Origins of the Iraqi Conflict and Crisis

The room buzzes as the weather outside peaks at a mere 40 degrees. Inside the audience is perking up, munching sugary pastries, sipping coffee and taking in the energy of fellow activists here to make change.

Gathered at Rutgers School of Law for Iraq at the Crossroads: Protecting Refugees, Rescuing our Allies, and Empowering Iraqi Law, these 200+ concerned citizens and academics have come together to work for a free and secure Iraq. The event, hosted at Rutgers on October 24, 2008, was sponsored by Iraq War veteran Kevin Murphy and his fellow Law Record colleagues.

One of the greatest challenges to the stability of Iraq is what Sam Parker of the U.S. Institute of Peace calls “sectarian entrepreneurs.” Speaking on the first panel of the day, he says that conflicts of identity and power have erupted in the absence of government institutions and are without historical precedent. The diverse groups of Iraq have historically gotten along well and it is largely in times of intervention by outside forces that Iraqis have violently broken into sectarian division.

Daniel Rothenberg of DePaul University joins in, coining this an “Economy of Violence.” He says that in the absence of a strong government and basic infrastructures, such as job opportunities and education, Iraqis have become unemployed, idle, hungry, and angry. Force and violence often seem the only means of survival, and in desperation, Iraqis have formed militias, raping and pillaging their neighborhoods, taking what they need.

Such violence and torture was iconic Saddam—an eerie parallel with Iraq’s troubled history.

“There is little difference between suffering by those who were taken by Saddam in the past, and the militias or peshmergas we see today,” continues Professor Rothenberg. Rape, in particular, has become a widely used method of violence, especially against Shi’a woman. Rapes in front of family members are increasingly common.

Terror and fear have gripped the Iraqi people as cities have been burned, schools bombed, families broken. The relatively peaceful coexistence of Shi’a, Sunni, Kurds and Iraq’s many minority groups has been erased by sectarian entrepreneurs. Seeking protection, Iraq’s people have found little alternative than to retreat to their tribal and religious groups, further dividing and isolating themselves.

“The explanation is more than just century old hatreds,” says Rothenberg.

Among the many powerful concluding messages of the Rutgers conference was the necessity of sound government institutions to maintain order, provide for the people and ensure a prosperous, peaceful future.

Caption: Iraq's empty neighborhoods.

Iraqi Refugees in Jordan: The View from the Ground

Last Thursday, as I lunched in the stately dinning room of one of Northwest D.C.'s Victorian brownstones, I listened to a fascinating discussion of the refugee situation in Jordan. Sitting at the head of the table was Noah Merrill of Electronic Iraq, who just returned from Jordan, where he spent hundred of hours interviewing Iraqi refugees.

Although there are approximately one million Iraqi refugees in Jordan, the interviewees were not easy to locate, Noah told us. Despite the UNHCR estimated 50,000 refugees fleeing to Jordan every month, there are no refugee camps; newly arrived refugees disappear into the densely-populated urban landscape of Jordan's biggest cities.

The untraceable existence of these refugees has several worrisome causes. First among these is Jordan's ability to shirk the responsibility, mandated by international law, to recognize and protect refugees within its borders. Jordan never signed on to the 1951 Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees for fear that in doing so, it would be committing itself to granting residency to the large numbers of Palestinian refugees within its borders. With 60 to 70 percent of the Jordanian population made up of these Palestinian refugees, Jordanians, who are the minority in their own country, view the influx of Iraqi refugees as a genuine existential threat to their country's national identity.

Refugees, therefore, are not seen by the Jordanian government as, well, refugees. To paraphrase as senior Jordanian official: "Jordan does not have a refugee problem; Jordan has an illegal immigration problem." Thus viewed as illegal immigrants, Iraqi refugees are prohibited from working. Forced by financial circumstances to defy this prohibition, Iraqis try their best to stay under the radar. If caught, they face deportation back across the border, into the lawless terrorist haven of Al-Anbar province.

Other factors also make the climate inhospitable to Iraqi refugees. For example, the UN Refugee Agency, under pressure from the Jordanian government, has stopped issuing refugee certificates to Iraqis, and instead grants them refugees cards with the largely hollow "temporary asylum seeker" status.

