The Five Paradoxes of America's Iraqi Invasion

Given George W. Bush's religious credentials, one would imagine that as a result of the Iraq invasion, Iraq would be a more welcoming environment for Christians. One would also imagine that women would be more liberated, that ethnic cleansing would be less likely to occur, and that free elections would make Iraq a model democracy. According to this analysis from France's Le Figaro, in making such assumptions, one would be wrong. But if America withdraws …

Analysis by Renaud Girard*   

Translated By Kate Brumback

April 12, 2006

France - Le Figaro - Original Article (French)    

Three years later, what is the situation? In Iraq, under Saddam, there was absolute security in the cities and the country. A Westerner could walk there alone, anywhere, at any hour of the day or night. Paradoxically, the Iraq occupied by American troops has become the most dangerous country on the planet for a Westerner to visit.

Under the Baathist dictatorship, women were not afraid to go out on the street without their headscarves, and the Christian minority was free to openly practice its religion. During a solemn communion at the center of Baghdad in February, 2003, it was possible to hear church bells ring and see families being photographed on the church steps. That scene would be unthinkable today. One of the consequences of the decision to invade Iraq, made by the most openly Christian Western Leader, is, paradoxically, the persistent exodus of the Iraqi Christian community, the oldest in the East.

In their haste to topple the Baathist regime, the neoconservative ideologues in the Pentagon didn't really prepare for post-Saddam. They thought that his dictatorship was the worst kind of regime and that things would undoubtedly go better afterwards. They were wrong. There is something worse than dictatorship: anarchy. And there is even something worse than anarchy: civil war.

Civil war, between Sunnis and Shiites, has indeed begun. After the attack (attributed to Sunni extremists) on the Golden Mosque of Samarra - the third most important Shiite holy site on February 22 - the Shiite militia have begun a veritable Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre [] against the Sunni population of east Baghdad. The fact that these militia have the tacit support of the police shows that the Iraqi state can hardly be expected to have the strength to quell this interfaith fire.

Beyond the spectacular attacks, an even more harmful violence is developing in the capital’s mixed neighborhoods. The Iraqis often live in an extended family arrangement. To compel an entire clan to resign itself to leaving a neighborhood, the militias assassinate one of the clan's members. This “discrete” interfaith violence currently leads to over 20 deaths per day in Baghdad. The result is ethnic cleansing on a grand scale throughout the capital. The model of the Western “humanitarian” interventions of the 1990s was to put an end to ethnic cleansings, which were judged scandalous. The third paradox of the American intervention is that, in Iraq, such an ethnic cleansing has been involuntarily provoked.

Kurdistan, autonomous since 1991, is the only Iraqi area that is truly calm and prosperous today. But the happiness of Kurdistan cannot mask the interethnic tension (Kurds v. Arabs) that exists in the ethnically mixed cities of Kirkuk and Mosul.

Iraq has become a much less secure country than it was three years ago, but what about the region? The two reasons given for the intervention by President Bush were the fight against Islamist terrorism and that against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Terrorism - and Islamism in general - has paradoxically seen exponential growth throughout the region. In Saudi Arabia, it is formally advised that Westerners not walk in the street.

The fifth paradox of the American intervention in Iraq is that, in getting bogged down there, the Pentagon has lost all of its dissuasive power against the military ambitions of neighboring Iran. The Islamist President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems unaffected by Washington’s threats in the - very probable - event that Iran refuses to suspend its uranium enrichment program.

Thanks to its considerable influence over the Iraqi Shiite community (more than 55% of the population), Iran possesses an important dissuasive weapon against an America that is trapped in the Iraqi quagmire. The most important political party in Iraq, the SCIRI (Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq [], was founded in Iran during [the Ayatollah] Khomenei’s time, and its militia participated - on the Iranian side! - in the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988).

American neoconservatives sincerely believed that a new Iraq would arise out of free elections, and become a model State for the entire region. Democratic elections did indeed take place (in January and then in December 2005). But the vote only confirmed the centrifugal leanings of the electorate. The citizens didn't vote for one program or another, but solely along ethnic and religious lines. When the state is so weak that it no longer ensures the physical security of its citizens, citizens naturally seek refuge in ethnicity, religion and clan. American neoconservatives forgot, that in the history of the construction of societies, the State has always preceded democracy, and not the other way around.

However, leaving Iraq now would be, for America (final guarantor of the country’s unity), an even more serious error than having come. Because the shockwaves from an explosion of the country along its ethno-confessional lines would fatally reverberate throughout the Gulf States, to inflame the most oil-rich area in the world.

* Foreign correspondent for Le Figaro.

VIDEO FROM U.A.E.: EGYPTIAN PRESIDENT SAYS IRAQI CIVIL WAR HAS BEGUN

Al-Arabiya TV, United Arab Emirates: Excerpts from an interview with Egyptian President Husni Mubarak, Apr. 8, 00:04:58, Via MEMRI

"Civil war has more or less broken out. There are Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, and those coming from Asia... It's very difficult, and I don't know how Iraq will pick up the pieces."

Egyptian President Husni Mubarak