Category: Iraq-2007-q4

I went to a talk that Juan Cole gave at the Middle East Institute here in Washington DC, this morning. The talk was along the lines that there are currently three simultaneous civil wars underway inside Iraq– and that the US has very little to do with any of them.
The first one he identified was the intra-Shia struggle for control of Basra. He noted, of course, the great strategic role that Basra plays within the whole country– as chokepoint for a large proportion of the imports going into it and, crucially, of the oil exports going out of it.
The second was the Sunni-Shia struggle for control over Baghdad. Here, his assessment seemed to be that the main effect of this year’s US military “surge” had been to disarm and weaken the Sunnis in Baghdad and the surrounding areas and thereby to hand a large victory– at least at the demographic level– to the Shiites there. (I have a few questions about this analysis, but it’s not bad as a first approximation perhaps.)
The third is the looming confrontation between Kurds and all others over control of Kirkuk, its surrounding province, and other areas of north-central Iraq including Mosul.
Now, I’ll confess I had to leave the session after the first couple of questions had been asked and answered. So maybe Juan covered the following points after I left. But my main queries about what he said had to do with his contention that the US has “little or no role” in these three intra-Iraqi tussles for power.
Indeed, in the main body of his presentation, he presented considerable counter-evidence to that thesis– including when he talked about the effects of the surge in Baghdad and in his repeated references to the large amount of support the US has given to SCIRI/IISC/Badr ever since 2003.
At a broader level, too, it is evident that none of these conflicts would have assumed anything like their current very violent and destructive form if there had been a functioning, national-level administration within the country– either a functioning national government, or a military occupation regime that took seriously its responsibilities under international law to provide effective administration of the country.
Note that I am absolutely not claiming that under Saddam Hussein there was no inter-group violence within the country. There certainly was; and during a number of specific periods it took on an extremely atrocious form. But we could note that from about 2000 onwards, there was very little lethal inter-group conflict inside the country. All potential parties to that had perhaps become worn out by the combination of the effects of past bouts of atrocious violence and the horrendous, grinding-down effects of many years of tough (and, actually, also mega-lethal) sanctions.
The US invasion and (mis-)occupation of the country reignited all the old inter-group hatreds and probably created some new ones as well. It gave a virtual carte blanche to vindictive groups like SCIRI and other Shiite factions and the Kurdish factions. (Remember the terrible mishandling of the “trial” and execution of Saddam Hussein, almost exactly one year ago today?) And most importantly, the US occupation completely failed to do anything effective to ensure the orderly administration of the country, leaving private groups bent on revenge for past sufferings free to roam the country at will.
So maybe Juan is correct at some technical, or “surface”, level to say that the US has very little connection on a day-to-day basis with the inter-group violence that is now, still, roiling Iraq. But none of us should take that to mean that the US– its government and its citizens– don’t still bear a massive, ongoing responsibility for the suffering there.
We do. Under international law and under general notions of responsibility and morality.
Trying to find a way to make up for the harm we have inflicted needs to start with a clear declaration that the US intends to get out of the country completely, and at the earliest possible opportunity. Then let’s work with the other nations of the world– including, certainly, Iraq and all of its neighbors– to find a way to design our withdrawal that will optimize the chances for stability in Iraq and the region as we leave. Under these circumstances, I am worried that too many people, listening to Juan’s analysis, might just shrug and say, “Well, we’re not really part of that violence there; we’re not responsible for what’s going on there any more… And besides, the Iraqis just have all these ‘primitive’ and ancient hatreds. Let them pursue them however they want. Whether we go or stay won’t make any difference.”
But it does. And so will the manner in which we leave. Wish I’d had the time to discuss some of these questions more with Juan while he was here.

Brig. Gen. Qais al-Ma’muri, chief of the Iraqi Police in Babil (Babylon) province south of Baghdad was killed along with two of his bodyguards by a roadside bomb today, the NYT reported.
Iraq-affairs expert Reidar Visser writes in a communication that he says I can share most of with you*, that

The news about the assassination of Babel’s police chief Qays al-Ma‘muri today is particularly tragic to those who are hoping for the restoration of a non-sectarian Iraq where ethno-religious identities are in the background. For several years, Ma‘muri had stood out as an honest figure of authority in the mixed governorate of Babel, and had fought hard against militias regardless of their sectarian affiliations.
Already, some newswire reports speak of “suspicion towards al-Qaida”. In the absence of further evidence, such accusations should be treated with caution. In several cases of violence in the Shiite-dominated parts of Iraq – including Basra before the imposition of a state of emergency in May 2006, and Najaf during the battle with the “Soldiers of Heaven” in January 2007 – vague references to al-Qaida were used by Iraqi government sources to gloss over episodes that clearly featured elements of intra-Shiite conflict.

