by Vali Nasr
As a rift opened between the Sunnis and Kurds, on the one hand, and the Shia government in Baghdad on the other, Turkey entered the fray. Since 2006, Turkey had built strong ties with the Kurdish region. Moreover, and more importantly, Turkey felt compelled by its ambitions regarding regional leadership to take up the Sunni cause. It was the logical step for a majority-Sunni power eager to take the Arab world under its wing. An angry Prime Minister Erdogan summoned Maliki’s national security adviser to Ankara and dressed him down for his treatment of Iraqi Sunnis. The Turkish premier then brushed aside the Interpol warrant for Hashemi’s arrest and gave him shelter in Istanbul under the full protection of the Turkish police. In Turkey, Sunnis and Kurds had found a patron in their quest to move away from Baghdad’s control.
The fight against Maliki strengthens Iran’s hand—Maliki will seek Tehran’s support, and so will his Shia rival Sadr. Sadr has also been talking to Barzani and Iraqiyya’s leaders, lending impetus to their resistance to Maliki. America, meanwhile, is in no mood to be dragged into Iraq’s political drama. It is willing to go along with a Barzani-Sadr plan to unseat Maliki so long as it does not create a mess—which means implicitly endorsing a greater role for Iran in Iraq.
With Turkish influence growing in the Kurdish north and Iranian influence in the Shia south, Iraqi unity is fading fast. Normal politics is over for now. Coalition building between various parties intent on shoring up the center is giving way to a kind of political “warlordism.” Political bosses will divide the spoils to serve their constituencies. They have no vested interest in the state, other than to carve up its resources; they will forge tactical alliances and go to battle with competitors to maximize their share. Iraq’s political warlords will bring down the state to get rid of Maliki, but some will also sell out to Maliki if he meets their price. But even if all the stars align for Maliki to fall, it will not be a restoration of democracy or normal politics, only the gradual demise of the state—the coming apart of Iraq.
America’s quick exit now looks to have doomed Iraq’s experiment with democracy, and in an ironic twist it is America’s man in Iraq who is the aspiring dictator.
All this is happening at a dangerous time, coinciding with the destabilizing force of the Arab Spring. Iraq was meant to send a signal that democratic government was possible in a part of the world that had never seen one up close. Instead it is signaling that sectarianism is ascendant.
When Tunisians and Egyptians revolted against corruption and misrule, many expected that Iraqis, too, irrespective of sect or ethnicity, would take to the streets to demand accountability and good government. After all, they suffer more than any other Arab people from corruption and misrule. A few demonstrations similar to those in Tunis and Cairo raised hope for a proper reckoning, but in Iraq the Arab Spring did not have any wind in its sails.14 Here things were not straightforward.
Iraqis too want dignity, good government, jobs, and an end to corruption, but their politics does not yet turn on these issues. The Bush administration had assumed that once it got rid of Saddam, Iraqis would focus on bread-and-butter issues and building a democracy. But Saddam’s dictatorship had also kept in place minority rule, giving Sunni Arabs a disproportionate share of power and resources, brutally suppressing Kurds and Shias in the process. The U.S. invasion ended that imbalance. Kurds and especially Shias gained as their numbers decided distribution of power and resources. When a dictatorship that keeps in place an inequitable distribution of power among sects and ethnic groups bites the dust, the first upshot is a torturous—and in Iraq’s case, violent—rebalancing act. In Iraq, Sunni resistance to the writ of the Americans who had shattered the Sunni-run state plunged the country into a bloody sectarian war. The Sunni insurgency fought both the U.S. occupation and the Shia ascendancy it facilitated. The insurgency wanted America gone so it could restore Sunni dominance over Iraq.
When the guns fell silent in Iraq in 2008, the assumption was that the Sunnis had finally given up. The American troop surge had convinced them that Baghdad was beyond their reach and Shia control of Iraq was a done deal. America hoped that some combination of Shia magnanimity and Sunni acquiescence would guarantee peace and stability for Iraq—and give U.S. troops a ticket out of the war. But sectarian truce did not mean sectarian peace or a final consensus on the fate of Iraq. The country moved on from the Saddam years but not too far, and the sectarian violence that followed the invasion inflicted fresh wounds and set off fresh cycles of revenge. Shias still fear Sunni rule, and Sunnis rue their loss of power and dream of climbing back to the top. Each has a different vision of the past and a different dream for the future. There are still scores to settle, decades of them.
