As Obama and McCain slog it out over who plans to withdraw when, while Al Qaeda exhorts wavering Jihadis to launch one last fanatical push and StWC gathers a diminishing band of trots to denounce Bush and Blair, the situation in Iraq is quietly and quickly starting to outflank everyone.
In Iraq today three Baghdadi policemen were killed by a grenade attack, an off-duty policeman in Mosul was shot dead and seven dumped bodies were discovered across the country. Since 1st July two US soldiers have been Killed in Action; easily the lowest death rate for US troops since 2003. Each death represents a terrible individual tragedy yet the statistics illustrate that the violence has abated from the murderous levels of the last four years. Like a dying tempest the terrible violence has begun to blow itself out. The shootings and the IEDs will continue, perhaps for years, but it is no longer at a level that threatens the elected Government or the civilian population has a whole.
Some time soon the US Marines will hand over security responsibilities for Anbar Province, the very birthplace of the insurgency, to the resurgent Iraqi Army. British generals have advised that their troops will mostly be out of Iraq by spring 2009. A forthcoming Pentagon report will recommend that the US Army pulls out of Iraq even faster than even Obama has dared to suggest, with perhaps 50,000 troops left in Iraq by next spring.
Al Qaeda has been virtually defeated. It is cooped up in Mosul and limited to the murder of off-duty policemen and Sunni Awakening members. It no longer has the capacity to decimate the Shias with suicide bombings or terrorise the Sunnis with beheadings. Similarly the Iraqi Army has routed the Mahdi Army in its own backyard and installed the rule of law and Government. Iraq remains a powder keg and the future could easily herald a resurgent Al Qaeda, a dominant Mahdi Army or the return of civil war; yet there are reasons to feel cheerful about Iraq’s future for the first time since 2003.
Sunni Arab states are starting to talk about installing ambassadors and writing off Iraq’s enormous debts. Nouri Maliki suddenly seems like an assured statesman and in recent weeks he has been seen walking the streets and distributing thousands of dinars to needy Iraqis. The security situation hindered American development plans for years but with a newly pacified society and the price of oil at an all-time record high there is a chance for the desperately needed reconstruction efforts to take place. Iraq’s estimated oil revenues will be an enormous $70 billion this year; $100 million has been ear-marked to rebuild Sadr City, $100 million for Basra, $100 million for Amarah and $80 million to help re-settle refugees. Of course oil wealth can often curse 2nd and 3rd world countries through the temptations of corruption, nepotism and dictatorship. Maliki himself stated that “Money is not a problem, but we must put it in honest hands to spend."
Much can go wrong and predicting the future is a mug’s game but with the help of the US Army, Western technical knowledge and the institution of democracy one can hope that Iraq’s immense oil wealth may filter through to the people who need it most. Before 1990 Iraq was the most secular of all the Arab states and it used to have the strongest and best educated middle class in the region. The US will protect Iraq’s democracy, it has invested too much to do otherwise, and the Iraqi Government is now strong enough to contain the wretched insurgency. Iraq may limp on as a corrupt, petro-state with a low-level insurgency and ethnic tensions for years to come; equally it may become a beacon of what democracy and education can achieve for the people of the region. This outcome may displease many who had hoped against it but I suspect that, if their nightmare ends, the Iraqis won’t care.
2008-07-14 @ 23:12