Also, Noah continued, the Jordanian government, echoing a similar threat it made last year, has stated that it will expel all Iraqi children from schools - public and private. Amelia Templeton, an Iraqi refugee advocate and former NPR correspondent, said that when she interviewed Jordan's Minister of Education, he cited the cost and pressure on classroom size caused by the refugee influx as the rationale behind such measures. Yet Jordanian officials have begun to shut down schools operating out of churches - independent, informal schools which have no presumable impact on public classrooms. Noah pointed out the devastating effects such measures are having on the Iraqis, a people whose culture deeply prizes education.

In order for Iraqi refugees to ensure that they will not be deported back to Iraq, they have two options: leave Jordan and flee to a more hospitable country like Egypt, or try to gain residency status. This second option is only available to Iraqis that have the ability to put a certain amount of money into Jordanian banks. Essentially, says Noah, the Jordanian government is following international conventions to protect one type of refugee: the wealthy refugee.

A final factor threatening many Iraqi refugees in Jordan is a virulent and "intentionally constructed" anti-Shia sentiment, says Noah. State-led propaganda campaigns spread the belief that the Iraqi Shia community is responsible for bringing Americans into Iraq and for the "assassination" of Saddam Hussein. As a result of these sentiments, Iraqi Shia refugees that try to form self-help communities are deported back to Iraq.

Noah Merill ended the discussion by saying that the refugee crisis represents a political problem. As such, humanitarian aid is necessary - but not sufficient - when it comes to dealing effectively with this problem. He says that a plan that helps get Iraqi refugees back into Iraq should be fundamental to any proposed solution. This is, he said, what the refugees he interviewed truly desired - to go home.

With American NGO participants just coming back into town from last week's UN-led conference to address the Iraqi displacement crisis, I am trying to track down any information about whether such a plan is in the works. But with the fragile security environment in Iraq constantly undermined by ongoing violence, I have to wonder what the prospects for such a plan really are at this point.

For more information on Iraq's refugee emergency, be sure to check out EPIC's interview with refugee advocate Sean Garcia of Refugees International.

The Sunni/Shia Divide

I received an e-mail from a senior polling analyst for the BBC who analyzed the poll I discussed yesterday, and broke it down according to Sunni/Shia responses.

Here are some of the more interesting results:

• 93% of Sunni Arabs describe their life today as quite or very bad, compared to 47% of Shia (Q1);
• 71% of Sunni Arabs believe their children will have a worse life than them, compared to 18% of Shia (Q5);
• 85% of Sunnis think things in Iraq are somewhat or much worse than Spring 2003, compared to 32% of Shia (Q7).
• 93% of Sunnis believe the security situation in their village/neighbourhood is quite or very bad, compared to 38% of Shias (q11);
• 96% of Sunnis say the availability of jobs in their village/neighbourhood is quite or very bad, compared to 70% of Shia (Q11);
• 93% of Sunni say their family's protection from crime in their village/neighbourhood is quite or very bad, compared to 50% of Shia (Q11);
• 97% of Sunnis favour a unified Iraq with a central government in Baghdad in the favour, compared to 41% of Shia's (Q14);
• Shia's are split between one unified Iraq with a central government in Baghdad in the future (41%), compared to 40% who favour a group of regional states with their own regional governments and a federal government in Baghdad and 19% who favour a country divided into three separate independent states (Q14);
• 94% of Sunnis believe the national government has done quite or a very bad job, compared to 68% of Shia who say it has done a quite or very good job (Q20);
• 96% of Sunnis disprove of the way the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is handling his job, compared to 67% of Shias who approve (Q21);
• 88% of Sunnis say they consider the US government to control things in Iraq, while 50% of Shia believe the Iraqi government is in control (Q23);
• 97% of Sunni oppose the presence of coalition forces in the Iraq compared to 83% of Shia (Q25);
• 97% of Sunnis feel not very safe or not safe at all in their neighborhoods, compared to 71% of Shia (Q33);

Mohammed Hayawi

While we know the names of each and every U.S. soldier who has died in Iraq, the names of killed Iraqi civilians are rarely recorded. Some organizations such as IraqBodyCount.org try to put a number on the tragedy, but rarely are they able to put a face on it.

