Levels of Complicity

A short while back, the New York Times had a lengthy piece on the evolving role of the security forces in Iraq. Their well-known complicity in the ongoing violence makes the situation appear quite bleak. Elements from the Ministry of Defense are exposed as having actively aided the Sunni insurgency, just as Shiite death squads from the Interior Ministry have targeted the Sunni minority. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Underneath the seemingly clear sectarian division lies a vast network of competing security agencies and a “galaxy” of armed groups, each with its own loyalties. Significantly, since the various armed groups act on behalf of either political parties or factions within the government (or insurgents), there is nothing resembling unanimity among Iraq’s leaders on how to address the problem, or even how properly to identify it.

In some sense, then, it is difficult to see how this situation will be brought under control as the sectarian divisions become endemic to the way in which Iraq is governed. (In spite of the uplifting “turning-point” rhetoric of the new cabinet appointments, one doubts how significantly this will improve things in the long run.) And the situation seems to be getting worse, not better. According to the LA Times, more people died last month in Baghdad than in any other month since the invasion. The figure, just shy of 1,400, does not include soldiers nor victims of explosions, making the number all the more breathtaking for what it says about the spiraling sectarian divide and the role of the security forces. Yet, as the BBC reports, “[N]o-one believes these are the true figures from the violence in and around Baghdad as many bodies are not taken to the morgue, or are never found…”

Although the New York Times treats the American effort to build the Iraqi security forces as a failure, they regard the ensuing violence as though it were a mere byproduct of that failure. In other words, it was the half-hearted effort that helped lead Iraq to its current insecurity. But is that all there is to it? Was the effort itself essentially pure-of-heart and lacking only in the execution?

In fact, as Lenin’s Tomb points out, the history of the security build up has been anything but a well-meant but under-staffed affair. From US-sponsored assassination and kidnapping squads, to the portfolios of certain figures charged with training and leading the security forces, the weight of the violence seems not so much a byproduct, as a coordinated plan that, admittedly, has gotten beyond anyone’s control. In short, though sectarian divisions exist within Iraq, what made them decisive to the security situation was the corrosive influence that the United States had on the initial training and recruiting of the various forces. The murderous role that certain police commandos were playing, says LT, was known from the beginning. “Yet there’s no consistency to the narrative, there’s no sense of connecting these things.” There is, he says, a “perceptible prohibition” against taking the narrative beyond the causes of death or identification of the parties involved. Those ultimately responsible appear to have had no influence at all.