June 20, 2014
"This is civil war," said Ken Pollack during a recent Saban Center for Middle East Policy event on the Iraq crisis and policy options for Washington. "We are not on the brink of civil war. We are not heading toward civil war. This is what civil war looks like," Pollack continued. He was joined in the discussion by three other Brookings senior fellows: Center Director Tamara Cofman Wittes, who moderated the event, Suzanne Maloney, andMichael O'Hanlon.
Wittes opened the conversation by putting the current Iraq conflict into the context of wider regional issues, including the problem of the United States prioritizing security threats and thus "overlooking deficits in governance in the region that in fact contribute to instability."
This is the broader context that the Obama administration faces when it looks at the crisis in Iraq which presents challenges and threats for regional order and stability but also potentially more directly for the United States but it also doesn't present a whole lot of good options for the United States.
This is Civil War; Options for a Unified Iraq
Pollack, author of a report last summer, "The Fall and Rise and Fall of Iraq," said that the situation is a revival of the civil war of 2006-08, but that it's possible to imagine Iraq remaining unified as a country. For that to occur, he said, it requires either "a bloody, bloody victory by one side, that will probably take years to make happen, and certainly tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of deaths," or "a reconciliation." That is why, he said, he has been pressing for "a plan that would involve both the United States being willing to assist in a whole variety of different ways, military and non-military, but only if there is a political component to it. We've got to recognize that military force without that critical political component will be at best useless, and at worst could be counterproductive."
He underscored this point: "I think it would be a mistake for the United States to embark on an air campaign in Iraq either unilaterally or in conjunction with the Iraqi government as it is currently constituted."
Pollack said that while a variety of actions by a variety of Iraqi leaders has driven Iraq to this crisis point, "first and foremost among them is Prime Minister Maliki, who by his consolidation of power and his arbitrary actions against a whole variety of his political rivals has alienated important elements of Iraqi society," especially the Sunni community.
Pollack explained that the "only way that we're going to have a unified Iraq, a peaceful Iraq, a stable Iraq" is if Sunni tribal groups now reluctantly supporting ISIS are brought back into the political process.
And that is going to require very significant change, political change ... broadly speaking it is going to require limits on the prime ministers powers so that Iraq's minority groups do not fear once again being oppressed under this prime minister or the next prime minister. It is going to require a more inclusive government, which unfortunately I think means a national unity government despite the problems that will be inherent in that. And it is going to require a thoroughgoing reform of the Iraqi armed forces to take them back to where they were in 2009, a time when Iraqis loved, respected and felt safe being protected by their military. Not today, when many Iraqis feel threatened by that very same military because it has been politicized over the past three or four years. And that's a very tall order, and I am doubtful that it will come to pass. But if we can get that kind of political change, then under those circumstances I think U.S. military assistance takes on a very different complexion.
But we've got to put the horse before the cart, and that means political reform is the key, and no military effort, either unilateral or in conjunction with the current Iraqi government, makes sense unless we have got that political component.
Pollack hopes that Prime Minister Maliki "will see this as a wakeup call" and will "take this opportunity to shift gears, to accept limits on his power, to bring the Sunnis back in, and for that matter to make concessions to the Kurds and a whole variety of other groups to create a more inclusive government." But he remains skeptical, and it is more likely, he forecast, that "you are going to see a de facto partition of Iraq for the foreseeable future."
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