Another War in Iraq?

The world is abuzz with rumours of impending war between Iraqi Kurds and Arabs. The International Crisis Group has come forward with a suggested settlement that would see the Kurds suspend their claims on Kirkuk for a decade in exchange for exclusive rights to the oil reserves in their region.

The New York Times reports that American commanders fear that a mission now underway in Mosul, “could degenerate into a larger battleground over the fragile Iraqi state itself.”

“The problems are old but risk spilling out violently here and now. The central government in Baghdad has sent troops to quell the insurgency here, while also aiming at what it sees as a central obstacle to both nationhood and its own power: the semiautonomous Kurdish region in the north and the Kurds’ larger ambitions to expand areas under their control.

“The Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki is squeezing out Kurdish units of the Iraqi Army from Mosul, sending the national police and army from Baghdad and trying to forge alliances with Sunni Arab hard-liners in the province, who have deep-seated feuds with the Kurdistan Regional Government led by Massound Barzani.”

…the American military has already settled on a policy that may set a precedent, as the United States slowly withdraws to allow Iraqis to settle their own problems. If the Kurds and Iraqi government forces fight, the American military will “step aside,” General Thomas said, rather than “have United States servicemen get killed trying to play peacemaker.”

It’s hard to imagine how the US military would react if it had to get involved. It’s notionally obliged to support the government, that would be Maliki’s Arabs, but Washington’s closest allies in Iraq are the Kurds.

The real thorn in Maliki’s side is the city of Kirkuk and the oil-riches in its vicinity. The Kurds are claiming Kirkuk as part of their territory. Referenda to settle the issue have been scheduled and postponed at least twice.

The seeds of Arab/Kurd unrest were sown in the constitution of the Kurdish Autonomous Region written with the assistance of American foreign service expert, Peter Galbraith, back when Saddam was in charge. In the wake of Saddam’s removal, the Kurds threw their constitution in the face of the provisional administration of Bremer as a “done deal.” Eventually the Kurds succeeded in forcing Baghdad to incorporate the Kurdish constitution into the Iraqi constitution. There it’s been sitting, a ticking time bomb, ever since.

The International Crisis Group warns, “The most likely alternative to an agreement is a new outbreak of violent strife over unsettled claims in a fragmented polity governed by chaos and fear.”

For those either so ill-informed, unaware or completely gullible – your surge really didn’t bring peace to Iraq. No, it didn’t settle anything, nothing. There was just a temporary lull in the mayhem as the parties went on about their business and prepared for what they saw coming. That goes for Maliki and his Badr Organization, Sadr and his Mahdi Army, the Sunni and their insurgent militias, the Kurds and their Peshmerga. It took a pretty infantile outlook on Iraq to believe that the Bush surge had accomplished anything.

I think it was Joe Biden who endorsed a “3-state” solution for Iraq and was mocked for it by John “Victory” McCain. In fact, if you understand the issue of the Kurdish constitution and its major, unresolved inconsistencies with the Iraqi constitution, the 3-state solution is actually the default option. Just don’t tell the Old Geezer, it would break his heart.

 

There’s Something Stirring in Baghdad

The real measure of Iraq’s stability is about to be tested.

Forget the surge. That was never more than American political theatre. Yes, violence in Iraqi centres did decline. That actually began before the surge was implemented and that traces back to a number of developments in Iraq at that time.

The tinderbox issue of the moment is the Status of Forces Agreement between the Maliki government and Washington. It supposedly provides for the withdrawal of America forces from Iraq by 2011 but, in reality, it’s riddled with so many conditions and escape clauses that withdrawal becomes iffy at best, out of the question at worst.

Everyone has been curious about Muqtada al Sadr and his Mahdi Army and where they’ve gone lately. Today, Reuters reports that thousands of Sadr supporters took to the streets of Baghdad to protest the agreement and demand that American forces quit Iraq.

What’s entirely uncertain is whether the agreement will be passed by the Iraqi parliament. Asia Times Online reports that the Maliki government, even as it has signed the deal and submitted it to parliament for approval, privately hopes it is defeated:

The Americans announced, against [Maliki’s] wishes, the arrest of a senior officer in the Iraqi army on charges of channeling funds from Tehran to radical groups inside Iraq.

The funds were to be used to buy the loyalty of certain Iraqi parliamentarians in order to sink the proposed treaty with the US. Maliki never wanted the much-loathed treaty with Washington, and neither did Tehran. To keep his post, however, he had to go on with American requests to ratify the pact before the end of 2008.

