With the United States mired in Iraq, Iran finds itself in an extremely powerful position. Its influence over the Shi’a parties in Iraq allots it the ability to directly affect the outcomes of the American mission in the country. The SCIRI is particularly close to Iran, as it took refuge under the Islamic Republic during Saddam Hussein’s reign and its Badr Organization militia was trained by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The al-Da’wa party was also housed in Iran for a number of years during its struggle against Hussein’s Ba’athist regime.
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Military power plays a vital role in Iraq – in actuality, it plays a number of roles currently, which is at the root of the problem. Military force should only be used in order to attain military goals, generally being either the attainment or defense of territory, and/or the destruction of enemy forces. In Iraq, however, the administration is utilizing force to destroy Iraqi insurgents, defend the Green Zone, and affect political outcomes within the Iraqi system by acting as a counterbalance for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki against rival Shi’a parties and their militias, as well as Sunni insurgents. (more…)

Iraq, originally cobbled together by acts of the British Empire after centuries of Ottoman rule as three, ethnically-separated governates, is experiencing the severe pangs of nationalism in the form of a bloody civil war. The Kurds, Shi’a, and Sunni are re-enforcing their regional boundaries as sectarian violence continues throughout the country, forcing even those who had once ethnically co-mingled during the Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein to flee to the relative safety of ethnically-defined enclaves. In the middle of this civil strife are the American armed forces, whose initial military victory – the deposing of Sadam Hussein – seems distant and ineffectual in hindsight’s prevailing clarity.

The status quo consisting of the continued American occupation of Iraq punctuated by increased periods of military activity has not and will continue to not produce lasting results. While periods of increased scrutiny on insurgent and milita-aligned elements may create some immediate changes, those have always been and will continue to be shallow and short-lived victories. The complexities of the Iraqi situation makes it so that military force alone cannot win the day; violence begets violence and will continue to fail in creating a tenable political situation acceptable to all vested parties. A new strategy grounded in the realities of the current situation and in bold diplomatic maneuvers offers the only hope of returning peace to a beleaguered and war-weary Iraqi people.
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Syria is feeling the great strain of absorbing tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees:

Syria, the last Arab country welcoming large numbers of Iraqi refugees, is now all but closing the gates and leaving 40,000 Iraqis who flee their country each month with almost no place to go.

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Syria kept its doors open even after others, including Jordan and Egypt with 700,000 and 130,000 Iraqi refugees respectively, said they could take no more. But the strain on its small, state-controlled economy apparently has become too great.

Despite the administration’s line to the contrary, Syria truly does not gain anything by stoking the flames of war in its neighbor to the east. Certainly, lax border patrol most likely exists — the Syria-Iraq border is expansive. Syria also undoubtedly views its position on Iraq vis-a-vis the border issue as a sort of bargaining tactic, a way to force the United States into negotiations over other outstanding issues such as the status of the Golan Heights. However, even in the case of a concentrated effort to stop cross-border raids, Syria has little control over the chaos in Iraq. In fact, as this refugee crisis suggests, it is being harmed in numerous ways by the Iraqi civil war. Not only can the Syrian economy not support the massive influx of Iraqi refugees, the country is being filled with Iraqis that have a very good chance of becoming radicalized. It is the slow al-Qaedaification of Syria, the strengthening of radicalized Islamic ideology. To the ignorant it all seems as if this is a boon for Syria, a part of the overall plan. It most certainly is not.

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Unfortunately, this isn’t overly surprising:

Iraqi special forces and British troops stormed the offices of an Iraqi government intelligence agency in the southern city of Basra on Sunday, and British officials said they discovered about 30 prisoners, some showing signs of torture.

What is surprising is exactly how enfeebled Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki is: he cannot even criticize his Shi’a rivals in government for torturing Iraqis:

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a conservative Shiite, condemned the raid in Basra, but he publicly said nothing about the evidence of torture.

“The prime minister has ordered an immediate investigation into the incident of breaking into the security compound in Basra and stressed the need to punish those who have carried out this illegal and irresponsible act,” said the full text of a statement issued late Sunday by his office.

It remained unclear why he sought to pursue the raiding force aggressively rather than the accusations of prisoner abuse. Efforts to reach officials in his office were unsuccessful.

Could Maliki be so frightened for his position and, perhaps, his life that he refuses to publicly condemn what may have been the work of the SCIRI’s Badr Organization disguised as Iraqi intelligence officials? Perhaps Maliki believes it unwise to take on both the Mahdi Army and the SCIRI at the same time, but, regardless, this is a testament to how far al-Da’wa and Maliki himself have slid since his appointment as PM. (more…)