To invoke the “V-word” to characterize the current situation in Iraq has been a hoary cliche almost since before the war started – and in Vietnam the U.S. was trying to defend an established government threatened by internal rebellion, not to overthrow it and create a new one – but what other comparison is there?
Well, there’s Yugoslavia. It was similar to Iraq in a lot of important ways: A multinational, multireligious state, cobbled together after WWI out of provinces of fallen empires because it seemed like a good idea at the time. (All “South Slavs” are pretty much the same, right?) Long ruled by authoritarian government – Marshal Tito’s Communists – which was brutal and arbitrary, but which at any rate kept a lid on the society’s intractable ethnic and religious hatreds, and managed to make that impossible country function and even thrive. (In the late '80s, Yugoslavia was considered the most prosperous Communist economy in Europe, and was a popular destination for tourism.) But then, when that government fell from power, those old hatreds came bubbling to the surface and tore the country apart bloodily. One sees the parallels?
Of course, the crucial difference is that Iraq’s regime, unlike Yugoslavia’s, was overthrown by foreign invaders, who have not yet left. (The other crucial difference is that Iraq has oil.)
Issues for debate:
What can we learn from Yugoslavia’s example, that might help us in Iraq?
Can Iraq be preserved at all, as a state, in its present formation? Or is Yugoslavia-style fragmentation inevitable?
How can we avoid the prospect of “ethnic cleansing” of ethnic/religious minorities in Iraq’s different regions?
The Yugoslavia comparison is telling in some ways, but an important difference is that this was a time-sensitive humanitarian crisis which a UN force intervened (successfully in some ways, unsuccessfully in others such as at Srebrinica) to ameliorate. There simply was no time-sensitive humanitarian crisis in Iraq in 2002, and the intervention came from just a couple of UN members, give or take the odd special forces troop from elsewhere.
As I’ve argued in other threads, I think there are more parallels with Northern Ireland. Initially welcomed by the ‘oppressed’, the solely British forces eventually became targets after monumental fuck ups which killed innocent civilians. Those interventionist forces could not simply leave without risking an all-out sectarian war which the internal security forces (or even those of Eire) simply had not the money nor resources to handle. Peace in Northern Ireland was only possible by the British forces, painfully, staying for decades at a cost of billions until they could (largely) leave safe in the knowledge that no civil war would result.
In Iraq right now, the Sunnis are waiting to launch civil war upon US/UK withdrawal, for a few years if necessary. That is why I argue that we cannot withdraw for decades, just like Northern Ireland.
Yep, there are a lot of analogies available there, too - not that they’d have influenced Bush’s actions if he’d thought about them, either. Separate ethnic groups with serious tensions based on historical behavior patterns, generally segregated geographically but with a lot of mixed areas, civil war suppressed by military dictators, remove that and the lid blows off.
I don’t see any way the Yugoslav civil war(s) following Tito’s death could have been prevented by any means short of preemptive ethnic segregation, effectively partition, of the mixed areas such as Sarajevo and central Bosnia. Partition was also the means by which the violence died down, and I don’t see what else would have worked nearly as quickly or with any fewer lives lost. Milosevic and Tudjman and others deserve a lot of blame, sure, for fanning ethnic hatred, but they wouldn’t have succeeded if their populations hadn’t been receptive to the messages already.
So they’re Sadr and Sistani and whoever else, the Sunnis and Shiites are the Serbs and Bosnians, the Kurds are the Slovenians (got their own land with defined borders, little ethnic mixing even along the edges, went their own way ASAP), Saddam was Tito. It generally fits.
The major lesson? Partition the place, with neutral zones where the tensions are hottest (the blue helmets do that job, but under Bush the green ones will have to fill in), let the people’s energies be devoted to building their own countries instead of fighting, be tolerant to a point of the governments that emerge in the several regions while growing economies increase the urge for democratic rule (you can’t force that on anybody who doesn’t yet want it badly), and above all drop the delusions.
SentientMeat, there was no humanitarian crisis as such there in 2002, but there arguably is one now. As long as our presence is seen as supporting the Shiites rise to power rather than neutrally suppressing violence, we’re making it worse.
