The Beginning of the End of Iraq?

This article of the same title is in response to both the new situation we find in the aftermath of ISIS taking over large swathes of territories in Northern Iraq including Mosul and in response to the article here referenced by Michael J. Totten.

http://worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/michael-j-totten/beginning-end-iraq?utm_source=World+Affairs+Newsletter&utm_campaign=f0bd018217-June_13_2014_Blogs_Totten_Motyl_Chang&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f83b38c5c7-f0bd018217-294621961#comment-1435084405

The best article yet for assessing what is happening in Iraq and how it got into the mess it finds itself.  "Arab governments complain when we intervene, and they complain when we don't intervene. They complain no matter what".  How true! That is typical for blaming the other for the mess they create.  If it is not left to “inshallah” but for America to solve.  When America tries and fails, it is blamed for doing the wrong on purpose.  This negativity is what predominantly ails the backbone of Arabism today.  

Below is a bottom-up perspective of a failed country dating back from its inception.  A state that is inorganically drawn up by Sykes/Picot with mainly straight lines and some say shoving of elbows for the squiggly bits to give the drawing some authenticity.  As President Obama says “this is a wake-up call” so it may also be break-up call for “Inshallah” a better future may lie ahead.  As in the Balkans breakup is not so hard to do!

In my opinion, the title of Totten's article is spot on and quite frankly exactly what my family predicted following the July 1958 revolution which also marked out our final exit from the country we love.  This indictment on a country that never looked after its own so much so that an Iraqi citizenship was discredited by almost its entire population equally so by most of the world.  Iraqi Nationality became a heavy burden engrossed in oppression, coercion, and subversion.  Causes for the diaspora of the people of this once immensely wealthy country rarely attributed to economic hardship or religious dissension but its population left in droves to escape the cruel nature of its rulers.  No wonder the Iraqi population abandoned this once beautiful country where culture abounded but now finds itself intellectually bankrupted and ravished by all manner of atrocities.  Indeed, in tune with the colour of new flags, it is a Black period for all the freedom loving and peaceful people of Iraq of whatever religious persuasion.  It is a hefty price for a once proud nation to dishevel among its ruined societies and where the value of life is lost in political quagmire becoming the standard debris of religious sectarianism.

The position today is that ISIS proliferation in Iraq is the making of the Iraq regime by Maliki’s own religiously aggressive and increasingly divisive government.  Their insistence against inviting the Sunni representative into the government weighed heavily on Sunni Leadership.  Besides, Maliki also imprisoned a number of Sunni front liners and tried some in absentia on trumped up charges accusing them of subversive activities rather than inviting them to join his government as coalition partners.    Despite all the bombings in Baghdad and elsewhere for the last ten years or so he failed to get the message.  Winning a democracy fair and square, as he has done, is not enough when considering the deep religious fissures that exist among an already severely stratified society. Viewed from a historical point of view it is evidently right to bathe in euphoria and seize the Shia moment after centuries of Sunni domination. However, it is not the time to indulge in browbeating the opposition or abnegating rational judicial Prime Ministerial duties.  Instead, it is time for political compromises that will undoubtedly carry mileage towards the road of Nation building.  It is imperative to reconcile religious belief of all sections of Iraqi society with the secular government for effective parliamentary, sourced from bicameral balancing, for an active State to take hold.

Helped by the porous borders between Iraq and Syria it did not take much effort, together   To hold the advance of ISIS in Syria means America inevitable siding with the Shia and by implication with Assad’s regime and Iran.  We could yet see American airstrikes helped by Iranian and Iraqi forces sharing the same cause.  For now, there is no other option it seems.  Over to the other side, of course, with such infiltration into Iraq by possible Saudi-backed insurgencies is increasingly proving to be an effective force for hitting and hurting Iran’s military and economic underbelly.  At the same time if it finds success in detaching the infidel Farsi Nation it would succeed in actually reducing if not erasing any Iranian significance over the Arabs; virtually fraying its sphere of influence. With Iran’s current International political isolation over its highly covert Uranium enrichment programme, gaining support from the West will be in short supply for certain.  On the other hand, it becomes inconceivable for a religiously motivated Saudi Arabia to become the hegemonic power in the region.  Its impartiality and totalitarian regime, although for now blanketed, it nevertheless when news does come out, albeit in trinkets, speaks volumes.  Isolation at this point is not an option for Iran. Effectively it will need to sleep with the devil to reassert its authority and decouple the moderate Iraqi Sunni factions from their loose ties with Saudi Wahabism.  In the meantime whatever America decides will eventually be wrong so the devil if you do and the devil if you don’t. With arguably Wahhabi Saudi finance, for ISIS to spill over from the swathes of territories they hold in Syria. The International options that can stem this flow, however, are limited.

Arab Nationalism

“Don’t fear the tears from our maternal eyes.

Away from us grief-making cowards!

When you take up arms we must triumph;

It is for Kings to shed tears.

We gave you life;

Warriors, that life is no longer yours;

All your days belong to the Motherland,

She is your mother before us”

 This extract from Le Chant du depart (The Song of Departure) c. 1794 after the call of Levee en Mass in Revolutionary France.

