{"id":20877,"date":"2015-06-09T15:00:27","date_gmt":"2015-06-09T05:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=20877"},"modified":"2015-06-09T10:18:37","modified_gmt":"2015-06-09T00:18:37","slug":"iraq-an-avoidable-catastrophe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/iraq-an-avoidable-catastrophe\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraq: an avoidable catastrophe?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/7112414819_400ffb0b48_z.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-20880 size-full\" title=\"Swords of Q\u0101dis\u012byah\" src=\"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/7112414819_400ffb0b48_z.jpg\" alt=\"Swords of Q\u0101dis\u012byah\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/7112414819_400ffb0b48_z.jpg 640w, https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/7112414819_400ffb0b48_z-205x137.jpg 205w, https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/7112414819_400ffb0b48_z-332x221.jpg 332w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The unfolding humanitarian and political disaster in Iraq and Syria is ultimately a consequence of confusion, impetuosity, a preoccupation with tactical issues at the expense of strategic ones, and an ignorance of the political, communal, religious and cultural dynamics of Mesopotamia that borders on culpability.<\/p>\n<p>The fall of Mosul, Palmyra and, more recently, Ramadi to the <em>daesh<\/em> (ISIL) forces, together with the jockeying for control of Tikrit, are the early indicators of a far more significant change in the strategic landscape of Mesopotamia (Iraq and Syria) and the Levant.<\/p>\n<p>At the core of this strategic change are five intersecting factors:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>the continuing death throes of the Ottoman Caliphate as formerly centralised authority gives way to communal and tribal leadership;<\/li>\n<li>the progressive collapse of the Sykes\u2013Picot agreement, which reflected European notions of the nation state that weren\u2019t shared by the tribal leaderships that exercised local power;<\/li>\n<li>the long-term consequences of Balfour\u2019s \u2018betrayal\u2019 of the promises made to the pan-Arabist Hashemite Emir Faisal in return for the support of Arab tribes against the Turkish forces during WWI;<\/li>\n<li>the mid- and long-term consequences of the decisions taken by the US administration in Baghdad under Ambassador Bremer following the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 to proscribe the Ba\u2019ath party, to dismiss Ba\u2019ath party members from Iraq\u2019s civil administration and to dismantle the Iraqi army;<\/li>\n<li>and the absence of a comprehensive strategy on the part of any of the parties engaged, excepting the <em>daesh<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>While the historical factors that are central to the present situation in the Middle East are as disparate as they are profound, in terms of this essay they can be dealt with collectively. At its most successful, the Ottoman Caliphate was a rickety association of emirs and local leaders who were prepared to use their authority to underwrite the religious legitimacy of the Ottoman leadership in Constantinople\u2014the Caliphate. At its peak, it was a loose federation united by Islam and divided by competing ethnic, cultural and linguistic traditions.<\/p>\n<p>The imperial Europeans, particularly Britain and France, effectively ignored both the competing interests of the Arab tribes and the potential for massive political instability that their interference and artificial cartography might generate. As Peter Mansfield points out in his study <em>The Ottoman Empire and its Successors<\/em>, Balfour was keenly aware of the fact that the Balfour Declaration deceived the Arabs and betrayed the pledges of self-determination for the peoples of the former Ottoman provinces\u2014delivered not least of all by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia). We are still paying for that betrayal, as are the people of the Middle East.<\/p>\n<p>The astonishing arrogance that marked the European powers\u2019 approach to the Middle East in the 19<span style=\"font-size: 13.3333330154419px; line-height: 18.1818180084229px;\">th<\/span>\u00a0and early 20<span style=\"font-size: 13.3333330154419px; line-height: 18.1818180084229px;\">th<\/span>\u00a0centuries continues to influence the behaviour of most of nations that make up \u2018the coalition of the willing\u2019. In his two magisterial works <em>Orientalism<\/em> and <em>Culture and Imperialism<\/em>, Edward Said charted the dynamics that rendered Western attitudes both normative and determinative. The unshakeable faith in the integrity and efficacy of western democratic values fails to come to grips with values and traditions that stem from entirely different civilisations, cultures and communities.<\/p>\n<p>Nowhere was this clearer than in the failed attempts by the US to impose western democratic practice on Iraq and Afghanistan. Paul Bremer\u2019s interregnum sowed the seeds of the present disaster. The success of <em>daesh<\/em> forces owes as much to the fact that they are largely led and peopled by former members of the Ba\u2019athist Iraqi defence force as to the weakness and timidity of the current Iraqi army.<\/p>\n<p>The fact is Iraq is a failed state, with the obvious consequence that the Iraqi army doesn\u2019t know what it\u2019s fighting for or where its loyalties lie. <em>Daesh<\/em>, on the other hand, know exactly what they stand for and what they\u2019re attempting to achieve. They have strategic purpose.<\/p>\n<p>For countries such as the US and Australia, to even contemplate deploying front line forces to defeat <em>daesh<\/em> reveals a profound misunderstanding of Clausewitz\u2019s dictum \u2018war is the continuation of policy by other means\u2019. In the case of Iraq, there is simply no policy. How could governments justify the sacrifice of young Australians and Americans when even the Iraqis aren\u2019t willing to stand and fight?<\/p>\n<p>And in the case of the US and its partners in the Middle East, the absence of strategy is even more obvious. Indeed, the continued deployment of armed force\u2014at an accumulated cost approaching a trillion dollars\u2014is an indication of the powerlessness of the western allies rather than a sign of their strength.<\/p>\n<p>The delivery of ordnance from 30 thousand feet and some gap-plugging training for what passes for an army in Iraq may appear to sanction the activities of various groups of irredentists, guerillas, militias and armed \u2018death cults\u2019. But far from solving the underlying problems, western military intervention actually exacerbates them by giving them focus and reason. The deployment of smart power in the form of a sustained diplomatic effort has a greater chance of success than the continued reliance on hard power.<\/p>\n<p>In some surprising ways, Mesopotamia in 2015 resembles Europe at the beginning of the 17th century, when communities were locked into savage mutual slaughter in the name of God. It took the Treaty of Westphalia to end the Thirty Years War and introduce a measure of political stability based on rules. As it was in Europe then, so is it in Iraq and Syria now: the political leaders and the combatants need to call a truce, come to the table and forge the kinds of agreements that end the suffering and displacement of communities.<\/p>\n<p>This might at least offer some hope that disaster does not become catastrophe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The unfolding humanitarian and political disaster in Iraq and Syria is ultimately a consequence of confusion, impetuosity, a preoccupation with tactical issues at the expense of strategic ones, and an ignorance of the political, communal, &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":264,"featured_media":20880,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1010,191,895,274],"class_list":["post-20877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-coalition-operations","tag-iraq","tag-islamic-state","tag-syria"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Iraq: an avoidable catastrophe? 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