Tag: Iraq
Ten places ICG neglects
I don’t entirely agree with ICG’s “Next Year’s Wars,” their choice of conflicts is idiosyncratic, and they don’t really predict anything, but it is hard to compete with an organization that has smart people on the ground in difficult places. I’ll focus on 10 places they don’t mention:
1. Russia: Putin doesn’t make it over 50% in the March 4 election but wins the second round. Demonstrations continue but he resists new parliamentary polls. Weakened, Putin lashes out at his opposition and makes things worse. Who knows where this ends, but it will probably not be in 2012.
2. Saudi Arabia: Crown Prince Nayef succeeds to the throne and tries to roll back King Abdullah’s modest reforms. Demonstrations break out but are brutally repressed. Oil prices, already high due to Iran’s threats to the strait of Hormuz, skyrocket.
3. Iraq: The Sadr bloc’s call for new elections in Iraq is echoed by the Kurds and eventually Iraqiyya. Maliki tries to avoid it, but he eventually falls to a vote of no confidence in parliament and elections are held towards the end of the year. I’m not going to predict the outcome.
4. Egypt: The constitutional process is difficult and delayed, but presidential elections are held in the fall (postponed from June). Secularist candidates split their constituency, the Muslim Brotherhood blows its lead by pressing social conservatism and Abdel Fotouh, a relatively moderate Islamist, wins.
5. Libya: Continues to implement its established roadmap, elects the “National Public Conference,” prepares a constitution and succeeds in disarming, demobilizing and reintegrating most militias.
6. Bahrain: The Americans continue to support the regime. Iran, stung by tightened sanctions, sponsors demonstrations against the Fifth Fleet.
7. Sudan: War, between north and south. South wins, takes back Abyei and part of South Kordofan. President Bashir is shipped off to The Hague by his generals.
8. Zimbabwe: Mugabe dies, his loyalists hang on but can’t manage the economic collapse. The opposition takes over.
9. Balkans: Serbia gets candidacy status for the EU but that fails to save President Tadic’s Democratic Party from a parliamentary election defeat. Kosovo meets all the requirements but continues to be denied the European Union visa waiver. Bosnia gets a new government but no constitutional reform.
10. United States: Republicans nominate Mitt Romney. Economy continues slow recovery. Barack Obama is reelected, by a smaller margin than in 2008. Al Qaeda succeeds post-election in mounting a non-devastating suicide bombing.
And for extra measure:
11. China: Big real estate crash late in the year cripples Chinese banks and causes bigger problems for the world economy than the euro, which muddles through.
12. Israel/Palestine: Big but largely nonviolent demonstrations on the West Bank. Israelis say “genug ist genug” and unilaterally withdraw from Palestinian population centers.
That should give me something to write about a year from now! None of it should be mistaken for advocacy, and a good bit of it is based on feel rather than analysis.
I reviewed last year’s predictions yesterday.
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Who doomed Iraq?
Three of Iraq’s leading politicians write in the New York Times this morning:
Unless America acts rapidly to help create a successful unity government, Iraq is doomed.
Is it true? And if so, who doomed it?
I confess my strong sympathy with the plight of these Iraqiyya leaders: former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, current parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi and current Finance Minister Rafe al-Essawi garnered more seats in the March 2010 elections than any other coalition but for almost two years have been unable to convert that victory into meaningful power. Their complaints about Prime Minister Maliki, who dreads the prospect of a Ba’athist coup, are well founded: he does abuse the security services and manipulate the courts.
I nevertheless find myself gagging on their plea for American help. These are the same politicians who refused to speak up publicly for a continuing American troop presence in Iraq. Their colleagues–Vice President Tariq al Hashemi and Deputy Prime Minister Saleh Mutlaq–were among the strongest voices calling for American withdrawal. They are now hiding out in Kurdistan, having lost the protection that the American troop presence once provided.
Looking more closely at the New York Times piece, the plea sounds more like a threat. Nowhere is there any sign that Iraqiyya is prepared to go into opposition, ally with other political forces to bring down Maliki’s government in parliament, or take other political measures to solve the problem. They say they will come to an American-supported national conference aiming to resuscitate a power sharing government, but the preconditions for doing so are legion:
But first, Mr. Maliki’s office must stop issuing directives to military units, making unilateral military appointments and seeking to influence the judiciary; his national security adviser must give up complete control over the Iraqi intelligence and national security agencies, which are supposed to be independent institutions but have become a virtual extension of Mr. Maliki’s Dawa party; and his Dawa loyalists must give up control of the security units that oversee the Green Zone and intimidate political opponents.
