Civil War: Iraq is Not a War

It's a mess! What a different war, what a different civil war from anything any of us ever imagined. It isn't Americans versus "bad guys" on behalf of the democratically elected Iraqi government. It isn't Americans and Shiites against Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. The forces on the ground have changed considerably.

Accounts by Washington Post reporter, Thomas Hicks and New Yorker writer Jon Lee Anderson (11/19/07) both make clear: the civil war in Iraq has gotten very murky. The reduced violence is largely caused by new alliances between American forces and anti-government forces, the Sunni Awakening and Guardians of various neighborhoods in Baghdad; the surge may have aided this process. Sunnis who had been attacking American troops a year ago, saw their common interest with American forces in hunting down al Qaeda. American commanders cooperated, realizing that this could work for both of them. Clever commanders on the ground: clever Iraqis. Those marriages of convenience have now been formalized, and a lot of money is going from American commanders into these groups.

This is much to the consternation of the Iraqi government. Maliki and his Shiite colleagues have good reason to worry, and good reason to ask for help from their Iranian friends, too. This is because the Sunnis now see the American military as their allies against an increasingly intransigent government.

Anderson's interviews of former insurgents now cooperating with American forward bases reveal that these men, now that al Qaeda is less of a problem, are in it for vengeance: against the Shiites. In one case, a man whose brother had been shot by Shiite Mahdi Army troops had sworn vengeance and was quite frank about using the US military to help him kill the hundred Mahdi Army men he had sworn as just payment for his brother's death. Another even came right out and said his people had taken their blood debt of the Americans in the previous years of war, but now it was time for the Shiites to meet theirs.

Ricks points out that one of the reasons for the drop in violence in Baghdad and elsewhere has been the completion of ethnic cleansing. But the drop in violence has a catch 22: if the increased security lures back refugees, many of them Sunnis running out of money in Syria and Jordan, they'll demand their houses back.

Now, I ask you: will the Shiite squatter, who might have been driven out of his own neighborhood, or previously suffered at the hands of Sunnis, peacefully give the house back to the returning owner?

Then there is the coming civil war between the new allies of the American troops and the government. On whose side will the US fight, then?

Why will these two groups fight, since both have gained by cooperating with the American military? Wouldn't they be natural allies?

They are natural enemies. Sunnis dominated and prospered since before a modern Iraq, going back at least to the Ottoman Conquest--until the US invasion. Shiites did manage to have status in some parts of Iraq, mainly the south, but nationally they were as subordinate as the Kurds. Now Shiites control the government and have driven Sunnis from the best neighborhoods and the best land in any part of Iraq where they have majority control, including, most painfully, in Baghdad.

Now, American commanders, according to Ricks, say privately that their greatest problem, maybe even their worst enemy is the Government! This is because the government refuses to recognize these new groups, and refuses to merge them with their own (largely Shiite) security forces. And apparently the two groups carry on a subterranean war under the noses of the Americans.

When commentators a year or more ago (including me, on this website in August, 2006) said that US troops were wading into the midst of a developing civil war , they didn't realize how literally true that was.

Clever tactics has caused American troops to change sides. The result has been at least a lull in the violence. But what will be the result when the Sunni forces, invigorated by American money and support, face Shiite government troops also funded, and equipped by the US? The Sunnis made up most of the army under Saddam Hussein, the Shiites are better equipped. What better set up for a heating up of the civil war!

Is this really Bush's strategy all along: to keep Iraq in turmoil so that American oil companies and global corporations can continue to extract as much money and oil from the country--and American taxpayers--as they possibly can? Perhaps not, but it is certainly an outcome they would welcome.

Is there a solution? Yes. It involves peaceful withdrawal by American troops and a UN mandate given to a neutral party like Japan, or better, Vietnam, to mediate a truce and then a settlement of grievances and a new constitutional order for Iraq.

This can't happen under US control, because Iraqis have to work out their problems themselves. They will either work them out in a bloody civil war, or through a third party mediator who favors neither party. The US is too compromised with both, which is why this kind of settlement can only happen after the US leaves.

The one thing the US could realistically do to help stop civil war between Shiites and Sunnis (and Kurds) would be to pledge a large amount of money (a significant fraction of the money we spend yearly on the war) to fund reconstruction once a settlement has been reached and politically implemented.

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