NOTE:Since I wrote this article, further developments have come to light regarding our plans for Iraq. Basically, Bush has apparently decided to run our foreign policy the way your order Chinese food–a little from column A, a little from column B. [See Marquis, Christopher. "Bush Officials Differ On Way to Force Out Iraqi Leader." New York Times. (June 19, 2002) for further explanation]. In other words, he'd decided to give the C.I.A. and the Iraqi National Congress their shot at toppling Saddam's regime, using the methods described below, and then, when and if they fail, sending in an invasion force of about 200,000 U.S. troops to get the job done. They are going to fail. This article discusses the reasons why—and hopefully gives some inkling of the consequences of their failure.
THIS WEEK'S RANT: Why You Have to Kill the Bad Guy in the Sequel, or Our Government is Run By Idiots Just Like You and Me
So, you may have heard, we're going to have a war in Iraq. Coming to a theatre near you, Desert Storm Part II: The Vengeance. You may ask yourself, why are we going to have a war in Iraq? And if you've been reading the papers, you may answer yourself, "biological and chemical weapons mumble...his own people...might have a nuke mumble...Inspectors...Sanctions...suffering Iraqis mumble...'Axis-of-Evil'–in short: Saddam Hussein is a bad dude." Here's a better question: Why didn't we topple Saddam Hussein eleven years ago?
That question has a simple answer–and it's not the one you may have been reading about on the New York Times op-ed page, i.e., "Colin Powell is a pussy." And it's not, as has been elsewhere claimed, because "We thought he would fall all by hissself, we've been giving money to the rebels and stuff." We didn't topple him because we didn't know who to replace him with. (If any of y'all are muttering indignantly to yourselves, "But the United States government doesn't replace foreign governments, we're a democracy, goddammit, we stand for Freedom, and Truth, And Justice, and É" you'd best split now, it only gets uglier.) What worries me is, we still don't know who to replace him with.
"Huh?" you're saying. Well, lemme 'splain. Hopefully by then y'all will be depressed as I am. First, check out this article in the Times Footnote 1. For those of you who can't access it or are too lazy to do so, it says basically this: The State Department, the C.I.A. and the Pentagon are arguing over what rebel groups to support in the proposed Iraqi war. The State Department, being the State Department, wants to have a broad based coalition, and it's been trying to set up some meetings with the various rebel factions, to help plan for the aftermath of Saddam's overthrow. (Picture a factotum with a clipboard–the kind of kid who went to all the Student Council meetings–standing at the head of the room saying, "Ok, so who wants the Ministry of Agriculture? Hmmm? C'mon, people, that's a really important government task, ok? Not everybody gets to be Minister of Defense.") The C.I.A.–well, what the C.I.A. really wants to do its help covertly plan a military coup, because that's what the C.I.A. always wants to do. But somebody finally convinced them that Saddam's habit of periodically executing anyone he suspects of disloyalty–he killed two of his own sons-in-law Footnote 2 makes this Maybe-Not-Such-The-Plan. So they've contented themselves with grumbling about what everybody else wants to do. The Pentagon, on the other hand, has been having sweet nothings whispered in it ear by a group called the Iraqi National Congress (I.N.C.), led by one Dr. Ahmed Chalabi. (Remember those names, kids, they're gonna be on the final). The I.N.C. has been rubbing Dick Cheney's knee and saying things like "Baby, it'll be just like Afghanistan, I promise. All we need is air strikes. Barely any ground troops at all. You know we can take care of it. Just give your honey pie a little more money, 20, 30 million or so, and we'll take care of the rebellion for you. C'mon, Sweetness, Saddam'll be dust before you can say ‘lift those sanctions.'"
All this political infighting kinda makes me wish we had someone who could step in and be like "Alright, Children, this is the way it's gonna go down." Like the President, for instance. Footnote 3 Which one will win? I dunno. I'm just a whiny little Brooklynite who reads too many magazines and likes to Monday-morning-quarterback Colin Powell. But my money's on the Pentagon. "Forming a broad-based coalition" is a lot like "nation building" and W. always gets that icky face when he talks about that.
So, what's the problem with all this? Well, here's where we have to get into a little Iraqi history. It may not be painless but I'll try and make it brief.
