In contemplating the horrifying reporting coming out of the Syrian conflict today and the equally tragic toll of the eight-plus year Iraq war, the world is likely witnessing the latest chapter in the long-running history of sectarian conflict in the region. The current battleground in this chapter is Syria and Iraq, and it sheds light on the deeper problem of sectarian conflict within the region.
Syria’s is an internal struggle, save for the contributions of foreign fighters. In Iraq, on the other hand, coalition forces dominated by the U.S. played an outsized role. But in light of the data from the two conflicts, how significant was the U.S. role, as opposed to that of internal sectarian forces, in the admittedly incalculable losses in Iraq? Reporting has shown that in both Syria and Iraq, most violence has in fact been a result of already existing internal sectarian struggles.
Media and UN reports indicate approximately 110,000 Syrians have perished since the conflict began in early 2011. By contrast, through 2011, the Iraq war resulted in the deaths of some 157,000 Iraqis, according to the Iraq Body Count project. (Brown University’s Cost of War Project calculated upwards of 187,000 deaths directly attributable to war violence. Other estimates range from 80,000 to more than 400,000.) One noteworthy revelation in a recent study by Canadian, U.S. and Iraqi researchers published in PLOS Medicine in October indicates that militias were identified as more responsible for violent deaths after 2006 than coalition forces. According to figures of Iraq Body Count, coalition forces were directly responsible for approximately 14% of the near 95,000 deaths through 2006, with over half of those coming from the first year of the war.
In Syria, the majority of violent deaths appear to have come at the hands of the Assad regime’s forces and its supporters seeking to preserve the current leadership, according to the Violations Documentation Center in Syria. Roughly nine million Syrians, or about 40% of Syria’s population, are displaced; some 2.2 million as refugees in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq. At its height in the summer of 2007, the Iraq war had produced over 4.2 million displaced Iraqis, 2 million inside Iraq and 2.2 million in neighboring countries, according to UNHCR. After just three years, Syria’s displaced numbers are significantly greater, despite Iraq’s larger population.
Syria’s economy has suffered a catastrophe, as farms, small businesses and factories have been abandoned or destroyed and as labor fled. Since 2010, its exports have declined by 75%, according to the Cologne Institute for Economic Research, and oil production, a major export and hard currency earner for the country, has fallen by half from 400,000 barrels per day.
Estimates of the Iraq war’s costs to the U.S. abound, but figures on damage to Iraq’s economy are less frequently mentioned. For one thing, some of the costs to the U.S., such as aid and reconstruction, actually contributed to Iraq’s economy. Moreover, after the U.S. invasion, sanctions on Iraqi oil exports were lifted, leading to a near doubling of oil exports from 2002 to 2009. So, cost estimates of the conflict to Iraq’s economy are problematic. One early study in 2005 by Professor Colin Rowat of Birmingham University in the UK estimated a 40% loss to national Iraqi income, though its findings may have since changed.
It is important to note that Syria’s losses have occurred almost entirely as a result of Syrian-on-Syrian violence. The only external contribution, which cannot be quantified, has come from foreign fighters, i.e., al-Qaeda and other non-Syrian Sunni militants, Iraqi militias, Hezbollah, and Iranian fighters and advisers. According to Aaron Y. Zelin of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, over 8,500 foreign fighters have participated in the conflict since late 2011 as opposed to several hundred thousand Syrians engaged in the conflict.
Considering these admittedly limited figures, it appears that while the American invasion ignited the Iraq war, existing sectarian tensions, which the U.S. grossly underestimated in March 2003, provided the tinder. Certainly by 2006, the U.S. role had become more of a catalyst in Iraq’s sectarian conflict. One is reminded of the British occupation of Iraq in the 1920s, expertly recounted in Christopher Catherwood’s Winston’s Folly: Imperialism and the Creation of Modern Iraq. In that occupation, Britain inserted itself into Iraq’s sectarian conflict and, using the Hashemites, ultimately placed the Sunnis atop Iraq’s leadership structure. Some eighty years later, the Americans would replace Iraq’s largely Sunni leadership with Shia. Neither occupier made headway in settling the Sunni-Shia feud.
One is tempted to ask if America’s involvement in Iraq, like Britain’s in the early 20th century, was less an invasion and occupation – which it unquestionably was – than another ill-considered venture of a Western power into the region’s long-running sectarian conflict. Removing Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, inevitably meant establishing a new government. America’s natural disposition toward democracy meant any new government would have to be democratically elected, which in a nation of some 65% Shia meant a Shia-led government. The Americans effectively repeated the action of the British, using the commendable artifice of democracy this time to place the Shia on top. But little was settled in Iraq’s historic Sunni-Shia and Arab-Kurdish disputes.
The rampant sectarian violence that arguably prolonged the U.S. occupation of Iraq is now being seen in Syria and is continuing again in Iraq. (Estimates of Iraqi violent deaths in 2013 are between 7,800 and 9,500, according to the UN and Iraq Body Count, respectively).
Iraq post-2006 and Syria today bear similar characteristics. They are both manifestations of the underlying problem of much of the Middle East today: sectarian conflict. Neither the British in the 1920s nor the Americans in the early 2000s fully appreciated this root cause of conflict in the region. Now in Syria, sectarianism is naked and exposed and without the direct intervention of a foreign power to mask it, although external supporters abet and ultimately exacerbate it.
Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, and the Assad regime are unquestionably a problem but are not the problem of the region. These and other extremist organizations prey upon the distrust, intolerance, hatred and fear that define the Middle East’s underlying problem of sectarianism. The unavoidable tragedy of these internal conflicts and perhaps others to come, e.g., Lebanon, is that the region is so ill-equipped and unwilling to address this problem. The two principal antagonists in the historic conflict, Saudi Arabia and Iran, may not expressly seek the awful violence seen in Syria, Iraq or Lebanon (during its civil war), but neither are they willing to concede to the other.
The Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Arab League can play a role in getting these and other Muslim nations to begin a dialog, starting inside their own countries, but they will need help. The UN Security Council, the U.S. and the EU will need to play this vital facilitative role if the problem of sectarianism is to be addressed. They will need to devote persistent effort and high-level attention to ensure it gets the necessary priority consideration.
Yet sadly, after the American experience in Iraq, no outsider appears willing to step up and face head-on the Middle East’s most enduring conflict.