EXIT
STRATEGY FOR
IRAQ:
ARABIC-SPEAKING
PEACE-KEEPERS
SYNOPSIS:
In retrospect, we can now see that the main problem
in Iraq
was not the promotion of terrorism against any other parts of the world
but tribal violence among different groups of Muslims.
The occupation by U.S. troops only made that situation worse.
Now that America has withdrawn its combat soldiers
from Iraq,
sectarian violence has continued
and no stable situation of law-and-order has been established.
If the USA takes over another Arab country because
of internal strife,
the exit-strategy originally suggested for Iraq might be applied there:
Once the killing has been stopped by U.S. and allied troops,
as quickly as possible, the policing
of that country
should be taken over by thousands of Arabic-speaking peace-keepers.
All such police and soldiers must be perceived by everyone
as not favoring one group over another.
Foreign peace-keepers would only be required
until the country establishes a new government,
which will allow the emergence of local police forces.
Civilian police would have no weapons of war,
which might be used to oppress the people of their own area
or to commit warfare against any other part of the country.
When actual peace on the ground is achieved,
most of the Arabic-speaking peace-keepers from other Arab countries
can depart for their homelands.
OUTLINE:
1. RECENT HISTORY OF IRAQ—MUTUAL GENOCIDE
2. MUTUAL
GENOCIDE
IN NORTHERN IRELAND AND GANGLAND USA
3. LAWLESS IRAQ
AFTER U.S. OCCUPATION
4. AN
ARABIC-SPEAKING PEACE-KEEPING FORCE
5. A GRADUAL TURN-OVER TO THE NEW
PEACE-KEEPING FORCES
6. WORST-CASE
SCENARIO—FULL-SCALE CIVIL WAR
1.
RECENT HISTORY OF IRAQ—MUTUAL GENOCIDE
From 2003- 2012 Iraq was occupied by U.S. military
personnel.
These troops were supposed to keep the peace in that country,
where we overthrew the dictatorial government.
Iraq was torn by violence of one group of Muslims
against another.
They seemed to kill each other whenever they can get away with it.
And the lawless situation allowed lots of opportunities
for private armies and death-squads to kill members of other groups.
This kind of civil strife might continue for the foreseeable future.
Will a strong central government with an obedient military force
be able to control such tribal violence at some time in the future?
Without getting into the details of these Muslim
differences
and to prevent any suggestion of favoring one side or another,
I will call them simply Muslims A and Muslims B.
(There are also sub-factions of each major group,
but that does not matter for this analysis.)
Both sides have private armies or militias,
which are loyal primarily to their own ethnic or tribal group.
And even some of the military forces employed by the Iraqi government
are really more loyal
to their own ethnic-religious group
than to the country of Iraq.
Both Muslims A and Muslims B operate death squads,
which kill the other kind
of Muslim
whenever good opportunities for killing present themselves.
This happens often, since the citizens of Iraq
are also divided into Muslims A and Muslims B.
Muslims A think twice before calling the police
when 'their own' death squad is killing hated Muslims B.
(We should remind ourselves, however,
that most everyday Muslims are peaceful, not violent.
The minority of
violent Muslims get into the news
because they are having such a large impact on the current situation.
If peaceful Muslims ever get the upper hand,
then the tribal violence might end.
See more thoughts along this line in another on-line essay:
"Peaceful
Muslims & Violent Muslims".)
Peace will be restored when there is a police
force or a military order
that is trusted by all Iraqis to enforce the laws without regard to
ethnic identity.
As long as Iraqis continue to think of certain armed groups
as either "our army" or "their army",
there will be no peace in Iraq.
2. MUTUAL GENOCIDE IN
NORTHERN
IRELAND AND GANGLAND USA
Perhaps we can understand the tribal violence in
Iraq
if we compare it to other situations
in which people kill each other because of their group identification.
Until recently in Northern Ireland, Protestants and
Catholics
had rival para-military forces whose main function
was to kill members of the "opposite religion".
Of course, they thought of this function as "defending" their own
tribe.
Oddly, these two opposed gangs were of the same race
and had the same religion—Christianity.
But the slight differences between these ethnic groups
was enough for them to kill one another when law-and-order broke down.
Even in the United States of America,
where we pride ourselves on being very civilized,
we see continuing gang-warfare in our ghettos.
Members of rival gangs kill one another frequently
simply because the 'enemies' are members of a different gang,
sometimes easily identified because they wear different colored clothes.
Their identities as gang members means
that they must hate members of the rival gangs.
How close is this to tribalism in Arab countries?
