Home  New Features The attrition
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Written by Maqtista
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Sunday, 10 June 2007 |
De facto UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently embarked on a hearts and minds campaign, saying that Labour can win back thousands of people to the party because Blair is going. One tiny problem in the analysis: the main reason they all hate Tony Blair - the coalition occupation of Iraq - hasn't gone away. Indeed, all the indications are those disaffected Labour voters will fail to re-engage because Gordon will prolong the British mandate, "until the job is done" in Bushspeak.
So in Britain even more than the US there are precious few signs of policy change towards Iraq. A Brown cabinet will still be stuffed full of a replica set of yes-wonks, the left-wing backbench far away from the whips and influence. Cameron, for all his obsession about winning votes by any means test necessary, won't betray the Conservative party line on this one either.
The US has been talking about getting a special human in to take charge of both the Afghan and Iraq control rooms, but no-one wants to take the job with a change of regime and party imminent (not that there would be much policy shift by party change, again). Talk has been aired of shifting the job to the UN, but again these are mere hints.
The Shia round up and kill Sunni suspects; the latter respond with market bombs, in addition to their rising attacks on the coalition. Unable to make headway against the Shiite shites, with figureheads like Al-Sadr experienced at manoeuvring around unseen after oppression from the Saddamite, and ex-Baath psychopaths, the coalition is locked into a costly game of status quo. Defence experts throughout the Western alliance fear the break-up of Iraq into the Shia south, Sunni centre and west and Kurdish north, but this is a pointless view (not quite on the same denial as "Iraq is not at civil war" but close) when it's clear to anyone that this fracturing has already happened, and on a much more decreasing scale than a tripartite division. It is even beyond cantonisation. Power bases have been established in all the major cities and across the provinces, they themselves have to stave off local competition for control of local government or ministerial branches, and few resources are making it into the central pocket. Both Shia and Kurdish groups in control of the oil fields are fighting hard to keep a large degree of federal control of the petrodollars, so Baghdad is no closer to tying up the all-important hydrocarbons law. The coalition military command are so loathed in Maysan that ‘insurgents' are trying to grow opium in the arid desert.
If the first error of the post-Saddam Iraq was to de-Baathify Iraq, the physical slate too clean enough to build scores of military bases, what has since been allowed to develop is down to the slavish adherence to ‘maintaining security', in the process ignoring aspects like the creation of a civil society and basics like power supply. Both fundamental mistakes have created a heightened form of capitalism based on racketeering that will probably take longer to rein in than the Sunni resistance (again, occupation-created) and the Shia revenge squads themselves. No matter how many troop surges you have it won't be enough to control the Sunni triangle, the Sadrists, the Shia death squads in blue Interior Ministry clobber, the drug gangs. In Basra and elsewhere in the south, oil is controlled and distributed without recourse to what their Shia brothers are saying in the Green Zone. The UK army are just one faction with guns, occasionally gaining control of a situation around the south, mostly staying impotent in the barracks unless the cameras are there. Prince Harry would have been well safe.
It's a grim comparison but Iraq is in a similar state to the
Palestinian territories or pockets of Lebanon such as the
semi-permanent refugee camps or south Lebanon; through its people's own
connivance it is able to enjoy some aspects of the modern market almost
as a placebo to the lack of safety, representation and statehood. And
as these areas show, when a democratic progress is allowed to take
place there is no guarantee the people's verdict will stand. So why
bother with that route? Little fiefdoms, some clerical, others just
gang cliques, predominate. You need loyalty to one or the other to
maintain any hope of an income.
Such a suspension of development has sustained Palestinians for decades
up until the recent Gaza infighting, but within Iraq is fomented many
different calls to undermine the regime and anything like a united
resistance against the US-backed regime and the occupation seems
impossible.
So many faultlines, then, so many reasons for the continued troop
presence. They can keep getting annoyed at the rising level of number
and sophistication of attacks on coalition soldiers; proof positive
that our troop presence is, er, fully justified. Chief among the
geopolitical reasons is ‘if Iran keeps poking its nose in, so will we'.
