The clock is ticking for Iraqi Prime
Minister Nuri al-Maliki, the hapless, feckless
leader of the Shi'ite fundamentalist party
al-Dawa. From Washington, London, Baghdad and
other capitals come rumors that Maliki's
government will soon be overthrown by a
nationalist general or colonel or that he will
resign in favor of an emergency "government of
national salvation".
A coup d'etat in Iraq
would put a period - or rather an exclamation
point - at the end of the Bush administration's
bungled experiment
with democracy there. And
it would open an entirely new phase in that
country's post-2003 national nightmare. Would it
result in the
creation of
a Saddam Hussein-like strongman to rule Iraq with
a heavy hand? Or would it force the warring
parties (Sunni insurgents, Iranian-backed Shi'ite
militias and Kurdish warlords) to intensify the
bloody civil war that is tearing Iraq apart? No
one knows.
As the carnage in Iraq reaches
new heights of barbarism, what's clear is the
utter uselessness of Maliki's government. It is
simply incapable of staunching the bloodletting.
Despite weeks of blunt warnings from US officials
that time was running out for him, on Sunday the
prime minister announced yet again that efforts to
disarm Iraq's militias would be postponed. "The
initial date we've set for disbanding the militias
is the end of this year or the beginning of next
year," he said, according to USA Today.
Still, whatever form it might take, a coup
stands an excellent chance of making a horrible
situation worse. Rather than toy with yet another
misstep, the capstone in a seemingly endless
series of errors in Iraq, the Bush administration
- including the increasingly powerful "realist"
anti-neo-conservative policy types now emerging in
Washington - would do far better to start planning
for a quick exit.
Despite the bloodbath
fears that are constantly raised about an Iraq
without American troops, a US exit need not
consign that country to years of Rwanda-style
ethnic slaughter or a Congo-style civil war. Even
as it leaves, there are plenty of things the
United States could do to ameliorate the state of
post-occupation Iraq, including beginning real
negotiations with the Iraqi resistance and
launching diplomatic efforts to get neighboring
countries, especially Iran and Syria, to stay out
of the conflict.
Even though a military
coup might seem to some desperate policymakers a
tempting option, it's one of those quicksand
ideas. In a paper just written for the Middle East
Institute, the sagacious Wayne White - who headed
the State Department's intelligence effort on Iraq
until last year - specifically warns that it's
time for the US to "back off" in Iraq:
A series of apparent US ultimatums
and veiled political threats aimed at the
government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in
recent weeks - especially Maliki himself - is
but the latest example of excessive US
involvement in the Iraqi political process.
But it is time that setting the overall
direction of Iraqi politics must be left to
Iraqis, for better or worse. Washington must
recognize that it cannot orchestrate political
success in that tortured land through still more
heavy-handed political tampering. And stepping
back from the Iraqi political fray is a
prerequisite for any overall exit strategy.
Is a coup in the cards? I
first raised the possibility of a coup in an
October 6 column, "Coup in Iraq?" for
TomPaine.com. It followed a drumbeat of comments
and statements from Bush administration officials,
US military officers, US ambassador to Iraq Zalmay
Khalilzad, Senate Armed Services Committee
chairman John Warner and former Representative Lee
Hamilton - co-chairman with James A Baker III of
the Iraq Study Group - all of whom warned Maliki
ominously that he had only a matter or weeks or
months to get a handle on Iraq's paramilitary
armies, militias and death squads.
The
consequences for the prime minister of failing to
do so were left unsaid, but the warnings were so
explicit that Maliki spoke to President George W
Bush this week about how he should interpret the
barrage of deadline-like statements, and the
president replied, according to spokesman Tony
Snow, "Don't worry, you have our full support."
(Think: Heck of a job, Maliki!) In fact, whatever
consoling words the president might have had for
him, the Iraqi prime minister has almost no
reservoir of support left either in Washington or
among US military commanders in Iraq.
Over
the weekend, rumors began to fly thick and fast.
