New Iraqi Alliance Formed
Whether it lasts is anyone’s guess but at least they’ve formed a coalition that’s capable of governing.
At the news conference announcing the political accord, President Jalal Talabani and al-Maliki were flanked by the leader of the northern autonomous Kurdish region, Massoud Barzani, and Shiite Vice President Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi.
The four men signed a three-page agreement they said ensures them a majority in the 275-member parliament that would allow action on legislation demanded by the U.S.
Talabani, a Kurd, said al-Hashemi refused the invitation to join in the new political grouping but “the door is still open to them and they are welcome at any time.”
Al-Maliki also called on the Sunni Accordance Front, which includes al-Hashemi’s party, to return to the government and heal a rift that opened when the bloc’s five Cabinet ministers quit the government.
The four-party agreement was unveiled four weeks before the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker are to deliver a progress report on Iraq to Congress.
“We have relegated efforts to topple the government to the past. We are now in a new stage,” said al-Maliki’s adviser, Yassin Majeed. “We will keep working to bring the Accordance Front back, but if they insist we will have a majority in parliament and bring in new ministers.”
Of course, this information started in the eleventh paragraph, after talking about the widespread violence and the supposed disarray, etc. Still, it’s welcomed information wherever they position it in the article. I think by now, most conservatives just skim the first few paragraphs because it’s likely that the important information will be towards the bottom of the article.
On the substantive side, we’ll see if this coalition will actually pass the oil revenue-sharing reform legislation that is the most important step in the national reconciliation process. If this coalition can’t get those things accomplished, the American people will get restless. They won’t support keeping our troops there without political progress.
Technorati Tags: Jalal Talabani, Nouri Al-Maliki, Sunnis, Kurds, Shia, Reconciliation, Revenue Sharing
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
August 17th, 2007 at 8:53 am
Iraq News That Speaks For Itself
by Haroon Siddiqui
Opinions, subjective though they are, ideally rest on facts, widely
garnered and reasonably interpreted. Sometimes, facts alone are
enough, obviating the need to pontificate. Such is the case with
several recent small news items about Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan.
False intelligence: For about a year, American troops in Iraq had been
looking for the leader of a shadowy insurgent group.
In May, the Iraqi interior ministry announced that Abu Omar al-
Baghdadi had been killed.
But, then, he was heard from.
Now, to everyone’s further embarrassment, comes word that he didn’t
exist at all. He was an invention of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia (AQM) -
either to inflate the number of resistance groups or to counteract
local backlash against the AQM being infiltrated by foreigners
(Egyptians, Saudis, etc.). Hence the name Baghdadi (someone from
Baghdad).
The revelation that he was a fake comes from an AQM man captured by
the Americans.
How do they know he is telling the truth? They don’t. That, in turn,
has led to new speculation: his ratting may be the real ruse - to
protect a person who does exist.
Missing arsenal: A third of the weapons issued to Iraqi troops are
unaccounted for, says the U.S. Accountability Office. Missing: 110,000
AK-47s, 80,000 pistols and 135,000 body armour items. Unless the stash
is sitting somewhere unbeknownst to the Americans, the weapons were
most likely sold on the black market or just passed along to the
insurgents.
That raises the disturbing possibility that the U.S. supplied some of
the weapons being used to kill the Americans and create the chaos the
Americans can’t control.
Ayatollah power: Iran, neighbour to Iraq and Afghanistan, has been
accused by Washington of arming the Taliban and the Iraqi Shiites with
roadside bombs and other equipment. Skeptics include a growing number
of Americans. They see it as George W. Bush’s propaganda to deflect
attention away from his two foreign crises or, more ominously, to
build the case for attacking Iran.
However, the leaders of Afghanistan and Iraq, despite their near-total
dependency on Bush, are refusing to play along.
Hamid Karzai said in Washington that Iran’s role in Afghanistan has
been that of “a helper,” especially in development projects. Hosting
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Kabul Tuesday, he again praised Iran.
Nouri al-Maliki, on a visit to Tehran, lauded Iran’s “constructive”
role in “fighting terrorism” in Iraq.
A third U.S. ally, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyran of Abu Dhabi,
told visiting Ahmadinejad that the United Arab Emirates would never
allow its territory to be used for “hostile activities” against Iran.
Either these leaders are afraid of Iran or they think Bush is wrong
or, worse, that he can be ignored.
Civilian deaths: The U.S. Army/Marine Counterinsurgency Field Manual
says: “An operation that kills five insurgents is counter-productive
if the collateral damage leads to the recruitment of 50 more
insurgents.”
Yet civilian deaths and injuries continue. The latest incident: “U.S.
air strike on Taliban commanders wounds at least 18 civilians.”
The U.S. military said that “during a sizeable meeting of senior
Taliban commanders, coalition forces employed precision-guided
munitions after ensuring there were no innocent Afghans in the
surrounding area.” Except that there were.
An Afghan official said the Taliban had gathered for a public
execution of two accused spies and “forced the people to come and
watch.” A tribal leader estimated that “hundreds were present.”
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/16/3199/
August 17th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
It sounds like quite a few people in the Iraqi government are learning how to manage practical politics.
There will never be a “western democracy” in Iraq, any more than it’s likely that there will be “Florida democracy” in North Dakota. But it sounds like the people in charge are starting to take charge.
