Iraq is back in the news. Al Qaeda-inspired militants have descended on the country from the north, overrunning large swaths of territory as Iraqi government troops abandoned their positions and fled. Why is this happening? What does it mean? What should the United States do?
Why this is happening
This is happening because Iraq is an artificial amalgamation of (mainly) three different groups, created in 1919 by the Versailles Peace Conference that settled affairs after World War I. The groups don't get along and each wants to run its own affairs independently. An ethnic group called the Kurds predominates in the northeast. Sunni Muslims predominate in the north and west. Shia Muslims predominate in the east and south. When the area was under the Ottoman Turkish Empire until the end of World War I, Ottoman imperial power kept them all more or less in check. After that the British Empire moved in and took control, suppressing several rebellions. After independence Iraq's situation remained turbulent, with coup, counter-coup and revolt remaining the order of the day until Saddam Hussein gained power in 1979. His totalitarian dictatorship achieved quiet through brutal repression. Even so, Saddam, a Sunni, had to put down Kurdish and Shi'ite rebellions.
The U.S. led invasion of 2003 removed Saddam's dictatorship. With his repressive power gone, soon Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurdish militias were engaged in vicious fighting for advantage against each other, and against American, British or other international contingents whenever they were seen as trying to enforce order along lines that any group felt tended to favor its rivals. Finally, elections installed a government under a Shi'ite Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki. There are more Shi'ites in Iraq than the other two groups, explaining why Maliki was elected. His government was decidedly sectarian, favoring Shi'ites and freezing Sunnis and Kurds out of meaningful power sharing. The Kurds basically set up their own autonomous region in the northeast and bided their time. The Sunnis, who are more closely intermingled geographically with the Shia, complained, seethed, and waited for their chance. It came when the al-Qaeda inspired ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) forces, who are fanatical Sunnis, invaded last week from Syria, where they have been battling Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad's regime.
What it means
Since the end of the Cold War the world has seen the emergence of many smaller states out of what once were larger, multinational states. The former "republics" of the Soviet Union and the small Slavic nations that were once parts of Yugoslavia are some prominent examples. What is happening in Iraq means the same thing. Cohesive peoples who are minorities and being ruled in a discriminatory fashion by other groups want their independence. Middle Eastern Sunnis and Kurds who find themselves in a nation created by European diplomats a hundred years ago want to have their own countries and rule themselves.
What the United States should do
The U.S. should let nature take its course. Having three states in what is now Iraq corresponds to the human reality on the ground there. The history of the region shows that keeping all three groups together under one political order can be maintained only at great cost by coercive power, either by an outside empire willing to make a permanent commitment of time, money and blood, or by an internal dictatorship willing to operate with extreme ruthlessness. Though enthusiastic in support of the invasion in 2003, by late 2004 the American people barely re-elected the president who started the war, and by 2006 had thrown that president's party out of the majority in both houses of congress. Though militarists such as Sen. John McCain advocate going back in, they have quickly forgotten how desperate and costly the fighting was that temporarily kept the factions from each others' throats, how futile the idea is in light of Iraqi history, and how rapidly the American people's appetite for the entire exercise soured the last time it was tried. In 2006 a Delaware senator, Joe Biden, co-wrote an op-ed in the New York Times saying that a three-state Iraq, or a weak state with three regions enjoying substantial internal autonomy, was the realistic solution to Iraq's repeated convulsions. He was right.
Click here for a Washington Post piece showing an ethnic map of Iraq and a link to Biden's NYT article.
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