IRAQI SUNNIS LOOK TO U.S. TO DEFEND THEM FROM SHIA AND KURDS
New George Fiedman piece on post-election situation. (Everybody is talking INTENSELY to everyone as to what to do now.)
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Geopolitical Intelligence Report: Iraq's Future: Seeking a Balance to
Iran
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THE GEOPOLITICAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT
Iraq's Future: Seeking a Balance to Iran
February 07, 2005 1956 GMT
By George Friedman
The Iraqi election returns are coming in, yielding no surprises: The Shia
have won. They would have won even if the Sunnis had participated in the Jan.
30 election, but the Sunnis generally didn't participate. The Shia,
therefore, not only won, but won big. The larger part of the country
participated in the elections because their leaders, Shia and Kurd, support
the political evolutions that are taking place. The Sunni leaders did not
participate in part because they opposed the political evolution and in part
because they feared the insurgents.
In other words, the elections confirmed the political realities of Iraq. The
question now is whether those realities are locked in, or whether the
elections have created a new dynamic. More simply put, have the elections
created a new reality that sufficiently frightens the Sunni leaders so they
will try to participate in the political process, despite the threats of the
insurgents? It boils down to which the Sunni leaders fear more -- the
insurgents, or a Shiite constitution and government over which they have no
influence.
The non-insurgent Sunni leadership -- tribal elders, village leaders,
religious figures -- are caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one
side there are the insurgents, whose military influence in the four major
Sunni provinces is substantial. They have shown a willingness to kill Sunni
leaders who make political accommodations with the Americans or their allies.
On the other side, there are the Shia and Kurds, both of whom have been
victims of Sunni-dominated governments. If the Sunnis leave the political
levers entirely in the hands of their enemies, they face a bleak future. The
insurgents are able to intimidate, but they cannot defend the Sunnis against
the combined force of Shia and Kurds, unrestrained by the Americans.
At this moment, the United States suddenly becomes the protector of these
Sunni leaders -- their path out of their predicament. The United States is
certainly motivated to help them: Officials in Washington would rather not
see the Sunnis excluded from the central government. Certainly, given a
choice between a Shiite-dominated government and no government, the United
States will go with the Shiite government. However, Washington fears three
things:
1. That in spite of doctrinal differences with Iranian religious authorities,
the Shia will impose an Islamic republic, resembling Iran's. (There is some
basis for this fear: In fact, the two main Shiite parties -- Hizb al-Dawah
and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq -- were based in Iran
when Saddam Hussein held power, and they remain quite close to Tehran. It
also should be noted that Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the top Shiite
cleric in Iraq, rhetorically has opposed an active political role for clergy
but behind-the-scenes has become one of Iraq's chief political powerbrokers.)
2. That the Shia will, in the long run, fall under the influence or control
of Iran and become an Iranian satellite.
3. That a Shiite government cannot hold Iraq together, and it will break into
three separate regimes.
All three outcomes threaten a fundamental U.S. strategy in the region. Since
the 1960s, the United States has pursued a balance of power strategy in the
Persian Gulf between Iraqi and Iranian power. The United States did not want
to see Iraq emerge as the dominant power in the region after the Iran-Iraq
war of the 1980s -- and it acted against Iraq when Saddam Hussein's forces
invaded Kuwait. But Washington does not want to see an unchecked Iran
dominating the region either. The United States wants Iraq to return to its
traditional role of blocking Iranian aspirations. The American fear is that
the three outcomes it dreads will all result, in the long term, in unchecked
Iranian power.
Therefore, while the United States is delighted the election took place and
that the global media are viewing it as a triumph for democracy, the fact is
that the United States is extremely nervous about the electoral results. It
wants the Sunnis participating in the political process -- both because
Washington wants to keep Iraq as a single, unitary state and because it wants
checks and balances on potential ambitions of the Shiite leadership. The U.S.
understanding with al-Sistani does not seem all that firm a protection
against unpleasant outcomes.
