ISG reaction from Reidar Visser

    Reidar Visser has written some very good analysis of the Baker-Hamilton– Iraq Study group– report. It’s posted here on his historiae.org website. But I’m also going to put it up here so we can then all discuss it. ~HC

The Iraq Study Group: Regionalisation Not Balkanisation
By Reidar Visser (http://historiae.org)
6 December 2006
In a remarkable rejection of partitionist winds that have blown through America over the past year, the Iraq Study Group (ISG) in its report of 6 December 2006 recommended a final big push for the Iraqi national reconciliation process, with the collective effort of regional powers as a potential catalyst.
As far as state structure issues are concerned, partition (or any kind of unconstitutional federalisation, whether “from above” by Iraqi elite politicians or on the basis of foreign advice) was apparently never taken seriously by the ISG. Already prior to the release of the report, a few members of the ISG working groups had complained to the press that they had felt marginalised during the process and that their proposals never truly came on the agenda. The report itself rather brusquely dismisses the prospect of “devolution to three regions” (p. 43), citing arguments that for once are almost identical to those of the Bush administration: practical infeasibility and the dangers of greater regional chaos. Elsewhere, the report mostly shuns the federalisation question, with the implicit message that they envisage this process to stay on track according to the constitution: outside Kurdistan, federal decentralisation is optional not mandatory, and if it is to be done, it will start by initiatives “from below” in the Iraqi governorates, not by Baghdad politicians or by outsiders with “plans” for Iraq.
Instead, the report advocates a serious attempt to get the national reconciliation process back on track, especially as regards re-inclusion of the Sunnis. To facilitate this, it proposes new initiatives on several levels. Perhaps most significantly, there are proposals to work for greater regional momentum that could be conducive to a more peaceful Iraq. The ISG advocates the creation of an “international support group” for Iraq that would include neighbouring states, which in a collective forum might be able to transcend some of their narrow interests linked to their particular protégées inside Iraq. Importantly, active steps to progress in the wider Arab–Israeli conflict and the Palestine issue are recognised as a central pillar for improving the regional atmosphere.
The ISG also suggests that the Iraqi government itself is not doing enough to drive the national reconciliation effort forward. It focuses on the need for rapprochement with the marginalised Sunnis, and introduces several new ideas about how to achieve that. These include a suggestion for United Nations support in the constitutional revision process, a rather outspoken criticism of the current Iraqi constitution’s allotment of undiscovered “future” oil fields to the regions instead of to the central government (apparently the criticism is also directed against regional control of the oil sector as such), international arbitration over Kirkuk, and a delay of the Kirkuk referendum (pp. 65–66.) There is also a more general “talk-to-everyone-but-al-Qaida” attitude throughout the report.
Many of these proposals are quite radical in that they explicitly challenge the current version of the Iraqi constitution. But at the same time they also serve as alternatives that could receive consideration in the constitutional review process. Some of these suggestions have earlier been floated in international NGOs and by figures working in the United Nations system. It is likely that the driving forces behind the 2005 constitution (chiefly the two big Kurdish parties and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, SCIRI) will feel threatened by some of the recommendations in the report. On the other hand, these suggestions should appeal to a large silent majority of Iraqi nationalists of both Shiite and Sunni backgrounds, as well as to regional powers worried about Iraqi decentralisation spinning out of control.
In the current situation, regionalisation and multilateralism generally come across as good ideas, although the United States should not underestimate the desire of regional powers to keep them engaged, mired down in Iraq. The proposed overtures to regional powers in turn reflect a failure of United States policy in the Middle East in two areas. Firstly, inside Iraq, it relates to a communications problem. The ISG report explicitly acknowledges this (p. 14), asserting that the United States is “unable” to talk to the most important Shiite figure (the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani), and “does not talk” to another important political leader, Muqtada al-Sadr. This has led to sole reliance on the Shiite party that best understands how to deal with Washington – SCIRI – which happens to be the party with the most long-standing and systematic ties to Iran, and which is also the author of the Shiite federalism proposals that most infuriates the Sunnis. But SCIRI account only for some 23% of the deputies within the big pro-Shiite United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), and their elevation to a pre-eminent contact point reflects a failure on the part of Washington to engage other partners among the Shiites. This has created some remarkable contradictions in US policy. There was something distinctly Trojan about the way in which pro-Iranian SCIRI leader Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim was invited to Washington for high-level talks only days after a leaked memo by Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld had advocated a robust strengthening of US forces along the border with Iran to physically protect Iraq against Iranian influences.
The second issue that has precipitated a turn to regional powers relates to overall US policy in the region. Importantly, the ISG recognises the inter-relationships between Iraq and broader regional issues. Until there is a minimum of consistency in the US approach to democracy and human rights issues across different countries in the Middle East, it will remain unable to conduct an ideological foreign policy and will rely on compromises with regional states. This also affects the situation in Iraq, where many parties are reluctant to talk to the United States precisely because they are unconvinced about Washington’s overall vision for the region. Until the US becomes more energetic in solving the Arab–Israeli conflict – chiefly by speeding up the process towards an independent Palestinian state within borders approximating the pre-1967 situation and with an honourable settlement for the 1948 refugees – this problem will remain.
Copyright © 2006 historiae.org
This document may be freely reproduced as long as http://historiae.org is credited as the source.

