On Thu, 6 May 2004, Joe Dees wrote:
>
> She claims that we are hated by the Iraqis, who don't want what we have
> to offer, even though the BBC poll expressly refutes her, pointing out
> that most Iraqis want a constitutional democracy in Iraq, and wish the
> US military to stay until the new government can provide security for
> its land and peoples.
>
> As to who will emerge behind Sadr, no one will who wants to represent
> the Iraqi Shi'ites, who are repudiating him en masse (led by Iraqi
> Ayatollah Sistani, the #1 Shi'ite cleric) and killing his followers.
> The dead-ender jihadist mindset of which she speaks is held by a small
> and dwindling minority, whose temporary existence should not be used as
> an excuse for abandoning the aspirations for freedom, democracy,
> representative government and human rights held by 20+ million Iraqis.
And from a source you respect, no less, Joe Dees.
"The presence of military bases planted all over the country, staffed by
tens of thousands of soldiers, would be like having a gun constantly
pointed at any future Iraqi government's forehead, thereby preventing it
from doing anything that would provoke the US into pulling the trigger.
Lieutenant-Colonel Brennan Byrne, explaining their actions in Fallujah
recently, summed it up best: "Diplomacy is just talk unless you have a
credible force to back it up. People will bend to our will if they are
afraid of us." As the cases of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cuba, Iran, Grenada,
etc show, the US has not shied from launching military interventions
against governments that threaten its geo-economic interests in the form
of invasion or covert operations. In Iraq, the soldiers will just have to
march out of the bases."
Whole article:
// Jei
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FD30Ak01.htmlIraq's future: Dreams and nightmares
By Herbert Docena
United Nations special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi was not alone as he went
around Baghdad, just as the uprising against the coalition forces began
some weeks ago. Robert Blackwill, Condoleezza Rice's deputy for Iraq at
the National Security Council, was always by his side.
Tasked to come up with a proposal for Iraq's political transition, Brahimi
is now suggesting that come June 30, the United States should transfer
power to a government headed by a prime minister, a president, and two
vice presidents - all chosen by the United Nations, in consultation with
the US and the US-hand-picked Iraqi Governing Council (IGC). No one was
surprised when US President George W Bush - Blackwill's boss - later
hailed Brahimi's proposal as "broadly acceptable to the Iraqi people" and
among the people the UN will be "consulting" about Iraq's future leaders.
Alongside the efforts to neutralize anti-occupation forces now rather than
later, the Brahimi plan is the latest twist in the US's constantly
evolving strategy to establish its permanent interests in Iraq. The
original strategy was to stay on as direct occupying power for "as long as
is necessary and not a day longer". That was eventually scrapped in favor
of transferring "power" to a sovereign government by June 30, while
remaining in control for as long as is necessary. Just before the outbreak
of the uprising at the start of April, that plan had also become
untenable. All that the US needs, for now, is to ensure that it can stay
just one day more - in order to stay on for as long as is necessary.
Plan A: There should be no illusions
When the invading armies first set foot at Saddam Hussein's palace last
April, they had no immediate plans to move out. In February, a month
before the war, US State Under Secretary Marc Grossman said: "The United
States is committed to stay as long as is necessary, but not a day more."
In response to questions about when they intended to transfer power to an
Iraqi government, US officials could only give evasive answers and
motherhood statements.
Holding democratic elections to replace Saddam was not high in the
priority list and, indeed, Secretary of State Colin Powell had earlier
ridiculed the Iraqis' capacity for Jeffersonian democracy. "There is this
sort of romantic notion that if Saddam Hussein got hit by a bus tomorrow,
some Jeffersonian democrat is waiting in the wings to hold popular
election [laughter]," Powell had said in the aftermath of the first Gulf
War of 1991. "There should be no illusion about the nature of that country
or its society."
Going by its current foreign policy strategy around the world, the US was
expected to implement its tried and tested "democracy promotion" program
in Iraq, applying elements from its related experience of installing its
brand of "democracy" in the Philippines, Nicaragua, Chile and Haiti, to
name a few. But during the first months of the occupation, it was still
unclear as to how exactly they would be pursuing such a project.
