Is the “Khalilzad Cable“, the full text of which was published by the WaPo today, the present war’s equivalent of the Vietnam War’s “Pentagon Papers“?
Back in 1971, when Pentagon employee Daniel Ellsberg leaked huge portions of the 47-volume report on US-Vietnam relations commissioned by SecDef Robert McNamara to the NYT and the WaPo, their publication by the two papers sparked a storm of controversy in the US and helped to swing elite opinion massively against the war.
The “Khalilzad cable”, which was sent from Viceroy Khalilzad to Secretary of State Condi Rice just “hours” before the surprise trip that Bush made to Baghdad on June 12, reveals how stunningly unsuccessful all the US’s efforts to stabilize Iraq and build effective, pro-US new security forces there have been. Equally significantly, it also reveals the degree to which Zal Khalilzad, the US Viceroy in Baghdad, is aware of this situation– despite all of Bush’s earnest public avowals that things are going ahead very well in Iraq.
That’s why it deserves to have the same impact within the US policy elite that the Pentagon Papers had in their day.
The text of the cable– marked “Sensitive”, but also “Unclassified”– was given by a person or persons unnamed to brilliant WaPo columnist Al Kamen. The title that Khalilzad put in the “subject” line was this: Snapshots from the Office: Public Affairs Staff Show Strains of Social Discord.
Okay, the content of what was in the cable was pretty interesting– though not much in it comes as any huge surprise to anyone who’s been following the good Iraqi blogs and good journalism from Iraq over the past few months. But what intrigued me just as much was the context within which Khalilzad was writing it… It seems to be a detailed study of the behavior and attitudes of just nine employees in (I assume from the title) the Public Affairs Office at the “embassy”.
Why did the ambassador spend so much time and effort producing this particular piece of work, I wonder?
I have two suppositions: (1) It’s possible that the “Social Discord” within the PAO had grown to the degree that the office’s work had become noticeably fault-ridden… in which case Condi might well have asked her man there: “Zal, so what the heck is going on in the PAO, anyway?” Or, (2), Zal, last weekend, for whatever reason, might have thought it would be instructive to try to provide Condi with the most firsthand description he could of “How Iraqis Live”… Well, he’s not going to get that from talking to the Iraqi political leaders… and he’s not about to exit from the Green Zone in a disguise like some latter-day Haroun al-Rashid and go out ‘n’ about in downtown Baghdad to see how his subjects are really living there… so the “subjects” of the planned enquiry who are closest to hand seem to be the three Iraqi women and six Iraqi men who work in his own PAO.
(Or, of course, both motivating factors might have been at work.)
Para 4 of the cable is interesting. He writes that the women from the PAO, “also tell us that some ministries, notably the Sadrist controlled Ministry of Transportation, have been forcing females to wear the hijab at work.” This is recounted with the air of being ‘news’– and it indicates that Khalilzad’s best way of learning what’s going on in Iraqi government ministries is to listen to hearsay from the handful of women who work in his PAO?
Similarly, in para 6, Khalilzad once again shows us how reliant he is on indirect hearsay to learn things about life in Iraq that are common knowledge to bloggers, good journos, and human-rights workers within the country:
- An Arab newspaper editor told us he is preparing an extensive survey of ethnic cleansing, which he said is taking place in almost every Iraqi province… ”
Para 11 gives a little snapshot of how terrifying life has become for the Iraqi employees in the US Embassy. It deals with the strong suspicions these employees have about the hostile attitudes of the Iraqi forces personnel controlling the access checkpoints around the Green Zone:
- They seemed to be more militia-like and in some cases seemingly taunting. One employee [told us that] guards had held her embassy badge up and proclaimed loudly to nearby passers-by “Embassy” as she entered. Such information is a death sentence if overheard by the wrong people.
Paras 12-15 seem particularly revealing:
- 12… [O]f nine employees in March, only four had family members who knew they worked at the embassy. That makes it difficult for them, and for us…
13. We cannot call employees in on weekends or holidays without blowing their “cover”…
14. Some of our staff do not take home their American cellphones, as this makes them a target. Planning for their own possible abduction, they use code names for friends and colleaguyes and contacts entered into Iraqi cellphones. For at least six months, we have not been able to use any local staff members at on-camera press events.
15. More recently, we have begun shredding documents printed out that show local staff surnames. In March, a few staff members approached us to ask what provisions we would make for them if we evacuate.
