Daily Times

The recently launched military offensive to retake Fallujah from IS has reportedly made considerable progress, though it is not clear if IS has made a tactical retreat to rethink their entire strategy. If it is the latter, they might concentrate more on guerilla operations to include suicide bombings and an array of “lone wolf” and other small operations targeting high impact public places in the US and Europe. The operation to retake Fallujah was a multi-pronged offensive combining Iraqi forces and Iranian militias, with considerable help from US aerial attack on IS positions. The US has never officially approved Iranian militia involvement, but unofficially, it is tolerated as IS has come to be virtually regarded as a common enemy. While winning back territory from IS is important, what is even important is to create a sense of security and stability among the civilian population. And that is the big question because civilians have become the cannon fodder in some ways in this murderous civil war.

While IS excels in brutality, Iraq’s Shia government and its militia allies are prone to go on rampage against Sunni population, and Fallujah is predominantly Sunni. The practice generally is to separate the young male Sunni population and send them to detention centres for interrogation, generally a euphemism for torture and even execution where considered necessary for “security” reasons. Iraq has a fundamental problem of a deep-rooted sectarian divide, with each side regarding the other as untrustworthy. Worst still, they are not the real Muslims as seen from either side’s prism. Now that the Shias hold power, the minority Sunni population of the country is at the receiving end as a pay back of sorts for the brutality of Saddam’s Hussein’s period when Shias were easy game for his regime.

The foundation for instability in the Middle East dates back to the collapse of the Ottoman rule when the British and French colonialists helped themselves to the spoils by dividing much of the Middle East between them. In the process, they created territorial entities and kingdoms of incompatible parts that laid the foundation for subsequent trouble that is still with us. And when they finally decided to withdraw –but still keen to pull the strings — they left behind territorial and constitutional arrangements that would be unworkable even at the best of times. No wonder, the Middle East is such a mess.

If this wasn’t chaotic enough, the US and its western allies further inflamed the situation by introducing the external phenomenon of an Israeli state, which become a flamethrower in an already incendiary situation. And when the Shah of Iran, a US ally, was overthrown in 1979 and replaced by a clerical regime thus turning the US and Iran into bitter enemies, Washington encouraged Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Iran’s regional rival and enemy, to attack Iran, thus starting a bloody eight-year war in the 1980s that was fought to a stalemate, but with hundreds of thousands of Iranian casualties.

The Iraq-Iran war bankrupted Hussein’s treasury owing lots of money to some of the Gulf monarchies that had bankrolled his operations. That led him to attack Kuwait, hoping that its oil riches would solve all his financial problems, and also make him into a determining force in the Middle East. And because of his virtual alliance with the US during his war with Iran, he didn’t expect the US to get so worked up over his Kuwait adventure as to start the first Gulf War. But with their dependence on Middle Eastern oil, the US wasn’t going to tolerate a regional upstart like Hussein to upset their carefully laid down strategic plans over many years. The first Gulf War put Hussein back in his box, but President Bush senior wasn’t yet decided about overthrowing him, and replacing him with some one more compliant. At the time, the US hadn’t thought through what might come after Hussein, as there were too many imponderables.

The US had encouraged the Shias to rise, but when they did and Hussein turned on them with great ferocity, the US administration declared a no-fly zone to warn off Hussein. To punish him for his Kuwait adventure, an already vanquished Iraq was subjected to a severe international sanctions regime, which hit badly its vulnerable people, like children and the old folks. The estimates of children’s deaths from lack of essential medicines and the like went as high as half a million. The conservative cabal around George W Bush when he became president, some of whom had been his father’s close advisers, weren’t happy that Bush senior had left half-finished the Iraq business by leaving Hussein in the saddle even though in a very weakened position. They had plans to finish that job, now that they were ruling the roost with President Bush dependent on them to run the administration.

And they got their opportunity when September 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred, and Hussein was said to have al-Qaeda connections. He was also accused of running a clandestine nuclear weapons programme as well as working on missile launchers — his so-called weapons of mass destruction. Even though there was no confirmation by the relevant international nuclear regulatory agency of any such nuclear programme, the Bush administration decided to go ahead with plans to invade Iraq and to get rid of Hussein. Which they did and Saddam was hanged, with his state administration demolished but with no alternative blueprint or structure to run the country. The result was total chaos, and out of this chaos emerged the Iraqi version of the al-Qaeda.

In other words, in a country where there was no al-Qaeda to start with as Hussein would never have tolerated another power centre or insurgency movement, this one grew up in the chaos of the aftermath of his overthrow. Which eventually was suppressed by the American forces with the collaboration of the Sunni tribal chiefs who had turned on the al-Qaeda in Iraq, as they seemed to become a law unto themselves treading on the Sunni traditional power structures. But after the Americans withdrew from Iraq, and handed over the country to the incoming Shia regime, the new regime fractured the fragile unity forged by the US forces with the Sunni tribal allies by starting an orgy of revenge against the country’s Sunnis. And that created the conditions for the emergence of a more brutal and extreme version of the al-Qaeda in the rise of IS that went on to carve out the so-called caliphate out of a large chunk of captured Iraqi and Syrian territory.

The depredations and brutality of IS have brought the US and its allies back into Iraq, this time deploying more of their air power and less of their ground forces, mostly in advisory roles. And they are now engaged, with Iraqi army and its associated militias to push back IS, which seems to be making progress as seen in Fallujah and elsewhere with the overwhelming use of American air power.

But pushing back IS here and there, welcome as it is, won’t solve the problem unless Iraq has a nationally cohesive state with the joint stake of its people. Moreover, that state would need to provide basic security to its people to live and plan their lives without fear of persecution and torture. Without this, an al-Qaeda or IS or some variant of it, will tend to emerge.

The writer is a senior journalist and academic based in Sydney, Australia. He can be reached at sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au