Meanwhile, he turned a blind eye to all those opposing it. In fact, he encouraged them at times because this echoed his own personal beliefs and what he felt best served the interests of both Iraq and Iran. Among other things, the treaty calls for the withdrawal of all US troops from Iraqi cities by June 2009, and from all of Iraq by 2011, “unless requested otherwise by the Iraqi government”.

…Within the political system, Maliki remains at odds with the Sadrists, although the tension is low nowadays because of mutual distrust of the American treaty. Maliki is mildly trying – again – to win the favors of Iraqi Sunnis as his relationship remains strained with the two Kurdish heavyweight parties. He wants the Sunnis to oppose the treaty as well, and then cite their opposition with US decision-makers.”

If this account is accurate it means that Maliki signed the Status of Forces Agreement because he had to and now is looking to his parliament, including the opposition parties, to take him off the hook by voting it down.

The Americans are putting Maliki under a full court press to deliver a deal before the end of the year. That’s when the UN mandate lapses. Without a done deal on January 1, 2009, America becomes an “illegal occupier” and subject to sanctions.

If the deal is signed, sealed and delivered, Iraq would be bound to accept the American occupation for at least two years, the agreement requiring that much notice of revocation.

 

America Out of Iraq by 2011?

This one sounds hard to believe. McClatchy news service reports that the Iraqi and American governments are nearing completion of a status of forces agreement that provides for the withdrawal of all US combat troops by 2011:

“The tactical team is finished and it’s a closed deal, but remember that we’ve been through this before and every time we close a deal it’s reopened,” said a senior [Iraqi] official who’s been participating in the talks.
The official said that the deal, once completed, would be perhaps the most restrictive agreement the United States had with a country where it had troops.

“We’ve seen all the status of forces agreements with other countries,” the official said. “This is the best that the Americans have conceded.”

The official asked not to be identified because the deal is still being negotiated.

Another official, Ali al Adeeb, a senior member of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s Dawa party, said he’d been briefed on the negotiations and he confirmed the details.

The latest deal is said to also provide for the withdrawal of all US forces from Iraqi cities by next July. It sounds remarkably similar to the British withdrawal of its forces from Basra last year in preparation of their departure from Iraq.

What remains to be seen is whether the United States actually abandons its plans to nearly double the number of American military bases in Iraq from the existing 32 to a total of 60. The Pentagon has long identified a strategic need for a major, permanent military presence in the Persian Gulf region from which it can dominate the Middle East oil fields. Leaving Iraq would also relieve Iran of the pressures of strong American forces in Iraq on one border and Afghanistan on the other side. If the US proceeds with the expansion of its Iraqi bases it will be pretty obvious that it has no real intention of leaving anytime soon and certainly not by 2011.

To encourage al Maliki to cement a withdrawal deal, Muqtada al Sadr is now offering to disband his Mahdi Army militia once a fixed withdrawal date is set. There could also be an enormous amount of intrigue lurking behind that promise.

 

Dissecting "The Surge"

John McCain clings to “the surge” of US troops into Iraq as proof that 1) America is winning in Iraq and 2) that he’s the best man to serve as America’s next president.

The success line is built on two facts – the US sent an additional 30,000 soldiers to Iraq and violence in that country subsided. It’s highly convenient for McCain to claim that one led to the other, convenient but also highly misleading.

There are a number of reasons for the drop in violence in Iraq but there’s also an awful lot of wishful thinking thrown in for good measure by those with a personal stake in the surge.

We know that a major cause for the drop in violence in Baghdad has been the conclusion of ethnic cleansing. The Shiites have taken over the city and the Sunni and other minorities have been “cleansed” to their own, ethnic enclaves. The surge did nothing to stop much less reverse the ethnic cleansing of Iraq’s main city.

Another major cause for the drop in violence has to be credited to Muqtada al Sadr who has reined in his powerful Shiite militia, the Mahdi army. The good news is that al Sadr has told his forces to lay low. The bad news is that al Sadr has told his forces to lay low. The fuse on that little bomb may have been put out but the guy holding it still has a pocketful of matches.

Then there’s the Sunni resistance which has, at the moment, loaded up with American weapons and American cash to fight their fellow Sunnis, the al-Qaeda terrorists. Now that al-Qaeda has decided to refocus its efforts on Pakistan and Afghanistan, the resistance is pushing on something of an open door. The good news is that the Sunni resistance is winning. The bad news is that the Sunni resistance is winning. You see, the resistance has all along said, quite openly, that they’ve only called a temporary truce in their battle with the Americas and the Shiite militias. That was enough, however, for the US forces to re-arm, re-equip and heavily fund their once and future adversaries.

If the surge had really worked it would have meant somehow defanging the militias and the resistance. The whole political reconciliation business was intended to lay the groundwork for an end to ethnic violence but that hasn’t happened.

