Dr N. Janardhan :
Baghdad needs a homegrown inclusive power-sharing mechanism. The goings-on in Iraq and the Middle East bring to mind former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s observation a few years before her assassination. A few Pakistani-origin British parliamentarians of the House of Lords had ranted in Dubai about the damage that Western interventions had caused in the Middle East, and the slur on Islam in general.
In response, Benazir sensibly reminded the gathering that it was not as much a West versus Islam conflict as much as it was a conflict among Muslims. ‘We Muslims’ are more responsible than ‘outsiders’ for the sectarian divide, she asserted.
The takeover of Mosul by the Al Qaeda offshoot Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is another example of the unending sectarian strife that the region has actively engaged in for political gains. To blame the West, primarily the United States, would not be wrong. In the case of Iraq, however, it would be more appropriate to blame the Nouri Al Maliki-led government for failing in its mission to build an inclusive Iraq, post-Saddam Hussein.
Equal blame should be apportioned to the backers of ISIL, which believes that “improving the condition of the people is less important than the condition of their religion,” and propagates extreme violence to achieve its goals.
The crux of Middle East’s problems has been marginalisation of one sect for the benefit of the other. In Iraq, while Saddam Hussein targetted the majority, Maliki systematically sidelined the minority thereafter by ignoring the need for distribution of political and military power commensurate with the country’s demography. The ISIL is now demanding its pound of flesh on behalf of the Iraqis after failing in Syrian.
In this backdrop, US President Barack Obama is correct in hesitating to intervene in Iraq, as he did in Syria, and as he has been advocating since the campaign ahead of his first presidential bid.
The pronouncement in May 2014 that “US military action cannot be the only or even primary component of our leadership in every instance…Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail,” is an important admission in Obama’s continued attempt to refashion American foreign policy.
Obama is also aware that irrespective of whether or not the United States is engaged in the Middle East, it will never be able to get on the right side of the anti-US extremists. Hence, it may be better to face their wrath without getting overtly or covertly involved than face the same wrath or worse by getting involved. The fact is United States interventions, presumably to help improve things, have failed for most part of its decades-long role in the region.
Further, irrespective of its intentions, it has accumulated more ill-will than goodwill – not just among extremists, whom they have sought to eradicate, but only helped mushroom, but even among the ordinary people. Another dimension to US interventions is that it has not only radicalised religious groups in the region but also radicalised certain sections of American Muslims.
In a situation where a decade-long Iraq-US military partnership could not establish an army capable of offering even minimum resistance to the ISIL in Mosul and where the Taleban is resurgent in Afghanistan, one cannot help but wonder how successful another US intervention would be.
Further, it is now ironic that the very country that the GCC and the United States blamed for regional instability is being approached to stop the ISIL. This US ‘pivot to Persia’ – which may be good from a long-term regional security architecture perspective – however goes against the grain of what Washington and the GCC have sought to avoid for decades.
After the US-led coalition ousted Saddam in 2003, Iran gained an influential partner without raising a finger. This was followed by the Arab World accusing Iran of propagating a ‘Crescent’ that was expanding into an ‘encirclement’. Washington is now ready to seek Tehran’s help and, thus, crown it with the hegemonic status that it has always craved for and even claimed de facto.
Nothing wrong with the bid, except that if Washington goes ahead without taking the GCC governments into confidence and making it a collective regional effort, it would be another recipe for disaster.
The best thing to happen after this crisis blows over, in whatever way, would be for Iraq to remain united with a new homegrown inclusive power-sharing mechanism. The worst thing, and one that should be avoided, would be to keep Iraq geographically united and politically polarised as before by using external force.
(Dr N. Janardhan is a UAE-based political analyst)
