On December 18, 2011, Iraqis watched in mixed fear and
jubilation as the last US tanks rolled across the border into Kuwait, marking
an official end to the American-led invasion in 2003. Two years later in 2013,
those fears seem to have borne out while jubilation is in short supply:
civilian deaths are reaching levels not seen since the Iraqi civil war of
2007-2009, and massive attacks have become a regular facet of everyday life. In
September alone, there were nearly 1,000 deaths, 800 of which were civilians. Even this was shy of
the 2013 high of 1,057 deaths in July. Sectarian, regional, and tribal divides
have widened, not subsided, and the Maliki government itself is a hotbed of
corruption, poor governance, and has lost the public’s faith as a democratic
institution. The current path of Iraq indicates at best a pattern of cyclical
violence, and at worst a nearly unstoppable march back to civil war.
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| Qasim Ahmad Tahan carries the body of his 5-year-old son Walid. Courtesy AP. |
Yet chances are, you haven’t seen Iraq in the headlines in a
while. Violent acts have become so frequent that they hardly make it on Twitter
reports. On Monday alone, 15 car bombs went off in Baghdad, which, as the BBC’s
Michael Knights points out, “would have been an unprecedented event...[i]n any
other country.” In Iraq, it was the 38th attack of this kind in the
last 12 months. Given that the current security crisis began but did not end
with the US occupation of 2003-2011, American policymakers should be scrambling
to figure out a way to aid the Maliki government in combatting the violence.
With a civil war next door in Syria and unrest in Egypt, instability is
spreading like disease throughout the region in the wake of the Arab
Awakening’s derailing by autocrats. Combined with US war weariness with Iraq
itself, it appears that the US can or will do little to stem the tide of what
is becoming a river of blood.
