Annointing Winners In A Civil War -- Always A Problem Posted by David Shorr

Strange story on Morning Edition this morning from Corey Flintoff in Iraq. The lead-in says that consultations with local sheiks have been turning violent; then Flintoff covers one such meeting that stays relatively cool; and the US officer remarks on the shift from when he used to get nothing but complaints instead of, as now, thanks.

Then within the story, and the meeting, is a show-down over a shift of local Iraqi command from one individual to another. While the story briefly mentions the patronage that's at stake in the switch, it makes it sound like just another tough personnel call at the office, who's going to get the promotion -- except here, one of the performance metrics is collaboration with the US occupation against AQI. And that's the point: it's no fault of the US forces, but what we're essentially doing is making nearly arbitrary choices about who will have power at the local level. The fact that it's at a local level is itself a big problem. The story is about command of militias. Just how does this relate to the stabilization of a unified Iraqi republic?

What's infuriating, for me, about the steady stream of surgeisworking, is that if you strip out the real context, it's easy to claim success. To quote once again from Steven Simon's excellent "Price of the Surge" article in Foreign Affairs:

The problem is that this strategy to reduce violence is not linked to any sustainable plan for building a viable Iraqi state. If anything, it has made such an outcome less likely, by stoking the revanchist fantasies of Sunni Arab tribes and pitting them against the central government and against one another. In other words, the recent short-term gains have come at the expense of the long-term goal of a stable, unitary Iraq.

Comments

[Zathras]

I've never understood why liberal opponents of the administration's Iraq policy insist on taking this tack.

Actually, that's not quite right. They take it because at the end of the day their bottom line is still American domestic politics. The surge is Bush's surge; it must therefore fail, whatever news reports say. This leads, though, to a line of reasoning obtuse as to the reality of Iraqi politics, while at the same time making the case of American withdrawal in the least persuasive way imaginable.

The obtuseness lies in their insistence of defining "reconciliation" as the accomodation of Sunni Arab grievances by the Shiite-dominated government. Simon himself makes clear why this is wrong; he acknowledges, as observers who ought to know better sometimes have not, the deep sense of grievance nursed by the Shiite majority against the Sunni Arabs (he does not relate it specifically to the deliberate and repeated tactic of the Sunni Arab-dominated insurgency of killing Shiite policemen, police recruits, government workers, and civilians over a period of four years, preferring to reference historic resentments stemming from Saddam's time and even before. But any recognition that Iraq's Shiites feel themselves the wronged side in that country's sectarian divide is progress).

What recognition of this sense of grievance has come from Iraq's Sunni Arab minority? Look at it this way: how likely is it that Nelson Mandela would be regarded as the great peacemaker if South African whites had immediately started slaughtering Xhosa civilians and assassinating government officials, right after the transfer of power in 1990? Naturally most Iraq's Sunni Arabs nurse an image of themselves as victims, and what a big surprise that is in an Arab country, but harping on the failure of reconciliation as an American failure to make the government let bygones be bygones misses the point of reconciliation completely. Absent some contrition, apology or at least recognition on the part of Sunni Arabs of the wrong they have done to the Shiites, in Saddam's time and through the insurgency both, reconciliation ain't happening. The most likely outcomes that don't involve perpetual conflict are an armed truce enforced by time and the indefinite presence of an American army in Iraq -- the objective the Bush administration is pursuing now -- and a resumption of sectarian strife that leads to the destruction of what is left of the Sunni Arab position outside of Anbar.

(Incidentally, Simon does not -- probably because he wrote his Foreign Affairs piece before the Maliki government launched its operation against the Sadrists in Basra -- dwell on one positive aspect of Iraqi government policy. The move against the Sadrists provides Sunni Arabs some assurance that the government is not organized only against them, but is instead also prepared to move against a Shiite militia that has much Sunni Arab blood on its hands. This isn't a solution to anything, but it is a step in the right direction)

Neither outcome addresses the major interest of the United States in Iraq, which is liquidation of the commitment there. Simon instead joins what appears to be a large company willing to indulge fairy tales about how an American withdrawal is important for what it will mean for Iraq, and how it is the keystone to a wondrous arch of diplomacy involving Iraq's neighbors and the UN and Gulf State bankers and all the rest.

The drawback of this line of thinking ought to be obvious -- if things go wrong, if the UN doesn't want to risk the lives of its personnel, if Iran decides not to be helpful, if mass casualty attacks on Shiites in Iraq resume, if the role of the American army in keeping Iraqi Arabs from killing each other turns out after all to be as central as it appears to be, then the logic of the situation will demand pauses in the American withdrawal. These pauses may be long. They may be indefinite. As long as our discussion of Iraq assumes that what matters is the future of Iraq, they are likely, no matter what is said on the campaign trail now.

I wasn't in favor of the surge either -- my estimate of the proper place of Iraq in American foreign relations hasn't changed much in the last year and a half -- but I see no point in continuing that debate to the point where I'm required to deny an obvious tactical success. American withdrawal from Iraq will happen when Americans believe it is something we need to do, not when they are presented with clever ideas about how it is something the Iraqis need us to do. It will happen when they believe Iraq's problems are Iraqis' fault and responsibility to solve, not ours. Most of the public is already there, but the politicians and foreign policy community haven't caught up. I wonder sometimes if they ever will.

