Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

Iraq is being torn apart while George W Bush and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim enable each other. As the Hadley memo points out, Mr. Bush is counting on Mr. Hakim to deliver an Iraq that can "govern itself, sustain itself, and defend itself." Mr. Hakim, for his part, is in the enviable position of being able to use the leader of the free world to pursue his goal of bringing about an Islamic revolution in Iraq. The dialectic between Mr. Bush and Mr. Hakim became abundantly clear today.

Today the US military detained Ammar al-Hakim, the eldest son of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, as he returned to Iraq from Iran:

U.S. forces detained the son of one of Iraq’s most prominent Shiite politicians for several hours Friday, a spokesman for the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq said.

The convoy of Amar al-Hakim, one of the sons of party leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, was stopped as Amar was returning from a trip to Iran, Haitham al-Husseini said.

The senior Hakim, whose party controls the largest number of seats in the Iraqi parliament and who met with President Bush during a visit to Washington in December, spent many years in exile in Iran and has close ties to that country. U.S. officials have said Iran has supplied weapons to militias targeting American forces in Iraq.

The younger al-Hakim, however, was released, with an apology from the American ambassador, after some high level intervention:

State-run television said Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, a Shiite who depends on Mr. Hakim’s support, intervened to help release the son, Amar Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.

…

The American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said he was “sorry” for the detention. The son is himself a senior official in Mr. Hakim’s political movement and has often taken a leading role in building support for his father’s political efforts throughout Shiite-dominated southern Iraq. A Hakim aide suggested that the son was being groomed to take control of the family’s political dynasty.

…

He also said that United States military officers whom he would not identify had contacted aides to Mr. Hakim and apologized for the detention. Mr. Khalilzad, the American ambassador, was quoted by news agencies as saying that he regretted the episode and that “we do not mean any disrespect” to the Hakim family. [Emphasis added by me.]

It appears that the Bush Administration knows who the real masters are in Iraq. An administration that famously does not say "sorry" for launching wars without justification or killing innocents in Iraq was bending over backwards to not show "disrespect" to the Hakim family.

Ammar al-Hakim is not only the son of Mr. Bush’s man in Iraq, he is also a major political force and power broker in Iraq in his own right. The younger al-Hakim is the second in command, after his father, of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and he is the point man for SCIRI’s push to create a separate Shia state in the south of Iraq.

One of the strongest advocates of a federal state in the south is Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, SCIRI, one of the major Shia partners in the UIA bloc. He says federalism is a “constitutional right” not only for the Kurds but also for the people of central and southern Iraq.

“Federalism does not mean splitting the country. It is a hope for the future of Iraq, and it is a demand by the masses,” he said recently in Najaf.

Hakim has commissioned his son, Ammar al-Hakim, head of the Shahid al-Mihrab Institute, a SCIRI establishment that promotes Islam in southern Iraq, to mobilise popular support for the federalism project.

In addition to his leading role in advocating for a separate Shia homeland in the Iraqi south, Ammar al-Hakim is very well known in Iraq and has often been the spokesman for SCIRI since the beginning of the Iraq invasion. The major force that stands in opposition to the Hakim family’s plan to create an Iranian proxy state in Iraq is Moqtada al-Sadr. In Mr. Bush’s attempt at isolating Mr. al-Sadr he is handing Iraq over to the Iranian-backed and financed SCIRI and the Iranian-groomed Hakim family.

While Mr. Bush complains about Iranian influence in Iraq, he continues to back the Iranian-supported SCIRI in Iraq. One is forced to ask whether Mr. Bush understands that his actions and alliances in Iraq are undermining Iraq’s territorial integrity. One is forced to ask whether Mr. Bush understands that his actions and alliances in Iraq are giving aid and comfort to Mr. Bush’s stated adversary in Iraq, that is, Iran.

There can only be two possible answers to Mr. Bush’s puzzling dalliance with SCIRI and the Hakim clan. One possibility is that Mr. Bush is ignorant of the complexities in the Iraqi political landscape and does not understand how his actions contribute to Iraqi instability. The other possibility is that Mr. Bush understands fully that his actions in Iraq are empowering Iran. If the latter is the case, then one is forced to ask why Mr. Bush would want to empower Iran in Iraq. It may be that by empowering Iran in Iraq, the only Iraq exit strategy left on the table for Mr. Bush is to strike Iran in order to counter Iran’s increased influence. Recent saber-rattling by the Bush Administration against Iran does not bode well for the future.

Meanwhile, the president of the United States hosts a death squad leader (Abdul Aziz al-Hakim) in the White House and calls him "Your Eminence" and the American ambassador to Iraq is forced to apologize to the death squad leader’s son in case any disrespect was caused by American soldiers.

The Bush Administration is spiraling down into a major conflagration in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. To some extent, it is traveling on auto pilot. Left to its own momentum of inaction and massive overreaction, this Administration will almost certainly embark on a war with Iran.

It has been on this course for a long time.

Last Spring when Seymour Hersh first stirred up the pot, I wrote the following:

I recall quipping to a friend a few weeks ago that I thought the way out of Iraq for this Administration was through Iran. What I meant at the time was that since this Administration had haplessly shifted the center of gravity of Iraqi politics to Iran, without Iran having to fire a shot, that the only way to exit out of Iraq with "credibility" was to attack Iran. Iran then becomes a continuation of a larger war "on terror" and it can then not be said that Iraq was lost since it will only become an unfinished chapter in a larger war.

It is now becoming apparent that the way out of Iraq, for this Administration, is indeed through Iran.

The eternally confused cheerleader of the Iraq invasion, Kenneth Pollack, was quoted in the New York Times stating the obvious:

“The administration does have Iran on the brain, and I think they are exaggerating the amount of Iranian activities in Iraq,” Kenneth M. Pollack, the director of research at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, said Sunday. “There’s a good chance that this is going to be counterproductive — that this is a way to get into a spiral with Iran that leads you into conflict. The likely response from the Iranians is that they are going to want to demonstrate to us that they are not going to be pushed around.”

Mr. Pollack is half right. The Administration does have Iran on the brain, but Iran is not likely to respond so easily to such provocations. I think the latter statement is a little bit of wishful thinking on Mr. Pollock’s part.

Last week, in a confusing and contradictory speech, Mr. Bush went squarely after Iran (and threw Turkey a much overlooked bone regarding the Kurds):

Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilizing the region in the face of the extremist challenge.

This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.

We are also taking other steps to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East. I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region.

We will expand intelligence sharing, and deploy Patriot air defense systems to reassure our friends and allies. We will work with the governments of Turkey and Iraq to help them resolve problems along their border. And we will work with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the region.

Since then his loyal surrogates - Bob Gates, Condi Rice, Stephen Hadley and Dick Cheney - have spread out across the world beating the drums of war.

Mr. Cheney, emerging from his secure undisclosed location, found it easy to replace "q" with "n" in his doomsday messages:

“So the threat that Iran represents is growing,” he said, in words reminiscent of how he once built a case against Mr. Hussein. “It’s multidimensional, and it is, in fact, of concern to everybody in the region.”

We can expect the bombs to start flying when the threat from Iran goes from "growing" to "grave and gathering".

This latest bravado is not only a signal by this Administration of defeat in Iraq; it is also a signal of defeat to Iran. The United States has been outmaneuvered by Iran, both in Iraq and on the nuclear issue. Having lost the war on the geo-political battlefield, the Bush Administration’s only option left is to lob missiles and drop bombs. The Bush Administration is out of its depth when it comes to foreign policy. Its only weapon, which it has so far failed to wield effectively, is the military option.

Mr. Bush’s plan to interdict Iranian agents inside Iraq is ill-conceived and naive. Iran’s power in Iraq does not come from supplying IEDs or other weapons to attack American troops. The Sunni Iraqi insurgents, those who make up the bulk of the force attacking American troops, are not supplied or supported by Iran. Most of Iran’s support structure in Iraq has been decades in the making. It is not limited to a few agents supplying arms to Shia militias. Iran has been, for decades, supporting Shia parties in Iraq. The most prominent of these are the SCIRI and the Dawa party - both of which hold the reigns of power in Iraq. They control many of the key ministries, including the Ministry of Interior. SCIRI’s Badr Brigade has become fully integrated into the Ministry of Interior and regularly carries out its death squad activities under official sanction. The SCIRI and the Dawa party were founded and trained by Iran in the 1980s. Most of the leaders of the two parties were exiled in Iran, if not Syria, for much of the last two decades - and a significant number of these leaders speak Persian as well as Arabic. When the SCIRI and Dawa party leaders speak of foreign interference in Iraq’s internal affairs, they are not talking about Iran, they are talking about the United States and the Sunni Arab countries.

Iran’s support does not end with the Shia. Iran has also been supporting elements within Iraqi Kurdistan since the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war. Iran’s roots in Iraq run deep and wide. It is fortified each year with millions of Iranian pilgrims who descend upon the Shia holy sites in Iraq. So, when Stephen Hadley asserts that the United States is resisting Iranian "hegemony" in the region, he is remarkably naive. Iran already has hegemony over much of Iraq, and the odds of the United States countering that hegemony are slim to none.

The irony is that when Mr. Bush talks about going after death squads in Iraq, he is talking about going after Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. Iran would like nothing better. Although al-Sadr is Shia, he is also an Arab nationalist. He is against partitioning Iraq to form a southern homeland for the Shia. By going after al-Sadr, once again Mr. Bush would be doing Iran’s bidding. To add further to the mess of Mr. Bush’s policy, Mr. Bush’s latest best friend in Iraq is Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of SCIRI. al-Hakim also happens to be Tehran’s man in Iraq, and for an independent Shia homeland in the south. By eliminating al-Sadr’s influence and positioning SCIRI to take over the leadership in Iraq, Mr. Bush will have ensured Iranian dominance of Iraq.

The political outlook in Iraq does not look good for Mr. Bush. The die was cast on this course when the first American bombs started falling on Iraq in 2003. There is now only one option for Mr. Bush to avoid defeat in Iraq - and that is to attack Iran. Mr. Bush and his coterie of advisors certainly knows their machinations in Iraq will not effectively counter Iranian "hegemony". So, they are going through the motions and getting ready to go for the jugular.

Mr. Cheney warned yesterday about Iran:

They are in a position where site astride the Straits of Hormuz, where over 20% of the world’s supply of oil transits every single day, over 18 million barrels a day.

There is really one solution to Mr. Cheney’s geographic quandary. That solution is to wipe Iran off the map so they no longer sit "astride the Straits of Hormuz".

As President Bush puts the "final touches" on his "new" Iraq policy this weekend, Washington waits with bated breath for the fight to come. Having called up his Surgin’ General, David Petraeus, Mr. Bush is ready to embark on his Iraq escalation against the will of the American public and its elected Congress.

It is time to consider the consequences of Mr. Bush’s policy of escalation in Iraq.

It has been widely reported that Mr. Bush’s policy is based on the ideological fantasies of the neo-conservatives at the American Enterprise Institute. The neo-conservative of the moment is AEI’s Fred Kagan. In his report, entitled "Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq", he lays out the "new way forward".

Throughout history, when small minds have attempted to think big, the results have been catastrophic for the world. This period of history is proving no different.

Mr. Kagan declares in the first lines of his report:

Victory is still an option in Iraq. America, a country of 300 million people with a GDP of $12 trillion, and more than 1 million soldiers and marines can regain control of Iraq, a state the size of California with a population of 25 million and a GDP under $100 billion.

Pride is not a strategy. The strategy in Iraq should not be based on a need to demonstrate the might of the American military-industrial complex. The strategy in Iraq should be based on the long term national interest of the United States of America.

Mr. Kagan continues:

Iraq has reached a critical point. The strategy of relying on a political process to eliminate the insurgency has failed. Rising sectarian violence threatens to break America’s will to fight. This violence will destroy the Iraqi government, armed forces, and people if it is not rapidly controlled.

Victory in Iraq is still possible at an acceptable level of effort. We must adopt a new approach to the war and implement it quickly and decisively. [Emphasis added by me.]

He has reached the opposite conclusion from most sane observers of the fiasco in Iraq. It is precisely our reliance on a military solution, and not a well thought-out political process, that has led us to this point in Iraq. Our failure to plan for "Phase IV" operations after toppling Saddam Hussein has contributed to the chaos in Iraq - and the time for a do-over has long passed.

So, what will be the consequence of the Kagan delusion, if implemented? If the Kagan plan fails, we will have sacrificed Iraqi and American lives for another stab at the ideological pie in the sky. However, the real danger lies in the success of the Kagan plan. Most observers have so far argued that his plan will fail and therefore should not be attempted. I believe the greater danger lies in the plan’s success.

Fred Kagan’s plan is a strategy for ethnic cleansing. If implemented, the Bush Administration will actively participate in a policy of ethnic cleansing in Iraq. They will make the American military and the American people complicit in their policy.

Mr. Kagan’s plan focuses on Baghdad as the center of operations. His plan is to clear, or "ethnically cleanse" if you will, the Sunni parts of Baghdad:

We must send more American combat forces into Iraq and especially into Baghdad to support this operation. A surge of seven Army brigades and Marine regiments to support clear-and-hold operations starting in the spring of 2007 is necessary, possible, and will be sufficient.

These forces, partnered with Iraqi units, will clear critical Sunni and mixed Sunni-Shi’a neighborhoods, primarily on the west side of the city.

The Shia government of Nouri al-Maliki and the Shia militias of Moqtada al-Sadr and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim have been quietly following this policy for well over two years now. Finally, they will get some American help.

As the United States debates what to do in Iraq, this country’s Shiite majority has been moving toward its own solution: making the capital its own.

Large portions of Baghdad have become Shiite in recent months, as militias press their fight against Sunni militants deeper into the heart of the capital, displacing thousands of Sunni residents. At least 10 neighborhoods that a year ago were mixed Sunni and Shiite are now almost entirely Shiite, according to residents, American and Iraqi military commanders and local officials.

To prepare for the American assistance, the Maliki government this weekend unveiled their plan for ethnic cleansing, or "fighting terrorists", as they like to call it:

Maliki’s words appeared intended to counter the perception that the plan would focus on combating Sunni insurgents. An aide to Maliki, Hasan Suneid, a Shiite Muslim lawmaker, told the Associated Press that the Iraqi army would devote 20,000 additional troops to the capital and begin by combating Sunni insurgents in western Baghdad.

…

Maliki’s speech provided few details about the tactical or strategic changes guiding the forthcoming effort. But his aides described an effort that relies on U.S. troops to combat Sunni insurgents on the outskirts of Baghdad. Those areas are where the Sunni insurgents plan and manufacture the deadly explosives that detonate regularly in the city.

"Maliki believes that it is in this ring that the attacks are coming from," one of his aides said.

The Iraqi forces would target the most violent neighborhoods, and commanders would have a greater degree of autonomy in their assigned sections of the city, Askari said.

Maliki believes that if the additional troops can effect a decrease in violence over the next two months, then he can negotiate more effectively with Shiite militia leaders in the city and improve his chances of disarming them, his aides said.

Mr. Maliki and Mr. Kagan are in complete agreement. The way to secure peace is to decrease the violence by ethnically cleansing Baghdad of Sunnis. Then, the Shia militias will make nice and peace will reign. Call me biased, but having lived through such a plan of "pacification" in my own life, I can smell ethnic cleansing better than most.

Baghdad is important. It is important because the sectarian fault lines of Iraq run through it. Throughout the American occupation, Baghdad has been coming apart along sectarian lines. Once mixed neighborhoods are being slowly ethnically cleansed into Shia and Sunni neighborhoods. Now Mr. Kagan is advocating helping the Shia eliminate the remaining Sunni neighborhoods west of the Tigris River. When Iraqi forces and militias go into Sunni neighborhoods they will go in to settle sectarian scores, not to hunt "terrorists". The United States government should take no part in this.

The path to national reconciliation in Iraq does not go through Baghdad - only the path to Iraq’s disintegration goes through Baghdad. The path to a stable Iraq goes through Iraq’s oil fields in the South and in Kirkuk, appeals to shared Arab nationalism, and access to the Persian Gulf through the Shatt al-Arab. A smarter man than Mr. Kagan would consider how oil revenue sharing, pipelines to the Gulf, and interests of Iraq’s neighbors such as Iran in said access to Gulf can be weaved together into a way forward that does not lead down a path of further violence. Instead, a small mind has come up with a recipe for ethnic cleansing - and Mr. Bush is set to endorse it.

It is up to the newly muscular United States Congress to prevent American complicity in the ethnic cleansing and massacres to come. A massacre of Iraq’s Sunnis will push us toward that regional war that everyone claims they fear. It is time for Congress to step up and prevent any further loss of American and Iraqi lives in the service of ideological midgets.

 [Cross posted at Taylor Marsh]

Nir Rosen at IraqSlogger is reporting on rumors that Moqtada al-Sadr was present at Saddam Hussein’s hanging. In fact, he might have been one of the hangmen. Apparently, that is the reason they were chanting "Moqtada! Moqtada! Moqtada!".

The pro-Baathist website printed the following pictures showing similarities between the hanging pictures and Moqtada al-Sadr. These rumors have been flying around for a number of days now. However, given the circumstances of the hanging, it is not terribly far-fetched. So, here are the pictures for what they are worth.

So, what does everyone think? Ok, the pinky ring is just too funny

The New York Times just implicated Iraq’s Mr. Fix-it in the Saddam execution video debacle. Get ready for aftershocks.

In its report on Iraq’s alleged investigation into the Saddam execution, there is this startling passage:

As his aides announced that the events at the hanging would be the subject of an inquiry, one of the officials who attended the hanging, a prosecutor at the trial that condemned Mr. Hussein to death, said that one of two men he had seen holding a cellphone camera aloft to make a video of Mr. Hussein’s last moments — up to and past the point where he fell through the trapdoor — was Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Mr. Maliki’s national security adviser. Attempts to reach Mr. Rubaie were unsuccessful. The prosecutor, Munkith al-Faroun, said the other man holding a cellphone above his head was also an official, but he could not recall his name.

In one casual passage, the New York Times drops a bombshell.

Mr. al-Rubaie is not just anyone in Iraq. He is the link between the Americans and the Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani. He is also the go-between to Moqtada al-Sadr. He has been involved with the Dawa Party since its days as a major terrorist organization. In the 1980s, he was the Dawa Party’s international spokesman.

In 2004, when George W Bush visited Iraq he reached out to Ayatollah al-Sistani through Mr. al-Rubaie:

American officials in Iraq are well aware of al-Rubaie’s ability to navigate in both worlds; when President Bush landed in Baghdad for Thanksgiving dinner, clearly he’d been briefed. As al-Rubaie remembers their encounter, the president pointed at him and said, "Dr. al-Rubaie, I want you to convey this message to Mr. Sistani. Tell him that I pray to the same god he prays to… Tell Sistani I have nothing but praise for your religion. I have many millions of Muslims in my country back home."

Mr. al-Rubaie also was instrumental in getting Moqtada al-Sadr into the current Iraqi government. In 2004, Mr. al-Rubaie fell out with then Prime Minister Allawi over how to confront Moqtada al-Sadr:

The approach appears to be straining the Iraqi government as well. On Monday, the office of Ayad Allawi, the interim prime minister, said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the national security adviser, had been relieved of his duties and replaced with a close ally of Dr. Allawi, Qassim Daoud.

The precise reasons for Dr. Rubaie’s dismissal were unclear, but he and Dr. Allawi disagreed sharply over how to quell the insurgency and, in particular, how to deal with Moktada al-Sadr, the rebel Shiite cleric. While Dr. Rubaie favors coaxing Mr. Sadr into the political mainstream, Dr. Allawi is demanding Mr. Sadr’s surrender first.

Mr. al-Rubaie has since played a crucial role in positioning the Dawa Party in the center of the Iraqi governmental pie. Last summer he wrote a Washington Post op-ed sketching out a "road map" for an American withdrawal from Iraq while leaving the keys with the Dawa Party.

In short, Mr. al-Rubaie is a powerful man in the current Iraqi government with all the right connections. If he is implicated in the Saddam execution fiasco, it will also implicate the Dawa Party and Ayatollah al-Sistani. If al-Rubaie falls, so falls the Dawa Party. With Maliki weakened and al-Sadr targeted by the Americans, this could be the beginning of a coup attempt in Baghdad. The only Shia party that can gain from such a coup is the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

Suddenly, Mr. Bush’s photo-op with Abdul Aziz al-Hakim comes into focus.

Update: The New York Times has removed the reference to Mr. al-Rubaie from the web edition of the article. The changed passage reads:

A prosecutor who attended the execution, Munkith al-Faroun, said he thought one of the invited witnesses had recorded the session on a cellphone, but he could not recall his name.

MSNBC reports that Mr. al-Faroun, who was quoted in the New York Times article, is now retracting his accusation:

On Wednesday, an Iraqi prosecutor who was also present at the execution denied a report that he had accused National Security Adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie of possible responsibility for the leaked video. “I am not accusing Mowaffak al-Rubaie, and I did not see him taking pictures,” Munqith al-Faroon, a prosecutor in the case that sent Saddam to the gallows, told The Associated Press. “But I saw two of the government officials who were … present during the execution taking all the video of the execution, using the lights that were there for the official taping of the execution. They used mobile phone cameras. I do not know their names, but I would remember their faces,” al-Faroon said in a telephone interview. … The New York Times on Wednesday reported that al-Faroon told the newspaper “one of two men he had seen holding a cell phone camera aloft to make a video of Mr. Hussein’s last moments up to and past the point where he fell through the trapdoor was Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Mr. Maliki’s national security adviser.” The Times said it had been unable to reach al-Rubaie for comment. AP also could not reach him Wednesday. His secretary said the security adviser, a close aide to al-Maliki, was in Najaf and would not return until later.

The plot thickens.

When George W Bush was presented the Iraq Study Group report last week, according to Lawrence Eagleburger, Mr. Bush’s reaction was "Where’s my drink?"

Since its release, the report has been much maligned from both sides of the political aisle. In my previous post, I wrote that the report was significant because its assessment of the situation in Iraq has neutered Mr. Bush’s argument about "progress" in Iraq. It has also quite clearly demonstrated Mr. Bush’s foreign policy as an utter failure. While the right is making a valiant attempt to discredit the report, I think the damage has already been done. Mr. Bush will need that drink, he may even huff and puff, but I stand by my assertion that the foreign policy of the United States is no longer in the hands of this president. He has been put in a corner like a petulant preschooler.

My previous post focused on the "Assessment" part of the report. This post will address the 79 recommendations. As I mentioned earlier, I think the report’s central failure is its recommendation that Iraqi forces be trained by the U.S. military into 2008. The recommendations, taken together, really are not recommendations at all. It seems to me the recommendations themselves are simply criticisms of Mr. Bush’s Iraq policy - the recommendations point out specific failures that have led us to the Iraq of today as spelled out in the "Assessment".

The recommendations are in three parts. First, Mr. Bush’s failure to engage in regional diplomacy. Second, Mr. Bush’s failure to pursue national reconciliation. Third, Mr. Bush’s failure to properly train and equip the Iraqi security forces. The failures together have facilitated Iraq’s slide into chaos. The report holds out the hope that if those failures are remedied immediately there is a chance that chaos may be averted in Iraq. I have my doubts.

Mr. Bush’s failure in Iraq is rooted in the same failure that led to the war in the first place. It is a failure to grasp reality. When ideology drives policy, reality is not that important to the ideologues. However, reality has a way of asserting itself. The report explains the basics to Mr. Bush:

Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals. [p.95]

While the rest of the world understood that the insurgency in Iraq was complex, Mr. Bush and his lackeys "knew" that it was al Qaeda and a few "dead-enders". Therefore, no effort was expended finding out about the nature of the enemy:

While the United States has been able to acquire good and sometimes superb tactical intelligence on al Qaeda in Iraq, our government still does not understand very well either the insurgency in Iraq or the role of the militias.

…

Congress has appropriated almost $2 billion this year for countermeasures to protect our troops in Iraq against improvised explosive devices, but the administration has not put forward a request to invest comparable resources in trying to understand the people who fabricate, plant and explode those devices. [pp. 93-94]

You see, Mr. Bush knows they are "evil-doers". So, it is not important to know what motivates them and how they operate. A smarter or more curious man might think it was important to know your enemy’s motivations so that you can combat your enemy more effectively. But not this president.

