Though the Iraq war is certainly not over, it has reached a crossroads. During
the course of the war, about 40 countries sent troops to fight in what was
called "Multi-National Force-Iraq". As of this summer, only one foreign
country's fighting forces remain in Iraq - those of the United States. A name
change in January 2010 will reflect the new reality, when the term
"Multi-National Force-Iraq" will be changed to "United States Forces-Iraq". If
there is an endgame in Iraq, we are now in it.
The plan that US President Barack Obama inherited from former president George
W Bush called for coalition forces to help create a viable Iraqi national
military and security force that would maintain the Baghdad government's
authority and Iraq's territorial cohesion and integrity. In the meantime, the
major factions in Iraq would devise a regime in which all factions would
participate and be satisfied that their factional interests were protected.
While this was going on, the United States would systematically reduce
its presence in Iraq until around the summer of 2010, when the last US forces
would leave.
Two provisos qualified this plan. The first was that the plan depended on the
reality on the ground for its timeline. The second was the possibility that
some residual force would remain in Iraq to guarantee the agreements made
between factions, until they matured and solidified into a self-sustaining
regime. Aside from minor tinkering with the timeline, the Obama administration
- guided by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, whom Bush appointed and Obama
retained - has followed the Bush plan faithfully.
The moment of truth for the US plan is now approaching. The United States still
has substantial forces in Iraq. There is a coalition government in Baghdad
dominated by Shi'ite (a reasonable situation, since the Shi'ites comprise the
largest segment of the population of Iraq). Iraqi security forces are far from
world-class, and will continue to struggle in asserting themselves in Iraq. As
we move into the endgame, internal and external forces are re-examining
power-sharing deals, with some trying to disrupt the entire process.
There are two foci for this disruption. The first concerns the Arab-Kurdish
struggle over Kirkuk. The second concerns threats to Iran's national security.
The Kurdish question
Fighting continues in the Kirkuk region, where the Arabs and Kurds have a major
issue to battle over: oil. The Kirkuk region is one of two major oil-producing
regions in Iraq (the other is in the Shi'ite-dominated south). Whoever controls
Kirkuk is in a position to extract a substantial amount of wealth from the
surrounding region's oil development.
There are historical ethnic issues in play here, but the real issue is money.
Iraqi central government laws on energy development remain unclear, precisely
because there is no practical agreement on the degree to which the central
government will control - and benefit - from oil development as opposed to the
Kurdish Regional Government. Both Kurdish and Arab factions thus continue to
jockey for control of the key city of Kirkuk.
Arab, particularly Sunni Arab, retention of control over Kirkuk opens the door
for an expansion of Sunni Arab power into Iraqi Kurdistan. By contrast, Kurdish
control of Kirkuk shuts down the Sunni threat to Iraqi Kurdish autonomy and
cuts Sunni access to oil revenues from any route other than the
Shiite-controlled central government. If the Sunnis get shut out of Kirkuk,
they are on the road to marginalization by their bitter enemies - the Kurds and
the Shi'ites. Thus, from the Sunni point of view, the battle for Kirkuk is the
battle for the Sunni place at the Iraqi table.
Turkey further complicates the situation in Iraq. Currently embedded in
constitutional and political thinking in Iraq is the idea that the Kurds would
not be independent, but could enjoy a high degree of autonomy. Couple autonomy
with the financial benefits of heavy oil development and the Kurdish autonomous
region of Iraq becomes a powerful entity. Add to that the peshmerga, the
Kurdish independent military forces that have had US patronage since the 1990s,
and an autonomous Kurdistan becomes a substantial regional force. And this is
not something Turkey wants to see.
The broader Kurdish region is divided among four countries, Turkey, Iraq, Iran
and Syria. The Kurds have a substantial presence in southeastern Turkey, where
Ankara is engaged in a low-intensity war with the Kurdistan Workers' Party
(PKK), members of which have taken refuge in northern Iraq. Turkey's current
government has adopted a much more nuanced approach in dealing with the Kurdish
question. This has involved coupling the traditional military threats with
guarantees of political and economic security to the Iraqi Kurds as long as the
Iraqi Kurdish leadership abides by Turkish demands not to press the Kirkuk
issue.