Turkey is keen to keep America involved as much as possible in the
north, so it doesn't have to be (at least against Iraqi Kurds),
and Saudi Arabia, which has become assured in making vacuous
diplomatically correct comments, overall likes the occupation and
suspension of progress north of its border, because it keeps both Iran
and Iraq in check from being able to rival it for wealth and influence.
But believe it or not, Jordan and Syria have no particular desire to
see a continuation of war, as they can't afford the huge numbers of
refugees arriving in Amman and Damascus. Yet the opinion of King
Abdullah, despite having the ear of Washington, is scarcely relevant,
while President Asad has been told to fuck off over Iraq so many times
he just concentrates on subversive matters in Lebanon.
So how long can the coalition presence last? At least as long there is
no diplomatic progress with Iran, so a very long time indeed. Iran
won't be moved by UN calls to denuclearise, trade threats from its
partners and enemies (there is so little investment as it is) and the
occasional sight of a flotilla of floating materiel sailing through the
Strait of Hormuz. Analysts argue that politically Ahmadinejad's fucked
and to a large extent he is, but he, as well as the regime, is always
going to be able to rely on a welter of nationalist support while the
US plays Bad Cop. Iran, as much as America, is in this for the long
haul. They showed resilience in the first Gulf war with Iraq, they can
take huge losses, gas attacks, active US help of Iraq and swathes of
disinformation (Saddam's campaign was right, said Rumsfeld and Regan).
As the Sadrists indicate to the Americans in Iraq, a Shia nationalist
ideology is not to be fucked with. Iran, on many levels, may not
actually be officially tinkering (while roadside bombs may be
Iranian-manufactured that's no guarantee their sale is being sanctioned
by the state), but clearly Tehran is tinkering in enough other areas.
As it indeed should, having far more legitimate reasons to interfere
than an energy-thirsty Western nation who, having invented reasons to
come and invade, then creates the situation for some of those reasons
(ie Al-Qaida) to develop, which elongates the occupation and makes the
publicised reason, to build democracy in the region, seem like a sick
joke. Make that a double, as not only did a Sunni cod-Islamic
resistance set up in Iraq to attack the Shia and the coalition, but
soon Western Muslims would soon attach their hearts and connect their
minds to the problems in Iraq. The resulting 7/7s and endless repeated
attempts constitute, in the stultifying logic of our times, even more
reason to carry on the policy we started. It would be a sick joke if it
wasn't the baffling reality.
And that energy question is key here. In a few decades time, Western
nations will no way have adjusted quickly enough to the end of peak
oil, so Iraq and its bountiful southern and northern hydrocarbon
resources is a long-term insurance policy against our inability to
adapt. It's a costly one, as well as planned long in advance,
but one that will probably have been budgeted for. As Israel and
America has shown in its approach to the Middle East peace process, it
may not look good but denial, delay and obfuscation of a situation can
work and be sustained over decades. So expect the stasis to continue in
Iraq, and expect Iraq to become ever more ungovernable in a traditional
nationalised, statist sense in that time. A black gold protectorate is
worth that aberration.
It's always been Iraq's eternal misfortune to be under the western
imperium, to be created under dubious circumstances by foreigners like
Gertude Bell and hijazi kings and for that entity to now be defended
whatever the cost by those who keep being told to keep their eyes on
the afore-mentioned prize. So it's a depressing scenario unless new
ways can be devised to mobilise the popular opposition against the war
in Western countries (as I.T pointed out once, can the protestors stop
looking so happy on the march?) to effect a difference, unless
politicians in Iraq and especially the west emerge, capable of throwing
away the yolk of bogus realpolitik and unless a well managed UN-led
withdrawal can begin to take place.
The moral choice here (to end the occupation) is still the easy and
only acceptable option as long as the details (far more planning than
went into the invasion) are right - and there's a hero's place in
leftist history for anyone brave enough to institute that process.
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