22 thoughts on “ISG reaction from Reidar Visser”

  1. My two cents is this: The Baker report says domestic issues center on national reconciliation, without which there isn’t any hope for containing the violence. Visser focuses on that, and notes that there are several new ideas in the report for promoting the reconciliation process. Visser also stresses the connection between regional cooperation and domestic-Iraqi reconciliation, as another positive feature of the Baker report.
    But when you read the NYT and the WaPo reports, there is scarcely a mention of national reconciliation. Readers of those papers have probably never heard of it. The US newspapers have focused instead on (1) the supposed inevitability of Sunni-Shiite violence, and (2) at a deeper level, the idea that military force is really the only tool the US needs or can use, hence the popular attitude that since we can’t conquer the insurgency or the militias militarily, there’s really no hope.
    These are two aspects of the outlook that has been flogged by the US media lo these many years: We should be able to overcome problems like this militarily; but if we can’t, then the violence will inevitably continue and there is nothing to be done, and besides, this supposed natural Shiite-Sunni violence isn’t our fault anyway.
    Visser is relieved Baker didn’t fall afoul of some of the ill winds that have been sweeping America lately (partition, for instance), but given the uninformed and superficial nature of public attitudes here, you still have to ask whether any US government will be able to follow through with a meaningful reconciliation plan, which (as the report notes), is bound to be politically unpopular anyway.

  2. There is a cold war going on between Iran and the US for control of the region. Until that reaches some measure of settlement, I doubt that any progress is possible on the Arab-Israeli front.
    Israel learned last summer that walls offer no protection and military high tech no deterrence. Via proxy (Hezbollah) or via its alleged nuclear intentions, Iran looms large over the Israeli political landscape.
    So the US must deal with Iran. Trouble is, in any negotiation, whoever benefits from the status quo has the upper hand. With the US bleeding in Iraq, Iran has time on its side. Every day that passes further weakens the US position vis a vis Iran.
    The neocons thought the road to Jerusalem ran through Baghdad. Wrong. It runs through Tehran. Sadly for the US, it’s a charter member of the Axis of Evil that holds all the cards and the superpower that is superpowerless.
    Perle predicted there would be a statue of Bush in Baghdad. He got it almost right. If the Iranians have any sense of gratitude they owe Bush his own statue in Tehran. No westerner has ever done more for the Iranians.

  3. في هذه الاثناء، واصل الاحتقان السياسي الداخلي تصاعده. ومع مواصلة الكتلة الصدرية مقاطعتها البرلمان والحكومة العراقيين، تقدم النائب الصدري فلاح شنشل، أمس، بعريضة موقعة من 115 نائباً (من أصل 275 يؤلفون البرلمان)، يطالبون فيها بإعلان جدول زمني لانسحاب الاحتلال من العراق.
    http://www.assafir.com/iso/today/world/710.html

  4. I just saw Jim Baker and Lee Hamilton on CNN International here in Taiwan. Baker said with no hesitation and with a perfectly straight face: “The U.S. will stay in Iraq for a long time.” He and the other old guy sitting next to him said a lot of other stuff, too, all of which the above quotation renders moot. No mention by either elderly gentleman, of course, of where a broke and increasingly indebted America will get the blood and funds to do all this “staying,” let alone why any “sovereign” Iraqi government worth the name would allow the American military to remain on its territory or in its airspace for even a moment.
    While watching this surreal, Orwellian scene, I had a flashback to some four decades ago when I witnessed a breathless, sweet young thing from Los Angeles announce her intention to go north to San Francisco where she intended to “live with” the hippy community there in the Haight Ashbury district. A TV interviewer asked her how she planned to support herself. “How will you eat?” he inquired. Her innocent, glassy-eyed reply:
    “Why, food … just … ‘is’!”
    I never saw such improbable old hippies in my life as these two semi-embalmed establishment elders speaking of impending national bankruptcy without a care in the world. Somewhere in the back of my mind I could just hear them saying:
    “Why, but … blood … and billions … just ‘are’!”
    Meanwhile, back in the “real” world:
    They lost three thousand souls last month
    While we lost seventy;
    Yet we say the Iraqis have
    No sense of “urgency.”
    We take our time; we drag our feet;
    We dawdle and we stall;
    Then we blame the Iraqis for
    The snail’s pace that we crawl.
    Yes, I think I see poetic possibilities here, if not the doom awaiting unsuited astronauts exiting their spacecraft on the airless surface of the moon, foolishly taking the presence of oxygen and atmospheric pressure for granted.

