2007 - The Iraq End-Game

Experience has shown me that, when it comes to Middle Eastern affairs, Asian news sources often differ considerably from their Western counterparts and, when they do, the Asian take usually turns out right.

The latest Asia Times features an article that predicts 2007 will see the end game for Iraq as the US and Britain engage the Sunni Arab states to tackle their Shiite nemesis Iran and its surrogates. As the Asia Times sees it, their escape route seems to depend on setting Persian Shiite Iran against America's Sunni Arab allies:

"The year 2003 marked the implementation of bold and reckless strategies aimed at handing the US and Britain virtual ownership of the crucial Middle East region and far beyond, but 2006 was the year all the negative repercussions of their failed policies finally converged, obliging the two reckless powers to stare into the yawning chasm of a regional forfeiture.

"Now, 2007 is the year that marks the full-blown arrival of the endgame in the Middle East, when the US, Britain and Israel attempt somehow to pull a "win" from the mauling flames of regionwide failure. Their desperate policy of "one last push" to achieve that win is already shoving all the region's fractious players into a similar endgame stance, powerfully accelerating the region's descent into instability and upheaval as all its players take postures to make their final moves to prevent the loss of their respective goals and interests, each one attempting to win the game before time and opportunity run out.

"However, while the region is certainly characterized by a multitude of fractious entities all struggling for advantage and ascendancy, the negative effects of the ill-fated US/British invasion and occupation of Iraq and now their "one last push for a win before defeat" policies are causing the region's varied sectarian, political and militaristic factions to polarize. They are lining up on only two fundamental sides, with the ever more distinct dividing line between them constituted as the issue of Shi'ite against Sunni in a struggle for regional ascendancy and domination.

"Thus the entire region is sharply mirroring the bipolar sectarian configuration of Iraq itself - with Shi'ites and their sympathizers and supporters on one side and Sunnis and their sympathizers and supporters on the other.

"When the US and Britain removed the oppressive and bloodstained Sunni-based Saddam Hussein regime in 2003, they simultaneously unleashed the very real prospect of Shi'ite regionwide ascendancy. The Hussein regime effectively and strategically kept Shi'ite Iran contained, and worked to keep its regionwide tentacles (such as Hamas and Hezbollah) weak and manageable.

"Prior to the 2003 invasion, there existed a rough balance of power between Shi'ite and Sunni factions across the region - neither was able to achieve inordinate regionwide power or dominance. The US and Britain took directly on themselves the enormous task and responsibility of maintaining that rough regional balance of power when they crashed into the Hussein regime. They were entirely unprepared to assume that strategic responsibility, however.

"They permitted and, by rushing along Iraq's troubled political process, they even facilitated and encouraged the steady rise toward ascendancy of one faction over the other, and not merely within Iraq. They facilitated the regionwide ascendance of the Iran-friendly Shi'ite faction.

Thereby, they set the stage for a fundamental, lopsided power imbalance, one that has pointedly inspired the hopes and determination of the rising Shi'ite faction with respect to the achievement of (1) freedom from its perceived cruel domination by Sunnis, (2) increased regional influence and power, and even (3) regional domination.

"At the same time, as that US/British-instigated imbalance of power continues to tip in Iran's favor, it has acutely disturbed and frightened the oil-rich Sunni Arab regimes who legitimately fear a regional takeover by ascendant Iran. In 2007 the final consequences of the United States' failed policies will arrive. Those consequences are extremely unlikely to include anything resembling the "win" still hoped for by the US, Britain and Israel, for the simple reason that all the evidence points to the conclusion that the regional tipping point toward ascendancy by the Shi'ite faction may already have been reached.

"Now, the US and Britain are faced with the insurmountable problem of finding a way, at this extremely late date, to restore a rough balance of power to the region by attempting to reconstruct something similar to the mechanisms they eliminated and failed to replace in 2003. And they now have but one last chance, and they must be successful before the sectarian tinderbox they helped create is set aflame by only one of many impending sparks. All the odds are entirely against them.

