The Current Situation in Iraq and Syria Without the Iraq War

CaliGuy

Banned
How would the current situation in Iraq and Syria have looked like without a 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq (either because Bush changes his mind in regards to this or, perhaps more likely, because Gore wins the U.S. Presidency in 2000)?

Anyway, any thoughts on this?
 
Iraq would likely see an uprising that results in an even messier situation than OTL.

The Kurds would undoubtedly break away in the North. The Sunnis would be divided between supporting Saddam Hussein (or one of his sons if he is dead) and the Sunni jihadists. The Shias would be divided between secularist liberal movements and supporting Iranian backed Shia militia.

In a way, the Iraq War was a benevolent thing, knowing what Iraq would be like after the Arab Spring/Winter.

In regards to the West, President Hilary Clinton would likely have intitiated a air intervention against the Saddam Hussein government a la OTL Libya 2011. Meanwhile the Iranians try to expand their sphere of influence westward and the Turks try to screw over the IRaqi Kurds in some fashion.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Iraq would likely see an uprising that results in an even messier situation than OTL.

The Kurds would undoubtedly break away in the North. The Sunnis would be divided between supporting Saddam Hussein (or one of his sons if he is dead) and the Sunni jihadists. The Shias would be divided between secularist liberal movements and supporting Iranian backed Shia militia.

In a way, the Iraq War was a benevolent thing, knowing what Iraq would be like after the Arab Spring/Winter.

In regards to the West, President Hilary Clinton would likely have intitiated a air intervention against the Saddam Hussein government a la OTL Libya 2011. Meanwhile the Iranians try to expand their sphere of influence westward and the Turks try to screw over the IRaqi Kurds in some fashion.
What about Syria?
 
The biggest X-factor is whether the lack of an Iraq War butterflies away the Arab Spring. Seems very likely that the particular set of events that led to the uprisings wouldn't have happened in the same way. So maybe we'd just have continued stability in Iraq and Syria in the same way we had for decades. That was certainly people's default expectation before the Arab Spring.

Or maybe something like the Arab Spring would happen around the same time. Seems like Saddam would likely follow the same strategy of brutal repression in the face of an uprising Assad did. Almost certainly without the destruction of the Saddam regime in Iraq you wouldn't have the rise of ISIS. Probably both Iraq and Syria would crush any rebellion a lot quicker than IOTL.
 
Iraq was a radicalizing cauldron of hated, division and religious radicalism that was getting ready to explode like Syria and Saddam was a demented tyrant in less and less control of his state and less and less connected to reality.

You are going to have an uprising and my guess is the House of Saddam gets pushed aside by the religious radicals that they allowed to grow strong. Sunni Iraq might be led by Zarqawi or some Iraqi theocrat, but it won't be by Saddam.

Syria goes up in flames as well and religious radical Sunnis from Iraq take the Sunni sections of Syria that Assad can't hold.
 
Anyway, any thoughts on this?

1) Arab spring likely to still happen. (Economic and climatic factors will be the same, and as Napoleon said, every country is 3 meals away from revolution.)

2) Saddam, in the eyes of his neighbours, will continue to be disliked, but still preferred to any alternatives.

3) The alt-Arab Spring will likely lead to some unrest in Iraq, most likely this is put down quickly (if brutally) but it could turn into a civil war.

4) If Iraq continues to sell oil priced in Euros, it could have interesting effects on the Euro crisis (making it less severe, but maybe not by enough to be noticeable).

5) If Iraq continues to be economically isolated, the country will be poorer than OTL (according to the world bank's statistics, the Iraqi economy really benefited from the fall of Saddam), however, Iraq may have found other ways out of isolation, though I doubt it would find a complete escape (compare it to Cuba and Iran, neither of which have ever completely escaped economic isolation after the US applied the first sanctions to both, but who have found work-arounds that allow them to get by). So Iraq would definitely be poorer, but it may not be so poor that it is actually a worse place to live than OTL Iraq.

6) The Saddam regime may fall on its own when Saddam dies and his successor turns out to be a poor replacement - a particular nightmare might be if Uday succeeds his father.

