Rosen: Iraq won't return to civil war, but...

Nir Rosen reports from Iraq in The National's weekly Review, and it's worth a read, as is most of Rosen's work. In many ways, today's piece is similar to his April 2009 Review piece: Rosen argues that the Sunni-Shi'ite sectarian war is over, because the Iraqi state is too strong.

There are still militias active in Iraq, and the level of deadly violence would be unacceptable almost anywhere else on Earth. But the fears frequently voiced by foreign analysts and reporters - that the civil war is merely in abeyance, and that sectarian fury could break out again at any moment after a series of deadly attacks, or an unfavourable election result - are overblown.

But you nonetheless see some ominous signs for the future throughout Rosen's piece.

He describes an Iraqi public that has become largely exasperated with politics because of the poor performance of their elected representatives. This encompasses both major national issues -- parliament hasn't passed a hydrocarbons law, the status of Kirkuk remains unresolved -- and micro-level concerns: Reconstruction efforts proceed at a snail's pace, and the Iraqi economy is in shambles.

Widespread alienation from the central government does not bode well for the long-term durability of Iraq's newfound security.

I would also quibble a bit with Rosen's characterization of the de-Ba'athification crisis, and the Western concerns about it:

As worldwide attention has returned to Iraq in the run-up to the March 7 elections, a new chorus of worry has emerged, concerned that the corrupt political manoeuvring of some Shiite parties - who have succeeded in banning prominent nationalist and secularist candidates under the thin pretence of de-Baathification - would lead first to a Sunni boycott and then to renewed sectarian violence and war.

This is a bit of a straw man: I don't know any serious Iraq analysts worried about a Sunni boycott. Joost Hiltermann's February 25 policy brief says there's little talk of a boycott; Reidar Visser has argued repeatedly that a boycott won't happen; Marc Lynch called it unlikely in January; Michael Hanna said it's not in the cards; and so on. Likewise, I don't know any serious analysts predicting imminent sectarian warfare.

The real concern is that the de-Ba'athification crisis is an indicator of unresolved tensions -- and that those tensions, coupled with Iraq's crushing poverty and severe refugee crisis and lackluster government performance (all of which Rosen chronicles quite well), will lead to unpredictable long-term consequences.

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