Post-American Iraq

On the first night of Operation Desert Storm, American military forces launched a ferocious air attack that overwhelmed Iraq's defenses. It was the start of one of the most brilliant and decisive military campaigns in modern history, one that promised to cement a long era of American leadership.

Yet on that same night, Michael Scott Speicher, an American fighter pilot, was shot down by the Iraqis before vanishing for almost 20 years. On Sunday, the military announced that Speicher's remains had finally been found in western Anbar Province thanks to a tip from an Iraqi who was present at the crash site.

There's something poignant about this: As Americans prepare to leave Iraq to the Iraqis, one of the last mysteries from the first Gulf War had finally been solved. And at the risk of taking creative license, it was solved because the Bedouins who had buried Speicher almost two decades ago had come to trust the Marines who had brought something like peace to Anbar.

The American entanglement in Iraq has been defined by profound mutual incomprehension. During the Iran-Iraq war, many in the West saw Saddam Hussein as a valuable bulwark against Iran's Islamic radicalism. And after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, he was seen as a Hitlerite tyrant bent on conquering the Middle East. As President George W. Bush made the case for regime change, Saddam was convinced that the Americans were bluffing, and that they had no intention of launching an expensive invasion. What had been a formidable clandestine weapons program had evolved into an elaborate con game, which Iraq's increasingly paranoid ruler used to ward off his Iranian enemies and internal rivals.

Yet the con game was convincing enough to mislead crack intelligence analysts in the West. The incomprehension only deepened when the U.S. and its allies successfully overthrew the Baathists. Iraq was deeply divided along ethnic and sectarian lines, and civil society had been brutalized out of existence. Post-Saddam Iraq was scarred by poverty and pervasive violence, and the collapse of the Baathist state led to a collapse of basic security, one that caused Iraqis to turn to ethnic and sectarian loyalties. A bloody insurgency sparked a bloody communal conflict, one that America's post-2006 military success has greatly diminished.

But now, as American forces accelerate their withdrawal, it's clear that Iraq remains a shattered society. One can see the faint outlines of a flourishing multi-ethnic Iraqi state, one that takes its cues from the dynamic economies of the Gulf region by investing oil wealth in building a literate, outward-looking middle class. But to get there, a post-American Iraq will need the Shia majority to act with magnanimity and restraint towards the Sunni minority. So far, at least, its not clear that such enlightened behavior is forthcoming.

Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates suggested that the U.S. might withdraw an additional combat brigade in addition to the two already scheduled to leave the country at the end of the year. At the same time, the Iraqi government has been taking an independent course on security matters, one that critics claim reflects its Shia sectarianism. The Iraqi security forces attacked Camp Ashraf, home to the People's Mujahedeen of Iraq, a millenarian cult committed to the destruction of Iran's Islamic regime, a move that to some observers reflected Baghdad's friendliness towards Tehran.

Whether or not this was a wise move remains to be seen. But what's far more disturbing is the Iraqi government's failure to reach a lasting accommodation with Iraq's Sunni minority, the fears and anxieties of which fueled the insurgency in the first place. Rather than integrate the Sunni Awakening Councils into the security forces, the Iraqis have been arresting their leaders.

More dangerous still is the threat posed by the ongoing Kurdish-Arab dispute over oil-rich Kirkuk Province. Under the Baathists, large numbers of poor Shia Iraqis from Baghdad and other cities were resettled in the region to dilute Kurdish majorities. Fear of Kurdish domination has also led some Sunni Arabs in the region to support Al-Qaida in Iraq. The parallels to the former Yugoslavia and the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians are distressingly clear: The Kurds want to undo a grave historical injustice, the Arabs want to hold on to the only homes they've known for decades.

Within Iraqi Kurdistan, a new political movement, Change, has arisen to challenge the entrenched duopoly led by the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, historical rivals that now divide political spoils between them in an effort to maintain an unchallenged grip on power. This new political competition rests on the question of which faction is most eager to fight for the region's interests. Because Iraqi Kurdistan has its own militia, fighting for the region's interests means more than having a particularly tough delegation in the National Assembly. The Turks, who've faced their own long-running Kurdish insurgency, are paying close attention.

American military power is a scarce resource. The Obama White House has decided, for good reasons, that the struggle for Afghanistan and Pakistan is more vital to American security than the struggle for Iraq. It's true that the Iraqi government has gained the capacity to fight the remnants of the insurgency with some degree of effectiveness.

Besides, to truly control the political future of Iraq, the United States would have to spend enormous resources, which most Americans are convinced would be better used closer to home. Though American involvement in Iraq won't end for many years--if not, as Sen. John McCain suggested during the presidential campaign, many decades--to come, the key questions regarding the distribution of political power and resources are in the hands of the Iraqis.

One hopes that the decisions Iraq's leaders make will give meaning to the sacrifice made by the thousands of coalition troops and Iraqi security personnel who've died since the fall of Baghdad.