Leaving Iraq and the World More Dangerous

BEIRUT -- Following the American mainstream media's celebratory coverage of the withdrawal of "combat troops" from Iraq earlier this week, the truth is that killing, destruction and waste of resources will continue apace in Iraq for some time. The full impact of the mayhem and devastation unleashed by the American-led invasion will only be measured in calculations across the entire region -- and globally in some instances, like the spread of networks of trained-in-Iraq terrorists -- for many years to come. To mark the withdrawal of US combat troops as a great milestone is to engage in new forms of intellectual colonialism and self-deception -- standard procedures when countries send their armies to the other side of the world for imprecise goals based on false pretenses.

More than 50,000 US troops will remain in the country for some years. This is not the end of combat in Iraq, as fighting will go on among assorted parties for some time, given how the Anglo-American invasion unleashed new forms of political and sectarian tensions, including armed conflict, in and beyond Iraq. The tensions and attacks between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq reflect a troubling phenomenon that is relatively new in the region, and emanates largely from the Iraq war. Shiites and Sunnis have always had theological and even some social-cultural differences, but they rarely fought or ethnically cleansed each other in modern times. Now the Shiite-Sunni demarcation has expanded into a major new regional political divide and battle line that reverberates across the entire Middle East and parts of Asia.

This is exacerbated by another Iraq war consequence, which is the heightened regional role played by Iran after the demise of the Baathist regime and state in Iraq. Iran's more assertive role inside Iraq and regionally helps shape the new ideological, cultural and strategic confrontation that defines much of the Middle East. Iran's close links with Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas and other elements in Arab public opinion create a new constellation of forces that is actively opposed by conservative Arab governments, Israel, the United States and other foreign powers.

Tens of thousands of Iraqi, American and other dead and many more injured cannot rationally be calculated in any meaningful terms, given the nature of invasion and war that sanction such cruelty as a normal operating procedure. Those on the receiving end of curtailed or destroyed lives, however, feel the pain and instinctively, silently, do the cause-and-effect calculation of who is responsible for their loss and what should be done about this. Another four million refugees and internally displaced Iraqis generate their own challenges, both for the Iraqis whose lives have been shattered and for the host countries and regions that have to absorb them. Such sustained displacement, exile and refugeehood are a radicalizing force that may further damage Iraq and the region in the years ahead.

Equally dangerous is the reality of perhaps thousands of militant Salafists and terrorists for whom Iraq was a magnet for training and killing, and these battle-hardened killers are now dispersing throughout the region and the world. They join home-grown radicals and criminals around the world who try to bomb planes and public squares because they are angered by events in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A more nuanced but very grave victim of the Iraq war is the integrity and credibility of international law and the UN system that seek to preserve global peace and security. When world powers like the United States and the UK ignore global ethical and legal norms, unleash their armies in destructive rampages, then withdraw in self-satisfied triumph for offering a convoluted form of "liberty" to perplexingly ungrateful natives, the rest of the world concludes three things: The big powers do not consistently respect international law and UN institutions, therefore others around the world should not necessarily respect these same norms and laws, and when big powers use force to get their way others at the receiving end should resist them by force in return -- whether military or political force. Two aspects of this going on today are rather telling: the move led by Hizbullah to discredit the UN-mandated investigation and special tribunal that aim to identify and hold accountable those who killed the late Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri; and, Iranian-led defiance of UN-anchored global nuclear energy protocols that many feel are being inconsistently applied to different countries, such as Iran, Israel, Pakistan and India.

The Middle East and the world are far more unstable, violent and dangerous today than they were a decade ago, partly as a result of the Iraq war and partly because of other indigenous factors -- including assorted thug-based regimes like the one Saddam Hussein ran for nearly 30 years. American combat troops leaving Iraq should remind us, above all, of the many and terrible consequences of their entering Iraq.

Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.