Iraq would likely see an uprising that results in an even messier situation than OTL.

Possible, but rather unlikely I'd say.

The best I can come up with for a "nightmare" scenario is for Saddam to die just before the Arab Spring, Uday to succeed him and then lose control over the Shia-dominated south of the country when the Spring hits - Iraq then sliding into a civil war that gets entangled in the Syrian civil war as Uday's regime supports the Syrian Sunnis against the Assad regime and Assad and Iran support the Iraqi Shias against the Uday regime...

Even that could easily end up being "better" than OTL in terms of not producing quite as much chaos.

Also, if the US has been focusing on Afghanistan (likely meaning that Afghanistan goes far better for the Western intervention forces), then it may have the appetite to intervene in the Iraqi/Syrian civil war/all 'round mess at the head of a coalition of local allies.

I wonder if there would be an intervention in Libya in a TL where Iraq wasn't invaded?

fasquardon
 
How would the current situation in Iraq and Syria have looked like without a 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq (either because Bush changes his mind in regards to this or, perhaps more likely, because Gore wins the U.S. Presidency in 2000)?

Anyway, any thoughts on this?

Saddam ruled Iraq with an Iron hand - he would have been 80 in April 2017 - so it is entirely possible that he would actually have died of natural causes in the 10 years since his OTL execution

I suspect that without his 'leadership' then the balkanised state of Iraq would have descended into civil war in much the same way as the Yugoslavian states did post the death of Tito and we would still likely see the rise of religious extremism in the region.
 

BooNZ

Banned
In a way, the Iraq War was a benevolent thing, knowing what Iraq would be like after the Arab Spring/Winter.
Far-canal - someone's been drinking the Rumsfeld vintage kool-aid ...

Meanwhile the Iranians try to expand their sphere of influence westward...
The Shite Iranian administration are less likely to expand their influence westward if the coalition of the willing has not removed the Sunni Iraqi administration

Iraq was a radicalizing cauldron of hated, division and religious radicalism that was getting ready to explode like Syria and Saddam was a demented tyrant in less and less control of his state and less and less connected to reality.

You are going to have an uprising and my guess is the House of Saddam gets pushed aside by the religious radicals that they allowed to grow strong. Sunni Iraq might be led by Zarqawi or some Iraqi theocrat, but it won't be by Saddam.

Actually no - both Iraq and Syria were largely secular regimes - religious radicals arose from a grossly malfeasant occupation, which created a power vacuum in the Iraqi space. The occupation radicalised elements of the Iraqi military, while drawing in additional militants and extremists to 'liberate' Iraq. It respect of Syria, the religious radicals are the ones currently being sponsored by the West and their client states.

Syria goes up in flames as well and religious radical Sunnis from Iraq take the Sunni sections of Syria that Assad can't hold.
Actually no - the population of Iraq is actually predominantly Shite, not Sunni

I suspect that without his 'leadership' then the balkanised state of Iraq would have descended into civil war in much the same way as the Yugoslavian states did post the death of Tito and we would still likely see the rise of religious extremism in the region.

The most likely replacement would be Qusay Hussein (second eldest son), who by 2003 already had command of the Iraqi Republican Guard and internal security forces among others. It is probable he would have brutally suppressed any competition and continued to suppress religious freedoms if expedient.
 
Actually no - both Iraq and Syria were largely secular regimes - religious radicals arose from a grossly malfeasant occupation, which created a power vacuum in the Iraqi space. The occupation radicalised elements of the Iraqi military, while drawing in additional militants and extremists to 'liberate' Iraq. It respect of Syria, the religious radicals are the ones currently being sponsored by the West and their client states.

So secular dictators have what they decide is 'the most holy of all Qur'ans' written in their own blood?

Qur'an etched in Saddam Hussein's blood poses dilemma for Iraq leaders

It was etched in the blood of a dictator in a ghoulish bid for piety. Over the course of two painstaking years in the late 1990s, Saddam Hussein had sat regularly with a nurse and an Islamic calligrapher; the former drawing 27 litres of his blood and the latter using it as a macabre ink to transcribe a Qur'an. But since the fall of Baghdad, almost eight years ago, it has stayed largely out of sight - locked away behind three vaulted doors. It is the one part of the ousted tyrant's legacy that Iraq has simply not known what to do with.