Sectarianism is an old wound in the Middle East.15 But the recent popular urge for democracy, national unity, and dignity has opened it up and made it sting afresh.16 This is because many of the Arab governments that now face the wrath of protesters are guilty of both suppressing individual rights and concentrating power in the hands of minorities.
The problem goes back to the colonial period, when European administrators created state institutions designed to manipulate religious and ethnic diversity to their advantage. They handed minorities greater representation in colonial security forces and governments in order to give these minorities an intense stake in the colonial regime and, in effect, make them its gendarmes. This is what the French did with the despised (by the Sunnis) Alawite minority in Syria; what the British did with the Hashemites, Bedouins, and Circassians in Jordan; and what the Ottomans and later the British did with the Sunni Arabs in Iraq.
The Arab states that emerged from colonialism after the First World War and the end of the League of Nations mandates promised unity under the banner of Arab nationalism. But as they turned into cynical dictatorships, failing at war, economic development, and governance, they, too, entrenched sectarian biases. They were still the same states Europeans had built. This scarred Arab society so deeply that the impulse for unity was often no match for the deep divisions of tribe, sect, and ethnicity. Some also argue that the infatuation with Arab unity prevented Arab states from developing proper national institutions, which also made them vulnerable to the surge of tribal loyalties and identity politics.
These sectarian states survived for a long time, seeking to hide their deep divisions via tricks such as taking census surveys as seldom as possible. Their authoritarian governments resorted to force when they had to, but more often persuaded restless majorities and minorities to accept things as they were by relying on what the scholar of ethnic conflict David Laitin calls a “hegemonic common sense.”17 Arab nationalism served as that common sensibility. The promises of fulfilling a historic destiny and standing up to America and Israel were potent enough to push sectarian worries to the side.18 But over time the pan-Arabist ideology lost its allure, and as its promise increasingly rang hollow, states built to keep in place minority overlordship grew vulnerable.
Iraq is a preview of what the Arab Spring may bring across the region. The loosening of the grip of stolid and brutal states over society brings to the surface competitions for power and resources centered on long-suppressed ethnic and sectarian divisions.19 At its worst, conflict could turn into full-scale civil wars culminating in the redrawing of maps. (Already the example of South Sudan, born after decades of conflict over irreconcilable differences, is looming large in the region’s imagination—just ask the Kurds.) The specter also looms of broader regional conflagrations as developments in various countries—often involving the same issues, sects, tribes, and ethnic groups in ways that cross borders—become linked together in a chain of conflict. We thought of the fall of dictatorships in Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America as a democracy wave; in the Middle East it will be a wave of tribal and sectarian conflict. It is only now, after the American invasion of Iraq and the Arab Spring, that the Middle East is finally throwing off the yoke of colonialism and—via the terrible means of fratricidal bloodletting—getting past its leg
acy.
So it is that with Gaddafi’s brutal regime gone, Libya is gradually coming apart along tribal and regional lines. Likewise, Yemen is inching closer to civil war and a north-south division, and Syria is descending into a sectarian war between the Sunni majority and the minority Alawites and their allies.20 But the struggle that matters most is the one between Sunnis and Shias. The war in Iraq first unleashed the destructive potential of their competition for power, but the issue was not settled there. The Arab Spring has allowed it to resurface. Today, Shias clamor for greater rights in Lebanon, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, while Sunnis are restless in Iraq and Syria.
