Political pressure on President Bush to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq is gathering momentum. He should resist it. Basing a pull-out on political calculations rather than the situation on the ground will have momentous and adverse effects for the United States throughout the Arab world.
Would a sudden and massive withdrawal of American troops force Iraqi confessional groups to come together to avoid the bloodshed that almost all Iraqis dread, or would it simply precipitate a general civil war, similar to the one in Lebanon, or even the 1970 Jordanian-Palestinian conflict? Or would the massive power vacuum created invite the occupation of various parts of Iraq by Iranian and Turkish troops?
None of these scenarios is likely. Until the new Iraqi government has attained a general legitimacy and established a degree of control over Iraq, any large-scale withdrawal of U.S. troops will result not in a sudden dramatic disintegration but in a gradual erosion of the Iraqi state and of stability throughout the Middle East.
To begin with, definitions of what is meant by legitimacy and control have to be fairly specific. Legitimacy does not mean establishing a government of universal acclaim and popularity. The ferocity of the Sunni insurgent attacks on the Shi'a population and their obstructionist attitude toward the political process suggest their objective is to control Iraq rather than simply have an equitable part in governing. Their historical sense of superiority and widespread belief-despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary-that they are a numerical majority feeds this. They are being spurred by money and support from the outside Arab Sunni world, fearful of some sort of "Shi"a arc." King Abdullah II of Jordan used this term to express his apprehension of a swath of Shi'a-controlled territory emerging, that would extend from Iran through Iraq, Syria, and southern Lebanon. In actuality the Alawis of Syria (a distant offshoot of Shi"ism), who constitute about 15% of the population, are not really thought of as fellow Shi'a by the Iraqi Shi'a. This Sunni fear, combined with a general tendency among Western scholars and journalists to view Shi'a Arabs as religious fanatics and extremists, supports the mantra that without full Sunni support any government freely elected will be dead on arrival.
Neither does control imply tight government presence in every village and square mile of Iraq. That was not true even under the draconian rule of Saddam Hussein. Kurdish and border areas near Syria and Iran will always be areas of tenuous government control. Revenge killings and sectarian strife will not be eliminated. For the U.S.-led Coalition to withdraw, an Iraqi government elected by a majority must have essential control of the major cities, especially Baghdad, and the provincial capitals. The government must also secure the transportation arteries between them, as well as the oil fields and pipelines. If the Coalition leaves before these conditions are met, then the Iraqi state will begin to erode and disintegrate.
Division of Iraq Not an Option
It has been suggested that the division of Iraq may be the only solution, with the establishment of Arab Sunni, Arab Shi'a, and Kurdish autonomous states. The problem with this is that the Kurds will have oil, the Shi'a will not only have oil but also the "garden of Eden," a rich agricultural area, while the Sunnis will have mostly desert. Given their truculence and somewhat justified sense of potential deprivation, Sunnis are unlikely to accept this arrangement. Aided by outside support, the conflict will continue. Just as the division of Yemen did not create stability, but rather a scenario for conflict and the eventual absorption of South Yemen by North Yemen, the division of Iraq will result in perpetual conflict between the mini-states, spurred by the inequity of natural resources.
It should be recognized that while the Kurds managed to create an educated political elite under the protection of the Coalition after Gulf War I, the Shi'a have not had the same opportunity. Just as the mere issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation did not prepare the blacks of the South to take their place in society, neither did the liberation of the Shi'a from the Saddam regime. For at least 80 years, and some would say centuries, they have been held in a subjugated status, with only limited opportunities for top leadership positions within the military, the bureaucracy, or political sectors. It will take time to generate an educated elite comfortable with the reins of power.
There will be no Iranian, Syrian, or even Turkish armies pouring across the border. They all have very good internal and external reasons for not doing so. With massive internal problems, the Syrians are very weak. The Turks no longer have a state wrapped around their army. There would be great political resistance to the Turks trying to absorb a hostile population that would likely reignite the rebellion within their own restive Kurdish population. Moreover, the Turks, particularly fearful of a further dilution of their Turkish ethnicity, are also facing a potential conflict between the increasingly vocal Islamic traditionalists and the more secular Alevi population. The generally quiet Alevis, a distant branch of Shi'ism and a much higher percentage of the population than the Turks care to admit, have been mobilized politically by the fundamentalist Sunni Islamic trend in Turkey. As for the Iranians, the spectacle of Darius' Immortals breaching the border, even in the Shi'a south, would be one sure way of reuniting the Iraqi Arabs.
