The ferocious public row between the governments of Syria and Iraq over the alleged responsibility of Syria-based Iraqi militants for Baghdad's Bloody Wednesday bombings may escalate or subside. The episode has already served to expose several unpleasant truths about the regional dynamics at play in Iraq.As the US prepares to reduce its role in Iraq, there is still no regional consensus to prevent or contain a renewed destabilisation of the country. Instead of helping Iraq consolidate its fragile progress and escape a fractious future, neighbouring countries continue to see it as a battleground to determine the region's fate. Worryingly, the US seems at once unwilling and unable to prevent them from doing so.
Americans may take comfort in the pluralistic political order that is slowly emerging to whitewash a legacy of blood and occupation, but Iraq's neighbours seem far less interested in protecting and nurturing its costly political transformation. The US invasion of Iraq has unquestionably upset very delicate equilibriums in the Middle East. Iraq will never again be the Sunni bulwark against Iranian ambitions or Syria's competitor as the stalwart of pan-Arabism. Iraq's Kurds will never again accept Saddam-style political and military domination that neighbouring Iran, Turkey and Syria felt comfortable with and sometimes replicated to rule over their own Kurdish minorities. Iraq's emboldened but divided Shiites are enjoying unprecedented power, while many of its Sunnis lament the demise of a strong, unified Iraq.
Iraq has become a hostage of feuds between its neighbours and the US and is embroiled in bilateral conflicts, some of its own making, that poorly serve the stated objectives of stability and nation-building.For Syria and Iran, Iraq has served since 2003 as a convenient battlefield to at once bog down the US and increase their own leverage in their dealings with Washington. And it is there that they inflict the most serious damage to the US with relative impunity and deniability, and it is on the topic of Iraq that the US has re-engaged them.
Of course, they have Iraq-specific objectives as well. That acting in pursuit of these interests jeopardises Iraqi stability matters little. For Iran, the ambition is to become the dominant external player, prevent the emergence of a strong state and export as much of its theocratic system of governance as possible. This is why Iran recently encouraged the formation of a sectarian Shiite alliance and resents cross-confessional politics.
The much weaker Syria has little reach inside Iraq beyond the insurgent factions operating from Damascus. Its modest goal is to protect its eastern flank and ensure it can punch above its weight in regional affairs. This is why Syrian complicity or at least wilful ignorance of the recent bombings in Baghdad cannot be completely dismissed. Syrian protestations that it values Iraqi sovereignty are at best disingenuous when it blatantly allows Iraqi rejectionists and foreign fighters to operate from its soil.
The Arab states also require some serious introspection. The Saudi hardline position toward the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al Maliki, whom they suspect of being a front for Iranian penetration, has set the tone for many other Arab and Gulf states. With so little trust between the two governments, there is little intelligence sharing to combat Sunni extremism effectively. To be sure, the kingdom has used its influence to turn tribes and Sunnis against al Qa'eda in Iraq for fear of blowback at home, but too many indoctrinated Saudis have joined its ranks nonetheless.
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