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Iraqi withdrawal
symptoms
By Ashraf Fahim
In the aftermath of the Iraqi elections,
which had a respectably high turnout (58%) and
which went off without the catastrophic violence
some predicted, senior officials in the George W
Bush administration have projected an air of
self-righteousness befitting a condemned man who
is vindicated just as the hangman is fastening his
knot.
"The American military and our
diplomats, working with our coalition partners,
have been skilled and relentless, and their
sacrifices have helped to bring Iraqis to this
day," said US President Bush. With the wind
seemingly at his back, Bush has dismissed any
suggestion that a timeline be set for a US
military withdrawal.
US Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been similarly swept
up in the afterglow, miming British
Lieutenant-General Sir Stanley Maude's famous
proclamation in 1917 to the newly invaded Iraqis
that "our armies do not come into your cities and
lands as conquerors or enemies, but as
liberators". Addressing troops in Baghdad on
February 11, Rumsfeld said, "You have shown the
world that America is, in fact, a land of
liberators, not of occupiers."
It is worth
noting, however, that the prophets of doom
cautioned not only of the election's logistical
obstacles, but the danger that Sunni Arabs would
not participate, thereby deepening inter-communal
tensions. That fear has been realized, with
turnout extremely low in Iraq's majority Sunni
Arab provinces.
Whatever the intent of the
administration's rhetorical bravado, its
unwillingness to contemplate a timeline for
withdrawal, as demanded by nationalist Iraqis who
boycotted the election, communicates a desire to
pursue maximalist strategic goals.
The
administration has been remarkably tone deaf to
Iraqi fears that their country is destined to
become an American colony, as demonstrated by
Lieutenant-General James T Lovelace, the army's
top operations officer. Lovelace announced just
prior to the Iraqi election that the US Army would
likely keep 120,000 troops in Iraq for at least
two years. The administration's predictable
contention that the assessment was just one
possible contingency is unlikely to set Iraqi
minds at ease.
While Rumsfeld has insisted
that the election marks a "tipping point" in
defeating the still-raging insurgency, there is
little evidence that this is so. Violence has
continued unabated since the election, and the US
chairman of the Joint Chiefs told Congress on
Thursday that insurgents were still conducting up
to 60 attacks daily.
Nor has the election
altered the broad consensus among Iraqis of the
need to chart their future without foreign
interference. It is only on the means of ending
the American occupation where the Iraqi consensus
frays.
Sunni or nationalist
disenchantment?
The debate about how Iraq
can best be stabilized has revolved around the
widely held assumption that the Sunni Arabs,
Iraq's formerly dominant class, are disenchanted
by their loss of privilege but will join the
political process if offered a plum seat at the
table. It is also conventional wisdom that
"moderate" Sunni Arabs can and must be separated
from the "extremists".
"Detaching the
Sunni mainstream from the hardcore terrorists is
clearly the most critical challenge of the weeks
ahead," declared a New York Times editorial on
January 31.
Both assumptions require
qualification. It is not only disenfranchisement
but opposition to American tutelage that riles
Sunni Arabs. Their prerequisite for joining the
political process is not just a piece of the pie,
but a guarantee that America will leave, and soon.
In addition, their disenchantment reflects
pan-Iraqi anti-occupation sentiment.
The
rejectionist view was concisely expressed by
Muhammad al-Kubaysi, a member of the powerful
Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS). "The
elections are not a solution to the Iraqi problem,
because this problem is not an internal dispute to
be resolved through accords and elections," he
told al-Jazeera. "It lies in the presence of a
foreign power that occupies this country and
refuses even the mere scheduling of the withdrawal
of its forces from Iraq."
As the new Iraqi
government takes shape, many observers have argued
that the Sunni Arabs may now be eager to enter the
political process before the train leaves the
station. Numerous news reports have spoken of
their willingness to get involved in writing
Iraq's all-important constitution. But there are
indications that those Sunni Arab leaders willing
to do so are the same ones who participated in the
election to such little effect.
