العراق: مخاطر البقاء و مخاطر الانسحاب

بقلم: باري بوسن

هيرالد تريبيون - 19/4/2007

Iraq : The risks of staying and the risks of leaving

By Barry R. Posen The Boston Globe

Published: April 19, 2007

BOSTON :

Supporters of the war in Iraq , including most recently Senator John McCain, tell us that a series of awful consequences will certainly result if U.S. forces disengage. This argument is offered with great confidence. Yet the costs of disengagement are less certain than is often argued, and the United States can reduce the risks that these costs will arise - and limit their consequences if they do.

Supporters of the war predict six major disasters if U.S. forces withdraw:

Al Qaeda will take over the country. This risk is nonexistent. Al Qaeda's support is strongest among Sunnis, whom the Shiites outnumber by three to one. The Shiites control the military, the police, and numerous militias. The United States has ramped up its operations in Baghdad in part to stop the Shiites from cleansing the Sunnis. There will be no caliphate in Baghdad , whether Americans stay or leave.

Iraq will become a new Afghanistan , to Al Qaeda's benefit. The most extreme among the Sunni insurgents may indeed be committed to international jihad, and they may continue to work clandestinely out of Iraq , as they do today. But these jihadis will not be comfortable. Iraqi Shiites despise them, and even many Sunnis oppose them. U.S. intelligence will indeed have to keep an eye on them, and special operations forces may occasionally need to sneak back into Iraq to strike at them. These are capabilities the United States has spent billions building up since Sept. 11.

The current civil war (or wars) will escalate. Fighting may indeed intensify after a U.S. disengagement. To come to an understanding of how wealth and power in Iraq will be shared, the political forces there must measure their relative capacity and will. The United States now stands in the way of such a measurement, and the U.S. presence de-legitimizes any outcome. The promise of a certain withdrawal date may clear the heads of some Iraqi politicians; a negotiated settlement could start to look better to them than an escalation of fighting.

Genocide. The humanitarian consequences of this intensified fighting could be grave. But genocide happens against unarmed populations; all groups in Iraq are heavily armed. Still, the violent ejection of minorities from particular areas is likely. Instead of convincing minorities to stay in neighborhoods where they are vulnerable, the United States can help people resettle in parts of Iraq that are safer.

If the civil war intensifies, regional powers will rush in. This too is already under way, but escalation into a giant civil war is not in anyone's interest. Syria , Iran , and Turkey have Kurdish minorities which may become restive during such a war. The Saudis would likely prefer that their Sunni Arab friends make a deal, rather than wage a fight that they might lose. Even Iran , whose Shiite co-religionists stand to win such a war, faces risks. The Arab Shiites are not one big happy family; they kill one another in Iraq today. Most Iraqi Shiites think of themselves as Arabs; heavy-handed Iranian intervention may energize their nationalist opposition.

The United States can engage diplomatically to remind the regional players of their interest in stabilizing Iraq . If the United States leaves Iraq deliberately, and under its own power, it still has cards to play.

The worst case. The civil war escalates; outsiders back their friends; their friends begin to lose, so the war escalates to become a regional conflagration. Could happen, but one should not exaggerate the military capabilities of any of the local players. They are all heavily armed, but conventional warfare is not the strong suit of any of the regional actors, with perhaps the exception of Turkey . The Saudi forces are almost surely helpless without help from Western contractors. Iran 's air forces are obsolete. Moreover, Saudi Arabia and Iran are one-crop countries; each depends on oil facilities that are vulnerable to attack by the other. A kind of Mutual Assured Destruction should deter both from risking general war.

Four years of experience strongly suggests that the costs to the United States of persisting in Iraq will be significant. Whatever success is achieved, the end result will not be the stable liberal democratic vision of the war's supporters. Rather, after lots more killing, exhaustion may set in, deals may be struck, and factions may retreat to tend their own battered gardens.

Call this what you will, but it cannot justify the costs incurred. And this outcome will not differ significantly from what will occur if the United States begins to disengage now.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/19/opinion/edposen.php

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نشرنا لهذه المقالات لا يعني أنها تعبر عن وجهة نظر المركز كلياً أو جزئياً

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من حق الزائر الكريم أن ينقل وأن ينشر كل ما يعجبه من موقعنا . معزواً إلينا ، أو غير معزو .ـ