Then, there are some paras where Zal tells Condi what he has learned about general security conditins in the area around Baghdad from these PAO staff people:
- 20. Since Samarra [i.e. the late-February bombing of the mosque in Samarra]… [o]ur staff– and our contacts– have become adept in modifying behavior to avoid “Alasas,” informants who keep an eye out for “outsiders” in neighborhoods. The Alasa mentality is becoming entrenched as Iraqi security forces fail to gain public confidence.
21. Our staff report that security and services are being rerouted through “local providers” whose affiliations are vague. [Or perhaps your staff know but don’t want to tell you, Zal? Had you thought of that?]… Personal safety depends on good relations with the “neighborhood” governments, who barricade streets and ward off outsiders. The central government, our staff says, is not relevant; even local mukhtars have been displaced or coopted by the militias. People no longer trust most neighbors.
And finally, in para 23, Zal does reveal that he’s not quite sure how much he can trust even these staff people: “Employees are apprehensive enough that we fear they may exaggerate developments or steer us towards news that comports with their own worldview. Objectivity, civility, and logic that make for a functional workplace may falter if social pressures outside the Green Zone don’t abate.”
So okay, at the next press briefing at the White House or the State Department, let’s hear some of those reporters asking the Prez, or Condi, or their flaks: “So really, how are things going in Baghdad? And do you judge that Ambassador Khalilzad is an experienced and well-informed judge of the situation there?”
My judgment from all the above– assuming the cable as leaked and published is genuine (and I assume the WaPo would have done much to authenticate it before they published it)– is that things are even more precarious for the US position in Iraq than I had previously thought… It seems to me that Khalilzad and his staff there are hanging on by a hair. And what’s more, he seems to understand this– and to be eager to warn Condi about just how bad things are… And this, apparently even after he’d gotten the good news about the killing of Zarqawi and Maliki’s completion of forming his government…
(We have also, earlier, seen Khalilzad or his staff people telling the NYT’s John Burns that of course it was the US Viceroys in Baghdad before him who made all the big mistakes… not him, at all.)
Helena
From Wikipaedia on the phases of Guerilla Warfare
Foreign support in the form of soldiers, weapons, sanctuary, or, at the very least, statements of sympathy for the guerrillas can greatly increase the chances of victory for an insurgency. However, it is not always necessary.
Maoist theory of people’s war divides warfare into three phases. In the first phase, the guerrillas gain the support of the population through attacks on the machinery of government and the distribution of propaganda. In the second phase, escalating attacks are made on the government’s military and vital institutions. In the third phase, conventional fighting is used to seize cities, overthrow the government, and take control of the country.
Guerrilla Tactics were summarized into the ‘ Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla[1] in 1969 by Carlos Marighella. This text was banned in several countries including the United States. This is probably the most comprehensive and informative book on guerrilla strategy ever published, and is available free online. Texts by Che Guevara and Mao Zedong on guerrilla warfare are also available.
The text of the Kalilizad message seems to indicate that the war has progressed to phase 3 on the Maoist classification. It is generally seen as the beginning of the end.
This might be supported by Friday’s chart from Brookings indicating that the number of native informants has increased substantially over a year ago.
Informants in this phase are trying to buy a visa out for themselves and their families.
the Khal Cable is a confirmation of Riverbend’s writings.
I quite agree it’s a fascinating text. I would presume that it has been sent over Khalilzad’s signature (as the ambassador), but is not actually by him, or even that he would have necessarily known much about it. However it’s interesting to note that the author does seem to know what he or she is talking about. He or she knows what a Fayli Kurd is for example. It is not always obvious that people sent out to serve the US in Iraq know anything at all about the country. It’s a refreshingly honest and well-informed piece of writing. That surprises me.
I should add, from the point of view of textual analysis of the Khalilzad cable, that there’s one funny phrase “comports with their own worldview”. ‘Comport’ is very strange; the meaning exists, according to Merriam-Webster, and it is a correct usage. But what sort of English-speaker uses that kind of word? It’s extremely rare. I have never seen it before.
I think that should help us to understand what kind of person has written this text.
Extraordinary.
It reminds me of how South African whites used to discuss the situation in terms of what their maids had told them: “My maid says…” It was the best contact they had with reality.
Thank you Helena, for your own background to this thing.
I’ve often wondered how well you know this man, Khalilzad. You often refer to him as “Zal”. What kind of man is he? Is he a distinct personality, with a degree of individual agency? What is Zal’s story?
“It is not always obvious that people sent out to serve the US in Iraq know anything at all about the country.”
What a delicious understatement, Alastair! The reality is that it is usually completely obvious that people sent out to serve the US in Iraq know nothing whatsoever about the country. In fact, I would go further and suggest that it is usually obvious that if anything their heads are filled with a lot of contrafactual nonsense about the country.