The vault in the vast mosque in Baghdad has remained locked for the past three years, keeping the 114 chapters of the Muslim holy book out of sight - and mind - while those who run Iraq have painstakingly processed the other cultural remnants of 30 years of Saddam and the Ba'ath party.

"What is in here is priceless, worth absolutely millions of dollars," said Sheikh Ahmed al-Samarrai, head of Iraq's Sunni Endowment fund, standing near the towering minarets of the west Baghdad mosque that Saddam named "the Mother of All Battles". Behind him is the infamous Blood Qur'an, written in Saddam's own blood.

Even to get to this point - the last step before entering the forbidden vault - has been a tortuous process.
And then there are the Sunnis themselves, who are fearful of government retribution if they open the doors and of divine disapproval if they treat this particularly gruesome volume of the Qur'an with the reverence of a holy book.

"It was wrong to do what he did, to write it in blood," says Sheikh Samarrai. "It is haraam [forbidden]."

Despite this, Sammarie says he acted as the document's protector during the mayhem that followed the US-led invasion in 2003, hiding pages in his house and moving others among the homes of his relatives.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/19/saddam-legacy-quran-iraqi-government

ISIS?

CFAGjeLWgAU-j4b.jpg


fedayeen-4.png



No Saddam's paramilitaries. They went around in the 90s and enforced Islamic law as well chopping off hands and heads and had their own religiously radicalized youth and yes I have seen the pictures.

Secular tyranny became religious tyranny under the Back to Faith movement in Iraq and it even infected the Republican Guard and Iraqi Army.

IS top command dominated by ex-officers in Saddam's army

BAGHDAD (AP) -- While attending the Iraqi army's artillery school nearly 20 years ago, Ali Omran remembers one major well. An Islamic hard-liner, he once chided Omran for wearing an Iraqi flag pin into the bathroom because it included the words "God is great."

"It is forbidden by religion to bring the name of the Almighty into a defiled place like this," Omran recalled being told by Maj. Taha Taher al-Ani.

Omran didn't see al-Ani again until years later, in 2003. The Americans had invaded Iraq and were storming toward Baghdad. Saddam Hussein's fall was imminent. At a sprawling military base north of the capital, al-Ani was directing the loading of weapons, ammunition and ordnance into trucks to spirit away. He took those weapons with him when he joined Tawhid wa'l-Jihad, a forerunner of al-Qaida's branch in Iraq.

Now al-Ani is a commander in the Islamic State group, said Omran, who rose to become a major general in the Iraqi army and now commands its 5th Division fighting IS. He kept track of his former comrade through Iraq's tribal networks and intelligence gathered by the government's main counterterrorism service, of which he is a member. It's a common trajectory.
...
One initiative that eventually fed Saddam veterans into IS came in the mid-1990s when Saddam departed from the stringent secular principles of his ruling Baath party and launched the "Faith Campaign," a state-sponsored drive to Islamize Iraqi society. Saddam's feared security agencies began to tolerate religious piety or even radical views among military personnel, although they kept a close watch on them and saw to it they did not assume command positions.

At the time, the move was seen as a cynical bid to shore up political support among the religious establishment after Iraq's humiliating rout from Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War and the Kurdish and Shiite uprisings that followed.

"Most of the army and intelligence officers serving with IS are those who showed clear signs of religious militancy during Saddam days," the intelligence chief said. "The Faith Campaign ... encouraged them."

In the run-up to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, Saddam publicly invited foreign mujahedeen to come to Iraq to resist the invaders. Thousands came and Iraqi officials showed them off to the media as they were trained by Iraqi instructors. Many stayed, eventually joining the insurgency against American troops and their Iraqi allies.

http://www.militarytimes.com/story/...-dominated-ex-officers-saddams-army/31332975/

The jihadists allowed in by Saddam and had trained by his armed forces merged. Men like al-Baghdadi came of age and studied theology and got his PhD in it during the Back to Faith movement.