Still, whatever the constitutional and political arrangements between Iraqi
Kurds and Iraq's central government, or between Iraqi Kurds and the Turkish
government, the Iraqi Kurds have a nationalist imperative. The Turkish
expectation is that over the long haul, a wealthy and powerful Iraqi Kurdish
autonomous region could slip out of Baghdad's control and become a center of
Kurdish nationalism. Put another way, no matter what the Iraqi Kurds say now
about cooperating with Turkey regarding the PKK, over the long run, they still
have an interest in underwriting a broader Kurdish nationalism that will strike
directly at Turkish national interests.
The degree to which Sunni activity in northern Iraq is coordinated with Turkish
intelligence is unknown to us. The Sunnis are quite capable of waging this
battle on their own. But the Turks are not disinterested bystanders, and
already support local Turkmen in the Kirkuk region to counter the Iraqi Kurds.
The Turks want to see Kurdish economic power and military power limited, and as
such they are inherently in favor of the Shi'ite-dominated Baghdad government.
The stronger Baghdad is, the weaker the Kurds will be.
Baghdad understands something critical: While the Kurds may be a significant
fighting force in Iraq, they can't possibly stand up to the Turkish army. More
broadly, Iraq as a whole can't stand up to the Turkish army. We are entering a
period in which a significant strategic threat to Turkey from Iraq could
potentially mean Turkish countermeasures. Iraqi memories of Turkish domination
during the Ottoman Empire are not pleasant. Therefore, Iraq will be very
careful not to cross any redline with the Turks.
This places the United States in a difficult position. Washington has supported
the Kurds in Iraq ever since Operation Desert Storm. Through the last decade of
the Saddam regime, US special operations forces helped create a de facto
autonomous region in Kurdistan. Washington and the Kurds have a long and bumpy
history, now complicated by substantial private US investment in Iraqi
Kurdistan for the development of oil resources. Iraqi Kurdish and US interests
are strongly intertwined, and Washington would rather not see Iraqi Kurdistan
swallowed up by arrangements in Baghdad that undermine current US interests and
past US promises.
On the other hand, the US relationship with Turkey is one of Washington's most
important. Whether the question at hand is Iran, the Caucasus, the Balkans,
Central Asia, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Afghanistan, Russia or Iraq, the Turks
have a role. Given the status of US power in the region, alienating Turkey is
not an option. And the United States must remember that for Turkey, Kurdish
power in Iraq and Turkey's desired role in developing Iraqi oil are issues of
fundamental national importance.
Now left alone to play out this endgame, the United States must figure out a
way to finesse the Kurdish issue. In one sense, it doesn't matter. Turkey has
the power ultimately to redefine whatever institutional relationships the
United States leaves behind in Iraq. But for Turkey, the sooner Washington
hands over this responsibility, the better. The longer the Turks wait, the
stronger the Kurds might become and the more destabilizing their actions could
be to Turkey. Best of all, if Turkey can assert its influence now, which it has
already begun to do, it doesn't have to be branded as the villain.
All Turkey needs to do is make sure that the United States doesn't intervene
decisively against the Iraqi Sunnis in the battle over Kirkuk in honor of
Washington's commitment to the Kurds.
In any case, the United States doesn't want to intervene against Iraq's Sunnis
again. In protecting Sunni Arab interests, the Americans have already been
sidestepping any measures to organize a census and follow through with a
constitutional mandate to hold a referendum in Kirkuk. For the United States, a
strong Sunni community is the necessary counterweight to the Iraqi Shi'ites
since, over the long haul, it is not clear how a Shiite-dominated government
will relate to Iran.
The Shi'ite question
The Shiite-dominated government led by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is
no puppet of Iran, but at the same time, it is not Iran's enemy. As matters
develop in Iraq, Iran remains the ultimate guarantor of Shi'ite interests. And
Iranian support might not flow directly to the current Iraqi government, but to
Maliki's opponents within the Shi'ite community who have closer ties to Tehran.
