There are approximately 5,200 U.S. troops on the ground in Iraq performing a variety of counterterrorism operations, including train, assist, and equip missions with the Iraqi security forces. Some of those soldiers, however, may be coming back home (or at least re-deploying) from Iraq after the Pentagon announced the shuttering of the land component command of Operation Inherent Resolve. The statement from U.S. military officials comes less than two weeks before millions of Iraqis go to the polls to choose their next parliament, and at the same time the Trump administration is deliberating about what America’s force structure in Iraq should look like.
Commanders in the counter-ISIS coalition, however, are concentrating on the wrong question. The factor that will prevent another jihadist insurgency in Iraq and help determine Iraq’s success or failure is not the number of American troops stationed in the country—it’s how Iraq’s own politicians behave.
In the normal discourse of Washington’s national security community, the fast and violent rise of ISIS in Iraq is often pinned on President Barack Obama’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011. We are frequently told that this decision was hasty, ill-advised, and driven by domestic political considerations rather than the realities of Iraq. Defense Secretary James Mattis wants to ensure that a similar withdrawal does not occur under the Trump administration’s watch.
The trouble with this argument, though, is that it not only assumes that it is the U.S. military’s job to pacify Iraq and turn it into a wealthy, peaceful, and corruption-free nation, but that it is within America’s ability to do it.
A decade and a half of deep involvement in the Middle East should have ridden that notion out of the minds of the Beltway elite. Iraq, after all, had more than 160,000 Americans in uniform at one point, yet it was still a country riven by a fractured society, a highly turbulent security environment, endless amounts of political nepotism and government abuse, and elected politicians who were beholden to sectarian interests. While sectarian violence decreased temporarily during the U.S. troop surge, the policy was merely a holding pattern meant to provide enough stabilization and calm for Iraqi politicians to coexist and reconcile. Iraq’s leaders failed to seize that opportunity.
The ISIS invasion across northern and eastern Iraq and the fact that a sizable portion of Iraq’s Sunni community either supported the group or tolerated it as the better option over a Shia-dominated government in Baghdad was in many ways an indictment of how little effect the 2007-2008 surge had on Iraqi politics and society. The Islamic State arose not because the United States did not have sufficient skin in the game (as some analysts robotically point out), but because the Iraqi government under then-Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was the definition of abrasive, parochial, and authoritarian. Sunni lawmakers and ministers were charged with terrorism offenses or forced into exile; Sunni tribal forces who partnered with Baghdad against al Qaeda were stripped of their salaries and left unemployed; and units of the Iraqi army were being repurposed as the prime minister’s personal spear against political rivals and anti-government demonstrators.
Sunni Iraqis viewed Shia politicians as lackeys blindly following the orders of their masters in Iran, and Shia Iraqis viewed Sunni tribal leaders and parliamentarians as allies of al Qaeda and threats to the state. With such a mistrustful, dysfunctional, and combustible environment, is there any wonder why the Islamic State was able to gain popular support and invade and capture substantial amounts of Iraqi territory so quickly?
Fortunately for Iraq, ISIS is no longer the wild beast that it was four years ago. With the group all but finished, the Iraqi people and their politicians have a second chance at rehabilitation and reconciliation. It is time for that country’s leaders to pick up the pieces and rebuild with the help of their regional allies after four years of tough urban warfare.
This is not to say that Iraq does not have a full plate of issues to address. The divide between Iraq’s political class and the citizens it is duty bound to serve is wide and will take years to bridge. When asked about the political climate, Ismail Jassim of Karmah, Iraq, remarked to The New York Times he was both angry and disappointed with lawmakers across the country. “Our politicians do nothing for us,” he said. “We never see them, except on TV at election time.”
Can any of Iraq’s endemic problems be solved? Yes, they can. But they will only be solved by Iraqis in suits, not by American corporals and sergeants in desert camouflage.
It is not the responsibility of the United States to play the alien mediator whenever Iraqis are unwilling or unable to come together to resolve their differences over how the government should run, who should be appointed to which position, or what the focus of the national budget should be.
The Trump administration’s goals should be to safeguard U.S. security and prosperity, not to rebuild fractured Middle Eastern countries. Even massive, costly, permanent occupations and nation-building campaigns have failed for nearly two decades. America can eliminate transnational terrorist threats, but only the political leaders throughout Iraq can rebuild that nation.
President Trump is fond of telling the American public that the U.S. will no longer be doing the business that other foreign countries should be doing for themselves. In a post-ISIS Iraq, Trump now has an opportunity to execute it.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a fellow at Defense Priorities.