Unfortunately, the notion of Iraqi politicians faced with an impending civil war suddenly becoming statesmen and ceasing to play to the galleries is dangerously wrong. As has been seen following the December elections, the cries of foul play from disgruntled losers are mostly theater, but they continue to polarize the population, something that Iraqi politicians in their quest for power seem to worry about very little. However, it is unlikely to be an all-out civil war between communities that turn on each other with the fanaticism and savagery witnessed in Rwanda. Despite the polarization, almost every extended family among the middle and upper class has mixed Sunni and Shi'a members through intermarriage, and most of the major Sunni tribes have Shi'a branches. Within Baghdad's middle and upper class mixed neighborhoods there is very little communal violence, but the low level of revenge killings of former Ba'athists by some Shi'a groups and the mostly indiscriminate Sunni violence against the Shi'a will no doubt continue for some time.
The Middle Eastern Way of War
What is most likely is a withering Iraqi state, dominated by irresponsible politicians who would invite the security services and money of outside Arab and Middle East powers to shore up their power base within Iraq. This is the Middle Eastern way of war. The Iraqi invasions of Kuwait and Iran were aberrations. The various contending neighbors would use subversion and propaganda, and bundles of money, with respective outside security services coalescing around their champion. Before being too critical of Iraq's leadership it must be remembered that Saddam Hussein systematically eliminated anyone who displayed leadership potential. Those not killed fled and lived for years outside Iraq. Like the Palestinians of the Palestine Liberation Organization leadership, they basically lost contact with their own people.
Within the context of evaluating these possible scenarios, the key to predicting the cohesiveness of the Iraqi state will be understanding the identity of the Iraqi people. How strong is Iraqi nationalism vis-à-vis communal identity, or Arab identity versus Islamic sectarian identity? Bernard Lewis, in his book, The Multiple Identities of the Middle East (New York, 1998), has described the tendency of Middle Easterners to have many personalities. Not only are they multiple, they are sometimes transitory and shifting, with outside events often being the catalysts. Their identities as Iraqis, Muslims, Shi'a, or Sunni are not fixed in terms of priority.
An Iranian invasion, as previously mentioned, would most certainly bring out the Arab/Iraqi identity over the Shi'a. In the Iran-Iraq War both sides miscalculated the loyalty of their neighbor peoples. Saddam was under the illusion that in the oil-rich part of Iran, once called Arabistan by the British, the Arabs of Iran would rally to his cause. They did not. Apparently there was an equally illusionary belief on the part of the Iranians that the Shi'a of Iraq, who constituted the bulk of the enlisted ranks of the army, would defect to the Iranians. They did not. Of course the summary executions and general climate of fear were factors, but they do not adequately explain the general loyalty of the Iraqi Shi'a soldier to his Sunni-controlled nation over that of his Iranian Shi'a co-religionists. So if the people who live there make these mistakes in cultural intelligence, how can we make any prognostications with any degree of certainty? I doubt we can, but at least we can avoid the one-size-fits-all caricatures that up to now have bedeviled our efforts to establish lines of communication with the Iraqi people.
Because of the ethnic and religious strife so common in the Middle East, the power of the state is often underestimated. Meanwhile, the view that the Arab states created by the colonial Western powers are artificial and undermined by tribal and sectarian loyalties overemphasized. The ability of the state to grant favors, largess, confer honors, and create jobs can be a powerful centralizing factor.
While in Iraq as an attached member of a psychological operations unit in 2003, I worked with Iraqi translator-interpreters who were from all ethnic and religious communities and lived in various parts of Baghdad. While working with these very talented people, I noted several incidents that, in an anecdotal way, illustrate the problem of precisely describing the identity of the Iraqi people at any given moment in time.
