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2 A blueprint for chaos in
Iraq By W Joseph Stroupe
The "New Way Forward" strategy to be
implemented by the Bush administration amounts to
a new way forward to regional chaos. The policy
pointedly asserts itself to politically unite
Iraq's fractious and troublesome sectarian
entities and, simultaneously, defang Iraq's more
radical Sunni and Shi'ite sectarian militias. The
goal is stability inside Iraq, but with the
assured cost of a deadly boomerang in one form or
another.
Notably, the Bush administration
is likely to get a deadly form of tactical "unity"
among Iraq's diverse factions that it foolishly
and
shortsightedly didn't bargain
for. This will include a newborn cohesion among
Shi'ite and Sunni factions and militias arising
out of their impending joint struggle against a
desperate and dangerous common foe - the foreign
occupiers.
If the US and Britain are
perceived by Iraq's Shi'ites as excessively
targeting Shi'ite militias while largely ignoring
Sunni militias, then they risk mobilizing the
entire body of Iraq's Shi'ite population against
the continued presence of foreign forces,
resulting in a virtual Shi'ite insurrection, with
catastrophic results.
Repercussions
inside Iraq Iraq's heavily armed and
all-pervasive sectarian militias do not wish to
lay down their arms and they will all, from the
more "moderate" to the radical, fight the US and
Britain to retain and further consolidate their
hard-won power and leverage within their
respective regions.
Additionally, and very
importantly, the majority of the nation's peoples,
who have come to rely on their respective militias
for safety and security in the environment of the
abject failure of Iraq's government - and the US
and Britain - to provide such, do not wish to see
their favored militias weakened or defanged.
Hence these peoples can be relied on to
deny all meaningful support to the US and Britain
as they implement their "new way forward"
strategies. Many will actively oppose the
occupying powers through their respective
militias, thereby dooming the entire effort to
massive failure.
The new US strategy
betrays the failure to comprehend even the basics
of Iraq's emerging political, ideological and
security situation. While the occupying powers
have been focused for years on the surreal,
castle-in-the-sky political process in Iraq,
Iraq's Shi'ite and Sunni neighbors have been
constructing genuine power bases across the
country via the sectarian militias. They have been
entirely pleased to let the occupiers be
distracted by their democratic dreams.
Iran, especially, has adroitly succeeded
in pulling levers to genuinely obtain influence
and power within Iraq. Saudi intelligence recently
declared, correctly, that Iran had succeeded in
creating a Shi'ite state-within-a-state. But
neighboring Sunni regimes have also achieved
considerable success in their respective regions
of Iraq, which is, in reality, already
fundamentally divided into two parts, with a third
part in the north inhabited by Sunni Kurds.
This has been accomplished under the
unintended auspices of the presence of US and
British forces, which have so far kept the warring
factions from wiping each other out in a
full-blown civil war, Instead, each faction has
been able to solidify its power base.
Iraq
has become the main focal point of intensifying
regional Shi'ite-Sunni sectarian rivalries in
which all of Iraq's neighbors have enormous
stakes. The US did not anticipate that attacking
Iran's insurgent networks in Iraq was virtually
inconsequential with respect to limiting or ending
Tehran's influence there. The same is true with
respect to Syria and other Sunni Arab regimes,
whose influence inside Iraq is also considerable.
Insurrection to expel the occupiers
Inside Iraq, the rival militant Shi'ite
and Sunni factions, both facing a renewed US
assaults, will be obliged to unite on a purely
tactical basis against their common foe.
If the Nuri al-Maliki government in
Baghdad genuinely aligns with the US and Britain
in their final push against the militias, then it,
too, will become part of the "larger enemy" and a
prime target for the powerful militias. The
government, already struggling for legitimacy,
voice and leverage, would likely fall quickly.
Under such a threat, the "sovereign"
Maliki government is likely to abandon the US and
Britain, aligning with Iraq's militant factions
and demanding an emergency withdrawal of all
foreign forces from Iraq, thereby creating a
crisis of immeasurable consequences for the US.
The tactical union of factions opposed to
the US presence will cause the rapid
transformation of the Iraqi political-militant
landscape from the current complex mixture of
anti-US insurgency and sectarian warfare into a
much simpler and unified landscape. What will
emerge is a nation-wide insurrection against the
newly aggressive occupiers.
However, if
the US push is perceived to inordinately target
Shi'ites, then the insurrection will be mostly of
Shi'ite composition, though still extremely
potent.
Either way, the US is presiding
over its own impending forfeiture in Iraq, leading
to forced withdrawal ("redeployment") .
In
this event, there will no longer be anything to
act as a check on Iraq's disparate sectarian
factions, which will then turn on each other in a
massive and chaotic civil war fought over the
issue of which faction(s) will achieve and hold
dominance. Iraq's Sunni and
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