Iraq: Taking stock of the last decade

In November 2002, a senior correspondent for The Atlantic, James Fallows, questioned readers if America was ready for a long-term relationship with Iraq. Writing four months before the US invasion, Fallows harrowingly predicted a task of nation-building at hand once Saddam Hussein was toppled. A series of misguided policies – the 'shock and awe' of occupation at first and botched attempts to create a democratic state after – saw Fallow's fears play out in reality. A swift invasion protracted into a long drawn occupation, a quagmire reminiscent of America's experience in Vietnam nearly three decades earlier.

It is hard to draw a conclusion on the events of the last ten years. The cost of the war – in terms of human lives and resources expended – has been higher than any estimates predicted before the invasion in March 2003. Yet, Iraqis no longer live under the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein today and the country is finally starting to experience a degree of stability in certain regions. But to understand Iraq's future requires taking stock of the last decade. Arguably, this past decade was marked by the lack of a legitimate case for going to war in 2003 in the first place. A subsequent failure to rebuild a country long unfamiliar with strong political institutions and a case of American imperial overstretch since then has transformed Iraq – and the Middle East –into a region most onlookers would fail to recognize a decade since the invasion in 2003.

For a war that was based on false pretexts around Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, the results may have been written long ago. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 had badly damaged America's sense of security. It was dubbed as a 'failure of imagination', an event considered improbable for a nation that was long safe in its own harbours and one that American intelligence failed to forewarn. Yet less than two years later, faulty intelligence led the US to a grave new war. A new 'Bush Doctrine' had laid the path for American intervention in a post 9/11 world which endorsed pre-emptive and unilateral measures as legitimate means to change regimes in the so-called axis of terror. Iraq was the first stop (Afghanistan was a different case some would say, a war waged in retaliation for harbouring al-Qaeda). Still reeling from the shock of 9/11, very few in the American public or the media questioned the case that the then President made to Congress in his State of the Union address in January 2003. Having failed to secure UN authorization for military intervention, it became paramount for the American forces to unearth evidence of Saddam's stockpiles and claim a degree of legitimacy for its actions. It was not long before it became clear that the promised WMDs had already been dismantled by the past regime and quite suddenly, the American unilateral invasion lost its sole justification. Unlike in Rwanda or Bosnia where a clear humanitarian crisis justified intervention during the 1990s, Iraq came to lack a moral legitimacy from the onset, a dilemma that would haunt and bog down American forces for a long war.

The task of nation building in Iraq was not an easy one either. In the immediate aftermath of the fall of Baghdad, many American advisors were surprised to see the lack of resistance from local forces and found themselves with the task of cobbling together a new Iraqi state. While the victory was swift, the aftermath proved to be chaotic. Interviews later with Pentagon insiders later revealed that there was no Plan B in place – any roadmap to rebuild the country was glaringly absent. The hastily formed Coalition Provincial Authority took a series of decisions that soon opened up fault lines in a society long suppressed by the Baath party. 400,000 armed men were let go from the Iraqi army, a move that not only put thousands of Iraqis out of work but left a security vacuum to be exploited later by extremist groups.

Analysts often point out that Iraq, as a state, had begun to crumble in the 1990s when UN sanctions against the Saddam regime reduced its capacity to deliver services, and when the Kurdish north gained autonomy thanks to UN enforced no-fly zone. Once any semblance of a central government vanished with the US invasion, Iraq's old fault lines resurfaced in the form of sectarian violence. A unique ethnic and sectarian mix of a Shia Muslim majority, 20% Sunni Muslim and 15% Kurdish, along with several other minorities may have predestined the country to a civil war. Toby Dodge, who teaches at the London School of Economics, takes the argument even further: the collapse of the Iraqi state created the social stress and acceptance of violence that allowed what he calls "ethnic entrepreneurs"—political manipulators of sectarians fears—to flourish. 2006 -2007 marked the culmination of a perfect storm as sectarian violence spiralled into unabashed bloodletting, aided by foreign actors and local militias. A lost opportunity in 2003 to quickly secure the power vacuum in Baghdad meant US troops had to now contend with quelling the violence and deprioritize the task of building political institutions. A troop surge in 2009 allowed the US to finally stabilize the violent infighting but sealed its fate for an urgent exit. By 2010, for an ill-defined war whose objectives were dubious, America had little choice but to cut its losses and walk away from the task of establishing a democratic Iraq.

Meanwhile, at home, the Americans were grappling with another crisis of a different kind: the collapse of the US financial markets in the fall of 2008. Facing an unprecedented debt burden and soaring unemployment, any idealism of fighting a far flung war began to lose sway amongst the American public. With fears of a looming double dip recession, American policymakers faced a critical case of imperial overstretch. For what was a war to reiterate American power across the globe turned out to a drain on the resources of a nation struggling with a domestic mess of an economy.  By March 2013, according to a poll by CBS News, 54 percent of Americans said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq while 50 percent said the United States did not succeed in achieving its objectives. The Iraqi experience clearly did not morph public opinion in support of the war and left most disillusioned by the need for American intervention far from its borders.

And yet, it is perhaps too early to write off Iraq completely. Security incidents have dropped significantly and the Kurdish north and Shiite south are seeing the benefits of stability for the first time. Turkish and Middle Eastern investors are fuelling an industrial and property boom in Irbil and Sulaymaniya, Kurdish cities once brutally suppressed by Saddam Hussein. At the national level, oil production is up significantly to almost three million barrels per day, and has helped the Iraqi parliament to pass a $100 billion budget in mid-February. Financial analysts have pegged Iraq as one of the fastest growing markets in the Middle East, a prospect aided by the fact that most of Iraq's infrastructure and industries have long been operating at far below capacity. On the diplomatic front, Baghdad has received its first Saudi ambassador since 1990s, hosted the Arab League summit and renewed relations with key neighbours, including Jordan and UAE.

The road for Iraqis over this past decade has by no means been an easy one. The average Iraqi is the single actor who has borne the majority of costs in terms of human lives and livelihood. The outcome of a less than legitimate invasion coupled with the political failure has meant that Iraq's future is still very much a work in progress. But with the first signs of optimism in a long time, the next decade for Iraq has the potential to be its turnaround story.

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Safwan Shabab is a Bangladeshi investor currently based in Chicago.