The lower-middle-class neighborhoods that Lt. Col. Jeff Peterson's troops patrol have been the epicenter of Iraq's civil war for most of the past year. "Every issue facing Baghdad writ large is in our area," he says.
In recent weeks, Col. Peterson has tried a controversial approach to calming his sector. As Sunnis and Shiites have separated into their own neighborhoods, he has resisted the urge to encourage reconciliation or even dialogue. Instead, he has erected massive concrete barriers between the sects.
His vision is for a series of small, homogenous, gated communities, each consisting of a two-block square. Each would be built around a market, a mosque and a generator. "The goal is to provide the neighborhoods with a chance to protect themselves, without having to rely on coalition forces, the Iraqi government or the militias," he says.
How he got to that point -- after months of bloodshed and failed experiments -- illustrates a lot about both the possibilities and limitations of the U.S. vision for Iraq.
Currently, the U.S. strategy for stabilizing Iraq is built around getting Iraqis to reconcile and support the democratically elected, Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. It's a classic approach to fighting an insurgency, in which an outside power works to strengthen a friendly, albeit weak, government. The hope is that with help, the government will eventually win the backing of the people by providing security and meeting essential needs. Once insurgents are cut off from support among the population, they will be relatively easy to crush. That's the premise of President Bush's surge strategy, built around bolstering support for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government.
The problem, say some commanders, is that they aren't fighting an insurgency in Iraq anymore. Today, they are trying to stop a civil war between feuding Sunnis and Shiites. "At times I have been tempted to call it a counter-civil war or counter-sectarian fight," Col. Peterson says.
This isn't just an academic point. In a civil war, building up the government and its security forces may be counterproductive, serving only to ratchet up the killing. Defusing a civil war depends on stopping everyone from fighting.
"If you are given the mission to stop hatred, how do you do that?" asks Brig. Gen. John Campbell, an assistant commander overseeing all U.S. forces in Baghdad.
The good news is that Col. Peterson's strategy successfully reduced the violence (if not the "hatred") among warring Sunnis and Shias in a neighborhood in South Baghdad. Unfortunately, Col. Peterson had to partition the neighborhood into religiously homogenous zones for his plan to work.
Perhaps, similarly, the best current solution for Iraq is to divide it into three countries: one for Kurds, one for Sunnis and one for Shiites. It's not an ideal solution (divying the oil resources would be difficult, Iran would get a client state and minorities like Turkmen and Christians would get the shaft) but if the alternative is continued sectarian conflict while the U.S. clings to the hope that Iraq Sunnis will one day start trusting a vindictive Shia government... then I guess dividing the country is the realistic way to go.
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Of course, if you wanted to obscure the nature of the sectarian conflict in Iraq you could go on Rush Limbaugh and spread lies about Al Qaeda in Iraq, or you could say what President Bush said on Wednesday:
The enemy that had done us harm would be embolden. They would have seen the mighty United States of America retreat before the job was done, which would enable them to better recruit. They have made it clear -- they, being people like Osama bin Laden or Zawahiri -- have made it clear they want to drive us from Iraq to establish safe haven in order to launch further attacks. In my judgment, defeat -- leaving before the job was done, which I would call defeat -- would make this United States of America at risk to further attack.
In other words, this is a war in which, if we were to leave before the job is done, the enemy would follow us here. That's the lesson of September the 11th. It's an integral part of my thinking about how to secure this country...
To imply that "the enemy" can't attack us as long as we're stuck in a civil war in Iraq is pure folly. Britain understands that. We're breaking our army in Iraq, while OBL and Zawahiri have already established a "safe haven" on the Pakistan border.
Labels: Iraq morass