I wish them the best, and hope that whoever is running this country two years from now has the sense not to ruin Iraq.
August 19th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
August 19, 2007
Op-Ed Contributors
The War as We Saw It
By BUDDHIKA JAYAMAHA, WESLEY D. SMITH, JEREMY ROEBUCK, OMAR MORA, EDWARD SANDMEIER, YANCE T. GRAY and JEREMY A. MURPHY
Baghdad
VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day. (Obviously, these are our personal views and should not be seen as official within our chain of command.)
The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. It is crowded with actors who do not fit neatly into boxes: Sunni extremists, Al Qaeda terrorists, Shiite militiamen, criminals and armed tribes. This situation is made more complex by the questionable loyalties and Janus-faced role of the Iraqi police and Iraqi Army, which have been trained and armed at United States taxpayers’ expense.
A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.
As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.
Similarly, Sunnis, who have been underrepresented in the new Iraqi armed forces, now find themselves forming militias, sometimes with our tacit support. Sunnis recognize that the best guarantee they may have against Shiite militias and the Shiite-dominated government is to form their own armed bands. We arm them to aid in our fight against Al Qaeda.
However, while creating proxies is essential in winning a counterinsurgency, it requires that the proxies are loyal to the center that we claim to support. Armed Sunni tribes have indeed become effective surrogates, but the enduring question is where their loyalties would lie in our absence. The Iraqi government finds itself working at cross purposes with us on this issue because it is justifiably fearful that Sunni militias will turn on it should the Americans leave.
In short, we operate in a bewildering context of determined enemies and questionable allies, one where the balance of forces on the ground remains entirely unclear. (In the course of writing this article, this fact became all too clear: one of us, Staff Sergeant Murphy, an Army Ranger and reconnaissance team leader, was shot in the head during a “time-sensitive target acquisition mission” on Aug. 12; he is expected to survive and is being flown to a military hospital in the United States.) While we have the will and the resources to fight in this context, we are effectively hamstrung because realities on the ground require measures we will always refuse — namely, the widespread use of lethal and brutal force.
Given the situation, it is important not to assess security from an American-centered perspective. The ability of, say, American observers to safely walk down the streets of formerly violent towns is not a resounding indicator of security. What matters is the experience of the local citizenry and the future of our counterinsurgency. When we take this view, we see that a vast majority of Iraqis feel increasingly insecure and view us as an occupation force that has failed to produce normalcy after four years and is increasingly unlikely to do so as we continue to arm each warring side.
Coupling our military strategy to an insistence that the Iraqis meet political benchmarks for reconciliation is also unhelpful. The morass in the government has fueled impatience and confusion while providing no semblance of security to average Iraqis. Leaders are far from arriving at a lasting political settlement. This should not be surprising, since a lasting political solution will not be possible while the military situation remains in constant flux.
The Iraqi government is run by the main coalition partners of the Shiite-dominated United Iraqi Alliance, with Kurds as minority members. The Shiite clerical establishment formed the alliance to make sure its people did not succumb to the same mistake as in 1920: rebelling against the occupying Western force (then the British) and losing what they believed was their inherent right to rule Iraq as the majority. The qualified and reluctant welcome we received from the Shiites since the invasion has to be seen in that historical context. They saw in us something useful for the moment.
Now that moment is passing, as the Shiites have achieved what they believe is rightfully theirs. Their next task is to figure out how best to consolidate the gains, because reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all. Washington’s insistence that the Iraqis correct the three gravest mistakes we made — de-Baathification, the dismantling of the Iraqi Army and the creation of a loose federalist system of government — places us at cross purposes with the government we have committed to support.
Political reconciliation in Iraq will occur, but not at our insistence or in ways that meet our benchmarks. It will happen on Iraqi terms when the reality on the battlefield is congruent with that in the political sphere. There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers. The choice we have left is to decide which side we will take. Trying to please every party in the conflict — as we do now — will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run.
At the same time, the most important front in the counterinsurgency, improving basic social and economic conditions, is the one on which we have failed most miserably. Two million Iraqis are in refugee camps in bordering countries. Close to two million more are internally displaced and now fill many urban slums. Cities lack regular electricity, telephone services and sanitation. “Lucky” Iraqis live in gated communities barricaded with concrete blast walls that provide them with a sense of communal claustrophobia rather than any sense of security we would consider normal.
In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, “We need security, not free food.”
In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.
Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.
We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.
Buddhika Jayamaha is an Army specialist. Wesley D. Smith is a sergeant. Jeremy Roebuck is a sergeant. Omar Mora is a sergeant. Edward Sandmeier is a sergeant. Yance T. Gray is a staff sergeant. Jeremy A. Murphy is a staff sergeant.
August 20th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
[...] The Captain’s Journal had a good article on how to lose in Iraq last week, and California Conservative talked about a new Iraqi governing coalition that might have a smidgen of promise. [...]
August 21st, 2007 at 1:46 pm
Assuming this post is more reality-based than “Scott Thomas’s” journalistic efforts, this is interesting. I’m inclined to believe that the authors are real, considering that the article does not criticize the military, but rather the civilian government.
“the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. … To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched.”
[Iraqis should] “… call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.”
The authors may have a point. The Gallup Poll reports that the U.S. Congress has hit 18% approval. That’s as low as it’s been since 1992. ( http://www.galluppoll.com/ )
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