By July, two months into the occupation, then press secretary Ari
Fleischer was still saying: "We will stay as long as is necessary to get
the job done and done well and done right, and not a day longer." On July
13, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) established the 25-member
IGC, an interim Iraqi authority with limited powers and an indefinite
life-span. Plans for any transfer of power, elections, or the writing of a
constitution, remained vague and non-committal.
By October, the biggest problems hobbling the US in Iraq had crystallized.
First, it had become obvious that the violent and non-violent resistance
to the occupation was growing stronger instead of dying. Coalition forces
continued to be subjected to as many as 15 to 20 attacks daily. A leaked
Central Intelligence Agency report indicated that more and more people
were supporting the resistance. Second, the lack of international
legitimacy for the occupation was hindering foreign governments from
footing the human and financial costs of the occupation. One by one,
requests for more troops were turned down, and attacks on coalition
soldiers tested the willingness of the willing.
Whatever we want to call ourselves
By then, these mounting and inter-acting problems were threatening the
viability of the occupation. If more GI blood were spilled, especially
during the run-up to the US elections, then Bush's chances at a second
presidency would be gravely imperiled. There would be little reason to
have the troops fight tooth and nail to stay in the palace if they can't
even claw their way into staying at the White House. With oil exports
raking in less than expected revenues and without the necessary cover for
foreign governments to give more grants or loans to Iraq, the money needed
to finance the reconstruction bonanza would soon dry up. Moreover, despite
the promise to turn Iraq's domestic market into a "capitalist dream" for
multinational corporations, many were having nightmares about the
possibility of their investments being expropriated by a subsequent
government.
On October 13, the US reluctantly tabled before the UN Security Council a
new proposal requiring the IGC to present a plan for elections and a
constitution before December 15. Despite this reassuring step, there was
no certainty that the plan would automatically be adopted for it would
still have to be approved by the US.
A series of developments, however, would eventually push the US into a
corner. In late October, a donors' conference held in Madrid to raise
funds for Iraq's reconstruction turned out to be a massive flop, with much
less in pledges than expected. The World Bank and the United Nations had
estimated that up to US$56 billion would be required, but only $13 billion
was raised. Then, on November 2, guerrillas shot down a helicopter,
killing 16 soldiers in the deadliest single attack since the invasion. By
then, more body bags had been sent home during the occupation than during
the invasion itself.
The establishment of the IGC was supposed to address some of these
problems, but while expectations were not particularly high at the outset,
by then, they had proven to be a big disappointment. They were supposed to
be the Iraqis in front; and yet the Iraqis themselves could see who was
calling the shots behind the scenes. A Gallup poll released in November
reported that the majority of Iraqis recognized that the council was
little more than an instrument of the occupying powers, with little power
to defy the occupation authorities.
Some council members accepted to sit on the council as a tactic in a
double-game they were playing - one foot to tangle with the occupation
authorities inside the council, another foot to fight them outside. More
galling perhaps to those who put them in power was that some members had
become increasingly public in their criticism of the very ideas closest to
the Bush administration's heart.
In the best of all possible occupations, the US would have wanted to stay
on as the direct occupying power until it had enough time to establish the
conditions in which it could transfer some power to a sovereign Iraqi
government, while entrenching enough power for itself. Indeed, this was
Plan A all along. But as one administration official had conceded by
November: "The Iraqis won't tolerate us staying in power for that long.
Whatever we want to call ourselves, we are an occupying army, and we just
cannot stay in power for that long." Wracked by the unyielding resistance,
troubled by dwindling finances and troop commitments, unable to calm the
nerves of prospective investors, and worst, facing the prospect of
electoral defeat at home, Plan B had to be formulated.
In the second week of November, L Paul Bremer, chief administrator of the
CPA, took an unscheduled flight from Baghdad to Washington for crisis
talks in the White House. That was when the US's strategy was rewritten
and a new one charted.
Plan B: Levers of power
The objectives of any alternative to staying on as direct occupying power
were clear enough: to steal the thunder from the insurgents and the
anti-occupation political forces, get international recognition to protect
and finance the continuing occupation, and reassure the corporations that
they would recoup their investments. For any of this to be attained,
however, the US would have to give up a certain degree of control - a risk
and a compromise they would not have taken unless they were pushed against
the wall. Giving up partial control, however, was preferable to losing
total control.
