What Maliki Said . . . And What it Means
The BBC had an interesting story a few days ago about what Maliki "really" said regarding the need to set a timetables for withdrawal within the context of ongoing SOFA/SFA talks:
All of this seems to validate a number of points Dr. iRack has been making for some time now:In an audio recording of his remarks, heard by the BBC, the prime minister did not use the word "withdrawal".
What he actually said was: "The direction is towards either a memorandum of understanding on their evacuation, or a memorandum of understanding on programming their presence."
Mr Maliki's own office had inserted the word "withdrawal" in the written version, replacing the word "presence".
Contacted by the BBC, the prime minister's office had no explanation for the apparent contradiction. An official suggested the written version remained the authoritative one, although it is not what Mr Maliki said.
The impression of a hardening Iraqi government line was reinforced the following day by comments from the National Security Adviser, Muwaffaq al-Rubaie.
He was quoted as saying that Iraq would not accept any agreement which did not specify a deadline for a full withdrawal of US troops.
Significantly, Mr Rubaie was speaking immediately after a meeting with the senior Shiite clerical eminence, Ayatollah Ali Sistani.
But in subsequent remarks, Mr Rubaie rode back from a straightforward demand for a withdrawal deadline.
He said the talks were focused on agreeing on "timeline horizons, not specific dates", and said that withdrawal timings would depend on the readiness of the Iraqi security forces.
Militant elements
The confusion reflects the dilemma facing Iraqi government leaders.
On the one hand, many of them - particularly among the Shia factions - face a public which regards the US presence as a problem rather than a solution.
With provincial elections coming up soon, they could be outflanked by more militant elements such as the supporters of cleric Moqtada Sadr, who wants American forces out now and opposes negotiations that would cover their continued presence.
Yet the government knows that its own forces are not yet in a position to stand on their own against the two major challenges they face - the Sunni radicals of al-Qaeda and related groups, and the militant Shia militias which were partly suppressed in fierce battles this spring in Basra and Baghdad.
Both groups could simply bide their time awaiting the American withdrawal before making a comeback drive.
Violence has fallen off considerably from the horrendous levels of 2006 and the first half of 2007, but hundreds of people are still dying violent deaths every month.
Hence the ambiguity in statements by Iraqi leaders, who know that their own survival depends on US support continuing until Iraqi forces are genuinely able to stand alone.
1. The Iraqi leadership knows that the Iraqi public continues to dislike the U.S. presence, and in an election year those concerns have to be accounted for.
2. The Iraqi leadership--Maliki in particular--is much more confident in the capabilities of the ISF, making them willing to bargain harder during negotiations.
3. Whether or not they want a timetable for withdrawal, they want a "time horizon" that establishes some parameters for the draw down of U.S. forces and the transition from a lead-U.S. role to a U.S. support role.
But . . .
4. Most Iraqi leaders recognize, deep down, that they will still need the U.S. to provide support and critical enablers to the ISF for a while to come even as the U.S. moves out of the lead in combat operations.
So, to repeat something Dr. iRack has long argued, we should be negotiating a security framework within the context of setting a time horizon for our draw down and transition to a support role while also conditioning residual support (including, critically, support to the ISF) on political accommodation. The administration may or may not be doing the former, but they are most definitely not doing the latter. They don't believe in strategic conditionality. And, as a consequence, we are giving up what little leverage we have left to push the Iraqis toward the kind of political compromises--on SoI integration, fair elections to co-opt moderate Sadrists and avoid alienating Sunni tribes, etc.--that are necessary to lock-in security gains from the surge.
37 comments:
Let's see, on one hand, you've got the BBC report (translation?) of what Maliki said in his spoken remarks.
On the other, you've got (1) his office revising the transcript, (2) Maliki's office standing by the transcript when informed of the discrepancy, and (3) Rubiae reiterating the desire for a withdrawal timetable the next day (notably, after the WH had claimed Maliki was misinterpreted).
To claim that the former, rather than the latter, represents the Iraqi government's true intentions seems like a peculiar interpretation, to put it mildly.
Why is there a presumption that anything short of saying "What part of 'Get the f--k out' don't you understand?!" in every public statement means the Iraqis really want a long-term U.S. presence?
Isn't is possible that instead of trying to placate Iraqi public opinion while coming up with a way for the U.S. to stay, Maliki & Co. are trying to placate the Bushites while coming up with a way to ease us out the door?
Dr Irak, why wouldn't turning this around -- and making our withdrawal contingent on Iraqi political reconciliation and institutional growth -- be ill advised?
I think this is inevitably the path that will be blazed by an administration led by either Obama or McCain. We must bring troop numbers down after the so-called "Surge" (and this is happening), and we should be planning to rotate increasingly out of OIF in pace with security gains on the ground and political reconciliation in parliament and the provinces.
"Swopa" actually is wrong here for the obvious reason that al-Maliki isn't the whole cabinet. Without the two Kurdish parties, for example, the cabinet would fail to win a confidence vote in parliament.
Currently, you have Talibani saying that the Iraqi government wants a longterm security arrangment (call it "SOFA," "SFA" or whatever you want), speaking for the nation. You have al-Maliki saying different things to different people (and different news outlets), apparently tied to whatever message he's trying to put out to (placate domestic critics, shore up shrinking Dawa election prospects, improve the mood of US diplomats, fill in the blank here).
Swopa, America's public position is that it does not want long term bases in Iraq. Bush has said this many times.
About 4/5ths of Iraqis favor America training/equipping the ISF and fighting AQ inside Iraq according to the last public opinion polls. Do you disagree with this mission?
At the peak of the Surge, the US had 21 brigades in Iraq (including the Marines.) Now there are 15 (13 army and two marine.) Petreaus will soon announce a draw down to 12 brigades. They will draw down to 9 brigades, 7 brigades, 5 brigades in steps. The current plan is to reach 5 brigades by about mid 2010. Gen Petraeus has not briefed Congress after that.
In reading this, I was struck by the extent to which al-Maliki's political problem -- supporters who want American withdrawal at odds with a hard-nosed appraisal of the larger security issues -- seems to mirror Barack Obama's.
