According to NATO authorities, no demands were made by the Iraqi authorities to make use of the opportunities for military support offered by NATO in Iraq. Mr. Anders Fogh Rasmussen has confirmed
no training mission in Iraq is being planned by the Atlantic coalition. But he also says that NATO is “very concerned by the situation in Iraq and in neighbouring countries”.
HOW COULD THE CONFLICT DEGENERATE ?
The US government seems highly preoccupied by the situation in Iraq. Mr. John Kerry was travelling in Iraq before going to Brussels and met Ms. Catherine Ashton as well as other European partners and « discussed the grave security situation in Iraq », according to a spokesperson. The first of the up to 300 military advisers planned for Iraq has started to arrive in the country. The USA have also started to expand their surveillance flights over the countries, with manned and unmanned aircrafts, involving 30 to 35 sorties a day.
Officially, advisers have been tasked with missions such as evaluating the state of the Iraqi forces and are not here to combat ISIL themselves. But Admiral John Kirby said the US are « ready to carry out bombing raids if called upon ».
A LONG EXPERIENCE OF MISMANAGED CONFLICTS… AND OF INTENTIONAL ABUSES
What can we expect from these military advisers ? Experience shows that it can be the beginning of a deeper military involvement in the country. Remember that the US government itself reports that the Vietnam War started on 1 November 1955, when the U.S. Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) in Indochina (deployed to South-East Asia under President Harry Truman) was reorganized into country-specific units and MAAG Vietnam was established.
Experience also shows that the tasks attributed to some military advisers may be quite confidential, as they sometimes break international or US laws and customs regarding, for instance, human rights. During the Cold War, the « Condor » and « Gladio » programmes involved many illegal tasks, which amounted to crimes against humanity. When the most basic rights of the human being are ignored, special forces are of course able to pretend they obtain successes, but what is the value of confessions extracted under torture ?Zero. Now the USA are deeply involved, militarily, in countries like Pakistan, where they have demonstrated their ability to cooperate with local services to organise the « extraordinary rendition » of (presumed) extremist militants. Of course all of these issues have been widely documented, and it may seem that lessons were drawn and policies implemented to avoid such abuses. But Mr. Barack Obama’s drone policy has been an extraordinary opportunity to demonstrate that this may not be entirely the case, not to say the contrary… The military-industrial complex is permanently trying to persuade us that it is able to produce weapons allowing for a « clean war » with « zero collateral damage ». This is a direct incentive for starting a war, in spite of the fact that clean wars do not exist. An asymmetrical conflict of the kind the USA could wage in Iraq is likely to create a lot of collateral damage, as insurgents are known for using strategies such as hiding into crowds and sometimes taking hostages. Asymmetrical conflicts exist at least since the Renaissance and the development of unified states in Western Europe ; technologies of violence have developed along.
Another issue is the possible out-of-control arrival of contractors (including private soldiers) in Iraq. At the height of the conflict President Barack Obama said was ended on December 15, 2011, there was one of them for every 1,4 US soldiers. Two weeks ago it was reported they were evacuating the country. But won’t companies be tempted to send them back so as to follow the admission in the country of the military advisers ? This could amplify the conflict. Did you know that frequently during the Iraqi conflict contractors carried out their own “private dirty war” ? Blackwater’s communication policy has been heavily stained by its repetitive abuses, to the point it changed its name twice (“Xe” in February 2009, and “Academi” since December 2011).
Take also into account the possibility of a Republican take-over of the US Senate at the 2014 elections. They may be in position to demand policy changes regarding the US position in Iraq, to the worst. And let’s not think of the 2016 presidential elections. Everything will depend on whether lessons of the past have been effectively assimilated by policy-makers.
TO RESOLVE THE CONFLICT, UNDERSTAND THE IRAQI PEOPLE
We should defend to the latest the opportunity of a negotiated issue to the conflict in Iraq. Stakeholders should gather around a round-table and negotiate to find ways to resolve the Iraqi conflict.
Did you know that between 2003 and 2005, most of the anti-American insurgents were not religious ? They complained about suppressions of jobs, about the destruction of social security, which was Proconsul Paul Bremer’s policy in Iraq : a true « shock doctrine », as Canadian journalist Naomi Klein has put it, involving for instance the privatisation of the 200 state companies, some with 100% foreign ownership.
Note that Iraq’s opening to the free-market world was also an opportunity for the US government to splurge $70 billion in total for reconstruction, distributed at companies like Halliburton, Bechtel and Parsons, most of the time with no open bidding and, concordantly with the privatisation policy, no positive discrimination for Iraqi firms. This was the opportunity for many corruption cases, and very few, if none, were effectively sanctioned in spite of the fact that billions evaporated in the nature. Ms. Naomi Klein argues that Mr. Paul Bremer was aware of the suffering of the Iraqis but counted on “shock and awe” to dispel the discontentment. Instead, secular and pacific protesters turned progressively to religion and violence, and we may now be discussing of the eventuality of bombing former trade-unionists or pacific political militants which became simply overtly religious because of their despair.
