Taking Sides in Iraq’s Civil War?
The troop surge in Iraq is well underway and it’s possible to discern some interesting patterns developing. The Shiite militias, notably the Mahdi Army controlled by the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, have melted away. The joint American and Iraqi patrols and sweeps have not encountered much resistance in predominantly Shiite areas; they have found few militia members or arms. Clearly, the Shiite militia have made the decision to avoid a head-on confrontation with the increased American military presence in Baghdad – at least for the present.
The Sunni militias or insurgents, meanwhile, have also avoided confrontation with the Americans in the capital city for the most part, although there are signs that they have merely shifted their strength elsewhere. The increased presence of American soldiers in Baghdad is clearly having and will continue to have a dampening effect on the day to day violence in the city, particularly the kidnapping and murder of civilians that had become epidemic previously. However, the car bombs continue to detonate all too frequently in Shia neighbourhoods; we are, as yet, a long way from establishing the sort of secure environment in which the government can begin to reassert real control.
Meanwhile the battle against the Sunni insurgency, primarily in Anbar Province, continues with unabated fury.
It’s always seemed to me that one particularly unsettling aspect of the American role in Iraq is the fact that American forces have been pitted almost exclusively against the Sunnis, particularly since the clashes with the Mahdi Army in Najaf and elsewhere in 2004. This is understandable in that the insurgency itself is Sunni, exacerbated effectively by the Sunni Islamist extremists of al-Qaeda-in-Iraq who lose no opportunity to stir up sectarian hatred. It’s difficult not to escape the conclusion that in employing our troops to help the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, we have taken sides in this multi-faceted civil war,
Certainly the surge will likely dampen the sectarian violence in Baghdad, the kidnappings, the torturing by unspeakable means, the dumping of scores of bodies at the morgue every morning sporting either bullet or drill holes. The death squads will find it much more difficult to operate to be sure.
Yet it is much less clear how this will help in the long run to establish a stable Iraq with a strong central government in which both Sunnis and Shia have strong roles – one in which the threat of civil war has been extinguished. If the Mahdi Army and the other Shiite militias are allowed to survive, to reform and fight again another day, whilst they wait out the unwelcome but ultimately useful American surge, they could emerge stronger than ever. In the meantime, American forces will have continued to hammer away at the Sunni insurgents, as they have been doing for almost four years, and we will, in the process, have done a great service to the Shiite militias, albeit not necessarily to the nation of Iraq by weakening the ability of the minority Sunnis to defend themselves against a possible future onslaught.
In the end, it will not be enough to quell the violence in Baghdad. If we fail to go after the Shiite militias, wherever they are, we will have simply delayed but not prevented the great conflagration of outright sectarian civil war. And to stay long enough to do the job properly, even assuming the Iraqi government does its part, will take years. And even then, there are no guarantees of success.
Opposition to the surge, for the most part, is not based on lack of faith in a new military strategy – although there is plenty of room for doubt that it will succeed in the end – but more to this seemingly endless commitment of blood and treasure on the part of the American people.
And that debate has only just begun.
