![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Steven Simon for his extended input into this essay. I would also like to thank Raad Alkadiri, Dana Allin, Juan Cole, Clare Day, Jeffrey Mazo, H.R. McMaster, Reidar Visser and Marilyn Young for taking the time to read drafts of this essay and offer their constructive criticism. Earlier drafts were presented at the Centre for Arab Unity Studies, Beirut; the Clinton Institute for American Studies, University College Dublin; the Council on Foreign Relations, New York; INSEAD, Singapore; London Middle Eastern Institute, School of Oriental and African Studies; the Politics Department, Goldsmiths College, University of London; and the Regional Centre for Conflict Prevention, Jordan Institute of Diplomacy. I would like to thank the audience at each institution for the feedback they provided. That said, the views expressed in this paper are entirely my responsibility.
Notes
1. The review was announced publicly after the November mid-term elections. See David E. Sanger, Michael R. Gordon and John F. Burns, ‘Chaos Overran Iraq Plan in '06, Bush Team Says’, New York Times , 2 January 2007.
2. See James A. Baker, III, and Lee H. Hamilton, Co-Chairs, The Iraq Study Group Report (New York: Vintage Books, 2006), p. xii and Deb Riechmann, ‘Bush: to Win in Iraq, Beat Extremists’, Associated Press, Washington DC, 7 December 2006.
3. Quoted in Riechmann, ‘Bush: to Win in Iraq’.
4. See George W. Bush, ‘President's Address to the Nation’, 10 January 2007, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070110- 7.html.
5. Quoted in Sanger, Gordon and Burns, ‘Chaos Overran Iraq Plan in ’06, Bush Team Says’.
6. See Joseph R. Biden and Leslie H. Gelb, ‘Unity through Autonomy in Iraq’, New York Times , 1 May 2006.
7. See John P. Murtha, ‘Confessions of a “Defeatocrat”’, Washington Post, 15 October 2006.
8. See George W. Bush, ‘President's Address to the Nation’.
9. Bush, ‘President's Address to the Nation’.
10. See Isam al Khafaji, ‘A Few Days After: State and Society in Post-Saddam Iraq’, in Toby Dodge and Steven Simon (eds), Iraq at the Crossroads: State and Society in the Shadow of Regime Change (London and Oxford: IISS and Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 79.
11. Murtha, ‘Confessions of a “Defeatocrat”’.
12. Baker and Hamilton, The Iraq Study Group Report , p. 74.
13. I. William Zartman, ‘Posing the Problem of State Collapse’, in I. William Zartman (ed.), Collapsed States. The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority , (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1995), p. 1.
14. Ibid. , p. 6.
15. Ibid. , p. 5.
16. Nelson Kasfir, ‘Domestic Anarchy, Security Dilemmas, and Violent Predation’, in Robert I. Rotberg (ed.), When States Fail: Causes and Consequences (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 55.
17. See Charles Tripp, ‘After Saddam’, Survival , vol. 44, no. 4. Winter 2002–03, p. 26; Charles Tripp, ‘What Lurks in the Shadows?’, Times Higher Education Supplement , 18 October 2002, p. 17; and Toby Dodge, ‘US Intervention and Possible Iraqi Futures’, Survival , vol. 45, no. 3, Autumn 2003, p. 106.
18. See David L. Phillips, Losing Iraq. Inside the Post-war Reconstruction Fiasco (New York: Basic Books, 2005), p. 135.
19. Phillips estimates it made 120,000 unemployed out of a total party membership of 2 million. Paul Bremer cites intelligence estimates that it effected 1% of the party membership, 20,000 people. George Packer estimates ‘at least thirty-five thousand’. The large variation in estimates indicates the paucity of reliable intelligence on the ramifications of such an important policy decision. See Phillips, Losing Iraq , pp. 145–6, L. Paul Bremer III with Malcolm McConnell, My Year in Iraq. The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), p. 40 and George Packer, Assassins’ Gate. America in Iraq (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), p. 191.
20. Bush, ‘President's Address to the Nation’.
21. Daniel N. Posner, ‘Civil Society and the Reconstruction of Failed States’, in Rotberg, When States Fail , pp. 237, 240.
22. Andrea Kathryn Talentino, ‘The Two Faces of Nation-Building: Developing Function and Identity’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs , vol. 17, no. 3, October 2004, p. 569.
23. See David Laitin, The Russian-Speaking Populations in the Near Abroad (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), p. 16.
24. See Joseph Rothchild, Ethnopolitics: A Conceptual Framework (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), p. 29.
