Spring Break
Recent Iraq events omen for future
Robert Zaller
Issue date: 4/11/08 Section: Ed-Op
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About a year ago, Petraeus planned to clean out insurgent strongholds in Sadr City, Baghdad's vast slum, using newly trained Iraqi national army forces with the American military in a support role only. The result was a fiasco; many Iraqi units never showed up for battle, leaving American troops holding the bag.
Recently, as reports indicate, the Maliki government was under renewed pressure to make a showing of the army we had so patiently trained and expensively equipped. According to the official story, Maliki at length responded by attacking Basra.
At first, the American command professed itself surprised by the attack, although it rushed tactical air support into the fray within hours, and soon added ground troops. The absurd fiction that a major Iraqi offensive could be launched without the knowledge and consent of the U.S. was soon dropped, although details remain murky. What isn't in dispute, however, is that the assault was again a complete failure, with some units not merely surrendering but deserting - that is, giving up their weapons, abjuring their allegiance to the Maliki government and joining the Mahdi, with whom they thereupon began to fight as comrades in arms.
After a day or two of vowing to pursue the Mahdi to the death, Maliki hastily backed down, offering instead a ceasefire. Nothing came of this until the Iranians intervened and brokered a new truce.
Meanwhile, rocket and mortar fire rained down on the Green Zone, the U.S. headquarters in Baghdad, forcing American embassy officials to take to their bunkers. Extensive damage was done, and 34 Americans were reported killed or wounded there alone in a single day. So much for pacifying Baghdad, the ostensible purpose of the year-long Surge.
Why should Basra have been a target? The British had charge of it, but, after withdrawing more than 80 percent of their forces, they ceded control of the city to rival militias, retreating to a base near the airport where the militia of Maliki's own party, the Dawa, held sway. Maliki's real motivation for the attack on the city was to position the Dawa in the Shiite south for the provincial elections scheduled - after much American prodding - for this coming fall. In other words, the assault on Basra was a struggle between the militias of rival Shiite parties. Iraqi soldiers pressed into combat and belonging to neither group understandably repined, and in some cases lay down their arms.
We can expect more of these internecine conflicts as election day approaches, and rival groups position themselves to defend their respective turfs.
If all this sounds vaguely like gang warfare or the competition among Mafia fiefdoms, that is precisely what Iraq looks like in the sixth year of its American occupation. The country is governed by militias, which finance themselves (apart from American largesse) by controlling discrete elements of the production and transportation networks: the roads, the airports, the oil pipelines, the power grids, etc.
Particular militias may come and go, but the system is fixed: this is Iraq now, and Iraq tomorrow. The only stabilizing element - the only force capable of mediating among the militias when consensus breaks down - is Iran. The ceasefire that halted the confrontation between Maliki and the Mahdi is a case-in-point. The U.S. was in the middle of the battle, but had no hand in ending it.
Basra is an interesting test case for another reason, too. It is clear that American troop levels will remain at about 140,000 after reaching this level in the summer. Most planners who envision a long-term American presence in Iraq estimate force requirements at a minimum of 60,000 to 80,000. Those who (like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton) speak of a substantive withdrawal think in terms of an eventual residual force of perhaps 20,000 to 30,000, positioned in bases, as a tripwire against civil war. If it's not clear what 80,000 troops can do, however, it is clear what 20,000 can't. The British experience is instructive here. By retiring their remaining force to bases outside Basra, the Brits surrendered the city itself to the militias. When Maliki's attack made it a free-fire zone, they could only stand helplessly by: they were far too few in number to do anything but get hurt.
The fate of 1,500 British troops outside Basra would be that of 20,000 Americans dispersed around Iraq. Even three- or four times that number could do little but be bloodied in a general civil war, and little to restrain it from breaking out. The real choice in Iraq, therefore, is either retaining more or less current force levels (which may be logistically unsustainable), or withdrawing American troops entirely. The first option is that implied, if not yet offered, by John McCain; the second is that espoused by a candidate no longer in the running, John Edwards (and, of course, by Ralph Nader).
Neither of these options is attractive, except from the point of view of ending an unjust war.
The McCain option, let's call it, would at best freeze the current situation in place, at current costs in blood and treasure. It would not create a viable state, much less a democratic one. The withdrawal option would risk making a bad situation worse, and leave the only remedy in the hands of Iran. But Iran is going to dominate Iraq into the foreseeable future, and the Iraqis themselves are ultimately going to have to decide whether they want to be the new Somalia or not. Our time in Iraq is up; we are irrelevant to its future. What we need now is a leader courageous enough to recognize this fact, and clever enough to act on it without committing political suicide. It will take more than sitting up in lipstick and a red suit at 3 a.m., waiting for the phone to ring; and more than the audacity of hope.
Robert Zaller is a professor of history. He can be reached at ed-op@thetriangle.org.
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