The spoiler is America itself. The United States wants Iraq to grant it a near-permanent and autonomous military presence in that country. The Pentagon envisions expanding its existing 32-bases to 60 in total. That, kids, is a clear statement that America has no intention of leaving or even limiting its military dominion over Iraq any time soon. There’s a reason why the US has built its largest embassy in the world in Baghdad, on a site bigger than the Vatican itself.

This is a demand that neither Sunni nor Shia can accept. America will need one hell of a lot more than a paltry surge if it incites Arab Iraq to unite and rise up against it.

In Iraq, all eyes are on America. With Obama leading McCain in the polls it probably suits the interests of the Sunni resistance and the Shiite militias to lay low for the time being. Why fight if not fighting is the best way to rid the country of foreign forces? There’ll be plenty of time for the Sunni and Shiite to hash out their differences once American forces are gone. Those people aren’t going anywhere, are they?

But this is an election year and we’re talking about an electorate not very good at digesting nuance. Surge works, mmmm goood! It may even be that John McCain truly believes it’s working. After all he believes that Iran is training al-Qaeda and that the terrorists are Shiite, not Sunni, and that Iraq shares a border with Pakistan. This guy doesn’t know which way is up but, then again, he’s only running to be president.

 

Iraq’s Maliki Backs Obama, Not McCain

Oh Johnny boy, this has got to sting.

Iraqi prime minister Nouri al Maliki has told Der Spiegel that Barack Obama’s 16-month timeframe for withdrawal of American forces from Iraq is spot on:

“Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki supports US presidential candidate Barack Obama’s plan to withdraw US troops from Iraq within 16 months. When asked in and interview with SPIEGEL when he thinks US troops should leave Iraq, Maliki responded “as soon as possible, as far as we are concerned.” He then continued: “US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.”

Oops, that isn’t going to sit well for John, 100-Years War, McCain.

“…apparently referring to Republican candidate John McCain’s more open-ended Iraq policy, Maliki said: “Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of US troops in Iraq would cause problems.”

Iraq, Maliki went on to say, “would like to see the establishment of a long-term strategic treaty with the United States, which would govern the basic aspects of our economic and cultural relations.” He also emphasized though that the security agreement between the two countries should only “remain in effect in the short term.”

Maliki went on to say that he wasn’t expressly endorsing Obama, just his policy on Iraq.

“So far the Americans have had trouble agreeing to a concrete timetable for withdrawal, because they feel it would appear tantamount to an admission of defeat,” Maliki told SPIEGEL.

 

Is Sadr Tamed or Merely Waiting to Pounce?

Has Washington’s troop surge in Iraq truly succeeded as so insistently claimed? Violence on the streets of Iraqi cities has abated and attacks on US forces there have diminished. That is undisputed. But has this become yet another example of “Mission Accomplished” triumphalism?

I suppose it depends what you read, who you listen to, what you’re willing to believe.

If you believe George w. Bush, the man whose greatest skill of the past seven years has been lying through his teeth, the surge has been an unqualified success, a “Hail Mary” pass to redeem his presidential legacy. If you believe what you read or hear in the North American media, the surge has at least the appearance of success. That tends to be as far as most of us go. However there are others who don’t buy it, among them a lot of Iraqis.

What are the key components of the surge success? One has been the schism between Iraq’s Sunni resistance and the mainly foreign al Qaeda terrorists. The two worked more or less cooperatively for a few years but Iraq’s Sunni fighters have now turned against their former comrades and are hunting them down.

Under the American military’s “Awakening” programme, the Sunni resistance groups are now receiving arms and cash from the Americans as compensation for crushing al Qaeda. These groups, however, have repeatedly made clear their intention to once again turn on their American benefactors in the future.

Then there’s the Shiite militias. They fall into two main groups, the Badrs and the Sadrs. The Badr brigades are closely aligned to the Iranians. They’re also Iraqi prime minister Nouri al Maliki’s team. That relationship has seen the Badr boys infiltrate Iraq’s security services with entirely predictable and frequently murderous results. Their chief competition is the Sadr militia who more or less follow bad boy cleric Muqtada al Sadr, al Maliki’s main rival and nemesis.

The second element of the success of the troop surge has been the retreat of the Sadr militias. A couple of months back, al Maliki sent the Iraqi army to destroy them in Mosul but he failed, even after American intervention.

There’s a growing sense of unease at the moment about the Sadr militia and what they’re really up to. Some suspect they’ve collaborated with the Sunni resistance in laying low, awaiting the outcome of the American election and preparing to pounce should Bush/Cheney attack Iran.

