Nation-building in Iraq: Iran 1, the United States 0.

• Author: Ottaway, Marina
• Position: COMMENTARY - Essay

In 2003, the United States launched an ambitious nation-building project in Iraq and has little to show for it. Iraq is not united and non-sectarian, nor is it a beacon of democracy in the region, the goals of U.S. nation-building. Washington's influence is limited and depends entirely on Iraq's need for support against ISIS. Iran on the other hand, which never talked of nation-building, has penetrated Iraqi politics and society, establishing the conditions for its own long-lasting influence.

The Iraqi state today has been shaped more deeply by Iran than by the United States. The Iranian version of nation-building, based on building up organizations that share its goals, has trumped that of the United States, which depends on superimposing on Iraq institutions the U.S. thinks the country should have and training people to staff them. A Shia-dominated government is in place in Baghdad, and U.S. efforts to portray it as "inclusive" do not stand up to factual analysis. To be sure, the top government positions and ministries are divided among representatives of Shia, Sunni and Kurdish parties. But Shia militias armed and trained by Iran and the Kurdish peshmerga are now the country's main defense against the Islamic State, while the national army--made up of "weaklings" in the words of a Shia militia leader--is barely beginning to be reconstructed by the United States after collapsing without a fight in June 2014 and again walking out of the fight in Ramadi a year later.

The major Iraqi Shia political parties and militias were set up in Iran in the 1980s and the ties remain strong. The Iranian al-Quds Force continues to arm and train Shia militias and even participates in some of their operations, at least in an advisory capacity and possibly as a fighting force.

Iran has won the first battle for influence in Iraq and the contrast between Iran's success and the United States' failure offers some important lessons about nation-building. Iran gained influence by building on Iraq's sectarian divisions, and the resentment and aspiration of Iraqi Shias. Iran had nothing to offer other population groups, but its policies had the strong buy-in of an influential and powerful part of Iraqi society. The United States sought to promote national unity and decrease sectarian divisions, a noble goal in theory, but one that offered Iraqis an alien political and social model and thus was not embraced by any group. The model of nation-building Iran has followed successfully so far, shaping the country through de facto alliances with Shia forces, may make it impossible for Iraq to survive as one country. Paradoxically, Tehran does not want a divided Iraq any more than Washington does.

The United States: Grafting a New State

The United States invaded Iraq at the peak of the western nation-building enthusiasm that followed the fall of socialism. It is important to recapture the ebullience of the moment. Serious scholars were arguing earnestly that democracy had triumphed over other ideologies and that history had ended. Practitioners in USAID and consulting firms believed that they really could help new, inexperienced democracies consolidate their government institutions and civil societies. The enthusiasm spawned a democracy industry, which metastasized into a more ambitious nation-building industry in conflict-ridden countries, Bosnia in particular. By the early 2000s, scholars and practitioners were drawing up more and more complex models of what nation-building entailed, breathtaking in their social and political engineering ambition and in their lack of realism.

These ideas influenced policies in Iraq. Although the United States had ostensibly invaded Iraq to get rid of Saddam Hussein, not to turn it into a pluralistic, tolerant, well-integrated democratic country with an active civil society, equality for women, and a prosperous free-market economy, these and many other reforms quickly became part of the agenda. The massive "Future of Iraq" project launched by the US State Department in early 2002 produced a thirteen-volume study outlining a comprehensive nation-building program. The report discussed plans for Water, Agriculture and the Environment; Public Health and Humanitarian Needs; Defense Policy and Institutions; Economy and Infrastructure; Transparency and Anti-Corruption; Education; Transitional Justice; Democratic Principles and Procedures; Local Government; Civil Society Capacity Building; Free Media; Oil and Energy; and more. Essentially, it called for the impossible: a complete social, political and economic re-engineering of Iraq.

The feasibility of the plan was never put to a test. The Pentagon, which took charge of both the war and the project of reconstruction in Iraq, discarded the State Department plan and set up the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (renamed the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in May 2003). Guided by expediency rather than an overall plan, the CPA had a strong impact on the future of Iraq, although not the one it intended. Two decisions in particular contributed to exacerbating Iraq's sectarian conflict: the complete disbanding, rather than the reforming, of the Iraqi Army, and the launching of an extensive and ill-defined de-Ba'athification effort, that is, the culling from government ranks of members and above all officials of Saddam's Ba'ath party. Both moves engendered much resentment among Sunnis--incidentally, the "Future of Iraq" project had warned that such measures should not be taken. A...