The US Role in Iraq’s Sectarian Violence

March 12th, 2006 at 14:22 Björn Hallberg

Global Policy Forum forwards an interesting look at how the U.S. benefits from, and supports, the sectarian violence in Iraq and the subsequent tearing apart of the nation.

Professor Stephen Zunes examines the history of sectarianism in Iraq and the US role in exacerbating sectarian violence. Though US officials blame violence on “longstanding sectarian hatred,” Iraq had previously maintained a strong national identity and tradition of secularism. Following the invasion in 2003, US officials dissolved Iraq’s army and government bureaucracy – two highly secular institutions – and divvied authority along ethnic and religious lines. As Zunes points out, the ongoing presence of US troops will not prevent an Iraqi civil war, as the Bush administration insists, but will continue to aggravate sectarian violence.

Zunes specifically notes that

Top analysts in the CIA and State Department, as well as large numbers of Middle East experts, warned that a U.S. invasion of Iraq could result in a violent ethnic and sectarian conflict. Even some of the war’s intellectual architects acknowledged as much: In a 1997 paper, prior to becoming major figures in the Bush foreign policy team, David Wurmser, Richard Perle, and Douglas Feith predicted that a post-Saddam Iraq would likely be “ripped apart” by sectarianism and other cleavages but called on the United States to “expedite” such a collapse anyway.

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