, which often take their orders from Kurdish, Sunni
or Shia communal leaders. Sunni districts in Baghdad see the police
and police commandos as officially sanctioned deaths squads. Shia districts
say only their own militiamen can protect them from suicide bombers.”
The violence is displacing
families and creating segregated ghettos, with data showing that Sunnis
and other minorities are quitting the south, and Shiites leaving Baghdad
and the north. According to reports, the Tigris River in Baghdad is
becoming a dividing line between a Sunni west and Shiite south.
The latest figures show that
tens of thousands of Iraqis have fled their homes. Last month alone,
more than 30,000 people registered as refugees with the migration ministry.
Some 162,000 people have registered for help in the past five months.
The ministry has set up 11 tent camps for refugees, including one in
the southern city of Diwaniya where 10,000 Shiite refugees had taken
up residence.
The “national unity”
government headed by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is based on
an unstable alliance between Kurdish nationalists, Shiite sectarian
parties and some Sunni organizations, whilst the US-sponsored constitution
allows for the de facto partition into a Kurdish north and a Shiite
south. Not only does this exclude Sunnis from any share in the oil-rich
areas, it means that the various parties have a vested interest in fortifying
their control by enforcing communal divisions.
According to the Independent,
a senior Iraqi government official has said “Iraq as a political
project is finished” and that “the parties have moved to
plan B.”
The official told the newspaper
“that the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties were now looking at
ways to divide Iraq between them and to decide the future of Baghdad,
where there is a mixed population. ‘There is serious talk of Baghdad
being divided into [Shia] east and [Sunni] west,’ he said.”
On August 1, Iraq’s
vice president, Adel Abd al-Mahdi, said that the Shia Iraqi Coalition,
the largest parliamentary bloc, intended to raise the issue of a Shia
federal state, stretching from Babylon, 100 kilometres south of Baghdad,
to Basra.
“Federalism is constitutionally
secured. We have to work seriously on this issue, and figure out the
necessary mechanism to switch to federalism,” he said.
In addition, ongoing US efforts
to suppress resistance to its occupation have contributed to an upsurge
in the violence.
In June, Maliki announced
“Operation Forward Together,” aimed at “pacifying”
Baghdad. Some 4,000 US troops have been redeployed to the capital to
participate in a 75,000-strong force enforcing roadblocks, curfews and
house raids in an effort to shore up the Maliki government, which has
little legitimacy, let alone control.
Both Patey’s comments
and those of the US generals indicate that the US and Britain intend
to step up such repression. Certainly the singling out of the Mahdi
army for confrontation indicates a further clampdown against the majority
Shiite population in the south.
Having failed to extinguish
opposition to the occupation, there is a growing chorus of leading policy
advisers who are positively advocating the division of the country.
Some of these have long favoured such a scenario, as it would enable
the US to concentrate on securing the country’s oilfields.
Patey’s remarks are
almost identical to those of Peter Galbraith, former US ambassador to
Croatia, who wrote in the New York Review of Books in May 2004, “Civil
war and the break-up of Iraq are more likely outcomes than a successful
transition to a pluralistic Western-style democracy.”
Galbraith, writing under
the heading “How to get out of Iraq,” was positively advocating
such a scenario. As someone who played an integral role in the division
of the Balkans into competing, ethnically based western protectorates,
his latest book, The End of Iraq, argues for the partition of the country
into separate Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite areas as the “only route
to peace.”
Daniel Pipes, the director
of the neo-conservative Middle East Forum, has also endorsed civil war
in Iraq, arguing that it would be a strategic advantage to the US because
it would “reduce coalition casualties” as Iraqis “fight
each other.”
Such suggestions are as reckless
as they are absurd. Not only would it be a disaster for Iraq itself,
the civil war and ethnic cleansing necessary to accomplish it would
inevitably presage a broader military conflagration across the Middle
East and beyond.
But from Afghanistan, to
Iraq and now Lebanon, Washington and London have demonstrated their
indifference to the plight of the Arab masses. Motivated solely by the
drive to establish hegemony over the strategic geopolitical resources
of the Middle East, the imperialist powers have set into motion processes
that guarantee instability and breakdown.