DUBAI, 10 March 2003 — Iraqis have long lived in terror of Saddam Hussein. Now they and their Arab, Turkish and Iranian neighbors also fear the instability and bloodshed that may accompany his removal by a US-led invasion to disarm Iraq. With military action apparently imminent, some fear the consequences of a decisive American victory as much as a messy conclusion to such a war. “Along with Turkey and Iran, all the Arab states dread a chaotic outcome to war on Iraq, yet they have mixed feelings about a decisive US victory too,” a paper published by London’s Royal Institute of International Affairs said.
“Governments across the region know that their populations are likely to see such an outcome as blatant US imperialism, a grab for oil and a plot to protect Israel,” it said. President George W. Bush says a war will serve the cause of peace. His promises addressed some, but by no means all, of the worries of Iraq’s neighbors about a post-Saddam era.
Some are concerned they too might one day qualify as targets of Bush’s policy of pre-empting potential threats, by force if necessary. “Iraq is not the center of the Bush doctrine, it’s the start of it,” said Toby Dodge, a British expert on Iraq.
“Many countries have a stake in Saddam being toppled, but they also see themselves as threatened by the Americans. Who will be next on list? Syria? Iran?” said Amir Ali Nourbaksh of the Tehran-based Atieh Bahar consultancy.
Former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani argues that keeping US forces in the region after an invasion of Iraq would destabilize the whole Middle East and upset oil markets.
“Definitely, Americans will be buried in Iraq if they go in. If Saddam’s government fails to repel them, the Iraqi nation will do so after Saddam has been removed,” he said on Friday.
Does the United States have the will, ability and commitment to fulfill Bush’s assurances about ensuring Iraq’s territorial unity and transition to stable government after an invasion? Can it achieve the more ambitious goals of US hawks who say Iraq can be a beacon of democracy, inspiring change across the Middle East, creating new prospects for Arab-Israeli peace?
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal, like many who see Israel’s occupation of Arab lands and its weapons of mass destruction as a graver threat than Iraq, has his doubts.
“An occupation of Iraq is not simple. How are 250,000 troops going to maintain order in a country like that?” he asked.
“If you get chaos in Iraq, how will democracy flower in Iraq? If you achieve victory and there is somebody occupying Baghdad...just imagine what the reaction could be in the Arab and Muslim world to that fact alone,” he said this month.
Bush says he has “no quarrel with anybody other than Saddam and his group of killers who have destroyed a society”.
But over the years Saddam has forced hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Iraqis into complicity with his Baathist rule and the violent methods it has used to remain in power. “In the immediate aftermath of an invasion, unless it is firmly controlled, there will be a lot of violence,” said Sami Zubaida, a British-based academic of Iraqi origin. “There are scores to settle by people who have been tortured, lost relatives or been systematically humiliated by the regime.”
Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan and others fear that a struggle between non-Arab Kurds in the north, majority Shiite Muslims in the south and the long-dominant Sunni Muslim minority in the center might fragment their neighbor — though other fault lines in Iraq’s complex society could spark conflict within, as well as between, these far from coherent groups.
Turkey has already threatened to intervene to prevent Iraqi Kurds from seeking more autonomy. And Iran might feel obliged to help its Iraqi Shiite coreligionists.
Whatever the outcome of a US-led war on Iraq, it will reshape regional power balances and alliances and might prompt Washington to rethink its security strategy in the Gulf. The United States, in its quest to James Russell, a Pentagon scholar at the Naval Postgraduate School, questions whether a strong, united Iraq will still be needed as a counterweight to a much-reduced threat from Iran, now preoccupied with its own internal power struggles. In an article for the Middle East Review of International Affairs, Russell says that, while the United States must assert its commitment to Iraq’s unity to “attract political support for regime change”, it might be better to let it disintegrate.
Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi scholar close to the opposition Iraqi National Congress, believes his country cannot be healed simply by removing Saddam and his inner circle, but has no illusions about the difficulties of dismantling the Baathist legacy.