As you are probably aware, Islam, like Christianity, is not monolithic; as the religion has developed, so have different sects and schisms Footnote 4. One of the more basic divisions–broadly similar to the difference between Protestants and Catholics–is the split between the Sunnis and the Shia Footnote 5. Worldwide, about 85 to 90% of Muslims are Sunni. There are only a few places where Shias are the majority–Yemen, Azerbijan, Iran, and Iraq. Iran is the most important and influential of these countries in the Shia community–its population is overwhelmingly Shia–but Iraq's a close second; some of the religion's holiest sites are in Iraq. Those of you with long memories may be wondering, hey, wait a minute, didn't Iran and Iraq fight a war or something? Yeah, they did, for most of the 80s. One of the reasons for that is, while Iran and Iraq are both Shia majority countries, ethnically, Iran is Persian, not Arab–they speak Farsi, not Arabic. Iraq's Shias are almost all Arabs. Saddam is a big Arab nationalist–theoretically, he supports unifying all Arab peoples into a single state–and he's been able to exploit these ethnic divisions pretty effectively at various points in Iraqi history.
But the major reason for the strife between Iran and Iraq is that even though Iraq's population is majority Shia (a large majority, too, some experts estimate as much as 2/3s) the country has always been run by the Sunnis (Arab Sunnis are about 20% of the population.) This can be traced back to when Iraq was part of the Ottoman Empire–the Ottomans were Sunni, and they created a colonial Sunni elite to run Iraq for them; these people just switched over to working for the British after the Ottoman Empire was crushed, and then took power once the British left. Like most colonial elites, their power was based on keeping the brothers down–the Shias in this case–and the Shias have been persecuted with varying levels of intensity ever since the Ottomans took over, oh, about 500 years ago. Under Saddam the persecution level has been very intense. He bombed one of the Shia's holiest cities toward the end of the Gulf War Footnote 6.
You'd think this would be great, right? Peachy keen. After all, with all that they've suffered, it should be no trouble at all to for us to hook up with the Shia resistance groups–resistance groups which represent the desires of the majority! Neato!–and help them to topple Saddam. They can form a government–a government which represents the majority of the people! A democratic-ish type government!—and wham, bam, thank you Uncle Sam. Except there aren't really any Shia resistance groups. Well, there are, kinda. One must keep in mind that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you, and nobody stays a despot for long without being able to spot trouble and eliminate it. Saddam has ruled Iraq for nigh on 30 years. He assassinated the leader of the largest and most important Shia resistance group, the Dawa, in 1998. They're not totally crushed, but they have a Castro's chance in Sierra Madre Footnote 7 of taking over the country. There's another group called the Supreme Council for the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (SCIRI), but we don't like them. Still, could we rustle up our own handpicked Shia resistance? Maybe. But then we'd run into our other problem–if the Shias are the ones who defeat Saddam, then they'd be the ones in charge once he was gone. And we don't want that. Footnote 8
Why? Well, the only issues which have really riled up the Shia have been religious in nature—destroying their shrines doesn't go over well with religious groups, generally–and as in the rest of the Middle East, the unifying force of religion has an Islamic fundamentalist flavor which makes the U.S. government very nervous. Shia-controlled Iran was the first country to fall to an Islamic fundamentalist, "The U.S. is the Great Satan"-type regime, in 1979. And what country would be the natural ally of a Shia ruled Iraq? Iran. Iran provides the funds for the SCIRI, which is why we don't like the SCIRI. The founder of the Dawa hosted the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini for a number of years before Graybeard Blackturban went on to bigger and brighter things. Replacing Saddam with some Iraqi version of the Ayatollah is not what the U.S. government had in mind.
