Civil War Is Possible

What will the parliamentary elections in Iraq on 30 January bring and what does the political future of the country hold? According to the Iraq expert Ferhad Ibrahim, whatever happens, the violence is unlikely to end soon.

Fouad Ajami, a Lebanese-American professor teaching at the Johns Hopkins University, recently wrote that the elections in Iraq are a matter of life and death because the aim of the current wave of violence is to prevent the elections taking place. It is a fact that the central importance of the elections has grown.

Unfortunately, however, it is not a case of the Iraqis being able to choose between "elections or violence" because it seems likely that violence will remain a side effect of the process of change in Iraq. The diagnosis that the violence will escalate shortly before and during the elections and will not end once they are over, is not inaccurate.

Sunnis poised to lose power

The danger at the moment is that the country will slide into civil war. As a matter of fact, it has virtually done so already. After all, the elections will legitimise the transfer of power to the Shias. This explains why the Shias are tolerating the provocations of Sunni Jihadists, who are launching attacks on Shia sites and are murdering well-known members of their community. The 74-year-old religious leader of the Iraqi Shias, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, made the holding of elections a prerequisite for the toleration of foreign troops in Iraq.

Paul Bremer, who was put under huge pressure in early 2004 by the escalation of violence, was forced to accept the conditions laid down by the Najaf-based Ayatollah. To this extent, the promise to hold elections in the near future was one stage of America's Iraq policy, which has been very vague since the fall of Baghdad on 9 May 2003. But the elections will further the political marginalisation of the Arab Sunnis, who lost all positions of power when the old state collapsed.

The Arab Sunnis' mistrust of the policy of the United States, which robbed them of their position of power in Iraq, was and is the main reason for the resistance in the Sunni triangle. Decisions, like those regarding the creation of new armed forces, the recruiting of new state leaders, and, of course, the holding of elections, are seen by the Arab Sunnis as the final nail in the coffin of their domination of Iraq.

Pressure must be exerted on Syria and Iran

But the elections also hold perils for the United States. What happens if a Shia majority demands that the USA presents a timetable for its withdrawal? If the elected parliament decides on a constitution, will other groups agree with the decisions taken by the Shia majority?

What concerns the world community and the Iraqis at the moment is the intensifying spiral of violence and the insistent attempts of al-Qaida under the leadership of the Jordanian Abu Mussab al-Sarkawi to start a civil war by targeting the Shias. If the violence should escalate and if the Shias or the Kurds should abandon their restraint, a civil war will be inevitable.

At this point, it is important to make a few remarks on the specific situation in Iraq: the USA could possibly – with the consent of the elected Iraqi government – bring the extensive violence under control politically and militarily. However, for various reasons, this would prove rather difficult. The jihadists are a transnational operation and are embedded in transnational networks. This means that regional players like Syria and Iran, which have to date been embroiled in this virtual civil war, must be put under pressure.

It is a well-known fact that the Iraqi Baath party receives support for its guerrilla war from Syria. The USA is, however, reluctant to open up a new front in the Middle East. The same applies to Iran, whose strategic aim is to get the USA to withdraw from Iraq and considers this a greater priority that the formation of a Shia government in Baghdad. As part of their survival strategy, both states would accept a civil war in Iraq.

Civil war scenarios

But if civil war were to break out, what would the outcome of such a war be? The idea of a Shia state that has an economic chance of survival is doing the rounds in the Shia community. Sunni Arab states would probably put up fierce resistance to the establishment of such a state. A less radical scenario would be a confederation of the three Iraqi regions. This option would be unacceptable for those states in the Middle East that have a Kurdish minority.

The other remaining scenario would be division; Iraq, which Henry Kissinger compared to a three-winged airplane, could disintegrate along ethnic-religious divides. It is very likely that this scenario would meet with huge regional opposition especially from the Arab Sunnis, Turkey, and Iran.

The Achilles heel of all these scenarios is the future of the Sunni Triangle. If the triangle is separated from the Shia and Kurdish regions, it would develop into a new Talibanistan. None of the players involved can afford to allow a "safe haven" for al-Qaida to develop in the middle of the Near East.

At the end of the day, whoever wins the election in Iraq will have to involve the Arab Sunnis heavily in the drafting of future plans for the country. A Sunni quota, as suggested by the USA, would be one workable solution. This would not, however, put an end to the Jihadist violence. This is why it is likely that Iraq will remain teetering on the brink of a civil war for the foreseeable future.

Ferhad Ibrahim

Translation from German: Aingeal Flanagan

Ferhad Ibrahim holds a chair sponsored by the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, DAAD) at the University of Jordan in Amman. The Syrian-born professor has been living in Germany since 1971 and has taught at several institutes including the Free University of Berlin and the Universities of Postdam and Erfurt.