Iraq’s High-Stakes Struggle - Council on Foreign Relations interview with Jane Arraf, Correspondent, Christian Science Monitor and Al Jazeera, Baghdad. Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman.
Al-Qaeda's resurgence in Iraq's Anbar province has led Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to threaten an attack on Fallujah, which militants control. "This is seen as a fight to the death," says veteran journalist Jane Arraf, who notes that Maliki, in advance of elections slated for April 30, is facing one of his deepest crises. While Maliki's Shiite-led government is struggling for its survival, many Sunnis "feel that they are in danger of being essentially eliminated from the political landscape," says Arraf.
Comments
The interviewee's comments ringed true to me, and it was nice to see a more level headed assessment instead of the spin machine assessments in certain media circles and Congress blaming the current situation on the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. We see to forget that Al-Qaeda took over Fallujah at least twice when we were there in force, so the assumption that if we left 3,000 advisors in country it would somehow be different seems a bit of a stretch to me.
I sort of agree with Jane's comment toward the end of the interview, when she states, "One reason that the Iraqi security forces are still relatively weak is they lost a lot of their intelligence capability when the Americans left. The Americans took the technology and the expertise with them, and they had not been able to train the Iraqis to carry on that work." In all our lessons learnt reviewed I have seen, I don't recall seeing anything (may have been there, just don't recall) stating we failed to build the right types of security capacities. We can pump out infantry men like there is no tomorrow, but if they have to employ them blindly then that limits their effectiveness.
Even so, the real issue appears to be the Sunni-Shia civil war, and I'm not sure what difference it would have made have the U.S. stayed in force or with an advisory force. For those who want to blame America, I guess we can take partial blame from removing the dictator who managed to hold it altogether somehow, and then added fuel to the fire by trying to replace a dictatorship with a functional democracy under fire. Hard to argue we didn't have the best intentions, but one can argue we had a very bad strategy for achieving a better peace.
And we wonder just why the KSA disagrees with US policies towards Iran and the apparent in their view slant of US policy towards what they view to be an exporter of revolutionary Shiaism-Iran.
We also forget who established the expansion of Shiaism via the Green Crescent---ie Khomeini and we tend to ignore because it currently does not fit the policies driven by the NCA which is accommodation not détente with Iran. The US has repeatedly failed to openly acknowledge that the Green Crescent is in fact a core foreign policy element of the Iranian Shiaism.
KSA now views the simple fact being--- on their borders they are faced by Shia countries, they also "see" Shia activism in multiple other Arab countries,and they have a Shia minority in their oil producing areas.
They also see the simple fact that in reality Hezbollah was in fact created by the sending of Iranian "volunteers" in the 80s into Lebanon---they were not the core original Shia minority in Lebanon which was represented by the Amal.
They also see Hezbollah sending fighters into Syria as well as seeing Shia fighters being sent from Iraq into Syria.
So in fact to the KSA Iran proves itself to be still a "revolutionary" Shia expander---what is it we the US is not "seeing".
The second thing that is not being recognized by all the comments right now coming out of US is that a large number of Sunni tribes are starting to support "quietly" ISIS simply because they view the Malaki government is still wanting to "pay back" for the past against Sunnis and they view Malaki as being totally under control (Badr Brigades) of Iran not just "listening" to Iran---a big difference AND this is something US policy is not wanting to state as it goes against the entire "reason" we supposedly "deposed" Saddam---namely WMD.
One sees the US slant towards Iran with three examples all released publicly in the last few months by the DoS and which reinforces KSA views towards the US/Iran/Syria/Iraq.
1. DoS has in released in public statements while in Israel recently--- made it clear to Israel that what the DoS is pitching is the best they can get so get onboard.
2. DoS has started pitching the comments Iran can participate in Geneva if they "assist"---this "assist" is being pitched by the Russians. Opposite---KSA was not invited although the majority of Syria is Sunni.
3. The open public statement yesterday that the moderate SNC Syrians either come to Geneva or risk losing the US and international community meaning actually only the UK since France as indicated they will still support the moderate SNC.
How would and or does the KSA now view the US after that statement concerning the SNC yesterday?
They will support the Islamist groups even greater in Syria and now in Iraq as they view the ability of the US to understand the problems in the ME as right now being zero, nada, nichts. By the way that is the same view being expounded by Israel.
The US policy somehow does not recognize the "fight" between Iran and the KSA is over the question of who will lead "spiritually" the Muslim worldwide community.
Iraq’s Shiite’s will rule with or without Maliki. And any Iraqi Shiite government will have close relations with Iran in order to leverage Iranian strength against the Sunni regimes on the Gulf. These are two factors that Americans must get used to and may potentially reshape the political geography of the region in the years ahead.