Can the United States Avert Disaster in Iraq?: Evan Moore, National Review, May 14, 2016— The brutal bombings that rocked Baghdad this week are a stark reminder that ISIS remains a persistent threat to Iraqi security.
The White House’s Iraq Delusion: Washington Post, May 3, 2016 — Secretary of State John Kerry and other Western policy-makers – joined by the “elite” Western media – contend that 68 year-old Israel is increasingly isolated…
Can a Demagogue Help Save Iraq's Democracy?: Eli Lake, Bloomberg, May 4, 2016— Here is an irony to savor. One of Iraq's most notorious demagogues might now be saving the democratic experiment he nearly extinguished more than a decade ago.
Sykes-Picot at 100: Lee Smith, Weekly Standard, May 16, 2016 — This week marks the 100th anniversary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the document that shaped the modern Middle East.
Obama Hides His Iraq War: William McGurn, Wall Street Journal, Apr. 11, 2016
Research on the Islamic State, Syria, and Iraq: Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, Middle East Forum, Mar. 1, 2016
The Failures of the International Community in the Middle East since the Sykes-Picot Agreement, 1916-2016: Amb. Freddy Eytan, JCPA, 2016
‘A Shocking Document’ Turns 100: Daniel Pipes, Washington Times, May 8, 2016
CAN THE UNITED STATES AVERT DISASTER IN IRAQ?
Evan Moore
National Review, May 14, 2016
The brutal bombings that rocked Baghdad this week are a stark reminder that ISIS remains a persistent threat to Iraqi security. Though the extremist group has lost as much as 40 percent of its territory in the country over the past year, it retains control over the major urban areas that it seized in 2014. It is uncertain at best that Mosul — Iraq’s second-largest city — will be liberated by the end of this year, despite President Obama’s desire to defeat ISIS before he leaves office. And as the Iraqi political situation continues to deteriorate, there is a significant risk that the security situation will also unravel. The Obama administration must recognize that the current chaos in Iraq could completely undermine its campaign against ISIS, and take forceful action immediately in order to avert disaster.
To be sure, the U.S.-led coalition is having an impact on ISIS. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said in March that, “we are systemically eliminating [ISIS]’s cabinet.” Last week’s killing of the top ISIS military official in Anbar province is just the latest proof that that effort proceeds apace. And America’s broader campaign against ISIS has reportedly cost the group as much as $500 million in cash stockpiles, while halving its annual oil revenue to $250 million. Overall, independent reports estimate that ISIS’s monthly income has declined by as much as a third as oil production drops and more territory and people are liberated.
But in response to these gains, ISIS has escalated its use of large-scale terrorist attacks. The group’s campaign of bombings in Baghdad has two objectives: First, it is designed to undermine the Iraqi government’s already tenuous grasp on power by further angering the burgeoning protest movement and reigniting the full-blown sectarian conflict that occurred during the U.S. occupation. Second, it aims to force Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) to deploy more troops to secure the capital, diverting manpower that could otherwise be used in offensive operations against ISIS, and thereby stalling the effort to liberate Mosul.
Unfortunately, the Mosul campaign wasn’t going well even before ISIS ramped up its attacks. As the Associated Press reports, the planned assault against the city is still several months in the future — at a minimum — because the ISF is simply not ready. So far, only 18,500 Iraqi troops have been trained by the United States. Experts not only believe the offensive may require up to twice that number of troops, but also question whether the seven-week U.S. training course will sufficiently prepare ISF troops for a major operation. America’s own readiness is also questionable. Although Secretary Carter announced last month that the United States would provide additional advisors, attack helicopters, and artillery to support the ISF, that backup reportedly has yet to arrive at the front, and America’s troop presence in Iraq has actually declined slightly. Though coalition forces are as close to the city as they have been since it fell to ISIS in 2014, they are still some 40 miles away. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has admitted to the Washington Post’s David Ignatius that liberating Mosul “will take a long time and be very messy,” and that he doesn’t “see that happening in this administration.”