Bremer flew back to Baghdad with the revised strategy. Shortly after his
return, he convened the IGC and hammered out what would eventually be
referred to as the "November 15 agreement", a step-by-step plan which the
US claimed would effectively end the occupation. Sovereignty, Bremer said,
would be bestowed on the Iraqis by June 30, 2004.
If the plan fell into place, then Bush would have a fighting chance to
extricate himself from his problems. To American voters, he would be able
to vindicate his war by showcasing a newly independent Iraq. As IGC member
and Pentagon charge Ahmed Chalabi explained: "The whole thing was set up
so President Bush could come to the airport in October for a ceremony to
congratulate the new Iraqi government. When you work backwards from that,
you understand the dates the Americans were insisting on."
To the international community, Bush would be able to parade a newly
sovereign country, and in the process, get the international recognition
that would legitimize the occupation and give them more leverage for
demanding more money and troops. In addition, Bush would be able to cast
off the label of Iraq as a colony and of the US as an empire.
A successful "transition" would also allow the new government to be
embraced as full members - and not just observers - of international
organizations such as the Arab League and the World Trade Organization.
More importantly, the installation of an internally recognized "sovereign
government" is what investors bidding for Iraq's soon-to-be privatized
state-owned enterprises - with dirt-cheap prices set by the US Agency for
International Development (USAID) contractor BearingPoint - needed for
their peace of mind.
To Iraqis, Bush would be able to argue that he had liberated them and
therefore sweep the rug from under the insurgents who doubted his motives.
As a Pentagon official said: "The transfer of sovereignty clearly will
have an impact on security because you rid yourself of the 'occupation'
label. That is one of the claims that these so-called insurgents make;
that they are under American occupation. So you remove that political
claim from the ideological battle."
Here lies the essential component of Plan B. While the label would be
removed, the reality stays the same: it would still be an occupation.
Tucked under the text of the November 15 agreements were enough safeguards
to lock in US power over the subsequent transitional government and ensure
that even after June 30, the US would - for all intents and purposes -
still be calling the shots. As one senior White House official told the
New York Times then: "We'll have more levers than you think, and maybe
more than the Iraqis think."
The voice of the people?
Handing over power to any government that the Iraqis themselves chose was
out of the question at the outset. There was obdurate aversion to the idea
of holding general direct elections under the pretext that it was
impossible given the situation. And yet the Ministry of Planning's Census
Bureau chief attested in a report that an election would be possible as
early as September 2004. The report was rejected by the Americans and, for
some reason, did not get into the hands of the IGC members.
Tom Carothers, director of the Democracy Project at the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, explains why the occupation forces were horrified
at the idea: "Beneath the new interest of the United States in bringing
democracy to the Middle East is the central dilemma that the most
powerful, popular movements are the ones that we are deeply uncomfortable
with."
Bremer himself revealed his discomfort at elections, saying: "I'm not
opposed to it but I want to do it in a way that takes care of our concerns
... Elections that are held too early can be too destructive ... In a
situation like this, if you start holding elections, the people who are
rejectionists tend to win." A senior official of the CPA was more to the
point when asked why elections couldn't be held soon enough: "There's not
enough time for the moderates to organize." On the one hand, the US had
seen the wisdom in Thomas Friedman's advice of having "more Americans out
back and more Iraqis out front". But the US also needs to ensure that the
Iraqis out front are the kind of Iraqis they want.
What the US had in mind for taking care of its "concerns" and for giving
enough time for the "moderates" to organize was the selection of Iraqis
through caucuses in local councils whose members had been chosen and
vetted by the military, assisted by USAID contractor Research Triangle
Institute (RTI). Among the first contractors to arrive in Iraq after the
war, RTI now has 215 expatriate and 1,400 local employees deployed all
over Iraq to organize the non-rejectionists in fulfillment of its contract
to "identify the most appropriate 'legitimate' and functional leaders."
(The quotes around "legitimate" appear in the original text.)