Therefore, the United States has made it clear that it would welcome the
participation of Sunni political parties in the Iraqi government or, failing
that, in framing the constitution of Iraq. Given the American commitment to
democracy, allowing people who lost the election to participate, regardless
of the reason, might seem a little odd, but the fact is that the Americans
are far more interested in the political outcome than in the particulars of
how that outcome takes place. They want the Sunnis in, and are bargaining
hard to get them in.
Sunni politicians want to participate. The guerrillas can't protect them from
the Shia and, as important, they want a seat at the political table where
major decisions are being made and where huge amounts of U.S. aid have
managed to go missing. Once there is a coherent government in Iraq, the first
interest they will have is to get Iraqi oil flowing and increase that flow as
quickly as possible. The last thing the Sunnis want is to see all of those
royalties flowing into Shiite hands - a very real danger, considering that
almost all of Iraq's oil assets lie in the Kurdish north or Shiite south, and
the Sunnis themselves control only portions of Baghdad. At this point,
staying out of the government becomes disastrous.
The guerrillas have demonstrated that they can act inside the Sunni regions.
They also have shown they have relatively limited capabilities outside those
regions. The guerrillas are not going to deter either the Shia or the Kurds
from forming a government. Therefore, the train is leaving the station. At
the same time, getting killed by the insurgents is not high on the agendas of
Sunni leaders. The question therefore goes to the capabilities and intentions
of the guerrillas.
There certainly has been a decline in guerrilla activity since the election,
but that really doesn't tell us much. Since late summer, the guerrillas have
been carrying out attacks at an intense tempo. If they had been able to
simply sustain that tempo after the elections, the size of the guerrilla
organization would have had to be many times larger than evidence suggests.
It is no surprise therefore that the tempo has fallen off. The guerrillas are
tired. They have suffered losses. They are short of supplies. That would be
the case in any conventional or guerrilla war after an offensive of this size
relative to available forces. They will be resting, reorganizing, recruiting
and training for a while. Operations will not end, but they will subside.
However -- and this is critical -- there is no evidence that the guerrillas
have spent their strength and that they are incapable of resuming the
offensive in relatively short order.
This brings in another dimension. No guerrilla movement is self-sustaining.
It needs support. In Iraq, the movement needs the support -- voluntary or
coerced -- of Sunni leaders in order to draw on the resources of the
community. It also appears to need the support of sympathizers outside of
Iraq, in countries such as Saudi Arabia or Syria. Regardless of whether it is
government-sanctioned, various types of support appear to be flowing from
these countries. In other words, the insurgency needs support from Arab
states or, at the very least, their willingness to allow supporters of the
Iraqi guerrillas to funnel aid to them.
We have laid out three scenarios that concern the United States. Those same
three scenarios should scare the living daylights out of the Arab world,
particularly the Arabian Peninsula. Since the Islamic revolution in Iran --
and actually well before that -- the idea of an unchecked Iran moving
militarily in the Gulf region has been the ultimate nightmare of the Saudis.
Such a move would have religious, strategic and economic implications of
catastrophic proportions to the House of Saud and all of the principalities
along the western coast of the Persian Gulf.
During the 1980s, Saudi Arabia depended on the United States to protect it
from Iran. The United States depended on Iraq to block the Iranians. Even
after the first Gulf War, when the United States protected the Saudis from
Iraq, Iraq still served a vital purpose: blocking potential Iranian
expansion. Under any of the scenarios listed, the Iranians would potentially
have an open highway to the Saudi oil fields, and no indigenous power could
possibly stop them.
Now, the United States would probably intervene, but U.S. intervention is the
last thing the Saudis want. The last time the United States intervened to
protect the kingdom, in 1990, the result was an upsurge of anti-regime
sentiment for allowing Americans into Saudi Arabia. Al Qaeda was born in this
soil. Therefore, the Saudis have no interest whatsoever in letting things run
their course, and counting on the Americans to protect them is the last
resort.