Well, we must agree to differ. As a hypothetical, if we compared the death rate now to the death rate after withdrawal and found there to be a significant increase upon withdrawal (which there certainly would if, as this story suggests, the Sunni insurgents are waiting), would you admit that no matter how bad it seems now, it is still not worse than our absence?
Um, more deaths are certainly worse than fewer deaths, if I understand your point, hypothetical as it is. But we can only act based on what we believe will happen, based on human nature and what’s happened in analogous situations elsewhere. I’m suggesting that the least violent way forward in Iraq is the same as it was in Yugoslavia or post-colonial India for that matter.
As long as we pretend the place can be a peaceful, democratic society and still stay unified, we look like we’re favoring the majority group, and we give the minority reason to attack us and them - we don’t leave them any other rational option (and your cite supports that). The longer we postpone the creation of partitions, the more killing is occurring and the higher the ultimate death count will rise.
I would agree that partition might well be the least bloody option from a utilitarian position. However, note that this will take years and decades itself to enact, and that the Sunni Anbar province would feel doubly screwed at such because it has no oil. They would see their Shia neighbours, filthy rich and talking about unifying with Iran, and consider themselves as being oppressed by greedy ethnic-cleansing apostates. Cue outright war between the partitioned regions.
All we can do, I guess, is clearly state our predictions and advocate one or other course of action right now on their basis, then meet up years hence to discuss whose were more wrong. My prediction is that if you think the death rate is high now, before withdrawal, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
(Note also what partition did to Ireland. It arguably caused more bloodshed than outright occupation until an independent democracy of all factions living together might have caused.)
Yes, I think we have to be purely utilitarian when deciding the least-bad option. What consideration trumps the death count?
It seems you think our presence there is actually deterring killing rather than inciting it. Maybe so, but do you think it would still be so if the Sunnis had no plausible reason to think we’d withdraw even partially? There’s a long-term military advantage to them in having an opponent leave voluntarily, without having to use up their smaller numbers killing them, sure - but I don’t see any other reason to hold that belief, if in fact you do.
The Sunnis are screwed in any plausible scenario of Iraq’s future, and they doubtless know that, hence the civil war on whatever time scale. One scenario that you didn’t mention was their joining forces with the nascent Sunni-fundamentalist rebellion in neighboring Saudi Arabia, creating an Islamist state with lots of oil (and Kuwait stuck in the middle and perhaps doomed to its own rebellion). All we could do about it would be to try to play that new Sunni bloc against the new Shiite bloc (Iran and the Iraqi Shiite state), while buying oil from new Kurdistan instead to the extent possible.
If that independent, tolerant, peaceful democracy would even have been a realistic option before the fire burned itself out. I don’t see it myself, but perhaps the UK/Eire Dopers can weigh in.
Yes. If the Sunnis were convinced that 200,000 US/UK troops were going to be in Iraq until at least the year 2025, they may well not (as they apparently are now) be manoeuvring to take on the Shias come withdrawal and may even think twice about trying to hasten that withdrawal now by armed resistance. If we showed the potential suicide bombers a 2025 newspaper saying “peacekeepers still in Iraq”, would that affect their current decisions? I suggest so. In any case, I still think that whatever happens, having well trained professional troops able to guard civilian safe havens and keep basic infrastructure alive will ultimately save far more lives than the troops themselves will take (or have taken).
Well, the thing about armed resistance is that it breeds. The father of eight who is killed by Shias, or Americans, or whoever, ultimately increases his number eightfold. They seek military advantage because they can see it working - they can see the US withdrawal approaching in the next few years and see the bounty to be taken by force afterwards. A 20 year US/UK commitment would, I think, have them questioning whether it was worth it when, heck, you could just get a job and see those eight kids grow up.
[Emperor voice]The circle is complete[EV]
Heh heh. What we’d really need then would be a secular leader to unite all the factions in a united, stable Iraq, even if democracy suffered.