It is clear that the situation in Iraq is tenuous, at best, and the United States must be willing to devote considerably more resources in order to keep the country from falling apart. Former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey recommends that the Obama administration consider deploying even more forces to support the Iraqi advance than the Pentagon has announced. This would include more trainers and advisers to increase the size and capability of the ISF, as well as more attack helicopters and artillery in order to more frequently strike ISIS positions. But, Jeffrey also says, “a limited commitment of U.S. ground troops — two brigades of 5,000 troops each, reinforced by other NATO forces, along with local allies — could make even more rapid progress.”
The United States must split ISIS from its Sunni support base, which in the short term means creating an indigenous force of Iraqi Sunnis capable of fighting ISIS. The Center for a New American Security recommends building “essentially a Sunni equivalent to the Kurdish Peshmerga.” This should be achieved by providing weapons, training, and advisors to the Sunni tribes, and by “building out a multi-ethnic, multi-sectarian Sunni National Guard force that can hold territory taken from [ISIS].” Militarily empowering the Sunni community is important because “if Iraq’s counter-[ISIS] forces consist largely of Shia militias, the end result is likely to be increased sectarian violence. This will only further marginalize Iraq’s Sunni communities and divorce them from the Iraqi central government.”
Militarily empowering Iraqi Sunnis can also pave the way for politically empowering Iraqi Sunnis, another vital requirement to defeating ISIS. Robert Ford, a former deputy U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told the House Armed Services Committee earlier this year that “Iraqi Sunni Arabs . . . no longer hope to dominate the central government. Instead, most said they want to govern themselves in a decentralized or even federal Iraq, enjoying basically the same local governance that the Iraqi Kurds enjoy.” This type of federal power-sharing agreement, Ford notes, “is in line with the political vision of Iraq that the Iraqi Shia and Kurdish leaders used to emphasize ten years ago, and it is consistent with the Iraqi constitution.” But, even if Mosul were to be liberated and ISIS were to be severely set back, Ford warns the terror group would likely return to being an underground insurgency feeding off of Sunni resentments. Denying ISIS its base of support will require political reforms, such as establishing effective local government that can provide “basic services, new jobs, and . . . fair treatment from local police and judges.” …
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
THE WHITE HOUSE’S IRAQ DELUSION
Washington Post, May 3, 2016
Two persistent failings of U.S. foreign policy have been an overdependence on individual leaders, who frequently fail to deliver on American expectations, and a reluctance to accept that an established status quo can’t hold. The Obama administration has committed both those errors in Iraq — and it has done so more than once.
In its zeal to withdraw all U.S. troops in time for President Obama’s reelection campaign in 2012, the administration threw its weight behind then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, with disastrous consequences. Mr. Maliki’s Shiite sectarianism fractured the fragile political system and opened the way for the Islamic State. In 2014, having pushed for Mr. Maliki’s removal, the administration bet on Haider al-Abadi; now, in its impatience to reduce the Islamic State before Mr. Obama leaves office, it clings to a prime minister who has proved unable to govern the country or reconcile its warring factions.
Mr. Abadi’s impotence was revealed most dramatically over the weekend, when Shiite supporters of anti-American firebrand Moqtada al-Sadr stormed into Baghdad’s walled-off Green Zone and invaded the parliament. Nominally, the protesters were supporting one of Mr. Abadi’s aims, to create a new, technocratic cabinet to replace a corrupt system of dividing ministries according to party and sectarian lines. But Mr. Abadi denounced the invasion, which showed him as unable to control either the political insurgents or the established parties that have repeatedly rejected his reform proposals. The blowup came at a particularly awkward time for the Obama administration, which had just doubled down on its support for Mr. Abadi during a visit to Baghdad by Vice President Biden. As The Post’s Greg Jaffe reported, an administration briefer told reporters that Mr. Biden’s visit was “a symbol of how much faith we have in Prime Minister Abadi” and expressed optimism that his government was getting stronger.
Whether Mr. Abadi survives the present crisis will likely depend on whether Shiite parties, with help from Iran, can patch up their differences. But already he has proved incapable of addressing Iraq’s fundamental political problem, which is the schism among the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish communities. That brings us to the Obama administration’s second error: an unwillingness to accept that Iraq cannot survive under its present system of governance, which centralizes power in Baghdad. Since the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq’s Sunni-majority areas, the administration has stubbornly stuck to the slogan of a “unified Iraq,” even though that has effectively meant depriving Kurdistan’s autonomous government and armed forces of the resources they need to fight the war, and critically delayed the development of a Sunni leadership that could effectively govern areas liberated from the terrorists.
