Iraq is still a violent mess. Its democracy, imposed by the Americans, looks fragile. And the prospect of real harmony between the three main ethnic and sectarian components—Arab Shias, Arab Sunnis and Kurds—looks as distant as ever.”
-- Economist, January 5th 2013
With today’s ten year anniversary of George Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech on the USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003, it is worth examining where things stand in Iraq now and where the country might be headed. Few would argue that Iraq is the flourishing, pro-American democracy that Bush and his supporters envisioned at the start of the U.S.-led invasion. Circumstances there are not nearly as bad as they were from 2005-2007, to be sure. However, violence continues to be a problem in much of Iraq, and economic conditions there remain poor despite rising oil production. More importantly, the country’s deep sectarian and ethnic fissures have worsened to the point that they threaten Iraq’s continued viability as a nation state.
Security in Iraq remains a serious concern. Most news retrospectives of the Iraq war published in recent weeks have emphasized that Iraq is a much less violent place than was the case a few years ago, but such statements can obscure the reality that mass terrorist attacks are an ongoing phenomenon there. Bombings with death tolls that dwarf the recent Boston Marathon tragedy occur with some frequency, as do political assassinations. The number of violent Iraqi civilian deaths increased by about 10 percent during the first year following the U.S. military withdrawal, but violence fell in the last three months of 2012. There has been a spike in violent activity by al-Qaeda in Iraq and like-minded groups since the end of December, however, with wide scale attacks against Shiites, government security forces, and Sunnis seen to be collaborating with the government in Baghdad. The State Department issued a warning to U.S. citizens in late February to avoid “all but essential travel to Iraq given the security situation.” In light of these circumstances, Baghdad officials have reconsidered their earlier decision to decrease security cooperation with Washington following the U.S. military withdrawal at the end of 2011.