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FOREWORD
After a distinguished career as a United Nations official in the Middle East and elsewhere. Dr. Mohammed M. A. Ahmed has turned his recent years into study and research on the Kurdish issue. His Ahmed Foundation for Kurdish Studies has sponsored four separate scholarly conferences, each resulting in the publication of edited volumes dealing with the Kurds and 1.) International Law, 2.) Refugees; 3.) The 2003 Iraqi War; and 4.) Nationalism.
Now Dr. Ahmed has turned his attention to the naive and costly misguided U.S. war that overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003, but then got bogged down in a confusing, still ensuing Hobbesian civil war of all against all. Dr. Ahmed’s narrative vividly details the horrific bloodshed and confused U.S. responses, complicated by Iraq’s deep sectarian, ethnic, political, social, and tribal divisions as well as weak Shiite-led government attempts to ameliorate the situation. In reading the ceaseless recounting of the bloodshed one is reminded of the eerie comment made a half century ago by Allen Dulles, then U.S. CIA Director, that Iraq “was the most dangerous spot on earth.”
However, the other theme that emerges from Dr. Ahmed’s survey is how a seemingly hapless Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki slowly rose to the occasion and, as of this writing, is apparently well on his way to taming the Iraqi insurgency.
Unfortunately for the Kurds, if he does so, it might well be at their expense by reasserting Iraqi centralization. Of course, al-Maliki’s success story also must be understood in terms of the U.S.-led troop surge masterminded by General David Petraeus, the U.S. enlistment of former Sunni Arab insurgents into a pro-U.S. al-Sahwa or Awakening movement, the downfall of Muqtada al-Sadr’s al-Mahdi militia, and ethnic separation by walls and population movements. Parallel to all this, moreover, is the threat to Kurdish and Sunni Arab fortunes in an Iraq ruled by a strong al-Maliki, Shiite-backed government. Dr. Ahmed details and analyses all this in a fast-moving narrative that will prove most useful to government practitioners, scholars, and the lay public.
Michael M. Gunter
July 29, 2009
Introduction
Andrew H. Card, White House chief of staff, quietly approached President George W. Bush while he was reading to second grade children at the Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida, and whispered in his cars the news about the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. The President, who was shaken by the news, folded the book in his hands and quietly left the classroom. He told the reporters that, “Terrorism against our nation will not stand.”1 Following the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, President Bush divided the world into two camps, those who agreed with the United States and those who did not. The terrorist attack on the U.S. on September 11, 2001 provided President Bush a high moral and political ground to declare war on the Taliban who sheltered and aided the al-Qaida and their leader, Usama Bin Laden. U.S. intelligence also pointed a finger at Saddam Hussein’s secret agents for having met with Mohammed Atta, the terrorist leader who attacked the U.S. in Europe. The Bush administration also accused Saddam Hussein of pursuing weapons of mass destruction, which they considered a threat against the U.S. and its allies in the Middle East.2
President Bush's allies and friends advised him to exercise caution in dealing with Saddam Hussein, who was practicing cat and mouse tactics to break up the United Nations’ embargo imposed on his country for invading Kuwait in August 1990. In view of the ineffectiveness of the United Nations embargo to …
1 Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon & Shuster, 2002), pp. 15-20.
" Kenneth M. Pollack, The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq (New York: Random House, 2002); and Peter W. Galbraith, Unintended Consequences: How War In Iraq Strengthened America's Allies (New York: Simon & Shuster, 2008), pp. 1-13.
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