This is the New Iraq (US "Democracy"/Troops Peripheral)

Journalist Tom Ricks, author of two high-profile books on the US and the Iraq War, featured this comment on his blog from Nir Rosen, who has been notable for his reportage from Iraq. I found it illuminating for several reasons:

1. Rosen offers a pragmatic, rather than wish-driven, assessment that Iraq will not return to sectarian war. That prediction, which is being hotly debated amongst Iraq specialists, is one of the key issues behind and beyond the forthcoming Iraqi national elections on 7 March.

2. Don't confuse this, however, with "democracy", which is likely to be the superficial headline in much press coverage. Democracy promotion was never the goal of the Bush Administration when it invaded Iraq, and it is not the primary concern of the Obama Administration, either. This episode is power politics.

3. And an irony: Rosen's assessment highlights that the US military is largely a bystander in this process. There will continue to be a running argument as to whether the vaunted "surge" of 2007/8 created the space for a measure of stability and security, but those matters are now in the hands of Iraqis. Not sure, however, that Ricks will appreciate this point even as he posts Rosen's thoughts: he is one of the spokesmen for the US military's current push to delay and even break President Obama's declared date for withdrawal of American forces.

It's been frustrating to read the latest hysteria about sectarianism returning to Iraq, the threat of a new civil war looming, or even the notion that Iraq is "unraveling." I left Iraq today after an intense mission on behalf of Refugees International. My colleague Elizabeth Campbell and I traveled comfortably and easily throughout Baghdad, Salahedin, Diyala and Babil. We were out among Iraqis until well into the night every day, often in remote villages, traveling in a normal Toyota Corolla. Our main hassle was traffic and having to go through a thousand security checkpoints a day. Stay tuned for our report next month about the humanitarian crisis in Iraq (which deserves more attention than political squabbles) and the situation of Iraqis displaced since 2003. Stay tuned for my own article about what I found politically as well. And finally stay tuned later this year for my book on the Iraqi civil war, the surge, counterinsurgency and the impact of the war in Iraq on the region.



From the beginning of the occupation the US government and media focused too much on elite level politics and on events in the Green Zone, neglecting the Iraqi people, the "street," neighborhoods, villages, mosques. They were too slow to recognize the growing resistance to the occupation, too slow to recognize that there was a civil war and now perhaps for the same reason many are worried that there is a "new" sectarianism or a new threat of civil war. The US military is not on the streets and cannot accurately perceive Iraq, and journalists are busy covering the elections and the debaathification controversy, but not reporting enough from outside Baghdad, or even inside Baghdad.

Iraqis on the street are no longer scared of rival militias so much, or of being exterminated and they no longer have as much support for the religious parties. Maliki is still perceived by many to be not very sectarian and not very religious, and more of a "nationalist." Another thing people would notice if they focused on "the street" is that the militias are finished, the Awakening Groups/SOIs are finished, so violence is limited to assassinations with silencers and sticky bombs and the occasional spectacular terrorist attack -- all manageable and not strategically important, even if tragic. Politicians might be talking the sectarian talk but Iraqis have grown very cynical.

When you talk to people they tell you that the sectarian phase is over. Of course with enough fear it could come back, but Shiites do not feel threatened by any other group, and Sunnis aren't being rounded up, the security forces provide decent enough security, and they are pervasive, there is no reason for people to cling to militias in self defense and besides militiamen are still being rounded up, I just don't see enough fuel here for a conflagration -- leaving aside the Arab/Kurdish fault line, of course. (Though if Maliki went to war with the Kurds that would only further unite Sunni and Shiite Arabs.) The Iraqi Security Forces like Maliki enough, even if they prefer Alawi. The Iraqi army will not fall apart on sectarian lines, it would attack Sunni and Shiite militias, if there were any, but these militias are emasculated. They can assassinate and dispatch car bombs but they can't hold ground, they can't engage in firefights with checkpoints. The Iraqi Security Forces might arrest a lot of innocent people, but they're also rounding up "bad guys" and getting a lot of tips from civilians. The Iraqi Security Forces might be brutal, sometimes corrupt, but they no longer act as death squads, they take their role very seriously, perhaps too seriously, but these days anything is better than the recent anarchy and sectarian massacres.