One thing Uday was right about was to fear the Back to Faith movement and in the last several months before he was captured Saddam watched as many trusted officers went over to Zarqawi.

As for Baby Assad no he hasn't had a religious radicalization movement in Syria or at least nothing comparable to Iraq's Back to Faith Movement. There are quite a few Shia religious radicals there now though from around the region.
 
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BooNZ

Banned
So secular dictators have what they decide is 'the most holy of all Qur'ans' written in their own blood?

Peculiar public displays of piety by oppressive dictators are ordinarily for consumption by the masses - have another helping


Clearly no other paramilitary organisation could come up with a black garb and ski masks combo.

No Saddam's paramilitaries. They went around in the 90s and enforced Islamic law as well chopping off hands and heads and had their own religiously radicalized youth and yes I have seen the pictures.

Secular tyranny became religious tyranny under the Back to Faith movement in Iraq and it even infected the Republican Guard and Iraqi Army.

The cynical use of extremist nut jobs would be a standard tool in an oppressive dictators toolbox. Not pleasant, but not at all comparable to the hell unleased by the occupation following the 2003 invasion.

The jihadists allowed in by Saddam and had trained by his armed forces merged. Men like al-Baghdadi came of age and studied theology and got his PhD in it during the Back to Faith movement.

The study of theology (Christion or Islam) is not in itself a crime. The vast majority of the jihadists entered Iraq after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, due to the conditions established by the Coalition of the willing. The coalition of the willing disbanded the Iraqi administration and armed forces, creating a power vacuum and thousands of ready recruits for a subsequent insurgency. There is no evidence al-Baghdadi was remotely radical prior to the 2003 invasion and/or his time in US detention centres.
 
Peculiar public displays of piety by oppressive dictators are ordinarily for consumption by the masses - have another helping

Clearly no other paramilitary organisation could come up with a black garb and ski masks combo.

The cynical use of extremist nut jobs would be a standard tool in an oppressive dictators toolbox. Not pleasant, but not at all comparable to the hell unleased by the occupation following the 2003 invasion.

The study of theology (Christion or Islam) is not in itself a crime. The vast majority of the jihadists entered Iraq after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, due to the conditions established by the Coalition of the willing. The coalition of the willing disbanded the Iraqi administration and armed forces, creating a power vacuum and thousands of ready recruits for a subsequent insurgency. There is no evidence al-Baghdadi was remotely radical prior to the 2003 invasion and/or his time in US detention centres.

No matter the rest of the conversation he and you are having, it is a well known fact that beginning in the 1990s, Saddam Hussein began the country down a path of Islamification. He abandoned common Ba'athist tenets in favor of a far more religious form of governance.

He had nothing to do with Al Qaeda or anything like that, but he was certainly no longer a follower of the Ba'athist ideology. It seems to me that he began down this path to more easily hold power after the embarrassing display during the Gulf War, as this started soon after his defeat there and then.
 

gaijin

Banned
Peculiar public displays of piety by oppressive dictators are ordinarily for consumption by the masses - have another helping



Clearly no other paramilitary organisation could come up with a black garb and ski masks combo.



The cynical use of extremist nut jobs would be a standard tool in an oppressive dictators toolbox. Not pleasant, but not at all comparable to the hell unleased by the occupation following the 2003 invasion.



The study of theology (Christion or Islam) is not in itself a crime. The vast majority of the jihadists entered Iraq after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, due to the conditions established by the Coalition of the willing. The coalition of the willing disbanded the Iraqi administration and armed forces, creating a power vacuum and thousands of ready recruits for a subsequent insurgency. There is no evidence al-Baghdadi was remotely radical prior to the 2003 invasion and/or his time in US detention centres.

I completely agree with you but you won't convince people like JMC.

The reason is simple. JMC is a neocon and still hasn't seen a US intervention he doesn't like. The problem of course is that Iraq turned out to be a clusterfuck, hence excuses need to be made.

