Asia Times November 25, 2004
Further into the Iraqi labyrinth
By Ashraf Fahim
It
should come as little surprise that those Arab and
European leaders who attended the conference on Iraq's
future held from November 22-23 in Sharm el-Sheikh
failed in their attempts to get a timetable for the
withdrawal of US-led troops included in the final
communique. The newly reelected Bush administration,
soon to be staffed by even more foreign-policy hawks
than the previous one, is in no mood to relinquish its
strategic hold over Iraq. With Iraq further destabilized
by the attack on Fallujah, and ethnic tensions now
simmering, a precipitous withdrawal has been made even
less likely.
According to the Bush
administration's thinking, the elixir for Iraq's
swirling chaos remains the inexorable march of freedom,
a keystone of which will be the recently announced
January 30 elections. British Prime Minister Tony Blair,
ever Sancho Panza in this Quixotic adventure, put it
best during his recent visit to the US. "The exit
strategy is a democratic Iraq," he said on Meet the
Press. The goal of the election is to install a
government with enough legitimacy to deflate the
insurgency and thus wean away the flailing Iraqi
security services so the bulk of the belabored
"coalition" forces can depart.
But that hope is
beginning to look increasingly misguided as the
insurgency grows in sophistication, if not size, Sunni
alienation deepens, and the dangers of internecine
warfare loom. It now looks equally possible that the
elections will falter, with either a Sunni boycott that
would throw the results into controversy, or a
postponement that would inflame Shi'ite sentiment. In
any eventuality some level of insurgency will likely
persist.
'There is no Iraqi army'
The
reinvigorated Bush administration has apparently
interpreted its election victory as a mandate on its
Iraq strategy, and, in cooperation with the
exile-dominated interim Iraqi government of Iyad Allawi,
is plowing ahead with its military-focused plan to end
the insurgency. The strategy of bludgeoning the
opposition into submission may yet work, but as Fallujah
demonstrated, the price will be high for Iraqis and
Americans.
Even a military-focused strategy is
unlikely to succeed without more troops on the ground,
however (though an argument could be made that more
troops would simply equal more targets for the
resistance). With the latest offensive in the Sunni
triangle, the occupation is spread thin, and US
commanders are openly requesting more troops. An overlap
in troop rotations will likely boost US forces from
138,000 to 170,000 during the January election, but the
overstretched US military will be hard pressed to reach
the 350,000 threshold US commanders originally wanted.
Hitherto, the Bush administration has been
loathe to publicly acknowledge the need for more troops.
But, as a recent report published by GlobalSecurity.org
reveals, the US Department of Defense (DoD) did a
little-noticed "troops to task" analysis in August 2004
that came to that very conclusion, though it evaded
political controversy by doubling the desired "end
strength" of Iraqi, rather than US forces, to 346,700.
Unfortunately for DoD planners, "Iraqification"
isn't working. The US has made "essentially no progress
in increasing the number of Iraqi forces during the year
2004", according to GlobalSecurity.org. While there were
210,400 Iraqi forces of various agencies on hand in
January 2004 (90% of the desired end-strength at that
time), the total fell to 181,200 by October (just 50% of
the revised goal). These numbers simply refer to troops
who are registered, rather than trained, since different
security agencies have different standards for
readiness. Many may be poorly trained or not trained at
all.
The report's most startling finding is that
the number of police has plummeted from 84,900 to 43,900
in the past eight months. The two main branches of the
Iraqi military don't fare much better, with only 12,699
army soldiers (of 27,000 desired) enlisted so far,
although 41,261 national guard (of 61,904 desired) have
now been recruited.
Most importantly, the US
and the interim Iraqi government have so far failed
to create an ethnically diverse Iraqi military, or
instill it with anything resembling an esprit de corps.
The poorly trained forces have been plagued by
desertions and have generally failed to perform. Despite
reports that the Iraqi military did better this time around
in Fallujah (many deserted during last April's
invasion), some view the low casualties they suffered as an
indication of how little they were called on.
It is
also widely believed the Iraqi forces are heavily penetrated
by insurgent spies, as evidenced by the constant
attacks on police and army recruiting stations and,
for example, the kidnappings and executions of national
guardsmen - 12 were found executed near Mosul on
November 20, and nearly 50 in southern Iraq on October
24. Several high-ranking interim Iraqi Ministry of
Defense officials have also been assassinated, and, by
some accounts, ministry bureaucrats are so intimidated
by threats that the department has nearly ceased
functioning.
Iraqi and American officials have
fallen back on the dangerous strategy of using ethnic
militias repackaged in new Iraqi military fatigues in
order to instill ideological cohesion and overcome
intelligence penetration. It is an open secret that the
most effective unit to date - the 36th commando
battalion that fought in Najaf and recently in Fallujah
- are mostly incognito Kurdish peshmerga
(paramilitary) fighters.
"The reality is there
is no Iraqi army," wrote former UN weapons inspector
Scott Ritter in a recent article. "Of the thousands
recruited into its ranks, there is today only one
effective unit, the 36th battalion [which] should be
recognized for what it really is - a Kurdish militia."
Ritter concludes that even this reasonably effective
battalion "can only operate alongside overwhelming
American military support". There are also reports that
the Iraqi national guard has recruited heavily from
Shi'ite areas, leading some Sunnis to dub it "Allawi's
army", because Allawi is himself a Shi'ite.
The dangers of Balkanization
In the
context of Iraq's delicate sectarian balance, the use of
Kurdish militias or Shi'ite national guardsmen to put
down a Sunni revolt is highly risky. Ethnic tensions
have been largely contained so far, but they are
beginning to boil over as the election nears. With the
prospect of Iraq's future being written in indelible
ink, each community is understandably eager to secure
its share of Iraq's patrimony. The Shi'ite majority are
desperate to see their power reflect their sheer
numbers, while the Sunnis have become increasingly
fearful of a tyranny of the Shi'ite majority. Meanwhile,
the Kurds are hoping to formalize their autonomy.