Visser reproduces part of an informative May 2006 report from the NYT on Ma’mouri’s problems with the Shiite militias, and adds this:

only a few days ago, Iraqi media reported renewed attempts by the [IISC]-led provincial council to get rid of Ma‘muri by having him transferred to another part of the country. Also, there have been reports about conflicts between Ma‘muri and the Sadrists.

Today’s NYT story, which has been reported by a number of the paper’s Iraqi employees, quotes the head of Babil’s security committee, Hassan Watwet, as saying: “The primary suspect is al-Qaeda, but we do not rule out the second suspect, the militias.”
So with vicious violence continuing in many parts of Iraq outside of Baghdad, might we suppose that Petraeus’s famous “surge” had the effect of displacing some portion of the violence from the Central Baghdad areas that he has now largely “quadrillaged off” with Israeli Wall-type concrete barriers into the rest of the country?
Kirkuk, meanwhile, is also shaping up to be a huge, and hugely contested issue…
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* Reidar is trying to build up the (no-cost) subscription list for the Historiae.org website on which he posts these communications. So if you want to see the whole text of his analysis, and others like it in the future, you’ll need to go there and subscribe.

A lot has been going on in Moqtada Sadr’s movement in Iraq recently. The WaPo’s Ann Scott Tyson is reporting from Baghdad in today’s paper that Gen. Petraeus,

said Thursday he applauds Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr for helping, through a cease-fire, to reduce violent attacks in Iraq by 60 percent since June.

Also, Sadr spokesperson Salah al-Obeidi has just completed a tour of three Arab countries (Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Egypt), where he told his hosts that the Sadrist movement “has no objections to Arab states playing a role in stabilizing Iraq.” That report is a Stratfor rendering of a Thursday Sharq al-Awsat article (which I can’t find in the original Arabic. Help, anyone?)
Stratfor also reported that Obeidi,

accused Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the Kurds, the American occupation, al Qaeda and pro-Iranian Shiite groups [of being responsible] for instability in Iraq.

And he told his hosts on the trip that Iraq’s ethnic-Kurdish (and politically very Kurdish) Foreign Minister was not doing enough to take into consideration Iraq’s relations with the other Arab states.
This AP report meanwhile tells us that, back in Najaf today, Obeidi criticized the Sadrists’ Shiite rival, IISC head Abdel-Aziz Hakim, for his current visit to the US, calling it an “act of surrender.”
It is hard to gauge and assess these developments from a distance– except to note that the Sadrists seem to be treading a fine line between cooperating, de-facto and in some delimited spheres, with the Americans and not cooperating with them in others. It is also, certainly, significant that Obeidi– whom we have no reason to doubt at this point is accurately representing Moqtada’s views– is trying to position the group as a firmly Arab Iraqi movement, in contrast to the Hakim/IISC (formerly known as SCIRI) crowd who have historically had much closer ties to Iran.
We should recall that, in the parliamentary election of December 2005, all of Iraq’s Shiite parties collaborated, running on a joint list called the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA). Within the UIA, the Sadrists were probably the largest single bloc. But SCIRI (now the IISC) had by far the best links with the US occupation authorities and– perhaps equally importantly– with MSM journos in the US, who routinely came to describe SCIRI head Abdel-Aziz Hakim as “the leader of the UIA”, “the leader of the Iraqi Shiites”, etc etc.
(The occupation authorities maintained their close relationship with Hakim despite his longterm– and continuing– links with Tehran. Go figure.)
So in the jockeying for positions in the Iraqi “government” that followed thoseelections, the US and its allies did all they could to prevent the Sadrists from getting the leading posts, and to impose their own choice, Hakim, or one of his party henchmen. The result was a sort of stand-off. Eventually the weak non-entity Nouri al-Maliki, a member of another longtime pro-Iranian party called the Daawa Party, became Prime Minister… Of course, the “government” was still quite unable to deliver any actual services to the Iraqi people, especially public security, which is an absolutely essential element for the resumption of anything resembling normal life.
Then, fast forward to this year and the arrival of Petraeus. I have to say at this point that I think Petraeus is smarter than I earlier gave him credit for. Despite the many ethical flaws that I identified and still identify in, for example, the Counter-insurgency manual that he co-wrote, he does seem to have a strong grasp of the core fact that a smart politics of political inclusiveness is the best way to cobble together just enough social/political peace within Iraq that the US military can draw down its forces there significantly without that drawdown being an extremely destabilizing and humiliating rout.
I’m assuming that was the goal he was assigned when he took over as military commander in Iraq.
And, as is now clearer than before, he has been “reaching out” not only to Sunni former insurgents but also to strong elements within the Sadrist movement.
Tyson’s piece in the WaPo gives these additional details about Petraeus and the Sadrists:

Among several factors leading to the reduced violence, Petraeus pointed to what he called the decision by “a majority . . . of the militia” associated with Sadr to honor a cease-fire.
In striking contrast to the U.S. military’s previous wariness — if not hostility — toward the young firebrand cleric, Petraeus praised Sadr personally for “working to rid his movement of criminal elements” and making a “pledge of honor” to uphold the cease-fire announced in August. He said the United States is in indirect dialogue with “senior members” of Sadr’s organization to maintain the cease-fire.
“The Sadr trend stands for service to the people,” and the goal is for Sadr and his followers to become “constructive partners in the way ahead,” Petraeus said in an interview with defense reporters traveling with Gates.
Earlier this year, U.S. military and defense officials said Sadr had been weakened and his organization fragmented since the cleric left for Iran before the start of the boost in U.S. troops, apparently out of fear of being targeted.
“I wouldn’t say he has been marginalized,” Petraeus said Thursday. “He very much maintains contacts with his leaders and continues to give direction. . . . And there is an effort ongoing to try to get a grip on some of the nefarious actors who are associated with his movement.”
Meanwhile, Sadr’s rhetoric remains as anti-American as ever. “I speak to the head of evil Bush, go out of our land, we don’t need you or your armies, the armies of darkness, your aircrafts, tanks . . . your fake freedom,” said a statement issued under Sadr’s name two days ago.
The cease-fire has helped U.S. and Iraqi forces target Shiite extremist groups, many of them based in Baghdad’s large Shiite enclave of Sadr City, that continue to launch attacks despite the Sadr order. U.S. commanders have long sought to expand the presence of security forces inside Sadr City, which is now effectively controlled by Sadr’s militia, the Mahdi Army.

If you want to get more background on developments within the Sadrist movement, the longer Stratfor piece referred to above gives one view of these, though I don’t agree with all the judgments made by their anonymous analyst there. One example: my view of Sadr is that he is much more authentically “Arab nationalist” in his beliefs and approach than Stratfor gives him credit for– though yes, it is true that some proportion, perhaps not trivial, of his followers became caught up in the frenzy of sectarian (in this case, anti-Sunni) violence that swept over much of Iraq from February 2006 on. And indeed, it has probably been a hard job for him and the more politically savvy, nationalist-minded people around him to regain their discipline over the broader movement.
If Petraeus is to have any hope of executing an orderly or near-orderly drawdown of US forces from Iraq, he will need forces in both the Sunni and Shiite community who are prepared to (a) cooperate somewhat with each other, and (b) gain substantial control over most of the Arab-majority parts of the country, so that the US troop drawdown is not a rout– and to prevent as much as possible the direct military intervention of Iraq’s neighbors in the country as the drawdown occurs. Of course, if those newly emerging forces stick hard meanwhile to the sihgtly longer-term political goal of “an end to foreign military occupation”, then the US may be forced to make the drawdown considerably more far-reaching– or indeed total— than Petraeus or his current political bosses may currently desire.
A total withdrawal of US forces from Iraq is certainly what I would like to see. That is why I welcome these most recent signs of greatly increased political coherence and sophistication among the Sadrists– on a clearly “nationalist-minded” basis. And I welcome the signs of Petraeus’s realism, as well.
Might these two end up being the Boumedienne and De Gaulle of Iraq’s national liberation?
Petraeus, at least, would not have to face the prospect of an OAS-style revolt from within his own army, if and when he and his political masters take a decision for complete withdrawal….