Iraq after the pullout

Everyone has an opinion and I'm going to see if I can formulate mine before your very eyes!

Iraq is more tribal than national. That means most Iraqis' first allegiance is to their clan. Their tribe tends to be related to an area of the land with deep historical roots and religious identity. Their affiliation with other Iraqi tribes was forced when European colonial powers mandated national boundaries with no serious regard for the tribal areas.

Someday, to stabilize the region, the United Nations needs to work with all of the Middle East to reset the boundaries to be more in tune with the regional tribal areas. The map needs to be redrawn to gain some coherence for establishing functional governmental units.

The nation of Iraq, except when its central government has been autocratic, holds together only the more secularized and urbanized Iraqis who have interaction with the the rest of the world and who may have been educated outside Iraq.

Religious ties among the secular are mostly with the Sunnis. The tribal areas north and west of Baghdad are Sunni too but are not as secular nor have as much contact with the rest of the world.

The Kurds in the north are more secular and relate with much of the outside world because they have been able to use the wealth of the oil fields in their area and the distance from Baghdad to attain a good deal of autonomy. They are not Arabs like the Sunnis and Shia. Saddam tried to change out the population of Kirkuk with Sunnis from the Sunni triangle which has left that city particularly vulnerable to ethnic violence.

The Shia constitute the majority of the Iraqi population in the south. They also have concentrations in ghettos in Baghdad and some other northern cities. Oil is abundant in many Shia tribal areas though that wealth was not shared with them under Saddam.

The tribal leaders in each area have established their own militias for the purpose of maintaining order and discipline among their members. Those militias were operative under Saddam as long as they did not cross swords with him. He was not tolerant of them and used the army to suppress them and their tribes by force when necessary because he established his autocracy under the oppression of the colonial powers. His Baath party controlled the oil and the wealth and was the public face of the state of Iraq.

In this cursory sketch, I have laid out what I think are the most salient factors to give us a clue of what will happen when the US pulls out (we WILL leave as completely as we did from Vietnam and will have to find another way to "pay back" Iraq for the damage we've done).

The tribal leaders of all the ethnic groups have no desire to give up their authority to al Qaida, Iran, Syria, the United States, Saudi Arabia, or any government set up by our occupying military!

The Iraqi government will not meet the political benchmarks as long as we are there. They will not accept being a colony to have their oil wealth drained off by American corporations. They will have a hard time sharing that wealth with each other, especially since the Sunnis shared nothing with the Shia under Saddam.

As I see it, the Sunni tribes have retained some degree of their Baathist organization, politically and militarily, because it worked for them under Saddam. They have some affinity for al Qaida because al Qaida is more Sunni than anything. But they also see al Qaida as an outside force which would want to run things for their own purposes which the indigenous Sunnis do not share. Al Qaida will never be more than a means to an end for the Sunnis. - The current cooperation with the Americans is to help the Sunnis gain access to more arms for the showdown with the Shia when we leave, as well as to gain enough military strength to take on the Kurds who are well armed.

The Shia have control of the current central government and have the benefit of the American military equipment (we still don't give them body armor and adequate munitions to really establish themselves as an army or police force). They will become quite formidable when the Americans pull out because many of the Shia militias control much of the national army and police.

Muqtada al Sadr really is playing his own game, more so than the other tribal leaders. He is using Iran to strengthen his hand in Iraq much like al Qaida and the Sunnis are using Saudi Arabia and Syria (plus most of the other Arab states that tend to be Sunni) to strengthen their hands.

Muqtada al Sadr wants to take over Iraq but no one will let him. He knows it even if he has the largest most organized and disciplined militia. To have any say in the future of Iraq, he will have to cooperate. He will be used by the other Shia tribes to help hold off the Sunnis.

My opinion is that this leaves a "mutual destruction" situation which the tribal leaders will calculate to be too grave to carry through a fulfilled civil war. There will be a scramble for the military materiel left behind by our troops when they leave. Just as many insurgents went into the arms caches Saddam set up and we did not stop to destroy or guard, the competing forces will hope to get as much as they can. The Shia will have the best shot at most of it but I see the crime lords already calculating how to get to it first. The tribal leaders better talk about that during the August parliamentary break.

Most Iraqis do not want the occupation to continue. Among the Sunnis and Shia, those not closely tied to a tribe by virtue of becoming secular and relating to the outside world do not have militias unless they got money from somewhere (US, Saudi Arabia, Iran, moderate Arab nations) to hire Blackwater or some other mercenary group. They are the most likely to be run out or killed by the insurgents. Many have already left Iraq. The university people, doctors, bureaucrats, and business people leaving constitutes a major brain drain. The tribal leaders do not see them as crucial to their goals. As with Vietnam, many of those folks will leave when we do if they haven't already gone. Many will be killed.

Al Qaida in Iraq and al Qaida (international) are probably going to be less of a threat than the crime lords to settling things in the future. The crime lords have all those antiquities they've stolen and want to get onto the market. Al Qaida only wants bragging rights to build up their jihad against the West. The crime lords will see them as a rival gang.

As when India partitioned rather than go into a full civil war upon the British leaving, there will be displacement and bloodshed between the ethnic groups and between some of the tribes. As a state, Iraq has not raised up anyone with the political skills to pull off anything like a central government.

The tribal leaders are the key to resolving the political problems. Maybe the best gift we have given them is that we helped some of them get better acquainted by providing elections and then bringing many of them together in the parliament.

During the summer vacation, they will solidify their own positions, and then in September may well vote to ask the U. S. to leave, vote new leadership to replace the American-friendly lot that we've sponsored, and see if they can settle the dispersal of oil revenues.

The Bush Administration will not leave unless they can assure the Oil Companies they can deliver contracts to work the Iraqi oil fields. (That's really the only victory the President wants and will rename to something more grandiose if he gets it.) But the Iraqis will stall and continue to treat us the way the colonists treated the Redcoats, targeting US forces and trying to build up their own militias until we do leave.

We'd be there until a new administration in Washington with less owed to the Oil Companies takes over and lets the Iraqis resolve their own problems. If the new administration feels it necessary to stay with helping the Oil Companies, I see no hope for our relationships with the Middle East ever improving.

We have to get out.

The Iraqis will eventually resolve their differences. Iraq will probably partition along ethnic lines and find a way to pay off the Sunnis so they can establish their own economy without feeling they have to take over all of Iraq.

The crime lords and al Sadr are the most important flies in the ointment.

It would help if Saudi Arabia would cut off funding to al Quaida. They more probably would support whatever Sunni state evolves.

Iran is not really in a position to do much except stay on good terms with the Shia. President Ahmadinejad would not want to test his own popularity by interfering in Iraq. The Persians (Iranians) are not welcome among the Iraqi Arabs.

Al Qaida will make lots of PR over our leaving but the real joy will be that the insurgents of both Sunnis and Shia succeeded in pushing out the invaders who had trashed their homes in the middle of the night, imprisoned their men for years without grounds or justice, tortured them, killed them out of fear and prejudice, and tried to muzzle them when they spoke up.

Some would call letting all that happen chaos. I call it allowing the multiple forces to settle their own disputes and getting out of their way.

UNLESS PRESIDENT BUSH DECIDES TO INVADE IRAN . . .

UNLESS ISRAEL BOMBS IRAN'S NUCLEAR FACILITIES . . .

UNLESS THE WEST FORGETS THAT THE ISRAELI - PALESTINIAN CONTROVERSY IS YET TO BE RESOLVED . . .