Iraq
The beginnings of the state of Iraq laid the groundwork for its problems in the modern era. Under a British mandate, Iraq was established out of the provinces of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul. Further settling of Iraqi borders in 1923 decreed that Kuwait was to have most of the coastline territory, effectively preventing Iraq from ever becoming a great naval power in the Gulf area. Iraqi policy has since continually refused to acknowledge Kuwait as a separate state, until very recently. The British installed monarchy ruled over the ethnically diverse country until 1958, when an army officer overthrew the government because of its pro-West stance. The new government had to deal with the problems left from the previous era, including the under-representation of the majority Shi�a Muslims, the independence movement of the northern Kurdish population, and what was seen as Western appropriation of Iraqi resources through the Iraq Petroleum Company.
The destitution of 80% of the population led to the popularity of political parties that catered to the lower classes, like the Ba�ath party. American involvement began with monetary support to these dissenting groups as a counter to the regime�s arms buildup and military threat to oil interests in the area as shown by its resumption of hostilities with Kuwait. A Ba�athist coup in 1967 led to the solidification of power under Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr and then Saddam Hussein in 1979. Their repressive methods saw the gradual removal of the party/state distinction in all areas of Iraqi life and brought stability to Iraqi politics by crushing all opposition, including the Kurdish rebellion and the Shi�a rebellion of 1979, led by the ulama-supported Islamic Call. Wealth and international recognition came to Iraq in 1972 with the nationalization of the Iraq Petroleum Company, whose revenues helped to propel industrialization and social welfare schemes into reality. Politically, Iraq aligned with the Soviet Union by signing a 15-year friendship treaty and acquiring arms from them.
Relations with Iran, bad to begin with, were momentarily patched up with the Algiers Agreement, which conceded territory to Iran in return for discontinuing support to the Kurdish rebels. However, the rise of the Ayatollah Khomeini�s universal Islam movement in Iran provided too large of a threat to the secular nationalism inherent in the Ba�ath regime. In 1980, the decision to invade Iran was made with the moral and financial support of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, who felt they were also being threatened. A protracted war followed that began to affect oil shipping in the region. Alarmed at the menace to the Middle Eastern oil supply, the United States reestablished diplomatic relations with Iraq and supplied intelligence, monetary aid and military support to Iraq and Kuwait to bolster the effort against Iran. The war ended in 1988 by an agreed ceasefire. Significantly, the Iraqi Shi�a majority had chosen to side with the Ba�athist regime rather than submit to the religious calling inherent in the Iranian message.
Saddam Hussein�s tenure was marked by the building of a vast personality cult and an intention to be the foremost country in the Arab world. After the failure of the Palestinian intifada, he was the only Arab leader to champion the Palestinian cause in the face of growing Israeli power, and he was able to justify his enormous rearmament expenditures by arguing that Israel would only recognize Palestinian rights if Arabs could achieve military parity. At the same time, he began to resume hostilities with Kuwait, for several reasons. The destruction of Basra during the Iran-Iraq war had left Iraq landlocked, and the continual refusal of Kuwait to cede offshore islands to Iraq for a naval base had prompted Iraqi aggression in 1973 and again, after 1988. The $60 billion war debt owed to Kuwait was an annoyance, as was the Kuwaiti production of oil over OPEC limits, which decreased Iraqi oil revenues by billions as oil prices began to lower. If Iraq were to gain control over Kuwait, the debt would be removed, oil production would be normalized and economic problems would no longer be an issue; also, they mistakenly feared no reprisal from Britain or the United States, who had been their staunch supporters throughout the Iran-Iraq War. The combination of these pressures and benefits led to the Gulf War.
