New 'surge' report paints grim
picture By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - While there have been some
improvements in Iraq's security situation over the
past seven months, the level of overall violence
remains "high", with only modest improvements
possible over the next six to 12 months, according
to a study by the US intelligence community
released on Thursday.
At the same time,
prospects for a political settlement to Iraq's
multiple internal conflicts - particularly between
the Shi'ite majority
and
the Sunni minority - appear bleak. The Shi'ite-led
government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is
likely to "become more precarious over the next
six to 12 months", according to the latest
National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), which
reflects the consensus view of Washington's 16
intelligence agencies.
"Iraq's sectarian
groups remain unreconciled; AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq]
retains the ability to conduct high-profile
attacks; and to date, Iraqi political leaders
remain unable to govern effectively," according to
the 10-page "Key Judgments", the only section of
the report that was declassified.
"We
assess, to the extent that coalition forces
continue to conduct robust counterinsurgency
operations and mentor and support the Iraqi
Security Forces (ISF), that Iraq's security will
continue to improve modestly during the next six
to 12 months, but that levels of insurgent and
sectarian violence will remain high and the Iraqi
government will continue to struggle to achieve
national-level political reconciliation and
improved governance," it said.
The NIE,
titled "Prospects for Iraq's Stability: Some
Security Progress but Political Reconciliation
Elusive", comes as the administration of US
President George W Bush is preparing its own
report on how well its "surge" strategy - which
added 30,000 US troops to the 135,000 who were
already in Iraq in January - has been working.
The "surge", which also included the
application of more aggressive counterinsurgency
techniques, was designed to reduce sectarian
violence and improve security conditions,
particularly in Baghdad, to encourage political
leaders on all sides in Iraq to make the
compromises necessary to achieve national
reconciliation.
The Bush administration's
report, which will be presented to Congress in
mid-September by Washington's overall commander in
Iraq, General David Petraeus, and its ambassador
there, Ryan Crocker, will relaunch the
congressional debate over Washington's next steps
in its four-and-a-half-year-old occupation.
Democratic lawmakers, most of whom opposed
the "surge", have been pushing for Congress to
adopt a timetable for the withdrawal of all US
combat forces from Iraq. They have also called for
changing the mission of the remaining troops to
training Iraqi forces, protecting US installations
and personnel, and mounting special-forces
operations against AQI and other terrorist
targets.
President Bush, who has vowed to
veto any legislation that includes a mandatory
timetable for withdrawal, has indicated - most
recently in an uncompromising speech to the
Veterans of Foreign Wars convention - that he
believes the "surge" has shifted the balance of
forces in Iraq and should continue well into next
year if not beyond.
At the moment, he
appears to have the support of most Republican
lawmakers. However, Senator John Warner, the
influential ranking Republican member and former
chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee,
broke ranks with his party's leadership on
Thursday by calling on Bush to begin withdrawing
troops no later than the end of this year.
Warner, who just returned from his latest
trip to Iraq, joined Democrats in suggesting that
withdrawing US troops would help persuade the
various Iraqi factions that national
reconciliation was urgent.
"I really,
firmly believe the Iraqi government, under the
leadership of Prime Minister al-Maliki, let our
troops down," he said after meeting with
Lieutenant-General Douglas Lute, the White House's
so-called "Iraq czar".
The latest NIE,
which follows one released just before the surge
took effect in February, is likely to be used as
ammunition by both sides of the impending debate.
Despite its dour tone, the Bush
administration will likely seize on a number of
passages in the document that support its view -
that the six-month-old "surge" strategy designed
to curb violence in Baghdad has brought results
and should continue well into next year.
In particular, the NIE notes that the more
aggressive counterinsurgency tactics deployed
under the surge has checked the "steep escalation
of rates of violence" and led to "measurable but
uneven improvements" in the overall security
situation.
In addition, the NIE warns that
"changing the mission of coalition forces from a
primarily counterinsurgency and stabilization role
to a primarily combat-support role for Iraqi
forces and counter-terrorist operations to prevent
AQI from establishing a safe haven would erode
security gains achieved thus far".
That
assessment will likely be used by Bush and his
Republican supporters to argue against Democratic
efforts to redefine the US military mission in
Iraq, let alone to begin drawing down its combat
forces.
But the NIE's bleak assessment of
the political situation in Iraq is likely to fuel
Democratic arguments that, despite improvements in
the security situation, prospects for national
reconciliation remain as distant as ever.
"Political and security trajectories in
Iraq continue to be driven primarily by Shi'ite
insecurity about retaining political dominance,
widespread Sunni unwillingness to accept a
diminished political status, factional rivalries
within the sectarian communities resulting in
armed conflict, and the actions of extremists such
as AQI and elements of the Sadrist Jaish al-Mahdi
(JAM) militia that try to fuel sectarian
violence," according to the NIE.
"Broadly
accepted political compromises required for
sustained security, long-term political progress,
and economic development are unlikely to emerge
unless there is a fundamental shift in the factors
driving Iraqi political and security
developments," it noted, suggesting implicitly
that such a shift was not in view.
Indeed,
those passages were seized on by several
Democratic presidential candidates virtually as
soon as the report was released as evidence that
the surge has failed.
"With no progress on
political reconciliation between the various sects
in Iraq, it is clear that President Bush's tactic
of troop escalation has failed to achieve its goal
of convincing Iraqi leaders that they must take
bold steps to promote stability and reconciliation
in Iraq," said Senator Christopher Dodd.
Senator Barack Obama's Democratic
presidential nomination campaign released a
statement asserting that the NIE "underscores the
fundamental truth that we cannot continue to
substitute the bravery of our troops for a true
commitment from the Iraqi government to resolve
the grievances at the heart of their [Iraqis']
civil war".
The NIE also noted that
expectations both within Iraq and among its
neighbors that US troops will indeed begin to draw
down at some point in the next six to 12 months
will likely fuel sectarian violence and
intra-sectarian conflict as all of the various
forces in play jockey to fill the resulting power
vacuum.
While the ISF has improved its
performance over the past six months, according to
the report, it still depends on US forces for
"important aspects of logistics and combat
support". While the government is expanding the
Iraqi Army to fill critical gaps, "we judge that
significant security gains from those programs
will take at least six to 12 months, and probably
longer, to materialize", it said.
Growing
Sunni resistance to AQI - much ballyhooed as a
major strategic success by the Bush administration
and its supporters - offers, according to the
report, "the best prospect for improved security
over the next six to 12 months, but we judge these
initiatives will only translate into widespread
political accommodation and enduring stability if
the Iraqi government accepts and supports them".
That appears unlikely, the NIE suggests,
because of fears by the government's Shi'ite
leaders that Sunni groups "will ultimately side
with armed opponents of the government".
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