Informed Comment

Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion

Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute

Friday, April 30, 2004

Photographs of Abused Iraqi Prisoners

Screen captures from the CBS 60 Minutes broadcast of photographs of abused Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghuraib prison are available at memory hole. Others are floating around the internet that are even more explicit. There was also apparently coerced male on male sexual activity. The genteel mainstream news reports of this scandal (which have given it less attention than it deserves or than it will get in the Arab press) have not commented on the explicitly sexual message sent by the abusers, which is that Iraq is f**ked.
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Guest Commentary: Ray Close on 'The Real Meaning of Fallujah'

Guest Commentary

Ray Close


' The proposed plan to turn over control of the Fallujah security situation to an Iraqi force under the command of four retired generals is much more significant than might at first be apparent.

On the strategic level, with regard to overall American policy in Iraq, it represents a defeat for those who have contended all along that the insurgency is being carried on by a small group of thugs who do not enjoy widespread support within the Iraqi population at large. Today Donald Rumsfeld is explaining that he is merely acceding to the recommendations of local American military commanders that this compromise arrangement be substituted for the original plan for an all-out assault ---- weakly shifting from himself to them the responsibility for this sudden abandonment of both tough tactics and tough rhetoric. This represents a humiliating defeat for those who have argued that the United States had no choice but to "pacify" Fallujah, arrest the insurgents, confiscate their weapons, and reestablish the authority of the American military occupation forces. The new plan would accomplish none of those explicit and uncompromising assertions made repeatedly over the past few weeks by the president himself, by US military commanders in the field, and (please note) by politicians in the United States of BOTH PARTIES.

Strangely, George W. Bush does not seem willing yet to acknowledge this obvious defeat for his policies. One cannot attribute this merely to bad advice from his mentors, unless one is to believe that the neocons have a complete monopoly on all in-put to his mental processes. That is not a credible explanation. It seems more likely that his stubborn adherence to simplistic explanations of all anti-American sentiments and actions is another sign of his worrisome inability to comprehend the subtleties of this and other similar international challenges falling within the broad title of "the war on terror". Perhaps his intellectual mind-set ("there is no common ground between freedom and terrorism") simply makes it impossible for him to see the world as anything other than a zero-sum conflict between good and evil. That is very troubling quality, especially in the leader of a superpower.

Another conclusion one may draw from events of the past few days is that the general US strategy for dealing with Iraq, which has been based on predictions and recommendations of the neocon cabal in Washington (especially Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle) is becoming exposed at last as the disaster that informed analysts always knew it would become. As the neocons become more and more discredited, the political currency of their chief Iraqi protege, Ahmed Chalabi, sinks rapidly in value. Hence the efforts of the neocon faction to discredit the United Nations and its principal representative for Iraqi affairs, Lakhdar Brahimi, whose ascendancy they recognize as an obvious measure of their own failure.

This morning, I heard the Iraqi foreign minister vehemently protesting the characterization of the four Iraqi generals in Fallujah by the American media as "former Saddam Hussein generals." They are, he insisted very adamantly, IRAQI generals, not "SADDAM" generals. His message seemed very clear. He was saying to all Americans: "We can handle this ourselves, damn it! We may not have your numbers or your firepower, and we may not yet be adequately trained. But if YOU try to pacify Fallujah and the rest of Iraq by brute force, you will make this country impossible for ANYONE to govern, and that means that when you eventually leave Iraq, (God willing!), you will leave us in an even worse mess than we were in before you arrived. So let us do it by ourselves, please, for better or for worse. "

I take all of this as additional strong evidence supporting the points that I made last week, before the new compromise solution in Fallujah was proposed:

1. The political personalities around whom Lakhdar Brahimi and the United Nations will build a transitional governing authority in Iraq after 30 June (whoever they may be; it doesn't matter) have already privately abandoned any expectation that the United States military will be an appropriate or an effective force on which to rely for the establishment of unity and stability in the country; where there is no such expectation, there can no longer be any real trust, and where there is a lack of trust, there will inevitably be conflict, first political, soon violent;

2. The leadership group on which Lakhdar Brahimi bestows "legitimacy" on 30 June will have the intention (perhaps not publicly expressed at first) of vesting complete responsibility for military and security decision-making to a strictly IRAQI command authority just as quickly as possible; in the short term, this may seem virtually impossible because of insufficient resources, but it has become the clear objective of even the most moderate and reasonable Iraqis of the leadership class; the political imperative of independence may very well trump the obviously high short-term risks of chaos; the Iraqi people place a very high value on stability, and rightly so, but the force of national self-determination can become irresistible in an atmosphere of foreign occupation, and reason is sometimes the loser in that contest. Ask the Hungarians in 1956. Ask the Palestinians today

3. This means that the US Army will probably be obliged to leave Iraq before Bush, Rumsfeld & Company are prepared to manage the retreat as if it were a triumphant event for freedom; the Americans will therefore be seen by the rest of the world, and particularly the Muslim world, in much the same light as were the Israelis when they departed from Southern Lebanon ---as a frustrated and defeated occupation force expelled by victorious nationalists; this will make many Americans who supported the "liberation" of Iraq extremely angry and resentful; the British and other members of the glorious "coalition of the willing" will effectively have to make the best of a bad situation --- if they haven't wisely removed themselves from the scene in the meanwhile;

4. All of which makes the probabilities of chaos and civil war in Iraq next year even higher than we pessimists have been predicting. (UNLESS the "expulsion" of the American "occupiers" serves to unify Iraqis and restore their sense of national unity and common purpose; my fear is that this would be only a temporary triumph at best; historic divisions and rivalries would very soon resurface, and chaos would pick up where it left off.) "


Ray Close is the former CIA Station Chief for Saudi Arabia.

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10 US Troops Killed on Thursday

Between a huge roadside bomb in Baghdad, a rocket propelled grenade attack in Sadr City, and an attack in the eastern city of Baqubah, guerrillas killed 10 US troops on Thursday. There were further airstrikes on the Julan district of Fallujah, but the day ended with a decision not to invade the city. A South African citizen and at least 10 Iraqis were also killed around the country.

Four mortars were fired early Thursday morning near the Japanese base in Samawah, a small Shiite city of southern Iraq. Two mortar shells landed just outside the base. No one was hurt.

The US bombed the Julan quarter of Fallujah heavily on Thursday. The Guardian reports civilian casualties and argues that most of the fighters are not ex-Baathists or radicals, but young Fallujan men defending their city.

The New York Times did a fluff piece on the Fallujah bombings, quoting US military figures about how precise the AC-130 warplanes are. I am highly skeptical of these claims. Even blowing out the windows of a building, which bombing with howitzers would do, creates a hazard of flying glass that can severely injure civilians in the area, including children. The US would not use 500 pound bombs and AC-130s to get at a gang in Los Angeles or New York that had attacked police officers. It shouldn't be using such tactics in a country where it is the Occupying Power, either.
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Stand-Down in Fallujah

The US abruptly decided Thursday not to press the Marine assault on Fallujah. Instead, it is forming a 1000-man Iraqi unit to restore order in the city, led by a former Baath officer. There is controversy about who the commanding officer will be. Al-Hayat named Major General Jasim Muhammad Salih al-Muhammadi. Western wire services said it would be Salah Aboud, former army deputy chief of staff who at one point in the early 1990s had been an aide to the notorious "Chemical Ali," Ali Hasan Majid.

There are everywhere signs that the United States has embarked on a policy of re-baathification, rehabilitating thousands of ex-Baathists and putting them to work. Fifty former Baath officers met with Minister of Defense Ali Allawi on Thursday, expressing their deep disappointment with the current make-up of the new Iraqi army. The policy has two goals. First, it is aimed at mollifying the Sunni Arabs, who have given the US so much trouble in the past year, and from whom the high-ranking Baathists were largely drawn. Second, it serves as a threat to insurgents and Shiites, that if they continue to make trouble, they will be facing the aides of Chemical Ali.

Whoever made the decision to pull back and try to put an Iraqi face on the confrontation in Fallujah had more good sense than has been demonstrated by American leaders recently in Iraq. A bloody invasion of Fallujah had the potential of greatly deepening Iraqi and Arab hatred for the United States. It remains to see whether the new Iraqi force is up to the task of restoring order and quelling the fighters. The police in Fallujah have so far been ineffective, often admitting that they refuse to fight Iraqis on behalf of the Americans.



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Haeri Criticizes Muqtada

Ayatollah Kadhim al-Haeri, now in Qom, Iran, criticized Muqtada al-Sadr, according to AFP/ash-Sharq al-Awsat. Technically, Muqtada is under the authority of al-Haeri, though if Muqtada has managed to finish his studies and is a jurisprudent (mujtahid) he would not have to follow any other cleric blindly. Al-Haeri said that Muqtada had not had the right to declare holy war on the Americans in al-Haeri's name. This according to his brother, Muhammad Husain al-Haeri.

Al-Haeri, of Iranian extraction, had fled back to Iran from Iraq in 1976. He had been a leader of the al-Da`wa Party when in Iraq.

Al-Haeri says that the US must leave Iraq as soon as possible.

I would not get too excited about al-Haeri's comments. He is far from the scene, and Muqtada is well beloved because his father was a leader for so many Shiites. Muqtada has far more influence in Iraq now than does al-Haeri.