The latest crisis should prompt a reconsideration. Kurdish leaders are now openly saying that Iraq’s post-2003 political structure has collapsed; the United States should be forging closer ties to their regional government. It should also be working to encourage a similar federal state in Sunni areas of Iraq. If Iraq survives as a nation-state, it will be because power, and oil revenues, are radically decentralized from Baghdad. Continuing to center U.S. support on a single Iraqi leader, whether it is Mr. Abadi or someone else, is a recipe for more failure.
CAN A DEMAGOGUE HELP SAVE IRAQ'S DEMOCRACY?
Eli Lake
Bloomberg, May 4, 2016
Here is an irony to savor. One of Iraq's most notorious demagogues might now be saving the democratic experiment he nearly extinguished more than a decade ago. You may remember his name from the Bush era: Moqtada al-Sadr. He is an Islamic fundamentalist who has used violence for political gain. In 2004, an Iraqi judge issued a warrant for his arrest, accusing him of orchestrating the stabbing murder of rival cleric, Abdul Majid al-Khoei. His Mahdi army tried and failed to take control of the city of Najaf that same year. And while he opposes the strict Iranian conception of Islamic law, his followers have attacked shopkeepers who sell alcohol.
Yet today, Sadr's followers are providing the political muscle that Iraqi Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi will need to enact the reforms necessary to save Iraq from fiscal insolvency. Over the last weekend, Sadr's followers breached the gates of the heavily fortified "green zone" in the center of Baghdad and briefly took over the parliament to support a slate of technocratic ministers Abadi is proposing for his government. Unless Iraq's political bosses feel some popular pressure, Abadi's relatively modest reforms have no chance.
These reforms are aimed at preventing a dire crisis that's been years in the making. Luay al-Khateeb, a fellow at Columbia University and a former unofficial adviser to the Iraqi parliament on economic and energy issues, told me the decline in oil prices should force Iraq to cut government subsidies on energy as well as make-work jobs created when the price of oil was high. (Abadi has not gone this far) Khateeb said there were 2.5 million federal government jobs in 2003 when Saddam Hussein's government fell. Today, he estimates, there are 7 million, most of them unnecessary. And then there is the massive corruption endemic to Iraq's political system. Over the years, ministers and members of parliament were allotted huge budgets for their personal staffs and other benefits. Even after members retire from public service, in many cases the state continues to pay for their bodyguards and secretaries. This says nothing of the self-dealing that powerful Iraqi politicians and leaders conducted to win government business for friends and associates.
Recently Sadr has positioned himself as an outsider, even though he and his organization benefitted from the corruption in Iraq's political system that he now opposes. Sadr himself fled to Iran in 2007, but was apparently disappointed by the tepid welcome he received from the Islamic Republic's leadership, and returned to Baghdad four years later. So it's no accident that some of his supporters on Saturday were shouting slogans accusing Iraq's political class of being Iranian puppets. Nibras Kazimi, an Iraqi analyst and commentator, told me that Sadr blamed the leader of Iran's Quds Force, Qassem Suleimani, for fracturing his Mahdi Army and peeling off followers to form a rival militia known as Asaib Ahl al-Haq. When the Iranians and most Shiite politicians accepted the rule of then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Sadr was one of the only Shiite leaders to openly criticize him for his violent crack down on non-violent protests by Sunni Arabs.
Even some of Sadr's most potent critics acknowledge that, for the moment, he has lined up on the side of reform. Kanan Makiya, a historian whose latest novel, "The Rope," explores the complicity of Shiite leaders in covering up the murder of al-Khoei, told me that Sadr today "is a populist demagogue who happens to be riding the right wave at the right time."
Nonetheless, Makiya is concerned: "I worry that Abadi may become beholden to this very dangerous man." U.S. officials I spoke to this week told me that they, too, worried about Sadr's resurgent influence. Sadr eventually told his supporters to leave the green zone on Saturday, and Iraqi forces did not fire on the mob. But this was not an orderly protest. The protestors manhandled Iraqi legislators, trashed the parliament building and pulled down blast walls on the green zone's exterior. And yet, it was in the service of saving Iraq's beleaguered government.
