Page 2 of
2 SPEAKING
FREELY It's a fragile
'quiet' in Iraq By Brian M
Downing
inflict enough casualties
on the US to bring about an eventual pullout,
leaving a coherent Shi'ite majority there; but to
avoid inflicting so many casualties as to bring on
harsh economic sanctions or devastating air
strikes.
Supplies to Shi'ite militias over
the years have never been very high - Iran wishes
to demonstrate that it has supply lines into Iraq,
and it can expand them, raising US casualties to domestically
intolerable levels. In other
words, Iran has considerable control over American
casualties.
But Iran's policy is in
disarray. Israel's air strike in September on a
possible nuclear facility in Syria weighs heavily
on Iran. It implied Israeli and American
willingness to attack Iran, but more importantly
it demonstrated their ability to defeat the best
Russian-made air defense systems, on which Iran
has based much of its national security. In other
words, Iran is virtually defenseless.
Heretofore, the US feared the loss of too
many aircraft and planned to strike with only
cruise missiles. But its aircraft can almost
certainly penetrate Iranian air defenses,
devastate nuclear facilities and military bases
and economic infrastructure, and return to their
carriers and bases with relatively few casualties.
Iran could retaliate in several ways: send its
special forces into Iraq to attack American troops
and supply lines from Kuwait; encourage Hezbollah
to launch strikes across the Middle East; and
press the Shi'ite factions in Iraq to order the US
out or at least squeeze supplies. Some analysts
suspect that Iran has Russian-made missiles
capable of inflicting grave damage on American
aircraft carriers, two of which patrol just
outside Iranian waters.
Iran has no desire
to suffer the devastation the Israeli air force
visited on Lebanon in 2006, which American
airpower can now easily repeat. It would rally the
nation, but the economic damage would be
frightful. And so Iran might have blinked
recently. US generals have reported a decline in
Iranian arms entering Iraq. Iran realizes that
these supplies, limited though they are,
constitute a rationale for the US to launch
protracted air strikes across it - several
thousand targets according to some sources. And
although US policy toward Iran is probably
independent of Iran's actions in Iraq, it sees no
point in helping the US contrive a casus
belli.
Stability and
instability The absence of political
compromise between the sects is oft-noted, leading
some to conclude that stability in the region is
not in the offing and that recent developments
have no lasting meaning. However, another form of
stability is possible, one based on the US
abandoning mediation between Sunni and Shi'ites in
Iraq and aligning with the Sunnis in and out of
Iraq. The region might be headed for a standoff
between the US, Saudi Arabia and the Sunni Arabs
of Iraq opposed to Iran and the Shi'ite Arabs of
Iraq and elsewhere.
A new cold war, with
uneasy frontiers stretching from Mosul in the
north to Basra in the south, might be falling into
place. This standoff would necessitate stationing
a considerable portion of the US's available
combat divisions in the region for an unfathomable
amount of time, possibly making the duration of
its antecedent in Central Europe seem ephemeral.
For better or worse, there might be too
many instabilities for this standoff to come
about. One source of instability lies in the
makeup of Iraqi tribes. The tribes of Anbar and
Diyali are confederations comprising numerous
tribes, hence they are subject to fissures along
tribal, clan and personal lines. Tribal leaders
cooperating, or to some collaborating, with
Americans and receiving emoluments from them can
worsen these fissures.
Related to this,
al-Qaeda, though ostensibly on the run in Iraq,
has enjoyed considerable success recently in
assassinating tribal leaders working with the US.
Chastened by its blunders, it might learn to
exacerbate fissures and find allies. And increased
use of air strikes to keep American casualties
down has predictably led to many inadvertent
deaths of civilians and friendly forces that could
worsen uneasiness regarding cooperation with the
US.
The Shi'ite tribes also have serious
fissures. Saddam played one off against the other
and prevented the Shi'ite majority from coalescing
into a threat to his regime. Presently, Shi'ite
leaders nominally command militias and even some
regular army formations, but they rely on
traditional and charismatic appeals, making mutiny
and infighting by lieutenants disaffected by
recent events far more likely than in militaries
based on rational-legal authority.
A
further source of instability lies in the recent
return of many Sunni Arabs. As middle-class Sunnis
who fled to Syria and Jordan return, they will
politically and financially strengthen the old
oppressors of the Shi'ites. Many Shi'ites will
find this ominous and demand preemptive action.
Most Shi'ites have never heard of George
Santayana, but they know the Spanish philosopher,
essayist, poet and novelist's famous message from
long experience. ("Those who cannot remember the
past are condemned to repeat it.")
The
showdown over Iran's nuclear program is perhaps
the most critical source of instability. A
formidable group within the US government,
centered on the vice president, is pressing for
air strikes on Iran, regardless of its actions in
Iraq. There is of course an opposing group,
centered on the secretary of state, stressing
negotiations and international pressures, which
has the upper hand for now. But the correlation of
forces within the administration remains opaque to
most observers.
Iran's president or the
supreme leader, neither of whom seems well
acquainted with the norms of world politics, could
take action that would alter politics in
Washington. However, against expectation, the
supreme leader has recently rebuked the president
for his sharp denunciation of domestic figures who
oppose the nation's nuclear program - perhaps
another blink.
The decline in violence in
Iraq rests uneasily on several unrelated and
loosely related processes. The "surge" is
certainly one of them, but it is not foremost -
maybe not even in Baghdad where it began. The
number of these processes and their fragility do
not inspire confidence that the decline in
violence can continue, let alone help to promote
desirable political development. Nor are they
likely to allow the US to leave Iraq gracefully in
the foreseeable future.
Brian M
Downing is the author of several works of
political and military history, including The
Military Revolution and Political Change
and The Paths of Glory: War and Social
Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam.
He can be reached at
brianmdowning@gmail.com.
(Copyright 2007
Brian M Downing.)
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