So discounting the majority of the population, who does that leave? There's the Sunni elite we were talking about earlier. And at first glance, they do have their advantages–they are generally better educated than the Shia, on the whole, and most of the majors power players in business and government are Sunni, as well. Saddam himself is a Sunni, though sort of a po' white trash one. Oh, wait–that's the problem. Nobody who has attained or retained a position of power in Iraq today has done so without proving their loyalty to Saddam's regime. In addition, most have had their loyalty ensured by being forced to participate in one way or another in Saddam's brutality and repression of the populace–he once had a bunch of his generals personally participate Footnote 9 in the public execution of a group for former military officers accused of plotting a coup. Saddam's a big admirer of Stalin; in many ways he's modeled himself after him. Which means that even if he were to kick it tomorrow the best we'd likely get to replace him out of the current crop of politicians is a Khrushchev–someone who could attempt limited reform but not truly alter the repressive system which brought them to power. And no one seems to think that the Iraqi people will be content to sing a round of "The King is dead, long live the King," and head back for the gulag. Add to this the fact that we have almost no intelligence coming out of Iraq Footnote 10, and thus cannot ensure that anyone we do support will be friendly toward us once they assume power, and that replacing Saddam with one of his cronies would make us look like huge hypocrites and run the risk of displeasing what few allies we now have in the region, and this option is pretty much out.
"Gee wiz, this all seems pretty awful," y'all must be saying. A few of you, though, those quick at arithmetic, I can see a hopeful gleaming dawning in your dewy eyes: "But wait," you'll say, if 2/3s of the population is Shia, another 20 percent Arab-Sunni–what about the remaining 15 percent or so? What's up with them? Could they maybe help topple Saddam and form a government?" Oh, you mean the Kurds.
Ah, the Kurds. A noble and fierce people. Whenever you hear that Saddam used chemical weapons on his own people, that's the Kurds they're talking about. Of course, from Saddam's perspective, saying that he used chemical weapons "on his own people" is kind of like accusing the U.S. government of using biological weapons on our own people when we started handing out the smallpox blankets to the Indians. The Kurds are Muslims, but not Arabs, and certainly not Iraqis; they have a their own language and culture. What they don't have is their own country. When the Ottoman Empire was getting hacked to bits post-WWI, England and France basically took a map and divided the Middle East between them, using the rough administrative divisions of the Ottoman empire to form the new colonial borders. Meanwhile, the young Turks (Ottoman=Turkish), led by Kemal Ataturk, tried to preserves as much of their old territory as they could. The Kurds got caught in the middle; promised their own country, their mountain homeland ended up being part of four: Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. None of these places want to give up the Kurdish-inhabited parts of their territory Footnote 11, Turkey especially. In fact, if you listen to the Turkish right-wing (not that there are any other wings in military-run Turkey) there aren't Kurds in Turkey, only "mountain Turks." So the fact that you can't teach your kids Kurdish, or publish a Kurdish language newspaper, or listen to Kurdish radio or watch Kurdish TV is not really a problem. This is a bit like the KKK saying there are no black people in Montgomery, and thus no civil rights issues, and that guy hanging from the tree is a just local troublemaker, m'am.
As you might expect, the Kurds aren't all that pleased about this situation. Ever since WWI, Turkey, and to a lesser extent the other three countries, have been cracking down on various Kurdish uprisings, rebellions, and insurgencies. The Kurds are tough, experienced fighters, but they've been fighting for one thing during the past 80 years–their own homeland. Thanks to the Northern No-Fly Zone, for the past ten years they've pretty much had one, at least in northern Iraq. Footnote 12
Good for them, right? There is one little problem–in addition to being tough and experienced, the Kurdish rebels are also opportunistic and brutal (other side of the same coin.) The two main Kurdish rebel groups, the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), hate each other more than they hate Saddam. Both have cut deals with Saddam to hurt each other at various times. So even though things have cooled down a bit the past few years, it's unlikely that they'd be willing to form an alliance in order to defeat him—to the Kurds, who's in charge or Iraq doesn't really matter, because whoever it is will want to keep them a part of it. Therefore it's also highly unlikely that they'd be willing to give up the autonomy they've enjoyed for the past decade and submit to a newly-installed Iraqi government. Even if the U.S. were able to corral these Middle Eastern Hatfields and McCoys into working together, we are adamantly opposed to giving them what they want, and what they probably deserve, i.e., their own homeland. Why? Because a free Iraqi Kurdistan would be an excellent place to launch rebellions aimed at freeing the rest of Kurdistan. Turkey, which has made progress recently in suppressing its own Kurdish rebels, would be mightily pissed. And we do not care enough about the plight of the Kurdish people to risk pissing off a card-carrying NATO member, longstanding ally, and one of our few friends in the region.