It is with this in mind that I would like to point you to this article by Anthony Shadid of the Washington Post. Shadid is one of those journalists who dares to venture outside the Green Zone to capture the realities of everyday life in Iraq. Today he writes of Mohammed Hayawi, an Iraqi bookseller whose life ended far too soon:

After the invasion and the government's fall, Hayawi described himself much as other Iraqis did in that first uncertain year: as neither for Saddam nor happy with the Americans. He was angry, of course -- at the chaos, the insecurity, the lack of electricity.

"The American promises to Iraq are like trying to hold water in your hand," he told me in one conversation. "It spills through your fingers."

But he was never strident; he was filled with a thoughtfulness and reflection that survival in Iraq rarely permits these days.

Hayawi resented the occupation but voted in the elections the United States backed. He was a devout Muslim, but feared the rise of religion in politics. In his bookstore, once-banned titles by Shiite clerics, imported from Iran, vied with books by radical Sunni clerics, among them Muhammad Abdel-Wahab, the 18th-century godfather of Saudi Arabia's brand of Islam. Profit may have inspired his eclectic mix, but Hayawi also seemed to be making a statement: Mutanabi Street, his Baghdad and his Iraq would respect their diversity.

Increase of Aid = Decrease of Violence

According to a number of recent articles, enthusiasm for President Bush's troops surge is not as widespread among the Army as many have been led to believe. Infantry soldiers who patrol the streets of Iraq daily and have the most at stake in this conflict consider the over-reliance on a troop surge to be a tragic mistake:

"Almost every foot soldier interviewed during a week of patrols on the streets and alleys of east Baghdad said that Bush's plan would halt the bloodshed only temporarily. The soldiers cited a variety of reasons, including incompetence or corruption among Iraqi troops, the complexities of Iraq's sectarian violence and the lack of Iraqi public support, a cornerstone of counterinsurgency warfare." [more]

Meanwhile, officers are decidedly more optimistic. The WaPo reports, "Higher-ranking officers with the task force said they see encouraging signs that cooperation with Iraqis will improve as the new security initiative in Baghdad begins."

As Mikevotes at Born at the Crest of the Empire notes, "If you're an infantry soldier seeing little point in your patrols, how do you respond to being sent out, being shot at, seeing comrades wounded and killed, day after day at the hands of officers who you don't think have a grasp on the reality."

The reality is that there is no military solution to this conflict. There needs to be something more. So it was with great relief that I read this in today's New York Times:

"As evidence of the importance of civilian reconstruction, military officers involved in the internal debate are citing a recent classified study, conducted by the Joint Warfare Analysis Center of the Defense Department, based in Dahlgren, Va., that suggests violence in Baghdad drops significantly when the quality of life improves for Iraqi citizens.

Relying on surveys and other data on those wounded and killed in the violence as compiled by the military, the study found that a 2 percent increase in job satisfaction among Iraqis in Baghdad correlated to a 30 percent decline in attacks on allied forces and a 17 percent decrease in civilian deaths from sectarian violence.

But its emphasis on the importance of reconstruction is being cited by senior military officers and Pentagon officials as more evidence that Congress and the government’s other civilian departments must devote more money and personnel to nonmilitary efforts at improving the economy, industry, agriculture, financial oversight of government spending and the rule of law."

That one line bears repeating: "...violence in Baghdad drops significantly when the quality of life improves for Iraqi citizens." Simple. We keep seeing signs that the Bush Administration and DoD recognize the importance of economic development and yet in the end they seem to place all their faith (and dollars) in the potential for a military victory. With Gen. Petraeus at the helm, and with this recent report as a reference, we can only hope that this administration will finally address the economic dimension of this conflict. I have so much more to write about this, but I will save it for another post.

