March 24, 2014
In
late February, the U.S. State Department noted and protested a $195 million Iran-Iraq arms deal. The
Nouri Al-Maliki government was quick to deny the transaction, but admitted that
Iran had indeed competed for a small arms contract that the Iraqi Ministry of Defense
had put out for international bidding. The U.S. was concerned. Iraq was helping
Iran break out of an international sanctions regime that forbids arms trade
with Iran. As the U.S. balked at this potential “breach,” I could only think of
Rick’s Café Américain, the notorious casino of Casablanca. I'm shocked,
shocked to find that shady arms deals are going on in here!
In a
recent trip to Baghdad, a small arms deal with Iran seemed like a small matter
indeed to most. I spoke to scores of government officials at several
ministries, most of whom felt free to defend and criticize their government’s
behavior, depending on the particular political trend and religious sect they
represented. The purchase from Iran was dwarfed by two more significant factors: U.S. military assistance
to Iraq and, more to the point, Iran’s political alliance with the Maliki
government.
In a
recent contract, the U.S. Air Force signed off $838 million to Michael Baker
International, a U.S. defense giant, to build an airbase in Iraq that would
provide maintenance, spare parts and personnel training for the eventual
stationing of a large F-16 sale to Iraq’s air force. Pending final approval in
Congress, a small arms package, hellfire missiles and Apache helicopters, among
other sundry ammunition and ordinance are on their way to Baghdad. The near $1
billion USAF contract, in other words, is but the tip of the iceberg in terms
of Foreign Military Sales (FMS) to Iraq, a country clearly destined to become
one of America’s most important arms clients.
Since
there are no longer any U.S. troops on Iraqi soil, and no plans for stationing
any in the foreseeable future, the value to the U.S. of such large sales would
have to be seen in commercial terms and in any benefits derived from the use
they might be put to by Iraqi forces; and therein lies the rub. Iraq’s internal
security and general armed forces have been noted abusers of their population’s
human rights since their reconstruction after the fall of Saddam. More
ominously, the ongoing war in Iraq’s western region involves not only a
legitimate confrontation with Al-Qaeda affiliated forces coming across the
borders from Syria, but also Sunni tribal forces defending their homes and
cities from central government forces from Baghdad.
The
use of these weapons is highly contested. In recent conversations I had with
Iraqi officials, journalists and scholars, I found a high degree of polarization
on the situation in the country’s western, Sunni majority region and,
particularly the explosive Syrian border. The mostly Shia ministry officials
were defensive about their government’s policies of using force to suppress
what they saw as increasingly lawless regions harboring terrorist elements supported
by foreign (read: Arab Gulf) governments. Ironically, some Shia officials with
Sunni spouses were less vocal in public but showed more sensitivity in private
to the suffering of Sunni families and innocent civilians who did not wish to
identify with either Prime Minister Maliki’s military campaign or with Jihadi
efforts to retake the streets of the Anbar district, Iraq’s Sunni majority western
region which was dominated after the fall of Saddam by Al-Qaeda affiliated
forces. Sunni voices were to be heard complaining outright against the
government mostly on pan-Arab media or on Sunni owned TV stations. Sunnis in government, being a minority in
Baghdad, generally preferred to tone down any criticisms they may have of the
government’s crackdown on their brethren in Anbar.
The
problem with Anbar is only tangentially a Shia-Sunni problem. In essence, it is
a fundamental disagreement over the implementation of federalism. Having lived
under a strong central government since independence, Iraqis were at first suspicious
of federalist concepts suggested after the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003,
suspecting that the West, as the source of such ideas, merely wanted to
dismember Iraq, along with other Arab countries, to keep them weak and divided.
Tensions between central and local government were quick to emerge however,
particularly under Maliki.