Riyadh has an interest in making certain there is no threat from Iraq.
Therefore, the Saudis more than anyone now have an interest in seeing to it
that Iraq does not disintegrate and that the Shia are not allowed to govern
unchecked by Sunni interests. Therefore, it is the Saudis who have the
greatest interest in making certain that the Sunni parties in Iraq
participate in the framing of the constitution and in future governments. It
therefore follows that the Saudis now have a vested interest in reining in
support for the Iraqi insurgents and in seeing a degree of stability return
to Iraq's Sunni regions.
Indeed, it could be put more broadly: the Arab world has a vested interest in
containing the Iranians, and the Saudis have many of the levers needed to
bring about cooperation in the Arab world -- in particular, money. At the
same time, Saudi leaders would rather not see Iraqi oil come back online.
They've enjoyed higher oil prices mightily, and the guerrillas helped give
them that. However, all good things must end, and if they don't want U.S.
troops guarding their oil fields, they need to act.
Obviously, the Saudis might calculate that the United States will remain in
Iraq and take responsibility for putting down the Iraqi insurgency. But the
United States has delivered an interesting message to the Saudis. First, the
United States is neither capable nor willing to put down the insurgency.
Second, if Riyadh wants to make sure U.S. forces remain in Iraq -- in a
position to block Iranian ambitions -- the Saudis need to persuade their
Sunni brethren to end the insurrection and join the political process there.
Geopolitics create interesting outcomes. The American and Saudi/Arab
interests are now converging. The insurgents in Iraq are going to find
themselves increasingly isolated. They will not go away -- far from it. But
over time, the diminution of support will decay their ability to act and
increase the freedom of action of the Sunni leadership. A diminution of
violence to, say, the level of Northern Ireland in the 1970s is tolerable,
compared to what is happening now.
Obviously, the Iranians are more than a little aware of this dynamic. They
have a problem in that the Iraqi Shia are not eager to become puppets of
Iran. Nevertheless, the Iranians have a great deal of influence among the
Iraqi Shia, and they are pressing for rapid political evolutions -- getting
things done before the Sunnis get organized.
It is in this context that the constant rumblings between Iran and the United
States should be read. Nuclear weapons are an interesting topic to discuss,
but the real issue on the table is the future of Iraq. Tehran urgently wants
an outcome that, at least, secures Iran's western border permanently and, at
most, makes Iran the dominant regional power. The Iranians are doing what
they can to achieve that goal. The Americans will live with a Shiite regime
in Baghdad if they must, but the complete exclusion of the Sunni from Iraqi
politics is not what they want to see. Therefore, the Americans are
threatening the Iranians, and the Iranians are making it clear they are not
afraid. Interestingly, the United States is hardly in a position to threaten
Iran. Its forces are in no position to invade. Tehran, on the other hand,
can't be sure of that -- and of course remains keenly aware of U.S. air power
assets in the region -- so its demonstrations of courage are not entirely
persuasive.
The Americans and Saudis are talking intensely. In fact, everyone is talking
to everyone. The future rests in the hands of the Sunni leaders, whose lives
are in the hands of the guerrillas.
Behind this shadow play is the reality that Iran and the United States are
talking to each other intensely, at least through European officials and
probably in other venues as well. For example, Australian Prime Minister John
Howard has said that his country, at the Bush administration's request, will
act as a mediator between Washington and Tehran on the nuclear issue. The
Americans and Saudis are talking intensely. In fact, everyone is talking to
everyone. The future rests in the hands of the Sunni leaders, whose lives are
in the hands of the guerrillas.
It will not be the United States that takes down the insurgents. In fact, it
will not be the United States that finishes off al Qaeda. In the end, there
are a lot of other people for whom Islamist radicalism is suddenly turning
into something other than a good idea.
(c) 2005 Strategic Forecasting, Inc. All rights reserved.
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