Honorable Iraq Diffusion

The February 22nd bomb attack that destroyed the gilded dome of the 1000-year-old Shiite mausoleum of Iman Ali al-Hadi in Samarra, was the most graphic visual of the gilded political rubble the U.S. has created in Iraq, and also a sneak preview of the current civil war in Iraq. While Iraqi politicians and U.S. bureaucrats haggle over the formula of a national unity government, the repeated weekly suicide bombings of Shiite mosques remind us of how futile their effort to unite Iraq is.

The December 15, 2005 Iraqi election to choose the country’s first full-term parliament was hailed universally as a “historic day” for democracy because of the “great turnout.” Iraqis were not voting for a united Iraq. They were voting for sectarian separation. The jubilant Iraqi voters were not excited about a democratic Iraq. They were excited about the prospects of devolution and a diffused Iraq.

Iraqis know that a unified Iraq is unsustainable for four reasons: history, religion, ethnicity and politics. They also know the appearance of unity will hasten the removal of U.S. and coalition troops. Both Republican and Democratic leaders have promised Americans that up to 50,000 of the 160,000 U.S. military personnel there will be back home before the 2006 congressional elections. The majority of people went to the polls as Shia, Sunni or Kurds – not as Iraqis -- to expedite the departure of U.S. troops. The forces pulling Iraq apart are greater than those trying to glue it together. Iraq is torn apart by sectarian religious and cultural centrifugal forces highlighted by the shrine bombing that America can only manage constructively if it acknowledges the country cannot be kept together and that more troops will be needed before America can leave with honor.

The fundamentalist sectarians received nearly 90 percent of the nationwide vote. The U.S.-British backed secular and nationalist candidates lost even though they ran well financed campaigns with slick television ads. Their dream of establishing a pro-western secular democracy in a united Iraq has failed.

The new constitution Iraq approved on October 15, 2005 created three de facto states -- Shiite in the south, Kurdish in the north, and Sunni in the center. Local laws are superior to national law. The Shiites in the south and the Kurds in the north will own newly discovered oil reserves – which are in the Shiite south and Kurdish north. The only remaining issue is the revenue share formula for the Sunnis share of the oil revenues.

Most of the armed and police forces being trained by the U.S. led coalition forces are Shiite and Kurds. The more the U.S. military hands over prematurely to “Iraqis,” the more it will be handing over to Shia and Kurdish militia members that are bent more on advancing ethnic and religious interests than on defeating the insurgency or preserving national unity.

To think that the Kurds and Shiites in Iraq can forget their history and embrace the Sunnis in one central government is delusional and defies reality. Ultimately, the deep, vindictive ethnic and religious factions will fracture the government and country. Nationalism, as manifested by Kurds, Sunni and Shiite Arabs, is no different than the nationalism expressed by the new democratic republics that were part of the former Soviet Union, the Serbs, Croats and Macedonians in Yugoslavia, or the Czechs and Slovaks in Czechoslovakia. The World War I remnants of the Austria-Hungary Empire are no different than Iraq, itself a remnant of the Ottoman Empire.

The artificial borders of Iraq were created by its British colonial overlord to facilitate domination and control of the oil and can only be enforced by an oppressive authoritarian regime. The colonial borders must disappear for democracy to flourish as was the case in the former Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. Likewise Iraq will have to be divided into three separate countries to accommodate the Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites. Trying to keep them together in one democratic state ignores the religious and ethnic historical differences and grudges that have been temporarily put aside as they try to rid their collective tribal lands of the occupying infidels.

A democratic Kurdistan and democratic Sunni and Shiite states will do to Iran and the Middle East what glasnost did to Russia and democratic Eastern Europe. Iran’s mullahs, Syria’s Baathists and the royals in Saudi Arabia will go the way of the ruling elites in Romania, Poland, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.

America can create a lasting democratic model in Iraq for the Middle East. It has to install three democratic regimes and make sure they survive. It is important to avoid another U.S. foreign policy disaster. It would be a colossal catastrophe. America must deliver on its promises to the Iraqi people, America and the world. That is the only way America can extricate itself with honor with its “mission accomplished.” America cannot afford to fail in Iraq. If it does, it will be relegated to a 21st-century debt-burdened bankrupt – financially and politically.

Peter G. de Krassel is the author of Custom Maid War and Custom Maid Spin. peter@custommaidbook.com

Unsustainable Bushistan

U.S. military deaths have exceeded 2000 and can easily reach 3000 and more. Over 30,000 Iraqis have been killed as a direct result of insurgency attacks and U.S. military actions, that is an average of 1000 per month since the war started. Some estimates are much higher claiming that anywhere from 40,000 and 70,000 have died from all manner of war-related violence, including criminal activities. The Iraqi crime rate is now the highest in the Middle East, with around 10,000 homicides a year that would not have happened before the invasion. During 2002, Saddam Hussein’s last full year in power their were 1,800 violent deaths – not counting those executed by Saddam’s regime. These numbers are testament that America has not been able to bring security and stability to Iraq.

America was and continues to be ill-suited to handle counter-insurgency operations. In fact the U.S. “cultural insensitivity, almost certainly inadvertent, arguably amounted to institutional racism,” Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, who was the second most senior officer responsible for training Iraqi security forces wrote in the U.S. army magazine Military Review.

The Bush administration “apparently paid little or no attention” to pre-war assessments by the CIA that warned of major cultural and political obstacles to stability in post-war Iraq. Two classified reports prepared for President Bush in January 2003 had predicted that a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq would increase support for political Islam and would result in a deeply divided Iraq society prone to violent internal conflict.

It is time for America to come to terms with the reality that a united democratic Iraq is unsustainable. A civil war in Iraq will lead to a broader Middle East conflict, pitting Sunnis against Shiites. U.S. National Intelligence Director and former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, John Negraponte, admitted as much in a frank assessment in Early 2006 after the bombing of the Golden Mosque. “If chaos were to descend upon Iraq, or the forces of democracy were to be defeated in that country…this would have implications for the rest of the Middle East region, and indeed, the world,” Negroponte told a Senate armed services committee. Saudi Arabia and Jordan would support Iraq’s Sunnis with Iran coming to the support of the Shiites. Despite these warnings, the Bush administration is in denial that Iraq is sliding into civil war and that the only peaceful democratic solution is to divide Iraq into three separate democratic countries.