Nir Rosen - Aftermath

The presence of the U.S. Army forecloses many options for Iraqis, drawing the parameters within which they can act. There are varieties of colonialism and occupation, and they depend more on the financial interests and strategic aims of the colonizers than their wish to grant independence to their vassals. The continued American military presence in Iraq was still a constant implied threat. The Americans could stay on their bases if the Iraqis behaved, or they could emerge and kill whomever they wanted, as they once had. Moreover, Iraq was still burdened by several UN sanctions dating back to the Saddam era. It was forced to pay 5 percent of its oil revenues in reparations, mostly to the Kuwaitis. The Chapter VII resolutions denied Iraq full sovereignty and isolated it from the international financial community. In addition, with Saudi and Iranian interference and money in post-Saddam Iraq, as in Lebanon, it is impossible to have true democracy or sovereignty.

The Bush administration had tried to implement an “80 percent solution,” based on the notion that if Kurds and Shiites could reach agreement, then Sunnis could be ignored. But Sunni frustration can still lead to destabilization. Sunnis might not be able to overthrow the new Shiite sectarian order, but they can still mount a limited challenge to it. According to Iraqi political scientist Ghassan Atiyyah, the Kurds, with only the mountains as their friends (to paraphrase a Kurdish proverb), were able to destabilize Iraq for eighty years. Sunni Arabs are present in much more of the country and have allies throughout the Arab world who can supply them well enough to destabilize Iraq more than the Kurds ever could. It is not only Baathists and Al Qaeda supporters who oppose the new order. There are Sunnis who see themselves as Iraqi nationalists and worry that Iraq is falling under Iranian control. They see signs of this when much of the Iraqi Kurdish and Shiite leadership goes to Iran to negotiate political deals and work out the postelection order. But Shiites and Kurds cannot reach agreement without the Sunnis. It is Sunnis who dominate the border area between Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq. And as long as the Iraqi state insists on its Shiite identity, there will be Sunnis willing to undermine it.

While violence was down even in Baghdad’s worst-hit neighborhoods, and many Sunnis and Shiites strived to rebuild old friendships, Iraqi social relations were deeply wounded. I visited my friend Maher in Dora once again. He took me to the home of his old schoolmate Ra’fat Abid Alwan, a young Shiite man. Ra’fat had once owned a successful local curtain shop. In 2005 his family received a threatening letter. Then his brother was shot in the head and killed in the Dora market. Another brother was kidnapped later that year by an Interior Ministry vehicle. He was released three weeks later for a ransom of eighty thousand dollars, and the family fled to Syria. But they didn’t like Syria. They’d had a nice life in Iraq and didn’t want to end up working as bakers in Syria. So in August 2006 they returned to Baghdad’s I’ilam neighborhood, buying a new shop for curtains. They lived in I’ilam for a year. “Sectarianism started,” Ra’fat told me. “We saw bodies on the street,” so they returned to Syria again. In their absence Dr. Nabil, the local Al Qaeda boss, had taken over their home and given it to a Sunni family. The Americans discovered IEDs in the house and took it over, and then handed it over to the Iraqi army. While they were away four Shiite neighbors in Dora were beheaded. Ra’fat paid twenty-three thousand dollars to be smuggled from Syria to Turkey to Greece to Sweden in late 2007. After a year the Swedes told him Iraq was safe again and sent him home. His family returned to Iraq from Syria, and he joined them in December 2008.

In April 2009 nine houses in Dora belonging to Shiites were blown up. One belonged to Ra’fat’s brother. “It’s wrong to stay here, they blew up his house,” he told me. “We are not comfortable emotionally,” Ra’fat’s mother told me. Now they were trying to sell their house and move back to I’ilam. “Most of the neighborhood is gone,” Ra’fat said. “People only come back to sell homes.” I asked if relations could go back to the way they were. “Impossible!” they said. Ra’fat and Maher laughed at the notion. “This was the prettiest area of Dora, people knew each other,” Maher said. “We could enter each other’s homes like family.” I asked them how people could turn on one another like that. They blamed the Al Qaeda men who were mostly from the rural areas adjacent to Dora. “They wanted Dora for themselves,” they said. “It was criminally motivated.” Both Ra’fat and Maher agreed that there was still a lot of hatred.

A NEWSWEEK ISSUE in March 2010 declared U.S. victory in Iraq. But for Iraqis there was no victory. Since the occupation began in 2003, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had been killed. Many more had been injured. There were millions of widows and orphans. Millions had fled their homes. Tens of thousands of Iraqi men had spent years in American prisons. The new Iraqi state was among the most corrupt in the world. It was often brutal. It failed to provide adequate services to its people, millions of whom were barely able to survive. Iraqis were traumatized. This upheaval did not spare Iraq’s neighbors, either. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees languished in exile. Sectarianism increased in the region. Weapons, tactics, and veterans of the jihad made their way into neighboring countries. And now the American “victory” in Iraq was being imposed on the people of Afghanistan.

Seven years after the disastrous American invasion, the cruelest irony in Iraq is that, in a perverse way, the neoconservative dream of creating a moderate, democratic ally in the region to counterbalance Iran and Saudi Arabia had come to fruition. But even if violence in Iraq continues to decline and the government becomes a model of democracy, Iraq will never be a model to be emulated by its neighbors. People in the region remember, even if those in the West have forgotten, the seven years of chaos, violence, and terror, and to them this is what Iraq symbolizes. Thanks to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other failed U.S. policies in the Middle East, the U.S. had lost most of its influence on Arab people, if not the Muslim world—even if it could still exert pressure on Arab regimes. At first some Arab elites thought they could benefit from Bush and the neoconservatives, but now reformists and the elite want nothing to do with the U.S., which can only harm their credibility. Every day there are assassinations with silenced pistols and the small magnetic car bombs known as sticky bombs; every day men still disappear and secret prisons are still discovered. In Sunni villages Awakening men are being found beheaded. And although some militiamen have been absorbed into the security forces, others have turned to a life of crime, and brazen daylight robberies are common. But despite this, the worst might be over for Iraqis. On my trips to Iraq in years past, I had made a habit of scanning the walls of Baghdad neighborhoods for bits of sectarian graffiti, spray-painted slogans that were pro-Mahdi Army, pro-Saddam, anti-Shiite, or pro-insurgency. This time, however, there were almost none to be found. The exhortations to sectarian struggle had been replaced with the enthusiasms of youthful football fans: now the walls say, “Long Live Barcelona.”

This book would not be possible without the strong support of the New York University Center on Law and Security. I am very grateful to its generous director, Karen Greenberg, as well as Steve Holmes and David, Nicole, Jeff, Fransesca, Sarvenaz, and the rest of the family I have made there. They have given me a place to feel at home, the freedom to do my work, and the confidence of knowing I have their backing. My editor at Nation Books, Carl Bromley, was supernaturally patient with me and believed in my vision. Without him it would not have come to reality. Thanks to Mark Sorkin for his excellent copy editing and suggestions. I am also very grateful to my agent, Denise Shannon, for her enthusiasm and support.