Looking for these "legitimate" leaders, RTI employees have been going
around the country presiding over local council meetings and organizing
"democracy training workshops" in which they exhort their fellow Iraqis to
tell their neighbors to trust the occupation forces and to support their
plans for them. In one such workshop, a participant asked: "What's the use
of the elections? Everyone knows that the US will be appointing our
leaders anyway." The RTI staff replied: "You must talk with people in your
neighborhood and tell them this is not true. The new elections will be
honest, democratic and free." She then addressed the participants, saying:
"You must tell your neighbors to be patient. We were patient for 35 years.
What is another one-and-a-half years, even if the situation now is very
bad?"
Complementing USAID and RTI efforts to build up the "moderates" and the
non-rejectionists is the controversial National Endowment for Democracy
(NED), a quasi-governmental agency that supports and funds political
parties around the world. It can be safely assumed that the types of
parties that the NED supports are the kind that the US would want to win
the elections in Iraq. The NED has awarded grants to the International
Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute, and both
organizations are now compiling a comprehensive database of political
parties, establishing party offices, and conducting capacity-building
workshops to jump-start party formations in the country and make sure they
would be a force to reckon with come election time.
Bases of insecurity
The planned political transition will not give the over 100,000 soldiers
stationed in Iraq some respite. They are not going to be transferred to
the beaches of Diego Garcia just yet, but to 14 permanent military bases
that the US is constructing all over Iraq. General Ricardo Sanchez, the US
commander in Iraq, said unequivocally that the troops would remain in Iraq
for at least "a couple more years". General Richard Myers, chair of the
Joints Chiefs of Staff, was even more non-committal when pressed, saying:
"I really do believe it's unknowable."
Bremer's predecessor, General Jay Garner, has even expressed his hopes
that the military presence should last for a century. Citing how the naval
bases in the Philippines in the 1900s ensured "great presence in the
Pacific" through to the 1990s, Garner said: "To me that's what Iraq is
for, for the next few decades. We ought to have something there ... that
gives us great presence in the Middle East. I think that's going to be
necessary."
To justify this arrangement legally, the November 15 agreement demanded
the signing of a Status of Forces Agreement with the IGC by March 31,
2004. Presented as the Iraqis' formal "invitation" for the US military to
stay on in Iraq beyond June 30, the agreement is similar to those made by
the US with many countries hosting US military bases and other forms of
military presence. But while these treaties are normally negotiated with
sovereign governments, in Iraq, as a top military official quoted by the
Associated Press said: "At this point, we'd be negotiating with ourselves
because we are the government."
A crucial requirement for the US military to recede into the background is
for Iraqi security forces to replace them at the frontlines. "They will
take over the fight as we move back into the shadow, out of the cities," a
Pentagon official explained. Over the months, the US has been busy
training local security forces which will be placed under the command of
an Iraqi Defense Ministry to be staffed by people personally handpicked by
Bremer. The ministry would also still be under the control of the US
military command. Putting the US military under Iraqi control would be
laughed off by the US because as, Edward Walker, a former US ambassador to
Egypt and Israel and president of Middle East Institute, said: "I don't
see how we could expose our troops to decisions that are not in our
control."
The continuing presence of the US military and the establishment of an
Iraqi security force under US command will severely constrain the choices
and actions of any subsequent Iraqi government. As Richard Murphy, a
Council on Foreign Relations analyst and former US ambassador to Saudi
Arabia, put it: "We have fenced off one of the primary responsibilities of
a sovereign government." Since neighboring countries' relationships with
Iraq will inevitably be affected by the US's military presence in the
country, Iraq's future foreign policy, for instance, may as well be set in
stone. If a state is to be the only institution in a territory with the
monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, then the notion of an Iraqi
state will remain illusory even after June 30.
The presence of military bases planted all over the country, staffed by
tens of thousands of soldiers, would be like having a gun constantly
pointed at any future Iraqi government's forehead, thereby preventing it
from doing anything that would provoke the US into pulling the trigger.