New Pentagon Report Released: Violence Up, Jobs Needed

The violence just keeps getting worse. According to a just-released Pentagon report, injuries and deaths among US and coalition forces in Iraq rose 32% during the period from mid-August to mid-October over the previous three months. The average number of attacks each week and the average number of people killed or wounded in those attacks were at their highest levels since the United States handed over power to the Iraqi government in June 2004.

The Pentagon report places much of the blame for this increase in violence on the rise of ethnic and sectarian militias and other armed groups. The report specifically refers to the militia led by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr noting that it has replaced al-Qaeda as the biggest security threat in Iraq.

In terms of the economy, the Pentagon once again acknowledges the importance of job creation:

"High unemployment continued to feed sectarian, insurgent, and criminal violence. Although definitive data are not available on the actual unemployment rate, it has been an issue that has had a significant effect on the security environment. The Iraqi government, along with Coalition and international help, must create an effective strategy to provide jobs. This program must be seen as fair and non-sectarian by common Iraqis. It must produce tangible results for a plurality of Iraqis or it may decrease the legitimacy of the Government of Iraq and have little effect on the level of violence."

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Pentagon has been proactive in this regard. For the past 6 months, the Pentagon has been going around and preparing to open approximately 200 factories located all over Iraq, including in some of the most dangerous cities. Oil production and electricity services are still hampered. The report also makes mention that reconstruction efforts have boosted capacity to provide drinking water to 5.2 million people. However as Justin Rood of TPM Muckracker notes, a GAO report released this past Friday claims that 60% of that water is lost due to leaking, contamination and theft.

Another interesting tidbit from the report: While most organizations, pundits and politicians have already adopted the term "civil war,"the Pentagon says the situation in Iraq is "far more complex than the term 'civil war' implies." It goes on to say, "However, conditions that could lead to civil war do exist, especially in and around Baghdad," and the Iraqi people are fearful of civil war.

Vice President of Iraq in DC

Just got back from an event hosted over at USIP featuring Vice President Tariq al Hashimi, thus the delay in posting. I'll try and insert some analysis later, but I wanted to quickly relay some of the more interesting points he made.First here is a quick intro to VP al Hashimi taken from the Iraq Study Group Report:

"Hashimi is one of two vice presidents of Iraq and the head of the Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni Muslim bloc in parliament. Hashimi opposes the formation of autonomous regions and has advocated the distribution of oil revenues based on population, a reversal of de-Baathification, and the removal of Shiite militia fighters from the Iraqi security forces. Shiite death squads have recently killed three of his siblings."

1) the U.S. wrongly dismantled Iraqi army and police forces thinking the entire regime was Sunni when in fact 90% of soldiers are Shia. This created an enormous security vacuum and is largely to blame for the present situation. The U.S. must correct their mistake by funding, equiping and training a new Iraq army and police

2) Once Iraq has a fully operational and effective security force, the U.S. must leave Iraq. Iraq will bear the burden of any further bloodshed

3) the insurgency has been mis-characterized. It has no ideological basis and as such should be considered in terms of a resistance group. Its only purpose is to force the U.S. to leave Iraq. Once the U.S. complies, the "insurgency" will disappear

4) the solution to the crisis in Iraq is political. Once a constitution and government is set up that features input from all parties/sects within Iraq and is agreeable to all parties/sects the violence will end

5) When asked about the Iraq Study Group's recommendation that the U.S. engage Syria and Iran over Iraq, VP al Hashimi replied that other countries cannot decide Iraq's future. Besides he added jokingly, Iran and the U.S. really have enough to talk about, he wouldn't want to burden them with the Iraqi crisis as well.

Let me add that al Hashimi seems genuine in his desire to unite all Iraqis regardless of sect and he has shown in the past, particularly when he signed the constitution despite their being little Sunni input, that he is willing to compromise his own party goals to achieve stability in Iraq.

Iraq's Refugee Crisis

Refugees International (RI), a respected refugees advocacy group, has just posted a brief survey documenting the human costs of displacement and the lack of an adequate international response. They echo the sentiments of policy experts such as Ken Pollack and Dan Byman, noting that the violence in Iraq is creating a refugee crisis that is exporting instability to the entire region.

