IRAQ: THE RIGHT BUT A HIGH RISK STRATEGY
By Anthony H. Cordesman
11 Aug 14. President Obama seems to have adopted a strategy of making a long-term military commitment to Iraq. It is one based on air and missile power, advisers, and arms transfers, and conditional on Iraqis moving toward unity and helping themselves. He has also been right in giving the Kurds priority. They faced the most immediate risks, and their fate had the most immediate humanitarian impact on Iraq’s minorities.
As is all too common in today’s Middle East, however, the best option is ultimately the least bad option and filled with risks.
The first major risk is the evolving capabilities of the Islamic State (IS). It is clear that its order of battle is now steadily growing, has far more fighters, and is much better equipped as a result of its victories. It has evolved a mix of religious ideology, terrorism, and irregular warfare that is effective against the conventional Alewite- or Shiite-dominated forces of Syria and Iraq, capable of dominating or absorbing many other jihadist rebel factions, and stronger than a poorly equipped and somewhat impoverished Kurdish Pesh Merga.
Leaving Syria’s Bashar al-Assad to his own devices and fate, and as a burden on Iran, the Hezbollah, and Russia, makes perfect sense for the time being, but it also poses major risks. It works as long as the Assad forces do not lose major amounts of territory or key cities, and the Islamic State does not make major economic, military, political, and religious gains. It works as long as the United States and its Arab allies have significant moderate Sunni elements to support, and the Islamic State does not dominate all major Sunni resistance. And it works as long as the Islamic State “sanctuary” in eastern Syria has limited duration and does not steadily reinforce Islamic State capabilities in Iraq and steadily increase the threat to Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and other neighboring states.
This is a long list of additional sub-risks, and much ultimately depends on the Islamic State being so extreme in dealing with fellow Sunnis that it becomes its own enemy—cannot really unify those it tries to govern and integrate into its forces and cannot operate as an effective government. So far, the Islamic State does seem sufficiently extreme and self-destructive to follow this path, but it is not forced to do so, does show some signs of adapting, and has not yet provoked significant internal Sunni fighting against it. Betting against its lasting success seems to be reasonable, but it is scarcely certain.
The second major risk is Iraqi sectarian and ethnic divisiveness and dealing with political vermin like Nouri al-Maliki. Maliki’s steadily growing thirst for power, authoritarianism, corruption, gutting of the effectiveness and national character of Iraq’s security forces, and shift to using Shiite sectarianism against Iraq’s Sunnis and Kurds is what made the gains of the Islamic State possible. Maliki divided and undercut Iraq, alienated too many of its Sunnis, pushed the Kurds further toward independence, and left the Pesh Merga weak. His actions helped ensure that U.S. advisers and forces could not stay long enough to make Iraqi forces both national and effective. His links to Iran and its Revolutionary Guards present another threat of their own.
President Obama’s strategy of tying the level of U.S. military support to the creation of a new Iraqi government and dumping Maliki is the right one. Iraq cannot work as a state and create effective security forces without such changes. Most practical Iraqi political figures and Iraq’s leading Shiite cleric, the Ayatollah Sistani, realize this. But Maliki has had the power and the money to keep winning votes and remain a major political threat, as well as make it hard to find alternatives. He has also undermined national unity to the point where major political changes and some form of federalism that protects and em