US sidelined in Iraq's sectarian
war By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - The United States has been
reduced to the role of passive bystander as a new
stage of sectarian civil war has begun in Iraq,
marked by military units with heavy weaponry
carrying out mass killings.
Last week's
bloody massacre in Mahmoudiya illustrated both the
new level of sectarian violence and the US role as
passive observer, even as the administration of
President George W Bush acknowledges that the
primary problem in Iraq is sectarian violence, not
the Sunni insurgency.
"Sectarian violence
has now become the significant challenge to Iraq's
future," US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee on July 13.
However, the unwillingness of the US
military to intervene against
sectarian attacks on
civilians casts a new light on the primary
argument by administration and other opponents of
a timetable for withdrawal - that the presence of
US occupation forces is the only thing preventing
an even higher level of sectarian civil war and
chaos.
In the past, sectarian militias
have carried out massacres by rounding up
individuals in Sunni or Shi'ite neighborhoods and
executing them. But the massacre of Shi'ites by
Sunni gunmen in Mahmoudiya on July 17, in which as
many as 58 people were killed and 90 wounded, was
a military attack on civilians by Sunnis using
heavy machine-guns mounted on pickup trucks and
rocket-propelled grenades.
The attackers
were apparently a new Sunni militia group calling
themselves "Supporters of the Sunni People", but
many of the troops wore Iraqi security uniforms.
The group that took responsibility said the attack
was in revenge for the slaughter of at least 40
Sunni civilians by masked Shi'ite gunmen in
Baghdad, which went on for several hours on July
9.
Neither the Iraqi security forces nor a
battalion of the US 101st Airborne Division
stationed near Mahmoudiya did anything to stop the
massacre or to pursue the killers, though the US
troops were close enough to hear the detonations
and gunfire, according to a story by Bassem Mroue
of the Associated Press, and the attack lasted for
30 minutes, as reported by the Washington Post's
Ellen Knickmeyer.
The failure of the US
battalion to respond to the evidence of an attack
or to pursue the attackers was not an isolated
incident. According to the AP story, "Iraqi troops
are responsible for security in Mahmoudiya, and
American soldiers do not intervene unless asked by
the Iraqis."
According to United Nations
figures released this month, 14,338 civilians were
killed in violence during the first six months of
the year, and the monthly toll has been rising
rapidly since 1,778 were killed in January. The
report said 2,669 had been killed in May and
another 3,149 in June.
The current US
rules of engagement regarding sectarian violence
were set by a broad policy adopted by the Bush
administration at least as early as March.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the
Senate Appropriations Committee on March 9, "The
plan is to prevent civil war, and to the extent
one were to occur, to have the ... Iraqi security
forces deal with it to the extent they're able
to." Rumsfeld later modified that only slightly,
stating, "It's very clear that the Iraqi forces
will handle it, but they'll handle it with our
help."
Those forces are certainly not
going to fight to quell sectarian violence. As
Khalilzad acknowledged in a speech in Washington
on July 11, "Unfortunately, there have been
instances in which Iraqi forces gave way or even
cooperated with sectarian militias."
The
main army brigade in Baghdad, the all-Shi'ite 1st
Brigade, which has responsibility for all of
Baghdad west of the Tigris River, probably could
not be relied on to fight Shi'ite militias. As
reported by Knight Ridder's Tom Lasseter in
October, the views of its officers and troops on
revenge against Sunnis are no different from the
most militant Shi'ite militias'.
US
officials have continued to talk as though the
United States is determined to roll back militia
violence. Before Nuri al-Maliki was finally chosen
as prime minister in April, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice said at the end of a two-day
visit: "We have sent very, very strong messages
repeatedly ... that one of the first things is
that there is going to be a reining in of the
militias ... It's got to be one of the highest
priorities."
But Rice's tough talk about
forcing action on the sectarian militia problem
has little to do with reality. "I don't think
there is a lot we can do about it," said a
Pentagon consultant who asked not to be
identified. "The fact is we are becoming marginal
players on the Iraqi political scene."
The
Bush administration nevertheless continues to cite
the threat of future civil war as an argument for
maintaining a longer-term military presence, while
denying that a civil war already exists. In his
July 11 speech, Khalilzad said, "I do not believe
that what's happening could be described ... as a
civil war." Khalilzad suggested that a
"precipitous" US withdrawal could ensure a
sectarian war.
Even as he made the
familiar civil war argument, however, Khalilzad
hinted that the United States is willing to go
only so far to do something about the problem.
Given the risks of "an abandonment strategy", he
said, "we need to do everything prudently we can
to help them stand on their own feet, contain the
violence".
Democratic hawk Senator Joe
Lieberman has long made the same argument.
Opposing Democratic amendments calling for a
timetable for withdrawal, Lieberman said on
Saturday that this would "signal the sectarian
groups to hunker down and rearm their militias to
strengthen themselves for the civil war that they
fear will follow a premature American retreat".
Gareth Porter is a historian and
national-security policy analyst. His latest book,
Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and
the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in
June 2005.