Every Iraqi who can, has already left or as an Iraqi journalist chillingly puts it:

"Iraqis who are unable to flee the country are now in a queue, waiting their turn to die."

RI recommends that the US lead an international initiative to support Middle East countries hosting Iraqi civilians, and that donors increase support to UNHCR. If allowed to continue unchecked, the refugee crisis can only continue to grow as a threat to the Middle East.

RI has also posted several stories of Iraqi refugees that are truly heart-wrenching; Putting a human face on a crisis that has thus far been represented mainly by figures in the morning news. Here is one story in full:

"In August 2006, Ali was driving from Beirut to Baghdad and was stopped by a militant group near Fallujah.He was kidnapped when his Iraqi papers were reviewed and identified him as a Shi’ite religious leader.He was then sold to a Sunni militia, where he awaited execution with dozens of other Shi’a, told by his captors that killing a Shi’a got them closer to heaven.After two months in captivity, the Iraqi National Guard raided the compound, freeing Ali.He returned to Lebanon in November of this year to reunite with his family, who were told that he had been killed.Suffering from mental trauma, Ali can not work.Nada is beginning beauty school to support the family, and they hope to raise $10,000 to buy fake documents to move to Europe.In the meantime, they live in a small apartment in Beirut, and lack electricity because they cannot afford it.Their two children are in school thanks to the generosity of neighbors who are taking collections to pay for uniforms and school supplies."

Mahdi Army to the Rescue?

Apologies to all non-US readers for not mentioning that this blog would not be updated during the Thanksgiving holiday. And I hope those in the US and abroad who did celebrate Thanksgiving, had a good one. Welcome back. On to the entry...

The Washington Post is carrying a story on how in the aftermath of the Thursday bombings –the worst incident of violence since the invasion- it was the Mahdi Army (Muqtada Al Sadr’s militia) that came to the rescue.

"On Thursday afternoon, bombs in six parked cars began detonating at 15-minute intervals in three sections of Sadr City, including the crowded Jamila Market. Mahdi Army militiamen quickly spread out around the vast slum, residents said.

They helped the injured into cars and carted the dead to funeral homes, where the corpses would be cleansed according to Muslim rituals. Some donated blood and helped fire fighters douse flames. Other militiamen, some clutching AK-47 assault rifles or rocket-propelled grenades, searched for the perpetrators of the bombings. They found one more car, filled with explosives, and took the driver into custody.

At Khadisiya Hospital, militiamen assisted doctors and nurses, carrying patients into emergency rooms, Abid said. With hospital supplies thin, Sadr officials sent over syringes, medicines and other equipment donated by merchants. And with only four ambulances in circulation, most of the wounded were being brought in cars."

As many of the residents of Sadr City noted, that day the Mahdi Army was doing more for them than their government could possibly do. Of note: When PM Maliki came to survey the damage, his motorcade was greeted by a volley of stones and insults.

What the article fails to mention and, in fact implies otherwise, is that the Mahdi Army has been supporting the people of Sadr City for a long time now. I have heard various reports from Iraqis that Al Sadr and his men provide many services to the people of Sadr City including electricity, food, ice and security. What’s more, due to the near impossibility of finding work, the Mahdi Army is the only employment option for the youth of Iraq. (I recommend reading our interview with Cpt. Jon Powers for more on the plight of Iraq's youth)

The longer the government fails to provide basic services to its people the closer the Iraqi people will grow to the militias. In fact one resident of Sadr City explained that the events of Thursday prove that:

"there is no need to disarm the Mahdi Army. If they were not there yesterday, it would have been a disaster."

Assuming its not too late, the U.S. needs to address this issue immediately by funding local organizations which can in turn provide basic services and jobs to Iraqis. What’s more the U.S. needs to publicize the fact that it is behind the aid, otherwise Sadr or others will surely take credit for any of the assistance.

The U.S. and its allies have been trying to crush the Mahdi Army in the name of the Iraqi people, but what will happen when the Mahdi Army becomes the voice of the Iraqi people and has their full support? If this trend goes unchecked, the Mahdi Army could well develop into an organization as powerful as Hezbollah in Lebanon- which rose to power with a political and military wing and also provided social services for the country.