So there's nobody inside the country we can trust. Ok. But don't repressive regimes regularly spit out a number of exiled dissidents? Such as our old friends the Iraqi National Congress, mentioned above? The I.N.C. was supposed to be a confederation of all the Iraqi resistance groups; Chalabi, the leader, is Shia, and the group has extended olive branches to the Kurds and the Shia Islamists, even to the monarchists (all two of ‘em). For a brief period in the midᇮs there was some talk between these groups, but the last time the State Department tried to get them in the same room everybody pretty much sniffed and said, "Not if he's there." Bodes ill for the alliance, non?
Never mind that, the I.N.C. and their leader have got their mojo workin' in Washington; you, the U.S. taxpayer, have been fronting them millions of dollars for the past decade to help stir up opposition to the Iraqi regime. Some of the money has gone to providing homes and help for Iraqi dissidents who've managed to sneak out of the country; some goes to running a Free Iraqi radio station that broadcasts four hours a day. Some days. The rest appears to have been spent on first-class plane tickets from their London HQ to D.C., and keeping Ahmed Chalabi in Savile Row suits. (Man is shady, by the way. He had to hightail it out of Jordan on corruption and embezzlement charges in the late 80s; the Jordanian police still have a warrant out for him.) State recently told the I.N.C. that they were going to be cut off if they didn't start line-iteming the expense reports.
The I.N.C. have a plan, though. A simple and ingenious plan. They'll set up shop in Iraq with a few thousand U.S. trained guerrillas and begin to engage to Iraqi army. The U.S. has to shoot a few bombs off—Saddam does have 2,000 tanks left–but the I.N.C. figures that once the Army sees the U.S. is behind it, there'll be massive defections, the whole Iraqi defense will crumble and 6 months later they'll be laughing in Baghdad. Sounds good, don't it? Sounds just like Afghanistan, in fact–a proxy force backed by U.S. airpower, the crumbling of the pitiful regime, dancing and jubilation, cake and tape at 11. That's how Paul Wolfowitz, Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld's No. 1, likes to think of it, and you can bet that there's nothing Don would like to say more than "Make it so."
So what's the problem with the I.N.C. and their plan? Well, first, they already tried it once. Remember that old hippie slogan, "what if they had a war and nobody came"? The I.N.C. did, in 1996. With the help of the C.I.A., they managed to set up a base camp in northern Iraq. They bought some guns, had a few meetings with the Kurds, launched a raid or two against the Iraqi army by way of saying hello, and sat back and waited for the expected flood of resistance fighters to start rolling in. Except it didn't. Instead, Saddam cut a deal with the Kurds and they let him send in the Army, who killed 130 of the I.N.C.'s best (and only) fighters. And that was the end of that.
Of course, the I.N.C. says that it was the lack of American backup which led to their downfall–and the C.I.A. did admittedly screw them over, telling them at the last minute "Sorry, guys, turns out the Clinton Administration doesn't want to get sucked into a war with Iraq right now. You're on your own." No planes. Aside from the guaranteed U.S. backing, the only significant difference in the new plan is a change of venue–instead of working out of Kurd territory in the North, they want to work out of Shia territory in the South, so they can get stabbed in the back by entirely different allies. The reason this is supposed to be a much better plan, is because the South has most of the oil fields, and the I.N.C. figures once they have control of those, the army ought to just fall apart. Just like it did in the Gulf War. Right. A neglected fact about the Gulf War is that while the 300,000 or so conscripts who made up the bulk of the Iraqi army were big into the surrendering, the 100,000-strong Presidential guard–in other words, the high-ranking, technically skilled, dedicated career-officer section of the Army—stuck it out for 6 weeks of the best the U.S. AirForce had to offer. Those guys didn't retreat until the Allied troops hit the ground. Would they be likely to surrender this time, after a few weeks of light shelling and confronting an "army" of 10,000 to 20,000 (at the utterly improbable utmost) poorly-trained and lightly armed I.N.C. resistance forces? You tell me. Or better yet, tell Chalabi, before he breaks his lance on that windmill.
Actually, you might as well save your breath. As I remarked way back at the beginning of this article, two other whole government divisions have been schreeching about this for months. The C.I.A. thinks the I.N.C. is incompetent, the State Department thinks it's a thieves den. Both of them are probably right. But none of this may matter if the I.N.C. can suck off Defense hard enough to convince the war birds to give them another shot.