Lieutenant-Colonel Brennan Byrne, explaining their actions in Fallujah
recently, summed it up best: "Diplomacy is just talk unless you have a
credible force to back it up. People will bend to our will if they are
afraid of us." As the cases of Guatemala, Nicaragua, Cuba, Iran, Grenada,
etc show, the US has not shied from launching military interventions
against governments that threaten its geo-economic interests in the form
of invasion or covert operations. In Iraq, the soldiers will just have to
march out of the bases.
Shades of Nicaragua
Finally, the US had hoped to secure its interests and lock in its power
over the next government by putting in place the legal and institutional
scaffolding for erecting its desired economic and political structure for
Iraq. An army of bureaucrats and contractors has been toiling silently in
the background to assemble the kind of bureaucracy that would implement
the laws and policies that the US itself has been drafting and to
establish the kind of "civil society" that would actively support or
passively accept them.
USAID, along with the State Department and the Pentagon, has been
disbursing a portion of the United States' $18 billion budget to private
contractors reconstructing Iraq's political and economic systems along
lines favorable to US interests. BearingPoint, for example, has been
contracted to create a pro-market neo-liberal government in Iraq.
According to its contract, BearingPoint will "support those public and
private institutions that shape and implement economic and financial
policy, regulatory and legal reforms". It will also "recommend the best
available options for economic growth in Iraq". As the contract makes it
clear, the "best available options" could only be the neo-liberal policies
of privatization, deregulation and liberalization applied in their most
radical and uninhibited versions.
BearingPoint has been drafting and enacting economic laws and regulations,
building the capacity of relevant ministries, setting up "macroeconomic
analysis" units in these ministries' offices, establishing a stock market,
funding research institutes and universities, training and building a
network of pro-market economists, and forming a "civil society" that would
advocate neo-liberal policies by founding and supporting NGOs,
professional associations, chambers of commerce, etc.
Dozens of other contractors are doing similar work transforming various
dimensions of Iraq's nascent (or remnant?) government, such as its
educational, health, agricultural, and other policies. Many of these
policies, as well as the work of these contractors, will be carried
through even after the transition. That they still need time to finish
their work is another important reason why there's no rush towards letting
go.
The levers of power will be operated from out of an embassy with, in the
words of a ranking official, "the world's largest diplomatic mission with
a significant amount of political weight". It will be headed by one very
experienced man: John Negroponte, the controversial US ambassador to
Honduras during the 1980s who played a key role in assisting the Contras'
attempt to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Also working
out of that embassy complex will be the largest Central Intelligence
Agency station in the world, the biggest since the one in Saigon during
the Vietnam War. As the ranking official said: "We're still here. We'll be
paying a lot of attention and we'll have a lot of influence."
The unraveling
Despite frantic efforts to see the November 15 agreement through, however,
by the end of March, Plan B was in shambles. Virtually all the steps of
the November 15 agreement had been derailed.
The agreement began unraveling as soon as it was born. From the beginning,
it did not have the full backing of the US-installed IGC. Though it was
eventually presented as having the IGC's approval, the US was actually
forced to overrule a mutinous 24-0 vote within the council in favor of
direct general elections. More decisive in foiling the US plans was the
uncompromising opposition of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani - Iraq's most
influential political personality and the Shi'ite majority's de facto
leader - to many of the agreement's provisions, as well as his
uncompromising insistence on elections. On January 19, Sistani succeeded
in mobilizing over 100,000 to march in Baghdad calling for free elections
- the biggest protest in Iraq since the beginning of the occupation.
The US was eventually forced to scrap the plan for the caucuses, but no
concrete replacement was announced. By the end of March, with less than
100 days to go before the scheduled bequeathal ceremonies, the US still
had no idea as to whom it would turn over power and how they would be
selected.
The Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), or the interim constitution
that was intended to be the basic legal framework that would govern the
political transition, was also in tatters. It did not help that portions
of it were written by American lawyers. Despite its ratification on March
8, key political forces held deep reservations about its provisions, and
many refused to accept it as a binding document. Sistani practically spat
on the document, saying that in no way should it be seen as Iraq's basic
law. He even refused to meet with Brahimi unless he explicitly agreed that
the TAL would not be the starting point for any discussions on the
political process. The document, which stipulates that all of the laws
enacted by the occupation authorities would remain binding on the interim
government and which places Iraq's security under military US command,
would have legally justified the United States' continuing control over
the country after the transfer. By the end of March, it had also been torn
to pieces.