[David Shorr]

And you insist on questioning our motives and analysis. I guess this proves that those who can find common ground or agree to disagree on nearly all other issues -- I am a longtime admirer of Zathras' comments -- have extra difficulty over Iraq. My own notion of reconciliation does not focus on Sunni grievances, but a generic notion of a durable sharing of power, and permanent legitimate organs of government, rather than self-helping clans, militias, or self-helping rent collecters. This is a serious and fundamental point about the fragility of this surface calm. The root question here isn't whether we're aligning with Sunni or Shia, we're paying people off, and that is not going to build a unified Iraq with sustainable modes of coexistence between the sectarian communities.

[Shawn Brimley]

David - good post and I certainly appreciate the problem you've identified, but really - what alternative did Petraeus and Co. have in late 2006 / early 2007? I have yet to see any convincing argument that another option was present that could have better capitalized on the shift that was occuring in Anbar and other provinces. And are you really suggesting that not dealing with "self-helping clans, militias, or self-helping rent collecters" is really an option in Iraq?

[Zathras]

Generic notions of durable power sharing are valueless as a guide to policy if they are used without reference to the feelings of the people we'd like to share power.

Permanent legitimate organizations of government in Iraq require mutual consent by the factions within Iraq, which in turn requires some public recognition by the sect that benefited most from the rule of the Shiites great persecutor and that initiated war on the Shiites through the insurgency that wrong was done. This is not something the American commander in Iraq can do for that country's Sunni Arabs. There is no American approach to building "sustainable modes of coexistence" between communities if those communities, or significant parts of one of them, don't even acknowledge the reason why coexistence is such a problem in the first place.

[David Billington]

David Shorr:

"My own notion of reconciliation does not focus on Sunni grievances, but a generic notion of a durable sharing of power..."

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by generic here. A plausible notion of power sharing would require the Sunnis and Shias to set aside their grievances, not altogether, but sufficiently to make any power sharing work. I understand Zathras to be asking what should be done if the two sides do not set aside their grievances to this extent. Are you arguing that it would be easier for this to happen under a different constitutional arrangement?

There is no question about the fragility and artifice of the present moment in Iraq. But whatever its many drawbacks, what we also appear to have done, in effect, is to partition the country to give the various parties a respite that most seem to have welcomed. The real question is where do the Iraqis go from here. I'm not sure that we can do very much to answer this question now, except to decide a timetable for our own continued involvement.

[David Shorr]

Thanks for commenting, Shhawn. I'm quick to concede the importance of dealing with the devil when you have to. The operative qualifier being: when you have to. Reaching acommodations with the types of actors I listed makes sense if your purpose is to remain in-country as an occupying power. If your aim is to help build a viable unitary state, not so much.

You can think of me as a "swing VSP." For a start, unlike you, I don't specialize very deeply in the Iraq War. I was an opponent of the war; but for 2-1/2 years after the invasion, I supported the US remaining in Iraq to make things right. After that point, I could no longer see a plausible scenario by which the American military presence really contributes to a stable and durable federal Iraq. We're in the middle of a power struggle; there's no way for us to put our finger on the scale and even everything out.

[Dan Kervick]

Along the dimension that matters most to the Bush administration, the surge has been a success. Their goal was to stay in Iraq indefinitely, and to lock their successors into such an indefinite stay. Since the surge started, the administration has successfully dissipated much of the political pressure for a withdrawal that was building during 2006, and they have made progress in digging us in so thoroughly that the next president will have great difficulty digging us out, even if he wants to get out. And we're still there. So mission accomplished so far for Bush.

There is one area in which I think Zathras and I agree, although I don't want to put words in his mouth. My feeling is that too much attention has been paid among some surge watchers and surge critics to the goal of a major, negotiated, top-down political settlement, one that gives a lot of weight to "Sunni grievances", and contemplates constitutional changes aimed at giving the Sunnis more power. We hear that the surge is a failure so long as this process doesn't occur. My sense is that the path to stability in Iraq rather consists in the continued consolidation of power by the Shia-dominated government that already exists, and that a higher priority of the US and the international community should be to send a very clear message to the Sunni Arab minority that they lost, and that their era of minority dominance of Iraq, rooted as minority dominance always is in state violence and oppression, is simply not coming back. They are just going to have to reconcile themselves to a different role in Iraq.

I suspect I am more sanguine than Zathras about the role regional diplomacy can play in stabilizing Iraq, and in forging a new regional order and security framework, though I recognize that a US diplomatic push is doomed to underachievement or outright failure if it remains committed to extremist Bush administration goals of squeezing and isolating Iran, and engineering radical regime change in that country. One would hope that today's announcement by Iran of a temporary suspension of enrichment in order to re-open negotiations with the Europeans - and indirectly with the US - would make the Bush hardliners' position even more untenable. But I'm not counting on it, and I suspect we just need to wait for the next administration to take office in order to get some real diplomatic movement.