Tiger, Maliki's supporters also want MNF-I to increase their training/equipping of the ISF and their attacks on AQ. They want a short term presence. Simultaneously, they don't want a long term presence.
National Security advisor Rubai spoke about a 2012 time horizan. This is about where the Iraqi public is.
Dr. iRack:
Note from the cheap seat, nosebleed peanut gallery...
I appreciate that you explicitly put out hypotheses and evaluate them.
That said, your posts tend to be a bit longer, and in this era of Google making us dumber, may I offer a plea for brevity?
I'm hesitant, of course - your content is great, and so is your expository style. I just think it would be easier, and more fun, to read your posts if more fat was excised.
But great work, no doubt.
"Swopa" actually is wrong here...
This shocking blasphemy aside, Soldierno... brings up a valid point about ascribing any point of view to "the Iraqi government." From Time magazine a week ago:
Maliki may indeed be showing his true colors. Last month, Iraq's speaker of parliament, Mahmoud al-Mashhadanni, predicted just such a shift in the government's negotiating stance with the U.S. "[Maliki's] Shi'ite coalition is publicly with the [SOFA] agreement, but secretly against it," says Mashhadanni. "They came to power because of an agreement with the multinational forces, and they [have to] thank them for that. But the [long-term] presence of the multi-national force will affect their [popular, nationalist] position." (Mashhadanni's own party, the Sunni Tawafuq bloc, has the reverse problem; according to Mashhadanni, it secretly wants a long-term SOFA agreement - to balance out Shi'ite power with a mediating U.S. presence - but has to publicly oppose it because of his party's platform against the presence of foreign troops in Iraq.)
Interestingly, another top Iraqi pol just said the same thing, according to the Christian Science Monitor:
Jawad al-Bolani, Iraq's interior minister, summed up the challenges in an article published Saturday in the Arab daily Asharq al-Awsat: "The Kurds are with the treaty in public and private, Shiite Arabs are with it publicly but against it secretly, Sunni Arabs are with it secretly but against it publicly."
What I said up above applies to the viewpoint the Shiite parties in the GOI driver's seat (ISCI/Dawa). Perhaps Soldierno... thinks the Kurds would bring down the GOI coalition for the sake of demanding a long-term U.S. presence; I feel confident in predicting that they won't.
Similarly, I haven't heard of the polls Anand cites, but I'll go out on a limb and say there is zero risk of ISCI/Dawa facing a pro-American backlash at the polls, no matter how firmly they stand up against a SOFA/SFA/whatever deal. ;)
Incidentally, regarding the more practical security issues -- that is, the ISF's need for American support -- the problem is that we don't live in a world where Platonic ideals of the "U.S." and the "Iraqi government" work together to do what's best to defend Iraq.
On the Iraqi side, you've got diverging Shiite/Sunni/Kurdish interests, complicated further by the "powers that be/powers that aren't" split. On the U.S. side, you've got Bush/McCain expressing the neocon desire to maintain bases in Iraq indefinitely to project American power in the Middle East, and the prospect of a very different administration taking office in seven months.
So while the ISF admittedly isn't ready for prime time yet, the key question about the U.S. military backing them is, as Diane Keaton's character asked in Reds, "What as?"
The Shiite PTB's dream role for the U.S. military is as a subcontractor that helps crush their enemies (e.g., the Sunni and Sadrist insurgencies), as we have for most of the past few years -- and if we're willing to keep playing that role, sure, they'll be happy to have the U.S. around indefinitely.
But if we're there as an independent/dominant player -- free to arrest ISCI/Dawa members, for example, or to continue building up non-PTB power centers like the Sons of Iraq -- you can see why they might be tempted to fly solo sooner than we think is wise (and it has little to do with "overconfidence" in the ISF's abilities).
Beyond that, since the Shiite PTB have no interest in being the handmaidens for the neocon vision, they have a large incentive to make any deal with the Bushites as narrow and short-term as possible, figuring Obama will be easier to work with (and McCain, if it come to that, no worse than Bush).
The US will not be leaving Iraq any time soon. Rahm Emmanuel, Joe Lieberman, and friends would never allow a free, democratic, and Iranian influenced state without American troops as protection for their favorite land.
When our troops are at about 80k in Iraq and an Iraqi-made EFP bomb goes off in a settlement in the West Bank, there will be howls for another surge.
We will be in Iraq until we can no longer borrow money from China.
unfortunately, i completely agree w/you anon. 9:30 PM
-- and making our withdrawal contingent on Iraqi political reconciliation
been there done that.
America's public position is that it does not want long term bases in Iraq. Bush has said this many times.
bush lies. america's public position no longer reflects the reality of america's choices. america's position is for a 2 state solution in palestine. see how that's worked out.
we should be planning to rotate increasingly out of OIF in pace with security gains on the ground and political reconciliation in parliament and the provinces.
in other words if security and material gains don't materialize we should stay forever. hey, isn't that mcCain's position?
one might consider that the presence of foreign troops in iraq might in fact prevent political reconciliation. one might consider some iraqis consider a foreign force divorced from iraq's laws might hinder the security. especially when they know those sounds overhead are foreign aircraft that do in fact kill many civilians.
perhaps those eager for security and reconciliation should try the one solution that hasn't been tested in the last 7 years. let's find out what happens when we aren't there.
Currently, you have Talibani saying ....speaking for the nation.
whose nation? ours?
