Getting ‘traction’ in Iraq

On a number of occasions, including in this July 2003 JWN post, I’ve reflected on the “slippery” nature of the Iraq question.
Nowadays, the problem of the lack of traction in the country is at a new level of criticality–and in two different though linked dimensions.
In the security dimension, the current plan of the eager-to-withdraw occupiers is that new Iraqi security forces will be rapidly trained up so that they can police most of the country, as the occupiers withdraw ever further into out-of-sight cantonments.
But how do you even start to assemble Iraqi security people in the required numbers if you can’t even assure security for those Iraqis willing to come forward and enlist?
You need a traction point. It doesn’t appear to be there.
And then, in the political dimension, there’s a similar lack-of-traction problem, as shown by the failure of Allawi’s present “transitional” administration to meet the deadline for convening the first precursor body, that will then choose a second precursor body, to help organize an election, that will choose the Constitution-writing body, that will the lay out the rules for (sometime along the way there in the distant future) actually exercizing sovereign self-government of the country…
A big lack-of-traction problem there, too.
And of course these two dimensions are linked. How can you convene any of the national-level precursor bodies if the country is still wracked by inssecurity? And on the other hand, how can you ever get a national representative enlistment into the security forces if great chunks of the national population feel alienated politically from the occupier-backed regime?
Some people might call these chicken-and-egg problems. But with all the complexity in Iraq these days it looks like what you’d have with this metaphor is a massive omelette made with ground-up chicken feet, gristle, and beaks, garnished with bloody chicken feathers…. Not easy to find any way out of such a morass…
However, if you look at these as lack-of-traction problems, it’s just possible that–once you can find a more solid point from which to intervene–then enough traction can be provided slowly to start unraveling all aspects of the problem.

In the present situation in Iraq, it’s clear to me that the intervention has to come primarily at the political level. Specifically, a solid, tractionable buffer needs to be inserted between Allawi’s occupier-appointed transitional “government” and the whole process of organizing the nationwide elections. Tractionable, in this case, means that it has to be a buffer with considerably more political legitimacy inside Iraq than Allawi’s occupation-backed administration currently has.
I realize that for various historical reasons, the UN doesn’t enjoy a lot of support inside Iraq today. Also, that the UN has many organizational and other problems of its own. Still, in terms of the kind of political legitimacy that’s needed to convene a workable election process in Iraq, I think there’s no alternative to it.
It’s great that the UN still has one of its very expert transitional-election-planning teams working in Iraq. It needs to be given a much bigger role–despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that some people in Allawi’s administration have apparently started to chafe under its advice.
Thursday’s decision to postpone holding the first precursor body’s conference for two weeks was apparently taken by Allwai’s people only reluctantly, though it reportedly happened “at the request of” the UN team.
The fact that the mechanism for choosing “delegates” to that body bears an uncanny resemblance to the “Rube Goldberg” device proposed by Paul Bremer last November–and roundly opposed at the time by Ayatollah Sistani and other serious leaders of the Shi-ite community–doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in the process, anyway… But if Sistani, other key people in the Shi-ite community like Muqtada al-Sadr, and the UN experts can all come up with a satisfactory approach, then I would conclude it might be a workable one. That breadth of support has not yet been won for the “Rube Goldberg II” plan.
There are still a number of truly massive political problems that remain to be solved. A key one, that I’ve probably mentioned before, is the quite understandable lack of a stable, mature political-party system within Iraq’s non-Kurdish communities… The continuing organizational fluidity (and competitiveness) within the Shi-ite sector, in particular, combine to make it hard to figure out any authoritative way to have the interests of this majority portion of the national population satisfactorily represented in any election-planning body.
It would be much easier if you just had one massively dominating political trend inside this crucial Iraqi community–an ANC, a SWAPO, a Fretilin, a PLO–but you don’t. You don’t even have “just” two, or three parties (as you have two, inside the Kurdish community)… Then at least, you might know be able to figure out a formula for who to invite to the precursor conference, and how much weight each party should get. But you don’t even have that degree of (relative) clarity.
The continuing political-organizational fluidity in the Shi=ite community makes planning even the early stages of an election process very difficult. Anyone truly interested in building longterm democracy in Iraq should be working overtime right now to help the country’s Shi-ites build a stable, responsive political party system–whether with one party, two, or three; whether with parties that cut across into other Iraqi communities, or not: that’s all up to them. (More than three parties there would probably be a recipe for continuing chaos.)
If such a system doesn’t emerge within the next few months, then I’m afraid Iraq will be in for many months, perhaps years, of unrolling political crises, with people in every community trending toward the extremes and the possible breakup of the country.
But it doesn’t have to be like that. There is still time to find traction. But if this traction is to work truly for the longterm interests of the Iraqi people it cannot be provided–as at present– under almost completely undiluted US auspices. The UN has to be given a much larger role.