The
relative importance of those angling for a role
was summed up by Dan Murphy of the Christian
Science Monitor. "While some Sunni leaders who
rejected the elections are now scrambling for a
role in writing Iraq's constitution," he wrote,
"they either don't control those carrying out the
attacks or are allowing the bloodshed to
continue."
This movement is being led by
former Iraqi foreign minister Adnan Pachachi. The
octogenarian Pachachi is frequently heralded as a
Sunni Arab "elder statesman", but his party won a
paltry 12,000 votes in the election. The other
movement supporting involvement is the Iraqi
Islamic Party, which began life as a branch of the
Muslim Brotherhood, and which has been riven by
internal divisions on the merits of joining the
political process.
The more influential
AMS has conditioned participation in writing the
constitution on a timetable for US withdrawal, a
demand personally conveyed by AMS chairman Hareth
al-Dari to the United Nations' Iraq
representative, Ashraf Qazi. An identical demand
was rejected by US Ambassador John Negroponte
before the election, when the AMS offered to drop
its election boycott. There is no sign that the US
or indeed Iraq's interim leaders will be any more
receptive to the AMS' offer this time around.
The question of the hour, however, is what
position the major beneficiaries of the election,
the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), backed by Shi'ite
leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, will take
toward the occupation and relations with the
United States. The UIA, which won 140 of 275 seats
in the new assembly, had made a timetable for US
withdrawal part of its election platform, but has
not emphasized the issue since. And in order to
form a government, the UIA will likely rely on the
pro-US Kurdish parties, who are in no hurry to see
the US go.
The presumed transitional prime
minister, Ibrahim Jaafari of the Shi'ite Da'wa
Party, part of the UIA, has been cautious in his
assessment of the prospects for a US draw-down. "I
think the security system needs time", Jaafari
told CNN on Thursday.
Several factors
could force the UIA's hand, however. Firstly, the
Sunni Arab-dominated provinces have the ability to
veto the constitution when it is put to a
referendum in October by virtue of a provision put
in place to protect Kurdish rights. Given this
fortuitous leverage, Sunni Arabs and other
nationalists could push for an end to US
influence.
Secondly, there is public
opinion. A recent poll by Zogby International
found that 82% of Sunnis and 69% of the majority
Shi'ites want a US withdrawal "either immediately
or after an elected government is in place". The
Bush administration may thus be making a serious
miscalculation in presuming Shi'ite largesse.
Strong anti-occupation sentiment is held by
several key Shi'ite political actors as well,
notably junior cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who
withheld participation in the election for that
reason.
Muqtada commands a sizeable
following due to the legacy of his father, a
venerated senior cleric murdered by Saddam
Hussein. And he wasted little time after the
election holding the senior clergy's feet to the
fire. "I stood aside for the elections and did not
stand against them as I did not want to show
disobedience to the marjaiya [senior
Shi'ite clergy]," he said in a statement. "I did
not join these elections so that I would not
become one of the West's pawns." Muqtada also
demanded the marjaiya now to ask US troops
to leave.
The senior Shi'ite clergy are by
no means unified in their hitherto quietist
approach to the occupation. Najaf Ayatollah Ahmed
al-Hassani al-Baghdadi issued a strong
condemnation of the election on its eve, saying,
"I am a son of Iraq, and I call on all Christians
and Muslims to expel the Americans from Iraq."
Even members of the marjaiya, the
highest Shi'ite religious authority, barely
conceal their distaste for the US beneath a patina
of pragmatism. Bashir Najafi, one of the four
grand ayatollahs who make up the marjaiya
was blunt in an interview with the Washington
Post. US troops could remain at present he said.
"There appear to be good relations" between US
soldiers and the Shi'ites. But, "there are hidden
aspects. It's like a snake: The skin is soft, but
the snake is poisonous. The American soldiers are
the skin, but the American policy is still on the
inside."
Likewise, the long lines of
exhilarated, defiant Iraqi voters expressed
greater wariness of US intentions than gratitude
at their supposed deliverance. One man, Ahmed
Dujaily, an 80-year-old former minister under King
Faisal II, put it succinctly in comments to the
New York Times. "We thank the Americans for
destroying the regime of Saddam," said Dujaily.
