U.S. Politicians Conceal: Iraq’s Real Picture

by Gerry Foley / September 2008

The approach of the American presidential elections is a powerful reason for the politicians to cover up the festering problems in Iraq. They have had some success in this, apparently, since the commentators and the polls indicate that the Iraq War has receded as an issue. But the U.S. is far from achieving its long-term objectives in Iraq and it may be facing a resurgence of its problems in a more explosive form in the near future.

There are two apparent basic reasons for the decrease in insurgent pressure on the U.S. occupation forces. The first is the backlash against al-Qaeda among Sunnis.

Al-Qaeda has a sectarian Sunni ideology and a penchant for indiscriminate and murderous attacks. It was the best organized and best trained of the insurgent forces, thanks to the U.S. covert forces' aid in the war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, where its initial cadres were formed. But it has largely discredited itself in Iraq politically. For the time being, the U.S. occupation forces have benefited from that.

The second reason is the turn of the major anti-occupation force among the Shiites, the movement of Muqtada al-Sadr, away from military action and toward politics. Some commentators in the big U.S. press say it is the fading of al-Qaeda that is the reason al-Sadr is standing down his militia, the Mahdi Army. But al-Sadr's forces first came to prominence in fighting the occupation forces in Najaf and other southern cities. That was before al-Qaeda launched its self-defeating attacks against Shiite symbols and crowds.

Apparently, the shift away from confrontation with the U.S. military and its client Iraqi forces has divided al-Sadr's movement. But whether his turn to political action benefits the U.S. project in the long run depends on how the political scene develops in Iraq. Al-Sadr has shown that he is still capable of mobilizing mass protests against the U.S. occupation and the role of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East.

Another factor apparently reducing tensions in Iraq is that the U.S. has begun to project deadlines for withdrawal of American troops. The New York Times reported Aug. 21: "The United States has agreed to remove combat troops from Iraqi cities by next June and from the rest of the country by the end of 2011 if conditions in Iraq remain relatively stable, according to Iraqi and American officials involved in negotiating a security accord governing American forces there."

Even the most hawkish of the main U.S. presidential contenders, John McCain, has promised a U.S. withdrawal by 2013. However, by either date the U.S. occupation would be comparable in length to the two major U.S. "therapeutic" occupations of the last century, the occupation of Haiti and of Nicaragua. In both those cases, the U.S. occupiers left behind them reliable stooge dictators and effective neocolonial repressive forces to keep them in power.

The prospects for a stable U.S. satellite regime in Iraq are much more doubtful than in the cases of Nicaragua and Haiti, very small poor countries close to the imperial heartland. Iraq has immense potential oil wealth. That was what inspired the U.S. invasion. But it will not be so easy for the U.S. to maintain its grip on it if it withdraws its occupation from the country.

Moreover, the U.S. client government is based on the Shiite population, which historically has looked to Iran as its big brother. Commentators in the Russian press, analyzing U.S. policy aims after the Georgia confrontation, say that containing the influence of Iran has become the primary concern of the U.S. in the Middle East.

Despite U.S. attempts to keep the two apart, the Maliki government in Baghdad has been steadily drawing closer to Iran. If Iran is able to gain a decisive influence over a Shiite-based government in Iraq, its regional power will be greatly increased.

The U.S. occupiers have tried to use the Sunnis as a counterweight to the Shiites to forestall any alliance with a Shiite-based Iraqi government with Iran. But that is clearly becoming more difficult.

The major success, in fact, of the U.S. against the insurgency was its ability to bribe local Sunni strongmen to organize auxiliaries, the so-called Awakening groups, in its fight against al-Qaeda and other radical insurgent forces. But the Shiite-based government was always hostile to these Sunni counterinsurgency groups. And now that it sees an end approaching to the U.S. occupation, it has started to move directly against them.

The New York Times reported Aug. 22: "In restive Diyala Province, United States and Iraqi military officials say there were orders to arrest hundreds of members of what is known as the Awakening movement as part of large security operations by the Iraqi military. At least five senior members have been arrested there in recent weeks, leaders of the groups say.

"West of Baghdad, former insurgent leaders contend that the Iraqi military is going after 650 Awakening members, many of whom have fled the once-violent area they had kept safe. While the crackdown appears to be focused on a relatively small number of leaders whom the Iraqi government considers the most dangerous, there are influential voices to dismantle the American backed movement entirely."

"'The state cannot accept the Awakening," said Sheik Jalaladeen al-Sagheer, a leading Shiite member of Parliament. 'Their days are numbered.'"

The Awakening groups are directly subordinate to the U.S. military and paid by it, not by the Baghdad government. The Times article continued: "And while American officials are insistent that the program to pay militia guards continue to operate, General Perkins said it was not yet clear what recourse the military would have to prevent the Iraqi government from ending the program once it took control. 'We don't want this to be a dead-end, kick them to the curb kind of thing,' he said."

The article went on to indicate that the hostility of the Baghdad government to the Awakening groups was increased by the fact that some of them are starting to organize political opposition to the Shiite-based regime. It pointed out also that these groups see the U.S. occupation as their protector, as well as their sponsor, and that therefore they fear the withdrawal of the American occupation.

The New York Times article cited an Awakening group leader, Abu Azzam, as stating: "he feared the pullout of American troops, whom he saw as restraining the Shiite government from taken even harsher action against the Awakening. 'America is the only one asking us not to fight the Maliki government.'"

Obviously, the patronage of the U.S. military for the Awakening groups does not endear them to the Baghdad government, and the latter is feeling more and more able to go after them.

With the agreement for the withdrawal of the major contingent of its occupation troops that the U.S. is trying to negotiate with the Baghdad government, it will seek to be able to maintain a pivotal role in Iraq for the foreseeable future. But that can lead to a backlash of opposition broader than the U.S. has yet seen.

The Iranian paper Alalam reported Aug. 24: "Under the 'aspirational time horizon' of late 2011, U.S. troops would be out of Iraq. This timeline, U.S. officials are quick to point out, is a target rather than a hard date and subject to the achievement of certain as-yet-undefined measures of sustained progress in Iraq's political, economic, and security situations. The Iraqi government, on the other hand, wants any such deal to expire in three years, making the target date more or less firm without an additional agreement.

"Even then, the deal faces an uphill battle within Iraq, with thousands of followers of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr taking to the streets to denounce the agreement, which they described as 'a permanent colonization of Iraq,' and even the normally quiet Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani warning parliament to consider the long-term implications of any agreement. In addition, former Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari co-issued a statement with several other Members of Parliament condemning the agreement as 'humiliating.'"

So, it seems evident that the political quicksand is continuing to sink under the feet of the U.S. in Iraq. And the consequences of this disastrous adventure of declining U.S. imperialism are going to continue to take a terrible toll for all those involved. The only way to forestall these effects is for the U.S. to accept an immediate withdrawal of all its military forces and to cease its interference in the internal politics of the country.