What did Iraq war actually achieve? Thursday, 22 December 2011 03:02

This week, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta signed the document officially ending the Iraq War after the last US tank rolled out of Iraq and into Kuwait, across the border. There was no indication Iraqis were happy, no shots were fired, no trumpets blown in celebration.

Since the day United States troops entered Iraq in 2003 and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein, the cost of the war has reached around $807bn according to costofwar.com that shows the expense up to the latest fraction of a second. Besides, the US has lost 4,484 military personnel since 2003 and an estimated 115,676 Iraqi civilians have been killed and around 2.7 million Iraqis were displaced (based on Iraq Index Report by Brookings, November 30, 2011).

The war in Iraq also put an indelible black mark and brought great disgrace to US because of the torture and abuse that occurred in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. This has caused human rights groups such as Amnesty International to call for the arrest of former US president George W Bush for alleged violation of international  laws and former Secretary of  Defence Donald Rumsfeld was indeed charged with war crimes in France and Germany after rights groups filed a criminal complaint about the atrocities committed during the Iraq War.

The statistics above indicate that both Iraq and the United States are the losers in this war.

According to economics Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, the cost of the war to US is 50-60 times more than what the Bush administration predicted and was the fundamental cause of the sub-prime banking crisis that threatened the world economy. Combined with the still-ongoing war in Afghanistan, it cost the US around $1.2 trillion not to mention the thousands of lives that were lost and the war displaced on both sides.

What did the war in Iraq actually achieve?

Some may say it has given the Iraqis democracy and the right to choose their leaders, this is the third time that elections are to be held in the country. However, democracy is not only about having the right to choose one’s leaders.

It is about stability, security and the sense of safety and being able to improve one’s life economically, find a job of one’s liking, to be able to own property and conduct business without the fear of having it taken away by violence.

Killings and bombings in the country have surely come down; there are still people dying on the streets in Baghdad and security is still a problem and the threat of sectarian violence has, in fact, increased since President Barack Obama announced that US would withdraw troops from Iraq in October this year.

Others may say that the Iraq War has overthrown the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. True, but there are people, even if only a few, who miss life under Saddam’s regime because of the relative peace and stability which the country had back then.

A recent book about Saddam Hussein, published by Cambridge in September 2011, The Saddam Tapes: The Inner Workings of a Tyrant’s Regime, 1978-2001, re-examined Saddam’s regime and showed how the former dictator was quite nationalistic in his views and “antagonistic toward and sceptical of the United States, even at the height of US support for Iraq during the 1980s”. David Palkki, one of the co-editors of the book, wrote in Foreign Policy.

Palkki also noted that “Saddam believed that Iraqi acquisition of a nuclear weapon would enable it to liberate Israeli-held Palestinian territories. Iraq did not seek nuclear weapons to initiate a nuclear first strike against Israel; rather, Saddam explained, that he only wanted a nuclear weapon to deter Israeli nuclear weapon use so Iraq could wage a bloody war of attrition.”

Of course, Saddam may have committed the mistake of invading Kuwait, but this is not the issue here.

At the end of the day, the only country who stood to gain the most from the Iraq war and the subsequent pullout of US troops is Iran.

Iran making presence felt

Iran had already made its presence felt in Iraq’s political and military circles. A perfect example of Iran’s influence over the country was seen during Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki’s visit to Washington last week.

He took with him Hadi Farhan Al Amiri, who serves as Iraq’s transportation minister. Al Amiri is a former commander of the Badr Corps, which was the armed wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and received support from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. This is just a small indication of things to come in Iraq.

A political crisis already erupted on the day the last US troops pulled out when PM Al Maliki called for a no-confidence vote in his deputy, Salah Al Mutlaq while the Iraqi interior ministry reportedly issued an arrest warrant for Vice-President Tareq Al Hashemi since several of  his security guards have been under investigation over a bombing last month in the Green Zone.

In a nationally-televised news conference, Al Hashimi accused the Shia-led government of Al Maliki for using the country’s security forces to single out political opponents, specifically Sunnis.

He said: “The goal is clear; it is no more than political slander.” Both Al Mutlaq and Al Hashemi belong to the secular Iraqiya bloc, which is cross-sectarian but largely Sunni.

These developments raise concerns about the remnants of sectarian violence and the challenge is whether the Iraqi security forces are capable of keeping it in check without the help of  US troops.

The responsibility for bringing Iraq to where it is, of course, lies with the US. It is well-known that the original mistake was made by former president George W Bush.

However, President Obama’s administration is worsening it by withdrawing US troops and leaving it to sub-contractors like Blackwater/Xe or to Iran.

By leaving Iraq, the US has given Iran a chance to further its hold on Iraq and take the idea of “guardianship as rule” which was advanced by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and now forms the basis of the constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran a step ahead.

Before Shia Arabs used to see Iraq as the home of the “guardianship” of their faith but the recent influence of Iran in the country has changed this dynamic and furthers the original plan of Iran to take over Iraq as the Shia’s guardianship home.

Much is yet to be done in Iraq. What remains to be seen is whether Iraq can maintain its independence without being influenced by Iran and its policies and contain the Arab Spring fervour that has spread across the region by listening to all sections of its people. The consequences of failing on these will be long-term instability.

The Peninsula