For some time now, the Bush administration's stated goal in Iraq has been to tamp down the insurgency and curb the religious, ethnic and tribal infighting long enough to allow the Iraqis to work out their differences and reach a political settlement. Meanwhile, the Iraqi army and police would be armed and trained to take over the job of maintaining security from American and British troops.
That was the game plan. It hasn't worked, and the reason it has failed is increasingly obvious. The United States cannot accomplish for the Iraqis what the Iraqis are not willing to do for themselves. Unless they can reach a political settlement on their own and establish a balance of power among their feuding factions, no amount of pushing and cajoling by the occupying power is going to force them to end what has become a long civil war.
Iraq is an inherently violent and anarchic country, as I saw for myself in December 2002, when Saddam Hussein suddenly emptied the country's prisons and freed the inmates three months before the United States and its coalition partners invaded his country. Western journalists were taken in a convoy to Abu Ghraib prison, where we learned that Saddam had just announced a blanket pardon for all but a few hardcore enemies of his regime.
No one seemed to know how the scenario would be played out. Would the prisoners be released one by one? Would they be transported to their hometowns? Meanwhile, the crowd of Iraqis grew to thousands as hopeful families and clan members - and others with more sinister motives - besieged the prison compound. It was an astonishing sight for anyone familiar with Iraq in the days of Saddam's iron rule, when spontaneous gatherings of any sort were forbidden and ruthlessly repressed. No one seemed to know what to do next.
Then, without warning, the dam broke. Abu Ghraib exploded into chaos. Prisoners decided to release themselves and began scrambling over walls. Some knocked holes in the walls. The prison guards abandoned any pretence at maintaining order and threw up their hands in disgust. And then I saw what Iraqis could do to each other if given a free hand.
Families and clan members who presumably had scores to settle were seeking out certain prisoners as they came out of the gate and were shooting them on the spot. The chaos lasted for hours, and the next day, other families began demonstrations in Baghdad to force officials to reveal the fate of prisoners who had not been reunited with their families. I realized then that Iraq is a country that is not easy to govern under any circumstances.
The British tried to dominate it after World War I but eventually lost control after Iraqi nationalists slaughtered the foreign Arab monarchy that the occupying power had imposed on them. The turmoil that followed was eventually curbed by Saddam Hussein, who used extreme cruelty and mass murder to impose rule by a Sunni minority on the Shia majority and the Kurds. By the time the American coalition defeated Saddam's demoralized army in the 1990-91 Gulf War, the dictator was already starting to lose control of the Shia in the southern part of Iraq and the Kurds in the north.
When the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 and toppled Saddam Hussein, it liberated the Shia and the Kurds from an oppressive rule, but was seen as an unwelcome foreign occupier by the newly dispossessed Sunni. This may be a gross oversimplification of a complex and highly charged political landscape, but it gives you an idea of what the invading army was wading into.
It has meant that the United States, de facto, has ended up taking sides in a many-sided civil war. Under the American occupation, Sunni gunmen have forced Shia families out of their homes, and vice versa. The U.S. occupiers have then built walls around ethnically cleansed neighborhoods. American troops have also armed and trained Sunni militiamen in Anbar province. Moreover, the Iraqi Shia have been fighting among themselves. The Shia factions that control the government are now using the American armed and trained Iraqi Army to attack the militia run by the dissident Shia leader Muqtada al Sadr. In addition, there are signs that while the American-backed government in Baghdad wants to eliminate the highly popular Sadr as a political opponent, American officials want to coax him into the political process.
In short, America has become involved in a hornet's nest of political and ethnic problems in Iraq that even the British imperialists, with their long experience of occupying and ruling distant lands, were finally unable to resolve. So far, there are few signs that their modern equivalents – the U.S. officials in Baghdad - will be able to do any better.