In today's op-ed, HM says the bilateral long-term-deal negotiations that have been going on since April have been designed by the Americans so as to marginalize Maliki as far as possible, funneling the talks through his deputy prime-minister, the Kurd (and member of Talabani's PUK party) Barham Saleh.....What if anything will the Americans do? There is an old saying, HM says (old since April 2003) that if you want to know what the Americans are really thinking, go talk to Jalal Talabani, or else to his sidekick Barham Saleh. Talabani was in the Oval Office on June 25 assuring reporters that there was progress in the negotiations, which were still being described as for a long-term agreement....Perhaps the most noteworthy [of the ideas circulating around Talabani] is that Bush told him the government people in Iraq should utilize the short time remaining to him (Bush) in his second and last administration, and an important part of this "utilizing"--this attributed to Bush--is the matter of the Agreement and the need to sign it before the 31st of the current month....[And people around Talabani say Bush also told him] that 90% of the people who share decision-making with him are not in agreement with his policies in Iraq, and that he has been obliged in a lot of cases to use presidential authority to carry out measures that his aides and advisers and his ministers do not agree with. And one of those [policies that most of his aides do not agree with] is the continuation of the alliance with the leadership of the Kurdish and Shiite parties in Iraq for which [Bush allegedly told Talabani] Bush continues to be subject to bitter criticism from those around him and from allied countries, for toppling the prior regime and replacing it with a Kurdish-Shiite regime.....
There is in circulation more than one scenario [said to be] in Talabani's satchel, and the fact he returned [directly] to Baghdad this time, and not to Sulaimaniya as he has done in earlier trips, has triggered an uproar...
speaking for the nation? source.
Dr. iRack, what in your view the differences between Maliki recent call for timetables to US withdrawal comparing long standing Al-Sadir call for timetables to US withdrawal?
Can you tell us?
Dr. iRacK: you simply adopted Ahmad Chalabi's points from 2004. Not very original of you.
Do I get the impression the everyone, i.e. various Iraqi groups, Israelis, Other rich Arabs, Iranians and alls' local advocate, are fighting over who gets to be the latest dance leader of the tired old dowager who will give out anything to just make it until January 2009?
Keep getting back to Mrs Laura Bush's favorite chapter of Brothers Karamazov, The Grand Inquisitor..she warned what the masses would do and give in self delusion...and have.
Afraid our enemies understand that also.
First off -- these guys are all politicians. Don't pay attention to what they say, pay attention to what they do.
They're all negotiating. The biggest deal is Bush wants an agreement while he's in office, something that can tie his successor's hands, and iraqi leaders want to see how much he'll pay for it.
Most iraqis would feel ambiguous about a US withdrawal. Their GDP is something like $100 billion a year, US spending on iraq is something like $150 billion a year. A big part of that spending is at home but there are many chances for stuff to leak into iraq. Food, fuel, clothing, weapons, ammo -- everything we bring into iraq that has value will leak to iraqi civilians some. Even if the media claim that there are no prostitutes in iraq were true, there would still be significant trade and charity. All the iraqis who depend on US troops for part of their income will be concerned. Sure, they want sovereignty but what will they do without US money?
The less violence there is in sadrist and sunni areas, the less excuse not to count all their votes. But the more sadrists and sunnis in the parliament, the harder it is to keep US forces there.
Sunnis want our money and weapons and maybe training, and they really don't want us to decide they're the bad guys and keep attacking them, but they don't want us around either. If ethnic tensions decline they don't need us to protect them. If ethnic tensions don't decline they do better to fight than depend on us to protect them.
Sadrists want us to go away, period. They've been saying that all along, that's what got us to decide they were the enemy in the first place.
If we succeed in getting them to do politicking then they tell us to go away. So we need an agreement ahead of time that says they can't do that, since they're bound to do far better in the next election than in the last one, short of more extensive election-rigging than before.
So, Maliki has to give in. If he doesn't we'll block his foreign reserves. (His oil income comes through the USA and we don't actually have to give it to him.) We can do all kinds of things to him, up to the extreme of detaining him in Abu Ghraib with the story that he was a traitor to iraq. Bush doesn't have a whole lot to lose. And Bush can afford to pay both large bribes and big monetary concessions to get his treaty. Maliki has to give in after sufficient payment, and presumably afterward he'll lose a fair election and run for the border, or else he'll win a rigged election and try to stay on top.
Bush wins if he can create a treaty that Obama would get a lot of embarrassment and trouble from breaking. Or McCain could point to it and say he's just doing his duty.
Again, with fair uneventful elections we're almost certain to face an iraqi government that swore as compaign promises to throw us out. We need iraq to stay violent or we have no excuse to stay, and our friendly iraqi politicians need us to stay and beat up the voters or they will lose control of the government. How hard are we pushing them for a political reconciliation again?
Richard Dreyfuss is saying that there is coup talk again in Baghdad - though this time its coming from (his) U.S. sources in Baghdad. And presumably, the coup would be an Iraqi military coup. Interesting, but not sure I get the logic of it, and haven't seen it mentioned anyplace else. Anybody else on to this?
anna missed
Anna,
If I've found the right article, he's just citing Stephen Biddle, who has touted the possibility elsewhere:
Stephen Biddle, an adviser to General Petraeus, says that US government officials are buzzing about the possibility of a coup by the army against Maliki. "It's something that's being talked about," said Biddle, an Iraq watcher at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. Only the presence of US occupation forces in Iraq is restraining the Iraqi army from getting rid of Maliki, he suggested. "If we were to leave you could easily imagine a situation in which the military as the most effective institution in society decides to take over," Biddle said. "The parliament is the least respected institution in the society."
It doesn't put much of a dent in anyone's tinfoil supply to see the U.S. angle in promoting this fear as a way to dissuade Maliki from pursuing a withdrawal timetable. In fact, such whispering from U.S. sources suggests they don't think Maliki's faking it -- they're afraid he means it.
"It doesn't put much of a dent in anyone's tinfoil supply to see the U.S. angle in promoting this fear as a way to dissuade Maliki from pursuing a withdrawal timetable."
Or, you know, some in here might have actually worked with the IAs or IPs and know exactly what the jundhis think about the venal, corrupt, incompetent and -- did I mention corrupt? -- illegitimate (in the eyes of a large minority of Iraqis) government in Baghdad.
When the soldiers go three months at a stretch without pay; when they have to supply themselves with food from the villages and neighborhoods they patrol because the corrupt central government can't seem to get boxes to them without the crates "falling off the truck" during transit; when the AWOL/UA rate approximates 8 percent in a good month due to these problems?