  5. All these speculations are nice mental exercises, but all of this will come to naught. The US foreign policy establishment has been far more monolithic and rigid in its behavior in the post-WWII era than they would make it look, and the good cop / bad cop routine is not even amusing anymore. I don’t want to ruminate what I once said to one of Helena’s prior posts,
    https://vintage.justworldnews.org/archives/002259.html
    but weeks and months will pass, and the only noise you will hear from Iraq will be the gurgling sounds of people drowning in the quagmire. Meanwhile, rich fat vile politicians of all stripes in DC will make self-righteous squeals to prove to the semi-comatose masses that they knew it first/best. If we are not where we are now in 6 months, I will buy you all a beer/coffee ! But with deep sorrow I think we will be deeper in, and nowhere close to out.

  6. Jonathan Steele has an interesting analysis of the ISG/Baker report. (I got it through Badger If I remember correctly)
    I agree with most of his conclusions. I find the Baker report and advices to be very cynical : they are mainly taking in account that the US isn’t winning in Iraq and that the US citizen support for this war is weakening/disappearing. But when you look at it nearer :
    1) The withdrawal of US troops is put under so many irrealist conditions that it will never get accomplished.
    2) The goal is mainly to withdraw American troops from dangerous fields and let the poor ill equipped and ill trained Iraqi take the casualties.
    3) The report didn’t call for any substantial economic help to compensate for the damages she has caused to the Iraqi. How are they supposed to cope with a destroyed country, a destroyed state and a destroyed economy ?
    4) The main change concerns the US alliances in Iraq : Baker propose to reach out to the Sunni. Whether it is still possible isn’t sure, but the vocal protests of the US puppet politicians in Baghdad show that they are taking this threat very seriously. There is an aperture for that kind of solution if US talk to Al’Sadr and to the new front he is trying to create with the Sunni and Al’Mutlak among them. But this suppose a real time table for a complete and generous withdrawal, not the one consented from the top of the lips in the Baker report, the one advocated here by Helena.
    5) Solving the Israelo-Palestinian conflict is also a must and a good step. It also implies a significant change in US relationship with the Israelians; Bernard Chazelle’s remarks above are very interesting in this context.
    6) Both the US and Israel have now lost their illegal wars of aggression in ME. The Baker report is taking this in account, so this is a first good step in the direction of a more realist politic. But this acknowledgement should go deeper, both the US and Israel will have to make serious concession to their adversaries and this is not yet included in the Baker report.

  7. Salah
    I wonder if you wouldn’t mind using a larger type face when you post in Arabic.
    I find I am having difficulty in reading some of the words. Sometimes I am not sure if there are dots or diacritics on the letters.

  8. Helena
    As the final sentence talks about an equitable Palestinian settlement, the news that Laila and Yussuf made it through Raffah is probably On Topic.

  9. The US pitted Iraqi factions against each other in order to maximise its own leverage. After fomenting dissension among Iraqis, the US then started using the issue of reconciliation as another tool to maximise US leverage and exert pressure on groups that support the national resistance against the US and its craven collaborators. Until America recognises that it has no business trying to win in Iraq and commits itself to dismantling its monstrous embassy and vacating all its megabases, the mayhem will only increase.