It is not clear whether Iranian militant networks in Iraq have been broken, or
are simply lying low. But it is clear that Iran still has levers in place with
which it could destabilize the Shi'ite community or rivals of the Iraqi
Shi'ites if it so desired.
Therefore, the United States has a vested interest in building up the Iraqi
Sunni community before it leaves. And from an economic point of view, that
means giving the Sunnis access to oil revenue as well as a guarantee of control
over that revenue after the United States leaves.
With the tempo of attacks picking up as US forces draw down, Iraq's Sunni
community is evidently not satisfied with the current security and political
arrangements in Iraq. Attacks are on the upswing in the northern areas - where
remnants of al-Qaeda in Iraq continue to operate in Mosul - as well as in
central Iraq in and around Baghdad.
The foreign jihadis in Iraq hope such attacks will trigger a massive response
from the Shi'ite community, thus plunging Iraq back into civil war. But the
foreign jihadis would not be able to operate without some level of support from
the local Sunni community. This broader community wants to make sure that the
Shi'ites and Americans don't forget what the Sunnis are capable of should their
political, economic and security interests fall by the wayside as the Americans
withdraw.
Neither the Iraqi Sunnis nor the Kurds really want the Americans to leave.
Neither trust the intentions or guarantees of the Shi'ite-dominated government.
Iraq lacks a tradition of respect for government institutions and agreements; a
piece of paper is just that. Instead, the Sunnis and Kurds see the United
States as the only force that can guarantee their interests. Ironically, the
United States is now seen as the only real honest broker in Iraq.
But the United States is an honest broker with severe conflicts of interest.
Satisfying both Sunni and Kurdish interests is possible only under three
conditions. The first is that Washington exercise a substantial degree of
control over the Shi'ite administration of the country - and particularly over
energy laws - for a long period of time. The second is that the United States
give significant guarantees to Turkey that the Kurds will not extend their
nationalist campaign to Turkey, even if they are permitted to extend it to Iran
in a bid to destabilize the Iranian regime. The third is that success in the
first two conditions not force Iran into a position where it sees its own
national security at risk, and so responds by destabilizing Baghdad - and with
it, the entire foundation of the national settlement in Iraq negotiated by the
United States.
The American strategy in this matter has been primarily tactical. Wanting to
leave, it has promised everyone everything. That is not a bad strategy in the
short run, but at a certain point, everyone adds up the promises and realizes
that they can't all be kept, either because they are contradictory or because
there is no force to guarantee them. Boiled down, this leaves the United States
with two strategic options.
First, the United States can leave a residual force of about 20,000 troops in
Iraq to guarantee Sunni and Kurdish interests, to protect Turkish interests,
etc. The price of pursuing this option is that it leaves Iran facing a
nightmare scenario: eg, the potential re-emergence of a powerful Iraq and the
recurrence down the road of the age-old conflict between Persia and Mesopotamia
- with the added possibility of a division of American troops supporting their
foes. This would pose an existential threat to Iran, forcing Tehran to use
covert means to destabilize Iraq that would take advantage of a minimal, widely
dispersed US force vulnerable to local violence.
Second, the United States could withdraw and allow Iraq to become a cockpit for
competition among neighboring countries: Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria -
and ultimately major regional powers like Russia. While chaos in Iraq is not
inherently inconsistent with US interests, it is highly unpredictable, meaning
the United States could be pulled back into Iraq at the least opportune time
and place.
The first option is attractive, but its major weakness is the uncertainty
created by Iran. With Iran in the picture, a residual force is as much a
hostage as a guarantor of Sunni and Kurdish interests. With Iran out of the
picture, the residual US force could be smaller and would be more secure.
Eliminate the Iran problem completely, and the picture for all players becomes
safer and more secure. But eliminating Iran from the equation is not an option
- Iran most assuredly gets a vote in this endgame.
George Friedman is Stratfor's founder and chief executive officer.
(Published with permission from Stratfor,
a Texas-based geopolitical intelligence company. Copyright 2009 Stratfor.)
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