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Thursday, April 29, 2004

USA Today Poll: 57% of Iraqis say 'US Out Now'

From March 22 to April 2, 60 trained Iraqi pollsters interviewed 3,444 randomly selected Iraqis for USA Today. This is one of the first polls in Iraq that seems to me well weighted statistically, though to be sure we'd have to know more than USA Today told us.

The numbers are negative for the US, and are much more negative than previous such polls. Moreover, the polling ended by April 2, just before the Shiite uprising and the worst of the Fallujah fighting, so that it is highly likely that the present attitudes of the Iraqi public toward the US are much more negative.

Amazingly, 57% of Iraqis say that US troops should leave Iraq immediately. If one subtracted the Kurds, a much higher percentage of Arabic speaking Iraqis say this. And, they say it with their eyes open. About 57% also admit that life would get harder (i.e. there would be a lot of instability) if the US suddenly withdrew. They want the US gone anyway, and will take their chances.

Over half say there are circumstances under which it is all right to attack US troops! A February poll I discussed here had said that only 10% of Iraqi Shiites held that attacks on US troops were ever justified, and 30% of Sunni Arabs felt that way. The number in al-Anbar province (think Fallujah) was 70%, but it was high for Iraq at that time. Again, if the earlier polling was correct, there was a massive shift in opinion on this matter. We went from having about 3 million Iraqis think it was all right to attack US troops to more than 13 million.

[My earlier comment on the Feb. poll: "That is, the poll actually shows that in absolute numbers, there are more Shiites who approve of attacks on Americans than there are Sunni Arabs. The numbers bring into question the official line that there are no problems in the South, only in the Sunni Arab heartland. The other problem is that attitudes change, and sometimes they change rapidly. The US cannot count on the percentage of Shiites who approve of attacks on its troops remaining at 10% if it is strafing Sadr City in Baghdad. Every 1% increase in the number of Shiites who approve of attacks equals 160,000 new enemies.").

For the question, "Has the Coalition invasion of Iraq done more harm than good?", in the USA Today poll 46% say "more harm," whereas only 33% say "more good." But the ethnic breakdown here is startling. Only 2% of Kurds say the invasion did more harm. 56% of Sunni Arabs say it did more harm, and so do 59% of Baghdadis (Baghdad is about 2/5s Shiite but the Shiites there are probably Sadrists in the majority, who agree with most Sunnis about the undesirability of the US presence). Among Shiites, 47% say it did more harm, 28% say it did more good.

More harm: Total 45%, Baghdad 59%, Shiite 47%, Sunni Arab 56%, Kurds 2%

More good: Total 33%

About the Same: Total 16%

To the question of whether coalition military forces are mainly liberators or mainly occupiers, 71% said occupiers. The percentage among Arabs, both Sunni and Shiite, who said this, was about 80%. The Kurds mostly disagreed, which brought the numbers down. (The US never put that many troops in the Kurdish north, depending on the peshmerga fighters, so the Kurds are in fact much less occupied than the Arabs).

An opinion poll done by an Iraqi institute a couple of months ago found that about 47% of Iraqis said that the US invasion was a source of humiliation, and 48% said it was a liberation. If that poll was valid, it means that there was a massive shift in opinion by late March and a big growth in anti-Americanism. Based on my close reading of the Iraqi press and reports of sermons, I believe that the Israeli murder of Hamas clerical leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin on March 22 was the turning point in the big spike in anti-American feeling. There were lots of demonstrations that the Western press did not cover, and a lot of oratory.

Regarding George Bush, 55% of Iraqis have an unfavorable view of him, and if we exclude the 4 million Kurds and just look at the Arabs, his unfavorable rating is above 60% for both Sunnis and Shiites. Since Iraq is now for all practical purposes the 51st state, I say we let the Iraqis vote in the US elections in November.

Oddly, 61% of Iraqis still say that the US invasion and overthrow of Saddam was worth it (though only 28% of Sunni Arabs say it was worth it). That is, the poll does not show that Iraqis have begun regretting the US overthrow of Sadam. It shows that they have begun regretting the continued US Occupation.

And, the bad news is that despite the ballyhooed transfer of sovereignty on June 30, the actual US occupation is likely to last for a decade unless Iraqis throw the US out. And given their present mood, one should not dismiss the possibility that that is what they will do.


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Fallujah and Najaf

al-Hayat reports that the Interim Governing Council continues to attempt to negotiate a settlement at Fallujah between guerrillas and the US Marines. The Marines called down 500-pound bombs and AC-130 howitzers on the Julan neighborhood again on Wednesday, in reply to heavy fire from insurgents based there. Eyewitnesses said 10 buildings were destroyed and others damaged. There is no word on casualties, including civilian casualties. The IGC said that any general US attack on any Iraqi city had the potential to cause thousands of noncombatant deaths. The Sunni Islamist Muhsin Abdul Hamid has taken the lead in conducting negotiations, and he maintained that much of the city had returned to normal (apparently meaning the other neighborhoods beside Julan, which was receiving 500 pound bombs).

With regard to the situation in Najaf, US troops tightened their control of the approaches to it and began searching all vehicles moving between Najaf and Kufa.

An aide to Muqtada al-Sadr warned the Americans that there would be a violent reply if their forces entered Najaf. He also accused the Kurdish peshmerga fighters of helping the American forces. Husam al-Musawi said, "Our response will be violent and unpredictable." He described the erection of a barrier between Kufa and Najaf by the Americans as a laughable step aimed at isolating Kufa from Najaf. He said that any US patrol inside Njaf would be attacked as a form of self-defense. He said there was decisive proof of the participation of Kurdish fighters with the Americans in the siege of Najaf. (-ash-Sharq al-Awsat).

Some teachers in the Najaf seminaries called upon radical young cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to leave the shrine of Imam Ali, just as the Imam Husayn had departed from Mecca (when he led his uprising against the Umayyad empire in 680-81). This according to the Iranian newspaper, Baztab. The seminarians said that it was obvious that Muqtada's bloody confrontation with the US was doomed to fail, and that he should do the right thing and take his fight out of Najaf so as to protect it, just as Imam Husayn had protected Mecca.

In Qom and Mashhad in Iran, each of which has major seminaries, there were strikes and protests on Wednesday against the US siege of Najaf. A major cleric, says al-Hayat, warned the US against moving against southern Shiite cities in Iraq, especially Najaf and Karbala.
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New Executive of Technocrats being Readied for Iraq

Az-Zaman reports that American sources told it yesterday that influential quarters in the Central Intelligence Agency are putting forward as candidate for high office in the caretaker government of Iraq a politically neutral former major general and three prominent court judges and independent attorneys. There will be a president, two vice presidents, and a prime minister, requiring four appointees. One of the vice presidents will be a Kurd. The sources said that the White House had not yet made a decision about the candidates, and that Bush did not request suggestions for candidates from the Department of Defense.

The sources said that the 25 members of the current Interim Governing Council are not candidates for executive posts in the caretaker government, from which they will be formally excluded.

The State Security Council approved the Brahimi plan for a caretaker government on Wednesday.

Deborah Horan of the Chicago Tribune, in contrast, discusses the resistance still being put up to the Brahimi plan by some members of the IGC. (See my post of yesterday, below, "Brahimi Plan Controversial"). The tenor of the az-Zaman report suggests, however, that the IGC has already lost this battle at the level of the White House (presumably meaning the National Security Council). The reporter seemed to take some pleasure in asserting that the US Pentagon had been excluded from the nomination process. The Department of Defense, under Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Feith, has consistently backed Ahmad Chalabi for high appointed posts in Iraq, but he seems increasingly out of favor. (az-Zaman is close to rival Adnan Pachachi, a Sunni Arab nationalist).

Brahimi, in the meantime, called Wednesday for an end to military hostilities, affirming that there must be a voice for the city of Fallujah in the new Iraqi government. He also said the government might be appointed at the end of May, and that the deteriorating security situation would not be allowed to postpone the transfer of sovereignty.

Meanwhile, the civil administrator of Tikrit, Mark Kennon, admitted in a news conference that American troops would not necessarily withdraw from Iraqi cities when the new "sovereign" Iraqi government came to power on June 30.


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Iraq Corruption at Pentagon

Allegations of corruption have been raised against a Pentagon figure. He is said to have pressured the Coalition Provisional Authority to make a telecom bid private rather than public, so that it could be thrown to an American firm using the Qualcomm CDMA technology and ensure that the European GSM standard was not the only one in Iraq. The most interesting feature of the article, it seems to me, is the revelation of how much the bid process can be manipulated by seemingly innocent procedures like deciding if a contract is private or public.

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Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Brahimi Plan Controversial

Lakhdar Brahimi spoke further on Tuesday about his ideal plan for a caretaker government in the period June 30 - January 31, the run-up to national elections. It seems clear that Brahimi prefers that a handful of high offices be filled by technocrats with no further political ambitions. He thinks that politicians with parties who want to run for office should start their campaigns instead of serving as caretakers. The unspoken concern here is that incumbents might use the advantages of incumbency to position themselves to win the elections next January.

This plan is running into heavy opposition from the Interim Governing Council, most members of which would be excluded under the Brahimi rules. Salamah al-Khafaji told al-Hayat that it made no sense to have a president and two vice presidents. One vice president would be enough, she implied. And she felt it was not useful to have an expanded advisory committee that had no legislative powers, as Brahimi suggests.