Of course Maliki is in the end still a Shiite sectarian actor and has a core constituency, as Chalabi cleverly forced him to reveal, but Maliki is not pro-Iranian (though Iran is too often demonized as well as if the dichotomy is pro-American and good or pro-Iranian and bad). It's not a dichotomy of pro-Iranian or nationalist either.

It's not about whether Iraqis are sectarian or not. They are, though the vitriol and hatred have decreased. It's that they are not afraid of the other sect anymore. Fear is what led to the militias taking power and to the political and military mobilization along sectarian lines. There are attempts by some Shiite and Sunni parties to scare people again but in my conversations I feel it is failing. The fear is gone and the Iraqi Security Forces fill the security void, even if it's not pretty.

There is concern about Sunnis being disenfranchised or getting the shaft. But they have been disenfranchised since 2003. In part they disenfranchised themselves but anyway none of them expect to get unshafted. It's already done. The government is in Shiite hands and now it's a question of whether it will remain in the relatively good Shiite hands of [Prime Minister Nouri al-] Maliki, who provides security and doesn't bring down an iron fist on you unless you provoke him (sort of like Saddam), or the dirty corrupt and dangerous Shiite hands of Maliki's rivals -- [Ibrahim al-] Jaafari, [Abdul Aziz al-] Hakim, etc. I think these elections mean a lot more to Americans (as usual) and maybe to Iraqi elites than they do to Iraqis.

Besides, what can Sunnis do? Nothing, they're screwed and they have to accept it, and they have. The alternative is far worse for them. Sunnis in the region will not go to war alongside the Sunnis of Iraq. That moment came and went in 2006. Iraqi Sunnis don't even have a single leader who is charismatic and has real appeal, they're divided among themselves and these days your average Iraqi just isn't that into politics. I've heard it hundreds of times by now, they blame the religious parties, they say they got fooled and now they understand. Now that's not completely true, but the militias were able to mobilize people because of a security vacuum. These days it doesn't matter how remote and shitty the village I visit is, there are Iraqi Security Forces, and people have good things to say about them. Compared to the first three years of the occupation, Sunnis seem downright docile, maybe bitter or wistful, maybe angry, but their leadership is emasculated, in jail, abroad, just trying to survive, or just trying to make money.

Maliki will probably emerge the victor in the elections. His more sectarian and corrupt Shiite rivals are discredited and unpopular, but more importantly, he is an authoritarian ruler in the Middle East, he would have to be really incompetent if he couldn't stay in power. If Karzai could do it, then Maliki should be able to as well. Of course there is nothing uniquely Middle Eastern about this. In fact maybe looking at post-Soviet states is useful -- that is, the new ruler will not readily relinquish control, even if he has to bend the rules a bit, or operate outside the constitution. This has happened in Asia, Africa, and other places in transition. I hate to admit that I hope Maliki wins. He's the best of all the realistic alternatives. It's not like a more secular candidate is likely to win, so if it's not Maliki it will be Jaafari or [Ahmad] Chalabi. Frankly this is a rare case where I hope Maliki violates the constitution, acts in some kind of authoritarian way to make sure he wins the elections, because the alternative is fragmentation, or a criminal, sectarian kleptocratic Shiite elite taking over, and then Iraq might unravel. For now it's still "raveling."

Iraq Analysis: Thomas Friedman and the Never-Ending "Liberal Intervention"

UPDATE 0915 GMT: Here is what, in today's power politics, is what the rhetoric of "liberal intervention" props up. Thomas Ricks declares, alongside Friedman's piece in The New York Times, "Leaders in [the US and Iraq] may come to recognize that the best way to deter a return to civil war is to find a way to keep 30,000 to 50,000 United States service members in Iraq for many years to come."

