US Hegemony Has Transformed Iraq into an Abyss of Terror

Recently, the growing conflict in Iraq has reoccupied center stage across most of the world’s media. On the 10th and the 11th of this month the extremist organization Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) took control of Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul, and the Saladin province capital, Tikrit (Saddam’s home town). They are now moving inexorably toward the capital of Baghdad. On the 13th, U.S. President Obama made the announcement that the U.S. still has many options available, but that it would not be sending ground troops back into Iraq.

The cause for Iraq’s deteriorating condition lies directly in the fast-changing world of the Middle East. In 2011, sweeping changes engulfed the Arab world, fragmenting governmental authority, creating political unrest, and fostering anarchy. This [change] provided a breeding ground for the fomenting and spreading of extremist forces with “fundamentalist” agendas. This [development] is especially true for the Syrian civil war, which has persisted for over three years now. The Syrian conflict has drawn the entire world’s “holy warriors” into the fray; they have spread from this distribution center out into Iraq to join in the civil conflict there. ISIS was actually born into their destiny from the white-hot coals of the Syrian civil war. It has engaged in systematic cross-border plots to renew unrest within Iraq whenever peace begins to settle there. According to official statistics, at the beginning of 2011, over 300 terrorist attack incidents occurred each month in Iraq. In 2013, those incidents rose to over 1,200. According to further data from United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, the number of deaths in Iraq in 2013 reached 7,818, the highest level seen since 2008. As of 2014, along with the victory of the Syrian army — and especially since its March through April recapture of the northern strategic town of Homs — ISIS has been strategically hemmed in and driven into shifting its core activities back into Iraq. This [shift of ISIS], consequently, has made the Iraqi national security situation even worse. Even by April of 2014, deaths in Iraq exceeded over 4,000 in number. Over the first 10 days of June, more than 500 people lost their lives across the country. Iraq has now become “the most dangerous country on Earth.”

Iraq has transformed from a safe oasis into an abyss of terror, and the true origin of this disaster is the hegemonic policy of the United States. Before the Iraq War of 2003, although it was suffering from international sanctions, Iraq’s political climate was stable. Sectoral dissonance never raised its head, and “fundamentalism” was nowhere to be seen. It was actually the United States’ famous invasion over the “war against terror,” the disposal of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and America’s tailor-made “parliamentary democracy” that actually stimulated the country’s sectarianism. It also led to a central power vacuum and a corresponding social disorder. Moreover, these changes also saw the birth of the indigenous terrorist cell “al-Qaida in Iraq” (the previous name for ISIS). This would eventually lead Iraq into the cycle of unrest and terror that it is trapped in today.

The U.S. not only created problems by invading Iraq, but it also couldn’t put the endgame in order. In realizing that the chaos in Iraq was impossible to control and the conflict was increasingly sapping the strength of the United States, the U.S. decided that it may as well just pack up and leave. It progressively withdrew troops from Iraq between 2008 and 2011. This kind of irresponsible evacuation also caused Iraq’s security situation to collapse suddenly. The morale of Iraqi security forces plummeted. They also discovered themselves suddenly ill-equipped, and without the support of U.S. military intelligence, they found it virtually impossible to meet the grave difficulties they faced in executing their anti-terror operations. At the beginning of this year, ISIS occupied the strategic town of Fallujah in Anbar province. The army has been fighting [ISIS] for half a year, and they have still not reclaimed control from it. Now, these extremists have initiated a forced occupation of Mosul, and the ability of Iraqi security forces to respond to their attacks is very limited — the best they can do is roll with the punches that they are dealt. The prime minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, wants to try to strengthen control of the situation, but the “democratic body” is divided on this matter. Since 2008, Maliki has often tried to centralize power, suffering strong rebuke from both Sunnis and Kurds alike over his moves. This is where sectarianism took to the stage. The Iraqi central government fell into a position between a rock and a hard place — if it didn’t centralize power, it wouldn’t be able to stem the tides of terrorism. But if it did centralize power, it would certainly create bitter divisions and further sectarianism.

Iraq’s situation epitomizes the “carrying strength” of U.S. policy. In truth, the appearance of contentious issues like the Syria civil war, the chaos in Libya and the Iran nuclear problem are all connected to America’s Middle East policy. If we investigate further, we can see that this is because U.S. foreign policy has a number of weak points. In the last few hundreds of years, the U.S. and the West have long been the major power players on the world stage. From their entrenched mindset of “might is right” and their bullying demeanor, their small-minded policies toward non-Western countries do little to address the underlying problems these countries face. The truth is, the prejudiced and holier-than-thou attitudes of the West have only created problems. Their motivations behind those thousands of lives lost in the “9/11 incident” have turned from “groundless” accusations into a full-scale war on Iraq. A dreadful war, in which the aftermath effects we see today are rapidly growing beyond anyone’s control.

Wen Lin Tian is the assistant researcher for the China Modern International Relations Research Center, and an author for Global Network.