A Government with No Military and No Territory
Commentary: Iraq is suffering from a sovereignty vacuum -- and it won't be easy to put the country back together.
March 9, 2006
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Introduction by Tom Engelhardt
You know things are going badly indeed in Iraq when U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad chooses to use an image -- Pandora's box -- previously wielded only by that critic of the Iraq War, French President Jacques Chirac. Back in September 2004, Chirac compared American actions in Iraq to the famed box of myth, at a moment when Arab League head Amr Mussa was warning that the "gates of Hell" had been opened in that country (a comment assumed at the time to be but another example of overemotional Arab rhetoric). It took a year and a half, the blowing up the Golden Mosque in Samarra, and a near civil war, but now Khalilzad is ready to agree. In a Los Angeles Times interview, according to reporter Borzou Daragahi, he offered, "a far gloomier picture than assessments made in recent days by U.S. military spokesmen." In fact, he suggested the obvious -- if, that is, he weren't representing a government whose Vice President is still claiming that "progress in Iraq has not come easily, but it has been steady." He admitted that the "potential is there" for Iraq to fall into full-blown civil war and then he brought Chirac's image to bear. "We have opened," he said, "the Pandora's box and the question is, what is the way forward?"
You also know things aren't going well when the Pentagon issues an "Iraq Progress Report" (a "security and stability" assessment it is required to send to Congress every four months) indicating that "insurgent attacks in Iraq reached a postwar high in the four months preceding Jan. 20." You know things are not going well when, as that report notes, 88% of Iraqis in the Sunni areas of Tikrit and Bakuba, asked to describe "individuals attacking coalition forces," called them either "freedom fighters" or "patriots." (Don't even ask how that poll was taken.) Or when, surveying the ripples of chaos that George Bush's war has brought to the world, Brig. Gen. Robert L. Caslen, the Pentagon's deputy director for the war on terrorism, points to the plethora of terrorist groups popping into existence worldwide and states definitively, "We are not killing them faster than they are being created."
Meanwhile, the top Iraqi general in charge of security in Baghdad, such as it is, was killed in ambush this week; mosques continue to be attacked; Amnesty International announced that the U.S. still holds at least 14,000 (undoubtedly angry) Iraqis in its prisons; Iraqi oil production continues its steady decline to, at present, about 1.5 million barrels a day (almost a million barrels below where it was just before the American invasion began in March 2003); up to 50 employees of a Sunni-owned Iraqi security firm in Baghdad are kidnapped by unknown gunmen in police paramilitary uniforms in broad daylight; and Baghdad's morgue director flees the country in fear of assassination after revealing that "more than 7,000 people have been killed by death squads in recent months." Referring to these staggering figures, John Pace, the outgoing head of the UN human rights office in Iraq, who has clearly put in time at "the gates of Hell," commented, "The vast majority of bodies showed signs of summary execution -- many with their hands tied behind their back. Some showed evidence of torture, with arms and leg joints broken by electric drills."
In one of the understatements of our moment, Khalilzad offered the following summary of the situation in Iraq, "Right now there's a vacuum of authority, and there's a lot of distrust." He should know. He's the one in Baghdad's Green Zone scuttling between near-warring parties in the vague hope that "once a national unity government is formed, the effort to provoke a civil war will face a huge obstacle."
Michael Schwartz, a Tomdispatch regular, takes up the very issue of that "vacuum of authority" in Iraq in a major two-part piece for this site. He focuses on the strange, powerless state in which Iraq exists, in which Khalilzad's "national unity government" -- if it is ever formed -- will continue to exist. When you are used to living in a sovereign nation, it's easy to forget what a fragile thing sovereignty can be -- and, once destroyed, how hard it can be for anyone to reconstitute it.
A Government with No Military and No Territory
Iraq's Sovereignty Vacuum (Part 1)
By Michael SchwartzPresident Bush marked the Iraqi election of December 2005 as the beginning of a new era. A freely selected permanent government would begin asserting its sovereignty over the country, building an administrative infrastructure, and rising to the challenge of governing an unruly and often violent constituency.
Only three months later, this hopeful vision is in ruins. Various parliamentary leaders have occupied themselves with tortuous negotiations over who will be the next prime minister, while crises explode around their Green Zone sanctuary. Some of these crises flashed in and out of the headlines, including a controversy over illegal detention and torture sites reportedly run by Shia militias under the aegis of the Ministry of the Interior; a new wave of insurgent attacks in Baghdad; and, most dramatically, the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, triggering retaliatory attacks against Sunni mosques as well as nationwide demonstrations calling for the withdrawal of American forces. Other crises continue to build without benefit of the media spotlight: a multi-ethnic conflict over control of Kirkuk, the northern oil hub and projected capital of a future Kurdistan; the steady escalation of guerrilla attacks on American troops and of American air strikes against Sunni cities; a further degeneration in the delivery of electricity, potable water, fuel, and most of the other basics of modern life; a growing population of homeless refugees; an ongoing exodus of professionals; and unremitting unemployment levels, variously estimated at between 30% and 65% of the workforce.
In dealing with all these crises, the government was notable mainly for its absence -- neither a party to the controversies, nor a mediating force in any of them. It volunteered no leadership and was not invoked by any of the contesting groups.
This irrelevance is not temporary. It is the single enduring, probably irremediable feature of a government that has none of the resources needed to exercise sovereignty. As these multifaceted crises grow, intertwine, and overlap, the capacity for exercising sovereignty -- whether by this government, the occupation forces, or any other entity -- will only be further eroded.
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