Other members of the IGC, including Ibrahim Jaafari, the leader of the al-Da`wa Party and the most popular politician in Iraq, as well as Ahmad Chalabi, Iyad Allawi, and some others appear to be angling for the position of prime minister. If they succeed, then Brahimi's hopes for a relatively neutral, professional caretaker government will be dashed.

The IGC has in the past also resisted the idea of that body being dissolved on June 30, on which Brahimi insists.

As Bob Dreyfuss points out, these struggles have an international dimension. Ahmad Chalabi, Department of Defense officials like Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, and the Israeli government all oppose Brahimi's role and plans. Secretary of State Colin Powell, some Bush administration centrists, and Saudi Arabia, in contrast, support Brahimi and his approach.

One additional player should be mentioned. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani was the one who insisted on UN involvement in the process. He has been highly critical of the expatriate politicians, like Chalabi, whom he sees as corrupt and as working for foreign interests. Brahimi almost certainly would not be playing his current role had it not been for Sistani's demonstration of Shiite power, which was underlined by the recent uprising led by Muqtada al-Sadr. Although Sistani wanted earlier elections than are now planned, he also wants a limited caretaker government that will do very little other than prepare for elections. The Bush administration turned to Brahimi out of desperation and relative powerlessness, not voluntarily.

Chalabi has carefully larded the IGC and the cabinet with his relatives and cronies, and the Pentagon has given him most of what he wanted, including secret Baath government files that had no business being turned over to a private individual! Rather than democracy, the US has so far brought to Iraq cronyism, nepotism and financial corruption. Brahimi is attempting to move things in a different direction.

The high-handedness of the IGC was again demonstrated on Tuesday, when it issued a new Iraqi flag. It avoided the Arab colors of black and green (both of which have Islamic symbolism) in favor of blue and white, with the Kurdish color of yellow. The phrase "God is Most Great" was also dropped. Many Iraqis rejected the flag, saying an appointed committee of an Occupying power had no authority to change the flag. Some also complained that the new design resembled the Israeli flag.

az-Zaman ran an article quoting Iraqi politicians and intellectuals complaining that the new flag ignores the collective memory of the Iraqi nation, abandoning colors that have been in the flag for 80 years and that tie Iraq to the Arab world.

It seems to me that it is embarrassing for the US-appointed IGC to issue a flag and then just have it overturned by a new parliament next winter, and I cannot fathom why they did this. Like the Bremer administration's hopes of imposing Polish-style economic shock therapy on socialist Iraq, this plan seems likely to be another hangover of the heady days last summer when the US thought it could shape a new Iraq almost unimpeded.

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Muqtada and Fighters Defiant in Najaf

Luke Harding of the Guardian managed to get to Kufa after the big battle there. He writes:

' These days, Mr Sadr, a 30-year-old cleric whose father and uncle were both killed by Saddam, is a hard man to find. But his spokesman, Qais al-Kha'zali, told the Guardian that negotiations with the coalition to end the standoff in Najaf had broken down. "The Americans attacked us yesterday in Kufa using jet fighters," he complained. "They are agitating the situation. Mr Sadr demands that the occupation should end all over Iraq. The Americans hate him because he refuses to bargain with them." Mr Kha'zali said it was unreasonable for the coalition to demand the cleric disband his Mahdi militia without making concessions of its own. "They are demanding something and offering nothing," he insisted. Mr Sadr had also not murdered a rival cleric, he said, something the coalition accuses him of. '

The equally intrepid Dan Murphy has written a fine profile of Muqtada al-Sadr and his father, Muhammad Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, for the Christian Science Monitor. I don't believe the Sadrist movement can be understood or appraised without reference to Sadiq al-Sadr's movement of the 1990s, which Muqtada inherited, but most American observers and officials appear to be ignorant of this recent history.

With Spanish PM Zapatero announcing that Spanish troops have been withdrawn from Najaf and will be out of Iraq by late May, a security gap has opened up in the center-south. For the moment it has been filled by the US. But it is possible that the British will step into the breach. Doing so might give Whitehall more of a say in Iraq policy, and therefore more leverage in Washington, helping Tony Blair respond to the concerns of the British diplomatic community (see below).

But the British theorists of getting more deeply involved as a way of extricating London from Its Iraq dead end should consider that by going into Najaf they risk being on the front lines of any Shiite uprising that does occur. I suppose they think that they will anyway get caught in the crossfire of such a struggle in Basra, so they may as well have more of a say in the matter.

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Tuesday, April 27, 2004

AC-130s at Fallujah and Najaf (64 Sadrists Killed)

I made the mistake of turning on the television in the middle of the day and was treated to horrific images of part of the Julan quarter of Fallujah in flames. It appears that the Marines took fire from there and called in AC-130 strikes against the points from which the fire originated.

AC-130s were also employed to kill Army of the Mahdi militiamen near Najaf. AP says, ' The first fight came in the afternoon, when Shiite militiamen fired on a U.S. patrol. In the ensuing firefight, seven insurgents were killed. Hours later, an M1 tank was attacked with rocket-propelled grenades. A heavy battle erupted, during which warplanes destroyed an anti-aircraft gun belonging to the militia and 57 gunmen were killed, Kimmitt said. Najaf hospitals listed 37 dead, all young men of fighting age, suggesting they may have been militiamen. Al-Sadr aides said civilians also died, but could not say how many. '

Although some civilians may have been killed at Najaf, as alleged, it seems likely that most of the dead were Mahdi Army fighters loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr. The US has not invaded Najaf or bombed it, because of its sacred character, because of which any frontal assault would risk arousing Shiite religious passions against the US.

And here is the contrast between the two events in Fallujah and Najaf today. AC-130 warplanes are effective against troops deployed on a battlefield, but should not be used against urban targets. They were used effectively against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the field Afghanistan, and against the Republican Guards on the battlefield in the recent Iraq war. They and other such aerial weapons are what make a civil war of any conventional sort in Iraq unlikely, since the first time someone fields 150 men on a battlefield, they can just be taken out by the AC-130s. (Urban riots and alleyway fighting are a different proposition). I'm no expert on military hardware and do not pretend to be, but this makes scary reading even for a layman.

The immense firepower of these warplanes, however, simply should not be being unleashed against the Julan quarter. You cannot do that so precisely that you ensure that innocent civilians are not massacred along with the guerrillas. It is a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Although about 1/3 of Fallujans have reportedly left the city, that would leave 200,000 or so inside.

Given that most of the people living in the poverty-stricken Julan quarter of Fallujah are not guerrillas and are not combatants, calling down AC-130 fire on a neighborhood with civilians in it, in which the civilians are inevitably in harm's way, seems to me to contradict Article 3.

Art. 3. In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following
provisions:

(1) Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.

To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:
(a) violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
(b) taking of hostages;
(c) outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;
(d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.


That is, as the Occupying Power in Iraq, the US has a duty to avoid inflicting on innocent civilians in urban areas violence to life and person where that can be avoided. In this case, it could be avoided by using counter-insurgency techniques and clearing Fallujah neighborhood by neighborhood rather than by aerial bombardment.

[Someone challenged me on this, saying that Article 3 refers only to civil wars. Since the Fourth Convention is concerned with Occupied Territories, however, it seems to me that this common article must have been included in part because the framers wanted to cover these issues in regard to Occupied Territories. And, given that Iraq was conquered by the US, and there is no Iraqi government or Iraqi army, the current conflict in Fallujah resembles a civil war much more than it does an international conflict. That is, Fallujah is in rebellion against the Occupying authority within Iraqi territory, which is not inter-national, but intranational. The article clearly governs the treatment of all civilians and other noncombatants in the zone of conflict and not only prisoners, since "detention" is mentioned as only one of a number of causes for persons being hors de combat or outside combat. Some interpretations of Article 3 do exclude guerrilla wars from consideration, while others are more expansive, and the tendency is increasingly toward the expansive approach.

One authority notes, " For example, in a recent decision by the trial chamber of ICTY [International Tribunal Court for Yugoslavia] in Prosecutor vs. Tadic, it was observed that the common article 3 of the Geneva Convention was declaratory of customary international law. The decision further states: the rules contained in paragraph 1 of common article 3 proscribe a number of acts which: (i) are committed within the context of armed conflict; (ii) have a close connection to the armed conflict, and (iii) are committed against persons taking no active part in hostilities. On the question of existence of armed conflict, the appeal chamber stated that “an armed conflict exists whenever there is a resort to armed force between states or protracted armed violence between governmental authorities and organized armed groups or between such groups within a state. '

The precise applicability of Article 3 in any case is less important than that, in general, the international law of occupation requires the Occupying Power to guarantee as far as possible the safety, security and well-being of civilians under its rule. While the guerrillas in Fallujah are also endangering civilians by fighting from a city, for an Occupying Power to call down AC-130 strikes on civilian apartment buildings seems to me to an unnecessarily cavalier approach to civilian life, and the British officers in Basra agree with me].

It does not matter that some Fallujans are trying to kill Marines. You cannot punish the entire city for that.

Art. 33. No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.

Pillage is prohibited.

Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.



