8/14/2019 Military-based policies have failed in Iraq

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Military-based policies have failed in Iraq

Chris Abbott 

While George Bush pats himself on the back for the success of the ‘surge’, last week saw thepassing of two symbolic milestones in the Iraqi conflict: the fifth anniversary of the invasion to

topple Saddam Hussein and the death of the 4,000th US soldier. However, a more importantdevelopment is currently being played out in the battle for Basra: the final failure of military-based policies.

There is little doubt that the US troop surge coincided with relatively reduced levels ofviolence in Iraq. However, the latest figures from the respected casualty-monitoring group IraqBody Count, show that last month, for the first time since September 2007, the number ofcivilian deaths from violence were higher than in the preceding month. This suggests thatcivilian casualties may be on the rise again and that the security improvements which can beachieved through current tactics have now reached their limit.

In any case, contrary to popular opinion and despite the claims from Washington, it was not

the increased military presence that was the key factor in stemming the violence. The surgeactually allowed two far more influential developments the space to make an impact. The firstof these was the ceasefire announced by Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in August 2007. Thesecond was the Sunni ‘awakening’ movement turning against al-Qaida elements in thecountry as their anger grew against the attacks on the civilian Shi’a population, which havebeen a trigger for much of the sectarian violence.

Unfortunately, recent events in Iraq look set to reverse these two developments. The IraqiArmy operation against Shi’a militias in Basra may have the impact of destroying al-Sadr’sceasefire, and the American failure to pay the awakening councils footsoldiers’ promisedsalaries – together with several casualties in their ranks at the hands of the US military – maycause them to rethink their alliance with the Americans. These Sunni and Shi’a militia groupsmay now increasingly target Coalition forces, or each other, in a return to pre-surge violence.

This is not inevitable though. Long-term stability is dependent on all factions in the countryhaving a say in the Iraqi political process. Genuine reconciliation will need all sides to have aplace at the negotiating table, including those insurgent groups who have targeted civilians ormilitary personnel in terrorist attacks. They must all be brought into the political processwherever possible; exclusion will only cause people to turn to violence as the only courseapparently available to them.

There are no easy answers in Iraq, but what few solutions there are will be political, notmilitary. The various factions in the Iraqi conflict must realise this before it is too late, and thisholds true for the Iraqi government as much as anyone else.

Chris Abbott is the Programme Coordinator and Researcher at Oxford Research Groupand an Honorary Research Fellow of the Centre for Governance and InternationalAffairs at the University of Bristol.

Published on Open House , the flagship comment and analysis website of The Independent newspaper, 28 March 2008.http://blogs.independent.co.uk/openhouse/2008/03/military-based.html