Seven years after the 2003 war and the violence and disorder that followed, Iraq has moved on to other political conflicts and issues. Yet, for some, this will always be a case of returning to the scene to construct victory or to build the excuse for absolution. War must become liberation, crime must become justice, tragedy must become redemption.

Iraq: How Serious is the Sunni Election Boycott?
Photos of the Decade: 2004 (Abu Ghraib)

One of those who persists is New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. This morning Friedman, who used his "liberal" drum to bang loudly and incessantly for the 2003 invasion, opens his column:

From the very beginning of the U.S. intervention in Iraq and the effort to build some kind of democracy there, a simple but gnawing question has lurked in the background: Was Iraq the way Iraq was (a dictatorship) because Saddam was the way Saddam was, or was Saddam the way Saddam was because Iraq was the way Iraq was — a collection of warring sects incapable of self-rule and only governable with an iron fist?

Initially, the sentence is so confusing to risk being vacuous. Don't be fooled: in its morass of words lies the self-belief that distinguishes not only Friedman but many of those who cling to "our" (and "our" has nothing to do with those who live in Iraq) righteousness in waging the conflict.

Friedman has little cognizance of what is happening in Iraq in 2010, but that is not the point of his editorial, which dismisses any need to consider today: "Will Iraq’s new politics triumph over its cultural divides, or will its cultural/sectarian divides sink its fledgling democracy? We still don’t know."

Instead, returning to his tangled opening, Friedman has a different, self-justifying mission: if the man who became (in)famous for repeatedly declaring that the US would triumph in "six more months" (Wikipedia even has re-defined a duration of six months as a "Friedman) can ever declare progress in Iraq, then the US and Thomas Friedman are vindicated for liberating the country from a dictator. If progress is elusive, then it is because of the inherent flaws of these frustrating creatures called "Iraqis". Heads, we win; tails, you lose.

Let's be clear here. For all his chest-thumping of sincerity, Friedman's words pay little if any attention to the concerns or aspirations of those in Iraq. It is notable that the only source for today's thoughts is General Raymond Odierno, the US commander in the country, who Friedman quotes without any reflection. And it is notable that Friedman's ambitions are about the threat to the US, not to Iraqis, and about the fulfilment of "our", not "their", political visions:

The two scenarios you don’t want to see are: 1) Iraq’s tribal culture triumphing over politics and the country becoming a big Somalia with oil; or 2) as America fades away, Iraq’s Shiite government aligning itself more with Iran, and Iran becoming the kingmaker in Iraq the way Syria has made itself in Lebanon.

Let's be clear, however. This issue goes far beyond Thomas Friedman, who will continue to absolve himself at length and at regular intervals. Many commentators as well as public officials, sometimes with good intentions, advocated the invasion of Iraq for the liberation of its people. They usually did so, however, with little knowledge of and regard for Iraqis. Thus the 2005 exchange between Jeffrey Goldberg of The New Yorker and Bush Administration official Douglas Feith:

When I asked...if the Administration was too enamored of the idea that Iraqis would greet American troops with flowers, [Feith] argued that some Iraqis were still too intimidated by the remnants of Saddam’s Baath Party to express their emotions openly. “But,” Feith said, “they had flowers in their minds.”

Hundreds of thousands of deaths later, Iraq faces complex political, economic, and social issues. The reality is that the 100,000+ US troops, as well as numerous diplomats, advisors, and intelligence operatives, in the country are peripheral to the conflicts and negotiations. But Friedman, and those who share his viewpoint, cannot acknowledge that. There must be a vindication for what "we" sought to do for "them" in 2003. There has to be history's verdict, handed down in favour of the US.

Because, in the end, "liberal intervention" means never having to say you're sorry.