The United States’ occupation of Iraq has reached a very difficult point. Violence has greatly increased in recent weeks, with the number of attacks showing a consistent upward trend and the number of victims escalating. According to United Nations’ estimates, about 100 people died every day in June and July. Most of them are Iraqi civilians, victims of car bombs, attacks on mosques, and deliberate ethnic cleansing. Indeed, Iraq is now in the midst of a civil war that could escalate much further. But neither the United States nor the Iraqi government have a strategy to address the growing crisis. While both assert that the issues that divide Iraq cannot be solved militarily but need to be addressed politically, neither has a satisfactory political stratergy. The initial strategy envisaged by the US—the process leading to the formation of an elected government—has been implemented with technical success—the constitution was written and elections were held—but with no discernible impact on peace and stability in Iraq. The more recent strategy of courting the political participation by Sunnis favored by both US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and by Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has so far not led to a decrease in the violence perpetrated by Sunni organizations and in any case it cannot decrease Shia violence, which is now a very significant component of the problem. Both the United States and Iraq need a new strategy in Iraq, based on a realistic understanding of how different Iraq’s problems are now from those the U.S. confronted in the early period of the occupation.
There are three reasons for the present crisis. The first is the removal of the government of Saddam Hussein. Iraq is a deeply divided country that has only been able to maintain its unity in the past when placed under the rule of a strong, authoritarian government. When the U.S. suddenly removed Saddam, it eliminated not only a ruthless dictator whose passing from the scene few regret, but also the power that held Iraq together. The second reason is the collapse of the country’s administrative and security apparatus at the beginning of the U.S. occupation. As many studies have now shown, the United States planned and waged a very efficient military campaign but neglected to plan for the aftermath of victory. With too few troops on the ground and only vague plans, the U.S. civilian and military authorities failed to establish control quickly. The most immediate result was the looting of ministries and other government offices, as well as the damaging of power plants, water facilities, and oil installations from which the country has not recovered yet. The problem was then compounded by the disbanding of the military and police and by a poorly planned de-baathification program that not only removed from government positions the top layer of Saddam loyalists, but also extended the purges down into the middle level of the administration, depriving the government of experienced civil servants and technical cadres. The third factor is the dramatic change in the nature of the conflict in Iraq that took place between 2003, when the resistance to the U.S. occupation first manifested itself, and the present time. As a result, U.S. policy, which remained constant, no longer addresses the real issues.
Iraq is a divided country, with a highly heterogeneous population. Exact figures are not available because there has not been a census in decades, but current estimates place assume that Shia Arabs constitute about 60 percent of the population, Sunni Arabs fewer than 20 percent, and Kurds, who are Sunnis but not Arabs, about 20 percent, with much smaller number of Turkmen and of Christian Assyrians and Chaldeans. These estimates have been largely confirmed by the result of the December 2005 elections, in which Iraqis voted largely along ethnic lines. The ethnic and religious groups that constitute the population of Iraq never blended into a homogeneous unit. They were separated into different provinces under the Ottoman Empire. They separate identities under British rule, leading many British administrators to warn repeatedly about the fragility of the country and the problems that lay ahead. And they maintained strong separate identities under Saddam Hussein, despite deliberate effort on his part to impose on all groups a common Arab nationalist, Baathist ideology and a brutal policy of repression against those that resisted.
The already scant possibility that Iraq would emerge from the rule of Saddam Hussein as a united country was destroyed after the first Gulf War. Kurds, under the protection of the U.S. enforced no-fly zone, de facto seceded from Iraq, creating a separate, self-governing region. While there was much intra-Kurd fighting in this period over control of the new region, the Kurds’ determination to have a separate, autonomous region was and remains unanimous. In fact, some, particularly among the younger generation, want to go further and achieve complete independence for Kurdistan, a solution resisted by more experienced leaders aware of the international resistance such a demand would engender. Shias also revolted against Baghdad’s rule at the end of the first Gulf war, but unsuccessfully. They were less organized than the Kurds, thus less capable of resisting the repression Saddam unleashed against them. Furthermore, when Shias, buoyed in part by what they thought was a U.S. promise of help, rose up against the central government, neither the U.S. nor other countries provided support. Sunnis, on the other hand, continued to identify more closely with the Baath regime and its nationalist message. While Sunni dissidents were repressed as swiftly as any other opposition group, most top leaders in the regime were Sunnis, and the Baath rule gave the Sunni minority a more prominent role in the country than their numbers alone would have allowed. By the end of Saddam’s rule, Iraq the inherent division among Iraq’s population groups has become not only deeper, but also extremely politicized.