In other words, Maliki has to disarm first, or else.
What is this “else”? Are our Iraqiyya friends threatening civil war, as the Times headline writer suggests? Or are they just suggesting that they will press for further regionalization, trying to free Iraq’s Sunni-majority provinces from Baghdad’s rule? I might wish it were the latter, but there is no sign at all in their piece that this is the case. And to be fair, Maliki has done everything he can to block regionalization efforts, in both Sunni and Shia majority areas. It was unsettling, and possibly instructive, that the warrant for Tariq al Hashemi’s arrest quickly generated an Al Qaeda in Iraq spate of bombings targeting mainly Shia in Baghdad. Are our Iraqiyya friends getting support from those committed to violence?
Vice President Biden, who once proposed that Iraq be broken up along sectarian and ethnic lines, is now scrambling to keep the country together. He has leverage over Maliki, who values American security assistance and intelligence cooperation as well as diplomatic help in reestablishing Iraq as a regional power. Using that leverage is not cost-free however. At the very least, he should insist on peaceful methods from all sides, including those who say:
For years, we have sought a strategic partnership with America to help us build the Iraq of our dreams: a nationalist, liberal, secular country, with democratic institutions and a democratic culture. But the American withdrawal may leave us with the Iraq of our nightmares: a country in which a partisan military protects a sectarian, self-serving regime rather than the people or the Constitution; the judiciary kowtows to those in power; and the nation’s wealth is captured by a corrupt elite rather than invested in the development of the nation.
Hard to dissent from the preferences expressed here, and America should be prepared to help. I have spent many hours in recent years talking with Iraqi parliamentarians about national reconciliation. They need to begin doing some. The issues are difficult but not insoluble.
If Iraq is doomed, it is Iraqis who are dooming it.
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The end is nigh, again!
I made a bunch of predictions a year ago. Here is how they turned out:
- Iran: the biggest headache of the year to come. If its nuclear program is not slowed or stopped, things are going to get tense. Both Israel and the U.S. have preferred sanctions, covert action and diplomatic pressure to military action. If no agreement is reached on enrichment, that might change by the end of 2011. No Green Revolution, the clerics hang on, using the Revolutionary Guards to defend the revolution (duh). I wasn’t far off on this one. No Green Revolution, no military action yet.
- Pakistan: it isn’t getting better and it could well get worse. The security forces don’t like the way the civilians aren’t handling things, and the civilians are in perpetual crisis. Look for increased internal tension, but no Army takeover, and some success in American efforts to get more action against AQ and the Taliban inside Pakistan. Judging from a report in the New York Times, we may not always be pleased with the methods the Pakistanis use. It got worse, as suggested. No I did not anticipate the killing of Osama bin Laden, or the increased tensions with the U.S., but otherwise I had at least some of it right: growing internal tension, no Army takeover, some American success.
- North Korea: no migraine, but pesky nonetheless, and South Korea is a lot less quiescent than it used to be. Pretty good odds on some sort of military action during the year, but the South and the Americans will try to avoid the nightmare of a devastating artillery barrage against Seoul. I did not predict the death of Kim Jong Il, but otherwise I got it right. There was military action during the year, but no artillery barrage against Seoul.
- Afghanistan: sure there will be military progress, enough to allow at least a minimal withdrawal from a handful of provinces by July. But it is hard to see how Karzai becomes much more legitimate or effective. There is a lot of heavy lifting to do before provincial government is improved, but by the end of the year we might see some serious progress in that direction, again in a handful of provinces. This is pretty much on the mark.
- Iraq: no one expects much good of this government, which is large, unwieldy and fragmented. But just for this reason, I expect Maliki to get away with continuing to govern more or less on his own, relying on different parts of his awkward coalition on different issues. The big unknown: can Baghdad settle, or finesse, the disputes over territory with Erbil (Kurdistan)? I did not anticipate the break between Maliki and Iraqiyya, but I pegged Maliki’s intentions correctly. The Arab/Kurdish disputes are still unsettled.
