Iraq’s tragedy of errors from Saddam the CIA agent to ISIL's Takeover of Mosul
Late
last week, the world was awakened to the news of the Islamic State in Iraq and
Levant’s capture of Iraq’s second largest city. The rapid disintegration of the
larger and better-equipped Iraqi army caught everyone with surprise. World
media sounded the alarm. The violent al-Qaeda-affiliated group has overtaken
Mosul on its way to Baghdad. This focus on the ISIL says more about the world’s
image of the movement than its actual size and contribution to the events on
the ground. It overlooks the fact that the movement is a part of a mosaic of
Sunni groups disgruntled with the rule of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
Without
the actions of all these forces combined, ISIL could not have done more than the
asymmetric warfare, which it has been carrying out since 2006. It is true that ISIL’s
ranks have some of the most war-hardened fighters in the region, but neither
its traditional tactics nor its light nature warranted a major operation such
as the takeover of Mosul.
More
important than collapsing the work of all Sunni combatants into a war of a few
hours and attributing it all to the ISIL, much of what has been written about
Iraq sheds far too little light on the historical context which on close
inspection shows that recent events where both predictable and inevitable.
This
is not to downplay, legitimate or reprobate the ISIL or the role it has played
or going to play as the crisis takes an international dimension as it
inevitably will: Iraq is a rich country where too many actors are invested, and
no one will wait and see how the storm ends.
What
this essay hopes to highlight is that the current events are a part of a long
tragedy of errors; a long history of mishaps, of missed opportunities, of shady
deals, of meaningless wars, and foreign meddling. A tragedy of this historical
background is a tragedy that is likely to drag in many players and one that is
likely to linger, even if half victories are celebrated by one camp or the
other. Big guns often win, but they also tend to change hands.
The distant roots of Iraq’s
Tragedy of Error
If
one is to trace the early acts of this tragedy in post-independence Iraq, one
must inevitably address the cooperation between Saddam Hussein and the C.I.A, which goes as far back as 1958. This
cooperation paved the way for the violent rule of Saddam Hussein, and to a bloody
trail preceding his ascension to power and proceeding therefrom. Thanks to the assistance
of the CIA and a number of other Western intelligence agencies, Saddam, who
became effectively the president of Iraq in 1973—although not in name until
1979, was able to establish a network of security organizations whose tactics
and warring henchmen would spread a culture of terror and violence.
During
his 30 years of effective rule, Saddam emptied Iraq of all political figures
with leadership potentials. Those politicians who managed to scape death in
Iraq were pursued by hired assassins to wherever they lived. The surviving
remnants were either unable or unwilling to resist pursuing the path of the
very man they opposed: cooperating with foreign intelligence agencies. This
depletion of Iraq’s nationalist leadership would have an adverse effect on the
effort to rebuild the Iraqi state after the fall of Hussein. But it was only
one of Iraq’s many woes.
Iraq’s road to
sectarianism
Even
if one is to dismiss the CIA-Hussein love affair as somehow ancient history,
the triggers of the most recent acts of Iraq’s tragedy still featured the same
co-conspirators, albeit as they stood on opposite sides. Unlike the coup
attempts between 1958 and 1963 and the continuous investment in the rising Baath
strongman, the immediate causes of the most recent events were not covert
operations, but a well-publicized invasion in 2003.
When
American bombers started its ‘shock and awe’ campaign in March of 2003, there
was no Islamic State of Iraq. In fact, there was no significant Islamist
militant presence in the country. The exception was a small indolent Kurdish
group (by the name of Ansar al-Islam) in the northern areas. Of course, the US
made a show by awakening its members from their caves. But they did not play
then nor do they play now any rule. Much of the forces that are now playing a
role in the current political and militant tangram of Iraq were nurtured in the
post invasion environment.
Rolling
into Baghdad 18 days into the war with Blackwater and other mercenary contractors,
corrupt Iraqi politicians from exile and the benediction from Iraq’s main Shi‘i
cleric, Sistani, America and her allies had all the necessary ingredients to
transform Iraq.
The
invaders had a special reading of Iraqi history and a vision of how to fix it.
They believed that the struggle in Iraq is shaped by religious differences, not
political platforms. A corollary of that belief was the idea that the struggle
was taking place within the Arabic community since the Kurds already have an
autonomous region. Excluding the Kurds
meant that the Shi‘i sect would constitute the majority. It follows that, since
the president during the last twenty-two years was a Sunni, a correction of
that unfair history is crucial for the future of the state. The push to
compensate Shi‘is for the unjust history was in part driven by America’s own
guilt toward its past, particularly turning blind eyes to the repression of the
1991 revolt.
