Exit option for US in Iraq

War has been the most the terrible thing to have happened to mankind and has been its scourge since it realized self and identities.

What makes it much more grievous than even diseases or natural disaster, is perhaps a realization of its, futility, preventability, a sense of injustice and over all the guilt of being a party to this pogrom of fratricide.

Iraq today presents, yet another glaring example of a nation, and a civilization torn apart by greed of parochialism. As an antithesis to Arab nationality, enriched by the natural bounty of oil, juxtaposed to the origins of human civilization and an area central to all the three Abrahamic faith.

The backdrop of the crisis is:

With the breakdown of Ottoman Empire, the British divided the Arabian Peninsula, and popped up rulers, under their protection, and in a similar way, created Kuwait in a manner such as to squeeze Iraq’s entry into the Persian Gulf. The cold war heightened the tension, with Iraq joining the Russian bloc and signing the Baghdad pact. As a fall out of it, the baathist came to power and saddam Hussein established a firm, and tyrannical to his tribe of origin, the tikritians, and then his sect of Sunni Arabs, a discriminatory and reprehension regime was formed and the decade long Iran Iraq war was an ominous extension. During the war as Iraq got buried under debt, it attacked Kuwait, eyeing its oil fields as well as to increase its control over the Persian Gulf and it prompted, an US led international retaliation under Operation Desert Storm, which stopped short of dethroning saddam and imposed crippling sanction on his regime. In abid to enable rebellion , many measure like , no flying zone and mass demilitarization , which reached its peak during the operation Desert Fox(1998) , the final phase was against the backdrop of 9/11 bombing and has resulted in overthrowing of saddam’s regime and the US led forces trying to maintain a country plunged deep into civil war.

All said and done, Iraq has proved to be too complex for such simplistic analysis and the US, along with its war machine finds itself enmeshed into this treacherous polity of middle east, trying to fight, its plummeting moral authority, hatred of Muslim world, almost bringing the world into the brink of a clash of civilization, rising causality by a day, almost 4000 and counting. A falling currency and impending recession, and a condition where oil prices have crossed $100 a barrel and the already fragile world order and international institution has been run down.

The US and the saver world now grapple for a way out. A way which is

• Honorable for the US
• Assuaging the hurt Islamic feeling
• Capable of establishing peace and order in Iraq
• Acceptance to the divergent groups in Iraq
• Maintains regional balance of powers
• Reinforce energy security for the world
• Creates a situation favorable to the international drive against terrorism.

The first option is a long term investment by the US in taking over a gradual rebuilding of Iraq and its institution. Bringing over a force much larger, at least around 200,000. Disarmament of the sectarian forces, building up of a credible army and police forces, governing and judicial institution, reestablishing the oil sector in a public- private partnership model and then a gradual democratization of its polity.

This calls for a commitment and involvement, not available with the US polity. A war costing 200 billion $ a year, is not acceptable to the US public and there is no acceptance of further responsibilities.

Second available option , is a US retreat and UN takeover, facilitated by security council resolution , and a Un peace keeping force, with mainly forces from , Arabic and Islamic nations, and a gradual democratization, with world assistance following , similar to Afghanistan . But we see the results are not very encouraging and the biggest drawback would be an army large enough

Third option would be to trifurcate Iraq into Shia, Sunni and Kurd majority areas, but it would disturb regional balance with Shia regions, joining bloc with Iran and turkey opposing Kurd nation.

As we see options are many but they call for a statesmanship, not in view at present, and what can be best hoped is some intrinsic leadership to emerge and some internal consensus evolving around it.

By:- Komal Singhal