And, actually, I think there is one, extremely diffilcult, option which doesn;t have the Sunnis screwed. That is vast expenditure on infrastructure throughout Anbar and all Sunni areas, paid for by the proceeds of the oil elsewhere. For twenty years, costing trillions.
Yeah, I know, I know. Understand that I didn’t advocate breaking it in the first place, I’m just opining on ways to fix it without a stratospheric death rate.
I’d suggest otherwise - I don’t think they generally see us as “peacekeepers”, but as allies of the Shiites, for one thing. For another, they know as well as we do that such a longterm commitment is not possible given our system, not as long as there’s considerable internal disagreement among us about it (that wasn’t a problem when the issue was containing Communism for half a century).
If your scenario existed anyway, I’d think the Sunni insurgency would decide there was no value to them in delaying an action for which they see no alternative, and the Battle of Baghdad would be earlier and probably bloodier. Our blood, that is.
It might, if that was what was happening.
Damn right. The more civilians that get shot at roadblocks by scared American kids, the more insurgents there are.
They’ve got plenty of their own candidates available, too. Whatever gave the warhawks the idea that Saddam was really any different from any other power-hungry military dictator with a secret police? That type crops up wherever the conditions are ripe for it - and we certainly haven’t made the conditions any less ripe than they were in the Baathist coup in the Sixties.
Partition of Iraq would be further complicated by this non-trivial question: who gets the oil-rich regions? As I understand it, most oil is in the Kurdish north and the Shiia south. Where would that leave the Sunnis? Angry, poor and spoiling for conflict.
India seems to have been headed for civil war after the British departure anyway, whether or not there had been a Jinnah inflaming the Muslims or a Nehru the Hindus (and demagogues only get powerful when the people allow them to be, so it wasn’t their fault and if they hadn’t, somebody else would have). There’s no way to be confident that a nonpartition civil war would have resulted in fewer than a million deaths, especially considering that there wouldn’t have been defined borders for anyone to flee to and be relatively safe behind. Their border conflicts ever since have not, however, resulted in much actual bloodshed at all. Although the 2 countries, now 3, are still on cold terms, the partitioning of India has arguably been a long-term success even measured by simple body count. The reverse is arguable too, of course.
As for where you draw the borders, that has to be defined mostly by where the people are. If the Sunni-controlled areas don’t have oil, the wise course would be to find a way to buy them off as well as provide for their own security. That’s damn hard, sure, and I don’t claim to know how, but I’d certainly rather give that problem to the diplomats than the soldiers.
I was expecting this thread to contain the rest of the lyrics to the song suggested by the thread title. Like:
'Raq’s beginning to look a lot like Y’slavya
Everywhere you go.
Take a look at the market square
Bombed from over there
With R.P.G.s and missiles, doncha know?
Okay, it’s hard to make “Yugoslavia” fit in the two syllables of “Christmas”, but still…
I would suggest that this is a very simplistic understanding of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was not a country teetering on the brink of breakdown with old ethnic and religious hatreds. Intermarriages were fairly common. Depending on the region, intermarriages accounted for as much as 25-30% (as in Sarajevo), with an overall intermarriage rate in Yugoslavia of about 15%. I would say it was Milosevic and Tudjman who dug up these supposed “old ethnic hatreds,” and exacerbated them in their own plots for power. It’s not like Croats and Serbs and Bosnians had a deep-seeded hatred of each other before the war. That’s a bunch of bullshit.
So, honestly, I see no useful similarity between Yugoslavia and Iraq.
I cannot answer that question with any sort of authority. All I can tell you that, as far as Yugoslavia is concerned, the separate ethnic groups were pretty well inter-married and living fairly harmoniously with each other up into the very early 90s.
I have never been to Iraq and have very little knowledge about the ethnic hatreds there. I do get the impression that they are more deeply-seeded and go back farther back in history than Yugoslavia’s. But I defer to anyone who has an insight into that culture.
I believe it can be saved in present form. the thing to remember that in the end all three groups are muslim. Yugoslavia was two different religions, and many cultures. If something were to happen i think it would be the kurds who would brake away.