Well, maybe it matters if you're the Iraqi people, whose opinion of the I.N.C. might be summed up as, "Who?" They have no following within the country. If the United States tries to set them up as a government–probably after having to rescue them from being massacred, again—please hope that we decide to stick around long enough to make sure they stay put, because–as you, dear reader, should be able to discern after reading this– there's several dozen other groups who will have their fins above the waterline, circling around to try and seize power themselves. Stay or go, it will be obvious to the Iraqi people and the rest of the world that an I.N.C. led government is a U.S. puppet regime. Which, if I were an Iraqi–an Iraqi who has suffered 30-plus years of Saddam's depravities and two wars, followed by 10 years of U.S. sanctions-produced poverty and humiliation–I might not be too happy about.
But hey, who cares about the Iraqi people? We've got a war to win. [**]
Footnotes:
[*] Okay, so Dante had it inscribed over the gates of Hell in The Divine Comedy. So I'm a pretentious git. So what.
1 Gordon, Michael. "U.S. Action on Iraq Slowed by Rift Over Whom to Support" New York Times. (May 10, 2002).
2 In Saddam's defense, the sons-in law had defected to the West and given out some very juicy soundbites. But get this–he managed to talk them into returning to Iraq. I'm mean, c'mon, how big of an idiot could you possibly be?
3 Yeah, me too. But I don't think Gore would be much better–he'd probably be more inclined to a State Department-like coalition, but all of these solutions have problems, as we shall see.
4 Schizm. Cool word. Let it roll over the tongue—Shhhhciiizzzmmm. Neat. But, I digress.
5 If you want to know more about this, check out this link http://www.islamfortoday.com/shia.htm
6 Of course, the Shia were trying to rebel against him at the time–with some covert U.S. backing. We did nothing to stop him from crushing the rebellion, however, for the reasons stated above.
7 For those of you wondering what the hell I'm talking about, when Castro landed in Cuba to start the revolution in 1956, all but a dozen or so of his men were killed right after he hit the beach. Castro, Che, and the rest of the fellas retreated to the Sierra Madre mountains, and after two years of fussin' and fighin' they somehow managed to overthrow the Batista regime–a 200 to 1 shot, something like hitting the Trifecta on a day when it snows in July. It's the same with the Dawa.
8 What's that? Yes, you, in the back. Doesn't the United States support democracy and freedom-loving people everywhere? Dear lord, are you people still with us?
9 In this context, "personally participate" means he had them shoot the prisoners themselves, in case you were unclear on that. He's also rumored to have perfected a neat little loyalty test on his squads of bodyguards–squad of bodyguards A sneaks into barracks of bodyguards B and starts shaking people awake, whispering "It's a coup, brother. Are you with us?" Anyone who says yes gets a bullet in their pillow, by way of their cranium.
10 The incompetence of the C.I.A. is the subject of whole ‘nother article, which I may get around to someday. But check this out the CIA section under Iraq: The Players in this link meanwhile: http://www.comebackalive.com/df/dplaces/iraq/index.htm. In fact, if you want to scare yourself shitless, check out that whole site: http://www.comebackalive.com/df/dplaces.htm. Those guys are nuts–they have a tendency to go in for the gory details which may or may not be accurate, but in the main the info is correct and to the point.
11 Partly because there's some oil there; can you say ca-ching?
12 If we could get them to trust us again. The Kurds staged an uprising in 1991, expecting U.S. military support if Saddam came after them; instead, in order not to piss off Turkey (see above) and because of our the-devil-you-know policy toward Iraq, we allowed Saddam to crush it. Then we had the balls to bitch about his human rights violations and "treatment of his own people."
[**] If you prefer your foreign policy discussions more wonkish and less flippant, here are a few links to articles which explore this issues with greater depth and insight than I, but fewer Star Trek references: "After Saddam, What Then For Iraq?" Mideast Policy Council Roundtable, Jan. ྟ. http://www.mepc.org/forums/chcs/17.html
A bit on the future of the Kurds, vis-ˆ-vis Turkey http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2002/03/26032002102554.asp "The Rollback Fantasy" More on the idiocy of various I.N.C./Pentagon schemes http://www.ciaonet.org/olj/fa/fa_99byd01.html