Although not necessarily driven by a desire to
divide prerogatives along sectarian lines, the outcome was precisely that: a
sectarian vision, a sectarian rhetoric, and predictably sectarian policies. It
made matters considerably worse that some of the Iraqi advisers to the
Provisional Authority came with strong sectarian biases and extensive ties with
Iran.
It
suffices to highlight this aspect of Iraqi politics to look at the profile of
two influential figures in the current regime: Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki
(who concentrates in his hands vast powers, especially in matters related to
security and armed forces) and the Minister of Transportation (who is at the
same time the head of the Shi‘i extremist militia Faylaq Badr), Hadi al-‘Amiri. Both have deep ties with the Iranian
intelligence community. Faylaq Badr is one of four main Shi‘i militias ( Faylaq Badr, Jaysha l-Mahdi, ‘Asa’ib ahl
al-Haq, and the Iraqi branch of Hezbollah).
The first two of these were active in the summer of 2003 before any Sunni palpable
counterpart emerged.
Al-‘Amiri’s
Faylaq Badr, received considerable
assistance and training from Iran since its early creation in 1981. Once in
Iraq after the invasion, al-‘Amiri became an ally of al-Maliki, which allowed
him to place his men from Faylaq Badr
in sensitive posts in the security apparatus. In position of power, Al-‘Amiri
exacted revenge on many former senior military officers. Although some of what
he did in Iran is unknown, many Iraqi prisoners of war claimed he tortured them
during their captivity in Iran.
The
regime’s main figure, al-Maliki, has also along sectarian history and deep ties
with the Iranians. During the period
from 1979 to 1987, he was the leader of the military wing of the Hizb al-Ad‘wa, which took the Iranian
side in the war. Al-Maliki’s first assignment after the invasion was to assist
the director of the De-Baathification Program. In that post, al-Maliki made
sure to purge all his foes from the system and introduce his allies.
This
direction would encourage the awakening of sectarian sentiments. The vying for
dominance was not only raging in the government hallways but on the airwaves as
well. The sudden and unmonitored deregulation of the Iraqi media sector opened
the gates for a cacophony of conflicting channels. Rising rapidly with dubious
backing, the new actors aggressively pursued conflicting agendas, fanning in
the process the flames of sectarian grievances. This chaotic atmosphere was unprecedented.
In the pre-invasion Iraq, the media was exclusively state-owned, and its
content strictly state-controlled. Despite
its savagery, Saddam Hussein’s regime didn’t allow sectarian divisions to play any
role in either public policy or public discourse.
The unlearned lessons:
al-Qaeda emergence, defeat and second rise
When
Bush would declare— 22 days after his troops entered Baghdad— the war a
‘mission accomplished,’ the signs of trouble were already looming. Within days
the Americans were taking casualties due to resistance operations. Erupting
mostly from Sunni areas, the resistance spread to most of the north, west and
center of Iraq, reaching a number of Shi‘i cities. After Shi‘i resistance
elements were quickly neutralized, Shi‘i politicians put their cultural
expertise and sectarian militias at the service of their American allies to
help put down the fierce resistance in the Sunni areas.
Showing
little restrains, these militias raided Sunni neighborhoods, using brutal
tactics to force residents to cooperate. Many men were executed and many women
were raped.
The
gruesome images and stories of Sunni plight would not only enrage local Sunnis
but would also draw in foreign forces. Chiefly motivated by sectarian revenge
and lacking an appreciation of Iraqi tribal and sectarian ties, the new comers
pursued brutal tactics (car bombing amongst other things), which exacerbated
sectarian tension and confused the Iraqi resistance scene.
The
confusion was so great that the Ayman al-Zawahiri—then al-Qaeda’s second in
command—felt the need to address from his location in Afghanistan Abu Mus‘ab
al-Zarqawi, then a rising figure in what proved to be a bloody and protracted
war. The missive, which came in early October of 2005, highlighted two
important points in al-Qaeda’s strategic thinking. The first was that the
American presence in Iraq is temporary and that the movement should think
beyond their presence. The second point was that the organization would like to
impart to the Iraqi branch the bitter lesson learned after 9/11: targeting
civilians is not popular amongst Muslims.
Al-Zarqawi,
the Jordanian fighter, who had some training in Afghanistan and some prison
time in Jordan, was doing in war what many Iraqis working with the US were
doing in politics: rapidly transforming the fighting in the Iraqi theatre into
sectarian battlefield. Al-Zawahiri warned that this was terribly damaging the
reputation of the Iraqi resistance, which had given the Arab mujahedeen (now
under the banner of al-Qaeda) a second chance, and a friendlier environment.