And finally, the March 31 deadline for signing a Status of Forces-type
agreement lapsed. The IGC - in a little-noticed but very significant act
of defiance - had earlier refused to enter into any agreement, saying they
did not have popular mandate. "We are not 100 percent accepted by the
Iraqi people. We have not been elected. We do not want to draft an
agreement that a new government would come in and change anyway,"
explained Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar, an IGC member.
A failed plan
Just as the November 15 plan was crumbling, the situation it sought to
address was deteriorating. There was simmering anger among Iraqis, even
among the Shi'ite majority, as genuine relief at Saddam's ousting was
gradually replaced by seething frustration and disappointment. The planned
political transition, instead of defusing the pressure, served to further
fan the suspicions of those who saw through the machinations. Patience was
wearing thin. As Asaam al-Jarah, principal of Khadimiyah High School,
said: "We lost faith in the Americans. Everybody was waiting for the
transition, waiting and waiting. Then we saw the law was rubbish."
A full year after the invasion, there was still no let-up in insurgent
attacks against the coalition forces. On the contrary, tension seemed to
be rising in certain areas that used to be quiet. In a distressing
development for the US, the newly elected government of Spain had
announced that it would soon be withdrawing its troops if command did not
pass to the UN, and this was followed by similar hints from Poland and the
Netherlands. Spanish troops have since left. Closer to home, the burning
and mutilation of the bodies of four private security contractors in
Fallujah caused an outrage in the US, further sapping domestic support for
Bush and the occupation.
With all the key components of Plan B subverted, the objectives of the
revised US strategy could not be met. Without a selection process that
would give the US a hand in determining the outcome, the US-favored
"non-rejectionists" and "moderates" would have no way of assuming power.
Without a constitution widely accepted as legitimate by key Iraqi
constituencies, there would be no legal cover for keeping the US-enacted
laws and policies in place and for justifying the US-imposed
post-transition political structure. Without the Status of Forces
agreement, there would be nothing to justify keeping the GIs in Iraq after
the transfer of power.
In other words, without a successful political transition - measured
according to how well they served the United States' goals - the armed and
unarmed resistance would keep growing and international support in the
form of troops and finances would continue to be withheld. Without first
resolving the problems that Plan B sought to address, the US would not be
able to finally move on with its plans for securing what it went to war
for in the first place.
Ultimately, the political process hatched last November 15 collapsed
because it failed to gain the express or tacit support of key sections of
Iraqi society. The last thing that the US wants on June 30 is another IGC,
another Iraqi authority without popular support, and therefore incapable
of fronting for the US and carrying out its plans. As US Senator Carl
Levin realized: "It is also true that if we restore sovereignty to an
entity created by the United States that doesn't have the support of the
Iraqi people and the international community, there could be even greater
violence against our forces, including the possibility of civil war."
Without removing the "occupation" label, the GIs would be fighting the
same recurring battles. As one military officer said: "We can beat these
guys and we're proving our resolve. But unless the political side keeps
up, we'll have to do it again and again after July 1, and maybe in
September and again next year and again and again."
The US needs to install a governing body which will be perceived as
sufficiently "sovereign" and "independent" to calm the Iraqis and satisfy
the international community. The US has concluded that the only way left
to secure the very interests its soldiers are dying and killing for - oil,
markets and military bases in a strategic region - is to install a
friendly government, structured to be independent in everything but the
things that matter most to the US.
However, the one vital ingredient for this plan to succeed - a certain
degree of legitimacy of the US occupation - was the one thing that could
not be clinched. Without it, the entire Plan B collapsed.
The show must go on
The outlines of Plan C are only now emerging, but it appears to consist of
the following components.