Iraq invaded Kuwait in August of 1990, followed promptly by the beginning of Operation Desert Shield in October. The United States, alarmed at the danger to oil production in the Persian Gulf, sent a large military force to the Gulf following a formal request from Saudi Arabia. The troops had been ordered to protect Saudi borders and enforce a trade embargo on Iraq, which was supported by the Western nations, the Soviet Union and the Arab League. By November, though the venture was successful, President Bush had decided to go to war to protect Kuwaiti oil interests and to guard against the loss of the large and vital Kuwaiti investment in the Western economies. The UN Security Council had set a January 15, 1991 deadline for Iraqi withdrawal, which was ignored; American aggression then began under Operation Desert Storm. After air raids quickly eliminated the civilian infrastructure and Iraqi air defenses, Hussein sought to confuse the issue by sending Scud missiles into Israel and Saudi Arabia. During Desert Shield, he had brought attention to the US double standard in treating the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait. With this aggressive move, he again brought up the Palestinian issue and aroused Arab resentment by daring the Israelis to retaliate. If Israel had done so, US Arab allies would have been forced to withdraw instead of being caught supporting an alliance with Israel against another Arab nation. US pressure persuaded them to back down. The ground war began on February 24, after which Iraqi troops scrambled in retreat back to Basra; US air strikes killed thousands before President Bush controversially declared the war over on February 27, without ensuring the overthrow of Saddam Hussein�s regime.
The aftermath of the war proved disastrous: a southern Shi�a rebellion followed by a short-lived Kurdish rebellion in the north were quickly crushed. The eventual death toll was horrendous, with 100,000 killed during the war, 6,000 during the southern uprising, and 20,000 during the Kurdish flight into the mountains. Under the terms of the ceasefire agreement agreed upon by Iraq and the UN Security Council, Iraq was required to return Kuwaiti property, pay damage claims, accept newly set boundaries and provide locations and amounts of all chemical and biological weapons caches to the UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM). If Iraq complied, economic sanctions would be lifted and Iraq would regain oil revenues. Due to American suspicion that Iraq was not being truthful with UNSCOM, the embargo stayed. Without oil revenues, Iraq was unable to pay reparations and provide humanitarian aid to the Iraqi people. As a concession, a food for oil agreement was implemented in 1996, whereby a set amount of oil was sold in order to buy humanitarian supplies. It provided little relief, as the majority of the monies were taken by the UN to pay for reparations, Kurdish supplies and UN operations in Iraq, leaving a remainder that was too miniscule to provide for the destitute Iraqi population. Civilian infrastructure had been completely ruined and food and medical supply shortages caused great child mortality, malnutrition and disease, enhanced by the inoperability of water purification systems and sewage plants. High inflation and currency devaluation reduced the Iraqi middle class into poverty, and the destruction of industry led to rampant unemployment, which inevitably led to rises in crime and prostitution. The embargo had also isolated the intellectuals of Iraq from outside influences, and prevented the introduction of new technologies like computers and the Internet. Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein was able to stay in firm control. The obvious corruption of his family among such hard times did not make him any more loved, but his ruthlessness in wiping out opposition discouraged all dissent.
The humanitarian disaster in Iraq began to persuade Arab and Western nations that it was time to end sanctions; this left the United States alone in its insistence on retaining them. The American policy of dual containment replaced diplomacy with force. In December 1998, Hussein demanded that sanctions be ended before UNSCOM would be allowed to continue with its weapons search. Almost immediately, Britain and the United States started Operation Desert Fox, bombing the country for 3 days as a show of might. This did not frighten Hussein; he ordered his air defense to fire on allied planes, which returned fire. The bombings destroyed the established UNSCOM monitoring system and attracted heated denunciations, terminating the Security Council consensus needed to maintain economic sanctions. Arab allies were no less pleased at supporting what seemed like a greedy superpower. However, this did not stop American and British aggression. Air raids and maintenance of no-fly zones continued into 2001, as did proposals, rejections and counterproposals for the sending in of weapons inspectors into the country. In 2002, Iraq offered several proposals for the entrance of weapons inspectors. These were refused by US officials, but an agreement was finally reached upon the acceptance of a UN proposal. After the discovery of several inconsistencies in Iraqi information, President George W. Bush prepared the United States for war with his January 2003 State of the Union address. In March 2003, during a concentrated US effort to go to war against Iraq, other Security Council members threatened to veto any US proposal to enter the UN. Due to unseemly behavior and misguided attempts at diplomacy, the United States was unable to find sufficient support for the war within the UN and decided to push on alone, declaring war on Iraq on March 19 under Operation Iraqi Freedom. The short war ended in April, when Saddam Hussein�s regime fled Baghdad. Currently, US troops are maintaining order in Iraq until a provisional government can be stabilized and maintain power over all of Iraq.