Golly, I wonder why the military -- a goodly portion of whom are NOT ISCI flunkies -- would want to get rid of their chief problem?
We hung the last Iraqi strong-man and murdered our appointed strong-man in Vietnam.
The new dictator would be wise to befriend anyone but al Amriki.
Soldiernolongeriniraq -- that's a good point, but is the Iraqi military self-sufficient enough & independent enough of ISCI et al. to actually pull off a coup on their own, rather than creating a fragmented free-for-all that results in worse anarchy?
It's kind of like the Kurds joining a no-confidence vote... taking out the feeble structure that exists might be easy enough, but what can they put up in its place that isn't even more fragile?
Soldiernolongeriniraq -- that's a good point, but is the Iraqi military self-sufficient enough & independent enough of ISCI et al. to actually pull off a coup on their own, rather than creating a fragmented free-for-all that results in worse anarchy?
It's natural for them to blame their pay and supply problems on the iraqi parliament. But isn't it because we trained mostly combat troops first, and we're only now filling in with the logistics and other support guys? We needed to get iraqi combat troops replacing our combat troops as quick as possible, but support functions weren't so urgent. Now we have the combat troops but they can't function without our behind-the-scenes support.
So if they said they wanted to stage a coup and we said no, would they do it anyway? Hardly. We could pull the plug and they'd never ever get paid or resupplied. Even if we left off the airstrikes. But if we wanted a coup could we find somebody in the iraqi army to carry it out? Very likely.
How would a coup help us? Well, pretty much everybody is deeply dissatisfied with the iraqi constitution. If there was a coup and they promised to hold elections as soon as possible, and they revised the Constitution and then held elections as promised, we might get a much-improved iraqi government out of it. And while the coup was still in effect we'd get to run iraq our way, and clean up a lot of problems without having an interfering iraqi government in the way.
But a coup before the US elections would look bad. It would look like iraq wasn't going well. Probably better to schedule it just after a McCain victory, if it happens at all.
Robert Dreyfuss - what is his expertise on Iraq?
In the article quoted here he says:
"The IIP, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood secret society, WAS ELECTED IN 2005-2006, to its provincial posts and its parliamentary slots only because it was THE SOLE SUNNI PARTY THAT WOULD TAKE PART IN AN ELECTION THAT WAS WIDEY BOYCOTTED BY SUNNI ARABS.(Only about two percent of Sunni Arabs voted.)
In fact, the IIP contested the Dec 2005 elections in a coalition with two other parties - the "general council" then headed by Adnan al-Dulaimi, and the "National Dialogue" headed by Khalaf al-Ulayan.
The coalition is called the Iraqi Accord Front and polled about 15% of the national vote, becoming the biggest Sunni bloc in the COR.
Far from boycotting the election, the Sunni Arabs turned out in large numbers to vote.
Dreyfuss goes on to say
"So the idea that IIP has any political power is absurd. Most Sunni Iraqs are secular or moderately religious, and they reject the fundamentalist views of the IIP."
My recollection is that was Adnan al-Dulaimi's party that was widely regarded as being fundamentalist and supported by the Association of Muslim scholars and the IIP was regarded as the more moderate? This would seem to be the case because the head of the IIP, Tariq al-Hashimi has been one of the two vice presidents of Iraq since the Dec 05 election.
Dreyfuss' previous prouncement on Iraq affairs was in an article last March, headed:
"The Lessons of Basra Iraq War -
The latest round of Iraq's Shiite vs. Shiite civil war was to have been Bush's defining moment.
The result: utter humiliation for the US and the Iraqi government"
He wrote:
"At the start of the military offensive launched last week into Basra by US-trained Iraqi army forces, President Bush called the action by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki "a bold decision." He added: "I would say this is a defining moment in the history of a free Iraq."
"That's true--but not in the way the President meant it. As the smoke clears over new rubble in Iraq's second city, at the heart of Iraq's oil region, it's apparent that the big winner of the Six-Day War in Basra are the forces of rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army faced down the Iraqi armed forces not only in Basra, but in Baghdad, as well as in Kut, Amarah, Nasiriyah, and Diwaniya, capitals of four key southern provinces.
"That leaves Sadr, an anti-American rabble rouser and nationalist who demands an end to the US occupation of Iraq, and who has grown increasingly close to Iran of late, in a far stronger position that he was a week ago.
"In Basra, he's the boss.
"An Iraqi reporter for the New York Times, who managed to get into Basra during the fighting, concluded that the thousands of Mahdi Army militiamen that control most of the city remained in charge. "There was nowhere the Mahdi either did not control or could not strike at will," he wrote."
As far as I'm aware Dreyfuss has never written a corrective to this mistaken analysis.
How can he be regarded with any credibility?
As for Stepehn Biddle's comments they first reported by Robert Burn of AP at the end of a lengthy story on the development of the Iraqi army following its successes in Basra, Sadr City, Eastern Baghdad, Mosul and Maysan. They were published 4 days before Dreyfuss picked them up and attracted no interest at the time.
Dr. iRack (I have to say, at the risk of being cruel, for a guy as smart as you, you should have picked a better nom d’blog – piggy backing off Steve Jobs and Youtube, no matter how smartly the jeans and black turtleneck works, just doesn’t give you enough credit).
1) You’ve read Susan Stokes’s book on how Latin American politicians lie, right? Do you think Maliki is content pushing for Americans out of Iraq now, and after winning the election, will seek no real change? Is this just a campaign issue he’s exploting on which he has no intention of following through? After all, would violence increase or decrease were the biggest, baddest militia on the block to leave?
2) Does Maliki really have confidence in ISF? Should he? Didn’t the March episode in Basra and Sadr City indicate that ISF cannot be relied upon by itself? What parts of ISF need strengthening, and to the extent it’s combat support/combat service support, can the US provide real leadership there that the Iraqis can sustain themselves?
3) What force package would you propose both now, and after the election (theirs, not ours)? An advisory element, a logistical element, an SOF element, and a division-sized element for contingencies and QRF functions?
