Collapse

Barrett: The Collapse of Iraq and Syria
had no intention of continuing to support the Sons of Iraq program that
armed Sunni elements in the fight against terrorists and al-Qaeda. There
was concern at the time that strategically the ‘Surge policy’ was reinstituting
tribalization in Iraq and thus further fracturing what was left of the Iraqi
state and assuring it could not be reconstituted. It also served to heighten
sectarianism across the board. 176 By this time, the U.S. was trapped. The goal
was to stabilize the situation and enable a withdrawal, but for all intents
and purposes without large numbers of U.S. troops to prop it up, Iraq as a
state had already ceased to exist. The Shi’a, now with Iranian backing, were
creating a sectarian state in which the Sunnis were second-class citizens or
worse—enemies of the state.
This had an interesting effect. It erased what was left of the border between
Iraq and Syria; the line on the map became meaningless. In a 2010 discussion
with Lieutenant General Talib al-Kenanai, the director of counterterrorism
in the Maliki government, on security issues for Iraq, Syria and the lack of
control in the border regions was the paramount concern. 177 The U.S. invasion,
the destruction of the Iraqi army, the removal of Sunnis from positions
of responsibility, and then the campaigns to subdue the Sunni insurrection
had linked Sunni resistance in Iraq to the Sunnis of Syria in a manner that
had not existed since the Ottomans. Smuggling routes from Iraq to Syria to
support sectarian brothers in the Alawite-dominated state now moved from
Syria to Iraq to support the insurgency. Designed to elude Syrian government
control, Damascus could impede but not stop the flow, particularly in light
of the fact that from 2005 to 2007, there was little control on the border. The
surge reinstituted control but only through the aggressive forward posture
of U.S. troops, and then not completely.
After the surge and the withdrawal of U.S. forces at the behest of the
Iraqi government, control on the border
collapsed again. This not only affected the
security situation in Iraq, but it also created
problems in Syria as well. By 2010-
2011, the failure of the Shi’a government
in Baghdad and the Alawite government
in Damascus to address fundamental
political, economic, and social issues with
The Shi’a, now with Iranian
backing, were creating a
sectarian state in which the
Sunnis were second-class
citizens or worse—enemies
of the state.
their Sunni populations turned eastern Syria and western Iraq into a Sunni
powder keg requiring little to set it off. In Syria, the growing affluence of the
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