- Palestine/Israel (no meaning in the order–I try to alternate): Palestine gets more recognitions, Israel builds more settlements, the Americans offer a detailed settlement, both sides resist but agree to go to high level talks where the Americans try to impose. That fails and Israel continues in the direction of establishing a one-state solution with Arabs as second class citizens. My secular Zionist ancestors turn in their graves. Wrong so far as I know about the Americans offering a detailed settlement, even if Obama’s “land swaps” went a few inches in that direction. Right about failure and Israel’s unfortunate direction.
- Egypt: trouble. Succession plans founder as the legitimacy of the parliament is challenged in the streets and courts. Mubarak hangs on, but the uncertainties grow. Pretty good for late December, though I was happily wrong about Mubarak hanging on.
- Haiti: Not clear whether the presidential runoff will be held January 16, but things are going to improve, at least until next summer’s hurricanes. Just for that reason there will be more instability as Haitians begin to tussle over the improvements. Presidential election was held and things have improved. Haiti has been calmer than anticipated. Good news.
- Al Qaeda: the franchise model is working well, so no need to recentralize. They will keep on trying for a score in the U.S. and will likely succeed at some, I hope non-spectacular, level. Happy to be wrong here too: they did not succeed, but they did try several times. And they did not recentralize.
- Yemen/Somalia: Yemen is on the brink and will likely go over it, if not in 2011 soon thereafter. Somalia will start back from hell, with increasing stability in some regions and continuing conflict in others. Yemen has pretty much gone over the brink, and parts of Somalia are on their way back. Pretty much on the mark.
- Sudan: the independence referendum passes. Khartoum and Juba reach enough of an agreement on outstanding issues to allow implementation in July, but border problems (including Abyei) and South/South violence grow into a real threat. Darfur deteriorates as the rebels emulate the South and Khartoum takes its frustrations out on the poor souls. Close to the mark, though Darfur has not deteriorated as much as I anticipated, yet.
- Lebanon: the Special Tribunal finally delivers its indictments. Everyone yawns and stretches, having agreed to ignore them. Four indictments were delivered against Hizbollah officials. I was also right about yawning and stretching.
- Syria: Damascus finally realizes that it is time to reach an agreement with Israel. The Israelis decide to go ahead with it, thus relieving pressure to stop settlements and deal seriously with the Palestinians. Dead wrong on both counts.
- Ivory Coast: the French finally find the first class tickets for Gbagbo and his entourage, who go to some place that does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (no, not the U.S.!). The French and UN settled it by force of arms instead of the first-class ticket. Not cheaper, but less long-term trouble.
- Zimbabwe: Mugabe is pressing for quick adoption of his new constitution and elections in 2011, catching the opposition off balance. If he succeeds, the place continues to go to hell in a handbasket. If he fails, it will still be some time before it heads in the other direction. He failed and the predicted delay ensued.
- Balkans: Bosnians still stuck on constitutional reform, but Kosovo gets a visa waiver from the EU despite ongoing investigations of organ trafficking. Right on Bosnia, wrong on Kosovo.
I’m content with the year’s predictions, even if I got some things wrong. Of course I also missed a lot of interesting developments (revolutions in Tunisia, Libya and Syria, for example). But you wouldn’t have believed me if I had predicted those things, would you? Tomorrow I’ll discuss 2012.
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Could we go to war by mistake again?
I was on C-Span this morning talking about Iraq. The program is now up on their website. A lot of questions focused on the past: why we went to war in Iraq, who should be held accountable for the mistake and whether oil was a motive. The moderator, Rob Harrison, tried to keep the focus on the future, but he was only partly successful.
While I too worry more about the future than about the past–there is more you can do about it–I regard it as healthy to ask why we made a mistake like invading Iraq.
I am convinced oil had little to do with it–we were getting oil from Saddam Hussein, and we are getting some oil from Iraq now. Few American companies have benefited from Iraq’s new openness to foreign oil companies, and most of those are active in Kurdistan. The stuff is sold on a world market at market prices. No need to invade anyone to get it.
