Fear of communal riot looms over Iraq

The departure of the last US combat troops from Iraq last weekend coincided with the collapse of the fragile US-imposed unity government between Shia and secular-Sunni politicians.

As US military convoys assembled, the secular Iraqiya bloc led by Ayad Allawi suspended participation in parliament in protest against the the authoritarianism exhibited by Shia fundamentalist Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Maliki responded by ordering the arrest of Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi on charges of ordering his bodyguards to carry out bombings and assassinations. The charges are ironic because Maliki has been accused of organising death squads and private prisons.

After Hashemi flew to the safety of the Kurdish autonomous region, Maliki barred him from going abroad and called on parliament to dismiss Sunni Deputy Premier Saleh al-Mutlak on grounds of incompetence. Iraqiya has threatened to withdraw its seven ministers from the collapsing coalition.

Washington had hoped the warring sides would reach a working arrangement after the 2010 election. But this did not happen. Iraqiya, which won most seats in the assembly, was unable to form a government  because Maliki insisted on remaining in office. He managed to cobble together a coalition only because Tehran pressed radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and the Kurds to back him.  Thereafter, the US persuaded Maliki to draw in Iraqiya in order to make this government "inclusive," at least in theory if not in practice. 

Different views
The “unity” imposed by the Obama administration was always tenuous. Maliki - who has retained the powerful interior and defence ministries - has never had any intention of sharing power and his Shia fundamentalist Dawa party has a very different vision of Iraq’s future than that adopted by secular Iraqiya.

This power struggle is certain to persist and could give rise to conflict between the country’s Shia-Sunni, Arab-Kurd, and religious fundamentalist-secularist communities. 

The US intentionally split Iraq into these camps during the occupation with the aim of maintaining its presence in the country through the traditional colonial practice of divide-and-rule. The unwinnable nine-year conflict in Iraq, US public opposition to staying on, and President Barack Obama’s determination to withdraw the troops ended the experiment but left Iraq divided.

Obama tried to paint a rosy picture of Iraq when, marking the pull-out, he claimed that the US had created “a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.”

As the government crisis shows Iraq is unable to rule itself democratically even though the election was relatively free and fair and its outcome should have been a government representative of all Iraqis. This government is not representative because Maliki and the US installed Shia fundamentalists, who repeatedly tried to assassinate ousted President Saddam Hussein, are still battling the outlawed Baath party and accuse Sunnis and secularists of seeking its revival.

Obama was wrong when he said Iraq is “sovereign, stable and self-reliant.” Iraq is not sovereign or self-reliant. The 800,000 men in its armed forces and police cannot defend the country from external aggression. Iraq has neither air force nor navy. For many years Baghdad will have to depend on US forces based in Bahrain and Qatar to defend Iraq’s territorial integrity.   
 
Iraq is not stable. Its domestic security forces are unable to ensure law and order.  An estimated 350 Iraqi civilians are killed every month by bombers and shooters; kidnapping is rampant. Local government offices and security installations and Shia pilgrims are regularly targeted.

Shia elements attack Sunni militiamen who aided US forces in the battle against al-Qaeda while Sunni insurgents remain determined to overthrow dominant Shia fundamentalists. Iraq faces civil conflict if the Kurds attempt to annex to their autonomous area large tracts of land and oil fields belonging to adjacent Arab majority provinces.

Iraqis suffer from poor educational and health facilities, high unemployment and the shortage of electricity. Nearly nine years after the US occupation, Iraqis may have power cuts of 10 or more hours daily and are forced to rely on generators for power in homes, offices and industrial establishments.

Outages are crippling development and reconstruction. Iraq is far more corrupt today than under Saddam Hussein. Iraq is rated 175th most corrupt on a listing of 182 countries drawn up by Transparency International.

Iraqis of all communities fear that the conflagration in neighbouring Syria, fanned by the US and the West, could spill across the frontier and ignite communal conflict in Iraq.

On the strategic plane, Iraq is caught up in the rivalry between the US, which seeks to retain residual control, and Iran, which is determined to draw Iraq into its sphere of influence. If Iran succeeds, the region’s Sunni powers, led by Saudi Arabia, could renew efforts to destablise Shia-dominated Iraq, once the stable core of the eastern Arab world.