Warnings of chaos in Iraq as US prepares to pull out

There are ominous rumblings coming out of Iraq that next weekend's legislative elections could plunge the country into further uncertainty, violence and even another bout of civil war.
 
Until a few weeks ago, the polls had suggested that Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki was likely to be returned with a bigger vote, and this would mean greater stability for the country. Over the weekend, however, some experienced Baghdad hands have suggested that support for Maliki is weakening and that the election could tip him from office.

Thomas Ricks, author of Fiasco, the most powerful critique of George W Bush's war policy for Iraq, has been writing from Baghdad in his new role as analyst for the Center for A New American Security. He warned in the New York Times that President Obama may have to revise his plan to start the rapid pull-out from Iraq for next month.

After this month, according to Obama, at least 10,000 US military personnel will leave every month up to the end of the year. This will leave an 'oversight' force of about 30,000 – 50,000. This would not be sufficient to hold the ring in a civil war, such as the one that ensued between 2006 and 2007. Nor would it be sufficient to serve as the Praetorian guard to keep in power any new national government in Baghdad.

George W Bush and his advisers thought they could introduce Madison-style democracy to Iraq. They failed. The real problem, however, is whether sufficient consensus can be achieved between the warring tribes, sects, factions and nations of Iraq now to offer a realistic chance of the country holding together in even the most approximate conditions of stability and civil order.

Maliki himself has done much to refashion his Shia Dawa party into the new 'State of Law' party. But he has failed to reach out to key elements in the Sunni leadership.

His predecessor but one, Iyad Alawi, another Shia and the first interim prime minister after the American-led incursion of 2003, seems to have done better in signing up Sunni allies. His Iraqiya list includes the Sunni Vice-President Tareq al-Hassem.

Underlying the election and the present stage of Iraqi development are three uncertainties: the viability of Iraq's new army and security forces; the divisiveness of oil, particularly the new contracts; and the eternal issue of sectarian and ethnic divisions.

Building armed forces after shattering civil conflict takes longer than expected in current times, as the Americans are discovering in both Afghanistan and Iraq. It is a process of many years.

The charismatic oil minister, Hussain al Shahristani, has tried to get a new oil regime in place, underpinned by nine new laws, ahead of the elections. The problems are still immense, not least because the Kurds are persisting in saying that they can let their own oil contracts in the area ruled by their own Kurdish Regional Government. Already they have given contracts to 38 companies from 17 countries, including Norway and Turkey. Kurdistan is supposed to hold reserves of over 100 billion barrels.

The biggest prizes are the new unexploited fields believed to lie under Iraq's western desert regions. If these come on stream in the next decade or so, Iraq is likely to be the second largest oil producer in the world.

The fear is that such wealth could be a trigger to further violence, between Kurd, Sunni and Shia. And in turn, one of the biggest battles of all could be between pro and anti–Iranian Shia groups like the Islamic Supreme Council in Iraq (ISCI) of the al Hakim clan, which was originally spawned in Iran, and the nationalist Shia radicals of Moqtada al Sadr.

Smaller groups like Fadihla, with its strategic power base in Basra, could end up siding with the winner in the Shia power struggle and pitch for a separate Shia southern autonomous region against Baghdad.

Early last month, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger warned President Obama against overlooking Iraq. Kissinger was alarmed that Obama devoted just 101 words to Iraq in his State of the Union address, suggesting he was interested only in withdrawal. "The US troop withdrawal from Iraq will not alter the geo-strategic importance of the country even as it alters that context," wrote Kissinger.

Thomas Ricks also argues that Obama will have to be more flexible about the manner and rate of the US pull-out from Iraq, if he is not to court a regional disaster that might very rapidly go global. Echoing the Australian counter-insurgency expert David Kilcullen, Ricks warns: "Just because you invade a country stupidly doesn't mean you have to exit it stupidly." ·