Battle Stations!
If it was possible under the circumstances, one would have chuckled at screaming headlines proclaiming the certain imminence of World War III following the assassination of a very powerful Iranian General, Qassem Soleimani and senior Iraqi military officers in Baghdad by the United States of America. It was the wrong circumstances for a chuckle, but […]
If it was possible under the circumstances, one would have chuckled at screaming headlines proclaiming the certain imminence of World War III following the assassination of a very powerful Iranian General, Qassem Soleimani and senior Iraqi military officers in Baghdad by the United States of America. It was the wrong circumstances for a chuckle, but the reality is that much of the world has been under one form of war or the other due to the activities of the two key protagonists in this latest escalation, the USA and Iran. These are the two nations with the farthest and deepest tentacles around the world, virtually all of them engineering proxy wars against each other’s influence. You could say Iran and the USA were minding their normal business of planning to cause more problems for the people of the world when US President Trump upped the ante, killing a powerful and popular Iranian General on the grounds he was a threat to US lives. There is universal consensus that Iran will hit back. This is what is being passed as the commencement of the third world war.
Still, it will not be a world war. Actually, there has never been a war in which all humanity is involved, if you take out the war against hunger, injustice and impunity of a few nations like the USA. It is the arrogance of the powerful that gave birth to the idea that wars involving them, with weaker nations and peoples tagging along, were world wars. A war involving the USA and Iran will cost many lives of citizens of both countries and a lot more people from other parts of the world that had been sucked into spheres of competition and influence. It could be a brief exchange of terrible violence, or a long, patchy series of skirmishes that will keep many populations tensed up and living with daily violence. Cruel as it sounds, these populations already exist, and both Iran and USA have long mastered the exploitation of the weaknesses of many peoples and nations scattered across the world to fight their wars.
What can the world do to stop or limit an imminent escalation of violence that will deepen the turbulent insecurity of entire regions and instability in the world economy? Unfortunately, nothing. First, there is no ‘world’ that can do anything of substance to alter an alarming trajectory. It is a telling commentary of the state of the global community that just a few nations can decide how millions live or die. Countries like the US can murder citizens of other countries and threaten to kill a lot more if their countries retaliate. President Trump had repudiated the Iran Nuclear Deal that was meticulously crafted to take Iran out of the league of nations that possess nuclear capability, to the chagrin of all Americas key allies. Trump was the fuel in a fire, provoking countries and allies in a dangerous region that had burnt American fingers in the past. He was obsessed with a crude plan to cage Iran, presumably because he believed that it had been pampered in the past, and it is the place of the US to restore it to a deserved size. Now he strikes at the very heart of a nation that thrives on provocations, particularly those from the US. It is fair to succumb to the tempting assumption that an impeached president facing elections in less than a year is involved in a very costly gamble to shore up his prospects of being re-elected.
Iran has been re-awakened by a single strike from the US. There is only a very slim chance that it will turn the other cheek and accept a humiliation that will permanently damage its standing as a major regional power. Its considerable assets in proxies and allies will come into action as it designs retaliation against an adversary that is spread very thin around the world, and hamstrung by abused loyalties of allies and fractured domestic support. Iran will milk this incident to the last drop, reminding a people who have gone through major privations caused by sanctions that fighting back is the only logical outcome of US action. It will resume uranium enrichment, activate sleeper proxies and cells scattered all over the world, and dust up hostility blueprints. It could keep the US waiting and worried over how it responds, or it can start fires in many places over a long spell. Like Trump, it will also have an eye on the US presidential elections later in the year, but, unlike Trump, it will act to make him less popular for dragging Americans through an unnecessary and avoidable conflict.
Iraq is on its knees, and has been in that position for more than a decade, thanks largely to the US. It is uncertain how much power (or genuine desire) it has to order US troops to leave its territory, and it has even less power to remove Iran’s multiple influences around its vital areas. ISIS will be a big winner in any move to reduce the presence of its enemies such as the US in Iraq, and the Iraqis know the prospects of a future with a weak government and no one having their back. Russia will take full advantage of this escalating conflict to expand its considerable influence in a region slipping further away from US influence. Key regional players such as Saudi Arabia should ordinarily be cheerleading any reduction in Iranian clout in the region, but this is one moment when they will be cautioning against escalating conflicts with an adversary that would harm them as proxies, as much as it would love to hurt their principal.
For West Africa, and in particular for Nigeria, this gamble by President Trump could not have come at a worse moment. ISWAP, which is ISIS’s West Africa’s fighting outfit, is now causing more damage than all other factions of the insurgency. This time last year, West Africa was the only territory ISIS had not been virtually crushed in. Perhaps because of this, the tempo of its activities in West Africa picked up. It dug in around the shores of the Lake Chad and reinforced its networking across the entire Sahel, but especially in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon. In a conflict which will largely feed-off symbolism and morale of proxies, Nigeria and West African states should brace for some escalation. It is particularly worrying for Nigeria which is bearing the major brunt of ISWAP activities and failing to shore up flagging morale and funding operations by Nigeria and its neighbours. A few more additional dollars for a barrel of crude will not make up for the damage which this audacious gamble could wrought on Nigeria.
Nigeria’s restive Shia population will also find ways of standing up to be counted as Iran rallies the faithful all over the world. Just when you think the Indian medical trip fiasco had robbed the Nigerian Shia of a major grievance point, the decision to pass the buck to Kaduna State government to prosecute El-Zakzaki, and now this massive provocation by the US against Iran have sent all concerned back to the trenches. It is a very small world, and our portion of it has become a lot less secure.
Abubakar can be reached at [email protected]