But "we know what they are looking for. They are
looking for oil, and military bases, and
domination of the new regime."
There is
little sign that the palpable anti-occupation
groundswell is swaying hearts and minds at the
White House. The Bush administration has yet to
publicly address the issue of long-term military
bases, or when it intends to bring the troops
home. With Iraqis seemingly fractured along ethnic
and denominational lines, the administration is
apparently gambling that it can yet shepherd the
country into the kind of dependency relationship
it has with other regional US allies.
"They ask me, 'is there a timetable for
withdrawal from Iraq'?" said Bush at a recent
rally. "Here's my answer to that: You don't set
timetables. The timetable is as soon as possible,
and it's going to be based on the willingness and
capacity of the Iraqi troops to fight the enemy."
Bush's position would be reasonable were
the Iraqi security forces not years from
independence or unwilling to fight precisely
because they don't want to be seen to be doing so
at America's behest. The election has undoubtedly
increased the legitimacy of the transitional
process in Iraqi eyes, but the Iraqi military
still lacks the esprit d'corps and ethnic
diversity necessary to assert its authority over
the country.
At the moment some estimates
indicate that Iraqi forces are outnumbered by the
insurgents. Anthony Cordesman, a military analyst
for the conservative Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS), estimated the number
of Iraqi troops able to stand alone at only 4,500,
as Fred Kaplan pointed out in Slate.com. Estimates
of the number of active insurgents are put by the
US military at about 17,000.
Iraq's
interim leaders are cognizant of the weakness of
their own forces, and have been unwilling to
contemplate a US withdrawal. Interim Prime
Minister Iyad Allawi had hinted at a timetable
prior to the election before reportedly
backtracking under heavy US pressure. Immediately
after the election, interim President Ghazi
al-Yawar likewise called it "complete nonsense to
ask the troops to leave in this chaos and vacuum
of power".
Even if they could get a grip
on the insurgency, Iraqi forces are far from being
able to defend the country's borders, a
prerequisite for withdrawal laid down by Bush
during his February 2 State of the Union address.
"Iraq has few, if any tanks or fighter planes,"
wrote Kaplan in Slate. "Nor is the US military
training effort geared towards defending borders
or repelling an invasion."
Concerns about
Iraqi loyalty are likely playing a major part in
the frugality of their US benefactors. Heavy
weaponry could easily be turned on US troops, and
actually arming the Iraqi army could loosen its
dependence on the US. Those in search of history's
echo need only rent a copy of Lawrence of
Arabia. "Give them artillery and you've made
them independent," Lord Dryden councils General
Allenby on how best to equip the Arab uprising
during World War I. "Then I can't give them
artillery, can I?" replies Allenby.
Neglecting the Middle
Way
Numerous creative solutions have been
floated to the issue of US withdrawal, from the
gradual transfer of power to a UN force, to giving
the Iraqis a voice through a referendum on the US
presence. "If the American presence has been
divisive, a vote that asks us to leave could prove
the opposite," wrote several CSIS analysts in the
New York Times. The administration has yet to
pursue any of these compromise solutions. Instead,
it continues to attempt to square the circle of
Iraqi anti-occupation sentiment with its own
economic and military prerogatives, which may or
may not coincide with Iraq's.
There is, of
course, a mandated end to the US occupation,
stipulated in UN Security Council Resolution 1546.
That resolution says the US presence will conclude
at the end of 2005, or earlier if the Iraqi
government demands it. Even the venerable, pro-US
Adnan Pachachi has despaired of America's
unwillingness to reaffirm this vow. "What we
wanted from the Americans was a clear statement to
the effect that they would abide by this
resolution," he has commented. "But they refused
to do so, so it seemed the suspicions of the
[Iraqi] people have some basis in fact."
Ashraf Fahim is a freelance
writer on Middle Eastern affairs based in New York
and London.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
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