First, the show must go on. As expected, the US will not abandon its plans
to organize some form of handover ceremonies on June 30. Many Iraqis
collaborating with the US hinge their cooperation on the promise that
something will indeed be transferred on that date. To renege on that is to
turn them into potential recruits for the resistance. As Bush himself
acknowledged: "Were the coalition to step back from the June 30 pledge,
many Iraqis would question our intention and feel their hopes betrayed,
and those in Iraq who trade in hatred and conspiracy theories would find a
larger audience and gain an upper hand." Moreover, the pressure of US
domestic electoral politics demands another lavish media opportunity akin
to landing on a battleship in a flight suit, with the banner "Mission
Accomplished" as the triumphant background.
Second, having failed to secure adequate support from Iraqis for its
designs, the US now hopes that a UN stamp of approval will be enough to
eventually persuade them - and the international community - to accept the
post-June 30 order. This explains the importance of Brahimi. It accounts
for the decision of the US to toss its plans for the political process to
the UN, saying that the UN will now take over the process. The US
recognizes that it now depends, albeit reluctantly, on the UN for its
plans to survive.
This does not mean that Brahimi will be calling the shots. Brahimi's plan
for the UN, the US and the IGC to handpick the members of the interim
government provides the US more freedom for maneuvering and is arguably
more undemocratic and nontransparent than the original US plan for local
caucuses. It is certainly a very poor alternative to general direct
elections. Though the final say on the selection will nominally rest with
the UN - in a process that still has to be resolved - the US is expected
to play a strong hand. It can be safely assumed that the US will move
heaven and earth to prevent the appointment of any Iraqi who could
potentially block its medium-term and long-term plans for Iraq. Too much
is at stake for Bush's man Blackwill just to sit back and observe Brahimi.
It is also significant that, from available information, there is no sign
that the UN will force the US to abandon the arrangements it is now
putting in place in Iraq as "levers" for wielding power. Even if an
interim government formed by the UN and the US proves to be totally
independent, it would be powerless surrounded by 14 military bases and
130,000 US troops and imprisoned by a US-imposed legal, political and
economic infrastructure.
Right mistake at the right time
Finally, if the armed resistance and the organized political opposition to
US plans still refuse to accord the political transition the legitimacy it
requires, then they will just have to be neutralized - now rather than
later. If they can't be co-opted, then they'd have to be destroyed. It now
appears that this is precisely what the US was hoping to achieve by
cornering Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his followers and, in the
process, triggering an uprising it is now finding hard to contain.
Rather than yet another tactical blunder, the decision to provoke a
confrontation may have been a deliberate and well thought-out strategy
that should be seen not just in terms of day-to-day military tactics, but
in terms of larger political objectives. If it were a mistake, then it was
the right mistake at the right time.
For one, the order to clamp down on Muqtada came all the way from the top
- odd if the target was to be subsequently belittled as fringe and
marginal. There were no policy fissures or a break in the chain of
command. The decision, confirms the Washington Post, had the blessings of
the National Security Council (NSC) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).
It also had the full backing of senior Bush administration officials.
That clamping down on Muqtada at this time would definitely set off a
backlash was not lost on those who gave the green light. "Every time we
talked with Baghdad about taking any action against [Muqtada] Sadr, we
always talked about the need to have proper preparations in place to deal
with a violent reaction," an official privy to discussions at the NSC and
the JCS revealed. The chair of the JCS, General Richard Myers, admitted
that the US was aware of the consequences of attacking Muqtada in a press
briefing on April 7: "What contributed to this was our offensive action.
We shut down his newspaper. We went after one of his lieutenants ... And
it was not unanticipated or unexpected that we would see some resistance
to that." However, the US could not have foreseen the broader consequences
of what is now widely seen as a series of intentional provocations.
If Muqtada and his militia were just a "band of thugs", as Bush described
them, then why did the NSC consider him such a threat that they were
compelled to tighten the noose around him? If the occupation authorities
were fully apprised of the possible consequences of their actions, why
would they risk provoking a full-scale confrontation? If the US really
wanted to douse the backlash, then why did it proceed, even as the
situation was worsening, to inflame passions further by threatening to
arrest Muqtada? If the US really intended to restore calm, then why did it
go on, even as the violence escalated, to launch full-blown operations
against Fallujah and risk a two-front uprising? Having bombed a mosque and
having killed over 600 Fallujah residents and scores of others in various
cities; were they really expecting Iraqis to sit back and applaud?
