The US efforts in Iraq will definitely fail. Societies do not become liberal democracies overnight, but only through an arduous history of assembling wealth, when they slowly learn to raise hands in voting instead of breaking them. Autocracy is the only chance for stability in Iraq. The autocracy might come from two sources: a strongman like Saddam or an external – Iranian – control. Even religious authority is not an option in the multi-confessional Iraq.
So far, the US arranged for truce with Iran which temporarily scaled down its support for Iraqi guerrillas. The US also persuaded Kurds to refrain from openly ceding from Iraq, and Iraqi government – from dismantling the Kurdish de facto state. Even if all the major Iraqi groups root out the terrorists, the groups would still have plenty of opportunities to fight among themselves.
Iraq’s mirror is Lebanon: a religiously fragmentized state oscillating between fragile, frightful balance and bloody chaos. Iraqi situation is made worse by the low probability of its government doing away with terrorists completely. As Israeli example shows, even a few dozen killed are still a big deal when media inflate the stories. Iraqis are happy now with decrease in violence, but in a year of quiet they would adjust their expectations and view even small terrorist acts as signs of growing instability.
Iran nourishes its influence throughout the Middle East and Africa, and it is unlikely that Iran would abandon the perfect opportunity to influence Shiite Iraq. Shiites would not be happy about the necessity to reach consensus with Sunni minority. Too many forces influence Iraq from within and without. It cannot exist as even a remotely liberal, democratic country. It was for a reason that Iraq never existed before the British created that Frankenstein.
Iraq will become an unofficial Iranian province, fall to a strongman, or fall apart.
