It is now clear even to the most fanatical Bush acolyte that the neoconservative agenda in Iraq has come unstuck, horribly so. President Bush is trashing about for a solution and the old statesmen of the first Bush Presidency are there to help out in the Baker Commission. A few important points need be stressed. First, the partition of Iraq along sectarian lines will not help in establishing peace in the region. On the contrary it will only add to the list of failed and failing states. Second, the brutaal war waged by the USA against the people of Iraq, particularly the fanning of Shiaa resentment against the Sunnis has added a very complex dimension to the whole issue. As we have repeatedly pointed out in our past blogs, the USA has unintentionally strengthened the political space available to Iran and in so doing did what Iran had always hoped, a crisis from which like a pheonix a Shiaa state could arise. Surely the Bush Administration should have realised the folly of pursuing its highly provocative policy oi military occupation of Iraq.
This is not the time for recriminations. It is the time for solutions. The death toll in Iraq is unacceptable and this cycle of violence cannot be accepted by the international community. What are the options.
The tregion as a whole does not regard USA as part of the solution. In fact public opinion is firmly committed to the proposition that USA is the problem. Therefore the solution lies in the simultaneous withdrawal of USA and Britain from Iraq and the posting of a strong Iranian and Arab Peace Keeping force without UN supervision. This measure is required bwecause the region as a whole feels that the United Nations does not represent the wishes ans aspirations of the average person in the region and has become a tool in the hands of powerful Anglo-Saxon nations like the USA and its smaller ally Blair's England. This move will assuage the feelings of Iraqis because none of the important states in the region--Syria, Jordon, Iran and Turkey--will find the partition of Iraq a viable solution as all of them have sizable Kurdish or Sunni populations. Iran will not be eager to join this peace keeping mission, but pressure from the other Moslem states can pursuade Iran to send her troops.
This effort is of course premised upon the fact that the middle eastern peace process, especially the Two state solution envisage by the so called Road Map be restarted. The Israeli attak on Lebanon has added another important factor, and hence the states of the region may have some mechanism for collective security.
The objectives for which the war was faught in Iraq have not been realised and the al-Qaeda has emwerged very strong in the region not in an organisational sense but certainly in an ideological sense. The combined peace keeping efforts of the powers of the region in which the Shiaa state of Iran is the counterveiling power may help stem the tide.