The attack in February on the Golden Mosque in Samarra has brought Iraq to the brink of open sectarian conflict and reduced the chances of a substantial reduction in US forces this year. It has triggered the worst crisis in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003.
The outburst of sectarian violence which followed the attack on the mosque – one of the holiest shrines in Shia Islam – showed, with stark clarity, where real power in Iraq now resides. It does not reside in the interim government of Ibrahim al-Jaafari, or in Iraq’s fledgling national security forces – or even in the hands of the American and British forces. All of these were left, to a greater or lesser extent, looking impotent bystanders. At street level, power lies in the hands of young clerics and the militias they are associated with – men like Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shi’ite cleric whose forces have been accused of carrying out many of the revenge attacks against Sunni Muslims following the destruction at Samarra.
The ability of older and wiser men, such as the revered Shi’ite cleric Ayatollah Sistani, to act as a restraining influence now appears much reduced. Sectarian tension had been simmering for many months, and Sistani was widely credited with keeping angry young Shia in check. If more radical figures are now in the ascendant, that raises the grim possibility that, even if there is a relative lull in the tit-for-tat sectarian violence, a further outbreak remains likely – and with each outbreak, Iraq’s fragility will increase.
Washington’s unlovely options
All this calls into question whether events will allow President Bush to fulfil his evident aim of withdrawing a substantial number of US forces during the course of this year. His hope had been that Iraq’s December elections would set in train a sequence of events which would make this possible. The elections would lead to the creation of a broadly based – and therefore more legitimate – government. This would work with the Americans to speed up both economic reconstruction and the training of new and more effective Iraqi security forces capable of carrying a greater share of the security burden. At the same time, more and more Sunni Arabs would see that their future could be better assured through the political process than through armed insurgency.
That was the hope. But even if some of these things do eventually happen, they are not likely to occur within a timetable of Mr Bush’s choosing. Sectarian violence is complicating the already tortuous process of creating a new government. Sunni Arabs will not trust a government where key security posts are in the hands of Shi’ite figures （such as the current interior minister） whom they regard as deeply implicated in sectarian killings. But the violence is making Shi’ite figures more, not less, determined to hang on to key government ministries. On top of everything else there is the complicating presence of Muqtada al-Sadr, now officially part of the political process, yet still ready to resort to extra-parliamentary means – in other words, the selective use of violence to serve his political ambitions.
The current crisis serves to underscore what has surely been apparent in Iraq for some time: the limits of what the American superpower can do. On the issue of troop levels, a public U-turn by the Bush administration seems unlikely. It may well stick to its desire to start bringing home the troops, while privately considering its options with much greater caution. In the end, the dangers of pulling out and precipitating further violence and instability may outweigh the obvious attractions of disengagement.
Among other factors which US policy-makers must consider, Iraq’s neighbours are watching events with increasing twitchiness and closely monitoring whether the twists and turns of US policy are making matters better or worse.
Meanwhile at the political level, the pro-active US ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, seems ready and willing to bang heads together to bring about a new government more to Washington’s liking. But there is the constant danger that this will backfire, provoking indignant criticism of American interference in the workings of a supposedly sovereign state. As the British discovered in Iraq, an imperial power is all too often damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t.
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