Iraq in Fragments: The Occupation and Its Legacy

by Eric Herring, Glen Rangwala

When the United States led the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, it expected to be able to establish a prosperous liberal democracy with an open economy that would serve as a key ally in the region. It sought to engage Iraqi society in ways that would defeat any challenge to that state building project and U.S. guidance of it. Eric Herring and Glen Rangwala argue that state building in Iraq has been crippled less by preexisting weaknesses in the Iraqi state, Iraqi sectarian divisions or U.S. policy mistakes than by the fact that the US has attempted-with only limited success-to control the parameters and outcome of that process. They explain that the very nature of U.S. state-building in Iraq has created incentives for unregulated local power struggles and patron-client relations. Corruption, smuggling, and violence have resulted. The main legacy of the US-led occupation, the authors contend, is that Iraq has become a fragmented state-that is, one in which actors dispute where overall political authority lies and in which there are no agreed procedures for resolving such disputes. As long as this is the case, the authority of the state will remain limited. Technocratic mechanisms such as training schemes for officials, political fixes such as elections, and the coercive tools of repression will not be able to overcome this situation. Placing the occupation within the context of regional, global, and U.S. politics, Herring and Rangwala demonstrate how the politics of co-option, coercion, and economic change have transformed the lives and allegiances of the Iraqi population. As uncertainty about the future of Iraq persists, this volume provides a much-needed analysis of the deeper forces that give meaning to the daily events in Iraq.

354 pages, Hardcover

First published October 19, 2006

Reviews

[Hotavio · Rating 2 out of 5]

Iraq in Fragments: the Occupation and Its Legacy looks at the US Coalition occupation in Iraq. Given the time at which this book was written, 2006, this book provides an in depth look at the first three years of the occupation. Because the book is concentrating on the initial plan to “liberate” and conger up an American style democracy, there are plenty of opportunities for the author to point out how organizations became unraveled in these formative years of occupation. It is for this reason that the book, though only covering the first three years of war is not completely rendered irrelevant through the wars recent culmination after seven years of government building. That being said, Herring and Rangwala are concerned with the failures of state building as it relates to the fragmentation that it has produced. The idea of fragmentation and the word “fragment” is used throughout the book to describe the tendency of the Iraqi governance to break down into smaller decentralized governments following party, clan, or religious lines. The authors stress throughout the book how a lack of cultural understanding, planning, and inadequacies in restructuring have brought about this fragmentation.
The book is divided into six sections. The first, the Introduction, relays the events from the onset of war to 2006, focusing on military engagements and hot spots, particularly the attacks on Falluja, and the conflicts with Sadr Brigades. The information here is reminiscent of what one might remember hearing on CNN. The second chapter explores the effects of military occupation and the introduction of party politics. Of particular interest to me were the attempts at installing a propaganda network on television. It is in this chapter that the authors first talk about the Coalition’s failure to meet the infrastructural goals set before the invasion. This, as the authors provide throughout the book is one of the major factors which exacerbate the already uneasy Iraqi population, pushing them towards abandoning support of the occupiers. Chapter 3, Governance-Centre and Periphery, expounds on previous governmental structure in Iraq. Given the tribal nature of the country, the US was forced to acknowledge the lack of supreme authority in the central government, rather relaying on local and regional leaders to exert their authorities. This is not without its own problems and it denied the US the level of control it needed to achieve its aims, especially on the timetable that it had previously given. Insurgency and Coalition counterinsurgency is the topic of chapter 4. The authors bring up examples of counterinsurgent efforts in Viet Nam and Malaysia and use excerpts from a 1940s Small Wars Manual. Though dated, the manual clearly points out the shortcomings in the US’s ability and willingness to fight insurgency in a successful way as it neglects the relationship building aspects of occupation, therefore becoming more coercive and less legitimate. The fifth chapter is on capital and the drive to globalize the Iraq economy. While there were some successes in liberalizing the economy (and a reasonable amount of Iraqi support in doing so), the authors point out the extent to which American companies are benefited, thereby delegitimizing the process.
The final chapter is the conclusion, which deals with the legacy. The idea of dealing with the legacy of an occupation that had not yet ended was a little problematic for me. “Legacy” as it is in the title implies that the authors have been able to look back and fully see the effects of the Iraq War. This was and still is impossible.
It is not hard to determine where the authors stand on the occupation. They give huge amounts of evidence to back their opinion, but there is clearly a bias here. Perhaps the authors could have provided more to balance out the book, though this is not a history. The authors were kind enough to put a list of abbreviations at the beginning of the book, which helped out immensely. Perhaps another thing that would have been nice would have been diagrams making coalition structures a little easier to follow or remember.

[Rafael · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading this book and Nir Rosen's In the Belly of the Green Bird I actually feel like I understand what is going on in Iraq.