Could 2010 look for Iraq like 1975 looked in Vietnam?

Yesterday, General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker presented testimony to the Senate regarding the status of the “surge” strategy to stabilize the deteriorating situation in Iraq. The strategy was ordered by the Bush Administration as an alternative to the recommendations of the bi-partisan Iraq Study Group (a.k.a. the ”Baker-Hamilton Commission”) that became public last December. The Iraq Study Group found the Pentagon had under-reported incidents of violence in Iraq during the occupation and recommended the beginning of a pull-out of American troops and an aggressive diplomatic effort to reach political solutions to the conflict both internally and with Iraq’s neighbors.

Following the defeat of Congressional Republicans over the issue of the war in the 2006 election and the conclusions of the bi-partisan Iraq Study Group, the continually optimistic assessments of the Iraq situation by the White House were no longer credible. In an attempt to restore the reputation of the Bush presidency, the administration decided to gamble on an escalation (a.k.a. the “surge”) to undo the damage done by poor planning and incompetent administration of the formal occupation of the country. The reason given was to “buy time” for the political process in Iraq. To date, it appears there has been some limited success by American troops on the military front in certain areas of Iraq but the progress on the political front is practically nil.

The problem is there is a civil war going on – actually multiple civil wars between different parties in different parts of the country. The lack of political progress is being excused as the result of an immature democracy following decades of dictatorship. That is certainly true but it is not the only factor in play. The greater problem is the current leadership has a stake in the status quo – i.e., as awful as the violence is it is tolerable because it does not threaten the dominant powers in Iraq. The White House is not willing to acknowledge that. Instead, they continue to seek a military solution to a political problem thus enabling those dominant powers and weakening the political process in the long run. The failure of politics likely dooms Iraq to a greater conflict once U.S. troops withdraw just as is happening in the Basra region with the withdrawal of British troops.

It’s not a pretty picture and is a problem President Bush seems determined to dump in the lap of his successor.

Here is Juan Cole on the future of Iraq:

Could 2010 look for Iraq like 1975 looked in Vietnam? Yes. I just do not see evidence that either the new Iraqi political class or the Iraqi security forces are likely to have the maturity to avoid a conflagration when the US military withdraws.

There are three major wars going on in Iraq: 1) for control of oil-rich Basra, among Shiite militias and tribes; 2) for control of Baghdad and its hinterlands between Sunni Arabs and Shiites; and 3) for control of oil-rich Kirkuk in the north, between Kurds on the one side and Arabs and Turkmen on the other.

Gen. Petraeus believes that the Sunni-Shiite struggle for Baghdad is the central struggle, and that if it cannot be calmed down, nothing can be accomplished. His main energies have been put into reducing violence in Baghdad itself, in which he has succeeded to a limited extent (i.e. getting violence back down to summer, 2006, levels instead of astronomical January 2007 levels).

The successes in Baghdad are ambiguous, not clear-cut. The year 2006 was particularly bloody, so getting to that level is not satisfactory. The reduction in statistics on sectarian violence has not prevented hundreds of thousands of Sunni Arabs from being ethnically cleansed (mainly displaced) from Baghdad, turning it from a city that was 65 percent Shiite and 35 percent Sunni into one that is 75 percent Shiite and rising. The Sunni Arabs of al-Anbar, whether they hate "al-Qaeda" or not, say in interviews that they support the withdrawal of the Sunni Arab Iraqi Accord Front from the al-Maliki government, precisely on the grounds that al-Maliki is entangled with the Shiite militias that are displacing the Sunni Arabs from Baghdad.

Further, Gen. Petraeus has frankly admitted that whatever successes he has had in Baghdad militarily (and he has had some there) have not yet translated into solid political gains in Sunni-Shiite reconciliation. He continues to entertain hopes that they will be so translated, but all he can proffer us in this regard is exactly that, hopes.

Petraeus's perspective ignores the over-all rise in civilian deaths in 2007 compared to 2006, and pays no attention to Shiite-Shiite violence in Basra and Karbala. He also codes the Arab attack on Yazidi Kurds as an "al-Qaeda" act of violence. In fact, it was part of an ethnic struggle for control of land and oil in the Iraqi north that is just as destabilizing, potentially, as is the battle for Baghdad. He points to Iraqi security forces policing provinces such as Muthanna and Nasiriya in the Shiite south. It has to be acknowledged, however, that those provincial security forces are dominated by the Badr Corps militia of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, which was trained and may still be being partially funded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. And they are in an ongoing struggle with the Mahdi Army militia, also Shiite but more Iraqi nativist.

My own expectation is that unless Iraqi politicians become far more canny and powerful during the next two years, then when the American forces withdraw, the ethnic and sectarian militias will fight the three wars (Basra, Baghdad, Kirkuk) to a conclusion. It will likely be a bloody war similar to that in Afghanistan in the 1990s. With the Americans not around, it is possible that large militia forces will fight set piece battles.

There is also a danger of the neighbors being drawn into a big proxy fight in Iraq (including the Saudis, the Iranians, the Jordanians, the Syrians and the Turks).

Neither outcome is inevitable. If al-Maliki learns how to cultivate the Sunni Arabs as well as Petraeus has been (and if the Sunni Arabs will accept it from al-Maliki, which is not assured), then he might be able to draw them into his orbit just as King Feisal did in the 1920s. Al-Maliki's government is said to have $10 bn. in oil revenue that it refuses to spend; that could buy some loyalty.

Likewise, the US, the Europeans and the Arab League could work hard diplomatically to avoid a proxy war among the neighbors, and it might be avoided. I am heartened that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and President Mahmud Ahmadinejad of Iran seem intent on continuing to dialogue, and to avoid tensions reaching a fever picth between the two countries. If the US had any sense, it would be warmly encouraging this diplomacy, not trying to get the Arabs and Israelis to gang up on Iran.

But in all likelihood, when the Democratic president pulls US troops out in summer of 2009, all hell is going to break loose. …

It is all so unfair, of course, since Bush started and prosecuted this disaster in Iraq, and Bush is refusing to accept responsibility for the failure, pushing it off onto his successor.

But life is unfair.

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I'm a severe skeptic on the likelihood of anything that looks like success in Iraq. But I don't think career public servants such as Ryan Crocker and David Petraeus are acting as partisan Republicans in their Iraq efforts. I think they both are sincere, experienced men attempting to retrieve what they can for America from Bush's catastrophe. They may as well try, since the Democrats can't over-rule Bush and get the troops out, anyway. If the troops are there, they may as well at least be deployed intelligently, which is what Gen. Petraeus is doing. I wish them well in their Herculean labors. Because if they fail, I have a sinking feeling that we are all going down with them, including the next Democratic president. And their success is a long shot.