Sovereignty, but what about the
insurgency? By Charles Recknagel
In the past few days, Iraq has reached two
milestones that United States and Iraqi officials have
long said should help reduce the country's persistent
security problems. One is the formation last week of a
new interim administration to take Iraq to a first round
of elections in January. The second is Tuesday's
endorsement by the United Nations Security Council of
that administration becoming Iraq's sovereign
government.
Just before the UN vote in New York,
Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari restated his
belief that these events will convince his countrymen
they have a legitimate government of their own. "There
is also the question of how legitimate this new interim
government is, since we haven't had the chance to have
elections or to have [an] elected representative
government. So, with the involvement of the United
Nations, with providing some international legitimacy to
the new interim government, I think it will be more
acceptable to the people of Iraq," Zebari said.
But will the formation of an interim government
endorsed by the United States help to isolate Iraq's
insurgents, who seem to reject all efforts to establish
a new order? Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty put the
question to two analysts who are closely watching the
situation.
Daniel Neep of the Royal United
Services Institute in London says establishing a
sovereign government will not be enough by itself to
dissolve the insurgency. He says that will only come if
the new government is able to win the public's
confidence by its performance in office.
"I
think in the short term it is going to make very little
difference. We tend to focus on the UN resolution as
giving international legitimacy, but does it necessarily
mean that in Iraq? The Iraqis, of course, see the UN as
being the body which imposed sanctions on them for so
long, and so it has a different kind of image within
Iraq itself. I wonder whether we are paying slightly too
much attention to this rather academic question of
sovereignty. I think perhaps sovereignty is not the key
for most Iraqis. Really, legitimacy is, and the only
legitimacy that a government can get is through its
performance once it is in office," Neep says.
Neep says he does not expect any lessening of
insurgent violence in the run-up to June 30, when the US
formally hands over political power to the new
government. But he says that after the deadline is
reached, the new government will have a chance to define
its own anti-insurgency policies. One of those policies
may be to seek consensual solutions for dealing with
uprisings, rather than relying on force, as the US-led
coalition has often done previously.
"I think
the interim government will espouse a different kind of
approach to dealing with certain types of insurgency
than the US. If you look at what happened in Fallujah, I
think an Iraqi government would be extremely loath to
engage in a major operation like that. They would go
straight to the kind of solution that the US ended up
adopting, which was in trying to co-opt local leaders of
the insurgency and reach some kind of accommodation with
them. It's much more of an 'Iraqi' approach, trying to
not alienate local political figures but trying to bring
them into the system," Neep says.
It is not yet
clear how much freedom the new interim government will
have to pursue such strategies if they conflict with the
assessments of US officials. Washington will lead the
multinational force now tasked under the UN resolution
with securing Iraq until the country completes its
political transition by the end of 2005.
The new
UN resolution specifically "welcomes that arrangements
are being put in place to establish a partnership
between the multinational forces and the sovereign
interim government of Iraq to ensure coordination
between the two". But the resolution's wording leaves
the mechanics of the partnership to be defined in
practice.
Another key challenge for the new
interim government as it seeks to isolate the insurgents
will be to make clear progress in improving the living
conditions of ordinary Iraqis.
Joost Hiltermann
is a regional expert with the International Crisis
Group, based in Amman. He tells RFE/RL that the
insurgents have benefited to date from the widespread
disappointment among Iraqis with the pace of change in
their country.
"[The insurgents] have been able
to feed on a fertile environment because people have
been so disaffected by both the political situation, the
economic situation, the law-and-order situation, that
they have not actively done anything to oppose the
insurgents. They have allowed themselves to be
intimidated by the insurgents," Hiltermann says. "So, I
think what needs to happen in Iraq in order for the
insurgency to be addressed is a dramatic improvement in
living conditions of people, in the law-and-order
situation, in the employment situation, so that vast
masses of people in principle would benefit from the
change in government."
Hiltermann predicts that
in the coming months insurgents will continue to try to
undermine efforts to reconstruct Iraq by launching
attacks on Iraqi officials and police and by sabotaging
pipelines and other key infrastructure targets. He says
that the insurgents' strategy recognizes that the new
Iraqi state's prospects for winning the hearts and minds
of its citizens will be determined far more by economic
issues than by what happens at the UN.
Insurgents kept up their pressure in Iraq on
Wednesday by launching a mortar attack on forces loyal
to an Iraqi general charged with imposing security in
the central city of Fallujah. At the same time,
saboteurs blew up an oil pipeline north of Baghdad,
forcing what Iraqi officials say is a 10% cut in output
for the national electricity grid.
The attacks
follow car bombings on Tuesday in the northern city of
Mosul and the northeastern city of Baquba that killed 14
Iraqis and one US soldier.
Copyright (c)
2004, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio
Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut
Ave NW, Washington DC 20036