It all provides a puzzle for the U.S. Washington is working behind the scenes to secure a multi-billion dollar International Monetary Fund loan and other international financing to keep Abadi's government afloat for the coming months and years, in the hopes that he can begin to implement more substantive reforms. Without more stable governance, there is little chance of initiating a campaign to free Mosul, the nation's second-largest city, from the Islamic State. There are also the very real concerns Kurds now face as their leaders threaten to hold a referendum in the fall to vote on independence. Iraq's parliament is expected to meet again on May 10 to try to form the new government. The world will be watching closely — nobody more so than Moqtada al-Sadr.
Lee Smith
Weekly Standard, May 16, 2016
This week marks the 100th anniversary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the document that shaped the modern Middle East. Known officially as the Asia Minor Agreement, it was authored by the British diplomat Mark Sykes and his French counterpart François Georges-Picot. They were charged with the task of mapping out new zones of influence in parts of the Ottoman Empire, should the Triple Entente, which at the time included czarist Russia, defeat the Ottomans in World War I.
The regions under negotiation were the Syrian coast and what became Lebanon, which would go to France; central and southern Mesopotamia, which would fall under British supervision; and Palestine, which would be under international administration. The huge block of mostly desert in between would have local Arab chiefs under French supervision in the north and British in the south. The agreement was signed May 16, 1916. Now, a century later, according to a wildly diverse body of opinion, from the leader of the Islamic State Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to Israeli defense minister Moshe Ya'alon, Sykes-Picot has finally fallen apart. Over the last hundred years, the very phrase Sykes-Picot has become shorthand for a number of ideas about Middle East history. To wit: Sykes-Picot imposed artificial borders on the region; it legitimized colonial interference in the Middle East; it represented the betrayal of the Arabs by the Western powers. As it turns out, all of these beliefs are premised on conceptions that are grounded not in historical reality, but political ideology.
All borders are artificial. Even before the advent of the state system, borders around the world were either agreed upon by two or more parties or imposed through war or threat of war. Borders are human conventions, even if they are set off by natural landmarks, like bodies of water or mountains. In any case, the Sykes-Picot Agreement did not establish national borders. The borders within the area that Sykes-Picot dealt with were later agreed upon by Paris and London. Sykes-Picot merely allocated zones of influence, a political demarcation consistent with the history of the region, dominated by empires for thousands of years. "One empire, the Ottoman, lost," says Tony Badran, research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, "and two other empires, the French and the British, divided parts of its holdings between themselves. That division was in keeping with how empires have dealt with this area throughout the ages. The imperial tradition in this zone dates back millennia."
Badran traces it back to the historical ancient Near East, when the region's great imperial powers included Egypt, Persia, and what's now Turkey, from the Hittite Empire, to the Byzantines, and lastly the Ottomans. What we refer to as the Levant, says Badran, has simply been a buffer zone between imperial powers. "It's a zone of conflict, a historical theater of war. The people who live here are always assets of bigger powers. If you ally with Egypt and the Assyrians win, it's a losing bet. The kingdom of Judah later sought to align with Egypt against the Babylonians. Egypt and Judah lost, resulting in the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile to Babylon."
Often faulted for being oblivious to the reality of the Middle East, as Badran argues, the Sykes-Picot Agreement actually represented a mature understanding of the region's history. The "colonial interference" that Sykes-Picot stands for was nothing but the latest instance of empires carving out zones of influence, partly to balance each other's power. Even after Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan won independence—the Arabs rejected the 1947 U.N. plan to partition Palestine into independent Arab and Jewish states—many Arab political figures and intellectuals claimed that they'd been betrayed by the West. According to this view, the colonial powers had promised them a greater Arab homeland, and instead divided them into separate states. This is the Arab nationalist reading of recent Middle East history.
The central tenet of Arab nationalism is that the people of the Middle East who speak various dialects of the Arabic language constitute one indivisible nation with a shared past and a common destiny. As we now see with the sectarian and ethnic onslaught underway in Iraq and Syria, this notion is fanciful. If there really is such a thing as the Arab nation—rather than a collection of competing sects, ethnicities, and tribes—it is a nation at war with itself. Indeed, the rise of Arab nationalist ideology coincides with the rapid decline of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It was the Ottomans who, for all their very bloody methods, managed to maintain a certain amount of stability throughout the region, balancing warring factions. With the Ottomans on their way out, regional intellectuals and ideologues, including some among the Middle East's minority populations, saw Arab nationalism as a safety mechanism of sorts, intended to convince the region's various populations that more united them—language, culture, history, future—than set them apart.
