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Thread: Iraq catch-all: after Operation Iraqi Freedom ended

  1. #101
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    Default How Saddam Doomed The Defense of Iraq In 2003

    There was never any question that Iraq was going to be defeated by the U.S.-led Coalition in 2003. Saddam Hussein’s meddling in military planning before the war however, helped account for why the Iraqi armed forces fared so poorly. The United States was expecting a real fight with the Republican Guard, and to take the capital, but that never materialized. That was partly because three months before the invasion the Iraqi dictator completely changed his country’s defense plans with no provisions for how it was to be implemented.

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  2. #102
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    Default The Iraq We Left Behind

    A depressing, detailed article from Foreign Affairs: 'The Iraq We Left Behind:
    Welcome to the World’s Next Failed State' by Ned Parker, published early in 2012, but provided by a "lurker" today:http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articl...hind?page=show

    The FA summary:
    Weeks after the last U.S. soldier finally left the country, Iraq is on the road to becoming a failed state, with a deadlocked political system, an authoritarian leader, and a looming threat of disintegration. Baghdad can still pull itself together, but only if Washington starts applying the right kind of democratic pressure -- and fast.
    It must have "set alarms off" in Washington DC, as a month later there was a riposte:
    Iraq is hardly the failed state that Ned Parker portrayed in these pages, argues Antony Blinken, the U.S. vice president’s national security adviser. Norman Ricklefs sees Iraq’s politics becoming more moderate and less sectarian. Parker replies that despite these improvements, Baghdad still violates human rights and ignores the rule of law.
    Link behind a free, registration wall:http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articl...-iraq-on-track

    Like many here I expect we rarely look at what is happening now in Iraq, although thanks to JWing we can read his updates. From my little reading if anything Ned Parker's arguments are stronger today than when written.

    If Iraq becomes a 'failed state' or more likely a brutal dictatorship, if the public in the UK and the USA notice further interventions abroad may be greeted with incredulity. Even more so if Afghanistan "goes down the tubes" and is seen as a waste of lives, money and power.
    davidbfpo

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    Default Iraq won't be a dictatorship just dysfunctional for a generation

    I don't think Iraq will become a dictatorship. That would require the ending of elections and the political parties won't allow that to happen. It could become more of an autocracy however, because the opposition to PM Maliki is so weak and hungry for power itself that it's unable to stop his concentration of power. What will likely happen is a generation of dysfunctional government as Iraq tries to claw its way out of decades of dictatorship, sanctions, and wars, and transitions into a new society. Maybe something like a mix of Mexico when the PRI won every election and Nigeria with its oil wealth, corruption, and low level violence.

  4. #104
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    Default Path To War, The Iraqi View Of The 2003 Invasion In Their Own Words

    Saddam Hussein was completely misunderstood by the United States before the 2003 invasion. Iraqi statements were mostly discounted by Washington such as its willingness to accept renewed United Nations inspections at the end of 2002 or its fanciful claims that it was winning the war in 2003. That was because the Bush administration didn’t understand Baghdad’s worldview. Nine years after the Baathist regime was toppled there still a lack of understanding of the Iraqi perspective. There are extensive records now available that can help explain what Saddam’s government was thinking. These are being made available through the Iraqi Perspectives Project, and other sources. What they show was that two main factors shaped how Baghdad reacted to the Bush administration. First, Iraq’s long history of coups and uprisings led Saddam to rule through fear to prevent another one from toppling him. Second, his analysis of American foreign policy led him to believe that the Bush administration would be exactly like his father and the Clinton White House posing no real threat missing the fact that the new U.S. president was serious about removing the dictator from power. Looking at quotes from Iraqis during this period can help explain how the regime approached its confrontation with America.

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    Default Protests Return To Iraq In December 2012

    In the middle of December 2012, security forces arrested ten guards of Finance Minister Rafi Issawi of the Iraqi National Movement (INM). That same day spontaneous protests started in Anbar, Salahaddin, and Baghdad provinces. They demanded the release of the Minister’s guards, and an end to what they saw as government discrimination against Sunnis in government and through arbitrary detentions. Since then there have been demonstrations in Ninewa as well. Like previous protests in 2010 and 2011, the government is listening to their demands, while warning them about the limits of its patience. If those previous years are any indicator, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will only allow public outbursts like these to last so long before he breaks them up.

