Is Iraq like Yugoslavia?

The recent history of these two countries bears some striking similarities. Both countries came into being at about the same time as a result of the Versailles treaty following World War I. The collapse of the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian empires saw their former colonies pieced together as states with little regards to religious, ethnic or tribal populations, most of which had been fighting one another for centuries.

To hold together, these mismatched nations had to be run by dictators like Marshall Tito and Saddam Hussein. Ironically, for most of the time they were in power, both head of states maintained a cozy relationship with the United States. Out of all other communist block countries, Yugoslavia was the U.S. darling and Iraq was America’s good friend during its war against Iran.

Both countries disintegrated when their leadership changed. Upon Tito’s death and the end of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia imploded and erupted into a bloody civil war involving almost each ethnic and religious faction. That civil war only came to an end when the UN and NATO stepped in and took sides against Serbia. One notable difference with Iraq however, was that Yugoslavia had no oil and held little strategic value.

For almost a quarter of a century, Iraq was kept together under Saddam’s iron fist. The Sunnis (his people) were in charge. When something got out of line, Saddam had no qualms massacring thousands of rebels and everything would return to normal.

When the U.S. stepped in, it thought that ushering democratic institutions into Iraq would take care of everything and bring brotherly love throughout the land, including Kurdistan, the seemingly weakest link of the chain. Instead, the U.S. invasion of Iraq revealed the pent up hatred along sectarian and ethnic lines that had festered, but were suppressed, under Hussein’s long, brutal rule

To make matters worse, the country’s basic infrastructure that had been destroyed as the invasion progressed could never be fully restored, and with sporadic electricity, failing water and sewer systems, not to mention a total lack of security, the Iraqis quickly found out that their daily lives were worse off under Bush’s army than under Saddam’s Ba’ath Party.

Could this explosive reaction have been anticipated? Probably, but the Administration claimed it knew better and believed that after its troops had been welcome as liberators by the Iraqis, the whole populace would line up and ask for their own copy of the American Constitution. It did not happen. Instead looting took place and after being fired, the entire Ba’ath administration and the Iraqis army turned into thousands of disgruntled insurgents. Clueless in foreign policy, the Administration, not only broke everything inside the “pottery barn” when it invaded Iraq, but ignited a vicious civil war.

Led by clerics and warlords who only can tell their people to slaughter each other, this civil unrest is likely to cost hundred thousands if not millions more lives, and will create debilitating damages that may take many decades to repair. The U.S. invading forces that were so instrumental in bringing Iraq to a state of chaos have little credibility in turning things around, even with a hollow surge made of extended tour of duties instead of additional troops.

The upshot of this situation is that in order to carry on, Iraq cannot stay whole. Instead it will have to be partitioned along ethnic and religious lines, and someone (most likely the UN, not the incompetent invader), will have to figure out a convoluted way to make that break-up somewhat equitable.