The region's political leaders used Arab nationalism for a very different purpose—to undermine their regional rivals. For instance, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser regularly attacked Jordan and Saudi Arabia for betraying the Arab cause—i.e., the war to eliminate the Zionists and liberate Palestine. It is hardly a coincidence that Nasser's targets were American allies, and his Egypt, like the other prominent Arab nationalist regimes, Syria and Iraq, was a Soviet client. Again, the middle of the Arabic-speaking Middle East was a buffer zone, where the world's two great powers competed for zones of influence. Backing Arab nationalist causes and hanging the colonialist/imperialist label on Washington was part of Moscow's Cold War propaganda campaign. And indeed it was the United States that inherited the legacy of Sykes-Picot when Eisenhower ushered France and the United Kingdom out of the region with the 1956 Suez Crisis. Now, according to the Arab nationalist reading, the United States was the great colonial power.
Actually, that wasn't far from the truth, even if a country with its origins in anticolonialism rejected the description. The reality is that the Europeans were irrelevant. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the Cold War over, the Middle East enjoyed more than two decades of relative stability. It was the United States that kept the peace, a peace at least as stable as and an order much more liberal than that of the Ottomans. The peace that the region enjoyed had nothing to do with early-20th-century European diplomats, but was thanks to postwar American power. Sykes-Picot is the euphemism that Americans uncomfortable with the idea of empire have used to describe the American order of the Middle East.
For decades, the Arab-Israeli conflict was understood to be the region's central crisis—solve that, common wisdom held, and everything else will fall into place. As we now understand, compared with the Syrian war and the casualty count over 5 years which dwarfs that of the Arab-Israeli conflict over close to 70, the Arab-Israeli conflict is little more than a skirmish between two tribes. That the international community could afford to devote so much concern and resources to it over the course of decades is a testament to the nature of American power. The issue isn't that the Islamic State crashed the borders of Syria and Iraq in 2014 and therefore the colonial legacy of Sykes-Picot. Rather, it's that the Obama White House wants out. It's the American order of the region that's been dismantled—not by ISIS, but by the president of the United States. In effect, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that seeks to realign American interests in the region with Iran, while plotting a U.S. exit from the region, is a revision of Sykes-Picot.
We can't fix the Middle East, Obama deputy Ben Rhodes told the New York Times Magazine. It's about ancient sectarian and ethnic rivalries and hatreds. But the point was never to solve the problems of the region, a conflict zone for thousands of years. It was merely to ensure stability and protect American interests. The Ottomans were flushed out of the region when they wound up on the losing side of the Great War. The Obama White House opted out because it was tired. The region will pay the price for the administration's self-pity, as will the rest of the world, including America.
Obama Hides His Iraq War: William McGurn, Wall Street Journal, Apr. 11, 2016—In Barack Obama’s world, the answer is apparently not—not even when they are on the ground exchanging fire with the enemy. This is the fiction supported by Hillary Clinton and largely unchallenged by any of the three Republican candidates for president.
Research on the Islamic State, Syria, and Iraq: Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, Middle East Forum, Mar. 1, 2016
The Failures of the International Community in the Middle East since the Sykes-Picot Agreement, 1916-2016: Amb. Freddy Eytan, JCPA, 2016—This study is a recap of historical facts and aims to shed new light on the many failures of the Sykes-Picot agreement and implementation during the past century. Along with the comments and observations, it is a reminder to avoid naiveté and mistakes of the past. Jerusalem Center experts also explain the reasons for the failure of Western countries in achieving sustainable peace.
‘A Shocking Document’ Turns 100: Daniel Pipes, Washington Times, May 8, 2016—The Sykes-Picot accord that has shaped and distorted the modern Middle East was signed 100 years ago, on May 16, 1916. In the deal, Mark Sykes for the British and Francois Georges-Picot for the French, with the Russians participating too, allocated much of the region, pending the minor detail of their defeating the Central Powers in World War I.
