Prepare For Failure In Iraq

Britain's unhappy colonial experience in Iraq suggests the US will not withdraw as victors, leaving behind stability and security

By Bennett Ramberg
Tuesday 21 July 2009 14.00 BST
Courtesy Of The Guardian

The recent pull back of US forces from Iraq's urban areas marks the first leg in Washington's withdrawal from Mesopotamia that will conclude in 2011. But before we pop the corks two years hence, US decision makers would do well to look to the past to reduce the risks of the future.

The past did not begin in 2003. For the west, it began in 1914 when Britain, in the midst of the first world war, commenced occupation of three Ottoman provinces that comprise today's Iraq. The legacy of London's entry and exit marks a cautionary tale.

Britain's commercial maritime connection with the region had roots that went back at least a century. The first world war opened the opportunity to extend them onto terra firma. But conquest proved a bitter slog. The war sacrificed some 31,000 British and colonial soldiers. What London got in return was nearly three million largely poor inhabitants divided on the ethnic, tribal and religious lines we see today, a land rich in untapped oil resources and a new link to bind the British Empire's colonial holdings from Egypt to India.

As so often is the case, the native population greeted the liberators hopefully, but the honeymoon proved short-lived. The result, sporadic violence boiled into a 1920 insurrection as Britain, granted the League of Nations mandate to tutor Iraq toward self-governance, ignored pleas for immediate independence. In the battles that followed, some 8,000 Iraqis, largely Shia, died as they fought a reinforced British/Indian army of 80,000. The result left a country momentarily pacified but, in many parts, seething.

Following the revolt, Britain accelerated efforts toward domestic governance. Given their Ottoman administrative experience, education and forbearance during the insurrection, London chose Sunnis to man posts. This left Shias to stew and Kurds to stammer about their unmet demand for autonomy. London's appointment of Amir Faisal, organiser of the Arab revolt against the Ottomans but a foreigner to Mesopotamia, reflected further application to Iraq of colonial Britain's practice of divide and rule.

With limited cards, Faisal pushed for Iraqi independence. Fruition came in 1932 but at a price: Britain's imposition of the 1930 25-year treaty of alliance. Under the agreement, Iraq granted the English the right to air bases, to transport military equipment and personnel and to defend the country as it saw fit. In the decade that followed, Iraqis bridled. 1941 allowed them to take revenge in a germinating alliance with Nazi Germany, which Britain interrupted by occupying the country once again.

In 1958, the foundation the British had laid faced its dénouement in the royal family's domicile. On 14 July, in the palace courtyard, military coup makers executed the grandson of the king the British empire had put on the throne 37 years earlier

As Washington contemplates its Iraq exit, it could learn much from Britain's experience. First, do not equivocate in withdrawal. Any temptation to linger, as the British did, will only come back to bite the US some time down the road. To address the challenge London did not have, al-Qaida, the US can rely on Iraq's own hostility to the terrorist group and, in extremis, offshore American forces could intervene.

Second, the US ought not lament the failure to resolve Iraq's ethnic and sectarian divide. Britain too found it to be an impossible task after a decade of occupation, as conceded in a July 1929 cabinet memo: "The Kurd still dislikes and despises the Arab, the Christian hates and fears the Muslims and the Shia distrust the Sunni." While Washington's war may have exacerbated these fissures, it did not cause them.

Third, the US should prepare itself for the failure of the Iraqi government it nursed. Dysfunction is part of the region's political culture. Following independence from Britain, military cabals and others repeatedly intimidated or forced the removal of Iraq's ministers.

Finally, do not expect Baghdad to tow America's line in regional politics. With Britain's departure, Iraq in time became a regional force with interests quite contrary to the country that gave it birth. We should not be surprised if the new Iraq does the same.

History of course never repeats exactly. But given the British experience and Washington's difficult time since 2003, it would be folly to look to the future with brighter expectations, given the underpinnings that make Iraq Iraq.