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 Juan Cole is an Islam and Middle East specialist from the University of Michigan. His current research is working to make connections and bridge our understanding of the Shiite sect of Islam in Iran and Iraq, as well as jihadist (sacred war) groups such as the Taliban and al Qaeda.
Cole lectured at Pacific on January 19th in George Wilson Hall. He discussed two very important current events – both of America's wars: Afghanistan and Iraq.
He explained that the coverage of the war in Afghanistan has been minimized in the shadows of the war in Iraq. However, the violence is still prevalent and actually getting worse. Cole's lecture outlined the basics of U.S. involvement in these two countries in order to explain the reasons they are failing.
“United States foreign policy in both Afghanistan and Iraq has had initial military success, then profound political failures,” he said.
“The Bush administration set up a zero-sum game,” explained Cole, where the winners were joyous and the losers had nothing. “Politics doesn't have to be a zero sum game.”
His primary focus was the ethnic division of both countries. With such strong ethnic division among groups, civil fighting is difficult to apprehend without fully understanding each groups needs and working together. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. strategy has removed the group in power.
Afghanistan has variety of ethnic groups. The largest groups are the Pashtuns followed by the Tajik, Hazara, and Uzbecks. The alleged terrorist group, the Taliban, had grown into power as a counterforce to Soviet occupiers after the Cold War. When U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the Pashtuns, the primary members of the Taliban, were in power. They were removed in an attempt to recreate a new united government. However, the Taliban threatened the new government once again when local citizens began to support it due to government inefficiencies.
Cole reflected on the issues facing Afghanistan now as it again erupts in fighting. The ethnic division felt by Pashtun population has had deteriorating affects. Cole believes a united government could have seen more success, “if more extensive efforts had been made to integrate the Pashtuns.” Furthermore, Cole says U.S. policy needs to change “to reconstruction rather than search and destroy.”
Iraq also has three major ethnic groups divided almost completely into separate regions of the country: the Kurdish in the north, the Sunni in the center/western region, and the Shiites in the southernmost part of Iraq. The Sunnis ruled the county under Saddam's Baathist regime, and like the Pashtuns of Afghanistan were completely removed and humiliated by the 2003 U.S. invasion.
Now, in trying to form a unity government for Iraq, the Sunnis do not want to participate and also feel rejected.
Cole explained that 70,000 Sunnis were fired in the “de-Baathification” of Iraq. Now, the Shiites and Kurds in power have “screwed the Sunnis over royally, said Cole; “An unstable society” has emerged, in Cole’s words.
Cole also highlighted the irony in the U.S. decision to dissolve the former Iraq Army – thus letting 100,000 men with guns go home. Thus, Sunni and Shiite militia groups have formed to fight in urban warfare against one another.
Cole painted a picture of the bleeding ethnic wounds in Iraq saying, “The Sunnis’ message to the Iraqi public is: ‘You may be happy with the new Shiite government, but we are not happy; so you will not be happy – and we are going to blow it up.’”
To add to social division even more, the Kurds have essentially created their own system of government in the north and do not want the Sunni or the Shiites to take control of the oil in the northern region.
All in all, 130,000 U.S. troops are unable to establish security, according to Cole.
“This place is completely out of control,” he emphasized, “an ethnic zero-sum game.”
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