Additionally, what do you make of Pape’s (and Mearsheimer’s?) suggestion of using Saudi Arabia (and the Gulf?) as an offshore balancing platform? Are they simply trying to import the British continental commitment ideas on which they cut their teeth onto a situation for which it does not hold? Or does it make sense? (I lean toward it not making sense, but I’m not sure.)
4) Were there to be a massive pullout of American forces, do you give credence to Toby Dodge’s prediction (the New Yorker) that Iraq would consist of a few oases of *relative* calm, with the rest being anarchic? Or are you more optimistic? Or is this one of those – admittedly intellectually honest – “Well, it depends?”
Thanks
Adidas
anon wrote:
"In fact, the IIP contested the Dec 2005 elections in a coalition with two other parties - the "general council" then headed by Adnan al-Dulaimi, and the "National Dialogue" headed by Khalaf al-Ulayan.
The coalition is called the Iraqi Accord Front and polled about 15% of the national vote, becoming the biggest Sunni bloc in the COR.
Far from boycotting the election, the Sunni Arabs turned out in large numbers to vote."
There were three elections in 2005. The first was for the provincial elections, and that was the election that the Sunnis boycotted and the Islamic Party ran in. That's how they swept the Anbar elections because no one else contested them. The Oct. election was for the constitution, and the Dec. election was for the parliament. The Sunnis voted in the last two and boycotted the first.
That's why the Islamic Party's rule of Anbar is considered illegitimate by the Awakening movement.
Re: a coup, there is more talk about it. It wouldn't happen while the U.S. is still in Iraq in large numbers. People are talking about a coup down the road in a couple years. It's a definite possibility seeing as how no one likes parliament, and Maliki may not be able to build on the improved security by providing any services to keep up his improved standing with the public. That would leave the military as the only institution that quite works right, and of course, that's how coups start.
Mowtown:
Except that Robert Dreyfuss pretends that the Dec 05 elections, contested by the Sunni parties, did not happen.
He said: "The IIP, a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood secret society, WAS ELECTED IN 2005-2006, to its provincial posts and its parliamentary slots only because it was THE SOLE SUNNI PARTY THAT WOULD TAKE PART IN AN ELECTION THAT WAS WIDEY BOYCOTTED BY SUNNI ARABS.(Only about two percent of Sunni Arabs voted.)"
Pretence or ignorance, either way where is his credibility?
As for the coup:
Of course, had Bremer not disbanded the Baath-led Iraqi army and the banned the Baath party in 2003, the coup would have taken place a long time ago.
Further to my previous post, am posting this Robert Burns AP article in full becuase I think you military guys would be interested in it, especially the ones who've served there.
"US pleased, worried, by newfound Iraqi confidence
By ROBERT BURNS – July 13.
BAGHDAD (AP) — Wajih Hameed is an Iraqi general with an attitude. With a satisfied look, he listened as a subordinate officer explained to the deputy commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad how he plans to reposition his troops in the coming weeks.
"Before, they would have asked us to propose a plan" in such a circumstance and then would have accepted it with little argument, said Brig. Gen. Will Grimsley, who led a group of American officers to Hameed's office on Thursday. "Now they are telling us how they will do it," he said in an interview afterward.
Hameed's swagger sometimes grates on American officers. But Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond sees it as a hopeful sign the Iraqi army — generals and soldiers alike — has reached a new level of self-confidence, pointing the way toward truly independent Iraqi forces and, eventually, an exit for U.S. combat troops.
The flip side is that the Americans feel their control slipping away. This feeds a worry that Iraqi security forces either will set themselves up for a catastrophic failure or might even decide — at some point when the Americans largely have departed — that the country would be better off under military rule.
For now, the new assertiveness by generals such as Hameed, who commands all Iraqi soldiers in the western part of the capital, is welcomed.
"They have a self-confidence now that they didn't have when (I) first arrived" last fall, Hammond, the top commander of U.S. forces in Baghdad, said in an interview. The Iraqi army, he said, was largely limited as recently as last winter to manning checkpoints and "they were struggling with that."
What changed?
Hammond and nearly a dozen other American military officers said in a series of Associated Press interviews this past week that the key was the Iraqis' sudden and largely unexpected leap into hard battle in Basra in March, followed by offensives in the northern city of Mosul and the Sadr City section of Baghdad ending in May.
The Iraqi army faltered initially in the Basra offensive, but the outcome seemed transformative for the Iraqis.
"They are confident in their ability to stand up and take on increasing missions," said Grimsley, Hammond's deputy. That will be put to the test soon as the Iraqis prepare to take on a resilient insurgency in other parts of the country, perhaps including Diyala, northeast of Baghdad.
If the Iraqis stay on track, their taking more responsibility could allow Gen. David Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, to recommend to President Bush in September that he resume a troop withdrawal that is being put on hold this month so Petraeus has time to assess the overall situation.
A top Bush aide, Ed Gillespie, said Sunday that withdrawing more troops from Iraq after that assessment always has "been a possibility." Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said he hopes improved security in Iraq will allow troops to be shifted this year from Iraq to Afghanistan, where violence is rising. U.S. forces there sustained their deadliest attack in three years on Sunday.
There are now 15 U.S. combat brigades in Iraq, with the departure this month of the 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division. Petraeus told Congress in May that he might be ready to send more home in the fall.
Col. Bill Hickman, commander of the 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, said in an AP interview Sunday that even though U.S. combat power in his part of Baghdad — covering much of the northwest section of the capital — has shrunk by about one-half since last fall, he believes he could reduce further later this year.
"I think we will be able to have savings of U.S. forces" in the months ahead, Hickman said. He would not be more specific, saying he has not completed his assessment of exactly how much can be reduced.
Hickman and other U.S. commanders do not believe the Iraqi security forces are ready to operate without U.S. assistance. While they are pleased at the new assertiveness, some American commanders also struggle with an unsettled feeling about the risk of the Iraqis taking on more than they are ready to handle.
Hammond says that while he is encouraged, he also feels some anxiety.
