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When all else fails,
reorganize
By Ehsan Ahrari
Coming back from a week long vacation, when I
forced myself away from almost all means of global
connectivity, it appeared that I left the world around
me in "freeze" mode. The United States is still acutely
embroiled in Iraq. Nothing seems to be going right in
that country. Afghanistan is an equally unstable place.
In fact, Amnesty International issued a report
that portrays a very gloomy picture of female suffering
in that troubled land. Women are still being brutalized,
suppressed and even raped, while the US is the chief
occupier, with NATO forces taking the lead in
peacekeeping. For those women, the dream of a better
life after the Taliban remains a delusion.
For
the third time in the past six months or so, the White
House announced on October 6 a new regrouping or
reorganization in both Afghanistan and Iraq, as if the
problem is not due to failed policies in those
countries, but is merely of an administrative nature.
Accepting that the post-conflict US involvement
in Iraq ("phase four" in the military parlance) has been
a miserable failure will provide ample fodder for a
number of Democratic candidates, who are already
escalating their criticism of US President George W Bush
and his hapless foreign policy in the Middle East. Thus,
the administration is heavily relying on using
politically correct euphemisms in order to soft-peddle
its wrongheaded policies.
The mission of nation
building in Iraq is going nowhere, attacks on the
American soldiers are continuing, and weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) are nowhere to be found. But David
Kay, head of Iraq Survey Group, is still refusing to
admit that there might not be any WMD left. Instead, he
opted to raise the concern of those who are still
listening to him by claiming that Iraq may have hidden
chemical munitions among vast piles of conventional
munitions buried at various locations.
Now the
Bush administration is going through significant
gyrations by announcing that it will overhaul its
missions in Afghanistan and Iraq.
We are told
that a new entity, the Iraq Stabilization Group, will be
responsible for subsiding violence in Iraq and
Afghanistan, and will also spearhead nation building in
those countries. The person in charge is Condoleezza
Rice, Bush's National Security Adviser. A very
interesting aspect of this development is that Bush is
reported to have been frustrated with the handling of
the modalities of the US involvement in Iraq by the
Department of State and the Pentagon. In other words,
according to this description, he sees nothing wrong
with the US presence in Afghanistan and Iraq. Rather, he
envisions the incessant setbacks that his administration
is facing as outcomes of bureaucratic maladies and
dysfunctionalities.
Like the rest of the leading
US bureaucrats who are conducting US foreign policy,
Rice also refuses to admit any failure related to the
nature of US commitment or its handling of the
occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. In a statement that
ought to worry most leaders of the world, it dawned on
Rice only now that "we are in a different phase" of that
conflict. She said that reorganization efforts are
devised by herself, Vice President Dick Cheney,
Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld as an outcome of a discussion
they held with the President last August.
The
thinking underlying this reorganization is that by
diminishing the authority of the Department of State and
the Ministry of Defense, Bush would see promising
results in Afghanistan and Iraq, and soon. The pundits
in Washington are also quite sanguine about couching
this reorganization in the context of bureaucratic
tug-and-pull. This new measure is seen as resulting in
diminution of authority of Powell, as well as Rumsfeld.
The new major player is Rice. The creation of the Iraq
Stabilization Group promises to give her more direct
control. It is also a major shift in her role from a
provider of quiet advice to Bush - a role that Rice has
clearly preferred - to a direct implementor of two of
the most intricate issues of foreign policy, similar to
that of Henry Kissinger when he was the National
Security Adviser during the presidency of Richard Nixon.
Four of Rice's deputies will head coordinating
committees on counter terrorism, economic development,
political affairs in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the
"creation of clearer messages to the media" in Iraq.
The fact of the matter is that the massive
regrouping or reorganizing efforts in Washington do not
go to the heart of the problems in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Afghanistan has been a political and economic basket
case before the US carried out its military campaign in
2001, and is likely to remain so. The type of massive
assistance and attention that country alone requires
before it emerges as a halfway decent polity is beyond
the capability of the US and its NATO allies. Only the
commitment of the international community over several
decades might alleviate its misery - and the operative
phrase here is "might".
Iraq was a mess of a
different sort before the US invaded it. As nefarious as
dictators are, they have a record of keeping a
multiethnic caldron from boiling over. Josip Tito of
Yugoslavia and Saddam Hussein come to mind. Now Iraq
resembles Afghanistan. Indeed, Iraq has become a
gathering place for global jihadis who have nothing but
death and destruction to offer to the American forces
and to anyone who goes there even pretending to be
siding with America.
The recent news that Turkey
might send its peacekeeping troops to Iraq promises to
add one more group to the ongoing death and mayhem. This
time, the Kurds are likely to do their utmost to settle
their own ancient scores with the Turks. But the US
badly needs the Turkish participation in order to have a
visible Muslim presence, and also to alleviate the
chances of further deaths of its own troops.
The
solution to endless death and misery in Iraq is the
painful decision to hand over the rule of that country
to the UN. The US must consider lowering its presence,
authority, and, most important of all, its aspirations
in Iraq. These observations might sound like a broken
record to the Bush administration, but they bear
repeating as long as young GIs are dying, and Iraqis of
all walks of life are making it their national pastime
to cause injury to the occupiers of their country. Even
the current attempt to reorganize the US mission in Iraq
is akin to saving a sinking ship by appointing a new
leader of the crew whose mission is to bail the rising
level of water. Instead, the objective of the US ought
to be to bail out while it still can.
Ehsan Ahrari, PhD, is an Alexandria,
Virginia, US-based independent strategic analyst.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd.
All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
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