Are we really seeing mutual genocide
between different gangs of young men
all of whom think of themselves as 'Muslims'?
In both of these examples, the 'enemies' are quite
similar to one another:
They speak the same language.
They live in the same neighborhoods (at least to some degree).
They belong to the same racial groups.
They have the same basic religions.
When we see Muslims A and Muslims B killing one
another in Iraq,
we might be able to understand such mutual genocide
by looking at Northern Ireland and gang violence in the USA.
Good
policing seems to be the best way
to prevent mutual genocide in civilized nations.
When law-and-order breaks down,
the rival tribes take those opportunities to resume killing one
another.
Sometimes mutual genocide is prevented by a strong
government
that is not democratic and does not have the consent of the
governed.
Military dictators have also been able to maintain law-and-order.
Marshall Tito ruled the former Yugoslavia with an iron hand.
And he kept the Croats and Serbs from killing each other for the most
part.
When his dictatorship ended, the rival tribes were free once again
to kill member of the other ethnic group.
And the military forces also took part
because they were identified with one tribal group.
Likewise Saddam Hussein kept Muslims A and Muslims B
away from mutual genocide while he was still in power.
In both cases of military dictatorship,
the dictator was known to belong to a specific tribe.
But that did not matter.
The dictator was able to maintain law-and-order,
even when that included genocide
committed against certain small tribes of people.
(In November 2006, Saddam Hussein was found guilty
of ordering the deaths of hundreds of Kurds.)
3. LAWLESS IRAQ
AFTER U.S. OCCUPATION
With the violent overthrow of Saddam Hussein
by the armed forces of the United States,
Iraq descended into sporadic tribal violence.
As the armed militias 'defending' either Muslims
A or Muslims B
become more powerful and better organized,
there is danger that they will begin to fight each other
in order to gain the upper hand in governing Iraq.
This would mean a better-organized civil war.
And the winning side will have the oil revenue and government jobs
to give to their own people
while the losing side in the civil war
will get less of the benefits the government can hand out.
The U.S. military forces were supposed to help Iraq
to move beyond this violence of Muslim against Muslim.
But the mere presence of foreign occupiers only added to the problems.
In my view, our presence was not
the solution to Iraqi problems.
I think our military presence mostly made their problems worse.
Put another way, having U.S. military forces in Iraq
did more harm than good.
The people of Iraq can ask about the ten years of
occupation:
Was it worth the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis
to change the government we had under Saddam Hussein
to the government we have now?
Will all this killing eventually be justified
by some new form of government that will emerge in the future?
Americans asked similar questions:
Whenever another atrocity committed by U.S. troops
came to light,
whenever another group of prisoners was abused,
whenever we learned of more people being killed,
we asked ourselves about the best time to withdraw.
No matter what religious factions Iraqis belonged
to,
they were united in the hatred of the American occupiers.
Our military forces did not speak Arabic for the most part.
So law-enforcement was very difficult.
Since the withdrawal of U.S. troops,
some semblance of ordinary life has returned to Iraq.
But no one knows what will happen next.
4. AN
ARABIC-SPEAKING
PEACE-KEEPING FORCE
One workable alternative might have been to have the
U.S.
troops
replaced by professional soldiers from other Arab countries.
These forces would be trained and ready to take up
the duties performed imperfectly by U.S. military forces.
The greatest advantage of being from other Arab countries
would be that they can speak the language that most Iraqis use every
day.
When the peace-keepers speak the same language as the people,
there are fewer mistakes by the peace-keepers
due to lack of understanding of what the Iraqis were doing and saying.
And Arabic-speaking peace-keepers would be less
likely
to be seen as foreign
oppressors.
If and when a civil government emerges trusted by most of the people,
the foreign peace-keepers could operate within the emerging new order.
Iraq is a very rich nation in terms of oil resources.
It is so rich that there are no taxes on the people.
Oil production is owned by the government.
And eventually Iraq should be able to pay for its own security.
It might take some time to get the oil production back to pre-war
levels.
But once that revenue stream is restored,
the new government of Iraq could take over paying
for the peace-keeping efforts provided at first by other nations.
Until the oil is flowing again at pre-war levels,
the government of Iraq could borrow money by issuing bonds,
which would be redeemed when the oil-revenues returned to normal.
Because Iraq was not completely disarmed as the
result of occupation,
the new government will eventually establish a new military force.
But one problem in the prior system of private armies
was that some militias were understood to favor one kind of Muslim.
So people only trust the military forces that are identified with their
own tribe.
If Iraq is going to remain one country,
then eventually the military forces must be perceived
to enforce law-and-order without regard to group identity.