I can see why Shirin thought I was being ridiculous in understating US ignorance of Iraq as evidenced in the Khalilzad cable. From what I have read of reactions elsewhere on the web.
However my style is normally understated. And the points I made were quite right: one, that it was not Khalilzad himself who wrote this piece, you can see it from the language, and two, that for an American diplomat in the Green Zone, it is quite intelligent and open-minded.
You have to remember that even in the days of Saddam, Western diplomats in Baghdad had a very narrow point of view, because of course they had to get a permit every time they wanted to go out of Baghdad. So they concentrated on relations with Saddam. Things haven’t changed, only now they are limited to the Green Zone.
What surprised me was that anyone in the US embassy had the courage to write this kind of thing.
I have seen no indications anywhere that Khalilzad did not write this. Use of the word “comports” is not evidence in this regard– it’s a word that a person reasonably well-educated in British-English-type schools might use as a matter of course. (Which points to ZK, rather than away from him.)
It went out over his name and has not to my knowledge been disavowed by him.
It is somewhat surprising that a person in a supervisory role (whether the head of mission or someone less senior than that) would write so frankly, and in an “unclassified” cable, about the “social discord” in one of his units. If anything, this indicates that the writer is someone secure enough in his position, both structurally and w/ rgd to his relationship with the Secretary of State, that he need not worry about the possible appearance of professional impropriety of writing so frankly.
The revelation of how amazingly thinly informed ZK (or other senior diplomats) are regarding the situation in Iraq is one of the main revelations in the cable…. And we are spending how much on myriad layers of “HUMINT” and other “intel-gathering capabilities” in Iraq?? This is truly mind-boggling. And it is, as Dominic says, completely analogous to the “my maid says” form of “information” in apartheid SA.
I remember on one of the occasions I was in Baghdad in the early 1980s I was talking to a Brit diplomat– a fairly “dank” one– who was telling me all kinds of things about the goings-on inside the regime. Being an information gatherer myself (though of the journalistic kind), I pressed him on how exactly he knew these things. And being (as I recall) a little in his cups, he told me that most of what they knew was “pillow talk”– i.e., things they had gathered from British and other European women who were married to Iraqis… Quite pathetic.
I guess the main “news” for me in the ZK cable, though, was the degree of distrust (and not just “discord”) inside the professional cadre of embassy workers– and between them and the Iraqi checkpoint guards on whose trustworthiness they are all in the end deeply reliant.
“gathered from British and other European women who were married to Iraqis… Quite pathetic.”
Why Pathetic Helena? I can not see wrong with this statement, it’s a valid point to such degree!!
Some times it’s true these mirages used to spy, why you denied some thing used deep in history especially well used by Britt’s around the world as a tool of spying.
By the way at that time Iraq had orders any Iraqi married to Western Women not allowed to be in high rank position like head of Company “State Owned” of any heads of University and others things.
We don’t learn here something new. What we learn is that high ranked US officials in Bagdad know that too.
I’m always suspicious with such “leaks”, because it could easily be another spin…What for, why? Honestly, I don’t know but close to 5 years of spin is enough for being suspicious…
I don’t agree with those saying that insurgency is in the third phase of the guerilla war as depicted in Mao’s and others’ writings. What we see here is the beginning of a total collapse of Iraq as a country.
You need a strong central gvt to have an insurgency with a goal and some kind of unity. There is no such gvt in Iraq; beside, it’s quite good for the US to see different militias and political or ethnical sides fighting each other in Iraq, because those forces combined could easily harmed US forces a lot.
Since we don’t know what is the agenda (if there is any) of the USofA in Iraq, we won’t be able to understand how the situation can affect or help.
What seems obvious now is that there are no more united Iraq, no more Iraq as a country. POlitical, social and ecological destructions are the results of the US intervention, we shouldn’t forget that, because if there is any “third phase”, it will be the “spin phase”: the US will try to make others endorsing the responsibility, wether it is some kind of “alqaeda”, “UN”, “coalition of weasels” or I don’t know what.
سليم الحص
صاحب المشكلة يغدو في نفسه هو القضية.
هذه الحقيقة: . لطالما استخدمتها قوى الطاغوت العالمي في إخضاع الشعوب المستضعفة بصرفها عن حقوقها، عن قضاياها، إلى مشاكلها وهمومها. العصبيات المذهبية والإثنية والفجوات الفئوية المفتعلة توظّف في العراق لهذه الغاية، والجوع المصطنع بالحصار كما الحساسيات المحتدمة بين فصائل المقاومة منذ الانتخابات الأخيرة، تُوظَّف في فلسطين لهذا الغرض.