One of the things the city elders now negotiating with the Marines should do is invoke Article 15 of the Fourth Geneva convention:

Art. 15. Any Party to the conflict may, either direct or through a neutral State or some humanitarian organization, propose to the adverse Party to establish, in the regions where fighting is taking place, neutralized zones intended to shelter from the effects of war the following persons, without
distinction:

(a) wounded and sick combatants or non-combatants;
(b) civilian persons who take no part in hostilities, and who, while they reside in the zones, perform no work of a military character.

When the Parties concerned have agreed upon the geographical position, administration, food supply and supervision of the proposed neutralized zone, a written agreement shall be concluded and signed by the representatives of the Parties to the conflict. The agreement shall fix the beginning and the duration of the neutralization of the zone.


If the US can pay Halliburton $3 billion for various tasks in Iraq, it surely can afford to build temporary shelters to which Fallujan civilians could be evacuated during the current operations. It is outrageous for the US to conduct attacks on a city in a country it occupies while there are tens of thousands of women and children in harm's way. Fred Kaplan at Slate argues that to go forward could well derail the transfer of sovereignty on June 30.

It is precisely the kind of unethical and illegal action taken by the US military in Fallujah today against which the British diplomats were protesting (see below), and which they fear will drag the UK down along with the Americans. Nor is there any reason whatsoever to believe that the US can win by bombing Fallujah into ashes. That is attrition, which is poor counter-insurgency.

Gavin Bulloch writes,

' None of the attritional "solutions" is appropriate in a liberal democracy; furthermore it is considered that a "gloves off" approach to any insurgency has a strictly limited role to play in any modern counterinsurgency campaign. It should also be noted that the record of success for the attrition theory in counterinsurgency operations is generally a poor one. Undue emphasis on military action clouds the key political realities, which can result in a military-dominated campaign plan that misses the real focus of an insurgency. An inability to match the insurgent's concept with an appropriate government one--likened by Thompson to trying to play chess while the enemy is actually playing poker--is conceptually flawed and will not achieve success . . .

In an insurgency, the strategic center of gravity will be the support of the mass of the people. Clearly, this is not open to "attack" in the conventional sense, although insurgent strategies often incorporate the use of coercive force. An insurgency is an attempt to force political change, and thus it follows logically that the center of gravity can be reached only by political action. The government response to an insurgency should take as its fundamental assumption that the true nature of the threat lies in the insurgent's political potential rather than his military power, although the latter may appear the more worrying in the short term. Again, in Malaya, the center of gravity was targeted not by jungle patrolling, but by the political decision to grant independence;[3] the military contribution was invaluable, but not of itself decisive. The military campaign should focus upon the insurgents, but it is only one part of a wider solution.
'
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Protest Letter of 52 British Former Diplomats to Blair on Iraq Policy


The letter is worth reading in full, and probably it is also worth googling the signatories. It is extraordinary how terrified these experienced diplomats are, and amazing that these men who spent a lifetime practicing discretion would now speak out. I understand that the British special envoy in Iraq, Jeremy Greenstock himself, agreed with the substance but declined to sign because he was too close to the action. This letter is canary in the mine material, and should alarm everyone concerned with the situation in Iraq. They clearly are afraid that the 7500 British troops and administrators in Iraq are in severe danger from Bush/Blair policies, and that Israeli Prime Minister Sharon's policy of "negotiation by murder" has the potential to set the whole region aflame, just as, in some ways, it already has Fallujah.



Dear Prime Minister,

We the undersigned former British ambassadors, high commissioners, governors and senior international officials, including some who have long experience of the Middle East and others whose experience is elsewhere, have watched with deepening concern the policies which you have followed on the Arab-Israel problem and Iraq, in close co-operation with the United States. Following the press conference in Washington at which you and President Bush restated these policies, we feel the time has come to make our anxieties public, in the hope that they will be addressed in Parliament and will lead to a fundamental reassessment.

The decision by the USA, the EU, Russia and the UN to launch a "Road Map" for the settlement of the Israel/Palestine conflict raised hopes that the major powers would at last make a determined and collective effort to resolve a problem which, more than any other, has for decades poisoned relations between the West and the Islamic and Arab worlds. The legal and political principles on which such a settlement would be based were well established; President Clinton had grappled with the problem during his Presidency; the ingredients needed for a settlement were well understood; and informal agreements on several of them had already been achieved. But the hopes were ill-founded. Nothing effective has been done either to move the negotiations forward or to curb the violence. Britain and the other sponsors of the Road Map merely waited on American leadership, but waited in vain.

Worse was to come. After all those wasted months, the international community has now been confronted with the announcement by Ariel Sharon and President Bush of new policies which are one-sided and illegal and which will cost yet more Israeli and Palestinian blood. Our dismay at this backward step is heightened by the fact that you yourself seem to have endorsed it, abandoning the principles which for nearly four decades have guided international efforts to restore peace in the Holy Land and which have been the basis for such successes as those efforts have produced.

This abandonment of principle comes at a time when rightly or wrongly we are portrayed throughout the Arab and Muslim world as partners in an illegal and brutal occupation in Iraq.

The conduct of the war in Iraq has made it clear that there was no effective plan for the post-Saddam settlement. All those with experience of the area predicted that the occupation of Iraq by the Coalition forces would meet serious and stubborn resistance, as has proved to be the case. To describe the resistance as led by terrorists, fanatics and foreigners is neither convincing nor helpful. Policy must take account of the nature and history of Iraq, the most complex country in the region. However much Iraqis may yearn for a democratic society, the belief that one could now be created by the Coalition is naive. This is the view of virtually all independent specialists on the region, both in Britain and in America. We are glad to note that you and the President have welcomed the proposals outlined by Lakhdar Brahimi. We must be ready to provide what support he requests, and to give authority to the United Nations to work with the Iraqis themselves, including those who are now actively resisting the occupation, to clear up the mess.

The military actions of the Coalition forces must be guided by political objectives and by the requirements of the Iraq theatre itself, not by criteria remote from them. It is not good enough to say that the use of force is a matter for local commanders. Heavy weapons unsuited to the task in hand, inflammatory language, the current confrontations in Najaf and Falluja, all these have built up rather than isolated the opposition. The Iraqis killed by coalition forces probably total between ten and fifteen thousand (it is a disgrace that the Coalition forces themselves appear to have no estimate), and the number killed in the last month in Falluja alone is apparently several hundred including many civilian men, women and children. Phrases such as "We mourn each loss of life. We salute them, and their families for their bravery and their sacrifice", apparently referring only to those who have died on the Coalition side, are not well judged to moderate the passions these killings arouse.

We share your view that the British government has an interest in working as closely as possible with the United States on both these related issues, and in exerting real influence as a loyal ally. We believe that the need for such influence is now a matter of the highest urgency. If that is unacceptable or unwelcome there is no case for supporting policies which are doomed to failure.

Yours faithfully,

Brian Barder
Paul Bergne
John Birch
David Blatherwick
Graham Boyce
Julian Bullard
Juliet Campbell
Bryan Cartledge
Terence Clark
David Colvin
Francis Cornish
James Craig
Brian Crowe
Basil Eastwood
Stephen Egerton
Dick Fyjis-Walker
William Fullerton
Marrack Goulding
John Graham
Andrew Green
Vic Henderson
Peter Hinchcliffe
Brian Hitch
Archie Lamb
David Logan
Christopher Long
Ivor Lucas
Ian McCluney
Maureen MacGlashan
Philip McLean
Christopher MacRae
Oliver Miles
Martin Morland
Keith Morris
Richard Muir
Alan Munro
Stephen Nash
Robin 0'Neill
Andrew Palmer
Bill Quantrill
David Ratford
Tom Richardson
Andrew Stuart
David Tatham
Crispin Tickell
Derek Tonkin
Charles Treadwell
Hugh Tunnell
Jeremy Varcoe
Hooky Walker
Michael Weir
Alan White


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More Violence in Iraq

I was at a conference at Columbia on Monday and then traveling and so was away from news most of the day. When I did get a chance to check in, I found this Boston Globe piece that summarized the now-daily carnage. Renewed fighting in Falluja, including use of air strikes (a problematic strategy in a populated city). One Marine dead, eight wounded, and 8 guerrillas killed.

Renewed fighting around Najaf and Kufa, with the US determined to move into some new positions in Najaf. Al-Hayat reports that a group calling itself "The Youth of the People of Najaf," somethig like a street gang, claimed to have clashed with the Mahdi Army militia, to have killed some militiamen, and to have forced it out of the shrine of Imam Ali (this claim seems unlikely to me). The shrine cities have an old history of street gangs that fight one another, so that this local gang is taking on the Sadrists is plausible.

Since the Badr Corps of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq had control of the shrine of Imam Ali before the Sadrist uprising of early April, and since it still is helping patrol Karbala, my own guess is that Badr has deliberately pulled back in hopes that the Mahdi Army and the Americans will weaken each other. The hope that other Najaf forces will take care of Muqtada al-Sadr for the US seems to me forlorn. The Najafis hate Muqtada and his militiamen, who are not from Najaf on the whole. On the other hand, no Shiite clerical figure can possibly want to see the US drag Muqtada away in chains, since that would inevitably weaken the clerical authorities.