To be
sure, Maliki’s crackdown against Shia militias in Baghdad and in Basra in 2008
(and again in 2011) were popular at first and gave the impression of
impartiality. Maliki’s popularity in southern Shia districts dipped, however,
when complaints mounted against tough police tactics, including prison torture,
corrupt government officials and lack of services particularly to the oil-rich
southern region of Basra, where joblessness, electricity blackouts poor housing
conditions indicated neglect and a lack of respect of the region’s rights under
federal law. A request by the citizens of Basra to hold a referendum on greater
autonomy for the region went unheard by Maliki and the government in Baghdad.
Maliki’s
crackdown against Sunni opposition in western Iraq began in earnest with his
defeat of his main rival for the premiership, Iyad Allawi, who had successfully
courted the Sunni vote, in 2010 . Maliki, whose party actually received less
votes than Allawi’s in the parliamentary elections, won the premiership by forging
a broader alliance in parliament and consolidated his Shia power base
thereafter. In 2011, and upon the full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq,
Maliki accused his Sunni vice president Tareq Al-Hashemi of sponsoring
terrorist squads. The latter fled north to Kurdish areas.
In the
wake of the Arab Uprising in Tunisia and Egypt, the Sunnis of Anbar started
their own protest movement, including a sit-in in a public square. Maliki, who
failed to sway the opposition with promises of jobs and government positions,
finally used the Syria spillover to shut down the square by force, declaring it
had become a haven for terrorists. It actually did provide an excuse with the
infiltration of Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighters into Sunni
towns. Maliki’s forces surrounded and shelled the main cities of Fallujah and Ramadi,
with daily clashes escalating. But has the government has thus far refrained
from a full-scale assault on the cities.
Ironically,
while Maliki’s forces surround and pound ISIS forces, the borders are left with
wide-open gaps for two-way traffic, in and out of Syria. To be sure, there are
Sunni tribes with sympathies for relatives and Sunni rebels across the borders
in Syria and assistance in various forms has been getting across the borders into
Syria of late. In recent months , the traffic of Sunni Jihadis into Iraq has
made itself evident in various Iraq cities. On the other hand, Iraq’s land
borders and skies have been used repeatedly by Shia militias as well as by Iran
to assist the Bashar Al-Assad regime. When I asked security ministry officials,
as they complained about the lawlessness along the Syrian border, if they cracked
down just as hard on Shia militias crossing in the other direction, they
chuckled and said with a wink “that’s a problem of a different order of
course.” While Iraq does not officially takes sides in the conflict taking
place inside Syria, it is clear that while it cracks down with a heavy hand on
Sunni Iraqis taking advantage of the porous nature of the borders to help
Syrian rebels, it looks the other way as Shia militias cross into Syria to help
the Assad regime.
Which
brings us back to the two main points in the introduction to this article: U.S.
military assistance is pouring into Iraq at a time when political differences
with the Maliki government abound on critical internal and external issues. Towards
the end of his second term in office, Maliki has shown a poor human rights record.
He is failing to keep the country together, north, south and west. And for, all
the oil wealth of Iraq, he has little to show by way of economic growth. In term
of foreign policy, he has failed to steer a balanced course. His tilt towards
Iran and the Assad regime has caused a serious spillover of the Syrian crisis
into Iraq with a potentially disastrous deterioration of the security situation
for Iraqis and a worsening of relations with the Gulf Cooperation Council
states. His relations with Saudi Arabia in particular, already bad, may lead to
a complete rupture should he win a third term in office in the upcoming elections
this spring. It is these conditions combined that should concern the U.S. The
sanctions-busting $195 million arms transaction with Iran is no big deal by
comparison.
Nabeel Khoury is Senior Fellow for Middle East and National Security at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He previously served as Deputy Chief of Mission in Yemen (2004-2007), Deputy Director of the Media Outreach Centre in London (2002-2004), and Consul General in Morocco (1998-2002). In 2003, during the Iraq war, he served as State Department spokesperson at U.S. Central Command in Doha and in Baghdad.