"The two powers realize they cannot literally reconstruct a dominant Sunni regime in Iraq to face down the Shi'ites and Iran in a bid to revive power-balancing mechanisms. Those former mechanisms are gone and they cannot be revived. Those are no longer workable strategies and policies, anyway.

"But if Iran and the region's Shi'ite factions are to be faced down and counterbalanced, only the Sunnis can hope to accomplish the task and hold it in place on a strategic basis, because the US, already severely over-stretched and bogged down in Iraq, cannot genuinely accomplish the feat by itself.

"What Blair and US President George W Bush have obviously come up with is a strategy to pit the region's Sunnis against its Shi'ites, backing the Sunnis for the moment because they are in a weakened position with respect to Iran, yet not entirely abandoning the Shi'ites in Iraq, as long as they remain separate enough from Iran and its regional goals and proxies.

"The more radical Shi'ite militias, such as that of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, will have to be de-fanged in the "one last push" strategy when many thousands of additional US troops soon arrive. The policy of supporting both sides to achieve a balance of power (stalemate) is not new - the US pursued that strategy for decades before 2003, supporting both Saddam and Tehran during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, for just one example.

"But now the old strategy of indirect US/British involvement has a new twist, seeing that Iran and its proxies have advanced on the region to such a great extent since 2003. US and British military forces, primarily naval forces, are being massively increased inside and outside the Persian Gulf to facilitate certain "measured" actions against Iran.

"If the US and Britain imagine they can play the Sunni-Shi'ite sectarian rivalry card and somehow keep the repercussions contained within the realm of orderliness or "manageable chaos" by means of their naval and other forces, they are every bit as dense now as they were when they went into Iraq in the first place, imagining that that strategy would succeed.

"Sectarian passions on both sides are already running far too high across the region to facilitate any form of manageable transition from the current simmering and mounting chaos to a hoped-for return to a rough balance of power. The US and Britain are playing with the lighting of the fuse of a regionwide sectarian explosion.

"Are the two powers any more prepared to handle its multi-sphere implications and repercussions than they were prepared for those resulting from their 2003 invasion of Iraq? No, they most certainly are not prepared - but they are decidedly desperate to pull a "win" from the flames of failure, even if it means intentionally orchestrating a regional sectarian explosion whose outcome they imagine they can succeed in controlling.

"When the US and Britain stubbornly ignored repeated warnings and invaded Iraq, they allowed themselves to be tied into a Gordian knot whose compound filaments are much stronger than high-tensile steel. The more vigorously they have struggled to free themselves from that self-made knot, the tighter it has constricted their interests and goals in the region, so at present they are near to being crushed. The "one last push for victory before defeat" strategies represent what they hope will be their ingenious insight to raise the sword and cut across the knot.

"As the endgame arrives prompted by destructive US/British policies and strategies, Iraq will almost inevitably break apart along sectarian lines as its factions vie for ascendancy. That will oblige the surrounding states of Iran, Turkey and Syria to intervene to secure their respective, and conflicting, interests. Additionally, the Sunni Arab states will also intervene on behalf of their Sunni brethren in Iraq.

"As the US and Britain work to instigate the return to a regional balance of power by implementing their last-ditch strategies and policies, they will instead bring on the full-blown arrival of the Middle East endgame in which something other than the regionwide stalemate they envisage will be the result. One of the region's sectarian factions will win the game, thereby rising to ascendancy across the region.

"Not a restoration of a balance of power, but rather a further chaotic tipping of the balance toward one faction will be the most likely result of the implementation of their strategies. The Bush and Blair administrations are not known for their ability to conceive truly brilliant strategies and wisely implement them on the ground - hence the impending exhibition of their latest foreign-policy "talents" in the Middle East should be more than sufficient cause for alarm."

You may have noticed one element completely absent in this discussion: George W. Bush's vaunted "War on Terror." Why is it not a central issue? Because it's no longer relevant except as a cloak to cover the inevitable withdrawal of US forces in some contrived vestige of dignity or honour.

It's over folks. They're scrambling to get out of Dodge. We can only hope George will give Stevie a heads up on his way out the door - but don't count on it.