Published July 28th, 2007 by Future Atlas
Wargaming Iraq’s future
The Washington Post reported last week reported on wargames of Iraq’s future conducted for the American military.
The games suggested three outcomes:
Majority Shiites would drive Sunnis out of ethnically mixed areas west to Anbar province. Southern Iraq would erupt in civil war between Shiite groups. And the Kurdish north would solidify its borders and invite a U.S. troop presence there. In short, Iraq would effectively become three separate nations.
Other forecasts from the article:
- The games suggested that “partition would result” from a US pullout by a set date. “The games also predicted that Iran would intervene on one side of a Shiite civil war and would become bogged down in southern Iraq.”
- A retired Marine colonel “said that an extended Iranian presence in Iraq could lead to increased intervention by Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states on the other side.” Iran might conclude that its best counterstrategy “‘would be to stimulate insurgency among the Shiites in Saudi Arabia.’”
- Most Middle East experts agree “that either an al-Qaeda or Iranian takeover [of Iraq] would be unlikely” in the aftermath of a US withdrawal; according to Anthony Cordesman of the CSIS in a recent report, al-Qaeda ‘does not dominate the Sunni insurgency.’
Two variables are central to future scenarios for Iraq: how unified or divided it is, and how the state or states are governed. These forecasts are another sign that the most likely future may be division along ethnic and sectarian lines.