My guess is that the US will gradually encroach on Najaf and will eventually try to capture Muqtada. He gave an interview to the Italian La Repubblica on Monday, in which he predicted that if the US arrests or kills him, the Iraqi people will unleash on them the fires of hell. It seems to me likely that his cadres will in fact launch a long-term, low-grade guerrilla war in the South if the US captures or kills Muqtada. The question is whether, in putting down this insurgency to come, the US will alienate other Shiites, setting the stage for further failures. The US shouldn't have gone after Muqtada to begin with.

Two US troops killed and five wounded in Baghdad when a house blew up as they were trying to inspect it for chemical weapons. Local Iraqis said it was a cosmetics factory but it seems to have been something else.

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Monday, April 26, 2004

Shots Fired at Bulgarian President Parvanov
Attacks Kill 9 in Iraq, Including 2 US Military Personnel


Guerrillas directed fire at visiting Bulgarian President Georgy Parvanov as his motorcade moved from the Polish base to the Bulgarian base near the Shiite shrine city of Karbala in south-central Iraq on Sunday. They were repelled, and no casualties are reported.

With the severe insecurity in Iraq, the parade of foreign heads of state to that country has long seemed to me unwise, since they are obvious targets and if they are moving around they cannot be made all that hard. Australia's PM was visiting Baghdad briefly when the boat bombs struck. Parvanov should remember how exactly Bush made his one visit last Thanksgiving, with a great deal of stealth and very quickly. That wasn't cowardice; that was realism. (Australia's John Howard emulated Bush in making a quick trip).

At least nine persons died in violence in Iraq on Sunday. Guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb in Baghdad, killing a US soldier, and an American in the Coast Guard died of injuries suffered during Saturday's boat bombing off Basra in the Persian Gulf. (That attack has stopped Iraq's oil exports from the South for two days). Guerrillas fired Katyusha rockets at a hospital, a hotel and a television station in the northern city of Mosul, killing two hospital workers, two hotel workers, and wounding 13 others. Guerrillas in Kirkuk fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a police patrol (most of the police in Kirkuk are Kurdish peshmerga), killing a policeman and wounding five others.

In Diwaniya, a southern Shiite city, Spanish soldiers killed two guerrillas after taking fire from them.


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Ex-Baath Reservist Officers Recalled in Iraq

Az-Zaman: The new minister of defense, Ali Allawi, has called upon all officers in the former Baath military reserves, who have been cleared by US civil administrator Paul Bremer, to report to duty in the Civil Defense Forces.

The move comes after a sharp deterioration of security in Iraq's major cities, according to az-Zaman

The Interim Governing Council will take up with Paul Bremer next week the issue of how former Baath officers with experience can be recalled if they had not been involved in crimes against humanity. A center is being set up in Mosul where they can apply for return to duty. The IGC is very concerned, however, that officers with a criminal past not return to sensitive positions (I suspect they fear some unreconstructed Saddamists will get in, and possibly make a coup down the road).

Meanwhile, ash-Sharq al-Awsat alleges that the US has recently released 2500 Baath detainees, including some former high officials of the fallen regime.

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Sadrists Stockpile Weapons in Najaf Mosques, Schools

AP reports that a US general has said that he will move US troops into a base just near the holy city of Najaf as Spanish troops depart. He said that US troops would stay away from the shrine of Imam Ali inside the city. Paul Bremer (-az-Zaman) and Coalition spokesman Dan Senor complained that the Mahdi Army was stockpiling heavy weaponry in mosques and schools in Najaf. Az-Zaman says that Bremer is still intent on arresting Muqtada al-Sadr somehow.

Some reports of these troop movements. like that at the CBC seem to suggest that US forces will move into parts of Najaf beyond the base, but that isn't actually clear. It does seem clear that the US military is keeping the pressure on Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia in Najaf. This task is a delicate one, since too much pressure could produce another explosion, or start a trend toward the complete alienation of the Shiite majority from the US.

Meanwhile, a Kurdish member of the Interim Govering Council, Mahmud Uthman (Mahmoud Osman), gave an interview to ash-Sharq al-Awsat in which he said that the Sadrist movement is an important part of Iraqi politics and no attempt should be made to marginalize it, but that it must give up violence and learn to engage in civil politics. He said or strongly implied that the Baathists had used violence to try to shut down political movements, and that Iraqis were tired of that approach. (This statement can only be read as a huge slam at Bremer and other American officials who went after the Sadrists in late March and early April, provoking a massive confrontation.)

He said that Muqtada al-Sadr had refused to allow the IGC to play a mediating role, and had instead requested that the al-Da`wa Party (led by IGC member Ibrahim Jaafari) step in. He said that as a result, the IGC has little knowledge of the current negotiations in Najaf. He contrasted that situation with the Fallujah crisis, where, he said, several IGC members have been very active as mediators (and apparently less close-lipped than Jaafari).

He said that the IGC worried that any further confrontation with the US would delay the return of sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30.

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60% of Documentation for Modern Iraqi History Lost

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat/ AFP have an article on the impact of the looting last April after the fall of the regime on the documentation for modern Iraqi history. The article maintains that 60% of the documents are gone, most of them burned. The loss is especially extensive for the period of the constitutional monarcy, 1921-1958, a period during which there were at least sometimes fairly open parliamentary elections. I hope to find or translate the entire article at some point.

Note that US conservatives like Charles Krauthammer attempted to maintain last summer that the looting and loss of Iraqi history had been exaggerated.

As a historian of Iraq myself, I can't tell you how it hits me in the gut to have so much of the documentation gone. It means that we will never be able to recover the indigenous side of many developments now known only from the British archives, with their colonial biases.
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Sunday, April 25, 2004

Poll: 57% of Americans Believe Saddam Gave Substantial Support to al-Qaeda

A new poll shows that as of mid-March, 57% of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein had given substantial support to al-Qaeda. Worse, 45% actually say that "clear evidence" has been found in Iraq to support this allegation! As for weapons of mass destruction 45 percent say they believe Saddam had them before the recent war, and 22 percent say that he had a major program for developing them.

There is no documentary or physical evidence for any of these assertions.

The only good thing about the poll is that it showed that a majority of Americans now believes the Iraq war will not bring greater peace and stability to the Middle East (56% did believe it in May 2003), and 51% believe that Iraqis want US troops out of their country (this may actually be overly simplistic).

The poll was commissioned by the ' University of Maryland's Program in International Policy Attitudes, conducted by Knowledge Networks from March 16 to 22, was released yesterday. It surveyed 1,311 adults and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points. '

Why would so many Americans cling to patently false beliefs? One can only speculate of course. But I would suggest that the two-party system in the US has produced a two-party epistemology. Epistemology is the study of how we know what we know. If it were accepted that Saddam had virtually nothing to do with al-Qaeda, that he had no weapons of mass destruction (nor any significant programs for producing them), and that no evidence for such things has been uncovered after the US and its allies have had a year to comb through Baath documents-- if all that is accepted, then President Bush's credibility would suffer. For his partisans, it is absolutely crucial that the president retain his credibility. Therefore, rather than face reality, they re-jigger it to create a fantasy world in which Saddam and Usamah are buddies (as in the Jimmy Fallon/ Horatio Sanz skits on the American comedy show, Saturday Night Live), and in which David Kay (of whom respondents say they've never heard) never recanted his earlier belief that the WMD was there somewhere.

Of those who maintain that Iraq actually did have WMD, 72% say they are going to vote for Bush.

If 57% of Americans believe that Saddam was supporting Usama in the late 1990s through 2003, it means that not insignificant numbers of Democrats believe this. It shows that the Democratic party leadership has not developed an effective critique of Bush administration approaches to the 'war on terror,' and that in effect the Republicans are poaching on Democratic territory successfully in this regard.

It is bad for the country for policy to be made based on falsehoods, and it is even worse for failed policies not be be recognized as such because the public clings to myths.

I saw how the mythical opinions are generated at the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations where I testified last Tuesday. Former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger testified, and began his testimony with a long quote from Usama Bin Laden about how the US was timid and had easily been chased out of Lebanon and Aden with a few bombs. It was an odd way to begin a hearing on what has gone wrong in Iraq.

I don't have my degree in Neocon studies, but as I thought about this, it occurred to me that Schlesinger must count as one of the early Neocons, having gone over to Nixon at a time when the junior members of the club still clustered around Democrat Scoop Jackson. As a historian, I respect several of Schlesinger's achievements, and I know for a fact that he was very suspicious of Nixon during Watergate and put in safeguards against Nixon going to the officer corps and trying to declare martial law. But it is also clear that Schlesinger has what can charitably be called blind spots on the Middle East. During the oil crisis of the 1970s, British official Lord Cromer became alarmed at his views: ' But it was the substance of Schlesinger's remarks which set alarm bells ringing. "[One] outcome of the Middle East crisis," he told Lord Cromer, "was the [sight] of industrialised nations being continuously submitted to [the] whims of under-populated, under-developed countries, particularly [those in the] Middle East. "Schlesinger did not draw any specific conclusion from this but the unspoken assumption came through ... that it might not ... be possible to rule out a more direct application of military force". ' That is, he was at least talking about invading Saudi Arabia and occupying its oil fields, and he appears to have had rather dismissive views of Middle Easterners. (The area is not under-populated, by the way; the Middle East if we include from Morocco to Iran, and Turkey to Saudi Arabia, surely has a population comparable to that of the US). And, after the recent Iraq war, Schlesinger seemed to argue that no Arab would ever again lift a hand against the United States, since they had been taught a decisive lesson.

