LONDON – The looming threat of a new full-scale war that could determine the future of Iraq has given ample opportunity to politicians and commentators to refight the last one.
Among those who opposed the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, the present turmoil in the country is taken as vindication of their view that President George W. Bush’s misguided military venture would create more troubles than it would resolve.
The 2003 war bears the original sin of having been based on flawed intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction and the erroneous claim that the dictator was behind al-Qaeda attacks on America.
So, a war fought in part in the name of crushing fundamentalist Islam appears to have actually strengthened the jihadist forces that are now challenging the fragile democracy the US sought to establish in Baghdad.
There has also been ample cause in the past decade to challenge the wisdom of an enterprise whose aftermath led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqis, and shattered the lives of many more.
Events have led otherwise liberal-minded outsiders to question whether it would not have been better to leave Saddam in place. That is an argument echoed in the case of Syria, where there is a growing view that even Bashar al-Assad’s rule might be preferable to the mayhem being spread in Iraq, apparently by an axis of al-Qaeda and other jihadis, together with former members of Saddam’s regime and military.
Summing up the views of those who see the present militant onslaught in Iraq as further proof of the disastrous fallout from Bush’s war, the French news agency AFP wrote this week:
“The late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was long painted as an arch-enemy by the United States, but more than ten years since US-led forces toppled his regime, his era appears relatively stable and innocuous compared to the virulent threats now engulfing Iraq and causing alarm in Washington.”
That is not a view that would win any support in Kurdistan, where Saddam’s “stable and innocuous” rule translated into torture, oppression and genocide.
Kurds may regret the sufferings of their Iraqi neighbors and acknowledge the failings of US policy in the aftermath of the war. But they can be in little doubt that their present favorable situation stems from their leadership’s strategic decision to ally actively with the Americans in 2003. The cooperation extended to placing Peshmerga forces under US command.
Kurdish support was vital to securing the northern front after Turkey, America’s ally of choice, opted out of joining the invasion when preparations were already well-advanced. Turkish intervention could have proved fatal to the Kurdish autonomy that had evolved in the previous decade under the protection of the West’s no-fly zones.
Those exclusion zones were only established after the US encouraged the Kurds to revolt and then left them in the lurch as Saddam’s regrouped forces drove the Peshmerga from firstly Kirkuk and then the rest of Kurdish territories liberated in the aftermath of the 1991 Kuwait war.
Often in the nation’s history, the Kurds have served as allies of convenience in other people’s wars – courted when they are needed, shunned when they are not. Even now, outside powers seem to consider Kurdish aspirations as an inconvenient irritant to preserving the territorial integrity of majority Arab states such as Iraq and Syria, rather than as a central element in any future regional settlement.
Kurdish leaders will be reflecting on those lessons as they contemplate how to respond to the blandishments of President Barack Obama and the Baghdad government to be drawn more deeply into the war against ISIS.
Now, given its internal stability, its growing economic independence and the professionalism of its armed forces, Kurdistan is better placed to put its own interests first and to name its price for cooperation with its allies than at any other time in its modern history.
