By Garrett Brinker and Nigel Cory
This is part two in our series on Iraq. Part one can be read here.
Iraq has largely slipped from the American public’s radar. The ongoing civil war in Syria and negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program have taken precedence, followed by deliberations on the United States’ long-term presence in Afghanistan and ongoing instability in Egypt, Lebanon, and Yemen. Given this country’s recent history with Iraq, the Iraqi government is facing a very different political climate in Washington when it asks for weapons sales, military training, and other US support.
Two years since the withdrawal from Iraq, the American public and the Obama administration have been cautious about getting re-entangled in the country. This debate over renewed levels of support ironically coincides with the Defense Department finally ending its Iraq war presence. In December, the US pulled out the last of its contractors and handed over the last US project, a ship repair facility at Umm Qasr Naval Base, to the Iraqi government on December 15, 2013.
The Iraqi government’s request for US support hasn’t escaped the political and sectarian divide. Following recent discussions between Prime Minister Al-Malaki and Vice President Biden, Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq– a prominent Sunni politician whose party opposes Al-Maliki’s– told Slate that “stability will not happen through supplying arms only” because Sunnis in the region “feel they are being marginalized, and they are uprising now.” Al-Mutlaq goes on to claim that the military operations in Anbar are “mainly an election agenda” aimed at locking in the Shiite vote ahead of elections. A government this divided makes US involvement in quelling the violence and encouraging political stability in the lead up to the election very difficult.
Iraq Prime Minister Al-Maliki’s Approach – Fight Fire with Fire
The Iraqi military is being outgunned by Al-Qaeda, leading Al-Maliki to look to the United States for additional military firepower. Over the past few months, the Iraqi government has been asking for new arms, including Apache helicopters, drones, Hellfire missiles, and other weapons. In late January, the Obama administration moved forward with a deal to sell 24 Apache attack helicopters to Iraq and lease six others, at a cost of $4.8 billion. The deal also replenishes Al-Maliki’s government with an additional 500 Hellfire missiles to combat Al-Qaeda in Anbar province.
The Iraqi government’s framing of recent requests to combat Al-Qaeda is relatively black and white. What is much harder to dissect are the infinite shades of gray involved in the discussions to convince Al-Maliki that broader changes are needed to overcome this serious outbreak in violence. Symptomatic of Al-Maliki’s approach, are his public calls for the residents of Fallujah to expel Al-Qaeda fighters or face an all-out battle.
In the mid-2000s, Al-Qaeda in Iraq was defeated due to the community’s decision to support the US and Iraqi government. By the summer of 2006, Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his fighters had entrenched themselves in Anbar Province, partly due to the space created by the lack of government presence and the withdrawal of US forces to Baghdad. Later that year tribal sheikhs cut ties with AQI after experiencing indiscriminate violence and an extremist ideology at the hands of AQI. By April 2008, the US was providing salaries and support to 95,000 local community members to provide security. It was seen as a turning point in the US’s effort in Iraq, but the current situation is glaringly different.
Al-Maliki is trying to emulate this previous success. The Iraq Cabinet has approved $3.4 million in payments for tribesmen and $17 million in infrastructure projects for Anbar Province, along with thousands of assault rifles and machine guns. This time around, however, the risk of these same tribesmen turning against Al-Maliki and the Iraqi government must be playing on the Prime Minister’s mind given his fraught relationship with the Sunni community. These monetary incentives are only a recent development, showing that the balance of Al-Maliki’s approach still lies heavily on the use of the military to quell the violence. This strategy continues his recently combative approach to the Sunni community, while providing the leverage to obtain US weapons that have broader tactical and strategic value for Iraq. It also plays to Al-Maliki’s political strong suit by solidifying his position as the key Shiite leader, while showing Sunnis that he represents what they always suspected him. His strategy prioritizes short-term gains for potentially disastrous long-term pain.
The Sunni Leadership Reaction – Staking their Ground
Key Sunni politicians, however, are making very different requests of the Obama administration. Mutlaq and Al-Nujaifi especially are asking not just for military support, but also, more importantly, political resources from the United States.
Mutlaq is hoping the upcoming elections will be a chance to form a new unified government that can bring the country together. “America has a moral obligation to ensure that the coming elections in Iraq are free and fair,” Mutlaq told the Daily Beast. Specifically, he said the current Iraqi electoral commission will be loyal to Iraq’s political parties and will likely discount votes for political parties that have not provided the commissioners with appropriate patronage. In January, Mutlaq called on Obama to send election monitors to Iraq to oversee the April elections, saying “we would like to see the United States and the world and the non-governmental organizations, to send election monitors, to ensure through technology there will be no fraud.” Claims of fraud marred Iraqi elections in both 2005 and 2010.
The fears that underpin Mutlaq and Al-Nujaifi’s views had, until recently, been shared by US lawmakers. Specifically, a group of US lawmakers led by the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Robert Menendez, had been holding up the Apache sale over concerns that the Iraqi government would use the helicopters to crack down on minority groups, such as the Sunni community. In late January, Senator Menendez removed his objections, allowing the sale and lease of the Apache helicopters to go ahead. Within the context of a federal election and a surge in violence, it is difficult to see what legitimate guarantees the Iraqi government could have made to allay these concerns and improve cooperation with minority groups, especially in Anbar.
President Obama’s Approach – Wide Perspective, Limited Focus
President Obama discussed his strategic understanding of the region in a recent interview with the New Yorker. He acknowledged the need for a more nuanced US approach that considers specific issues, even if interconnected in the region, differently. The President remarked that he sees a clear differentiation between the capability and intent of the Al-Qaeda-inspired groups in Iraq and Syriaand the core of Al-Qaeda based in Pakistan (which recently disavowed its affiliates in Syria and Iraq) to strike the US and elsewhere outside the region. While this may be the case (at the moment), President Obama made the somewhat conflicting acknowledgement that the instability that ISIL and other extremist groups capitalize on impacts the US’s long-term security.