Excuse 1. Iraq is a clear and present danger with an active WMD program. Plus they have links to Al Qaida. We need to act!!!!!!!!

That was the reason given in 2003, we all know that was a load of BS now. Onward to excuse 2.

Excuse 2. True, there were no WND or links between Iraq and Al Qaida (until the US came that is), but that wasn't the real reason. See, in reality we invaded Iraq to spread democracy and good governance to the Iraqi people. We will make sure they have a well functioning peaceful society that serves as an example in the Middle East and will be a stable US Ally in the region.

That didn't turn out well at all hence excuse 3.

Excuse 3. Well ok Iraq is a fucking mess after everything that happened, but Uhmmm you know, it was probably inevitable. Sure, we fucked things up, but Iraq was going to end up in a civil war anyway because of reasons (reasons may vary, but the conclusion is always the same "US intervention isn't really to blame since civil war was inevitable") So, if you look at it that way we didn't mess up at all didn't we?? No harm no foul right??? Most importantly, no reason why we should not try this again right??


Excuse 3 is the standard BS JMC and Co. Are trying to push these days to excuse US involvement in the Middle East. It's just as much based on wishful thinking as excuse 1 and excuse 2, but it has the added adventage of being based on "what if" argument meaning there is no provable benchmarks (finding WMD, creating democracy) people can pin you down on.

Because of this reason I expect this to be the excuse the Neo-cons are going to stick to. Pretty nifty if your aim is to shift blame away from your own disastrous policies and decisions.
 
Perhaps a newly aggressive Iranian government would attack an Iraq weakened by sanctions and internal revolt.

Ding ding ding I think we have a winner. The only thing I see as really holding them back was the possibility that Saddam might have chemical weapons. His explicit reason for wanting to create doubt was to keep Iran off balance. Eventually though he would have had to open up to the inspectors (even if the U.S. hadn't invaded like under Bush they would still would have bombed him to get him to comply) and he would have had to show the world that he didn't have any WMD's. After that there's no reason for Iran not to invade; they have nothing to lose (they were easily capable of conquering Iraq by the early 2000s) and everything to gain.

Holding Iraq under a pliant puppet regime would have priceless strategic value for Iran because it would be last link in a saddle stretching from Iran to Syria that would provide a direct line to the Mediterranean and Israel's doorstep. They could station troops on the Golan Heights if they wanted (which would maybe have some interesting implications for the 2006 Lebanon War if this all happens in time).

It would simultaneously secure their flank and new allied state while vanquishing an old foe.

This would prevent the Syrian Civil War because Iran and the new Shiite-ruled Iraq now have the logistical capability to roll in tons of soldiers and basij and strangle any rebellion in its cradle, sort of like how the Saudis did that for Bahrain but on a much bigger scale.
 

BooNZ

Banned
Ding ding ding I think we have a winner. The only thing I see as really holding them back was the possibility that Saddam might have chemical weapons. His explicit reason for wanting to create doubt was to keep Iran off balance. Eventually though he would have had to open up to the inspectors (even if the U.S. hadn't invaded like under Bush they would still would have bombed him to get him to comply) and he would have had to show the world that he didn't have any WMD's. After that there's no reason for Iran not to invade; they have nothing to lose (they were easily capable of conquering Iraq by the early 2000s) and everything to gain.

Probably not

Unlike others, Iran does not have a track record of initiating conventional wars of choice.

It is no secret the neocons in the Bush administration were opening looking for an excuse to also invade Iran. You are suggesting the Iranians would repeat Sadam's earlier miscalculation in relation Kuwait (i.e. the acquisition of strategic oil resources).

Holding Iraq under a pliant puppet regime would have priceless strategic value for Iran because it would be last link in a saddle stretching from Iran to Syria that would provide a direct line to the Mediterranean and Israel's doorstep. They could station troops on the Golan Heights if they wanted (which would maybe have some interesting implications for the 2006 Lebanon War if this all happens in time).

Probably not

The Golan Heights has been occupied and administered by Israel since 1967
 
No matter the rest of the conversation he and you are having, it is a well known fact that beginning in the 1990s, Saddam Hussein began the country down a path of Islamification. He abandoned common Ba'athist tenets in favor of a far more religious form of governance.