The ethnic fissures were starkly demonstrated on
November 11 in the ethnically diverse city of Mosul,
when Sunni insurgents rose up in solidarity with
besieged Fallujah. As the insurgents overran police
stations, 3,200 of Mosul's 4,000 policemen fled their
posts or joined the rebels, leading the governor to call
in 2,000 national guard, who, it later emerged, were
made up entirely of Kurdish peshmerga. Sporadic
violence and territorial competition have been a feature
of Sunni Arab-Kurdish relations since the US invasion,
particularly in the oil-rich, disputed city of Kirkuk.
So the sight of thousands of Kurdish fighters roaming
the streets of Mosul can only have increased Sunni fears
that the US and new Iraqi government intend to weigh in
on behalf of Kurdish claims.
To date, the US and
the Allawi government have responded poorly to Sunni
reluctance to embrace the "new Iraq". The strategy has
been to coerce them into supporting the elections with a
big stick and relatively small carrot. There has been
little tolerance for opposition to the new offensive,
for example, with the notable arrest of several
"militant" Sunni clerics, as well as Naseer Ayaef, a
Sunni member of the interim National Assembly from the
Iraqi Islamic Party, one of the few influential Sunni
groups in the interim government. Ayaef had denounced
the Fallujah attack as "genocide without mercy".
Even if Sunni fears over power-sharing could be
allayed, the US would find it much more difficult to
convince them, and other Iraqi nationalists, that it has
no broader agenda of shaping Iraq's regional role in a
way that comports to US interests. The Bush
administration has made no attempt to address these
concerns, by, for instance, taking up presidential
challenger John Kerry's imaginative suggestion that the
US assure Iraqis it has no interest in building
permanent military bases in Iraq.
In the absence
of creative dialogue, US-Sunni relations have devolved
into a blood feud. Interim Iraqi security institutions
in Sunni areas are now "nonfunctioning and ...
infiltrated by guerilla sympathizers" according to a
November 18 Associated Press report, and the US military
faces "organized, region-wide resistance", in the words
of former US Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Jeffrey
White. "The resistance is fighting harder, smarter and
more effectively than the Iraqi military did during the
war," White told the Washington Post. Most ominously,
tensions have engulfed Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad. A
US raid on the venerated Abu Hanifa mosque in Adhamiya
on November 19 sparked bloody street battles, and
inflamed religious sentiment across Iraq.
The
invasion of Fallujah and the violence in Sunni areas has
led the influential Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars
(AMS) to organize a boycott of the election, in
cooperation with 60 Sunni organizations and a wide
coalition of ethnically diverse political groups. The
recent decision of the interim government to allow up to
4 million mainly Shi'ite Iraqi expatriates to vote in
the election has also deepened Sunni disenchantment. One
positive sign for the US, however, is that the Iraqi
Islamic Party will participate in the election, despite
Ayaef's arrest.
Worryingly, Sunni-Shi'ite
relations are increasingly marked by mutual suspicion.
Many Sunnis are upset with what they see as a lack of
Shi'ite solidarity with the anti-occupation insurgency.
The fact that Shi'ite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani
issued only a mild and belated criticism of the Fallujah
raid, through spokesman Murtada al-Qezweni, angered many
Sunnis, though Sistani did issue a strong condemnation
of the Abu Hanifa raid. On the flip side, many Shi'ites
blame Iraq's chaos on Sunni extremists. "Revulsion over
car bombings and beheadings by Sunni Muslim insurgents
... seems to have curbed the anger of many Shi'ites over
the US attack on Sunni rebels in Fallujah," wrote
Washington Post reporter Anthony Shadid in a recent
article about Shi'ite apathy about the US offensive.
A disturbing pattern of communal violence now
accompanies the anti-occupation insurgency, particularly
in the mixed Sunni-Shi'ite areas south of Baghdad.
Numerous Shi'ite clerics and pilgrims were reportedly
murdered along the roads from Baghdad to Najaf during
Ramadan, allegedly by Sunni militants. And the murders
of several prominent Sunni clerics - most recently AMS
members Sheikh Mohamed Amin al-Faidhi in Mosul on
November 22 and Sheikh Ghaleb Latif Ali near Baquba on
November 23 - are likely to stoke the nascent hostility,
regardless of where culpability actually lies.
Strong inter-denominational bonds and pan-Iraqi
sentiment do persist, of course. Shi'ite cleric Muqtada
al-Sadr has made a notable effort to foster ties with
the Sunni opposition, and the sermons of his supporters
and other prominent Shi'ite clerics in Baghdad are
filled with pleas for Islamic solidarity. But there is a
growing divisiveness that cannot be discounted. Shadid
spoke to one Shi'ite worshiper at Friday prayers, whose
message to the besieged citizens of Fallujah was
unforgiving. The offensive "is the verdict of God", he
said. "The Israelis are better than the people of
Fallujah."
No end in sight
What the
growing instability in Iraq and deepening ethnic
tensions exacerbated by US policy mean is that
"coalition" troops will be in Iraq for at least the
medium term. The newly emboldened Bush administration is
unlikely to change course to accommodate the Iraqi
opposition. What remains in this political vacuum - in
lieu of a miraculous election that unites Iraqis and
ends the insurgency - is a long bloody occupation, with
a distinct possibility that the US military will make a
desert of the Sunni triangle and call it peace.
Ashraf Fahim is a freelance writer on
Middle Eastern affairs based in New York and London.
(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
© Copyright 2004, Asia Times
