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