There are now no good routes – only painful ones – out of the disaster which the Coalition has brought upon itself in Iraq.
Though history may well say that occupation of Iraq was a classic of how to fight this kind of conflict, what happened next has been a classic of how not to build the peace that follows.
We have failed in Iraq. This is not to say that nothing positive can now emerge; or that ignominious retreat is the only outcome. It is merely to state what is now obvious to all – that the Coalition cannot now achieve the ambitious aims it set for itself four years ago. Iraq is a particularly painful example of the hubris which attends over ambitious aims, when it comes to post conflict reconstruction.
So what should we do now?
Well, the question is no longer shall we withdraw? but how and when and in what circumstances?
And here we have a problem. We are no longer in control in Iraq – our actions no longer shape events, they are shaped by them. And that applies to the circumstances of our withdrawal, too.
We are now in that dangerous territory where polices no longer define outcomes, they only give us the best chance of realising hopes.
And in the bonfire of hopes and ambitions in Iraq of the last four years, only one has survived as remotely achievable. To maintain a unitary Iraq and avoid, if we can, its dismemberment into chaos.
This can be no other aim for our policy now but this. For only if we achieve it can we have any hope of an orderly withdrawal and any prospect of leaving behind relatively stable peace.
What this means is a policy with three ingredients – and cutting and running isn’t one of them.
First we must continue to strengthen the army. The Iraqi police are a disaster and will remain so. The only force in Iraq with any remote potential for acting as the last bulwark against a descent into civil war and ultimate anarchy, is now the army – or at least we have to hope so.
Second we need to be more pro-active in seeking a political solution to the future shape of a unitary Iraq. Everyone knows that this lies in a strongly federal Iraq – but no-one can agree what that should look like. Current international policy is to stand to aside, leave this to domestic populations and play no part in this debate. This is a luxury we cannot afford any longer.
Day by bloody day Iraq is being reshaped, not by rational dialogue, but through murder, violence and ethnic cleansing. We may not now be able to stop Iraq breaking up – but we should not wish it to happen, or stand idly by while it does.
And the best – arguably the only way to prevent this is for the international community now to take a pro-active role in creating Iraq’s new federal structure before it is too late.
This is not a job for the Coalition – they cannot do it. It is a job for the wider international community, including, crucially Iraq’s neighbours, who are the third element in any plan to avoid a deeper catastrophe.
Perhaps it is not yet quite too late – I doubt if most of Iraq’s neighbours – with the possible exception of Iran – really want to see chaos and a vacuum of power on their borders.
But the only plan for a federal, unitary Iraq which could succeed would be one buttressed by an international community agreement, to which the neighbours themselves are committed – like the Dayton agreement, which enshrined the shape of Bosnia in an international agreement after the war there ended in 1995.
Is this possible? It will certainly be difficult – but it offers the best solution – perhaps now the only one which can avoid the catastrophe of collapse in Iraq.
It is no longer within the power of the United States to broker such a regional solution. But there could be role for the EU here.
There is already a group called the Neighbours Forum, which consists of Turkey, Iran, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. It meets regularly at Foreign and Interior Minster level and has recently invited the EU and UN as observers. The EU could and should now, urgently use this forum as a framework to work towards a wider regional settlement which includes the central question of Palestine and incorporates an agreement, guaranteed by the international community and underpinned by the neighbours, on the future shape of Iraq.
There is no other context within which any hope of a reasonable end to the Iraq tragedy can be achieved.
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