No withdrawal timetable, no
Zarqawi By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - US President George W Bush's
adamant rejection of a timetable for withdrawal
from Iraq effectively rules out a recent reported
offer from Sunni resistance groups to eliminate
the al-Qaeda terrorist haven in Iraq as part of a
negotiated peace agreement.
At the recent
Iraqi reconciliation meeting in Cairo, leaders of
three Sunni armed organizations - the Islamic
Army, the Bloc of Holy Warriors and the Revolution
of 1920 Brigades - told US and Arab officials they
were willing to track down terrorist leader Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi and turn him over
to Iraqi authorities as part of a negotiated
settlement with the US, according to the highly
respected, London-based Arabic-language al-Hayat
newspaper.
Other press reports have
confirmed the presence of Sunni resistance leaders
on the fringes of the conference, and al-Hayat
reporters were on the scene covering the
conference. Bush has effectively ruled out such an
agreement with the insurgent groups by rejecting
any negotiation on a withdrawal timetable.
He again attacked the idea of "setting an
artificial deadline" for withdrawal in his speech
to naval cadets on November 29. US ambassador to
Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad declared for the first time
in an interview on ABC News last week that he was
prepared to open negotiations with leaders of
Sunni insurgent groups who are not Saddam
loyalists or followers of Zarqawi.
But
without any flexibility on the troop withdrawal
issue, no real negotiations with the insurgents
are possible. The demand for a withdrawal schedule
has been the central negotiating demand of Sunni
insurgent leaders since they began communicating
early this year their conditions for ending the
armed resistance to US officials.
The
capture of Zarqawi by Sunni insurgents would not
end the terrorist haven problem by itself, but
that offer appears to shorthand for a broader
proposal to attack and eliminate the foreign
terrorist bases of operation in Iraq.
US
intelligence has long been aware of a sharp
rivalry and even occasional armed clashes between
Sunni insurgent organizations and the foreign
terrorists under Zarqawi's leadership, despite
their military cooperation against the occupation.
In the past, both the Sunni insurgents and
Zarqawi's followers have raised the possibility
Sunni leaders would turn on the foreign jihadis if
a peace agreement were reached with the US. Last
August, Saleh al-Mutlaq of the Iraqi Front for
National Dialogue, which is sympathetic to the
Sunni armed resistance, declared, "If the
Americans reach an agreement with the local
resistance, there won't be any room for foreign
fighters."
After reports of contacts
between Sunni insurgents and US officials surfaced
last summer, al-Qaeda in Iraq expressed serious
concern about just such a possibility. An Internet
posting by a follower of Zarqawi warned that if
the Sunni insurgents ended their armed resistance,
the insurgents would "exploit their knowledge of
the mujahideen and their methods and their supply
routes and they way they maneuver".
Sunni
insurgents and Zarqawi have clashed this year over
both possible peace negotiations and participation
in the October referendum on the constitution.
Organizations linked with Zarqawi warned as early
as last spring against negotiating with the US,
and threatened to kill anyone who worked to turn
out voters in the referendum.
A coalition
of larger insurgent groups called for maximizing
the vote against the draft constitution. Sunni
leaders told their US contacts in Cairo they would
not deliver Zarqawi to US forces, consistent with
their demand that the US military presence must be
phased under any negotiated settlement, according
to al-Hayat.
A Pentagon source commented
last week that it would "make perfect sense" that
Sunni insurgents don't want to hand over either
arms or foreign jihadis to the US, as a matter of
nationalist pride.
Cooperation with a
Shi'ite-dominated government on the foreign
terrorist presence in Iraq, however, would require
further negotiations between Sunni insurgent
leaders and the government on protection of
minority rights and other major political issues.
Negotiating with the major Sunni
resistance organizations, once regarded as
impossible, became a real option after Sunni
intermediaries began passing on peace feelers from
several of those organizations early this year.
Guerrilla units once thought to be acting
entirely independently of one another and without
any program are now credited with the capability
for common political action. Marine Lieutenant
General James T Conway told reporters in July in
Washington that the military had identified the
top eight to 10 leaders of the insurgency and knew
that they had met "occasionally" to "talk
organization tactics".
Some of those
meetings are said to have taken place in Syria and
Jordan. After meetings between the insurgent
leaders and US military officers, the top US
commander in Iraq, General George Casey, said that
the "preliminary talks" could lead to actual
negotiations with insurgent groups.
Bush's
"declassified" war strategy reflects a much more
sophisticated understanding of the relationship
between Sunni insurgents and Zarqawi's
organization than is seen in past administration
rhetoric. Whereas Bush administration rhetoric has
referred to the enemy only as "terrorists"and
"Saddam loyalists" in the past, the document
identifies a third group, the "rejectionists", who
are said to represent most of those who have taken
up arms against the occupation.
It
acknowledges that the "rejectionists" have goals
that are "to some extent incompatible" with those
of the terrorists. The document, titled "National
Strategy for Victory in Iraq", also hints that the
Sunnis have legitimate Sunni concerns about the
absence of any protection for minority rights in
the constitution pushed through by Shi'ite party
leaders.
Nevertheless, it suggests that
there is no need for any compromise with the
insurgency, because the US and its Iraqi allies
can play on divisions among the insurgent groups,
drawing off some of them and controlling the rest.
Bush declared in his speech on Iraq last week that
the goal was to "marginalize the Saddamists and
rejectionists".
According to source
familiar with Defense Department thinking on the
issue, a plan was adopted last summer for
"negotiations" with insurgent groups that would
offer no real compromise with them. Instead, US
officials would offer withdrawal only if and as
certain "conditions" were met, such as training
and deployment of adequate government units to
replace US troops.
The marginalization
strategy requires Shi'ite leaders to promise
greater protection for Sunni rights through
amending the constitution. "I think Khalilzad is
gently nudging the government in the direction of
negotiating with the Sunnis," said the Pentagon
source.
The administration is unlikely to
do anything more in contacts with Sunni insurgents
until and unless a more accommodating Shi'ite
leadership emerges from the December 15 election,
according to the source.
Meanwhile, no
effort is being made to take advantage of an
opportunity to do something concrete about the one
issue that is of concern to the US public. As the
domestic political struggle over military
withdrawal from Iraq heats up, failure to pursue a
timetable could eventually become an explosive
issue for the Bush administration.
Gareth Porter is an independent
historian and foreign policy analyst. He is the
author of The Third Option in Iraq: A
Responsible Exit Strategy in the Fall issue of
Middle East Policy.
