From Belfast to Baghdad – what have we learned?

Britain took 38 years to bring the warring parties to the middle ground.

from the August 16, 2007 edition

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In analogous fashion, American forces in Baghdad were welcomed as liberators in 2003. However, within a year, the United States was faced with a full-blown insurgency, primarily led by Sunni militants who perceived the US as siding with the Shiites. As occurred in Belfast, the new Iraqi military and national police force were seen as being partial to one side. Baghdad's Sunnis feared the Shiite death squads operated by the firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr (whose Mahdi Army also attacked Americans), but they equally feared the Shiite dominated national police. As a result of a sharp upswing in sectarian killing in the capital, Baghdad became the center of gravity in American strategy, resulting in the "surge" of forces this spring. However, after witnessing growing levels of cooperation between American forces and Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar Province, it is now the Shiites who increasingly distrust the Americans, with serious tensions arising recently between US Army General David Petraeus and Iraq's Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. And Shiite militias are presently the biggest threat to US forces in Baghdad.

Northern Ireland was a tough and thorny situation, but in terms of relative complexity, it was a game of checkers compared with the three-dimensional chess board that Iraq has become. Indeed, what began as a simple, old-fashioned war between the US and Iraq has now evolved into a nest of infernal complexities that almost defies description. When the US does something to support or appease one party, it creates hostility in at least two of the other internal actors and one or more external players.

Like the British in Ireland, the US has morally constrained itself from simply choosing one side and repressing or killing everyone else, but as a result the only "middle ground" in Iraq is the ground American combat forces now occupy. It took 38 years in Northern Ireland for the British to bring the warring sides to the middle ground, to make peace, and to withdraw. Anyone who claims the US can resolve the situation in Iraq more quickly is sadly mistaken.

Douglas A. Borer is an associate professor at Monterey's Naval Postgraduate School. He is the author of "Superpowers Defeated: Vietnam and Afghanistan Compared" and co-editor of "Information Strategy and Warfare: A Guide to Theory and Practice." The views here are his.

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