COMMENT A whiff of desperation in the
air By a Special Correspondent
All of a sudden US Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice is trying to revive the
Israeli-Palestinian peace process. However, there
is not likely to be any major breakthrough. After
years of neglect, the administration of President
George W Bush is negotiating from weakness,
desperately trying to salvage some kind of
"victory" from the Middle East morass.
In
a quandary over Iraq, Bush has returned to active
involvement in the Palestinian-Israeli peace
process, something that he swore he would do. But
like the new strategy in Iraq that he outlined in
his
January 10 speech, the renewed
attention to the peace process may be too little
too late.
The growing opposition to Bush's
new strategy inside the United States might be the
single most important development, for it is that
phenomenon that will ultimately decide its fate,
for the following reasons.
In the
information age, those in Iraq who are following
the evolving debate over Bush's strategy will
develop their own responses. Prime Minister Nuri
al-Maliki will cooperate with them, since he not
only relies heavily on the support of Muqtada
al-Sadr, but the new strategy counters Maliki's
own perspectives of permanently institutionalizing
Shi'ite dominance.
His critics say he
believes firmly in that idea. That might be one
reason he cannot raise himself above being a
Shi'ite sectarian leader to becoming a national
leader. The next few weeks will be most crucial in
determining whether or how cooperative Maliki is
likely to be.
The terrorists and
insurgents are also following the US domestic
debate. The intensity of their actions against US
and Iraqi forces is expected to increase. They
smell victory, as the Sunni anger builds in the
wake of Saddam Hussein's botched hanging and that
of his half-brother.
The Sunnis' sense of
despair is being regularly channeled into
terrorism and insurgency. From their perspective,
the US has to lose. That is the only way there
will be any opportunity of creating a system that
will give the Sunnis a fair share in governing
Iraq.
Increasing the number of troops in
Iraq has an air of "last stand" to it. The
rationale underlying the surge is very simple:
increased numbers of US troops will result in
stability. But there is also an unspoken sense
that this surge is taking place too late in the
game.
How will increasing the number of US
troops make the Shi'ites and Sunnis learn to live
with each other? From government officials to
terrorists, everyone is spending a lot of
emotional capital hating and killing other Iraqis,
or at least giving a wink and a nod in support of
those murderous acts.
As victory in Iraq
has become an "iffy" proposition, some strategic
thinkers in Washington have started to ponder the
consequences of America's potential defeat. There
is a sense that the Middle East as a region might
become a highly unstable place, and a place where
Islamists will run rampant, destabilizing
governments. Consequently, the Iraq Study
Group's proposal of reviving the peace process in
the occupied Palestinian territories has suddenly
become attractive. However, the trouble is that
the Bush administration has neglected that issue
for so long that it has deteriorated beyond being
resuscitated.
Besides, the Palestinian
nation is fighting with itself. The death of
Yasser Arafat has not produced a leader with
enough charisma to drag his people with him in
making peace with Israel. President Mahmoud Abbas
and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyya are just two
parochial leaders, two pygmies.
Abbas
appears to his people as too diffident to the
United States and too much of a representative of
the old order. Haniyya, on the contrary, appears
as too intransigent on religious extremism and in
opposition to negotiating peace with Israel.
Similarly, Israel has in Ehud Olmert a
leader with neither a grand vision nor enough
support from his people to enable him to make
major concessions toward the Palestinians to
achieve a political solution.
In the final
analysis, the United States has to win in Iraq.
Its defeat in that country would not be the end of
the world, but it would definitely be a setback
for its interests and its presence in the region.
It would also provide a free hand to Islamists.
Most important, it would be seen as victory for
Iran. That is precisely why the Bush
administration appears so desperate to win, and
might be why its rhetoric toward Iran has become
so strident.
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