"I've got some frustrating days when they do do things independently," he said Friday. "My staff reminds me, `That's what we wanted. Now you're not comfortable with it.' Well, that's maybe the rigid Army officer in me. But it is moving in the right direction. Is it there yet? No, it's not there yet."
Similar concerns are shared among the American officers working to develop Iraq's police.
Army Col. Mark Spindler, commander of the 18th Military Police Brigade, said in an interview Saturday that some of his colleagues worry that when the Iraqis act on their own, the U.S.-Iraqi partnership is breaking down.
"No, it's not breaking down. It's changing. That's progress," Spindler said.
The Iraqis, too, recognize that the dynamic between their leaders and the U.S. commanders is changing.
"They (the Americans) want us to rely on ourselves," Maj. Gen. Ali Hadi Hussein al-Yaseri, commander of all patrol police in Baghdad province, said in an interview Saturday in his headquarters. "We are now doing that."
Which raises this question: When will the Americans know that the Iraqis are ready to handle security entirely on their own?
"The Iraqis are going to have to decide. When do they believe they are where they need to be, on their terms?" Hammond said. He said one test of their readiness will be when Shiite militias, whose leaders he says largely fled to Iran and other countries after being pushed out of Sadr City, return to fight again.
He predicts that fight is coming.
"I wouldn't give up Sadr City like that, and I don't think they will. I'm sure they won't," he said. "They'll come back."
Hammond did not address the possibility of the Iraqi army breaking out of the control of its civilian overseers, but some private U.S. military analysts have said in recent weeks that they see a risk of a coup.
"It's something that's being talked about" among some U.S. government officials, said Stephen Biddle, an Iraq watcher at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. He traveled in Iraq in early June and returned with a largely positive view of security developments, tempered by concern about remaining sectarian tensions.
Iraq has vastly increased the size of its forces over the past year, now totaling 566,000 in the army and police. In May 2007 that number was 337,000.
For now, in Biddle's view, the presence of a large American military contingent mitigates against the possibility of a military coup.
"If we were to leave you could easily imagine a situation in which the military as the most effective institution in society decides to take over," Biddle said. "The parliament is the least respected institution in the society."
"An Iraqi reporter for the New York Times, who managed to get into Basra during the fighting, concluded that the thousands of Mahdi Army militiamen that control most of the city remained in charge. "There was nowhere the Mahdi either did not control or could not strike at will," he wrote."
As far as I'm aware Dreyfuss has never written a corrective to this mistaken analysis.
Anonymous, what evidence do you have that this is mistaken?
A bunch of people fighting for their homes. They concluded that getting massive airstrikes and artillery on their homes was not what they wanted, so they accepted the invading occupation army. Now they smile and make nice-nice with the occupiers. Could they strike? Sure, but what's the point?
If there are free elections coming up, who will they vote for? I don't know how to find that out until the elections. Neither Mahdi nor the occupiers are particularly tolerant of free speech. We won't find out what people think until they're ready to say.
Do they support Mahdi against the occupying government army? Do they support the army? Do they oppose both? They're iraqis, they have a long history of being discreet around the secret police, and a short history of anarchy where it pays to be discreet around anybody who might take violent exception to their opinions.
Given sufficent US aid the army might manage to suppress 30% of the population, or 70% of the population. Provided the elections aren't free. But in a counterinsurgency war, isn't the point to get popular support in places like Basra? And how do you tell whether you have it? You can do opinion polls provided the public believes the pollsters will not report to the secret police....
Adidas, I'll give you my answers to some of your questions though I'm not the pundit that Dr. iRaq is.
Do you think Maliki is content pushing for Americans out of Iraq now, and after winning the election, will seek no real change?
I can't begin to tell what Maliki wants. He's a politician. Is there any particular reason to think he will win the election?
Is this just a campaign issue he’s exploting on which he has no intention of following through?
He's a politician. How long has he been pushing this issue? Did he start before the campaign season started?
After all, would violence increase or decrease were the biggest, baddest militia on the block to leave?
No way to tell. Probably decrease. A rational economic plan would help a lot, and they can't have that while we're there because they're too busy dealing with us. No question that we mostly provoked violence until we started switching our army to do local police work. Now we might be suppressing some violence, but with the surge dwindled away how much can we keep it up? After we're mostly gone the biggest baddest militia will be the iraqi army, provided we keep the support troops in place to supply them and provided we give sufficient air support. Which fights will the iraqi army pick with iraqi voters? Who really knows?
Does Maliki really have confidence in ISF? Should he?
He's a politician. I'd say no, he probably doesn't. He certainly should not.
Didn’t the March episode in Basra and Sadr City indicate that ISF cannot be relied upon by itself?
No. Things could have changed since then. It's possible. It's been 4 months.
What parts of ISF need strengthening, and to the extent it’s combat support/combat service support, can the US provide real leadership there that the Iraqis can sustain themselves?
Their sense of mission is the central thing. Their primary job is to attack iraqi voters when iraqi politicians tell them to. To the extent that they're apolitical, this ought to be a problem for them. To the extent that they're opposed to the parties in power, this is definitely a problem for them. To the extent that they are supporters of the parties currently in power it is a problem for iraq.
Still, this is a big improvement over attacking iraqi civilians when the US army tells them to.
How would US soldiers feel about it if Bush told them to sweep into Boston and clear out the Democrats there? A lot better than if it was the chinese army cutting the orders, right?
What force package would you propose both now, and after the election (theirs, not ours)? An advisory element, a logistical element, an SOF element, and a division-sized element for contingencies and QRF functions?
Start up a big training effort for a real army, one that can resist an invasion. Teach them to lay real minefields, smart minefields, not just IEDs. Dig in to survive big artillery attacks and fight against armor. Start up a real airforce, and particularly give the infantry etc defenses against air attack.
They want to think of themselves as the defenders of their nation. Give them the training and supplies to do that. It would improve their morale 400% at least. And if we do get into a war with iran some of the iraqi army might actually fight.
Additionally, what do you make of Pape’s (and Mearsheimer’s?) suggestion of using Saudi Arabia (and the Gulf?) as an offshore balancing platform?