So it seems clear to me that Schlesinger was trying to shape his Senate testimony so as to hint around that the Iraq War was somehow connected to al-Qaeda, even though we all know that it wasn't. The only one who challenged Schlesinger on this was Rhode Island Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee:

' SEN. CHAFEE: I know these gentlemen have good opinions, but they don't speak for the administration. Those are the people we're going to get the answers from ultimately. But nonetheless, Secretary Schlesinger, in your opening comments, you quoted some very chilling testimony from Osama bin Laden. Why use that testimony at a hearing on Iraq?

MR. SCHLESINGER: The mention of that is to discuss why it is that the United States is engaged in the Middle East, because we were attacked, because of a declaration of war against Americans.

The question of Iraq, which is what you point to, it may or may not have been, as some stated, central at the time we went in. It may have been secondary or peripheral at the time we went in. But the administration is quite right that it is now the central front in the war against terrorism, because much of what we see in Fallujah today are terrorists who have come from the outside world. They are the ones primarily who have been setting the car bombs and have been doing the training.

So it has now become central, even for those who might, at the outset, not have thought it central.

SEN. CHAFEE: Well, it's become central because we invaded. But certainly I think you'd even agree there's never been any connection between Osama bin Laden and Iraq. They're very, very different issues. And Afghanistan is --

MR. SCHLESINGER: Well, I think you've had --

SEN. CHAFEE: -- a long way from Iraq.

MR. SCHLESINGER: I think you've had testimony, or a letter, at least, from George Tenet talking about the contacts between al Qaeda and Saddam going back at least a decade. But that is -- we are there. We are where we are. And the consequences of not winning, of not being successful, would be disastrous not only for the United States --

SEN. CHAFEE: I agree with that, but I don't think there's any connection with al Qaeda. We're there and now we have to be successful. I agree with that. '


Actually, George Tenet has testified that there was no relation between Saddam and 9/11. What is interesting here is how completely honest and aboveboard Chafee was being, in taking on the Neocon Consensus. That consensus has been adopted by the Right of the Republican Party as its election playbook, and it is repeated on Fox Cable News, on rightwing talk radio, at Republican fundraisers, dinners, and in television interviews all through the Red States. So far the Republican Right has been able to keep its partisans with it on these matters. You might think that a Republican like Chafee standing up for the truth is a good sign. And it is, of course, in some ways. But the Associated Press worries that centrist Republicans like Chafee and Spector are a "dying breed."

Still, that Senator Lugar agreed with ranking minority Senator Biden to hold the hearings at all was clearly an expression of extreme anxiety about where Iraq policy is going and about the potential catastrophe that lies ahead if his party cannot begin facing facts. (Biden has been courageous and straightforward that we are in big trouble; Lugar tends to signal it in more low-key ways). Senator Hagel clearly also has severe concerns. The Democrats, not being obliged to try to reelect a sitting president, in general are more clear-sighted on the problems right now, but many of the Republicans are also clearly alarmed. There wasn't much partisanship at the hearings, since after all, Iraq affects all Americans. The only exception was Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, who seemed angry about the hearings and kept throwing leading questions only at Richard Perle. It seems clear that the momentum of the Republican Party at the moment is in the hands of the Brownbacks and the Santorums, and it is they who are shaping opinion among the rank and file, aided by the Limbaugh megaphone.

If nearly half the country cannot even see that things are going badly wrong in Iraq, one despairs that anyone will work up the political will to try to fix the problems before it is too late.


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Iranian Diplomat Says a US attack on Najaf will Lead to Widespread Crisis throughout Iraq

From the ISNA website, via by BBC World Monitoring:

Iranian charge d'affaires to Iraq, Hasan Kazemi-Qomi made several statements at the Iranian Students News Agency site on 23 April:

' "If the occupying forces disregard the internal political, social and security situation in Iraq and launch military operations in the holy cities, including Najaf, then this will only lead to increasing clashes and the present crisis will only escalate. In fact, this will also lead to the emergence of serious popular resistance and will confront the occupying forces with serious problems. In that case, one can only predict the increasing lack of security in Iraq and the crisis will escalate to all the other parts of Iraq." ' . . .

' Another achievement of the visit [of the Iranian delegation last week] was that Iran expressed its readiness to contribute in any way possible to the restoration of calm, stability and security in Iraq. This was welcomed. However, the fact of the matter is that the bellicose policies of the occupying forces and their irrational response to the people's demands have increased and escalated the clashes on the domestic Iraqi scene. ' . . .

' Kazemi-Qomi stressed that the international community, the governing council and Iraq's neighbours should exert pressure on the occupying forces to prevent them from continuing to use force and resort to violence. '

' As we saw today, some coalition forces, such as Spanish and Honduran forces, are no longer prepared to cooperate within the framework of the coalition. . . For various reasons, these forces are no longer interested in staying in Iraq. That is because, firstly, those forces have come to Iraq to contribute to reconstruction and the establishment of security, not to deal with the crisis and oppose popular forces. Secondly, the policies that America is currently implementing are incompatible with the policies of other coalition forces in Iraq. In fact, one can even see differences of opinion between political and military sectors in America . . . Public opinion in countries that are members of the coalition have been exerting pressure on their governments and they are not prepared to sacrifice the lives of their own people so as to enable others to achieve their aims. Another reason is that coalition forces have taken account of their own future in Iraq. If they oppose the demands of the people of that country, they will jeopardize their own national interests in Iraq. . . If the crisis continues to escalate, then more countries will try to leave the coalition. '

Source: ISNA web site, Tehran, in Persian 0932 gmt 23 Apr 04

What comes across here is that actually many Iranian officials want Iraq to be a stable neighbor, and are worried that the US is mishandling it and that trouble will spread across the border to Iran. They were perfectly happy to offer their good offices to help resolve the current standoff at Najaf, but clearly no major party to the dispute was interested in having them do that, including especially Muqtada al-Sadr.

The Ledeenist drumbeat on the Brownshirt side of the Republican Party that Iran is behind the recent instability in the Shiite south is directly contradicted by Iranian actions and by Muqtada al-Sadr's refusal to see his supposed patrons. In fact, I suspect Ahmad Chalabi gets more money from Iran than Muqtada does. And, it seems obvious that the US administrators are the ones who provoked the clashes, which were not spontaneous but came in response to a US attempt to arrest Muqtada.


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Saturday, April 24, 2004

40 Killed in Another Bloody Iraq Saturday
At Least 5 US Soldiers Dead; Unknown US Casualties in Haswa, Kut
Boat Bombers Strike Basra Vessels, Kill 2


As sun sets on Saturday in Iraq, it pulls a shroud over the charnel house the country has become.

Suicide boat bombers drew their dhow up alongside a ship at Basra's offshore oil terminal and exploded it. A Coalition vessel intercepted another boat as it approached the oil terminal. Two US sailors were killed and 4-5 Coalition personnel were wounded: ' "At approximately 5:00 p.m. (1400 GMT), coalition naval personnel observed an unidentified dhow approaching the Khor Al-Amaya Oil Terminal (KAAOT) in the northern Arabian Gulf. Standard Maritime Interception Operations (MIO) procedures required the crew to board the dhow for inspection," it said in a statement. "As the eight-member boarding team approached the dhow in a rigid hull inflatable boat (RHIB), the dhow exploded, flipping the RHIB and throwing the crew into the water, killing two and wounding four," the statement said. Iraq's oil terminals in Basra were attacked by suicide boat bombing on Saturday, official sources earlier said. According to the sources, two of the attacking boats exploded alongside a ship tied up at the terminal and a third boat was intercepted by a coalition ship as it approached an exclusion zone around the terminal and there was an explosion soon after it was boarded. '

Guerrillas used a truck to sneak up on the US base at Taji just north of Baghdad, firing two rockets onto it that killed five US soldiers and wounded six, three of them critically. US helicopter gunships then took out the truck.

The death of a Marine in combat was also announced on Saturday.

The almost daily loss of US life in Iraq has provoked a controversy about the policy of the Bush administration in not allowing the press to cover the arrival of the caskets at Dover Air Force base. The photos have now been released on the Internet as a result of a Freedom of Information request.

The downtrodden slums of East Baghdad, now called Sadr City, were the scene of several discrete rounds of deadly violence. Before dawn on Saturday, US troops attempting to arrest suspected militiamen of the Mahdi Army became involved in a firefight that killed one or two Iraqis. A US shell went astray and landed in the bedroom of a civilian family, badly burning the three young girls sleeping there.

Later Saturday morning, unknown guerrillas shot three rockets into Sadr City, one at the crowded market. Cars went up in flames, and retailers' merchandise swirled through the torrid street, and chunks of human flesh were scattered.

Reuters reported, ' "There was blood and bodies everywhere," said Bassam Abdul Rahim. Angry residents of Sadr City -- a powerbase of rebel Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr who U.S.-led forces have vowed to kill or capture -- held up bloodied human remains to television cameras and said U.S. helicopters had fired at the market. They put a sign on a dead donkey saying: "This is Bush." ' The Star says, ' After the rocket strike, residents chanted: "Long live al-Sadr! America and the Governing Council are infidels!" '. That is, even though the rocket strike was carried out by enemies of the US, Shiites in Sadr City tended to blame the Americans, either for failing to provide security or because a dark conspiracy theories that the US was behind the attack. This reaction was the one intended by the guerrillas who fired the rockets, and who clearly hope to stir up trouble of some sort, either Shiite/ American or Shiite/Sunni. The anti-American interpretation was aided by resentments of the US hot pursuit and clash with local boys early Saturday morning.

