With America Exiting, Who Matters in Iraq?

Last week’s meeting in Damascus between former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and the leader of the Iraqi Shia Sadrist movement, Moqtada al-Sadr, inevitably attracted the conventional platitudes about Syria’s supposedly “key” role in shaping the future of Iraq, and of the region more broadly. However, Syrian propaganda overstated the reality of Damascus’ marginal importance.

The meeting between the two Iraqi politicians came as part of the country’s grueling ongoing government-formation process after the parliamentary elections this past spring, which ended in an effective stalemate between Allawi’s Al-Iraqiya list and the State of Law list of incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

The deadlock has mandated the need for coalition building. However, it has also opened the door for further regional meddling, which was already visible in the lead-up to the elections, and is now escalating as the United States draws down its military presence, intensifying the regional players’ push to fill the vacuum.

For years, Syria has been trying to create the impression that it has a central role in Iraqi domestic affairs in order to extract concessions from the US, which would offer it a piece of the Iraqi pie. The Allawi-Sadr meeting in Damascus was more fodder to feed the Syrian line.

Commenting on the series of meetings in the Syrian capital, Al-Watan daily, owned by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s cousin, offered no less than this ambitious headline: “The Region’s Future Is Made in Damascus.” Other bromides included assertions that the location of the meeting was a testament to Syria’s “heavyweight” status, enhancing Assad’s prestige. In fact, one Arab commentator went as far as to claim that the meeting constituted a “Western-backed Syrian mediation.” Al-Watan claimed that the visits of US Senator John Kerry to Syria were proof that Washington was working closely with the Syrians in shaping Iraq’s future, over the head of Maliki – a standard Syrian trick, using diplomatic contacts with the Americans in order to create the impression of leverage over its adversaries and to project the mirage that it is a first-tier actor. A mirage that apparently still fools naive commentators.

But a closer look reveals a very different dynamic as well as a very different Syrian role, much more in tune with its historical function as a buffer zone between the centers of power in Anatolia and Persia.

Indeed, it was these two players alone – the Turks and the Iranians – that were specifically named by Iraq’s Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, during a recent visit to Washington. “Iran and Turkey have emerged as the biggest players – and as rivals inside Iraq,” he reportedly said. Then, in what is emerging as a common refrain well beyond Iraq, Zebari added: “They believe that the United States is withdrawing from Iraq, and that there will be a vacuum… Both of them are working hard to fill that vacuum.”

The Damascus meeting itself highlighted this Turkish-Iranian dynamic. The spokesman for Al-Iraqiya in Damascus, Ahmad Dulaimi, put it plainly, when asked why the meeting was being held in Damascus at all. He observed that the meeting was supposed to take place in Iran, but in order not to upset the Turks, it was agreed to hold it in Syria. In other words, far from being a sign of Syria’s prestige, the choice of Damascus was due to it being an acceptable buffer ground for the actual operators: Iran and Turkey.

The Turks, who are said to support Allawi, sent their foreign minister to talk directly with the Iraqi politicians. As for Sadr, who has been living in Iran for a few years now, he is widely viewed as an Iranian asset. Having him meet with Allawi was a means for the Iranians to squeeze Maliki. Syria is quite secondary in this picture.

As Henry Kissinger noted back in 2006: “The Syrian contribution in Iraq is essentially marginal.” Syria, as one astute Middle East analyst once put it, deals in corpses, by using violence to create political openings. And that has been the way the Syrians have attempted to have a political say in Iraqi affairs, as evident from the concerted campaign launched from Syria against Maliki – a campaign, one should add, that was implicitly covered by both the Iranians as well as some Sunni Arab states. But second-tier Syria does not have the assets to fashion a political outcome in Iraq.

The violent campaign against Maliki may have contributed to the stalemated result of the elections, but it hasn’t knocked Maliki out. However, it did increase Iranian leverage over the prime minister, which is what we are witnessing today in the political haggling going on between Maliki, Iran’s allies like Sadr, and the Turks.

The Saudis seem content with Turkey’s intervention, which they perceive as a Sunni counterweight to Iran. But for the Obama administration, a scenario where the primary drivers are competing regional actors – some outright enemies of the US – is hardly a desirable, or stable, outcome. Washington’s passiveness was lamented by Zebari and other Iraqi officials, and creates the impression that Washington is unable to impose red lines on the middle powers.

The US cannot subcontract Iraq to rival, ambitious regional middle powers. The actors sense American detachment and they are maneuvering around, above, behind, and ultimately, against the US. This is not a recipe for regional stability, let alone for securing Washington’s interests and a sovereign and friendly Iraqi state.

Tony Badran is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies