12
October 2006
James Baker prepares the exits in Iraq
In
Washington, there is a frequent step before old soldiers die and after they've
faded away; recruitment into a blue ribbon panel established to resolve one
administration headache or other. The bipartisan Iraq Study Group, co-chaired
by a former secretary of state, James Baker, and a former congressman, Lee
Hamilton, is one such venture. The group, whose creation was urged by Congress,
is tasked with recommending new ways for the Bush administration to deal with
the war in Iraq. Its report will come out after the November elections, to
avoid being politicized.
The
group includes establishment stalwarts, including former CIA Director Robert
Gates, Bill Clinton adviser Vernon Jordan, Reagan administration Attorney
General Edwin Meese, retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, former
Clinton White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, former Defense Secretary
William Perry, former Senator and Virginian Governor Charles Robb, and former
Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson. While the conclusions of these insiders,
well-lubed in the etiquette of American power, are not binding, President
George W. Bush will have to take them seriously, because the next Congress is
bound to be hostile to "staying the course" in Iraq and might oblige
him to do so.
It's
still unclear what the group will recommend. Baker, in an interview on ABC
television last weekend, played his cards close to his chest, but did throw out
hints: "I think it's fair to say our commission believes that there are
alternatives between the stated alternatives, the ones that are out there in
the political debate, of 'stay the course' and 'cut and run.'" He
dismissed as unworkable a plan by Senator Joseph Biden to decentralize Iraq and
give Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis their own regions, distributing oil revenue to
all. Baker argued "there's no way to draw lines" between the three
groups in Iraq's major cities, where the communities are mixed.
However,
an article in The Times of London suggested a different plan. The group would
recommend breaking Iraq up into "three highly autonomous regions."
According to "informed sources" cited by the paper, the Iraq group
"has grown increasingly interested in the idea of splitting the Shiite,
Sunni and Kurdish regions of Iraq ... His group will not advise 'partition,'
but is believed to favor a division of the country that will devolve power and
security to the regions, leaving a skeletal national government in Baghdad in
charge of foreign affairs, border protection and the distribution of oil revenue.
The Iraqi government will be encouraged to hold a constitutional conference
paving the way for greater devolution. Iran and Syria will be urged to back a
regional settlement that could be brokered at an international
conference."
It's
not clear how the conclusions of The Times square with Baker's own dismissal of
the Biden plan. However, the likelihood is that the differences are in the
details, not in the overall principle of distributing power away from the
center, a process explicit in the federal structure mandated by the Iraqi
Constitution. In addition, Baghdad's control over Iraq has all but
disintegrated, so that any practical plan must take this into consideration.
But just how much is unclear. The proposal outlined by The Times, if it is proven
true, would suggest substantial dissemination of power. This would create a
confederal structure in form, but the partition of Iraq in fact, regardless of
claims that the Iraq Study Group has no such agenda.
What
of Baker's admission that the mixed nature of urban areas makes the Biden plan
unworkable? His focus on Iraqi cities, as opposed to surrounding rural areas,
might mean his group will propose some sort of mechanism to leave Iraqi cities
"open" to all communities, under separate administrations. If that's
the case, however, the scheme would have little practical meaning in places
like Kirkuk, where Kurds have the means, and the wherewithal, to pressure their
adversaries. As for Baghdad, the challenge would be to isolate the city from
the ambient ethnic and sectarian fighting. Like Sarajevo, the Iraqi capital is
likely to end up being a mere extension of the wars around it, with the battle
lines already drawn between "pure" sectarian neighborhoods.
In
reality, the Baker-Hamilton group is less there to engineer a stable future for
Iraq than to create conditions for American forces to leave the country. Baker
doesn't want to "cut and run," but there is an awful lot of cutting,
and not a little hurried walking, in his thinking. The idea is that once Kurds
and Shiites fully take security into their own hands in their autonomous areas,
the US will be able to substantially reduce its troop levels and withdraw the
remainder to safe areas, probably to Kurdistan.
However,
partition is a dangerous proposition. A favored course of action of uninspired
diplomats, the partitioning of territories has usually visited little more than
trauma on countries, accompanied by war. That's what happened in India,
Palestine, Korea, Vietnam, Cyprus and Bosnia, and nothing suggests that Iraq
will be any different. Iraqis may today have fallen back on their ethnic or
sectarian identities, but that doesn't mean they will accept a foreign plan for
effective partition. If anything, this may provoke their hostility and that of many
Arabs who will certainly interpret the proposal as an effort to fragment Iraq
to Israel's benefit. You will hear the familiar tropes that this is all part of
a vast neoconservative project to weaken the Arab world, though members of the
Baker-Hamilton team - particularly Baker, a sleek facilitator between big oil
and Arab custodians of stalemate - would shudder at such an association.
Finally,
asking Iran and Syria to guarantee this process means asking the two states
most responsible for destabilizing Iraq since 2003 to oversee its
stabilization. That's a typical realist habit, and Baker has long enjoyed
transacting with American foes. Syrian President Hafez Assad allowed Shiite
Islamists to kill American soldiers and civilians in Lebanon in the 1980s, but
was nonetheless rewarded by Baker and President George H.W. Bush with a blank
check for total hegemony over Lebanon in 1990. What Baker can't understand, or
won't, is that the Syrian regime survives thanks to the instability of its neighbors.
A peaceful Iraq threatens to make Syria, its intelligence services, and the
artificial state of insecurity the regime has created to sustain itself,
superfluous. Bashar Assad won't feel any compulsion to do the US favors as it
prepares to exit from Iraq.
But
don't expect Baker to care by then. His brief is to find an
"honorable" way for American soldiers to pull out; what comes
afterward is no longer in his hands. It's best to wait before judging the final
Iraq Study Group report, and Baker is too much of a calculator to cross Bush.
But what he ends up writing will be an American document for Americans. Pity
the Iraqis if they are once again secondary in deciding their own fate.
Michael Young is opinion editor of THE DAILY STAR.
Copyright
(c) 2006 The Daily Star
Wed, 18 Oct 2006 20:01:52 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
From: "Naim S. Mahlab" <nsm@videotron.ca>
A US exit from
Iraq in the foreseeable future will mean total chaos in the whole area.
Iran will dominate Shiite Iraq, the Kurds will probably
secede to the chagrin of Turkey, and the Sunnis
and Christians will pay
a heavy price just for being where they are.
The most reasonable solution that I can think of is the
'division' of the country into three semiautonomous
provinces, Sunni,
Shiite and Kurdish, who will be loosely tied together by some sort of federal
system a la Canada.
The EU and the US must make it clear to Iran that it must
keep its hands off Iraq. Without this last
point no solution will ever work.
Iran is primarily responsible for what has happened to
Iraq, and it must be forced to keep
its hands off.
Naim S. Mahlab