‘They make a desert and call it peace’’.

Obama was pontificating about Iraq on BBC  a last week, and got it completely wrong. So have all the chattering classes.

 

They chunter on about jihadists, Islamic extremists, terrorists and more.

 

It’s none of the above. It is both a religious and a civil war. These have always been notable for massacres and atrocities on a barbaric scale.

 

What we are seeing is a resumption of the Sunni – Shia conflict that has been going on spasmodically for centuries and the disintegration of the artificial states that were so casually and treacherously created by the British and French after WW1, breaking all the promises made to the Arabs on the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. Saudi Arabia is justifiably worried. The fall of the House of Saud is only a matter of time, although it keeps paying danegeld to ISIS and every other Wahhabi militant grouping .

 

Syria has ceased to exist as a viable state and may well emerge as three separate entities, a major cause of the destabilisation of Iraq. Kurdistan is a de facto state.

 

Western policy and activity in Muslim countries has been such an unmitigated disaster that it is difficult to imagine how it could have been worse. The initial idiocy was to overthrow the only stable, secular regime in the Middle East for reasons that have still not been fully explained. It was clear at the time that the notion of replacing Saddam’s autocracy with democracy was not going to happen.

 

There was no follow-up plan after ‘shock and awe’. The Iraqi military was disbanded but not disarmed. Anyone with a Ba’athist connection was banned from public office i.e. everyone with administrative skills since membership of the Party was a prerequisite. Looting was virtually unchecked. The rule of law was almost non-existent and ‘democracy’ was a mockery.

 

When the US occupied Iraq, it put in place politicians who were incompetent crooks whose sole qualification was that they were well-disposed towards America. Every Government Ministry was an opportunity for  enrichment on a breath-taking scale, including 10years ago more than $1 billion intended for arms procurement. The US authorities must have been aware of it.

 

Iraqis regard their leaders as racketeers who will steal everything possible

 

The war cost trillions of dollars and tens of thousands of military casualties. Iraqi civilian dead numbered more than 100,000. Nearly 10,000 were killed in 2013.

 

Whether the carnage in Iraq will increase the risk of terrorism in the West remains to be seen, but there is little sign of it in the present conflict.  The one certainty is that there will  no Western ‘boots on the ground’, but real diplomatic and foreign policy opportunities might arise.

 

The media has belatedly caught on to the prospect of a rapprochement between the US and Iran. Already Iranian military assistance is arriving in Baghdad. Saudi Arabia will  have a fit of carpet-biting, but the House of Saud is yesterday; Iran is tomorrow.

 

In the likely event of Iraqi oil supplies being disrupted there is a pretext for immediately lifting the oil embargo on Iran.

 

Will the West see this as a ‘carpe diem’ moment? Not on previous performance!