In a certain sense, the Middle East is starting to look like South Asia. Politics in India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka can be messy. They are more open and democratic than Middle Eastern politics, but South Asian societies feature communal and ethnic divisions that can sometimes erupt into violence. Sri Lanka is the most violent example, and India arguably has done the best job of holding its many separatist groups together. The Arab world, with the exception of Lebanon, was the “anti”–South Asia: authoritarian but stable and united culturally (everyone claims to be Arab first, then something else) and politically (anti-Americanism and opposition to Israel encounter no dissent). But that is no longer true. We are seeing personal and civic ties that bind sects and ethnicities together coming apart,21 and political incentives putting a wedge between erstwhile friends and neighbors—and sometimes right through families.22 Weak states do less to protect minorities and lack capacity to prevent outbreaks of violence.23 When the state’s ability to contain communal violence collapses, yesterday’s unity can quickly give way to today’s hatred and disorder. Regions find peace when states and nations there mirror one another.24 In the Middle East, states do not mirror their nations, and until they do the region will be racked by conflict.
Iraqis like to claim that there was no sectarianism in their country before the U.S. tanks showed up. Shias had Sunni friends, there were mixed marriages, collaborations, and partnerships—although mostly among the urban middle classes. The historian Niall Ferguson reminds us that pluralism was an inverse guide to ethnic and communal violence during the First World War. Wherever there was more intermarriage there was also more ethnic and racial violence.25 We saw this happen in Sarajevo as well. The Middle East is now where Europe was in 1914—gone is the unity and peace that held sectarian violence at bay.
Along the arc from Syria in the Levant to Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, Arab dictatorship has kept in place the dominance of one sect—often the one that is locally in the minority—over the other. The very first consequence of the weakening of those states will be a knife fight between the stubborn, desperate minority that has held power and the energized majority that now wants it. In short, Arab dictatorships from Syria to Bahrain are variations of Saddam Hussein’s state, and the Arab Spring is doing to them what the American invasion accomplished in Iraq: transferring power from the minority to the majority.26
So far Shia protests in Bahrain have gone down under hails of lead and failed to repeat the outcome in Tunisia and Egypt. The Bahraini monarchy has defended its grip on power with ferocity, and with generous Saudi support.
But what the Arab Spring did not do for Bahraini Shias, it did do for the region’s Sunnis. The regime changes in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya all empowered the Muslim Brotherhood and, more worryingly still, Salafis. This puritanical sect subscribes to a narrow reading of Islam and loves to patrol its constricted boundaries with an avid hostility toward deviants. Shias come in for special contempt not merely as infidels who refuse the message, but as heretics and apostates who insist on garbling and perverting it. The type of Sunni Muslim fervor that the Arab Spring has unleashed will not stop with vicious assaults against religious “outsider” groups such as Egypt’s ancient Coptic Christian minority. On the contrary, it will take aim at perceived enemies within the house of Islam itself and allow greater scope for conflict with Shias.
The uprising in Syria also upset the sectarian status quo. Assad’s Syria was the mirror image of Saddam’s Iraq. Iraq was a Shia-majority country in the clutches of a Sunni regime, whereas Syria is a Sunni-majority country ruled by Alawites, generally viewed as part of the Shia family. True, Bashar al-Assad had been no friend to Iraq’s Shias. To protect Syria’s facade of Arab unity for domestic consumption, Assad decried the American occupation while joining in with the regionwide sympathy for Iraq’s Sunnis (all the while continuing to suppress Sunnis at home). As a result, he supported all manner of Baathist and jihadist outfits in the insurgency that killed and maimed thousands of Iraq’s Shias and challenged their newfound hold on power. Still, his fall from power and Syria’s passage into Sunni hands (the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis are major forces among Syrian Sunnis) cannot help but energize the Sunnis just across the border in Iraq. The despair that led them to accept the outcome in Iraq in 2008 could be replaced by exuberance and a belief that this outcome may still be reversed.
A Sunni regime in Damascus—or controlling large parts of Syria bordering on Iraq—could do for Iraq’s Sunnis what Iran did for its Shias. If you add to that the full force (and cash) of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE—to say nothing of Turkey, Egypt, and the rest—the Arab world could be quite a lonely place for Iraq’s Shias. It was for this reason that Maliki lobbied on behalf of Assad with everyone he met while in Washington in December 2011. He even told President Obama that if the region’s Sunnis—backed by the Arab Gulf states—try to roll back gains made by Shias, “we will all become Hezbollah”—that is, turn radical and wage armed resistance.
