With significant potential implications for the region and the world, Iraq is in the process of joining the list of "failed states" in the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa), joining Libya, Lebanon and Syria in that category. A failed state is one where the central government controls only certain areas, including the capital city and environs, the rest being dominated by terrorist groups, separatist movements or semi-independent regional governments.
Iraq has just held a meaningless election, marred by a Sunni boycott and allegations of massive fraud. The government that eventually emerges from this farce will have no legitimacy outside the Sh'ia-populated regions of the country
Kurdistan in the north is already for all intents and purposes independent. It has its own armed forces and ample sources of income, since it controls one of the two main oil-producing regions of the country. Kurdistan maintains "representative offices" abroad, which are embassies in all but name, and signs agreements with foreign countries without reference to Baghdad.
Anbar Province in the west, astride the corridor connecting Iran with its allies in Syria and Lebanon, is a largely tribal region, contested by the government and Sunni insurgent groups, which control large portions of the province, including its largest city, Fallujah.
Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has just ordered the terrorist militia "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL) to leave Syria and return its fighters to Iraq to join the battle against the government. ISIL has agreed to do this.
Sunni groups stage constant terrorist attacks in central Iraq, including in Baghdad itself, and even tried to divert the flow of the Euphrates River to create a water shortage in Baghdad.
Iran cannot permit the corridor to its proxies in Syria and Lebanon to be cut in Anbar, and thus will intensify its battle against al-Qaida, which in retaliation may well mobilize its assets inside the non-Persian regions of the Islamic Republic to increase terrorist activities and feed insurgent movements.
What are the implications of all this for the region and the world? The bad news is that Iran may well increase its efforts to foment Sh'ia insurgencies in Saudi Arabia and the gulf states, especially Kuwait and Bahrain (where the Sh'ia are a majority). The good news is that Iran will be forced to divert its resources from spreading its influence and that of its terrorist proxy Hezbollah outside the Middle East. If unrest breaks out in Iran itself, which might even lead to regime change, so much the better for the Sunni southern arc of countries and for Israel.
Norman A. Bailey, Ph.D., is Adjunct Professor of Economic Statecraft at The Institute of World Politics, Washington, DC, and teaches at the Center for National Security Studies and Geostrategy, University of Haifa.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on May 11, 2014
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