25. See Andreas Wimmer, ‘Democracy and Ethno-religious Conflict in Iraq’, Survival , vol. 45, no. 4, Winter 2003–04, p. 120.
26. On this distinction, see Sudipta Kaviraj, ‘On the Construction of Colonial Power, Structure, Discourse, Hegemony’, in Dagmar Engles and Shula Marxs (eds), Contesting Colonial Hegemony: State and Society in Africa and India (London: British Academic Press, 1994), pp. 21–32.
27. See Toby Dodge, ‘How Iraq was Lost’, Survival , vol. 48. no. 4, Winter 2006–07, p. 166.
28. See Juan Cole, ‘Civil War? What Civil War? Desperate to Convince Voters We're Winning, Bush is Denying that Iraq is having a Civil War. But the Facts Contradict Him’, http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/03/23/civil_war/print.html, 23 March 2006.
29. Errol A. Henderson and J. David Singer, ‘Civil War in the Post-Colonial World, 1946–92’, Journal of Peace Research , vol. 37, no. 3, May 2000, p. 284.
30. See Damien Cave and John O'Neil, ‘UN puts ’06 Iraq Toll of Civilians at 34,000’, International Herald Tribune , 17 January 2007, and Associated Press, ‘Iraq Sets Toll of Civilians at 12,000 for 2006’, New York Times , 3 January 2007.
31. Jeffrey Gettleman, ‘Iraqis Bound, Blindfolded and Dead’, New York Times , 2 April 2006.
32. See Gilbert Burnham, Riyadh Lafta, Shannon Doocy, Les Roberts, ‘Mortality after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: A Cross-sectional Cluster Sample Survey’, Lancet on-line, 11 October 2006, DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(06)69491-9, http://www.thelancet.com. They place this figure within a margin of error that estimates the lowest casualty figure at 392, 979 and the highest at 942,636.
33. Based on interviews and Fareed Zakaria, ‘Rethinking the Way Forward’, Newsweek , 6 November 2006, p. 26.
34. See Toby Dodge, Iraq's Future: The Aftermath of Regime Change , Adelphi Paper 372, (Abingdon: Routedge for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2005), pp. 11–19.
35. See the interview given by General Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani, Iraq's intelligence chief, to Asharq al Awsat , 4 January 2005, and Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, ‘US Says Resistance in Iraq up to 20,000’, Guardian , 23 October 2004.
36. International Crisis Group, ‘In their Own Words: Reading the Iraqi Insurgency’, Middle East Report , no. 50, 15 February 2006, pp. 1–3.
37. For this point see the excellent chapter by Roel Meijer, ‘The Sunni Resistance and the “Political Process”’, in Markus Bouillon, David Malone and Ben Rowsell (eds), Preventing Another Generation of Conflict (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, in press).
38. See Dexter Filkins, ‘Foreign Fighters Captured in Iraq come from 27, mostly Arab, Lands’, New York Times , 21 October 2005.
39. See Bremer, My Year in Iraq , p. 274 and Larry Diamond, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq (New York: Times Books, 2005), p. 222.
40. See, Solomon Moore, ‘Militias Seen as Spinning Out of Control. Growing Extremism among Splintering Groups and Recent Clashes have Cast Doubt on Paramilitary Leaders’ Authority over Fighters’, Los Angeles Times , 12 September 2006.
41. See Hannah Allam, ‘Wolf Brigade the Most Loved and Feared of Iraqi Security Forces’, Knight Ridder Newspapers, 21 May 2005.
42. See Amnesty International, Beyond Abu Ghraib: Detention and Torture in Iraq , March 2006, p. 4.
43. See Solomon Moore, ‘Maliki Discusses Iraqi Cabinet Shake-Up’, Los Angeles Times , 6 September 2006, Borzou Daragahi, ‘Iraqi Official Deflects Criticism: The Interior Minister says Few of those Aiding or Tolerating Sectarian Killings Work for Him’, Los Angles Times , 14 October 2006, and Kirk Semple and Michael Luo, ‘Changes Coming Soon, Iraqi Minister Says’, International Herald Tribune , 14–15 October 2006.
44. See Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, ‘Tea and Kidnapping – Behind the Lines of a Civil War’, Guardian , 28 October 2006.
45. Quoted by Moore, ‘Militias Seen as Spinning Out of Control’. Also see Abdul-Ahad, ‘Tea and Kidnapping’ and Peter Beaumont, ‘Inside Baghdad: Last Battle of a Stricken City’, Observer , 17 September 2006.