  10. Dr. Visser worked very fast indeed, but a lot of other folks are catching up with him in the parlor game of using the ISG document to prop up whatever peculiar agenda one may happen to have become impassioned about already.
    “Bipartisan” must means that the thing was designed to work like that, I suppose.
    There are, however, limits. The Wall Street Journal throws up its editorial-board hands and does not even try to play the game:
    On that point, the best “new” idea on Iraq that we’ve heard runs exactly counter to the ISG suggestion of “conditional” U.S. support based on forced “reconciliation.” According to a report in the Washington Post, State Department Counselor Phillip Zelikow recently drafted a memo on something called the “80% solution,” referring to the roughly 80% of Iraqis who are Shiites and Kurds. Mr. Zelikow argues that U.S. attempts to draw violent Sunni factions into the political process have not only failed but also alienated our natural allies among the majority of Iraqis who welcomed the overthrow of Saddam.
    This does not mean the U.S. would be taking sides with Shiite death squads against the Sunni terrorists. Far from it, the point would be to reassure Iraq’s elected government that the United States is firmly on its side. This is particularly important for Mr. Hakim and other Shiites, many of whom still remember being abandoned by the U.S. after they were urged to rebel against Saddam way back in 1991.
    The U.S. has resurrected that mistrust far too often since 2003–in the use of Algerian Sunni Lakhdar Brahimi to select Iraq’s first interim government, and in the U.S. role earlier this year in forcing out former Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. Many Shiites now feel Nouri al-Maliki’s government is being undercut too.
    So it’s no surprise that Maliki aides reacted angrily yesterday to the ISG suggestion of “conditional” support. Shiite mistrust also played a role in the cancellation last week of the planned three-way meeting among Mr. Maliki, Mr. Bush, and Jordan’s King Abdullah. Our information is the snub had nothing to do with the leak of a memo about Mr. Maliki by National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley (the Bush-Maliki meeting went ahead as planned) but was instead a signal that the Iraqi government wants no part of a “regional solution” that involves concessions to Sunni terrorists.
    But God knows best. Happy days.

  11. I see timetables, schedules, benchmarks, metrics, and deadlines for Iraqis. I see none of these for Americans. Nothing focuses the mind like the prospect of an imminent hanging, we hear it said. All this would seem to suggest focused minds by the Iraqis and unfocused ones by the Americans.

  12. frank,
    if you have a little dial thingy on your mouse, then hold down the control key and turn the dial – text will get larger and smaller.
    I discovered this quite by accident. Works on most text on a computer, not pictures.

  13. Frank,
    I can not increase the font size due to the blog not a low me to use big font tag.
    If you using Firefox you can increase the font size by holding Ctrl and push “+” key or use “-“ to reduce the font also
    The above Arabic lines translation:
    Falah Shanshal from Sadris block said he presented a document to Iraqi parliament yesterday singed by 155 Iraqi parliament’s members (from total of 275 members) they asking for withdraw US troops from Iraq and for Time Table for withdraws troops

  14. At last they found the Holy Grail, the Two Buddies I mean, Bush & Baker (the Oilman & his Lawyer):
    from the ISG report, pages 57, 58:
    “Expanding oil production in Iraq over the long term will require creating corporate structures,
    establishing management systems, and installing competent managers to plan and oversee an
    ambitious list of major oil-field investment projects.
    To improve oil-sector performance, the Study Group puts forward the following
    recommendations.
    • The United States should encourage investment in Iraq’s oil sector by the international
    community and by international energy companies.
    • The United States should assist Iraqi leaders to reorganize the national oil industry as a
    commercial enterprise, in order to enhance efficiency, transparency, and accountability.
    • To combat corruption, the U.S. government should urge the Iraqi government to post all oil
    contracts, volumes, and prices on the Web so that Iraqis and outside observers can track
    exports and export revenues.
    • The United States should support the World Bank’s efforts to ensure that best practices are
    used in contracting. This support involves providing Iraqi officials with contracting templates
    and training them in contracting, auditing, and reviewing audits.
    • The United States should provide technical assistance to the Ministry of Oil for enhancing
    maintenance, improving the payments process, managing cash flows, contracting and
    auditing, and updating professional training programs for management and technical
    personnel    “

  19. I should perhaps add that this short piece was never intended as an exhaustive and comprehensive analysis of the ISG report, as some commenters perhaps seem to assume. Rather, it focuses on those parts of the report that relate to Iraq’s state structure. I am also sympathetic to the view that the whole question about the design of the Iraqi political system is above all an internal Iraqi affair, but at the same time it is an inescapable fact that the United States has a policy in the matter. That is why I think it is interesting that a bipartisan report should come out so strongly in favour of the unified state model.

  20. Reidar, I think it is great to have your text and the discussion up here, because (1) you were addressing a different “slice” of the whole issue than the one I addressed in my subsequent post, (2) you were quite right to note the significance of the ISG having come out so strongly against radical splitting of the Iraqi state, and (3) the speed with which you composed this well-considered text was impressive– and it gave me more time to compose my much longer (but still by no means comprehensive) post on the topic.
    (And Salah, thanks for the links.)

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