One caller suggested we were unhappy with Saddam because he wanted customers to pay for oil in a currency other than dollars. Lots of oil producing countries have tried that trick, which has been abandoned as often as it has been adopted. The day will come, but it is not here yet. And it is certainly nothing to go to war about.
There are two other explanations for the mistake that strike me as far more likely: the argument that a democracy in Iraq would transform the region and concern about weapons of mass destruction (WMD). There is no doubt that many within the Bush 43 administration were arguing the former. They were dead wrong: the Arab world regards today’s Iraq as a catastrophe, not a model democracy. The Arab spring owes nothing to Iraq. But the argument likely carried some weight in 2002-3.
The more decisive argument was WMD. I can’t know what was in George W. Bush’s head, but in the public sphere that was the argument that was prevalent, and prevailed. We had only recently been attacked, on 9/11 (2001, for those too young to remember!). The Bush 43 administration claimed that Saddam Hussein was harboring international terrorists and pursuing nuclear and biological weapons (he was known to have chemical weapons, and to have used them against Iraqi Kurds). It was a small step to concluding that he represented a grave and imminent threat to the United States, which is what Colin Powell argued at the UN Security Council. Condi Rice won the day with her warning that the smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud. I doubt she or Colin Powell knew the premise they were acting on was wrong.
We are now facing in 2011, and soon 2012, the same argument with respect to Iran, more than once. This does not mean that the argument is wrong. There is lots of evidence that Iran is trying to assemble all the requirements, including non-nuclear high explosive technology, to build atomic weapons. There is nothing like the cloud of uncertainty that surrounded Iraq’s nuclear program. But still we need extra care to make sure that we have pursued all other avenues to stop Iran from going nuclear before deciding to use our military instruments.
There is ample evidence that the Obama administration has in fact done this:
1. We’ve tightened sanctions, and gotten others to tighten theirs.
2. We’ve offered negotiations, which so far have been fruitless.
3. Cyberattacks and assassinations targeted against key technologies and people, respectively, occur often.
4. Support is flowing to the Iranian opposition, perhaps even to ethnic separatists.
5. We’ve repeatedly said that no options are off the table.
Trouble is, none of this guarantees that Tehran won’t go ahead anyway, hoping that possession of nuclear weapons, or more likely all the technology required to build them, will end American attempts to topple the theocratic regime.
If so, we still have to answer one further question: will military action make us better off, or not? Certainly in Iraq it did not. It is easy enough to imagine that the Arab spring might have swept away Saddam Hussein, as it has other autocrats. Iran’s green movement, quiescent as it is for the moment, could still be our last best hope, not so much for ending the nuclear program as for removing the fears that have fueled it since the days of the Shah. Military action would do serious damage to dissent in Iran, especially as it will have to be repeated periodically to prevent Tehran from repairing damage and moving ahead with redoubled determination to build nuclear weapons.
If there is anything worse than going to war by mistake, it is doing it twice.
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OK Santa Claus, here’s what I want
I’m hoping it’s true Yemen’s President Saleh is coming to the U.S. As that eagle-eyed young journalist Adam Serwer tweeted: “not to prosecute him…would be, u know, awkward.” That set me thinking about other good fortune that might come our way this Christmas eve:
1. Syria’s president Bashar al Assad decides he really wants to practice opthamology in London.
2. North Korea’s “supreme commander” Kim Jong Un wants to see professional American basketball so much he decides to give up the nuclear nonsense and buy an NBA team for Pyongyang instead. Lots more prestige and very lucrative.
3. Iran follows suit, abandoning its pan-Islamist pretensions, separating mosque and state and restoring close relations with Israel. It also buys an NBA team for Tehran.
4. Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki declares peace on earth and good will towards Sunnis and Kurds, steps down from power and invites Iraqiyya to name a replacement.
5. The new Islamist-run governments in Tunisia, Egypt (and yes, eventually) Libya follow the Iranian example, which convinces them separation of mosque and state are the best protection for religious freedom and will encourage religious devotion, as it seems to do in the U.S.
6. The Saudis rise to the occasion and do likewise, making the king a constitutional monarch to boot.
7. Bahrain does the same. Yemen gets not only a democratic government but lots of water.
8. Without implacable enemies, Prime Minister Netanyahu reaches a quick agreement with the Palestinians, whose state is admitted to the UN with no opposition.