When it first invaded Iraq, the Bush administration greatly underestimated the depth of the divisions. This is somewhat difficult to understand in view of the fact that most of the exiled opposition groups with which the United States had been dealing for years before the invasion were organized on the basis of religion and ethnicity. Instead of seeing this as a harbinger of things to come, the Bush administration chose to believe in the assurances of Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the U.S.-funded Iraqi National Front, that after the demise of Saddam Hussein all Iraqis would rally behind a new democratic regime. While aware that Kurdish autonomy would be difficult to take back, the Bush administration also convinced itself that most Iraqis were secular Moslems, thus confessional divisions were not a central issue, and that common interest in stability, democracy and economic development would prove more powerful than sectarian interests and identities.
The occupation of Iraq proved much more difficult than the administration expected. Not only the U.S. military had trouble putting an end to the orgy of looting and destruction that followed the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, but it soon started encountering a much greater degree of organized resistance than it expected. Within weeks of their initial entry into Iraq, U.S. troops started running into ambushes and attacks by Sunni insurgents using what the U.S. military calls Improvised Explosive Devices or IEDs. The similarity in the construction of these devices soon led to the conclusion that the U.S. was facing an organized force. U.S. policy thus was shaped by the need to re-establish order and administration in Iraq and defeat the insurgents.
The strategy that eventually emerged in early 2004, after months of improvisation and false starts, was a two-pronged one, with a military and a political component. The military component called for U.S. troops to continue tracking down the insurgents while at the same time launching a massive program of training and equipping a new Iraqi national army and a new national police force. The United States perceived the insurgents to be a mixture of Sunni “dead-enders,” that is supporters of the Baath regime refusing to give up, and foreign terrorists linked to Al-Qaeda, trying to take advantage of the unsettled situation in Iraq to further their jihad against the United States and the West. At this point the United States did not envisage having to curb resistance among Kurds or Shias.
The political component of the strategy called for the setting up of a legitimate, democratic government. This would happen methodically through a series of steps: the writing of a provisional constitution or Transitional Administrative Law; the return of sovereignty to a non-elected, temporary government in June 2004; the election of an interim parliament in January 2005. A committee set up by the elected parliament would then prepare a permanent constitution, submit it to a vote of parliament in August 2005 and to a referendum of the entire electorate in October 2005. The culmination of the process would be new parliamentary elections organized under the new constitution and the formation of a new government. The idea was that Iraqis would emerge from this extremely thorough process with a legitimate government and parliament, and united behind a constitution everybody had a chance to discuss and approve. Unfortunately, the plan was marred by a totally unrealistic time table, which did not allow time for any of the discussions and negotiations needed to develop consensus about a new constitution and political system, particularly in a divided society. It is possible that the political process would have failed even if more time had been allowed, given the depth of Iraq’s problems. The rushed timetable, however, virtually guaranteed failure.
The policy was based on a set of assumptions concerning the nature of Iraq’s problems. The first assumption was that the U.S. was facing a relatively small number of Iraqi Sunni insurgents and an even smaller number of foreign terrorists. They could contained and slowly eliminate by military means. The second was that the success of the political process would drive a wedge between the Sunni insurgents and the rest of the Sunni population. Ordinary Sunnis would discover that the U.S. occupation brought with it a large democratic dividend that would make life better for all Iraqis and thus withdraw support from insurgents and jihadis alike. The third assumption was that Kurds and Shias would not oppose the occupation. Kurds were clearly delighted to be rid of Saddam Hussein, and they did not feel under U.S. occupation because they were running their own region. Shias appeared initially to be quiescent, having been convinced by moderate clerics such as Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani to put up with the occupation as a temporary inconvenience on the way to a new political system where Shias would dominate because of their numbers.
The assumptions proved wrong, and the policy failed to bring about the expected results, either politically or militarily. Politically, the Sunni insurgents turned out to be much more than a small group of backward-looking, die-hard supporters of Saddam Hussein that would soon run out of money and supporters. Instead, they turned out to be a much larger, more resilient group appealing not only to Saddam supporters but also to all Sunnis fearful of losing their status and influence and of becoming a powerless minority in the new Iraq. Furthermore, the democratic process set in motion by the United States did not appeal to most Sunnis, who knew they would be outvoted by the more numerous Shias. They boycotted the January 2005 elections and a result they were underrepresented in the committee that wrote the constitution. Furthermore, Sunnis did not like the new constitution, which called for an extremely decentralized system with a very weak central government, while most Sunnis favored a centralized political system. While Sunnis participated in the December 2005 elections, and are better represented in the current parliament as a result, they still feel as an aggrieved minority. Far from isolating the insurgents from a Sunni population, the political process devised by the U.S. created another group of deeply disaffected Sunni leaders and politicians.