The two recommendations that follow, recommendations 77 and 78, after the ISG points out our lack of knowledge about our enemy are almost cursory.

The report points out the importance of engaging Iraq’s neighbors. The reason is quite simple - all of Iraq’s neighbors have a stake in a stable Iraq, almost certainly more of a stake than the United States:

It is clear to Iraq Study Group members that all of Iraq’s neighbors are anxious about the situation in Iraq. They favor a unified Iraq that is strong enough to maintain its territorial integrity, but not so powerful as to threaten its neighbors. None favors the breakup of the Iraqi state. [p. 47]

Given the importance of engaging Iraq’s neighbors, it is striking how little has been accomplished in this area. To date, Iraq has not yet established a working embassy even in Saudi Arabia [recommendation 2].

The report also states that Iran and Syria should be engaged without preconditions:

Dealing with Iran and Syria is controversial. Nevertheless, it is our view that in diplomacy, a nation can and should engage its adversaries and enemies to try to resolve conflicts and differences consistent with its own interests. Accordingly, the Support Group should actively engage Iran and Syria in its diplomatic dialogue, without preconditions. [p. 50]

Engaging one’s enemy is anathema to the Decider - he has already scoffed at the idea. However, Mr. Bush does not hold many cards and an ostrich is sometimes forced to pull its head out of the sand if it wants to breathe. Recommendations 9 and 16 offer carrots to Iran and Syria to sit down at the bargaining table. Those two recommendations have already set the tone for U.S. foreign policy, sooner or later Mr. Bush will be forced to follow, or remain irrelevant.

It is in the area of national reconciliation where the report breaks important ground. A number of the ideas have been proposed separately in the past. The report ties them together within a coherent strategy with a nice payoff at the end:

The point is for the United States and Iraq to make clear their shared interest in the orderly departure of U.S. forces as Iraqi forces take on the security mission. A successful national reconciliation dialogue will advance that departure date. [p.67]

To that end, recommendation 34 calls for the issue of U.S. force presence in Iraq to be on the table for any national reconciliation dialogue. This is a far cry from Mr. Bush’s belligerent tone to date.

The report proposes the reversal of the disastrous de-baathification process (recommendation 27) and it calls for oil revenue to be shared based on population (recommendation 28). The oil revenue recommendation specifically addresses the ambiguity that exists in the current draft of the Iraqi constitution. The report calls for the revenue from future oil fields to also be shared based on population. This recommendation is essential to bringing the Sunnis into the national reconciliation process.

The report punts on the most difficult, and perhaps the most intractable, of Iraq’s issues - Kirkuk. Recommendation 30 does suggest wisely that the referendum of the future of Kirkuk be postponed to avoid violence. In many ways, the Kirkuk problem is beginning to resemble the Kashmir issue in the Indian sub-continent - what is popular at the local level may not necessarily be in the national interest. Unsurprisingly, Kurds led by Massoud Barzani (and parroted by Jalal Talabani) have been critical of the report because it favors more central control of Iraq than the Kurds would prefer. The Kurdish claim to Kirkuk and its oil revenues are directly challenged by the report.

Above all, the report stresses the importance of talking to your enemies - the essential ingredient of national reconciliation. It proposes far-reaching amnesty (recommendation 31), engaging all parties, including Moqtada al-Sadr (recommendation 35), and less meddling by the United States:

Recommendation 37: Iraqi amnesty proposals must not be undercut in Washington by either the executive or the legislative branch.

As part of national reconciliation, the report proposes the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) of the militias:

The use of force by the government of Iraq is appropriate and necessary to stop militias that act as death squads or use violence against institutions of the state. However, solving the problem of militias requires national reconciliation.

…

Because the United States is a party to the conflict, the U.S. military should not be involved in implementing such a program. [pp.68-69]

The report recommends the presence of neutral international experts, who have significant experience from previous civil wars, to facilitate the DDR of militias [recommendation 38]. It is Mr. Bush’s failure to recognize the conflict for what it is that has prevented this essential step in national reconciliation from taking place.

