CourcyInt

COURCYINT SPECIAL BULLETIN

To: All Courcy's Intelligence Service members

Date: 24 July 2003

From: Joe de Courcy, Chief Executive, Courcy's Intelligence Service

Subject: IRAQ AFTER UDAY AND QUSAY

SUMMARY:

The elimination of Uday and Qusay Hussein on Tuesday was a welcome development that has given a much-needed boost to the morale of both the US and British governments. However, the success was a purely tactical one with no long-term strategic significance. There are forces at work in Iraq that are of far greater importance.

ANALYSIS:

Although Uday and Qusay undoubtedly continued to control huge financial resources and theoretically continued to control significant military forces that survived the fall of Baghdad (because they melted away rather than fought), the regime was finished from the moment the coalition forces invaded Iraq regardless of the particular fates of Uday, Qusay, or even Saddam himself.

In other words, rejoicing at the deaths of Uday and Qusay, while fully understandable, is a bit like a salesman celebrating every stage of a single order with equal enthusiasm, from the first indication of interest through the written order to the final payment. The end of Saddam Hussein's regime was a "done deal", and the deaths of Uday and Qusay have added little more than a written acknowledgement.

The problems that the United States and Britain face in Iraq are to do with the future not the past, and what resistance there has been so far is more a reflection of Arab Sunni fears about the future than a desire to see the return of Saddam Hussein. The minority Arab Sunnis understand all too well that, having brutally suppressed the majority Shias and Kurds for more than three decades, their future is extremely precarious.

The key point to keep in mind is that because of the ethnic/religious divisions of Iraq, the country is as unsuited to a democratic solution as was post-communist Yugoslavia.

In view of this, the coalition's options appear to be limited to the following:

1. An indefinite occupation by coalition forces with a marginal spreading of the burden among willing allies. The advantage of this would be to delay other unwelcome developments (see below) while putting off any admission that the coalition's stated objective of turning Iraq into a beacon of free-market democracy for the whole Middle East is unobtainable.

However such a policy would face increasing resistance within Iraq (spreading in time to the Shia as well as Sunni communities) and would feed opposition in America and Britain at a progressively delicate time in the electoral cycle for both George Bush and Tony Blair.

2. A relatively quick withdrawal, preferably by way of a handover to an interim administration by the United Nations. The advantage of this approach is that it would reduce the risk to American/British lives and reduce costs. However, as India has just made clear, no one is particularly keen to pick up the baton (poisoned chalice?) - and the risk of premature withdrawal without an alternative force to hold the ring is that Iraq would rapidly dissolve into civil war.

3. A decisive shift in policy about the future of Iraq, moving away from any hope of establishing a free-market democracy in a unified Iraq towards the division of Iraq into Shia, Arab Sunni, and Kurdish entities.

The advantages of such a policy shift could include the establishment of a pro-US administration in the Kurdish region and (if subtly played) a relatively pro-US regime in the Sunni region as well. The disadvantages would include a major split with Turkey (possibly even to the level of military confrontation) over Kurdish independence and the spreading of Iranian influence into the Shia areas of Iraq, thus effectively conceding a pro-Iranian sphere of influence from the borders of Pakistan to the Mediterranean coast of Lebanon.

CONCLUSION:

The problem is that all of the above entail significant disadvantages that appear to outweigh their respective benefits, and as a consequence the most likely outcome is one of drift.

At the moment, the US and Britain are still hoping that they can establish a respectable semi-democratic government for a united Iraq (option 1), and this will continue for the time being.  But as domestic electoral imperatives progressively intrude on policy (and as the difficulties within Iraq mount), so the necessary will and staying power to impose such a solution will fade, and the desire to share the responsibility more widely will increase.

However, if events push the US and Britain towards a desire to share their responsibilities more widely, so the enthusiasm within the international community to participate in the rebuilding of Iraq (option 2) will almost certainly recede in direct proportion. In other words, this is likely to prove a zero-sum game.

But if we are right about that, then the end result could yet be option 3, albeit by an unstructured degeneration rather than by any carefully planned progression.

END