Arab Nationalism is dichotomies of religious, ideological and geopolitical forces that could have come together towards the end of the First World War but instead it imploded by its internal struggle.  Such considerations added to selfish interests and totally bounded by lack of coherence and near total absence of common national interest that today still cries out for an Arab motherland.  Far from a heartfelt call to French solidarity at nation building, the result of The Arab Revolt of 1917 saw a furthering degeneration of the Arab cause towards an intended pan-Arabian nationalistic unity.   By contrast, the effect fastened itself to one of greater dominance; British and French colonialists’ forces in the shape of a Mandatory power (held in trust with curtailed sovereignty),  granted to them at The Treaty of Versailles in 1919.  It was to be the new chapter of the Middle East subaltern state but subsequently caused one of the severest damage to territorial and human loss the region would experience for many years and does so to this day.  The damage further increased after WWII by planting Israel, a Zionist State, marginalising the Palestinians to build homes for the displaced European Jews.  The revolt, in the meantime, proved a watershed in Arabian political thinking that went to disengage the Arabs from Ottoman hegemony that had until then chained them for almost 500 years in exchange to one sourced from Imperialist forces – Imperial Britain and France.

Having encouraged the formation of the Arab League in 1944-45 the hope was this would serve in keeping the Arab states together and also to act as a vehicle for Arab cooperation to contain the influence of outside powers such as American and Russian forces as much as from potentially predatory neighbours.  

 For many young Arabs, this post-war age promised to be a new ‘national age’.  “The false dawn of freedom from Ottoman power after 1918 – which had led instead to Britain’s regional overrule – might, at last, give way to the glorious morning of full Arab nationhood.”   Having secured a political friendship with the Hashimite kingdoms of Iraq and Jordan and securing the rights to the oil that came with Iraq and Persia, the British were able to lever their way over the Egyptian people. At the time comprising more than a third of Middle East population,  further validating, in their view, their hold on the Middle East. 

The Arab revolt in 1917 was not only to remove the Ottoman yoke of domination over the Arabs but also to help the British forces in their continued break-up of the remaining remnants of the multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire. At the time, the Ottoman Empire allied itself with Germany as part of the Central Powers declaring a ‘Jihad’ (Holy War) against Britain, France and Russia.   Despite the victory, Britain reneged on its promise for Nationalist and Independent Arabia.  The colonialist insisted that Arabia was not only unfit for self-government but went on a carving spree like the Sykes-Picot agreement, dividing Arabia at will but with an additional conciliatory promise of British assistance against internal revolt and external attack.  In the event, it bestowed kingdoms to those most cooperative and least inflexible.  Those kingdoms were to no other than satisfying the narcissist greed of the Hashimite tribe.  In the process, it was the Saudi Monarch who seized the holy places of Mecca and Medina from their Hashemite guardians and turned Hashemite Hejaz into a province of what became Saudi Arabia.  As a consequence there developed a rivalry between Egypt, the Hashemites and the Saudis which focused on Syria; a fertile ground even then for religious and regional conflict and prone to outside influences.  Since then there has been a separation of powers void of a centralised or dominating structure resulted in an ever-widening schism among the Arab nation; increasingly individualistic and egotistical in ideology.   

Soon after Egypt asserted its position as first place among the Arab states it suffered a shock defeat in 1948 Arab – Israeli conflict consequently led to the overthrow of its King Farouk in 1952.  The revolution that ensued brought with it the Republic of Egypt with young nationalistic officer Gamal Abdel Nasser shortly after that succeeding as its President.   The defeat was also a crushing humiliation but had an added effect to galvanise Pan-Arab sentiments provoking a nationalistic cause in the leading Arab states.  The struggle with the British was becoming increasingly violent none more so than the nationalising of the Suez Canal by Nasser in 1956.  The canal was constructed in 1859 and was jointly owned by the French and British. The British had purchased its share from Muhammad Sa'id Pasha, son of Mohamed Ali Pasha, ruler of Egypt under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire.  The purchase had an added value of saving Egypt’s economy from going bankrupt.  With the help of the Americans, by exerting pressure on the British pound sterling, the British ended its short but at the time destructive foray into Egypt.  To exert Egypt influence on the Arab world, Nasser mobilised his nationalistic ideas for Pan-Arabism succeeding in Uniting Egypt and Syria under the banner of United Arab Republic but unfortunately that was short lived.  That, in fact, was the nearest any Arab nation came to unite with another.

Arab countries gained independence separately, with varying anachronistic timing.  Such was the 

Disjointed social and geopolitical nature of the Middle East.  Reflecting on the whole region including Egypt and the Arabic-speaking North African countries one wonders whether there could ever be a social cohesion to an Arabised nation. To put it more simply at times it seems there is so much divergence in Arab culture and ideology that even Islam seems unable to bridge those differences. Although this, however, may be hemmed in the difficulty of defining an ‘Arab’, regional majority religions, nevertheless, fails to prove a unifying force but ultimately aimless and helpless in cohering what an otherwise a typical Semitic race is.  One sometimes wonders whether heritage, history or language can ever be the wellspring of weighted ideas to influence Arab ideological unity.  It points to the contrary, however, that divisional religious ideology with Tribal ethno-heritage background is instead igniting the catalyst; fuelling the diversity and sectarian violence we see today in the Middle East. Moreover, what is happening in Syria and elsewhere is evidence that Arab national identity is hollow; a clear evidence, therefore, that Arab Nationalism and civilisation has finally been exhausted.  Generally speaking Arab society, chiefly its leadership is proving effortless and incapable to exercise its rational stance to override Religion. We are, however, left with a conundrum to draw a typology of what is an Arab because many severely entrenched in the confusion of Islamic and Tribal nationalism for Arabism and holistic approach to nationalism remains totally defunct of a mother country.