It saves face while we're pulling out.
Were there to be a massive pullout of American forces, do you give credence to Toby Dodge’s prediction (the New Yorker) that Iraq would consist of a few oases of *relative* calm, with the rest being anarchic?
Consider that US forces have always concentrated on a relatively few provinces, and the places we haven't been were relatively calm all along. Admittedly Anbar is a huge province. But we went where the violence was and we stirred it up. I can't be sure what will happen in the places we *leave*, but the places we *mostly weren't* will probably keep on being pretty calm.
Without us involved, militias don't have as much of an excuse to exist. The ones that are against us won't have us to kick around anymore. If the elections are believed to be fair, they ought to run for office instead of attack. (But they need to stay vigilant in case some other militia attacks them.) The ones that are really armed criminal gangs probably won't get many votes. The less public support they get the easier it gets to clean them up, it turns into something analogous to US gang violence.
But maybe the ethnic violence isn't over. Saddam managed to suppress a lot of it, like Titov did in yugoslavia. Will iraq fragment like yugoslavia did? I dunno. We used to talk about the possibility and then we stopped talking about it. I guess we decided to put a positive spin on developments, and the country can't break up while the US army supports the official government.
Iraq could really use an external threat other than us. Somebody threatening to invade them, to get iraqis working together against the common enemy. But turkey doesn't count, and the only other candidate is iran which refuses to do it. I dunno.
J. Thomas:
Thanks for your detailed response. I will let it sink in a bit more.
But your comment about an external threat was particularly striking. I had never thought that a bellicose Iran might be a positive rather than a negative, but now I see how it might be. Is this an example of Tilly's, "War made the state, and the state made war"?
Addtionally, off of Fallow's article ("Why Iraq Has No Army"), in which he quoted from Garner, I had always thought CS/CSS was the problem, rather than motivation at the lower levels.
Incidentally, I realize there are a finite number of LSAs and FOBs. However, are JSS/COPs simply just located within a finite number of geographic areas, even if they blanket those areas more intensively than were troops solely based on FOBS and LSAs? In other words, are you saying even with the surge/post-surge strategy of JSS/COPs, Iraq continues to represent an anarchic space with a few relatively orderly locations?
Last, should the US really want the Iraqis armed - well - if there is a very realistic chance (due to SOFA, etc) that the Iraqis will not have us "sitting" on them (keep the US in, the Iranians out, and the Iraqis out, to paraphrase the NATO quip)?
Thanks for your well-considered, detailed response to my post?
Adidas
J. Thomas:
My last line should have been declarative rather than interrogatory:
"Thanks." Not "Thanks?"
Adidas
I had always thought CS/CSS was the problem, rather than motivation at the lower levels.
I figure it's both. Officially they can't operate independently until they can handle their own supply, and that hasn't been as high a priority as getting them on the ground where they can replace US combat troops. The lack shows up on paper.
But beyond that, when they can sit in friendly areas and wave people through checkpoints and all, where the public thinks of them as defenders, they can have pretty high morale. When they're supposed to move into cities and attack the voters, it's harder. And that's got to make a big difference. But it doesn't show up until they have to fight iraqis.
In other words, are you saying even with the surge/post-surge strategy of JSS/COPs, Iraq continues to represent an anarchic space with a few relatively orderly locations?
Not exactly. There are three things I want to point out about where the US troops get concentrated.
1. We go where there's trouble.
2. Trouble comes to us.
3. We make trouble.
A couple of years ago there was a propaganda point that almost all the trouble was concentrated in 5 provinces. It was right, then. There were lots of places where we weren't, where there wasn't much trouble. That may be less true now. Our media doesn't go to those places, and I don't trust the iraqi government statistics from them. But it's still somewhat true. So, while there are relatively small areas that we control intensively, we picked those areas carefully. They have strategic importance, and they are places that were anarchic without us. They might be anarchic when we pull out of them, I dunno. But they aren't representative of the rest of the country.
Iraq is probably a fairly ordered space (that suffers from a lot of gangsters in some areas), with some anarchic areas where we are.
Last, should the US really want the Iraqis armed - well - if there is a very realistic chance ... that the Iraqis will not have us "sitting" on them?
It depends. We definitely don't want them to have weapons that are effective against us, if those weapons might wind up in our enemies' hands. It's safer for us to give the iraqis real arms and real training if we actually don't plan to keep occupying them.
At the moment there's no obvious choice for the iraqi army to fight except the kurds. Who are also iraqi voters at the moment. All of their neighbors are either weak and inoffensive (kuwait, saudi arabia, jordan, syria) or relatively friendly to everybody except kurds (turkey, iran). Would anybody attack them while they're still suffering the effects of our attack and occupation? It hardly seems sporting. Maybe iran, after we're gone, if a sadrist/sunni/kurd coalition snubs iran hard enough.
But the kurds might want independence, and the way they'd determine the borders would be to have a war and then a peace treaty, and how much land the kurds got would depend on how well they did in the war. It would be the US-trained-and-supplied kurds against the US-trained-and-supplied iraqi army.
Well, it depends. If we want to hang in there, we need to train the iraqi army as an occupation army -- we'll get iraqis to occupy iraq for us and subdue iraqi voters who disagree with us, and we can supply them indefinitely to do that.
If we actually plan to encourage iraqi sovereignty, their army is a symbol of sovereignty to them and they want armor and artillery and an airforce, because they want their symbolic army to at least look real. It's kind of like telling a high school they can have a football team with uniforms but the team will all be lineblockers.
It will take awhile before they can be strong enough to invade any of their neighbors whatever we do. In the short run the symbolism is what matters.
And the main approach to disarming militias needs to be to get an actual democracy working. When they see they can get votes and have real influence in a real parliament, that's better than keeping up a militia. And the longer a militia goes with nobody attacking it, the more useless it seems. So if iraq could get a functioning democratic government they wouldn't need for their army to invade and occupy their own cities.