The deteriorating Shia-Sunni schism in Iraq and Syria have potentially serious ramifications for the US’s long-term national security and interests in the region if such groups, and the instability they create and foster, perpetuate. The trend of the last few years is troubling, especially given that the civil war in Syria, and the interconnected instability in Iraq and Lebanon, likely is not going to be solved anytime soon.
The recent surge in violence involving ISIL and Al-Qaeda has put pressure on the United States to help Iraq respond militarily to the growing crisis in Anbar. The Obama administration has quietly shuttled dozens of Hellfire missiles and low-teach surveillance drones, in addition to the more public arms deals of the past few months.
This support is set amidst the backdrop of an Administration that is reticent of getting re-entangled in a Middle East conflict. The Obama administration may recognize its influence as limited and see the sales as an easy way to regain some influence. In a push back against criticism of inaction in Iraq in early January, White House spokesman Jay Carney said recent violence in Iraq took place even when there were 150,000 troops there. He specified that the US has the ability to assist and deliver additional armaments and surveillance drones, but insisted that Iraq must be willing to take the lead. “If members (of Congress) were suggesting that there should be American troops fighting and dying in Fallujah today, they should say so,” Carney said. “The president doesn’t believe that.”
While a military deployment is not going to happen, with fewer than 200 military personnel remaining in Iraq, US contractors will be sent to provide support, training, and logistics for these arm sales. These will add to the growing number of contractors already working for the Iraqi military on its expanding network of surveillance drones, attack helicopters, and other defense systems. Such contracting arrangements are also reflective of the US political environment and a US military scaling back on costs and deployment.
The United States – Options and Considerations
So how can the United States help transcend the sectarian divide and violence in the lead-up to April’s elections and beyond?
The United States should provide arms to Iraq, so the central government can adequately defend itself from ISIL and Al-Qaeda’s resurgence. In providing much needed arms, the United States regains a degree of both direct and regional relevance and leverage in Iraq. When announcing he no longer opposed the Apache helicopter deal, Senator Menendez urged Iraq to stop Iran from using Iraqi airspace to ship arms to Bashar al-Assad in Syria. However, violence begets more violence. Guns, helicopters, and missiles are temporary fixes to resolving much deeper and systemic problems in Iraq. President Obama acknowledges that arms alone will not solve this crisis, but he has failed to show how these sales fit into a broader policy towards Iraq. At the moment they seem to be the center of the US plan.
What President Obama doesn’t clearly display is the resources and personal engagement to support the critical non-military components of helping Iraq stabilize as part of broader regional plans. President Obama realizes the limits to what outside powers can achieve in such a long-running and difficult issue as Sunni-Shia relations. The Obama administration, understandably, is unwilling to become intimately involved in the entanglements of Iraq. However, there are available avenues for a more concerted, coordinated and direct push by the US and regional allies to shape the political environment.
President Obama needs to step up direct engagement. The White House’s point man on Iraq, Vice President Biden, has kept busy with three calls in January to key Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish leaders. However, Vice President Biden’s range of phone calls is not sufficient to show that the Obama administration has a firm grasp on the issues and a clear determination to do what it can) to help resolve Iraq’s deep divisions.
Indirectly, President Obama will step up engagement in the regional picture in the coming months. He met the King of Jordan in early February, hosted the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in Washington on March 2, and is visiting the region in the second half of March, with an announced visit to Riyadh (with which the US has a strained relationship, partly due to differences over Iraq). Whether President Obama, Vice President Biden, and regional allies cooperate with the Iraqi government is a critical part. However, direct engagement on Iraq by President Obama, along with comparable attention and resources to Iraq more generally, seems seriously lacking when compared to nuclear negotiations with Iran, the Israel-Palestinian peace process, and the civil war in Syria. This is a major missing piece to the regional puzzle.
The US’s influence in Iraq should to be used for a concerted push to get Al-Maliki and his key Shiite supporters to genuinely reach out to and the Sunni community and its leaders. A strong Sunni representation in the Council of Representatives of Iraq is a crucial component to help unify the country. Another option is for Obama to grant Mutlaq’s request to send election monitors to Iraq. As Speaker Al-Nujaifi stated back in January, “we need to win the population back in these provinces. “We need to give those people their rights to support them at the political, economic, and security levels. And then Al-Qaeda will be defeated within days.” The Iraq government will need the US for further weapons sales and military support, but also critical political support, pending the outcome of the election. The US needs to grasp this increased relevance in order to put Iraq back on the right track.
April’s elections and the current battle to stabilize the country represent the possibility of cementing the contemporary fissures in Iraq’s sectarian landscape, or at least a chance to set them on a course for closure. In the worst case scenario, Iraq becomes a failed state, which would obviously have disastrous consequences throughout the region. The United States has a responsibility to the Iraqi government to not only help Iraq protect itself militarily, but to provide select resources and counsel for Iraq to become a stable, inclusive, legitimate democratic state. In a highly volatile region recoiling from the aftereffects of the Arab spring, a successful democratic Iraq could act as an anchor and show that stability is possible in other states, such as Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and Yemen. The United States, regional partners, and the broader international community have a stake in the stability and security of Iraq, and have a shared interest in ensuring its long-term stability and prosperity in the region.
Garrett graduated with a Masters in Public Policy from Georgetown University in 2015. He earned his BA in Political Science from the University of Chicago and worked as the Director of Undergraduate Outreach for Chicago’s Office of College Admissions after graduating. Garrett has previous experience in health policy, urban policy, and political campaigns. His interests currently focus on political strategy, national security policy, froyo, and French Bulldogs.
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