Iraq’s Sunnis may still hope to take back Baghdad, but failing that they could opt out of Iraq. A larger Sunni zone stretching from Anbar to northern Lebanon on the one side and the Turkish border on the other would be sandwiched between Shia southern Iraq and Shia and Alawite pockets to the north.
Iraq’s Shias would be sitting in the midst of a hostile Sunni world. Turkey and Saudi Arabia would be supporting their Sunni rivals, with the Turks possibly applying additional pressure via the Iraqi Kurds. Iran would then be the Iraqi Shias’ only friend. The Arab Spring may have weakened Iran’s influence in Egypt and the Levant, but it has confirmed it in Iraq. The political and religious resurgence of Sunni Islam is pushing the region’s Shias closer to Iran.
People in the Middle East talk of religious and national unity, and there are voices calling for bridge building. Egypt’s new president has reached out to Iran and wants his country to bring Iran into the Middle East fold. But sectarianism is the rising tide. It is setting in train complex and interrelated developments that will change the strategic—and possibly the physical—map of the Middle East, deciding regional dynamics for years to come. The sectarian impulse will guide strategic decisions such as Turkey’s support for Iraq’s Sunnis and Saudi Arabia’s mobilization against Iran. America has had nothing to do with this second wave of sectarianism—that was the fruit of the Arab Spring—but the hasty U.S. departure from Iraq paved the way for the tsunami to wash unimpeded over the region.
We cannot prevent all conflict in the Middle East, but we can hope to reduce its impact. A more gradual withdrawal from Iraq or an earlier push for political settlements in Bahrain and Syria would have kept the embers of sectarianism from erupting into raging flames. Left unchecked, strife in Iraq and Syria (and, before long, Bahrain) could combine to produce a belt of instability stretching from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. That would threaten America’s allies in Jordan and Saudi Arabia as well as jack up oil prices and hence threaten the global economy. There would be ethnic cleansing, floods of refugees, humanitarian disasters, and failing states with ungoverned territories that would provide opportunities for al-Qaeda. As Ayad Allawi has sagely and succinctly put it: “The invasion of Iraq in 2003 may indeed have been a war of choice. But losing Iraq in 2011 is a choice the United States and the world cannot afford to make.”27 Too late.
The general verdict on the Obama admini
stration’s Middle East policy is that “it has not done too badly.” There are no blatant mistakes, bleeding gashes, or crippling crises. In fact, the argument goes, the president’s hands-off policy has been good in that it has made the Arab Spring about Arabs—at the height of the protests there were no American flags burning in Cairo or Tunis, and plenty being waved in Tripoli.
This may be “good enough”—for today—but it provides precious little assurance about tomorrow. America’s aim remains to shrink its footprint in the Middle East, and so its approach to unfolding events there has been wholly reactive. It may get a passing grade in managing changes of regime as old dictators fall, but it has largely failed at the real challenge, which is to help new governments in the region move toward democracy and reform their parlous, sclerotic economies. Removing a dictator is only the first step on the road to democracy; beyond that, America has been nowhere to be seen. The Obama administration has neither come up with a strategy for capitalizing on the opportunity that the Arab Spring presented nor adequately prepared for potential fallout in the form of regional rivalry, the explosion of sectarian tensions, and deep-rooted economic crises.
What are America’s interests in the Middle East? How will we protect them as old regimes fall and new ones try to take shape? Can we influence outcomes? How should we prepare for the rise of Islamism, civil wars, state failures, reversals, and recrudescence of dictatorship? We need answers to these questions and a strategy for realizing the best, avoiding the worst, and protecting our interests in the process. America cannot and should not decide the fate of the Middle East, but it should be clear about its stakes in the region, and not shy away from efforts to at least nudge events in more favorable directions as a critical world region faces momentous choices. A “lean back and wait” posture toward unfolding events will not be enough—a series of reactions and tactical maneuvers do not amount to a strategy. A strategy requires having a clear view of our interests and of how to realize them by influencing as best we can the dynamics that are shaping the region.
