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'Is Iraq in a state of civil war now? How do you tell?' POWERPLAY(The Sunday Herald Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)HERE'S a measure of the madness: an ecumenical gathering of Shias and Muslims, returning from a demonstration against civil war following the destruction of the al-Askari shrine, are waylaid outside Baghdad, machine-gunned and left dead in a ditch. As nearly 200 civilians are buried in Iraq this weekend, it seems strangely inadequate, yet tasteless, to say: "Told you so." But the point is, many people did warn that this would be the outcome of the Iraq invasion in 2003. Indeed, this has been one of the most accurately forecast calamities in the history of international affairs. It wasn't just hacks like me who were saying as long ago as 2002 that a Western military invasion of Iraq would destabilise the entire Middle East, provoke a fresh round of international terrorism and plunge Iraq into civil war. Just about everyone from the CIA to Christian Aid said that a military strike against Saddam would be a mad adventure destined for disaster. Is Iraq in a state of civil war this weekend? How can you tell? So many people are being murdered indiscriminately throughout this country that the question of whether a civil war has formally been declared seems rather academic. Just look at the body count. This war has been devastating not just to Iraq but to the entire civilised world. It has corrupted the governments that inspired it; killed almost as many US and British servicemen as died in the 9/11 bombing; stuffed the mortuaries of Baghdad with Muslim corpses; played perfectly into the hands of al-Qaeda; and handed large parts of the Middle East to religious fundamentalists. A beacon of democracy? More like a funeral pyre of Western values. The main political beneficiary of the war has been President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad of Iran. His Shia-based Islamic republic appears to have been handed influence over much of Iraq on a plate. He is already orchestrating events in Basra, with the acquiescence of the British military, which seems sanguine about handing its slice of this shattered land over to the ayatollahs. But did we really go to war to create an Islamic republic, complete with subjugation of women, persecution of homosexuals and denial of free speech? Evidently, we did. We also went to war to hand the north of Iraq over to the Kurdish Peshmerga guerrillas, who now lay claim to the oilfields of Kirkuk, currently the communal property of the Sunni Muslims who backed the former dictator Saddam Hussein. There will be trouble there in due course. But for now the main focus of ethnic tension is between Sunnis and the Shia majority in the south. Yes, it is all looking horribly familiar. This is Lebanon after 1975, Pakistan after partition in 1947, the Balkans after the collapse of Yugoslavia, there are even echoes of Northern Ireland. Iraq is beginning to look like a history lesson in communal violence. Meanwhile the Americans are stuck behind their green line like the cops in Fort Apache The Bronx. What should they do? If the Americans stay, they remain a focus of discontent, a magnet for insurgents, a casus belli for global jihad. If they go, they'll leave civil war, ethnic cleansing, an orgy of Muslim bloodletting which will probably only cease when another dictator takes over and crushes all opposition. As for the Brits, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Blair's former envoy to Iraq, says the country will "fall apart more quickly" if coalition troops are withdrawn. The idea that the British could in some way broker a peace and smooth the path to democracy seems to have been abandoned. This is hugely important for the future geopolitical stability of the world. The bloodbath in Iraq will have repercussions throughout the Western liberal democracies which patronised this invasion. Something much uglier has been released than just a Muslim turf war in Iraq. In western countries such as France and Denmark, a new form of expatriot Arab nationalism is emerging - a new fundamentalism which is being reproduced in Western social democracies. Internal colonies of poor and insecure Muslims have been radicalised by the invasion and its bloody aftermath. It is regarded as a global Christian crusade against Islamic civilisation. These misguided and embittered individuals, often second-generation British citizens, now pose a very serious security threat - as the London bombs of 7/7 demonstrated. Within Britain's two million-strong Muslim community, a small but highly motivated minority, inflamed by faith, which sees no possibility of reconciliation of secular democracy, could threaten the social stability of the host nation. This represents a challenge to liberals and even conservatives in the West. The comfortable certainties of multiculturalism are being shattered. This is a new phenomenon which the liberal intelligentsia can neither comprehend nor placate. Can Western democracies permit enclaves of Sharia law within their society in the name of multiculturalism? The answer is no. But it is the Iraq war which has caused this desperate situation. It was all so predictable and it's not the end of the story. Thanks to the Iraq catastrophe, Iran has emerged as an Arab leader with nuclear ambitions. The Iranians intend to undermine the security of the West and are quite prepared to use oil as a weapon. Bogged down in an unwinnable war, America can do nothing other than deliver threats. America is overstretched, burdened by massive deficits and a dollars-2 trillion war bill for Iraq. There is a very real risk now of a global economic dislocation, precipitated by a run on the dollar. None of this was inevitable. This is no natural disaster; it was entirely made by politicians who were too stupid or blinkered to think through the consequences of their actions, or even listen to their security advisers. The final tragedy of Iraq is that those political leaders in America and Britain remain in office. |