The International Politics of the Persian Gulf

7. Regional Consequences of Internal Turmoil in Iraq

144 Regional Consequences of Internal Turmoil in Iraq D a n i e l L . B y m a n Iraq is moving away from the abyss of all-out civil war on which it teetered in 2006, but it is still far from being a stable country.1 The Iraqi government and coalition forces have made considerable progress in defeating Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and reducing the power of warlords in several areas. Yet the progress so far is fragile, and much remains to be done. Terrorism within Iraq remains a tremendous problem, with suicide bombing and other attacks occurring on a regular basis. Warlordism and a lack of the rule of law plague much of the country: the central government’s writ is weak and in many parts of the country clearly secondary to local figures. Indeed, the US effort to work with local leaders to defeat AQI has exacerbated this problem.2 Internal divisions, always considerable, are strong, with tension between communal groups—and just as important, within them—at times flaring up into violence. Iraq’s economy is stalled, and its middle class decimated by war and emigration. At the very least, Iraq will remain a limited source of instability for its neighbors and other regional states. Should Iraq return to the dark days of 2006, the risk of instability spreading from Iraq to neighboring states is far greater. Because stability in Iraq is so tentative, and because it depends on many factors that are difficult to predict and even harder to control, a US and regional priority should be to prevent the Iraqi conflict from spilling over and destabilizing neighboring states, an approach that requires preventing neighboring states from intervening, helping mitigate the risks associated with refugees, and striking terrorist havens, among other measures. Regional Consequences of Internal Turmoil in Iraq | 145 This chapter examines different potential forms of spillover from the Iraq conflict should violence return to the high levels we saw in 2006. In doing so, it draws on lessons from other large-scale civil wars as well as on the conditions in Iraq and in neighboring countries. It concludes by offering recommendations for the United States and regional states to mitigate the problems of spillover. Potential Forms of Spillover The consequences of the civil war on Iraq have been devastating. Although estimates vary widely depending on the methodology used, even a conservative methodology suggests that well over 100,000 Iraqis have died from the conflict so far.3 Beyond the consequences for Iraq and the moral obligations this places on the United States, the greatest threat that the United States would face from an all-out civil war in Iraq is the problem of spillover—the tendency of large-scale civil wars to impose burdens, create instability, and even trigger civil wars in other, usually neighboring, countries.4 The Middle East is no stranger to spillover. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has produced a series of interlocking patterns of conflict, with one civil war effectively sparking others in neighboring states. The various wars produced many forms of spillover, including masses of Palestinian refugees (augmented in 1967 by Israel’s conquest of the West Bank and Gaza). These Palestinian refugees and their continued attacks on Israel contributed to the 1956 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars, provoked a civil war in Jordan in 1970–71, and, when they were defeated and forced to flee to Lebanon, they then triggered the Lebanese civil war of 1975–90. In turn, the Lebanese civil war galvanized internal unrest in Syria, which only ended its own civil war in 1982 by employing horrific levels of violence against its own people. It is frightening that such patterns of interlocking civil wars are not uncommon . Genocide and civil war in Rwanda triggered the Congolese civil war that has been raging since 1996 and continues, albeit in a more muted form, today. Civil war in Croatia in 1991 triggered the subsequent conflict in Bosnia, which in turn fed the 1998–99 Kosovo war, which gave rise to the guerrilla war in Macedonia in 2001. Likewise, in the Caucasus, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict (a civil war within Azerbaijan that was at the heart of Baku’s conflict with Armenia) was an important spur to the fighting in Georgia, and both had an impact on (and were themselves affected by) the fighting in Chechnya. 146 | Daniel L. Byman Unfortunately, Iraq appears...