I observed that the Iraqis coming to work in the Green Zone never seemed to be interested in even looking at the various buildings that housed the Saddam regime, many of them destroyed and reduced to piles of rubble. I asked one of the most pro-American interpreters working with us about this and she said that every time she saw the destruction, it reminded her they were a "defeated people." Her Iraqi identity at that moment was greater than her very strong Shi'a identity.
Upon hearing the news Saddam had been captured, all the translators with whom I worked were ecstatic, including the one Sunni Arab Iraqi. Later I noticed he was glum. I asked him why and he said that the television clips of Saddam being swabbed were offensive. I asked why and he replied, "Because he is the president of our republic." Like most Iraqis of all the confessional groups he was happy that Saddam was captured, but later his Sunni loyalty re-emerged.
I was also in Baghdad when an "anti-terrorism" demonstration was held. It was primarily an occasion to show the muscle of various sectarian and political groups. I noticed that the communist group was very large, having a number of women among the marchers, most wearing the hijab. While interviewing a former Iraqi officer, I asked him about this and his answer was illuminating. He said that Iraq was the only country in the world where you could be a dedicated communist and devout Muslim at the same time.
A Complex Population
The Iraqi population is the most complex in the Middle East. While many general Arab traits are present, such as the tendency to see every situation in terms of a conspiracy, there are many unique Iraqi characteristics. Iraqi coworkers told me that in order to understand Iraqi culture I needed to read the works of Dr. Ali Al-Wardi, a famous Iraqi historian and writer on Iraqi society. His book, The Character of the Iraqi Individual, was partially translated for me by one of the many young Iraqi women who risk their lives every day to work for a democratic Iraq. Dr. Al-Wardi outlines the "dualism" of the Iraqi character, the oscillation between submissiveness and rebellion, between the ethos of the desert and the culture of the "frustrated farmer," obsequious to those over him but cruel to those below him, a society of rulers and the ruled.
He goes on to describe the conventions of child raising that tend to condition young men to cycles of anarchic behavior that alternate with meekness when confronted with authority. This tendency was further inculcated by the education system that emphasized concealment of individual feeling and anger, resulting in a culture of envy and scorn for those who achieve more in life.
Culture of Violence
The bloody history of Iraq, with its constant wars and state terrorism, has engendered a culture of violence and created thousands of homeless children, the ubiquitous street children found in all Iraqi cities. The calculated policies of the Ba'ath Party to facilitate its control resulted in the diminution of the traditional family and increased emphasis on sectarian divisions.
Finally, one additional factor that has sown the seeds of continuing bitterness is the "resettlement" policies of the former regime, forcing many thousands of people from their ancestral homes, destroying their culture, and creating a dependency on the government. Given these socio-political factors, one should marvel that the Iraqis have managed to hold it together thus far, particularly since our demonstrated understanding of Iraqi society and the magnitude of the task at hand have left much to be desired-to put it as diplomatically as possible.
It is really a very simple equation. The Coalition, meaning the United States, must remain in Iraq to protect the revolution. It is a revolution engendered by outside intervention, but a revolution nonetheless. It is a revolution in that we are assisting the Iraqis to transform their economy, from a nanny state to one of free enterprise, the military from a coercive regime-protection instrument to one that will defend the constitution, the political environment from one of oppression to one that is representative of the people, and a society from one that was all but destroyed by the social and political engineering of the Ba'ath regime to one that is being rebuilt and renewed. We must provide the firewall behind which the Iraqi people are allowed to work their own way toward a decent, representative, non-oppressive government.
One point is incontestable. If Iraq fails, the real losers will be the people of the Middle East. The state-controlled media will graphically demonstrate each day the evils wrought by "democracy." The cautious advance toward democracy will be set back for another generation. The general instability of the Middle East will continue and, as 9/11 so graphically illustrated, we are not immune to the socio-political convulsions that have been endemic in the modern history of that troubled region.
Colonel De Atkine is a former foreign area specialist who has taught Middle Eastern political-military affairs within the special operations community for the last 17 years. A graduate of the masters program at the American University of Beirut, he lived for 8 years in the Arab world and traveled extensively throughout the region. He was the military attaché in Amman, Jordan at the time of the 1970 Jordanian civil war and director of Army programs in the Office of Military Cooperation from 1981 to1983 as Egypt began its conversion from Soviet to U.S. military armament.