All American troops are scheduled to depart Iraq within three years. The results for the region could be catastrophic.
The Bush administration and the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki have agreed on a Status of Forces Agreement that mandates total American withdrawal by January 2012 and the removal of coalition forces from Iraqi cities and towns by the end of June 2009. Factor in President-elect Barack Obama’s stated intention to remove all combat brigades within 16 months, along with the American public’s almost inevitable response to all this — i.e., Why keep spending billions every month to maintain a force we know is coming home anyway? — and the timetable is likely to be even shorter than many anticipate. Indeed, even in the event that the Iraqi parliament rejects the SOFA, the withdrawal would likely only be accelerated due to the absence of a basis for official coordination between the two governments.
So far, the debate over all this in Iraq and the Arab world has been incredibly short-sighted. It has focused on the most sensational but least strategically significant aspects of the issue: questions of legal liability and responsibility for American soldiers’ actions in Iraq, the blame game over who put Iraq under the American yoke in 2003 and who is responsible for having kept it there since then, and complaints that three years is too long to continue to compromise Iraqi sovereignty.
Three years, however, is a mere speck in the broad sweep of Middle East history. What we should be looking at is not what happens in Iraq until the Americans leave but what will transpire afterward.
The American departure is liable to generate frantic maneuvering for power in three interlocking spheres: Iraq’s domestic scene, Iran and its interests, and Iraq’s Arab and Turkish neighbors.
Inside Iraq, the dominant domestic power is almost certain to be the party that can claim credit for having expelled the Western invader. Until that issue is settled, Sunnis will fight Shiites, and Shiites will fight Shiites. With American forces confined to barracks after June, Iran will make sure “its” Shiites — and most of the principal Shiite forces in Iraq are pro-Iranian — win the day. Panicky Saudis, Jordanians and even Syrians may try to intervene politically, financially and perhaps militarily. Ensuing events could encourage the American public to demand an even faster pullout, and President Obama is unlikely to argue that the collapse or corruption of Iraq’s fragile democracy is still America’s business.
In this regard, any attempt by the departing Americans to blunt Iran’s drive for hegemony in all or most of Iraq is not likely to be played out on the streets of Baghdad and Basra. Rather, it will of necessity become an agenda item in Obama’s initiative to open a dialogue with Tehran. In the ensuing give and take, Washington will be hard put to demand that Iran — whose acceptance of enhanced American efforts in Afghanistan will be critical — give up both its nuclear weapons ambitions and its designs on Iraq. Yet this is what Israel and Washington’s moderate Sunni allies will want.
Here it behooves us to recall that the Bush administration’s biggest mistake in invading and occupying Iraq was ignoring Saddam Hussein’s single saving grace in the eyes of his Sunni Arab neighbors: Saddam kept Islamic revolutionary Iran out of the Arab Middle East. Now that Saddam is gone, and once America leaves, there will be few if any physical barriers to an attempt by Iran to radically expand its sphere of influence.
Thus we are likely to see, in the course of 2009, the effective merging of Washington’s plans for Iraq and for Iran. The withdrawal from Baghdad cannot be detached from the dialogue with Tehran. The specter of Iran extending its active influence all the way to Iraq’s borders with Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria is in many ways as frightening to the region as an Iranian nuclear weapon. The Jordan-Iraq border, lest we forget, is only about 300 miles from Israel.
To be sure, there are numerous potential mitigating circumstances. The Kurds of northern Iraq are offering America long-term basing arrangements that would keep U.S. forces in the region and preserve Kurdish semi-independence (though this is hardly compatible with the SOFA). The governments of neighboring Sunni Arab states have, however reluctantly, begun restoring relations with Maliki’s Shiite government in Baghdad. Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds meanwhile are exploring better bilateral relations. New developments such as these could conceivably create a counterweight to Iran.
Then, too, Obama intends to be tough with Iran, possibly tightening sanctions, even as he proposes dialogue. And an American-brokered Israeli-Syrian peace could strike a strategic blow at Iran and its allies on Israel’s borders, Hezbollah and Hamas, and render an Iraq transition more peaceful.
These are intriguing possibilities. They can be advanced through creative diplomacy. But this can only happen if the Obama team adopts as its point of departure for dealing with Iraq withdrawal a clear recognition of the resulting dangers to the entire region — and a clear resolve to prevent or at least mitigate them.
Yossi Alpher is former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. He currently co-edits the bitterlemons.org family of Internet publications.
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The danger to the region comes from the US occupation. There should be no discussion of staying in Iraq; The USA is an occupier plain and simple. The World court must bring the invaders, and occupiers of Iraq to justice for War Crimes.