In effect, heralding success of the troop surge may be little more than whistling past the graveyard. There can be no success until Iraq’s armed camps are brought to heel, until they turn in their arms and their leadership dissolves. Until then, the game is still very much afoot.

 

Iraq Wants American Pullout Timetable

Barack says “soon,” McSame says “sometime, maybe” but that’s not good enough for the Iraqi government.

Iraqi prime minister Nouri al Maliki wants a fixed date for the withdrawal of American forces and he wants it enshrined in the “status of forces” agreement now being negotiated between Baghdad and Washington. From the Associated Press:

“Maliki said in a meeting with Arab diplomats in Abu Dhabi that his country also has proposed a short-term interim memorandum of agreement rather than the more formal status of forces agreement the two sides have been negotiating.
The memorandum “now on the table” includes a formula for the withdrawal of US troops, he said.

“The goal is to end the presence [of foreign troops],” Maliki said.”

But, but, but… what about those 58-military bases the Pentagon is planning to operate in Iraq (30-already exist, 28-new installations to be built), and that Vatican-sized US embassy? And what about all that oil? Yeah, that’s right, the oil.

McCain still can’t bring himself to say the “w” word – withdrawal. All his spokesman offered up was that the senator “has always said that conditions on the ground – including the security threats posed by extremists and terrorists, and the ability of Iraqi forces to meet those threats – would be key determinants in US force levels.” Read between the lines and you get “we’re not going anywhere.”

Meanwhile Afghanisnam is quickly turning into a regional conflict. Kabul is blaming yesterday’s suicide bombing of the Indian embassy as the work of Pakistan’s wily intelligence agency, the ISI. India has long worked in Afghanistan, not so much out of concern for the Afghans, but to get at Pakistan. There’s nothing India would like better than a Kabul government truly at odds with Islamabad. There’s been no proof yet that the Pakistanis were actually behind the embassy attack but it wouldn’t be surprising either.

 

Oh, To Live On Planet Bush

I hope the next time Americans elect a president they try to get one from planet Earth. Those that come from beyond, places like planet Bush, don’t do too well down here. Maybe it’s the whole gravity thing. They get weighted down and sluggish and their minds turn really dull. They can’t seem to get a sentence out right. Maybe it’s too much oxygen in the atmosphere that exaggerates their alternate reality from beyond.

Don’t believe me? Here, take a look. Bush says, probably believes, he cares about the environment. But, in his alternate reality, that means blowing the tops off mountains in West Virginia, drilling wells and running pipelines through wilderness preserves, and doing everything he can to thwart action on slashing greenhouse gas emissions.

Bush says he wants to bring peace and democracy to the Middle East and I guess he must believe that. But he supports brutal tyrants in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia and practically has a fit when people democratically elect Hezbollah to seats in Lebanon’s parliament or vote in Hamas in the Palestinian territories.

The man from planet Bush says he wants to build a strong, safe America and he might even believe that too. But he wages an insanely expensive war without end and does it on borrowed money, putting the fiscal equivalent of a burning tire around the necks of future generations and leaving the country to look forward to unnecessary decline. Better yet, he’s transformed war itself into a big business with mercenary contractors already matching or exceeding troop levels in Iraq.

Now the government’s own General Accounting Office shows that Bush’s alternate reality has done it again, this time on his claims about progress in Iraq. From the New York Times:

Over all, the report says, the American plan for a stable Iraq lacks a strategic framework that meshes with the administration’s goals, is falling out of touch with the realities on the ground and contains serious flaws in its operational guidelines.

Newly declassified data in the report on countrywide attacks in May shows that increases in violence during March and April that were touched off by an Iraqi government assault on militias in Basra have given way to a calmer period. Numbers of daily attacks have been comparable to those earlier in the year, representing about a 70 percent decline since June 2007, the data shows.

While those figures confirm the assessments by American military commanders that many of the security improvements that first became apparent last fall are still holding, a number of the figures that have been used to show broader progress in Iraq are either misleading or simply incorrect, the report says.

Administration figures, according to the report, broadly overstate gains in some categories, including the readiness of the Iraqi Army, electricity production and how much money Iraq is spending on its reconstruction.

And the security gains themselves rest in large part not on broad-scale advances in political and social reconciliation and a functioning Iraqi government, but on a few specific advances that remain fragile, the report says. The relatively calm period rests mostly on the American troop increase, a shaky cease-fire declared by militias loyal to the Shiite cleric Moktada al Sadr,

and an American-led program to pay former insurgents to help keep the peace, the report says.”