Al-Zarqawi
had pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda a year earlier. His declaration was a
surprise to most Islamists who knew of discord between Osama Bin Laden and
Zarqawi, discord going back to the latter’s stay in Afghanistan. Because of
that discord Zarqawi avoided acknowledging the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.
Doctrinally,
al-Zarqawi shares with al-Qaeda the belief in the need to militate for a Muslim
world free of (what both sides see as) the most insidious aspect of the
colonial legacy: the nation-state. Like almost all the ranks and files of the
mother organization, al-Zarqawi and his men were Salafis. Beyond this,
al-Zarqawi and his Shaykh Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi espoused far more radical
views than the mother organization, more particularly a strong anti-Shi‘i
feelings.
Despite
Zawahiri’s warning, al-Zarqawi and his group continued their extensive use of
indiscriminate suicide bombings, further fueling a civil war that had began
with a sectarian purge committed by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior and other
state organs under the guise of debaathification.
Although
al-Qaeda in Afghanistan sent more than one message to the same effect,
al-Zarqawi disregarded them. The discord between the mother organization and
the branch in Iraq was kept hidden, however, and business proceeded as usual. The
Iraqi branch continued its attacks, targeting houses of worship, crowded
markets and Shi‘i shrines. Sunnis accused of ties with the regime or the
Americans were targeted as well.
This
provoked a global outrage and discords within the Sunni camp in Iraq and
beyond. Tensions between al-Qaeda in Iraq and other resistance groups, such as
Iraq’s Islamic Army, intensified. This would prove disastrous both to al-Qaeda
but also to the Iraqi resistance. American military leaders, who were looking
for a way out of the seemingly endless asymmetric warfare in which their army
was embroiled, saw an opportunity to turn Iraqi tribal leaders against their
ungrateful guest, al-Qaeda in Iraq. That was the beginning of the Sahawat phenomenon and a major blow to
al-Qaeda’s influence in Iraq.
The
Americans knew from the beginning that— although enlisting and paying off
tribal leaders would provide a respite for their embattled troops— it would not
resolve the rising sectarian problem in the long term. Yet, they took no real
steps to systematically address the sectarian schism. The opportunity presented
by the Sunni active participation in the fight against al-Qaeda was missed.
Instead
of pushing for national reconciliation, sectarian-based policies became the
norm. Nouri al-Maliki, who had been ascending the political ladder in his party
and also in the Iraqi regime,
remained loyal to his sectarian vision even after he assumed the Prime
Minister’s office in 2006. Instead of reaching out to the disgruntled Sunnis
who were for much of the period from 2007 until January of 2014 willing to
settle for some concessions on his part, he sent his ground troops as well as
his bombers to silence their protests.
After
the American partial withdrawal, al-Maliki grew more dictatorial. What could
have become a small Sunni uprising with limited demands (at a time when
sectarian emotions run high throughout the region) was faced with draconian
measures. Thousands of men were detained and hundreds were killed. Stories of
detainees’ abuse, of mass rape, of sectarian militias joining the Iraqi army to
participating in looting and pillaging of Sunni areas abounded. Videos and
other records proclaiming to highlight some of these brutal measures were
posted on various websites and circulated across the Sunni cyber space.
To
make matters worse, Sunni tribal leaders of the Sahawat, which the Americans enlisted to defeat al-Qaeda during the
‘Surge’ did not represent a credible political class to help tie the Sunnis to
the political system. Despite the sympathy they garnered during their war of
attrition against the men of al-Zarqawi and his successor al-Baghdadi, the sahawat squandered that political
capital, favoring al-Maliki’s favors over their own community interests. This
situation left the Sunni Arab with far fewer options.
ISIL exploits the void
Since
last summer the Sunni areas have been simmering with discontent. Although some Sunni leaders remained reluctant
to take up arms against al-Maliki, fearing a fate similar to that of their
Syrian brethren, that was all changing by autumn. Sunni groups began targeting Iraqi
security units. These were mostly tactical attacks since some Sunnis still believed
that pressuring al-Maliki through peaceful demonstrations and perhaps some
limited violence would yield some outcome. Al-Malik made a major
miscalculation, judging that not conceding to any demand is better than
conceding any ground. The latter approach, he feared, would embolden the
dissenters and fuel more rebellion.
Around
this time, the disciples of al-Zarqawi who had five years earlier found the
Sunny Triangle suddenly inhospitable having made too many enemies were again
bogged down in Syria. The Syrian regime’s choice three years earlier to turn
the Syrian uprising into a sectarian strife, the injudicious decision by
Hezbollah to come to Assad’s rescue, and the parallel Saudi decision to
encourage undesired elements to plunge into the Syrian incinerator gave the
fading movement a conducive environment to regroup, weakly defended arms depots
to take and influx of fresh recruits as well as old connections from the
Arabian peninsula.
