A Calamitous View of Iraq's Future-from Basra

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http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/55242/#more

A Calamitous View of Iraq's Future-from Basra

Posted by Barry Lando at 2:00 PM on June 26, 2007.

Barry Lando: A report just issued by the International Crisis Group on the horrific situation in Basra after the British equivalent of the U.S. surge. A presage of what lies ahead.


While everyone is focusing on the U.S. led surge in Baghdad, Iraq’s second largest city Basra—a city that the British army were supposed to be pacifying — has been going down the tubes. That may well be the fate of Baghdad and much of the rest of Iraq as well, warns a report just issued by the International Crisis Group. It’s a report that should be must reading for anyone attempting to decipher where Iraq is heading.

Basra is Iraq’s economic capital, its major port; it sits astride vital supply routes for the country, and is located in Iraq’s most oil rich region. In other words, what happens in that city is crucial.

Between September 2006 and March 2007 carried out a “Operation Sinbad,” which was similar to Baghdad’s current surge. The British called it “clear, hold and civil reconstruction”– the idea being to turn over control to Iraqi military and police. According to the report, as the British continue to draw down their forces in Basra, the plan has failed miserably. Some excerpts follow—but I suggest anyone really interested in the subject, read the full report.

“In Basra, the British appear to have given up on the idea of establishing a functioning state, ….. Four years after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, they are facing increasingly frequent and bloody attacks, and it is hard to imagine them remaining for long. Indeed, even were the coalition to re-engage in Basra, it already may well be too late to salvage the situation by creating a functional state. Over time, local government in the south could well resemble a small failed state; the government might collapse, a victim of the ruthless struggle between unregulated and uninhibited militias.”

snip//

“As the U.S. considers plans for Baghdad and other parts of the country, the lessons are clear. First, the answer to Iraq’s horrific violence cannot be an illusory military surge that aims to bolster the existing political structure and treats the dominant political parties as partners. Secondly, violence is not solely the result of al-Qaeda-type terrorism or sectarian hostility, however costly both evidently are. Thirdly, as Basra clearly shows, violence has become a routine means of social interaction utilized by political actors doubling as militiamen who seek to increase their share of power and resources.

“Basra teaches that as soon as the military surge ends and coalition forces diminish, competition between rival factions itself will surge. In other words, prolonging the same political process with the same political actors will ensure that what is left of the Iraqi state gradually is torn apart. The most likely outcome will be the country’s untidy break-up into myriad fiefdoms, superficially held together by the presence of coalition forces. The priority, as Crisis Group outlined in an earlier report, is to confront the power structure established in the wake of the 2003 invasion, as well as the parties that now dominate it, by insisting on genuine political compromises and a more inclusive system. It is high time that Washington and London acknowledge that their so-called Iraqi partners, far from building a new state, are tirelessly working to tear it down.”