So the guy isn’t well-grounded, so what? His time on planet Earth is coming to an end and just months from now he’ll take wing and head back to planet Bush. Maybe next time Americans will do better.

 

Stirring Up the Pot – Iraq’s American Albatross

There are two things George Bush desperately wants to achieve before he’s evicted from the White House and they’re both huge concessions from Iraq. One is the national oil deal that lets the select Big Oil companies (Exxon, Chevron, Shell and BP) “manage” Iraq’s oil and the other is the Status of Forces Agreement whereby Iraq accepts a massive and permanent American military presence in the country.

The feckless Iraqi prime minister Nouri al Maliki made some noise about the Status of Forces agreement, even suggesting that the Iraqi parliament might just prefer the Americans to leave by the end of the year, but that was a negotiating ploy at best designed to blunt the wrath of Iraqi nationalists before the country’s national elections this fall.

Cutting these deals is somewhat bizarre. Arab leaders have learned never to conclude major agreements involving Washington in an outgoing president’s final year in office. The lame duck has little to offer in the long-term. They understand that rude surprises can also follow an American election and change in presidents. Best to keep as many bargaining chips as possible for that first meeting with the new guy.

It’s hard to see that these deals are truly in Iraq’s or America’s interests. Reverting Iraq’s oil resources to the very type of colonial management overthrown by every Middle East state, including then Baathist Iraq, seems to play into the hands of Iraqi nationalists like Muqtada al Sadr. Allowing American forces to establish and operate out of 58-bases in Iraq with virtual impunity merely throws fuel on the fire.

Adding these stressors at a time when Iraq’s central government is still fumbling the unity problem much less the equally problematical distribution of the nation’s oil wealth seems ludicrous. Why would Maliki worsen his own vulnerability and hand over such powerful ammunition to his rival, al Sadr?

This whole business sounds eerily like the Anglo-Iraqi treaties of 1922 and 1930. Why two? Here’s a hint. The Brits found big oil fields in Iraq in 1927.

The 1930 treaty enshrined British commercial and military rights in Iraq for which Iraq got – zip, nada, zilch. It gave the Brits almost unlimited military basing and unlimited mobility rights throughout Iraq and a colonial power over Iraqi oil.

Is any of this beginning to sound familiar? To protect their interests, the Brits ensured that the minority Sunnis would run the place, compliantly they hoped. That lasted until the Baathist nationalists took over the place after WWII.

Endless comparisons are being drawn between the British experience in the 20th century and America’s Iraq predicament of the 21st. Reading too much into them can be misleading. Britain had a vast colonial empire stretching through Asia, the Middle East and Africa at that time. Today’s Middle East has thrown off the shackles of colonialism but still harbours bitter memories of subjugation. Even the House of Saud is no longer dancing to Washington’s tune.

In fact, America today may more closely resemble the Ottomans following WWI than the Brits prior to WWII. Like the Ottomans, American prestige, power and influence are in retreat as new players such as China emerge to stake out their own turf. America’s military prowess was always more potent unused than when it took the field in Iraq and revealed its enormous limitations. America’s ability to maintain a conflict such as Iraq entirely on borrowed money and without implementing a draft has been exposed as its ruin.

The next few months promise to be a fascinating time for Iraq and the United States alike. There’s a chess game underway and, unfortunately, Washington still has Dick Cheney at its side of the board. At the end of the day, Cheney’s hardball tactics may do neither country any good.

 

Why Not Make It an Even 60?

Iraqi legislators are falling all over each other in the race to leak details of the “status of forces” agreement the US is trying to negotiate with the Maliki government.

The latest pearl is that the Pentagon wants to maintain 58-permanent bases in Iraq. Now, what does that mean? Where’s the perspective? Here’s an idea. Up till now, US forces have operated out of 30-bases. 58, of course, would be just shy of double that.

The next question is why? Why would Washington want to double its military installations in another country especially when it’s boasting how everything is settling down there. Why would it be asking for absolute control of Iraqi airspace up to 30,000 feet? Why negotiate for immunity for American military personnel and private contractors? Must be some explanation, right? There is but don’t hold your breath waiting for the Americans to admit it.

State Department spokesmen have hastened to tell reporters from America’s largest embassy on the planet that the US has no plans for a permanent occupation of Iraq. Just hearing that in a diplomatic complex bigger than the entire Vatican must be surreal.

This capitulation of sovereignty, if the Maliki government accepts it, will undermine all the progress that’s been made in Iraq. It will set Sunni against Shiite all over again. It will empower the nationalists like Muqtada al Sadr anhd weaken the already feeble Baghdad government. It will generate a pushback by Iran which might be enough to make Washington pull the trigger.