The Iraqi people still remain mostly destitute and in need of a strong infrastructure that can provide the populace with jobs, social services and food. Under Saddam Hussein�s agrarian reform laws, land was redistributed among the peasant farmers but agricultural upgrades were not given assistance, so production lowered while imports increased. The Gulf War and sanctions on exports did not help matters, as Iraq could not pay for food. Social reforms also could not be paid for, as mot of these services had been provided free of charge by the social welfare state sustained by oil wealth. The many social construction projects that provided jobs for the people had strong ties to industry and oil export, but the destruction and unrest within Iraq had eliminated the projects and the job prospects of a nation. These problems continued through the 1990s though the war was long over. To combat these problems as well as control the continuing fractionation of the various ethnic identities within Iraq, a strong leadership must be started in Iraq. In control of these efforts is the US military, which has not been able to find a suitable person to head the country and relieve the US-appointed interim governing council of duty. It seems that the Iraqi people are jubilant about escaping the tyranny of Saddam Hussein�s rule, but none are happy about the US occupation of the country and its involvement in the politics of the country, and would like to rule and express their freedoms for themselves.
Nevertheless, the instability of the situation seems to call for a strong presence in the area. Thus, it would be wise for the United States to stay in the area. Similar to British actions after World War I, the US presence should be minimized and rule of the country left as much as possible to the Iraqis themselves. Though unfortunate, the current revenge killings of former members of the Hussein regime and his widely-feared mukhabarat, or intelligence services, will have to be tolerated to some degree, lest overt antagonism against Iraqis not involved in actions against Americans be misperceived. The cruelties of the fedaheen expeditions � Hussein�s paramilitary forces � must also be addressed with some measure of force, but only as a last option. After what the United States has had to go through to topple Saddam Hussein�s regime, it would be detrimental to leave before a stable and favorable regime could be implemented in Iraq. Though US involvement has been foolhardy, starting with its appearance in the Iran-Iraq War, and though it has already been condemned internationally for what was seen as a reckless and unpopular war, the United States would draw harsher criticism should it fail to provide an adequate leadership for the Iraqis. US influence should be applied to ensure a fair political treatment of the majority Shi�a Muslims, who should also have a majority of the power. The safest route to contain the various ethnic identities and power struggles would be a coalition government that calls for a mixture of identities within the cabinet and bureaucracy without allowing for extended political polarization. Again, with both Afghanistan and Somalia in mind, it is important for the United States to establish stable power and sovereignty over the whole country before leaving a fledgling government to manage on its own.
Iraq should be persuaded to accept Kuwaiti sovereignty and borders without having to issue the dark threat of US retaliation; otherwise, this could inflame anti-American and pro-Arabist intentions amidst the existing grievances against the ruling families of the Gulf states. Instead, it would be prudent to let Iraqi international relations run its own course but secretly apply pressure to limit arms sales to the new Iraqi government to slow military rearmament and reestablishment of guerrilla forces. Iran, as another point of contention, could be a problem for the Iraqi state through the negative influence of pro-Iranian Shiite Muslims groups that could vie for power. However, the repression of the Muslim regime has prompted some recent anti-Muslim opinion within Iran alongside the power struggle between the president and chief ayatollah over Muslim influence, so the appeal of a pro-Islamist message to the Iraqi population would most probably have some sort of counter within Iran. Also, the negative public opinion impact deriving from the continued casualty rate in Iraq � 439 currently � could prompt a reversal in current policy in order to save political careers, but a sufficient deterrent should be the awareness of the possible detrimental effects on Iraqi and Middle Eastern political structure and stability. President Bush is already experiencing this pressure, as shown by his decreasing standings in popularity polls. In any case, a wise policy would be to stand down, but not leave Iraq, to ensure that the transition runs smoothly.