When private armies try to maintain law-and-order,
they are loyal first to their own families and tribal groups.
They cannot be trusted to arrest or kill
members of their own families or tribal groups
even when such members have clearly broken the law.
In Iraq, tribalism seems to be stronger than nationalism.
And no matter who pays the police,
they are emotionally
committed primarily to their own groups.
How long will it take before non-tribal police will patrol Baghdad?
The foreign Arabic-speaking peace-keepers could have
been organized
so that no one knew what kind of Muslims they were
(if they belong to one sect of Islam or another
or if they have no religious-ethnic identification at all).
This could have made the peace-keepers
completely
neutral in the tribal strife of Iraq.
Iraqis would not want to maintain foreign
peace-keepers
if the foreign occupiers were perceived to be oppressing some people.
Reasonable people of every group would be able to see
that it is in their best
interest to support the police
because the peace-keepers would be protecting all
Iraqis
from all forms of violence that might be visited upon them
—from
whatever source.
As said before, every effort must be made
to prevent anyone from thinking of the peace-keepers
as favoring one tribal group of Iraqis over another.
The Arabic-speaking peace-keepers must be completely above Iraqi
politics.
In order for the new peace-keepers to be perceived
as completely neutral,
it might be necessary to hire them individually
rather than hiring whole platoons of soldiers from other Arab countries.
Or each group of peace-keepers could be so well-balanced
among various Muslim identities
that Iraqis would not be tempted to say that they favor one group over
another.
The Arabic-speaking peace-keeping forces would disarm the tribal militias.
This would have to take place gradually,
after the population agrees that private armies are no longer needed
because law-and-order is being maintained by the
peace-keepers,
who are not identified with any faction
and who are paid and controlled by the new government of Iraq.
During the ten years of occupation as it actually
developed,
Iraqis were correct in assuming that the peace-keepers were infidels:
They were all Americans (and some British).
So there was a continuous open-season on killing Americans.
All of Iraq was a free-fire zone:
Any Iraqi who had a gun, a grenade, or a bomb could kill Americas.
And what police forces existed could do nothing about it.
This would be completely reversed if the peace-keepers
had been fellow Arabic-speaking Muslims
who have no agenda except to maintain law-and-order.
Baghdad remains a major area of conflict.
Killings are a regular part of their daily lives.
No civilized nation or city would tolerate such mutual genocide.
Nor should any city tolerate being occupied
by soldiers who do not speak the language.
I have lived in the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota for over 60 years.
And we would never consider having police who speak only Arabic
patrolling our streets and attempting to enforce our laws.
Why should we expect the citizens of Baghdad
to tolerate English-speaking military forces
who have little or no understanding of Arabic
and who do not understand the tribal structure of Iraqi society?
And it should never have been the duty of U.S.
taxpayers
to provide law-enforcement in Iraq.
American taxpayers
should not have been expected to pay Baghdad police.
We have enough problems enforcing the laws in our own cities.
I want my tax dollars to pay Minneapolis police,
not U.S. military forces patrolling Baghdad,
making themselves easy targets for militants of any side.
No Arabic-speaking peace-keeping force was ever
created for Iraq.
But if the civilized countries of the world
ever find themselves taking over another country like Iraq,
law-and-order should be maintained by Arabic-speaking soldiers.
And it might be best to disarm the occupied country permanently
rather than allow a new military force to emerge that would rule the
land.
5. A GRADUAL TURN-OVER TO THE
NEW PEACE-KEEPING FORCES
We should learn from the recent errors in Iraq
that we do not want to have any long-term occupations of other
countries.
If and when we decide we must take over other Arab countries,
we should have a clear exit-strategy from the beginning:
We should turn-over peace-keeping duties as quickly as possible
to Arabic-speaking soldiers from Arab countries.
Whatever new political order emerges after the
dictator has been deposed
should cooperate in making a transition to Arabic-speaking
peace-keepers.
We should insist that the new government implement plans immediately
to get as many such Arabic-speaking peace-keepers as
possible.
There is no reason to delay the beginning of this turn-over.
It will begin with one small group of Arabic-speaking peace-keepers,
who will be very high-profile in the country because they will be the
first.
And if they perform well—to everyone's
satisfaction—
then there will be
less resistance to additional troops from Arab
countries
coming to take over the peace-keeping operations
first performed (imperfectly) by the occupying army.
As peace is restored by means of these
Arabic-speaking peace-keepers,
then the U.S. forces could leave without much fanfare.
If the country is similar in size to Iraq,
the total number of peace-keepers would probably be about 100,000.