This attack killed six Iraqis and wounded 38 according to a local health official.

Three more rockets landed in the quarter during the rest of Saturday, one smashing into a two-storey house and killing a woman, wounding her daughter.

Elsewhere in Iraq:

*Guerrillas set off two roadside bombs in Haswa, an hour or so south of Baghdad. One hit a US military convoy. In response, the US troops engaged in a firefight that caught civilians in the crossfire. Eyewitnesses saw US helicopters taking away US casualties, but no word on specifics. The other roadside bomb hit a civilian bus. It killed 13 Iraqis and wounded 21.

*Polish-commanded forces in Karbala fought gun battles with Mahdi Army militiamen over Friday night in Karbala, killing 5.

*Near a US base at Tikrit, guerrillas detonated a roadside bomb, killing four Iraqis, including civilians and two policemen.

*Guerrillas assassinated an Iraqi woman translator for the US military and her husband as they left a US base (whereabouts not identified).

*Near the Shiite city of Kut in the far south, guerrillas attacked a US convoy and burned an armored vehicle. Eyewitnesses reported seeing US casualties.

The US is increasingly depending on ex-Baathists for security in the Kut area, according to Nicholas Pelham of the Financial Times: ' In Kut, 180km south of Baghdad, US forces replaced the police chief and his deputy with two Republican Guards, at least one of whom was a senior Ba'athist. Former officers in the Republican Guard have also been appointed to police posts in Diwaniya. '


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Muqtada al-Sadr Warns He will Unleash Kamikaze Bombers if Najaf is Attacked
Bulgarian Soldier Killed in Clash at Karbala


ash-Sharq al-Awsat: Muqtada al-Sadr, leader of the Mahdi Army militia, said in his Friday prayers sermon at the Kufa mosque on Friday that he will resort to the use of suicide bombings in confronting the American-led Coalition if they launched an attack on the city of Najaf.

At the same time, his supporters in the city of Karbala clashed with Coalition forces, killing one Bulgarian soldier. Five of the Sadrist fighters were wounded, along with 4 civilians and one Iranian. AP reports, ' Militiamen attacked a military convoy made up of Polish, Bulgarian, Lithuanian and Latvian soldiers near city hall in the center of Karbala around the time of weekly Muslim prayers, said Lt. Col. Robert Strzelecki, spokesman for Camp Babylon, the main Polish base. Gunmen and soldiers exchanged fire . . . On Wednesday and again Thursday, the coalition base in Karbala, known as Camp Kilo, was pounded with rebel mortar rounds. No one was injured, the division reported. ortar attacks on coalition bases throughout south-central Iraq - including those in Karbala, Najaf and Hillah - have grown more frequent in recent weeks. ' [Dutch troops came under mortar fire in Samawah Friday, and such exchanges seem to be routine if under-reported.]

Muqtada said to thousands of worshippers who crowded the mosque that Najaf "will never fall to the hand of the Occupiers." He added, "The men of the resistance will spill their own blood in defending their holy city." He said that numerous men and women had come to him asking permission to implement a suicide bombing.

He went on to say that he had repeatedly requested them to wait, but if an attack on "our cities"or on the Shiite religious authorities took place, they will transform into time bombs and will not stop until they have demolished the forces of "the enemy."

Muqtada likened the situation in Iraq to the condition of the Palestinians, saying that Iraqis "confront the same enemies and they must unite to defeat them." He added that the Iraqis must "unite their ranks for the sake of a common goal, that is, the liberation of their country."

The thronging crowds chanted slogans in support of Muqtada and criticizing not only the occupation forces but also the Interim Governing Council, whom they branded infidels.

Al-Sadr said that Najaf had survived wars all through history but tht it had always "emerged victorious." He observed, "The British were altogether unable to subdue Najaf, and nor had the Ottoman Turks, and nor will the American occupation succeed in razing it."

The Washington Post quoted more of his sermon: ' "My goal is to liberate Iraq," Sadr said, calling on Arab nations to support the insurgency. He equated the plight of Iraqis to that of Palestinians and vowed to avenge Israel's assassination of Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi this month "by act, not speech."

The WP noted that clerics are weighing in on the other big current crisis, as well:

' In prayers at another major mosque in Baghdad, a Sunni cleric warned U.S. commanders not to launch another attack on Fallujah. "We warn you against another massacre in Fallujah," said Ahmed Abdul-Ghafoor Samaraie. "If there will be more bloodletting and more people killed in Fallujah, one hundred Fallujahs will stand against you." '


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Is Chalabi Out? Brahimi Plan advances, Baathists Rehabilitated

The intrepid Robin Wright and Walter Pincus at the Washington Post argue that the Brahimi plan for Iraq could forestall the coronation of Ahmad Chalabi as Iraq's America-installed prince. Brahimi favors appointing four technocrats from outside the Interim Governing Council, leaving IGC members to organize themselves for a political campaign if they like. Some may be appointed cabinet members.

The current IGC is a mixture of warlords with militias, corrupt expatriate politicians, and token independents. When asked to appoint a cabinet full of ministers to run the bureaucracies last summer, they typically put in relatives or cronies. The oil minister, Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum is actually the son of Muhammad Bahr al-Ulum, an IGC member, and is related by marriage to Ahmad Chalabi. The recently appointed minister of defense (at first minister of trade), Ali Allawi, is the nephew of Ahmad Chalabi, as well.

Chalabi was behind the dissolution of the Baath army, and an extreme program of de-Baathification that purged even minor members of the party. By the way, no such extreme denazification was attempted in Germany after WW II. Party members who had taught elementary school just went on teaching elementary school after the National Socialists collapsed. Much of Germany's post-war bureaucracy was run by former party members. The important thing was only that they hadn't been guilty of crimes. This point is made well by Billmon.

Given the extreme alienation of Sunni Iraqis from the Coalition (30% believe it is legitimate to do violence against Coalition troops) has forced Bremer and the Coalition to rethink allowing Chalabi to purge so many thousands of technocrats, and to continue to control them politically forever after (the US military handed over to Chalabi large numbers of files on party members, which is outrageous--the files should be under the control of the Iraqi state, not a private citizen).

I don't think anything bad can come of letting former Baath engineers build things in the new Iraq. The US should be careful about putting former Baathists in military and intelligence positions, though.

In any case, the plot to install Chalabi has run into trouble. It is alarming, however, that Brahimi is still worried that Chalabi's cronies such as Doug Feith in the Pentagon may yet succeed in foisting him on Iraq.

By the way, the business relationship of Ahmad Chalabi's nephew Salem with a law firm that has some sort of affiliation with FANDZ, the firm of Mark Zell, a West Bank settler and former and future Feith partner, was detailed by Brian Whitaker. The web site of Salem's firm is registered to FANDZ. This Corpwatch article serves as a follow-up to the Whitaker piece, but does not settle the issue of Salem Chalabi's precise relationship to Jerusalem-based Zell, or the continued relationship of both of them to Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, Zell's sometime partner. Chalabi's Baghdad firm appears to be structured so as to trade on insider influence. Feith says he has cut off all relations with Zell's firm. But then Dick Cheney was thought to have given up all his Halliburton interests, at one time, as well.

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What is to Be Done in Iraq?: Polk

Guest Commentary

By William R. Polk

' While C.I.A. director George J. Tenet struggles in Washington to prove that his agency did not exaggerate the danger Iraq posed to the United States, American forces continue to come under attack on the ground throughout Iraq. Misunderstanding is evident in both situations. Not comprehending similar courses of events in Vietnam cost Americans thousands of lives and billions of dollars. So it is worth attempting to get as precise an interpretation of the issues as is now possible.

Take intelligence first: In his speech at Georgetown University on February 5, Mr. Tenet was candid on what he thought of as the central issue: that the analysis offered by his agency was “generally on target” and its advice to the President was hedged with warnings that all intelligence can be only an “estimate.” He also covered over Vice President Dick Cheney’s widely reported and unprecedented visits to “discuss” their appreciation with C.I.A. analysts. C.I.A. officers regarded these visits as attempts to get them to say what the administration wanted to hear rather than what their analysis supported. This must have been personally embarrassing as well as professionally disturbing for Mr. Tenet, but in his talk, he more or less denied it.

In that talk, Mr. Tenet carefully avoided the central problem. The problem is not that the CIA was wrong but that it was replaced

What replaced the CIA was a new office created in the Pentagon to provide a more “supportive” underpinning for the already agreed direction of policy. This “Office of Special Plans” was created under the aegis of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Under Secretary Douglas Feith. Reporting to Stephen Cambone, as under-secretary of defense for intelligence and the man who took the lead in the campaign to justify the attack on Iraq, was one of the most important but least known of the small band of “Neoconservatives,” Abram Shulsky.

Mr. Shulsky’s organization aimed essentially to supplant the entire American intelligence system. Although never admitted, its task, effectively, was to prove the charge, aggressively pushed by Vice President Cheney, that Saddam Hussein, in conjunction with his ally Usama bin Ladin, was poised to attack the United States with an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. It is that alternative intelligence analysis to which those who made the decisions listened. And it was that alternative which Tenet carefully avoided discussing.

