The previous post reviewed my assumptions on the major internal Iraqi political and military actors. This post will address some of these groups’ major political and economic aspiration goals. Finally we will examine how these goals either are or can be blocked by the other actors involved.
The SCIRI/Badr and SCIRI aspirations are very similar and mainly vary in which subgroup gets the marginal distribution of the spoils that they seek. These groups’ supporters tend to be Shia, moderately to well education, professional, and do not live in Baghdad or Basra. These supporters overwhelmingly live in the oil producing regions of the South as well as next to the oil distribution network.
The desired end state for these two groups is a weak central government and either strong provincial or a federation of provincial governments that control the vast majority of the oil revenue that is generated on their supporters’ territory. This will allow for the vast majority of the spoils to be distributed to their supporters.
These two factions are willing to work with the United States while also seeking to maintain strong relations with Iran. DAWA is more likely to allow a permanent US military presence. SCIRI would not mind an eventual withdrawal, but needs the US military to confront their internal enemies.
There are a couple of potential veto points that deny these two groups their desired end state. The first significant veto area is that these two groups control do not contain Basra or Baghdad. Without both of these cities, the rump Shia state in the south is economically infeasible. Sadrists control Basra and the oil export capability for the south. They have not exercised this capability but the latent threat is there.
Secondly, even if they can export oil from the south, without the control of Baghdad and the routes into the city, the rump state would still be an economic basket case. The Sunni Arab insurgents are able to deny the ability of Baghdad to function as a workable city and they control the major access routes into and out of the city to the south and the east. Finally the US government will attempt to veto through economic and diplomatic means any improved Iraq-Iran ties.
The Kurds are also want to decentralize power. Their primary goal is to ensure a functionally and eventually fully independent Kurdistan that includes Kirkuk. The two primary internal veto players are the Sadrists and the Sunni Arab insurgencies. The Sadrists have sent groups of their militia to Kirkuk to protect their coreligionists, while the Sunni Arabs have an economic stranglehold on the Kurdish export routes. The oil fields may be in Kurdish areas, or just outside of Kirkuk, but the pipelines and refineries are located on Sunni Arab territory. The distribution network for northern oil production has been severely degraded and often shut down.
Now in the long run there is a decent chance that a Kurdish economy that can not depend on oil as a hard currency generator would be a good thing as the lack of economic rent should encourage the creation of a diversified and deep high value add economy, but the economic rents are very alluring to the political and economic elites of the Kurdish regions.
The Sadrists desired end state is a nationalistic, reasonably strong central government that will distribute significant resources and protection to the urban Shiite populations. This entails a government with an arms length, but functional relationship with Iran and the US influence massively reduced. This has led to the two revolts in April and August of 2004, and what I perceive to be a very deep and reasonably effective combined political-military game of being the internal quasi-loyal opposition for the Shiite political umbrella.
However the Sadrists face several significant veto players. The United States government is the most notable veto player, as US military operations frequently target Sadrist activities and members. However the more real opposition is from the other Shiite parties as there have been numerous armed clashes between Badr dominated Interior Ministry security units and both the JAM and Sadrist affiliated Iraqi Army units. This is because the distribution of oil revenues is perceived to be a zero-sum fight over economic rent. The Badr Brigades can keep a significant portion of the foreign earnings in the south.
Additionally, the Sunni Arabs are able to restrict the ability of Baghdad of being a functioning city through their control of the access routes as well as the modern capital-intensive public service infrastructure such as the oil and electricity distribution grids. Al-Quaeda in Iraq can exercise their indirect veto most effectively here by contributing to the long-standing insecurity and ethnic strife within the greater Baghdad area.
The overarching Iraqi Sunni Arab political goal is a return to their previously privileged positions within Iraqi society, thus receiving the economic, political and cultural rents that they previously were collecting under Hussein. The intermediate goal is to control a significant portion of Baghdad as a functioning city area while asserting first amongst near equals status. This goal set has the greatest set of veto players. Everyone else opposes the restoration of Sunni Arab supremacy within Iraqi society and government.
The United States government goal set is, at this point nebulous as hell. To some degree the desired policy outcome that 160,000 US troops, $120 billion dollars a year and roughly 800 US dead and 7,500 wounded is to produce a replication of this year into next year, and hand the problem off to someone other than George W. Bush. I think that the initial goal of the Bush administration was to produce a US friendly, reasonably stable, anti-Iran, weak Iraqi government that had at least the façade of democracy if possible which would pump as much oil as possible with no questions asked by 2006. I am not sure if this was the desired end state in March of 2003, but I think it is a decent approximation.
Reality has been the veto player on the maximal goals of the United States government. More specifically, the Sunni Arabs have fought the US military to a strategic draw, moving towards a strategic defeat, the Sadrists have contributed to this as well as threatening US supply lines between Kuwait and Baghdad as an unexercised veto move, and the two other Shia parties want close ties with Iran.
My basic assumption is that the desired end states of all of the relevant groups are extremely infeasible under the current power distribution. This produces a stalemate and stalemates tend to be very bloody and indecisive.
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