The last thing the US presumably needs would be an outbreak of violence
when, with less than 100 days before the transfer of power and just a few
more months before US elections, the image they would want to project is
that of calm and stability. But the alternative to not doing anything in
response to the circumstances seemed more dangerous. "What is the risk of
not acting? What is the risk of turning our head and just ignoring the
trouble," CPA spokesperson Dan Senor agonized. If the anti-occupation
forces are left alone then they could grow stronger and more defiant and
the US could end up really losing control.
Drawing the lines
Bush himself has said that cracking down on Muqtada was a necessary step
towards the June 30 handover. As Senor explained: "We are focusing on
confronting those distinct and, I would suggest, isolated elements that
seek to derail the political process through the use of violence to
advance their parochial interests. We're confronting that, and we want to
return the process and give the process back to the Iraqi people, those
Iraqi people who favor dialogue over force."
It appears that the mission is to weed out all those forces antagonistic
to the US now before they cause trouble later, to make them fight now
while they're unprepared rather than later when they've had enough time to
organize and strengthen their ranks. Muqtada's side, for instance, has
said that they were at first unwilling to shoot back. "We didn't choose
the time for the uprising. The occupation forces did," said Fuad Tarfi, a
leading Muqtada follower.
Indeed, while anti-occupation sentiment runs deep, the Iraqis are in
general unprepared for another long war. They neither have the resources
to jump into a long-running confrontation with the world's only
superpower; a widely accepted political leadership to lead it; nor the
organizational structures to sustain it. This does not mean they won't,
especially if the US keeps pushing. But the act of resistance itself will
be carrying with it its own dynamic. Having emerged from three decades of
repression and fragmentation, it has not been and will still not be easy
building consensus among the various disconnected political forces
fighting the US. Despite this, efforts to build a united front and a
political leadership are expected to intensify. But still, as one former
colonel who took part in an uprising against Saddam in the 1990s and who
is now spearheading efforts to build a broad coalition pushing for a
political process independent from the US: "We want to fight the US at a
time of our choosing."
That is precisely what the US wants to forestall. The idea is to catch
them while they're not ready, to make them use their bullets now, throw
their grenades, and fire their mortars now so that they will have nothing
later. "If we do not address these elements and these individuals and
these organizations now," explained Senor, "we will rue the day because
these organizations, these militia will rise up again another day and it
is better to deal with them now than after June 30."
The aim is to draw the lines. The current uprising is now forcing Iraqi
political forces to choose sides before the day of reckoning comes. On the
one hand, they may be unwilling to take on the might of the US. But on the
other, they wouldn't also want to totally lose legitimacy later if the
resistance prevails. Unfortunately for the US, as the strength, spread and
spontaneity of the resistance suggest, many Iraqis are taking a gamble on
history and supporting the resistance.
A revolution?
"What the Americans and the Iraqi Governing Council can't understand is
that this is a revolution," said Sheik Anwar Hamed, a Shi'ite from Sadr
City, but who is not a follower of Muqtada, in an interview. "Everyone is
involved. Those who can't fight will give money. Those who can't give
money will give medicine. Those who can't give medicine will give food.
Those who can't give food will give blood," he explained, adding that this
is not just about Muqtada now. The resistance, he says, has no chain of
command, has no organizational structure, and has no recruitment process
because everyone can join just by fighting back.
"We are on a war footing now," conceded a senior military official in
Baghdad. Indeed, the US is now confronting the most serious challenge yet
to the occupation. This, says the Los Angeles Times, could well be the
second war on Iraq - the only way to hang on for a day longer, in order to
stay as long as is necessary. The first war, against Saddam, was a war of
choice, an easy one because the former dictator had no popular support.
Now, it is a war of necessity, and it could prove to be more difficult
because, this time, it is a war against the Iraqi people. For Iraqis, it
also seems like this could well be the war of liberation which the United
States had always promised them.
Herbert Docena is an analyst with Focus on the Global South, a
Bangkok-based policy research institute. He was in Baghdad when the
uprising broke out as researcher for the Iraq International Occupation
Watch Center. He can be reached at
herbert@focusweb.org.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact
content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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