Though recent polls suggest that most Iraqis have faith in PM Maliki, it is not at all unbelievable to think that as long as the Mahdi Army acts as a surrogate government to the people of Iraq, Iraqis may just well vote them into government when the time comes. Just look at what happened with Hamas in Palestine.

'Power Shifts' in War-Ravaged Baghdad

On October 31, Gen. George W. Casey Jr. acquiesced to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s demand that the U.S. military lift its blockade of Baghdad’s Sadr City, home to more than 2.5 million Iraqis – mostly poor Shiite Muslims – and some of some of Baghdad’s most notorious death squads. One of the reasons for the U.S. military’s action was to hunt for a missing U.S. soldier who is believed to have been captured by Abu Deraa, the leader of one of Baghdad’s most notorious death squads.

On Wednesday, November 1, I appeared on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer alongside Robert Grenier (a veteran CIA officer who served nearly a year as the CIA's top counter-terrorism official) to discuss this unfolding story. On the show, I emphasized the urgent need to put a stop to Baghdad’s sectarian death squads while also strengthening Iraqi sovereignty:

“[W]hat I think the prime minister has done is demonstrate once again that he's not ‘America's man in Baghdad’ and that he can exercise Iraqi sovereignty… [It’s] important for him to do that because that helps [to increase his] authority [and] ability to get things done. The question is: Will he then use that to get things done, particularly in reining in the death squads?”

Here’s the full transcript or streaming video of the segment. The Houston Chronicle, Reuters, CNN and the International Herald Tribune (via the AP wire) were some of the other Western news organizations that covered the ramifications of Prime Minister Maliki’s increasingly assertive exercise of Iraqi sovereignty.

According to AP:

“the armed death squads in Sadr City could increase their attacks against Sunnis across the capital, in the worst-case scenario. At a minimum, the action could send the wrong message to Sunnis…that their rivals in the Shiite militia can act with impunity and with political cover…”

Indeed, Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi (a leading Sunni Arab political leader and the highest elected official of the Iraqi Islamic Party) has already threatened to resign over Prime Minister Maliki’s failure to confront Shiite militias. He predicted that the lifting of the U.S. military’s blockade on Sadr City would end a lull in sectarian death squad activity.

Did the U.S. military’s October 25 raid into Sadr City and subsequent week-long blockade reduce Baghdad’s body count, particularly in the first few days when militias operating out of Sadr City would have been the most disrupted? As the numbers are tabulated, that remains to be seen.

Scott Peterson of The Christian Science Monitor provided an opinion piece on Maliki’s recent orders to U.S. troops. He writes:

“Shiite from the crowded Baghdad district of Sadr City are reveling in what they deem their ‘victory’ over American forces after Iraq PM Nuri al-Maliki…ordered the dismantling of U.S. and Iraqi checkpoints surrounding the area…” his was an opportunity for the Prime Minister to “further assert his independence…just days before U.S. midterm elections, in which the Iraq War has become a defining issue…”

According to Peterson, after a week of tensions between Washington and Baghdad, Maliki’s aides said they want to increase the unpopularity of Bush and the Iraq War ahead of U.S. elections “to expand Maliki’s authority…” However, Maliki owes his ascendance to Iraq's Premiership to Muqtada al-Sadr, who controls the largest voting bloc within the ruling Shia coalition. In fact, Muqtada may turn out to be the biggest winner of the past week, and that does not bode well for anyone in Baghdad.

Ten days in Tojbi

The Washington Post has a very interesting article detailing how easy it is for sectarian violence to overcome a neighborhood. The story covers ten days in Tojbi, a neighborhood in north-central Baghdad, and details an escalation of sectarian violence that all began with a dispute over the price of ice.

"He was selling a block of ice for 20,000 dinars. Its actual price is 5,000 dinars," said Abu Mohammed. "When we told him he should lower the price, he slapped one of our guys. We didn't like that. So we beat him up as punishment."

Shortly afterward, unfamiliar cars started to drive toward the Egheidat section of Tobji, Abu Mohammed said. Then came the rumors: The cars were to be used for drive-by attacks or suicide bombings…"