Yossi Alpher is a brilliant man and very well informed on Palestinian affairs. However, as an Israeli intel operative, we can see clearly the limits of his knowledgeability on Iraq. I offer a far more astute ON THE SPOT in Iraq scholar's opinion to counter Alpher's toxic view of Iraqi independence:Reidar Visser:http://www.historiae.org/withdrawal.asp "Nevertheless it does seem promising that the opposition in the Iraqi parliament in this case managed to turn a fragmented and sometimes ambivalent sense of protest into coherent demands and concessions from the Iraqi government that at least will keep issues like constitutional reform on the agenda and thereby could help set the stage for a more profound debate on these issues before the parliamentary elections in 2009." I would remind Alpher that to date, the per capita cost of Israel to the US outpaces that of Iraq. And yet, Israel would never countenance American encroachment on its independence or trampling of US forces on its land, knocking down doors, bulldozing houses and building walls, all has long been Israel's training of Americans on how to do in Iraq. So, can Alpher ever legitimately criticize Iraqis debating on how their lives were so turned upside down by Israel-trained Iraqis. And, worst still, all this done with IDF training while Sharon criticized the US invasion BEFORE it started, much as had Chirac! But somehow, the Holocaust bogyman, permits many neocons to argue on the basis of Israeli anxiety level, insistent on the spillage of American blood in order to calm Israeli fears of Iran. Though I doubt Alpher really feels the fear he expresses in the FORWARD, he nevertheless de-legitimizes the Israel role as center of the Mideast by justifying playing neighbors one against the other in the name of its own security. Obama may be no more able to stop Iran from getting an atomic bomb than Ike and JFK were in stopping Israel from acquiring a nuclear arsenal through its alliance with leftist France and apartheid South Africa. The real question is what then? The answer is that Israel will offer its nuclear umbrella to the Arabs in return for full diplomatic ties. Thus begins Israel's leadership of the Arabs, taking them out of the darkness of one crop oil banana republic status. The fall in oil to half of the recent peak is a golden opportunity for Israel to come to terms with the Palestinians for far more than a two-states solution-- actual one-economy solution-- the Palestinians becoming Israel's spokesmen before the Arabs. Alpher has excoriated Netanyahu in Bitterlemons.com for proposing an economic carrot instead of an IDF assassination stick. But of course, he cartooned the nuanced policies at issue. Fact is that handouts are no longer available from a depression-heading West for either the Israelis or Palestinians. Both will need to count on each other and that will be a model for how wealth can be acquired without oil. Syria will hopefully be Israel's next case in point, for though highly mercantile, it is not hightech enough to compete in the global market. The SOFA accord is more a statement of: "even if we do harm to ourselves by ourselves , we're sick of Americans killing us in order to steal our oil." Iraq will need the return of its technocrats and bureaucrats from their refuge abroad. That will force sectarian factions to accommodate each other and bring order to their common house. The Kurds are such gangsters that they will be far too busy cutting each other's throats to unite, become independent and provide the US a base from which to dominate the Middle East.Alpher, I don't think, yet fully appreciates the global economic crisis, nor the competition India and Pakistan provide Israel for America's military attention on South Asia, way from the Middle East. As Alpher himself recognized, Zionism has never been set back as much as it was by the neocons. Perhaps an Israeli certificate of "menschood" might have made them more responsible back when they dominated Bush; stroking, as Netanyahu did, calling them "mensh" when he really thought "nuts," to get from them campaign funds, might have better served Israel in the long run. But now NOBODY has money for ideological causes, be it Zionism or Jihad. Let us not be fooled by India's internal problems as if the issue were still an alQaeda war of global terrorism. Alpher tells us: "Here it behooves us to recall that the Bush administration’s biggest mistake in invading and occupying Iraq was ignoring Saddam Hussein’s single saving grace in the eyes of his Sunni Arab neighbors: Saddam kept Islamic revolutionary Iran out of the Arab Middle East. Now that Saddam is gone, and once America leaves, there will be few if any physical barriers to an attempt by Iran to radically expand its sphere of influence." I cannot imagine what he will say once Israel, once again as so often before, comes to terms with Iran-- both responsible nuclear powers (in no way comparable), like India and Pakistan-- with Iran using its puny atomic bomb as deterrence and not for attack as Israel twice considered doing against NON-NUCLEAR Egypt. Obama's middle name, "Hussein," not-withstanding, he is Constitution bound to argue "America first" and not prone to the neocon trope: IF IT'S GOOD FOR ISRAEL, IT'S GOOD FOR AMERICA. Whatever truth there may have been to that in the past, by screwing Bush into Iraq, the neocons made sure it will never again be the basis American foreign policy. Alpher has to realize that, Benny Morris notwithstanding, Jabotinsky is dead and America will only be an ally of Israel as a nation of Israelis, not as an ever expanding Jewish "iron wall" to which America owes existence because of the Holocaust. I am the first to desire Israel survive because I feel sure that it will lead the Semitic peoples out of the desert of oil banana republic status. Supporting Israel's quest to become "a light onto the [Arab] nations," is a fantastic return on America's investment in Israeli prosperity and security. Such a fantastic deal we haven't had since the end of WW II. But no more "World War IV" in order to keep Israel pointlessly expand in the Mideast sandbox. Like Israel, the US is now struggling to survive. Our intel community predicts that our "unipolar moment" is over and in the near future we will be only one power among equals. This denies us the luxury of keeping AIPAC happy; at the same time, our economic crisis will shrink the funds AIPAC can provide to our Congressmen as campaign funds in return for influence. So we'll all have to think of new ways to be constructive rather than feed our pampered anxieties with wads of cash.
Re: Roland Miller, Who should face the World Court, Mr. Miller? I presume you want President Bush and Vice President Cheney to do so. Very well, but in that case you'd better include President Clinton and Vice President Gore and Secretary of State Albright for bombing innocent civilian Serbs in downtown Belgrade. That too was a war crime, made more heinous by the fact that Al Qaeda was murdering Americans even then, but Clinton and Company never sent the B-52s to Afghanistan. Had he done so, we might very well have avoided 9/11. Thousands of American troops are still in Kosovo today. They too, are an occupying force. So, Clinton too, goes to the Hague. And by the way, you can include Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, the current President of the United Nations General Assembly, who in his role as a Sandinista thug helped to orchestrate the massacre of thousands of Miskito Indians in Nicaragua. What's good for right is equally good for the Left. And since you are presumably occupying Native American soil, Mr. Miller, kindly vacate your home too, or also be called a war criminal to the World Court.