He had nothing to do with Al Qaeda or anything like that, but he was certainly no longer a follower of the Ba'athist ideology. It seems to me that he began down this path to more easily hold power after the embarrassing display during the Gulf War, as this started soon after his defeat there and then.

Yes.

It actually got its start as a gambit in the 1986 politburo meeting during the Iran/Iraq War fearing that Iraqi Shia and Sunnis could make common cause against him to start the process of religiously radicalizing Iraqi Sunnis so that they saw their loyalty to the Sunni Islam above that of the Iraqi state to revolution proof the country.

The faith movement picked up massive steam though after the defeat in the Gulf War and even in the view of his son's got out of hand and was threatening to undermine his rule. There are a couple good books on it.

baramsaddamhussein.jpg
 
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BooNZ

Banned
Yes.

It actually got its start as a gambit in the 1986 politburo meeting during the Iran/Iraq War fearing that Iraqi Shia and Sunnis could make common cause against him to start the process of religiously radicalizing Iraqi Sunnis so that they saw their loyalty to the Sunni Islam above that of the Iraqi state to revolution proof the country.
"1986 Politburo" - you are confusing Iraq with Russia

"process of religiously radicalizing Iraqi Sunnis" You are confusing islamification, fundamentalism and radicalisation.

"Shia and Sunnis could make common cause against him" That would have been truly historic - it is doubtful the Ba'athist leadership would have contemplated such cooperation as being possible, let alone fear it.

The islamification of Iraq was effectively appeasement arising from regime weakness following the first gulf war. However, this weakness is in no way comparable to the wholesale and wilful destruction of the Iraqi society [by the coalition of the willing] following the 2003 invasion.
 
1986 Politburo" - you are confusing Iraq with Russia

Saddam actually had a Command Economy built on the Soviet model along with centralized planning.

Bremer after America came in decided on moving the government from a Socialist State to a Capitalist one overnight and it collapsed the state run industries and factories.
 
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Probably not

Unlike others, Iran does not have a track record of initiating conventional wars of choice.

It is no secret the neocons in the Bush administration were opening looking for an excuse to also invade Iran. You are suggesting the Iranians would repeat Sadam's earlier miscalculation in relation Kuwait (i.e. the acquisition of strategic oil resources).



Probably not

The Golan Heights has been occupied and administered by Israel since 1967

Sure they do. Under the Shah they sent tons of troops into Oman and after 1979 they actually did try to conquer Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War. They moved Saddam's troops of their territory really quickly and then spent the rest of it trying to take the whole country (Saddam sued for peace several times and was rejected). They also sent Quds force all over the Middle East. It would be completely in character for them to do that if they thought they could get away with it.

It is true that there were people in the Bush administration that were looking to invade Iran. It is not true, especially in this TL which implies that there is a more rational U.S. leadership, that this was ever going to happen. The reason Saddam got knocked off was because he relied on genocide to keep himself in power, invaded all of his neighbors including several crucial U.S. allies, and forced the U.S. to take tons of military actions against him. He also just plain went out of his way to act out whenever he should have done otherwise by supporting the PLO in the Second Intifada, celebrating 9/11, and other stuff. That was why we went in.

Iran just never did anything like that; they were smarter, and it didn't hurt that they were a lot larger and more powerful. The most the U.S. would have ever considered doing is striking their nuclear program. Going to war with them because they invaded Saddam's Iraq would have been an automatic nonstarter. Seriously, can you imagine making that argument to the American people? "Yeah, they invaded our worst enemy in the Middle East, who we have been fighting for decades, which is somehow bad, so we're should go to war with them." Any government that tried to make that argument would be lynched in the streets. We wouldn't have done anything.

No, the Syrians control the eastern third.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
Bremer after America came in decided on moving the government from a Socialist State to a Capitalist one overnight and it collapsed the state run industries and factories.
You mean just like the ex-Communist and especially ex-Soviet economies underwent a significant shock in the 1990s?
 
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