Meanwhile, on the ground in Iraq, there is a more pervasive failure of intelligence analysis which may, in the long run, prove even more costly to Americans. Put simply, it is what is actually happening there. The assumption has been that only a small group of “die-hard Baathists” oppose the Americans and that once they are eliminated by “hunter-killer” squads “security” will be established.

Looking back at America’s most grievous intelligence failure, Vietnam, we can see an analogy. Bluntly put, we thought we could shoot or bomb them into doing what we wanted. We saw what we wanted to see and never managed to ask the fundamental questions about what the people on the other side wanted, how they functioned and how we fit into their world.

During that period, I was a member of the Policy Planning Council. To my dismay, I found that while we had gathered more information on that little country than any government had ever gathered on any nation, we lacked any criteria for separating the merely interesting from the significant. So, being challenged to address the graduating class of the National War College, I read everything I could find on guerrilla warfare as it has occurred all over the world and constructed from those experiences an analytical “model.”

In essence, what I found was that guerrilla warfare is composed of three elements. First, the guerrillas have to establish their credentials, to win legitimacy, because they must demand sacrifices from those they would lead. They usually accomplish this by casting themselves as nationalists who oppose foreign imperialists -- Yugoslavs against the Germans, Greeks against the Germans and Italians, Irish against the British, Algerians against the French, Zionists against the British, Chinese against the Japanese, Vietnamese first against the French and then against the Americans and so on.

Only after they have established their legitimacy can guerrilla movements make the second step, to supplant the administration of those they would overthrow. In Vietnam, during the 1950s, as police reports I dug up showed, the Vietminh eliminated the French-installed administration everywhere outside the main cities and replaced it with their own. In Greece, Yugoslavia and elsewhere guerrillas did the same. Even when guerrillas are too weak to supply services, as they were in Northern Ireland, they assert their right to demand contributions (“taxes”) and protection (police power and justice) so they establish a claim on administration.

By the time they have established their nationalist credentials and assumed at least some attributes of government, the guerrillas have won, by my estimate, about 95% of the campaign. As the American statesman John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson about the American revolution, our guerrilla war against the British, the real revolution occurred long before the actual fighting which “was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it.” Military force is the short end of the stick.

Force is important, admittedly, but usually not in the way those who oppose the guerrillas believe. Foreigners regard the use of force as the means to create “security.” But those guerrillas who have won their wars are the ones who have learned how to use the power of their enemies like jujitsu against them. They goad the foreigners into actions that are painful or frightening to the natives and so further undermine the foreigners’ claim to legitimacy. In Vietnam, for example, Vietminh cadres would fire at American aircraft to provoke them into bombing villages. Then they would return to ask the frightened or wounded villagers rhetorically, “are those your friends who destroyed your houses and killed your relatives?”

Models are never exact; there are always exceptions. So the model I constructed for Vietnam cannot pretend to be more than suggestive. But both the similarities and the differences are instructive.

Take first the issue of legitimacy. So far, at least, Iraqis appear deeply divided so there is nothing quite like the single nationalism exhibited in many guerrilla wars. But we would find in most of them, in their early stages, nationalism was divided and weak. Nor is there such a unified leadership as in Vietnam; but in Yugoslavia, Greece and Algeria unified leadership came only at the end of the struggle. All had a major objective – to get the foreigners out. And despite nuances, this is clearly the objective of at least the Sunni Arabs and Shi’a Arabs – who make up about 75% of the population. The Kurds are inhibited by their fear of a likely Turkish invasion if America leaves suddenly, but their fear does not equate to pro-American sentiment. We cannot even dream of acquiring legitimacy for ourselves. Getting the foreigner out is the bottom line of nationalism.

On administration, we have proven unable to recreate the one we destroyed; and so have failed to provide minimal services to the bulk of the Iraqi people.

Finally, we are now disputing, as we did in the Vietnam war, the least significant of the three, military force. And not very successfully: we have suffered more American casualties in the months since the invasion than in the first three years of our involvement in Vietnam. Can anyone really believe it will get better?

So what can we expect? The short answer is defeat.

That is a bitter pill, one no political leader willingly swallows, particularly in an election year. So what are the alternatives?

The first is simply to delay. The expression “not on my watch” comes from naval officers who tried to avoid catastrophe for which they could be personally blamed. There will be a strong and understandable tendency of the Bush administration to try to slow down the tide running against us in Iraq. Bargain, negotiate, equivocate, encourage differences. These may indeed buy time. But if the time is not used constructively, the result will be, as it was in Vietnam, the worse for coming later.

The second alternative is to prop up a hand-picked ruling council. The British did this with reasonable success from 1919 to 1932. But we should remember that during that decade, Iraq had practically no literate, politically active population. In 1920, less than one half of one percent of population was in school; in that year, the government opened two secondary schools. One had 7 and the other 27 pupils. The British were candid about their policy. In their 1923-1924 report to the League of Nations, they wrote that “in this country, it is neither desirable nor practicable to provide Secondary education except for the select few.” Even at the end of the British mandate in 1932, the average pupil outside the main cities spent only 2 years in school and only 14 of the then existing 154 schools had as many as 6 grades. When I first lived in Baghdad in 1951, the whole country had only 5 mechanical engineers.

Today, the situation is entirely different. Iraq has one of the highest rates of literacy in the Middle East and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are highly trained professionals. In my example, it now has thousands of mechanical engineers. In sum, the Iraqis are not an “underdeveloped” people. It should be evident that they cannot be fooled with a façade in place of a government.

The third alternative is not simple and will not be easy, but it is the only one that offers America a chance to get out of Iraq less ignominiously than we got out of Vietnam. This policy can be divided into principles and processes.

Among the principles we will have to make completely clear is that 1) we will get out; 2) we will not so build ourselves into the Iraqi economy that, like the British did from 1932 to 1958, we will run the country behind a native façade; 3) that we will not seize or denationalize Iraqi oil; and (4) that we will, in some transparent fashion, allow a high degree of self-determination.

Among the processes, 1) we will get out with all deliberate speed; 2) we will begin right away to devolve political power in meaningful ways; and (3) we will immediately move to dilute our unilateral role by allowing serious political and commercial activities by other powers and political and “security” activities under UN auspices.

I suggest that, despite pronouncements, a sober view of what is actually happening in Iraq will show that on most of these issues our actions now lead in the opposite direction.

Take one, critical, example: we have spoken with apparent pride of our creation of an interim governing council. But, since we selected all the members and the group has no power, Iraqis see it as an attempt to fool them while we continue to run the country. Some will argue that this is paranoia, but to one who has studied Iraqi politics and history, as I have for the last 50 years, it is understandable: that is precisely what the British did during their rule of the country.

What else might we have done or could we do now? I think the best approach would be to reverse our emphasis on a national council and provide money and other forms of recognition and support to neighborhood groups. They can be helped to provide clean water, dispose of waste, open clinics and schools, provide protection against robbers, etc. and represent their constituents to the higher authorities. If the current situation is to be more than a hiatus between dictators, self-determination must begin there, at the grass roots.

For this, there is an old Middle Eastern – Muslim, Christian and Jewish – tradition. Quarters of towns and cities were expected to be self-governing and to maintain such facilities as schools, markets, public baths, clinics and places of worship. They taxed themselves and paid a lump sum to the government; they had their own police forces; and their leaders represented them to the rulers. That system has been weakened and partly supplanted by modernization, but elements of it remain and could again become vigorous in proper circumstances.

To begin at the neighborhood level also avoids the danger of corrupting the very concept of democratic government as the British did and as we are now doing with the powerless, appointed and manipulated “governing council.”

Wise observers like the late UN representative, Sergio Vieira de Mello, have understood that sovereignty not security is the key to Iraq. Only if we can win the “perception” challenge – the widely held belief in Iraq that we intend to stay, to control their economy, dominate their lives and exploit their oil – will enough Iraqis stop protecting the guerrillas that attacks will be curtailed. Security can be achieved only thus; to try to win Iraq by military force will have the same result as in Vietnam.

Lastly, however we got to where we are in Iraq, by intent or by bad intelligence, we must deal with the likelihood that a precipitous withdrawal will result in chaos; local mafias (as in Afghanistan) will proliferate; intercommunal massacres may follow; and, either in greed or in fear, other Middle Eastern states will almost certainly intervene.

So, it is evident that we must begin implementing an orderly, intelligent and effective policy rather than just trying to beat down opposition, to bolster shams or merely to hang on until after the American election. Time is not on our side. So we had better begin.
'


© William R. Polk, February 8, 2004


William R. Polk is the senior director of the W.P. Carey Foundation. After studies at Oxford (BA, MA) and Harvard (BA, Ph.D.) he taught at Harvard until 1961 when President Kennedy appointed him a Member of the Policy Planning Council of the U.S. Department of State. There, he was in charge of planning American policy for most of the Islamic world until 1965 when he became professor of history at the University of Chicago and founded its Middle Eastern Studies Center. Later he also became president of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs. Among his many books are The United States and the Arab World; The Elusive Peace: The Middle East in the Twentieth Century; Neighbors and Strangers: The Fundamentals of Foreign Affairs; Polk’s Folly, An American Family History; and The Birth of America.






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