I think we really need to give more thought to what is happening on the economic front. The Iraqi government, newly flush with oil revenues and now entertaining bids on its super-giant oilfields, is proposing a 44% increase in its annual budget. The new budget requests are for stepped up provisions of basic services, and also include plans to rebuild Sadr City. This, more than anything else, is how that government will grow in power and credibility among Iraqis, and acquire more stakeholders who will in turn reinforce the government's power. US citizens are supporting Iraq not just through our taxes, it seems, but through the gas we are putting in our gas tanks at prices well over four bucks a gallon.

Suppressing violence is always good in itself, but it also creates a climate in which economic improvements and development can continue to occur. Economic progress in turn promotes and reinforces stability, since more people then have more to lose by a return to violence, and they then buy in, in all sorts of ways, to the promotion of security and stability. Even those famously aggrieved Sunni Arabs will increasingly buy in as local leaders, partnered with and sponsored by local economic elites, acquire an increasing stake in the status quo. To the extent that the surge is allowing breathing space for the government to continue to grow in power, and for the Iraqi economy to begin to restore itself, we have to acknowledge that it can't be declared a failure.

I still worry that this country, and the media, political parties, think tanks and opinion leaders who are responsible for guiding our national discussion, has not yet reached the level of political maturity and realism where it can bring itself to have a frank and clearheaded debate about Iraq. Good heavens, it took us all the way from 2002 to 2008 to get to the point where mainstream opinion leaders could publicly acknowledge that, yes, global oil strategy and oil interests were indeed a major factor in the invasion of Iraq. Now we are in a situation in which the Bush administration, along with cooperative forces in Iraq, are engineering a long-term US presence in Iraq. But the realities of that engineering effort still mainly go uncommented by most of our opinion leaders. Shahrastani has gone over the head of the Parliament and the Iraqi people to open up the development of the supergiant oilfields to private Western oil companies through technical support agreements, which may ultimately turn into production sharing agreements, thus privatizing most of the Iraqi oil industry. This move will give the US business and political elite an increasing stake in a permanent military investment in Iraq, and in a long-term commitment to Iraqi security and a permanent presence in the country. And as the oilfields start to produce the result may well be a simultaneous reduction in global oil prices and increase in Iraqi oil revenue, as what Iraq loses through the lower prices is more than made up for in higher levels of production. One imagines that such an outcome would overcome much public Iraqi resistance to both privatization and to the US military presence that protects the oilfields, and much public US resistance to a permanent, in-country US commitment to Iraqi security.

We need a national debate that gets beyond the surge, and more frankly acknowledges that this Iraqi-American economic and security consolidation is happening, and that asks the American people to decide whether this is a takeover they really want to ratify and a commitment they really want to undertake. But the persistent failure of opinion leaders to deal directly and publicly with these economic, energy and strategic issues, and to continue to wallow in the propaganda plane about such things as terrorism, democracy promotion, and assorted bogeymen and evildoers means that these are matters which the American people will probably have, once again, decided for them, rather than deciding for themselves.

It seems clear right now that if US casualties continue to fall, and as manpower commitments ultimately decline, then after much grumbling from people nominally opposed to the Iraq invasion and war, many will probably say, "Oh well, we've already got those big bases built, and that big embassy built and staffed, and all that military equipment over there, and the oil is flowing, and the costs are declining, and we're even beginning to see a sort of profit from the whole thing. So we might as well stay." At least that's what I believe Bush and Cheney are counting on.

This is how imperial takeovers are sold in anti-imperialist America. The people charged with educating the public and guiding national debate pretend not to recognize the takeovers are happening as they happen. They wring their hands about side-issues, assuring us all along that the United States is too fine and exceptional to treat the world as a mere business, and field for economic exploitation and advancement. Then when it is all over, and the bulk of the mass murders are comfortably in the past, they say, "Oh well, too late now. Maybe it was all for the best."

[Zathras]

Two brief comments on Dan Kervick's observations: first, he is not wrong about my criticism of how the "surge's" success is viewed. He left out only one point, albeit a critical one, I have made here before, namely that we need to accept the likelihood that this is one of those problems there is no way to address with a "correct" American policy. Just because we send all the right messages to various Sunni Arab leaders doesn't mean they'll listen.

He is also not wrong about how I view the prospects for regional diplomacy. I'd go further than that and agree with him that there is little likelihood of major progress under the current administration. Bush and his team don't have a regional program right now: they have part of Secs. Rice and Gates's policy, part of Vice President Cheney's, a big part of Petraeus and Odierno trying to hold things together in Iraq, and a much smaller part of the Joint Chiefs and commanders in Afghanistan trying to cobble together resources to deal with a worsening situation in that country. The rhetorical gloss on this collection is all George W. Bush's, but otherwise what is presented to the world as American policy is a collection of ad hoc compromises among competing power centers within the executive branch. Since no decision is ever final, no diplomatic course is ever safe from review, reversal, or being undermined by actions taken by other parts of the government. It is the kind of situation that arises sometimes in administrations with very weak Presidents.

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