November 3, 2005
A War Without Winners
By Richard
Cohen
AMMAN -- In
some respects, Jordan is not having a bad war. Emigre Iraqis are
buying real estate here, the high tech sector is booming, the
port of Aqaba is busier than ever, contractors of all sorts stay
in the hotels, and a lot of what the military needs in Iraq comes
through Jordan. This country is one big supply base.
In some
other respects, the war is not going well at all. The neighborhood
-- one of the worst in the world for a small country -- has gotten
considerably less stable since the war began. It is true, of course,
that Saddam Hussein, the mad bully of the region, is locked up
-- and that is not an inconsiderable achievement. Although it
is often overlooked, ridding this area and the world of a dictator
who started two wars and savaged his own people has to be cause
for a certain amount of cheer.
But from
there, things go rapidly downhill. A Jordanian looking around
the region would see some ominous developments in neighboring
countries. The most important is the extension of Iranian influence,
if not outright control, into southern Iraq, where Shiites are
predominant and oil is found in abundance. The north of Iraq is
already a functional Kurdish republic. It, too, has oil. That
leaves the Sunni middle around Baghdad. It has no oil but will
be rich in aggrieved people -- a vast recruiting ground for al
Qaeda. It is not the sort of neighbor Jordan would want.
To the south
is Saudi Arabia, where al Qaeda's influence may be growing and
where some recent terrorist attacks seemed to have been inside
jobs -- someone in the military or the police was in on it. Whatever
the case, the Saudis, too, have a Shiite minority and it is located
in the oil-rich northeast, right next to Iraq and Iran. The Saudis
are not happy with how the war in Iraq has made their lives even
more difficult. It is impossible for Jordan, a country with a
population of a mere 6 million, not to worry about the potential
instability of a neighbor. It is impossible for an oil-dependent
America not also to worry about Saudi Arabia.
Now we come
to Syria, another of Jordan's problematic neighbors. The dictator
there, Bashar Assad, is under great pressure to produce the killer
or killers of Lebanon's former prime minister, Rafiq Hariri. Trouble
is, some of the culprits might be in Assad's own family -- if
not himself. Since he is not likely to arrest his brother or his
brother-in-law (not to mention himself), it's hard to see what
the outcome to this mess may be -- maybe sanctions imposed by
the U.N. However nice it would be for Assad to be among the unemployed,
Washington's primary concern is not strictly law and order, but
the willingness of Assad to allow terrorists to cross into Iraq
from his country -- another repercussion of the war and Syria's
fear that it might be next.
The U.S.
would love the Assad regime to go. But what would replace it?
It's hard to imagine, but it could be something worse -- the radical
Muslim Brotherhood, for instance. It is about the closest thing
Assad and his clique have to an organized opposition. Replacing
a secular dictatorship with a radically religious one is not what
Washington would call progress.
In short
-- and not taking into account the stalled Israeli-Palestinian
peace plan -- the war in Iraq has hardly made this area more stable.
It's true, of course, that nothing catastrophic has yet occurred
in the region, but the casual assurance that nothing will happen
must now be held to a new post-Iraq standard: Just about everything
Washington said was happening (WMD) and would happen (an easy
occupation) has turned out to be utterly false.
One could
almost forgive Bush for waging war under false or mistaken pretenses
had a better, more democratic Middle East come out of it. But
just as the 1991 Gulf War introduced an element of instability
in the region -- the rise of al Qaeda in response to the stationing
of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia -- so might this one do something
similar. A Shiite arc is forming, Iraq is infested with terrorists
and coming apart, Syria might be going from bad to worse, and
Saudi Arabia is complaining loudly that the war's only winners
are the Shiites and Iran. From here, it looks like a war that
is already going badly for America could go even worse for much
of the Middle East.
Mission
Accomplished?
©
2005, Washington Post Writers Group