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  6. #106
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    Default Analyzing Violence In Iraq In 2012

    2012 was a year of contrasts for the security situation in Iraq. The country’s insurgency grew in strength after the U.S. withdrawal, allowing them to launch more deadly attacks as a result. The Iraqi military also ceased conducting counterinsurgency operations. Those were two of the main reasons why Iraq Body Count recorded an increase in deaths for the year compared to 2011. At the same time, casualties decreased in the second half of the year after the militants’ summer offensive ended. Security incidents were also concentrated in specific provinces and specific cities within them. The number of casualties they caused was a small portion of their populations meaning that most people could go about their regular lives. Overall, security has remained largely the same since 2009, and is unlikely to change in the near term.

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    Default Analysis Of The History And Growth Of Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, The League Of The Righteous,

    Sam Wyer is an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War specializing in Iraq. In December 2012, he authored a paper on Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, the League of the Righteous. It provided one of the most detailed breakdowns of the history and organization of the League, and how it has tried to change itself from an Iranian-supported Special Group militia to a social and political party. Below is an interview with Wyer about Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq.

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  8. #108
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    Default How The United States Ran Into Party Politics As Well As Violence Trying to Rebuild I

    In 2005, American civilian and military officials decided that rebuilding Iraq’s government would be a top priority. The U.S. needed a government to run services and provide an alternative to militants. This was part of a new comprehensive counterinsurgency policy that Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad was trying to implement. The new strategy ran into three problems. First, the U.S. created local and district councils after the 2003 invasion with no laws or regulations, which made it difficult to integrate them into the Iraqi government once sovereignty was returned in 2005. Second after the two elections in 2005, Iraq’s new political parties took over the ministries. They set about concentrating power in their hands, ignoring the provincial and local councils, and delivered services on a partisan and sectarian basis. Third, the civil war was just starting, and violence made it difficult for the government to operate, because public workers were being killed and intimidated, while ministers were using their offices to carry out political and sectarian attacks. These all undermined the Americans’ plans, and some of these problems persist to the present day.

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    Default A Neoconservative Laments Trying To Create A Democracy In Iraq And Transform The Midd

    In recent years, several supporters of the war in Iraq have changed their tune. One is neoconservative John Agresto. In 2003, he put his words into action when he went to work for the Pentagon as the senior adviser to Iraq’s Higher Education Ministry. He would then go on to help found the American University of Iraq in Kurdistan. In 2007, he wrote Mugged By Reality: The Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions where he aired some of his misgivings about how the United States handled Iraq. Then in December 2012, he authored an article for Commentary magazine, “Was Promoting Democracy a Mistake?” It dealt with democratization as a philosophical matter, not the nuts and bolts of what the Bush administration did right or wrong in Iraq. Agresto came to the conclusion that Muslim culture is a major impediment to the creation of free and democratic societies not only in Iraq, but the Middle East in general. This is an argument that has been made before, and overlooks the changes that have happened in democratic theory over the last several decades. That means while Iraq may look grim today, it still has many possibilities for its future.

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    Default United Nations Human Rights Report Finds Continued Violence In Iraq, But More Importa

    In October 2012, the United Nations released its semi-annual human rights report on Iraq. It was authored by the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), and covered the first six months of last year. They had two major findings. First, violence and terrorism were still a daily occurrence in Iraq, although security overall was relatively stable. Second, Iraq’s justice system has major flaws. That includes the lack of due process, torture and abuse in prisons, the holding of detainees for long periods incommunicado, extended delays before trials, and the failure to release people after their charges had been dismissed, they were found guilty, or they served their terms. The U.N. noted that the Iraqi government was aware of these issues, and was working on improving some of them, but that it would take a very long time before any meaningful progress would be made. The report highlighted the fact that Iraq faces many institutional and cultural problems on top of the daily violence.

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    Default Overview Of Security In Iraq 2012, Interview With John Drake

    John Drake is the head of Global Intake at the British risk mitigation firm AKE. It publishes weekly reports on violence in Iraq, which are used by companies, NGOs, and media outlets that operate in the country. Below is an interview with Drake reviewing the security situation in Iraq last year.

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  12. #112
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    Default Iraq Lacks A Unified Foreign Policy Because It Lacks A Unified Country

    In recent years there have been several studies attempting to discern what Iraq’s foreign policy is after its emergence from the U.S. invasion and civil war. They have largely concluded that the country lacks a unified foreign stance. That’s because Iraq’s elite and government are deeply divided. The result is that each leader follows his own foreign agenda. Until the differences between the ruling parties are worked out, Iraq will continue to have this fractured stance.