In a piece headlined "Iraqis Call for Five-Man
Junta to End the Anarchy", Marie Colvin wrote in
the Sunday Times of London:
Iraq's fragile democracy, weakened
by mounting chaos and a rapidly rising death
toll, is being challenged by calls for the
formation of a hardline 'government of national
salvation'. The proposal, which is being widely
discussed in political and intelligence circles
in Baghdad, is to replace the Shi'ite-led
government of Nuri al-Maliki, the prime
minister, with a regime capable of imposing
order and confronting the sectarian militias
leading the country to the brink of civil war.
Dr Saleh al-Mutlaq, a prominent Sunni
politician, traveled to Arab capitals last week
seeking support for the replacement of the
present government with a group of five
strongmen who would impose martial law and
either dissolve parliament or halt its
participation in day-to-day government.
Mutlaq, who is sympathetic to, if not
affiliated with, the Iraqi resistance and its
former Ba'athist leaders, explicitly called for
Maliki to step down.
Colvin quoted Anthony
Cordesman, an uber-realist, conservative US
military analyst, claiming that there is a "very
real possibility" Maliki will be toppled. "There
could be a change in government, done in a
backroom, which could see a general brought in to
run the Ministry of Defense or the Interior."
David Ignatius - an exceedingly
well-connected reporter at the Washington Post -
wrote a column on October 13 citing Mutlaq as
well, and suggesting that Iraq's own intelligence
service (created, funded, and run by the Central
Intelligence Agency - CIA) is involved:
The coup rumors come from several
directions. US officials have received reports
that a prominent Sunni politician, Saleh
al-Mutlaq, visited Arab capitals over the summer
and promoted the idea of a national salvation
government, suggesting, erroneously, that it
would have American support. Meanwhile, top
officials of the Iraqi intelligence service have
discussed a plan in which Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki would step aside in favor of a
five-man ruling commission that would suspend
parliament, declare martial law and call back
some officers of the old Iraqi army.
Frustration with Maliki's Shi'ite-led
government is strongest among Iraq's Sunni
minority, which dominated the old regime of
Saddam Hussein. But as sectarian violence has
increased, the disillusionment has spread to
some prominent Shi'ite and Kurdish politicians
as well. Some are said to support the junta-like
commission, which would represent the country's
main factions and include former interim prime
minister Iyad Allawi - still seen by some Iraqis
as a potential 'strongman' who could pull the
country back from the brink.
To be
sure, Allawi - in London - denied any reports in
an interview with Newsweek that he is involved in
plotting a coup. "Total nonsense. To plot a coup,
I don't sit in London," huffed Allawi, a long-time
asset of the CIA and British intelligence. "I
would be sitting in Baghdad trying to make a
coup."
Allawi's denials aside, when I
spoke to a former CIA officer with wide experience
in the Middle East, far from pooh-poohing the idea
he had this to say:
It's being talked about in
Washington. One scenario is, the Iraqis do it
themselves, some Iraqi colonel who's fed up with
the whole thing, who takes over the country. And
it would take the United States forty-eight
hours to figure out how to respond, and
meanwhile he's taken over everything. The other
side of the coin is, we do it ourselves. Find
some general up in Ramadi or somewhere, and help
him take over. And he'd declare a state of
emergency and crack down. And he'd ask us to
leave - that would be our exit strategy. It's a
distinct possibility. I've raised this with a
number of foreign service and intelligence
people, and most of them - remembering the days
of the coups d'etat in the Middle East - say,
"Hear, hear!"
And you know what? I think
Rumsfeld would jump on this idea in five
minutes.
Of course, no coup will
happen at all - no general or colonel would dare
try - without, at the very least, a wink and a nod
from the CIA, the US military, or Khalilzad. And
most likely, it would take significantly more than
a wink, something like explicit support and
promises of assistance.
But, according to
my reporting, that is precisely what is being
discussed in Washington, even among the inner
councils of Baker's Iraq Study Group, the realist
(that is, anti-neo-conservative) commission set up
last spring to figure out what to do about Iraq.
Salah Mukhtar, a former top Iraqi official
who served as Iraq's ambassador to India and then
Vietnam in the period just before the US invasion
of Iraq, is not a spokesman for the Iraqi
resistance. But he is very well plugged in to the
thinking of that country's insurgent leaders. When
I spoke to him this week by telephone, he assured
me the resistance was well aware that elements in
the Bush administration might be planning a coup.
