BackIraq, Syria, and the clueless American
The crisis could set all of West Asia ablaze and even lead to a mini World War
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Let’s start with a listing of the contradictions and crazy alignments in what is going on right now in West Asia.
• The US and Iran have been sworn enemies since 1979. In fact, the last season of the extremely popular American TV serial Homeland ended with the CIA assassinating the head of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards.
• In the civil war in Iraq, both the US and Iran back the Shia-dominated Nouri al-Maliki government against the ultra-fundamentalist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), an offshoot of the al Qaeda.
• In the civil war in Syria, Iran backs and supplies arms to the Bashar al-Assad regime, while the US backs and supplies arms to the rebels, who are now led by the ISIS.
• The US wants Iran’s assistance to save Iraq from the ISIS.
• The US and Saudi Arabia have been allies for decades, and Saudi Arabia strongly wants to contain Iran’s influence in the region.
• Saudi Arabia quite possibly provided at least the initial funding for the ISIS.
• But now Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf monarchies consider the ISIS too extremist and a potential threat.
• The ISIS believes that the Gulf monarchies are effete, corrupt and not Islamic enough, and their overthrow will be part of its long-term goals.
• The Baghdad government is at odds with the Kurds who want full independence.
• But the Baghdad government and the Kurds are cooperating against the ISIS-Sunni uprising in Iraq.
• Turkey is deeply suspicious that if the Kurds manage to free themselves from Baghdad’s control, they would want a chunk of Turkey too, to fulfil their dream of Kurdistan.
• The Kurds and Turkey back the ISIS-Sunni uprising in Syria.
Makes sense? Well, that’s the way it is, and much of it is sheer American folly. All the misconceived and delusional strategies of the George W. Bush administration are now bearing terrifyingly toxic fruit. Iraq has surely been the most gigantic blunder of US foreign policy ever. Vietnam pales in comparison. This one could set entire West Asia ablaze—from Lebanon through Syria, Iraq and Jordan to the Persian Gulf—and lead even to a mini World War.
Iran will certainly enter battle, if it hasn’t already (reports are ambiguous till now), and Turkey could be drawn in also. Then, of course there’s Israel. The success of the Sunni army of the al Qaeda-proxy ISIS could see a new Chechen insurgency in Russia (many of the ISIS’ fighters are from Chechnya), and definitely reinvigorate the al Qaeda from Afghanistan to Indonesia.
According to the latest reports, ISIS controls about one-third of Iraq and is just 60km from Baghdad. ISIS and Syrian rebels had already seized vast tracts of Syria, including its border with Iraq. ISIS’s stated objective to create a huge new Islamic Caliphate, combining Iraq and Syria, run under the Sharia law. If it achieves this, one can be sure that that would not be the end of its ambitions.
Let’s look at a short history of how the US messed it all up. The US and its allies attacked Iraq in 2003 claiming that Saddam Hussein had links with al Qaeda, and was building weapons of mass destruction. It has since been proved conclusively—and admitted by the Pentagon and the US Senate select committee on intelligence—that both claims were false. In fact, the Allied occupation of Iraq gave the al Qaeda just the opportunity it needed to leverage Iraqi humiliation and set up base in the country. Finance from Saudi Arabia, supposedly an US (and especially Bush family) ally, flowed in.
Once the US took charge of Iraq, it dissolved the country’s 430,000-men-strong army. Lakhs of out-of-work troops and senior officers deprived of their severance packages had to go somewhere. Thousands joined the ISIS. A new Iraqi army was built under US supervision and training, but it is proving to be no match for the more experienced and motivated forces they are now facing.
Next, the US wanted to set up a democracy in Iraq, with a new Constitution and an elected Parliament. The hamhanded and hurried effort to imposing democracy on a nation that has never known it, didn’t work. The US ended up putting in place a Shia bigot, Nouri al-Maliki, as Prime Minister. Though the Sunnis form a majority of Muslims across the world, Iraq and Iran are Shia majority. Al-Maliki set about persecuting the Sunnis in myriad ways. Sunni unrest grew.
Meanwhile, in neighbouring Syria, the Sunnis got fed up with the Shia-favouring policies of President Assad and rose in armed rebellion. The ISIS moved in as brothers in arms. Jihadis from as far off as France and the US signed up with the ISIS. The US and its allies, totally clueless about what was going on, supported the rebels, who were by now led by the ISIS, a proxy for al Qaeda. Iran sent in Hezbollah militia from Lebanon to help Assad. So the US ended up aiding the very same army that is today about to wrench Iraq from its control and turn it into an Islamic fundamentalist state.
President Barack Obama has made it clear that he will not send US ground troops to fight in Iraq. The American people wouldn’t stand for more of their sons and brothers killed on foreign soil. He has moved an aircraft carrier into the Gulf and is considering drone and perhaps Air Force strikes. However, he also wants al-Maliki, in the meantime, to reach out to Sunnis and undo some of the divisive policies he has been revelling in. This is far too little, far too late, and as if the ISIS cares!
By the way, when the ISIS captured Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, they looted the central bank there, and harvested an equivalent of $430 million and an unknown amount of gold bullion, making it the richest terrorist organisation in history.
Now the US has reached out to Iran, which it has not been talking to for three decades, for assistance. Iran, presumably, will be willing, but on its own terms. It will want some clear concessions on its nuclear programme.
What are the possible scenarios? The Iranian army moves into Iraq, supported by the US Air Force. The ISIS will then certainly divert part of its forces from Syria, quite simply because Iran is the bigger enemy, and Iraq has more than 50 times the oil reserves of Syria. The resulting war could go on for years (the last Iran-Iraq war lasted eight years), with Iraq descending into hopeless anarchy, massive loss of life, and the global oil economy affected deeply and long-term.
The war could also spill over into other countries in the region (Lebanon and Turkey have already been affected by the war in Syria), which would be the ISIS’ intention—to complicate matters as much as possible. This is what the Gulf monarchies are terrified of, even though they have no love lost for either Iran or Iraq.
While the ISIS has been fighting the Iraqi army, the Kurds in their semi-autonomous province in northwest Iraq have become more or less independent. This would be bothering Turkey, because a large chunk of what the Kurds see as their homeland, Kurdistan, falls in Turkey. The Kurds may want a full Kurdistan.
Even if the war ends in a reasonable time, and the ISIS is defeated, Iran will make sure that it places a puppet government in Baghdad, and emerges as the supreme power in West Asia, which has been its ambition for three decades (if not centuries or millenia). If the ISIS wins, and manages to establish its Caliphate, all geopolitical equations will be transformed. Either way, the US loses, and possibly so does secular liberal democracy, due to the ignorant adventurism of one country. Think of it this way: if the US war on Iraq was actually about control of its oil, it’s not even going to get that now.
No, actually, the story did not begin with George W. Bush. It began two decades before he came to power, with the Americans backing Osama bin Laden to lead mujahideens against the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan, through the good offices of general Zia-ul-Huq of Pakistan. So many years later, no resolution or ending is in sight. One can only hope that the wars in Iraq and Syria do not escalate into something much bigger and much more dangerous for the planet.
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