Iraq And Al Qaeda

by hilzoy

A few days ago, Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber made a good point:

“Cheney asks

“Would the United States and other free nations be better off or worse off with (Abu Musab al-) Zarqawi, (Osama) bin Laden and (Ayman al-) Zawahiri in control of Iraq?” he asked. “Would be we safer or less safe with Iraq ruled by men intent on the destruction of our country?”

Let me get this straight. At time t you advocate a policy involving the invasion and occupation of Iraq on multiple grounds, none of which include the forestalling of an Al Qaeda seizure of power in Iraq (since such an eventuality is risibly improbable). At time t+n , as a direct consequence of that brilliant policy, the only options are (a) its continuation or (b) an Al Qaeda takeover of Iraq. Genius. No wonder that man got re-elected.”

I’d just like to add a few things. First, an al Qaeda takeover of Iraq is still risibly improbable. To take over Iraq, al Qaeda would have to take over the Shi’a and Kurdish areas of Iraq, which I very much doubt it can do. Nor is there any reason to believe that al Qaeda would be even remotely capable of governing a country. What is not so improbable is that al Qaeda might set up a base of operations in the Sunni area of Iraq, and that the Iraqi government would not have the power to dislodge them. And since one of the things a terrorist organization needs is a base of operations, this would be a very bad thing.

Second: this possibility really does exist only as a result of our invasion. Of the three main communities in Iraq, the Shi’a and the Kurds would never cooperate with al Qaeda. The Kurds are secular, and have no interest in Islamic fundamentalists like bin Laden. Moreover, they are basically interested only in protecting their autonomy, which would have been jeopardized by al Qaeda’s presence in their territory. Al Qaeda is a Sunni group, and would have gotten no sympathy from the Shi’a. The only people in Iraq who would ever work with al Qaeda are the Sunni Arabs.

As long as Saddam Hussein was in power, however, this was not going to happen. Saddam would not have allowed al Qaeda to set up a base of operations on his territory: they are much too uncontrollable, and he was a megalomanaical control freak. The likelihood that he would allow a group that was given to doing things like flying planes into the World Trade Center to set up shop in his country was basically zero — not because of any moral scruples, but because if anyone was going to commit monstrous acts from Iraqi territory, it was going to be him.

Moreover, the one group that might, in principle, have cooperated with al Qaeda was Saddam’s power base: the group that was most fully committed to him, in which he had the best and deepest connections, and which would not have gone against his wishes on something this important. The likelihood that al Qaeda would have been able to set up a base of operations in Sunni territory against Saddam’s wishes was, therefore, approximately zero.

By invading Iraq, we changed all that. Now, the one group that is opposed to the government, and over which the government has the least (read: no) control, is the Sunni Arabs: the very group that might give al Qaeda sanctuary. Moreover, the government itself is much too weak to be able to block the Sunni Arabs from giving al Qaeda sanctuary should they wish to do so. We have, that is, transformed the one region in which al Qaeda might ever have set up shop from a region that was completely controlled by a government that wanted no part of al Qaeda into an outlaw region in which al Qaeda could operate with impunity.

There were all sorts of other reasons to loathe Saddam Hussein, and to cheer his downfall. But so long as he was in power, al Qaeda would never have had a base of operations in the territory he controlled, including the entire Sunni region. That possibility exists solely because we created it.