This will be somewhat less than the total number of soldiers
initially needed to take over the country.
How many soldiers were needed by the dictator to maintain order?
As quickly as possible, the same revenue stream
that used to be devoted to the armed forces of the occupied country
should be re-directed to supporting the peace-keepers.
The same government money (from whatever sources)
could employ a like number of Arabic-speaking peace-keepers.
These professional soldiers will have no personal or emotional stake
in the tribal warfare among the various groups in the country.
These transitions can take place as quickly
as the
replacement peace-keepers
can begin to patrol the streets and countryside.
As law and order is actually established,
everyone who is now fearful of being killed in tribal violence
will notice that it is safe to resume their ordinary lives once
again.
Both the central government and local militias
will be disarmed.
Killing from all sides will be at an end.
Once the tribal violence
has
ended,
then the country can return to the more normal situation
in which its own local police forces will maintain law-and-order.
The number of Arabic-speaking peace-keepers employed
can be slowly reduced once everyone agrees
that Muslims A and Muslims B have stopped killing each other.
If and when tribal genocide ends,
perhaps with the help of Arabic-speaking peace-keepers,
then there might be hope for creating a stable government.
6. WORST-CASE
SCENARIO—FULL-SCALE CIVIL WAR
Post-occupation Iraq has not yet
descended into open civil war.
But if the aftermath of occupation does prove to be civil war,
then this will show that merely withdrawing did not work.
If the government of Iraq is not able to govern the
country,
then it will be overthrown by militants of one faction or another.
And the country will return to military dictatorship.
There is probably nothing we can do (or should do) to prevent this.
We know nothing about governing Iraq.
And we never should have tired in the first place.
Tribal loyalties might be too strong to
keep Iraq as one united country.
If the people are committed first
to their own tribal group,
then whichever group is strongest will eventually rule the country.
A
civil war of a few years duration might ensue.
Iraq will have chaos for a few years.
But eventually some form of government will emerge.
In my opinion, it is not the role of the U.S. government
to attempt to impose democracy on other countries.
Maybe Iraq will be divided (temporarily) between
the
warring factions.
(We might remember that even the USA was divided during the
Civil War.
Thus even regional loyalties can sometimes outweigh national identity.)
Civil war in Iraq might finally be resolved by
establishing three states
on the land that was once called Iraq.
This will result in considerable internal migration,
as people move to the new smaller states
established by their own ethnic groups.
(Some reports suggest that half a million Iraqis
have already re-located themselves to safer areas.)
(November 2007 update: Now 2.5 million Iraqis have moved within Iraq
and a similar number have left the country.)
But it is better for even millions of people to be displaced
from their homes and to move
to safe places among their own tribes
than for the same millions of people to be killed in a civil war
to determine which tribe will rule all of Iraq.
I regret the loss of life whenever it happens—to
whatever persons.
My view at the beginning of the war is the same as it is now:
The U.S. government should never have overthrown Saddam
Hussein.
If we had done nothing in 2003,
thousands of people who are
now dead would
still be alive.
And thousands of more people who are maimed for life
would still be whole-bodied.
And it would be the responsibility of the Iraqi people
to change their form of government if they really want to.
And even now—after the disastrous
intervention by
the United States—
it will still be the
responsibility of the Iraqi people
to establish a government
—or three different
governments for smaller states—
that they can live with.
drafted July 8, 2006;
revised 8-3-2006; 10-20-2006; 11-8-2006; 11-16-2007; 6-18-2011;
5-17-2013; 8-29-2014; 1-23-2015;
AUTHOR:
James Park is an independent existential philosopher,
living and writing in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
He has no attachments to any parties in the Middle East.
Much more will be learned about him from his website:
An
Existential
Philosopher's Museum.
This on-line essay is also a chapter in Iraq:
Mutual Genocide.
SEE RELATED ON-LINE ESSAYS:
Peaceful
Muslims & Violent Muslims.
Deprogramming
Former Members of Al-Qaeda.
Holy
War
Against Terrorism.
Policing
Mutual Genocide: Not a War on Terrorism, Not a Civil War.
Lessons
from
Iraq.
WHAT
WOULD THE WORLD PEACE FORCE
DO?
Disarm
the Planet Earth—One
Nation at
a Time D
Eliminate
all Weapons of Mass Death . D N
End
all
Military Dictatorships . D N
When
National Governments Collapse . D
Separate
the
Arabs and Jews in Palestine
. D N
Separate
the
Warring Factions in Iraq . D
Disarm
All Sides
in Afghanistan . D N
Disarm
All
Fighters in Syria . D N