The Temptation Must Be Resisted : Intervention should be avoided at all costs

In the wake of Iraq’s military defeat has come urban turmoil. In Basra and other cities in southern Iraq anti-government demonstrators are challenging the iron grip of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. Details are imprecise, and the partisanship of some of the sources claiming to know what is going on makes their information suspect. But some elements of the armed forces are involved, with units perhaps pitted against each other.

This political explosion was ignited by the anger and frustrations arising out of a costly, humiliating, and above all unnecessary war. To a significant but not yet fully measurable extent it is also a continuation of an ancient religious conflict. It pitted Iraq’s majority Shiite Muslim population, which has never been permitted to share equitably in power, against an unyieldingly repressive regime dominated by Sunni Muslims.

The anti-regime demonstrators are said to have asked for help from members of the coalition that beat Iraq. Some U.S. and other coalition forces are positioned not too far from the cities where the strife is taking place. At some point, for humanitarian or other reasons, intervention could conceivably become necessary. U.S. and other Western participants in the coalition ought to make it clear right now, irrevocably, that they have no intention of assuming a policing role, no matter how seemingly urgent the need to restore order may become.

If foreign armed forces must be sent into the cities to quell turbulence they should be provided by Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the other Persian Gulf states. In other words they should be unmistakably Arab and Muslim. For Westerners--for those some Muslims regard as infidels--intervention ought to be avoided at all costs. Not only would it expose ground forces to the possible risks of urban fighting but, far worse, it would give the appearance of the West butting into an Islamic religious conflict. That would be a no-win situation, to be avoided at all costs.

The anti-regime protests probably began spontaneously, as such things often do in the aftermath of military defeat. Early on, though, in Basra and possibly elsewhere, Iranian agents pretty clearly moved in to keep things stirred up in behalf of their Shiite Islamic revolutionary cause. Two-thirds of Basra’s 1 million people--it is Iraq’s second largest city--are Shiite. One of Tehran’s ambitions during its long war with Iraq in the 1980s was to export its revolution to Basra and the rest of southern Iraq.

No conceivable good could come from an extension of Iranian influence in Iraq. Should that occur, the region would quickly find itself facing fresh threats to its stability, just as it appeared that the crushing of Saddam Hussein’s expansionist ambitions had opened the way to a calmer future. Probably--nothing is certain in the Gulf--the deep nationalism of Iraqis of all religious persuasions would work to oppose the aims of their ancient Persian enemy. But if disorders should give way to chaos and foreign armed intervention does become necessary, U.S. and Western forces should make sure they stay well out of it.