9. The Taliban see that their Islamist counterparts in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya are on to a good thing and reach a power sharing agreement with the Northern Alliance, jettisoning President Karzai and precipitating an early American withdrawal.
10. Pakistan follows up American withdrawal and the new government in Kabul by reaching a broad-ranging agreement with India, including self-determination for Kashmir.
11. Al Qaeda opens a resort on the Somali coast called “The Caliphate.”
12. I retire to observe the peaceful competition between China and the United States, who compete in ping pong but do everything else collaboratively.
If Santa Claus really does exist, children, he’ll bring me those things for the 12 days of Christmas. If he doesn’t, then…
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Maliki as Rigoletto
It isn’t funny, but it is still hard to recount what is going on in Iraq with a straight face: the prime minister has accused a vice president of helping (or ordering?) terrorists to try to kill him, the vice president and a deputy prime minister have fled to autonomous Kurdistan to avoid arrest, and their coalition in parliament has withdrawn its members but continues to occupy its ministerial posts. Then this morning bombs explode at more than a dozen sites in Baghdad targeted mainly at Shia This terrorist response to the prime minister’s accusations ironically tends to confirm them.
All of this comes with dramatic sectarian and ethnic overtones. If Iraq were an opera, it would be composed by Verdi, not Mozart. Rigoletto, who manages to bring about all the outcomes he most fears, comes to mind.
It is hard to picture a happy ending. Michael Knights suggests several possible denouements. First: Prime Minister Maliki and Vice President Hashimi might still work a deal to restore the status quo ante. I doubt it, as five judges have supposedly signed Hashimi’s arrest warrant. Hard to forget about that, or about today’s bombs.
Second: the Kurds betray Hashemi and throw their support behind Maliki and his Shia allies, in exchange for concessions on their own demands. There will be hell to pay for this in the Sunni community, as Knights also suggests. And the Kurds have been fooled more than once by Maliki’s promises. It is doubtful they are prepared to be fooled again.
I think the best outcome is in fact Knights’ third, which he regards as an outside possibility: fall of the Maliki government in a parliamentary vote, with Kurds and the Sunni-based alliance Iraqiyya voting him out with support from the Shia-based Sadrists. But the bombings today will encourage Maliki in his worst instincts. Mass arrests? Martial law? Anything he can do to prevent Iraqiyya politicians from showing up in parliament will help preserve his hold on power.
Unfortunately the most likely outcome is an attempt by Maliki to use the forms of parliamentary democracy while establishing a de facto autocracy, as Reidar Visser suggests. This would be a sad fulfillment of many prophecies.
There is a tendency to blame it all on the Americans. I don’t see it that way. Iraq’s sectarian and ethnic divisions were not invented in Washington, which withdrew troops from Iraq only after an extraordinary effort to stabilize the country. What is going on now is essentially invented in Baghdad.
I have been relatively sanguine about the prospects for Iraqi democracy, despite all its difficulties. Even now, it is notable that the arrest warrant for Tariq al Hashemi, the vice president, was signed, apparently by five judges. Saddam Hussein did not bother with such niceties. He used extra-judicial killings to enforce his rule. But it is hard to see a good outcome when the protagonist is so bent on moves that will destroy rather than cure his precious offspring. I repeat what I said six months ago:
Ultimately, whether Iraq continues to develop as a democracy or lapses into something more like its unfortunate past depends on the Iraqis themselves. They seem ambivalent. Some of them, at least on some days, appreciate the freedom they enjoy today, which far exceeds the norm in the Middle East as well as Iraq’s own past. They want more democracy, not less, as recent street protests have demonstrated.
Others, or maybe the same people on other days, are impatient with democratic processes and cry out for “action”—someone who will fix all that ails the country without bothering to consult, legislate or show respect for human rights. Any serious effort to restore autocracy in the whole country would be met with dramatic opposition, most likely organized on an ethnic or sectarian basis.
My guess is that the appreciation of democracy will prevail over the hope for a quick fix. We should certainly do what we can to try to help ensure that outcome.
Today my guess would be reversed: the hope for a quick fix may prevail over democracy. It is up to the Iraqis. We can do little to prevent that outcome.
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