The recent Arab Summit held in Baghdad was a harbinger of the troubled times. Sunni Arab countries, including the Gulf States, sent very low-level diplomats to the event - and made no attempt to hide their displeasure with the current Iraqi administration headed by Nouri al-Maliki.
It's no wonder the Sunni Arab world is troubled by developments in Iraq. Bush's war and subsequent elections gave power to the majority in Iraq, who are Shia Muslims like their Persian co-religionists in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iraq's new leadership has shown little inclination to co-exist with former enemies. And that makes Sunni, Turkmen, and Kurdish Iraqis very nervous. The Bush/US policy left Iraq with a complicated power-sharing model that was supposed to give all minorities and regions a voice in the central government and a share of revenues from the country's substantial oil fields and reserves. Trouble is, it is not working as planned.
Earlier this year, the administration of PM Al-Maliki ordered the arrest of the country's Sunni vice president: Tariq al-Hashemi. He promptly fled to Iraqi Kurdistan, then launched his own diplomatic mission to the Doha, Qatar and Saudi Arabia - both Sunni strongholds. Hashemi warned today that the country might break up under current circumstances.
The al-Maliki administration this week also arrested and detained Faraj Al-Haidari, the Kurdish head of Iraq's election commission, which further inflamed regional and ethnic conflicts. One has to wonder how this is going to end. Many speculate that the country will ultimately break-up along regional, ethnic and religious lines. For surrounding states, with the exception of Iran who might benefit, such an outcome would be a disaster. It would certainly call into even more doubt the motives, strategies and efficacy of George Bush's war; not to mention the thousands of American lives lost; the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who died in the crossfire; and, the trillions of dollars in American treasure spent on this questionable effort. Baghdad fell...and nine years later it's still falling.
a. I really don't think Iraq would be better off with Saddam in power ... and I would hope you really don't think that either.
ReplyDeleteb. If the Iraqis are fighting a civil war, then it is the Iraqis problem and not ours, unless you endorse tyrannical rule by deviant and megalomaniac-type personalities. And no, Bush was not a tyrant. He might have a megalomaniac, as well as Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld, but they were not tyrants. And if you think their methods were bad, you really need to research the methods of Saddam and his son.
Thanks for your comment. Don't count me as a fan or supporter of Saddam Hussein. He was, as you note, a tyrant. I remember well his massacres of Kurds in the north and Shia in the south. I would still argue that Iraq today is not better off after our intervention to topple Hussein. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed, trillions spent, and the net result was to deliver the country directly into the hands of Iran. Only Iraqi Kurdistan and former Sunni insurgents stand in the way of total Iranian domination.
DeleteBut is that not their choice ...
ReplyDeleteAre you saying that the status quo as it stood in 2003 could have been maintained indefinitely?
And I doubt very seriously that Iran will dominate Iraq, but that is merely my humble opinion. Arabs will be Arabs and Persians will be Persians ... and there is a gulf there in more ways than one. Not to mention the Sunni - Shi'a gulf.
But then, one could also argue that thousands upon thousands were dying in Iraq before the coalition intervention, as well as billions were being spent on troops sitting in the desert (which was the only reason Saddam Hussein's regime even bothered to show a modicum of cooperation with the UN arms inspectors, who said he wasn't really cooperating). Do you really believe that the sanctions, as they existed, would have survived much longer or the Coalition would have continued to patrol the no-fly zones that protected the Shi'a south or the Kurdish north? Not hardly. A hard choice was made, and the aftermath was screwed up, but that does not negate the necessity for the choice in the first place.