46. See Sabrina Tavernise and Qais Mizher, ‘Iraq's Premier seeks to Control a City in Chaos’, Washington Post , 31 May 2006, and Tom Lasseter, ‘Iranian-backed Militia Groups Take Control of Much of Southern Iraq’, Knight Ridder Newspapers, 26 May 2006.
47. See Mariam Karouny, ‘Shi'ite Faction Menaces Iraq's Basra Oil Exports’, Reuters, 26 May 2006.
48. See Associated Press, ‘Shia Militia Seizes Control of Iraqi City’, New York Times , 20 October 2006, Ewen McAskill, Julian Borger and Michael Howard, ‘Iraq Mayhem Triggers Hunt for Exit Strategy in US and UK’, The Guardian , 21 October 2006, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, ‘We had Liberated Amara from the British. Basra Next’, Guardian , 21 October 2006, Sinan Saleheddin, Steven R. Hurst and David Randell, ‘Battle of the Militias’, Independent on Sunday , 22 October 2006 and Steve Negus, ‘Sadr Losing his Grip on Mahdi Army’, Financial Times , 31 October 2006.
49. See Dodge, Iraq's Future , p. 51.
50. See Dodge, ‘How Iraq Was Lost’, p. 169. On the negative effects of this decision see Mark Etherington, Revolt on the Tigris. The al-Sadr Uprising and the Governing of Iraq (London: Hurst & Co.: 2005), pp. 124–5. Phebe Marr estimates that ‘some 38 percent of Iraq's leaders since 2003 are outsiders, 19 percent are Kurds or others from the “free” zone in northern Iraq, and only 26.8 percent are insiders’ ‘Among the exiles the largest group, 62 percent, were working either full-time or part-time in opposition activities designed to replace the Saddam government.’ See Phebe Marr, ‘Who are Iraq's New Leaders? What do they Want?’, United States Institute of Peace Special Report, March 2006, p. 8.
51. See Dodge, ‘US Intervention and Possible Iraqi Futures’, p. 114.
52. Mark Turner, ‘Poll Planning on Track but No Room for Hitches’, Financial Times , 14 October 2004.
53. See Adeed Dawisha and Larry Diamond, ‘Iraq's Year of Voting Dangerously’, Journal of Democracy , vol. 17, no. 2, April 2006, p. 93.
54. See Charles Clover, ‘Shia “Agree Deal” on Candidate List for Iraq Elections’, Financial Times , 23 October 2004, Charles Clover, ‘Shia Look to Dominate Iraqi Parliament’, Financial Times , 3 November 2004, and Hamza Hendawi, ‘Iraq's Sistani Spearheading Efforts to Ensure Shiite Electoral Victory’, Associated Press, 17 November 2004.
55. For an excellent analysis of Sistani's motivations during this period see Reidar Visser, ‘Sistani, the United States and Politics in Iraq: From Quietism to Machiavellianism?’, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, Paper No. 700, 2006.
56. Roel Meijer, ‘The Sunni Resistance and the “Political Process”’, p. 7.
57. Edward Wong, ‘Sunni Party Leaves Iraqi Government over Falluja Attack’, New York Times , 10 November 2004 and Steve Negus, ‘Attack on City Fails to Shake Sunni Stance on Polls’, Financial Times , 11 November 2004.
58. For electoral data see Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, http://www.ieciraq.org/English/Frameset_english.htm, and Phebe Marr, ‘Iraq's Identity Crisis’, in Markus Bouillon, David Malone and Ben Rowsell (eds), Preventing Another Generation of Conflict (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, in press, 2007).
59. Larry Diamond, ‘What Civil War Looks Like. Slide Rules’, The New Republic , 13 March 2006, p. 12
60. Reidar Visser, ‘Centralism and Unitary State Logic in Iraq from Midhat Pasha to Jawad al-Maliki: A Continuous Trend?’, http://historiae.org, 22 April 2006.
61. Babak Dehghanpisheh and Michael Hirsh, ‘Reckoning in Iraq: In a Free Iraq, Saddam will Face Trial – and Try to Turn the Tables on his Captors’, Newsweek , 24 October 2005.
62. See Baker and Hamilton, The Iraq Study Group Report , pp. xvi, xvii, 75.
63. See Associated Press, 'Iraq President Rejects Baker–Hamilton Report’, 10 December 2006, http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/12/10/iraq.main/index.html, and ‘Translation of KRG president statement about Baker–Hamilton Report’, http://www.kurdmedia.com/news.asp?id=13704.