Well, until the surge the big sticking point about democracy was we couldn't let sunnis alone, we had to run around anbar looking for terrorists. And we still can't let sadrists get influence in the government because they want us out. We have a working truce with the sunnis now, and if we promise to get out we might get a working truce with the sadrists. Could they put together a democracy if we didn't stop them? I dunno. But it looks like the best hope to me. And in that context, an iraqi army that's trained mostly in occupation and counterinsurgency is as counterproductive to them as an army trained mostly in occupation and counterinsurgency would be to us.
An iraqi army that's mostly geared to fighting other armies wouldn't hurt iraq at all except for the expense and the possibility the government might be stupid enough to invade somebody. But an iraqi army that's mostly geared to suppressing their own population is an invitation to coups and other antidemocratic action.
JThomas,
"Without us involved, militias don't have as much of an excuse to exist."
Huh? No self respecting Iraqi man doesn't want a gun and a uniform and the status it brings (unless he's in another ministry, which means it's his job to steal for the rest of the family/village/tribe/militia/sect.
In fact over there, what I described is just common sense survival instincts.
"There are three things I want to point out about where the US troops get concentrated.
1. We go where there's trouble.
2. Trouble comes to us.
3. We make trouble."
You also seem to be inferring that the original sin of inter-communal violence in Iraq lays upon us. Maybe I'm reading too far into it, but..
We weren't around for the murder of Hussein Ali 1300 + years ago, nor were we involved in the 20's when the British patched together three provinces of the Ottoman Empire and called it Iraq. That's when violence and militias started. Most likely it will never really stop.
Saddam was just unusually efficient in keeping a lid on it with violence and bribes, and a police state that make's Syria's look like the ACLU.
As far as an external enemy and invasion by same: difficult to argue Iran hasn't already invaded. Impossible to argue that Turkey hasn't, because they repeatedly do (they have to). Turkey wants an end to PKK et al cross border terrorism.
Iran wants a Shia crescent from Iran to Lebanon.
And if we completely leave, we will have handed it to them.
J. Thomas:
First, your post is long, and second, you leave me with little with which to quarrel (since you're there and I'm not).
To be a nerd and a snob, I think the term you're looking for is institutional isomorphism, or even more specifically, mimetic isomorphism. (Charlie, AM if you're still around, Dr. iRack, Dr. Gentile, am I right?)
In other words, world society has determined that a nation state cannot be a nation state unless it has an army. Ergo, if we want to build an Iraqi nation state, we have to give it a bona fide army. (This is the same logic as to why landlocked nations have navies, or why - per Dana Priest's The Mission - Nigeria needs F-16s.) Once more, am I right?
I tend to agree with Cavguy from SWJ that Iraq's external threats - with the exception of Turkey - are minimal. Were Iran to attemtp to invade Iraq, I imagine the result would be something like Khafji II.
My only question is, if Iraq does not/cannot have a core cadre that can handle March 2008-type situations, isn't it possible those situations could escalate and create a chain reaction which could topple the regime? How long or heavy does the US security blanket have to be for the Iraqis to function without the complement of troops the US current has in place?
Adidas
Elf2006, no, I'm not saying that we cause all the violence in iraq. I *am* saying that the places we concentrate US combat troops are not random. To a large extent we put the troops where they are because there was already trouble there, and the places there wasn't already trouble we left alone. It isn't like there's anarchy everywhere we aren't holding the lid on. The places we pay attention to are among the worst, for multiple reasons. Not representative of the rest.
Sure, turkey makes incursions into kurdistan, and non-kurd iraqis don't seem to be that upset about it. Get it completely clear that kurdistan is iraqi, get a unified army and a very clear sense that kurds are loyal to the iraqi nation, and maybe that will change. Or if turkey decides to keep parts of iraq, particularly parts with oil.
If we allow iraq to have a democracy, they will make their own choices about iran. They may wind up considering iran a friendly nation, rather as canada considers the USA. Or maybe not. They are unlikely to agree to a common government, and my guess is that iran is unlikely to do a military invasion and occupation -- what does it get them to rule over even more arabs and kurds? They have problems enough already. I hope.
If the iranian army doesn't sweep across the middle east, if they merely depend on shias across the middle east to agree with them about things, how do we stop that by occupying iraq?
I want to point out that CIA estimates of the iraqi population split differ sharply from Saddam's. Our guys estimated 60% shia, 20% sunni and 20% kurd. There's no really good data but opinion polls have tended to turn up more like 55% shia, 30% sunni and 15% kurd. Even if the shias were unified politically (which they definitely aren't) they might not be in as good a position to stomp on the others as we at first thought.
Adidas, no, I'm not there. You're welcome to quarrel with any of my facts or opinions, either one. Or the mixtures.
World society might accept some nations that don't have functional armies. Tibet while it lasted, costa rica, etc. I think that iraqis believe ey have to have an army to be a nation. And their opinion counts for their nation.
I overstated my case, sure, even democracies need an army that can handle some social unrest. When the USA loses control of a city we send in the National Guard to impose order. And we need units that can handle situations like Waco etc, groups of armed fanatics that violate the larger culture's sensibilities. But a functioning democracy doesn't need much of that. People who have a complaint can go to their politicians. They can figure that if the votes aren't there then they'd probably lose an insurgency too. To take up arms against the majority, rather than try to convince them, when you know the odds are against you -- that takes a very special issue. In the USA slavery did it and nothing else so far. When you have to occupy your own cities to suppress your own voters, something is very wrong.
Sorry to be so long. I'd describe a possible path to get from here to there, but that would take even longer.
JThomas,
Thanks for clarification, noted.
Yeah, not really scientific info on Iraq (I am not sure they know themselves).
-- we'll get iraqis to occupy iraq for us and subdue iraqi voters who disagree with us, and we can supply them indefinitely to do that.
And the main approach to disarming militias needs to be to get an actual democracy working.
don't these two ideas contradict each other? if we are subduing voters who disagree w/us we aren't seeking a democracy. we are seeking the illusion of democracy.
what we want is a democracy that agrees w/us. if there was any chance this could occur we wouldn't need to supply them indefinitely, they would do it themselves.
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