In
Syria, the movement had for a while some success, garnering the respect of some
Sunnis inside and outside Syrian. Despite these successes in Syrian, the
movement’s presence in Iraq remained until recently very negligible. The tribal
dislike of the movement leader, al-Baghdadi, had discouraged the latter and his
men of trying to enter Sunni areas. Soon the foolhardy al-Baghdadi would spoil
all the hard fought gains both in terms of territory and reputation by entering
a messy conflict with Jabhat al-Nusra
and its emir, Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani. The traditional discord between
al-Qaeda’s main group, which has become progressively sensitive to its public
image within the Sunni constituent, and the obdurate Iraqi branch resurfaced.
As
Zarqawi had earlier done in Iraqi, al-Baghdadi declared a branch of ISIL, Jabhat al-Nusra, a traitor group and
proceeded to fight them. Al-Baghdadi won some of the battles against al-Jabha, much to the delight of Assad’s
supporters. But the new campaign of fratricide would cost al-Baghdadi his
reputation inside and outside Syrian, and many of his fresh recruits started to
desert his camp. Even al-Qaeda declared him a renegade force, and on May 3rd,
Zawahiri urged al-Baghdadi
to quit Syria and turn attention to Iraq, where more work needed to be done.
Within
the month, al-Baghdadi did what Zawahiri wanted. This was more likely not
because al-Baghdadi has become suddenly a faithful disciple but because the
poor strategist is a clever tactician. The policies of al-Maliki have become so
unbearable that most Sunni areas where in revolt and a small amount of trained
gamblers could change the tide. Al-Baghdadi moved in a contingent of his men
from Syria to take the prize. As statements’ from his organization reveal, he was
himself surprised both by how welcome he was and by the speed and the scale of the
Iraqi army’s disintegration. Staging the takeover of the Mosul is no doubt an
efficient recruitment tool for a movement whose reputation was very much on the
wane. ISIL now could claim to be saving the Sunni Iraqis after the latter had
forced it out a few years back.
America’s role and options
While
it is true that neither the late Hussein nor the Americans are actively
involved in this round of conflict, one thing should be emphasized. Having
covertly supported the delinquent Saddam Hussein of late 1950s, making his
ascension to power unavoidable ‘accident’ of history and again invading his
country in an unprovoked war in 2003, America and its allies could do some reflection
as the war rages in Iraq before deafening the world with their moral
indignation and civilized grandiloquence and before contributing to the
hostilities.
Any
haste to action would only spoil the existing opportunities to push toward a
more sustained solution of the crisis and would create further trouble down the
road to Iraq and to the region regardless of how successful any intervention
might at first appear. Obama’s recent speech bore some appreciation of the
problem, speaking of the need for al-Maliki to involve the Sunnis in the
political process. But this advice maybe too tardy and there may be no solution
short of al-Maliki’s departure. He has had enough time in power and has so far
done more bad than good.
While
it is refreshing to see that the US is aware of the background of the current
conflict and doesn’t simply reduce it to the rise of ISIL, injudicious past
interventions in the region are a cause of concern. It was never misinformation
that has marred US policies vis-à-vis the region, but rather the power of the
interest groups who tend to have the final say on what course of action should
be pursued.
The
role of these interest groups was clear in Obama’s speech after the fall of
Mosul. At no point did the speech reflect an appreciation of the immediate and
long-term consequences of the American and other Western countries’ tacit
approval of the burial of the democratic experiments in Egypt and Libya--a
novel case to add to a long list of grievances.
The
urgency with which the youth of the region look forward to a chance to secure a
respectable place for their nations in the world order doesn’t seem to be taken
seriously in DC. There is no cognizance of the fact that a well-informed Arab
middle class could clearly see that all roads to peaceful transition within
their countries are closed and that the promise of liberalized political and
economic systems has been illusory. The West may believe, as it has arrogantly
done so far, that there are no alternatives and that the system could be
maintained by the occasional replacement of notoriously bad leaders with worse
but unknown ones.
When
enough segment of the youthful and dynamic Arabs, who had so far cast their lot
with the world system, concludes that they will lose nothing but their humiliating
dependence on the West if they proceed to fight their way through the layered
world of corruption and colonial clienteles in their lands, a lot could change
and change dramatically. The
telecommunication revolution in the past century and the spread of universal
education have made it harder to maintain a narrative or a reality of
exception. It will be progressively difficult to sell the beautiful images and
rhetoric of a benevolent master, when the locals could clearly see him playing
all his tricks to keep them bereft of the essence of what he proclaims to offer
them.
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