According to him, the main focus of such a coup -
even one fostered by the United States - would be
to mobilize the Iraqi Army against the Shi'ite
militias:
The increase in the volume of mass
killing in Iraq is creating a willingness among
the people to accept a military coup. I would
say that 80% of Iraqis are willing to accept it,
to accept anything that would help to crush the
Iranian gangs [ie, the militias of the Shi'ite
religious parties, such as the Badr Brigade and
the Mehdi Army].
The United States is
making contacts with some old Iraqi generals in
Jordan. They are former Ba'athists. The United
States is looking for people to topple the
government of Maliki. Some of them are in Iraq,
and some of them are based in Jordan. Some of
them turned down the US offers, but some of them
accepted.
If there is a military coup in
Iraq, that coup will be [sympathetic to] the
Ba'athists. If its leader is not pro-Ba'athist,
there will be a second coup against that leader.
So either way, it will result in a pro-Ba'athist
government ... It would be a crazy move by the
United States. It shows that they don't
understand Iraq.
The unraveling of
Iraq? What does all this mean? As a start,
it probably represents a belated Washington
wish-list that contains quite a disparate, if not
conflicting, set of ideas about the American
future in Iraq. Some top officials are surely
eyeing the possibility of a last-ditch effort to
establish a government that would stabilize the
country, put down the resistance, and create a
secure environment for Bush's "victory" strategy
in Iraq - even though that victory would have
nothing to do with democracy.
Others in or
around the administration are undoubtedly drawn to
the idea of a coup, or at least of the forced
removal of Maliki in some fashion because it would
present a fig leaf for an American "redeployment"
(read: withdrawal from Iraq). Under this scenario,
the United States could exit as gracefully as
circumstances allow, leaving behind a strong Iraqi
central government that might still be an ally of
some sort.
Indeed, as early as mid-August,
a New York Times piece suggested that at least
some officials in the White House had given up on
the idea of democracy in Iraq and were ready to
look at "alternatives":
Some outside experts who have
recently visited the White House said Bush
administration officials were beginning to plan
for the possibility that Iraq's democratically
elected government might not survive. "Senior
administration officials have acknowledged to me
that they are considering alternatives other
than democracy," said one military affairs
expert who received an Iraq briefing at the
White House last month and agreed to speak only
on condition of anonymity.
Whatever
fantasies officials in Washington or Iraq may
harbor, however, a coup in Baghdad would by no
means be a silver bullet to end Iraq's anarchy.
Quite the opposite, it might just add to the
bloody unraveling of the country. The problem is,
as one experienced Middle East hand told me, "In
order to mount a coup, you have to have a state.
And there is no state in Iraq."
Iraq is
utterly anarchic, a Mad Max world of clashing
paramilitaries, gangs, warlords, sectarian
fighters, death squads, criminal enterprises,
government-backed mafias, and several hundred
thousand army men, police, Interior Ministry
commandos and special units like the Facilities
Protection Service that are only loosely under the
control of the central government. So how would a
prospective coup-maker, even with Washington's
fervent backing, impose his will on all that?
The answer is: he couldn't. If a coup
happens, it will likely signal that the center of
gravity inside Baghdad's Green Zone has shifted
from the Shi'ite majority (and its religious
parties, such as Dawa and the Supreme Council for
the Islamic Revolution in Iraq) to a more
centrist, more pro-Sunni, less sectarian, less
religious and less ideological bloc.
It
might be seen as an attempt by the CIA and the US
military to re-install a more Saddam-like regime
in Baghdad, perhaps with the intent of undoing the
damage that has been done to Iraq's unity and
stability by the neo-conservatives. But like all
too-clever-by-half strategies, this one would
probably make things not better but a lot worse in
a country that has already been torn to shreds by
the US invasion and occupation.
Robert Dreyfuss is the author
of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped
Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. He covers
national security for Rolling Stone and writes
frequently for The American Prospect, Mother
Jones, and the Nation. He is also a regular
contributor to TomPaine.com, the Huffington Post,
Tomdispatch, and other sites, and writes the blog,
The Dreyfuss Report, at his website.