On the military front the policy also failed. The insurgency continued—although this was to be expected because insurgent movements are notoriously difficult to suppress. Most importantly, the efforts to develop a new Iraqi army and police force encountered many set backs, in part because of mistakes the U.S. military has now acknowledged making in the setting up of training programs, but above all because the growing sectarian tensions defeated the goal of creating a non-partisan, national army and above a police force. The U.S. military does not routinely train police forces, and the early efforts were poorly designed and apparently poorly staffed. Also the trainers tried to put through the process too many people too fast. The result was an impressive increase in the number of supposedly trained Iraqi policemen, but very little to show on the ground. Many of the new police recruits did not perform, abandoned their posts under pressure, or decided that the risks of the job were too high, particularly after insurgents started to target police stations and recruitment centers. While some of the initial mistakes were corrected, a much more serious problem emerged, namely the fact that few of the policemen saw themselves as part of an impartial national police force, while most saw themselves as defenders of one or another group. Furthermore, few Sunnis joined the police force, which became predominantly Shia, except in Kurdistan where it was exclusively Kurdish. Most Shias policemen, furthermore, became affiliated with one of the competing Shia militias. As a result, to this day Iraq lacks a national, impartial police force. Rather, the police force has become a mosaic of rival militias. This leaves Iraq poorly policed and also makes the disarmament of the militias impossible. The training of the new Iraqi army was slightly more successful, in part because the U.S. military was better equipped to do this, in part because Iraqi units were kept under the close control by U.S. officers. Nevertheless, the training of the new army was slow and difficult, less for technical than for political reasons.
Not only did the original strategy meet with serious setbacks, but unforeseen development also took place, changing very significantly the nature of the problem the United States confronted in Iraq.
First, Kurds have had a disproportionate impact on the political process, further weakening the Iraq state. Not only have they remained adamant in their commitment to a Kurdistan with a degree of autonomy that falls just below formal independence, they have also convinced at least a part of the Shia leadership that regional autonomy is in their interest. A major Shia party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, joined the Kurdish parties in drafting a constitution that calls for a federal system with an extremely weak center, where provinces can join to form new autonomous regions, and where the laws of the regions can override the constitution. Other Shia factions and leaders are more ambivalent on the issue of autonomy, but they all signed on to the constitution. Regional autonomy is no longer exclusively a Kurdish demand.
Second, it is now clear that Shias, far from accepting U.S. occupation, are increasingly resentful. They are also increasingly divided. There is now a real struggle for influence over the Shia population between scholars such as Al-Sistani, who do not believe that clerics should also be political leaders, and Shia activists such as Moqtada Sadr, who has taken advantage of his position as a member of one of Iraq’s prominent families of Shia clerics to become a populist leader with a large following in the slums of Baghdad. The rivalries among Shia factions are made more dangerous by the fact that they are all armed.
Third, while the laborious constitution-making and election process unfolded, the central government became even weaker. The new government formed in April 2006 after four months of hard negotiations has virtually no control over what is happening in Iraq. It has no administrative capacity, no power to curb the militias, or to control decisions made at the local level by non-elected officials and local notables. Simply put, it does not govern.
Fourth, violence has not only escalated but also changed in nature. It is no longer caused by an insurgency fighting against the American occupants and the new government they have helped set up, but it is the result of a multi-sided conflict that involves Sunni insurgents, foreign jihadis, several Shia militias, and tribal and neighborhood forces. Civil war is a reality, with people being targeted not because of what they have done, but because of who they are. Ethnic cleansing is taking place, above all in Baghdad. Increasingly, Shias families are driven out of predominantly Sunni neighborhoods and Sunni families are expelled from predominantly Shia ones. There are no accurate figures for the number of people who have moved fearing for their lives, in part because most move in with other family members rather than seeking shelter in refugee camps. Nevertheless the number of camps is increasing.
The nature of the crisis in Iraq is thus quite different today from that the U.S. strategy was designed to address. The most striking feature of the present situation is the weakness of the government so painstakingly built through elections. The elections themselves were surprisingly successful, in that they remained reasonable free of fraud and even violence despite the circumstances. But the government that has emerged from the program is extremely weak. This is not the fault of a particular prime minister or cabinet, but simply of a process that started with the overthrown of Saddam Hussein and has continued unabated.
U.S. policy, however, has not changed to meet these new circumstances. Washington is still hoping, against all evidence, that the new government can gain legitimacy and become more effective. It is hoping to woe Sunni citizens away from the insurgents, this time by revising the constitution. It is stepping up police and military training programs, assuming that more and better training will turn into national forces. In the absence of political reconciliation and in the midst of sectarian violence, however, more training may have the opposite effect of strengthening the militias, as people trained to be part of the police force or the national army transfer their allegiance and their skills to help the sectarian fighting. The policies, in other words, are no longer addressing the problems.
The response of the Bush administration to all set backs so far has been that difficulties have to be expected and that the U.S. should stay the course. Since the policies implemented so far have not been successful and the nature of the conflict has in any case changed considerably, staying the course does not seem a viable option. What is needed is a new course designed to address the problems of 2006 rather than those of 2004. The options open to the Bush administration will be discussed in a second article in this two-part series.
*Marina Ottaway is the Director of the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC
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