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  13. #113
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    Default Still No Agreement Upon Security Forces In Iraq’s Disputed Territories

    From November to December 2012 the press was reporting that Iraq’s central and Kurdish regional governments were on the verge of war. The security forces of the two sides were facing off in northern Iraq. The cause was the creation of the Tigris Operations Command by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which the Kurdish parties took as being aimed at their aspirations for control of the disputed areas. There was a shootout between the two sides, and an increasingly vicious war of words between them. Since then there have been a series of meetings between Baghdad and Irbil with no resolution so far. If this were a serious confrontation this would still be a pressing matter, instead of the after thought that it is becoming. The reason was that this was always a political scheme by both Premier Maliki and Kurdish President Massoud Barzani to rally support behind them.

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    Default Corruption In Iraq, An Interview With Stuart Bowen, Special Inspector General for Ira

    Stuart Bowen started out working on Iraq as the Special Inspector General for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in 2004. When that organization ceased operating in the middle of that year, he became the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR). SIGIR releases quarterly reports to Congress along with audits and assessments on the rebuilding of the country. One issue SIGIR has focused upon from the beginning is corruption. Based upon his conversations with high-ranking Iraqi officials Mr. Bowen believes that the state of graft and bribery are worse than ever. Below is an interview with the Inspector General on this very important topic.

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    Default How The U.S. Spent Billions On Infrastructure, Which Iraq Could Not Maintain

    The United States continuously under estimated the magnitude of what it would take to rebuild Iraq. Originally, America had no plan for any kind of reconstruction believing that there would only be a humanitarian situation in the country after the 2003 invasion such as refugees, and food shortages. When the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) took over it then began a massive, multi-billion dollar rebuilding plan, but emphasized large infrastructure projects that had little immediate impact upon Iraqis. By 2005, the U.S. began switching to local reconstruction efforts that were supposed to be linked to a comprehensive counterinsurgency program, but that took two years to fully come to fruition. During the entire time what was neglected was the ability of the Iraqi government to manage and maintain the infrastructure that was being built and refurbished for it. Billions of dollars in power plants, water facilities, schools, etc. were being turned over to Iraqi authorities who either didn’t want or couldn’t run them. The Americans eventually tried to address this issue, but it came too little too late, resulting in massive waste.

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    Default Deadly Clash Between Iraqi Security Forces And Protesters In Anbar

    In late-January 2012 there was a deadly showdown between protesters and the Iraqi army in the city of Fallujah in Anbar province. Demonstrators were stopped from joining a large rally in the city, which led to a confrontation, shots being fired, and dozens of casualties. This points to the increasing tensions between the protest movement, which is in its second month, and the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Baghdad is giving lip service to meeting their demands, but if the premier’s reactions to the demonstrations in 2011 and 2012 are any indicator, his main priority is putting an end to them.

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    Default An Interview With Iraq Body Count

    The U.K.-based Iraq Body Count (IBC) is the premier organization for tracking deaths and violence in Iraq. Since its founding in 2002, it has kept a running count of the casualties caused by the Iraq War, which is constantly updated. Its work has also been included in various studies, and is a constant reminder of the costs of the conflict there. This is an interview with two members of IBC, Hamit Dardagan and Josh Dougherty.

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    Default The Forgotten Destruction Of Qawliya, Iraq By The Mahdi Army

    Of all the acts of violence left in the wake of the Sadr movement, one that seems to have been forgotten is its attack upon the town of Qawliya in Qadisiyah province. In March 2004, Mahdi Army fighters came to the village and leveled it. Qawliya was inhabited by gypsies, which the Sadr Trend had been criticizing since the time of Moqtada al-Sadr’s father Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr. It was quite common for Iraqis to vilify the community, and associate it with crime and prostitution. After the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein, the Sadrists attacked several gypsy villages, with Qawliya being its most notorious act.

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    Default Third Straight Year Casualties Increase In January In Iraq

    For the last three years the number of deaths in Iraq has increased in January. Usually this coincided with Shiite pilgrimages, but this year it was an increase in attacks upon the general population and the security forces.

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    Default Human Rights Watch: Iraq Becoming More Authoritarian

    Human Rights Watch in its annual world report found that Iraq has become more authoritarian in the last year. In 2012, the government clamped down upon the opposition, demonstrators, and reporters. The security forces continued to carry out arbitrary arrests, mass detentions, and tortured people on little to no evidence. The result was the limiting of political freedom, along with the continued lack of due process.

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