 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
October 30, 2006
There's One Last Thing to Try
This past August and September were the two deadliest months on record
for Iraqis, and October is set to exceed even those levels.
American policy in Iraq over the past two and a half years has been a mixture of nation-building and counterinsurgency, neither with much success. But the United States is now facing an even more difficult task: ending a civil war. People in Washington have decided to postpone any policy rethinking until the midterm elections are done, because we don't want politics to interfere with this process. After that, the hope is that the Hamilton-Baker study group will report its findings. Then we can begin making some of the moves it recommends. There's just one problem: conditions on the ground are deteriorating rapidly. Violence in Iraq has become largely sectarian in nature and has drastically worsened in the past two months. The International Organization for Migration estimates that 9,000 people every week are being driven out of their homes. The Iraq Casualty Coalition, which calculates Iraqi deaths based on local press reports, says that August and September were the two deadliest months on record for Iraqis, and October is set to exceed those levels. One more symbolic explosion—another Samarra bombing, say—could set off a chain reaction that will make things completely uncontrollable.
The rising sectarian violence is poisoning the atmosphere for any possible reconciliation or deal. Every week, new killings mean new reasons for vengeance and diminished prospects for compromise.
Another dangerous new trend is the rapid disintegration of political authority across the country. As the vacuum in security and authority widens, political leaders in Baghdad are losing control of their militias and cadres across the country. Local gangs are asserting power in their neighborhoods and making money in the protection business. They will not easily give it up. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld recently made an analogy to Algeria's civil war, pointing out that it took 13 years before that conflict burned out. But Algeria had a unified, competent government facing a reasonably unified, competent insurgency. That's simple compared with Iraq's chaos.
Historically, outside forces can do little in such circumstances. The proposal floating around various policy circles, for stepped-up regional diplomacy or a regional conference, is a fine idea and should certainly be tried. But will Syria and Iran really help stabilize a pro-U.S. government in Iraq? And do they really have the power to switch off the violence there?
Iraq's basic problem is an internal one. Its major parties need to commit to a power-sharing agreement. Such a deal appears highly unlikely. Iraq's governing majority—Shiite religious parties and the Kurds—seem wholly averse to making significant concessions to the Sunni minority. The Sunnis, beset by their own radical elements and lack of leadership, seem unable to present a united platform or to rein in the insurgents. And the United States seems to lack much power to make either side move.
The most disturbing recent event in Iraq—and there are many candidates for that designation—was the decision by Iraq's single largest political party, SCIRI, to push forward the process of creating a Shiite "super-region" in the South. This was in flagrant defiance of the deal, brokered by U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad before the January elections, that brought major Sunni groups into the political process and ensured Sunni participation in the voting. It is a frontal rebuke to President Bush, who made a rare personal appeal to SCIRI's leader, Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim, on this issue.
Perhaps the most critical element of a deal to end Iraq's violence is a broad and comprehensive amnesty. Almost no civil war or sectarian strife has ever ended without one. And yet every time amnesty gets discussed, powerful Shiite voices veto it. (Congressional Democrats and Republicans also have engaged in demagoguery on the issue, compounding the problem.) Another is an oil-revenue-sharing agreement, along the lines advocated by Joseph Biden and Leslie Gelb. This project moves forward and backward in fits and starts. Additionally, attempts at reversing, even modestly, the massive de-Baathification of Iraq have proved virtually impossible. Overwhelmingly, the evidence suggests that the major players in Iraq have neither the intention nor perhaps the capacity to forge a national compact.
Can the United States regain some leverage to force things forward? There is one last thing to try: privately but forcefully threaten a reduction of U.S. support for the current government. Nothing else—not the promise of aid, arm-twisting by the American ambassador, phone calls from President Bush—seems to have worked. It could be an honest conversation that explains to Iraq's governing coalition that American support cannot be unconditional. Without the American military, this Iraqi government would likely fall, and many of its members' lives might be in danger. Perhaps that will focus their minds.
Of course, there is a good chance that even this won't work. At that point—a few months from now—we will have to be willing to follow through on the threat. That does not mean a complete withdrawal. But American forces should be reduced and repositioned so as to create a much smaller, less active, less ambitious and, one hopes, more sustainable American presence in Iraq.
