28 May 2015
Arabs call for the Seventh Cavalry
by Neil Tidmarsh
Understanding US frustration in the Middle East
No wonder Ashton Carter, the US secretary of defence, lost his patience last week following the catastrophic collapse of the Iraqi army at Ramadi, Anbar province.
Once again the USA found itself in the bizarre position of arming and equipping Isis. Millions if not billions of dollars worth of materiel given by America to Iraq was abandoned in the flight and must now be swelling the Isis arsenal. Time after time in the past year the Americans have had to use air power to destroy American weaponry and equipment taken by jihadists.
Once again the initiative in the fight against Isis has passed to the Shia militia, which, being Iranian-backed, are far from sympathetic to the USA, and which again threaten to turn the situation into the bloody sectarian conflict – the predominantly Shia government against the predominantly Sunni Anbar province – which the USA worked so hard to steer Iraq away from before the withdrawal of American troops from that country and which has done so much to enable the Sunni Isis to establish itself in Anbar since that withdrawal.
Once again the country’s best fighting force – the US-trained Golden Division, an elite, well-equipped, disciplined, strictly non-sectarian SAS-type unit – is being squandered, having to hold the front-line in an unequal struggle. They number only 4000, are a special operations unit never intended to fight as front-line troops, and are now spread so thinly that they are facing destruction.
Ashton Carter can hardly be blamed for pointing out that the retreat of forces from an enemy which they vastly outnumbered poses questions about their fighting will and ability, even if the reaction of those involved was predictable enough. A sober and self-improving contemplation of home truths? No, a backlash of denial and accusation – it’s America’s fault for not fighting their battles for them. A commander of Shia paramilitaries in Iraq used Carter’s own words against him to criticise America’s reluctance to involve itself in the fight – but wasn’t it Shia paramilitaries who were demanding the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and indeed fighting against them prior to the 2011 withdrawal? And wasn’t it recent US air strikes which finally enabled those militias to recapture Tikrit?
In spite of accusations at home and abroad, Washington has just and prudent policies to further the causes of peace and stability in the Middle East: don’t inflame local sensitivities by deploying troops (a lesson learnt from a decade of painful experience), but help those fighting against ISIS and al-Quaeda by providing training, weapons, equipment and air-support; bring Iran in from the cold in return for a nuclear deal; discourage Israeli settlement and other hard-line Jewish activity to further the chances of moderate Jewish/Palestinian rapprochement. But strangely and frustratingly, the outlook for peace and stability in the region is bleaker than ever, and the situation is rapidly transforming into dangerous new configurations.
The USA appears to be losing its old friends and making new enemies. Saudi Arabia is infuriated by America’s attempts to talk to Iran. Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran are deadly rivals – Saudi Arabia doesn’t want Iran to be brought back into the international fold. The potential prize of nuclear disarmament is almost an irrelevance, given that the subsequent lifting of sanctions would enrich and empower a hated enemy. What Saudi Arabia wants is for the United States to fight its enemies – bomb the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in the Yemen, bomb the Iranian-backed Assad regime in Syria – and it is angry that the US is refusing to do so, angry that the USA’s priority is fighting al-Quaeda and ISIS, Saudi Arabia’s fellow Sunnis. Hence King Salaman’s recent snubs of President Obama – dropping out of face to face talks at Camp David, inviting President Hollande of France to a high-level meeting of Gulf States, etc.
Israel is equally incensed at US attempts to steer Iran towards regional peace and stability. Recently and extraordinarily, Netanyahu spoke out in Congress itself to criticise Obama’s policy on Iran. And, since then, he has created a new hard-line, right-wing government, a coalition between his Likud party and Jewish Home, United Torah Judaism and others. A rapprochement with Palestine, let alone a change of heart about nuclear deals with Iran, seems even more unlikely than ever. And now it seems that Iraq would like America to send troops back, to fight alongside the Shia paramilitaries who were trying to drive them out of the country only a few years ago. And recent calls for the USA to attack Assad in Syria have been replaced by calls to fight for Assad against Isis in Syria…
America might want peace and stability from the Middle East, but it seems that the players in the Middle East don’t necessarily want peace and stability from America. What they want is for America to fight their wars for them. Until recently, the voices of the Arab world – and indeed of world opinion in general – were deafening in their demands for America to disengage militarily from the region. Now they are deafening in their pleas for America to send troops back to the area. Call for the Seventh Cavalry… send them away… call them back again…
But even if they were willing to engage, it is unlikely that even the USA could fight on everybody’s side all at the same time.
