The Senate Foreign Relations Committee met Wednesday afternoon to hear testimony from three expert witnesses on the current political state of Iraq. The Committee members sought to answer some questions about the status of the reconciliation process and about the the causes of the recent flair-up of the violence in Basra and Baghdad. An archived webcast of this hearing is available at the SFRC website.

The testimony was very upsetting. Iraq has a central government in name only. Most of Iraq is “governed” from the bottom-up by warlords who are in charge of their own mini-regions in various parts of the country. It was these warlords who are responsible for handling government functions in their mini-states. The United States is currently sending out payments to a number of these local rulers to ensure peace in their regions.

This leads to a very precarious and fragile peace. The various clans involved are interested in preserving their own power in their region, not in joining together to form an overall security strategy for the nation of Iraq. The government of Nouri Al-Maliki is really one large faction and is only a regional player; the Iraqi Security Forces are only nominally a national force.

This creates the type of situation in which power struggles, such as the one we saw last week in Basra and parts of Baghdad, can occur. The Maliki forces clashed with those of the cleric Muqtada Al Sadr and the fragile coalition that has brought a relative calm to parts of Iraq fell apart. This strife was really two Shia factions warring over control of separate militias. The news media in the US reported this as if it was the Iraqi government taking on a rebellious sect in the country. In reality, these were both warring factions vying for power and there is no real central government that can step in and speak for a national government.

The panelists at the hearing today were asked for a “best case” scenario for Iraq. This topic has also come up at the morning hearing on Military Options for the US now that “the surge” of troops is winding down. The consensus seems to be that control in Iraq will come down to a dictator taking control in one or two regions of the country. Senator Kerry, in his questioning of the witnesses this afternoon, asked if this is what our troops have fought and died for and what we have expended an enormous amount of money to achieve: an Iraq governed by a more benign Saddam Hussein-type dictator.

Yahia Said, Director for Middle East and North Africa for the Revenue Watch Institute said that basically, this is indeed what the end result in Iraq might be. He said that it would be like Russia under Putin, and went on to say that Azerbaijan is better off under Putin than they were under the old Soviet system. Iraq will probably be better off than they were under Saddam Hussein, but they will probably end up being governed by some central authoritative type ruler.

The panelists stressed that the image of Al Qaeda in Iraq is oversold to the American people. The Sunnis in Anbar Province were able to deal with Al Qaeda fairly easily and drive them them out of their province last fall. Al Qaeda is in Iraq because the US forces are in Iraq. If the US withdraws then the Iraqi people will get rid of Al Qaeda, as the Sunnis did in Anbar. The real political problems in Iraq are between these warring factions of Sunni and Shia.

The real issue is the breakdown of control and the growth of smaller groups that are arming and fielding their own militias in their own mini-states in Iraq. The real task in Iraq is to get these factions to find a way to unite and put their weight behind some sort of central government. Sadly, there has been little to no progress in that regard.


The Senate Foreign Relations Committee will reconvene on Thursday morning to discuss the a path forward in Iraq. A webcast of the morning hearing will be available on the SFRC website as well.