64. 'Half of the Iraqi government is abroad at any one time’, Sharif Ali, head of the Iraqi Constitutional Monarchy Movement, quoted by Richard Beeston and Ned Parker, ‘Political Elite Finds a New Home Out of Harm's Way’, Times , 2 December 2006.
65. See Suzanne Goldenberg, ‘Bush Gambles on New Troops for Iraq’, Guardian , 11 January 2007; Julian Borger, ‘Go Big but Short while Transitioning to Go Long’, Guardian , 21 November 2006, Andrew Grey, ‘New US Iraq Commanders may have Limited Impact’, Reuters, 6 January 2007; and Alastair Macdonald, ‘Iraqi PM Announces Crackdown on Militias’, Reuters, 6 January 2007.
66. See Michael R. Gordon, ‘Bid to Secure Baghdad Relies on Troops and Iraqi Leaders’, New York Times , 11 January 2007, Salaam Jihad and Michael Howard, ‘US Troops Attempt to Stem Baghdad's Sectarian Bloodshed’, Guardian , 7 August 2006; Solomon Moore and Julian E. Barnes, ‘Many Iraqi Troops are No-Shows in Baghdad’, Los Angeles Times , 23 September 2006; Suzanne Goldberg, ‘We've Lost the Battle for Baghdad, US Admits’, Guardian , 20 October 2006; and Sanger, Gordon and Burns, ‘Chaos Overran Iraq Plan in ’06, Bush Team Says’.
67. See Raymond Whitaker, ‘Operation Sinbad. Mission Failure Casts Doubt on Entire British Presence in Iraq’, Independent on Sunday , 8 October 2006, and Associated Press, ‘US–Iraqi Checkpoints in Baghdad Lifted’, International Herald Tribune , 1 November 2006.
68. James Dobbins et al. , America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2003). A version of the longer monograph was published as James F. Dobbins, ‘America's Role in Nation-building: From Germany to Iraq’, Survival , vol. 45, no. 4, Winter 2003–04, pp. 87–110.
69. Faleh Jabar, Post-Conflict Iraq: A Race for Stability, Reconstruction and Legitimacy , United States Institute of Peace Special Report, no. 120, May 2004, p. 6.
70. See Gordon, ‘Bid to Secure Baghdad Relies on Troops and Iraqi Leaders’.
71. See Michael R. Gordon, ‘Securing Baghdad: A Numbers Game’, International Herald Tribune , 20-21 January 2007 and Frank Rich, ‘The Timely Death of Gerald Ford’, New York Times , 7 January 2007.
72. See Benard B. Fall, The Two Vietnams: A Political and Military Analysis (London: Frederick Praeger, 1968), pp. 106–7.
73. On counter-insurgency doctrine see Bard E. O'Neill, Insurgency and Terrorism: Inside Modern Revolutionary Warfare (Dulles, VA: Brassey's, 1990), p. 130 and D. Michael Shafer, Deadly Paradigms: The Failure of US Counter-insurgency Policy (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1988), p. 155. On state power see Michael Mann, ‘The Autonomous Power of the State: its Origins, Mechanisms and Results’, in Michael Mann, States, War and Capitalism, Studies in Political Sociology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), p. 4.
74. ‘The Shia-dominated government in Baghdad had since ignored all appeals for money for reconstruction (the “build” phase), which has meant few new jobs. Many Sunni areas complain of similar treatment from Baghdad. Tel Afar is now sliding back into instability. Thus a smart American strategy falls prey to the political realities in Iraq.’ Zakaria, ‘Rethinking the Way Forward’.
75. Iraq's ministries are managing to spend ‘as little as 15 percent of the 2006 capital budgets they received to do … rebuilding’. Across the government in 2006 estimates suggest that only 20% of all capital budgets were spent. See James Glanz, ‘Iraq Falls Far Behind in Spending’, International Herald Tribune , 11 December 2006.
76. See Charles A. Kupchan, ‘Getting In: The Initial Stage of Military Intervention’, in Ariel E. Levite, Bruce W. Jentleson and Larry Berman (eds), Foreign Military Intervention: The Dynamics of Protracted Conflict (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), p. 243.
77. See George W. Downs, ‘The Lessons of Disengagement’, in Levite et al., Foreign Military Intervention , p. 287.
78. Or as Paul Krugman put it, ‘Iraq has become a quagmire of the vanities – a place where America is spending blood and treasure to protect the egos of men who won't admit that they were wrong’. ‘Quagmire of the Vanities’, International Herald Tribune , 9 January 2007.
79. See Downs, ‘The Lessons of Disengagement’, p. 294.
80. See Bush, ‘President's Address to the Nation’.