I think this article gives the real answer and true conclusion what US trying and doing in Iraq.
They trying to make the Iraqi nation suffering and humiliating more and more to loose their desire to get rid of the invasion and its poppets called “Iraqi government” in this way of humiliation for 26millions Iraqi its exactly as Abu Griab tortures but in large scall.
Towns swept, villages and cities attacked and bombardments with F16, destroying hospitals, drink water supplies and services surrounding cites by high dam of sand all around, kidnapping women rapped and all sorts of dirty styles of Death Squads scenario just to bring this nation on its knees to accepted US invasion.
God bless Iraqis, God give Iraqis the power for long life to break this evil Amen…. Amen pray with me for Iraqis
It’s not a very important point, Helena, but I find it difficult to agree with your last remarks above. I read and correct a lot of English written by non-native English-speakers (my colleagues and students), and I find it easy to distinguish English written by a native speaker or non-native. This was native English by a well-educated person. You may know the word comport as part of your passive vocabulary, as I do, but do you use it actively? I doubt that there are a 1000 people in the world who would use it actively.
On the disconnect between the embassy and the outside world. It is of course in general true that embassies and diplomats, in their privileged ivory towers, are always disconnected from the real world, but in most countries there are means of access to information. Not so in Iraq. You always had to go out on the ground and see for yourself. Which diplomats didn’t do, and so they didn’t know. Obviously it is a big part of the background to the war.
And it is not surprising that it has continued. Although I haven’t been back to Iraq since the invasion, I had some dealings with the CPA, and there the disconnect was total. My Iraqi contacts and their CPA “advisors” were saying completely different things.
I am surprised this disconnect is news to you, Helena. It was true back in the 1980s, and you went to Iraq then I think. I’ve mentioned aspects of diplomatic ignorance in Iraq in my comments on this blog in the past.
Quite why westerners have so much trouble in understanding Iraq escapes me, but it is not difficult to observe that they do have this trouble.
Can any Arabic speakers confirm the degree of Khalilzad’s fluency in the language? Although he studied at AUB in Lebanon, can he address Iraqis in good Arabic? Perhaps he relies on the OPA Iraqi staff to be his eyes and ears because his own Arabic skills are limited. Otherwise, the Iraqi media would tell him the story. Note how he does not even cite any separate field intelligence reports. Perhaps they are worthless or decline to report to him.
I doubt the alleged cable ever reached Rice’s desk. The refusal to deliver or acknowledge the bad news might explain why someone chose to leak.
Had Rice read the comments, she would surely have upbraided him angrily for wasting time with blather at odds with the WH talking points. Their mutual boss, W, insists on a cheery “progress today” reports with a can-do attitude Bremer used to deliver.
Trivia: “Comport” came into the English language with the Normans, whose Saxon subjects would say “fit.” It has solid Continental roots and has sister words in all the Latin languages. It is not common in US or UK vernacular, but crops up in 19th century works, contemporary English translations of Continental works (where it is the direct, if unnatural, equivalent of the Freanch or Spanish word), and Continental people who acquire English as a 2nd language. It also appears in legal analyses and briefs. “Comport with” is an almost exclusively English construction, since the Romance languages would probablly prefer something built on “correspond” or another root.
Alastair,
With all due respect to the point you discussing about who was the writer.
I think the most importantly is why KZ did not discuss these issues with Ali Asistani? Or with Abdul Aziz al-Hakim ? Both are holding their religious position in new Iraq now so why then KZ not approaching them, why and who is doing these things then?
We all remembered that KZ visited Sistani before the last election and he did lobbing for that, why he did not take this matter seriously to them?
Strangely here we can say where ever US went place (I mean in Islamic World) there were a rise of “Taliban Style” of society….
So the matter is who behind these acts it’s more important who was write that memo or who leaked this cable or memo.
The reality is three years and half Iraq dragged from bad to worse, in all these years US keep insure the world its their for better security and better for Iraqis, this administration surly and truly failed miserably in their promises either they really don’t know what to do, or they deliberately doing this for long stay there.
Its may be useful to noted here more a year ago there were a small bit of news about a grope of US solders get trained to be exactly like ordinary Iraqis in the way they speaking and eating also the type of food (Iraqi food)also includes the dressing like Iraqi all sort of these things taken in account to make them looks like ordinary Iraqis, wonder where these guys went and how many of them trained and what mission sent for ?just curiosity one day may we informed by another “cable”.
Its looks entrusted, lire Saddam been an angle comparing with US administration mistrusted and lies with all their representatives in Iraq.
I think this war is “seminal lie ”