What’s Happening in Iraq After the U.S. Withdrawal?

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PJMedia:

Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi is an Anglo-Iraqi political analyst who has published widely on Iraqi politics and other contemporary Middle East issues. He is interviewed by PJ Media Middle East Editor Barry Rubin.

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Barry Rubin: Nine years after a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, has that country achieved stability and democracy? How many American soldiers are still in Iraq and what are they doing?

 

Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi: Iraq has achieved a degree of stability in that the sectarian civil war that centered on Baghdad in the 2006-2008 period ended decisively in favor of the Shi’a factions. In light of the U.S. withdrawal of troops in December 2011 (with only a couple of hundred or so Marines serving to guard the large U.S. Embassy complex in Baghdad), Shi’a militant groups have decided to lay down arms and join the political process, having lost all reason for continuing to fight.

The Sunni Arab population generally accepts that it must adapt to the fact that the Shi’a lead the political process in the country. The Sunni insurgency that remains — consisting of Islamist and Ba’athist militants — is ideological in nature, and will continue to carry out attacks. There is a serious terrorist threat in the country but the prospect of another sectarian civil war is very remote, even though the media constantly raise this point whenever there is an upsurge in attacks, which, if analyzed, can be shown to be part of cyclical trends (e.g., an upsurge in casualties can always be expected around the time of the Shi’a festival of Arba’een).

So, a degree of stability has been achieved, but there is a long way to go before the country can really be called a democracy: absence of rule of law, widespread corruption, increasing autocracy on the part of the prime minister, and suppression of protests by both Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government all point to an absence of real electoral democracy.

 

 

Barry Rubin: What is the status of U.S.-Iraq relations and does the United States have any real influence in what goes on in the country?

 

Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi: The status of U.S.-Iraq relations at present fits in with the general decline of American influence in the country over the years. The fact is, Washington does not really have any say in the workings of Iraqi politics. For example, the Americans had no role in devising the current unconstitutional compromise that allowed Maliki to have a second term in office, even though his bloc did not win the largest number of seats in the 2010 elections. Allawi’s al-Iraqiya bloc did, and according to the constitution, it should have been Allawi who had the right to form a government. Similarly, amid the current talk of a no-confidence vote against Maliki, Vice-President Joe Biden was reportedly supposed to come to Baghdad. He has not done so.

I would say that the U.S. approach toward Iraq does not help counter Iranian influence. It has often been noted that after the 2003 invasion, sectarianism became institutionalized with the award of positions in the interim government determined on a rigid sectarian basis. I do not think that the United States has quite moved on from such thinking. An approach that stresses Iraqi national unity and does not view everything through the sectarian paradigm of Sunnis, Shi’a, and Kurds might help to revive U.S. influence and counter Iran.