While the report, in my opinion, errs in the area of training security forces, it nonetheless does offer one very important and necessary recommendation:

Recommendation 50: The entire Iraqi National Police should be transferred to the Ministry of Defense, where the police commando units will become part of the new Iraqi Army.

This recommendation is important for two reasons. First, the Iraqi National Police is geared toward counterinsurgency and not police work. Therefore, it does not belong under the Ministry of Interior. The Iraqi Police Service, which does police work, is the appropriate force to be under the Ministry of Interior. Second and more importantly, by moving the Iraqi National Police out from under the MOI (which is under Shia militia control), Shia militia control of the force is diluted. It should come as no surprise that SCIRI has condemned this recommendation so harshly.

The ISG report is focused on bringing parties into the national reconciliation process. This is something the Bush Administration should have been pursuing from the start. The report makes overtures toward the Shia nationalists (Sadrists) as well as the Iraqi Sunnis, the ethnic minority. It does point to the essential formula of a future stable Iraq, if one is to emerge from this chaos. In any national reconciliation, the stronger group must make accomodations to include the weaker group if peace is to be the outcome. The report thus recognizes the importance of bringing the Iraqi Sunnis into the dialogue. This is in marked contrast to the "80% solution" being contemplated by the Bush Administration. It seems to me, that taken together, the national reconciliation and the regional diplomacy proposed by the report set the groundwork for an American withdrawal from Iraq.

Upon reading the full report, one wonders why the recommendations of the report have not already been tried by the Bush Administration in the last 3 years. One wonders what they have been doing the last 3 years. While the American military have been taking casualties, it appears that the White House has been out to lunch. That is the result of ignoring reality in favor of ideology.

While it is debatable if  "success" was ever in the cards once Mr. Bush made the ill-informed and ill-conceived decision to invade Iraq, the ISG report makes it clear that whatever hope of  "success" might have existed in Iraq was out of reach for this most incompetent of administrations. That will be the legacy of this report - exposing George W Bush for his incompetence in Iraq the way the television pictures from New Orleans exposed George W Bush’s incompetence in protecting the American people at home.

On Monday President Bush is scheduled to meet Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Mr. Hakim is to get the full treatment topped off with a White House meeting with Mr. Bush. On the heels of Mr. Bush’s ill-conceived summit meeting with beleaguered Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki comes another ill-conceived meeting with the head of the Badr Brigade militia in Iraq. Either Mr. Bush is involved in a bit of Machiavellian mischief in Iraq or he is utterly ignorant.

Mr. Hakim’s upcoming White House visit is remarkable and troubling. It marks the point where the President of the United States has become personally and publicly involved in the domestic politics of Iraq. It also marks the first time in this conflict that the President of the United States will host the leader of death squads in Iraq. I think it is safe to say that we have come a long way since Vietnam - a conflict in which the President of the United States was deciding which hill to bomb. In Iraq, the President of the United States is deciding which death squad to back.

Mr. Hakim’s SCIRI was formed by Iran in 1982 as a Shia insurgency group during the Iran-Iraq war. SCIRI was formed with the Hakim family at its center. While most Iraqi Shia fought against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war, SCIRI was the only group of Shia that supported Iran. SCIRI has since been funded by Iran while its military wing, the Badr Brigade, has been armed and trained by Tehran. Since the American invasion of Iraq, the Badr Brigade has taken over the Iraqi Ministry of Interior. One of the leaders of the Badr Brigade, Bayan Jabr, was until recently the Minister of Interior, in charge of the police forces. His police, that is the Badr Brigade, are largely responsible for the many tortured corpses that turn up on the streets of Baghdad:

In May 2005, Shiite militia groups in Iraq began depositing corpses into the streets and garbage dumps of Baghdad. The victims, overwhelmingly Sunni, were typically found blindfolded and handcuffed, their corpses showing signs of torture—broken skulls, burn marks, gouged-out eyeballs, electric drill holes; by that October, the death toll attributed to such groups had grown to more than 500. In November, American troops discovered more than 160 beaten, whipped, and starved prisoners—again, mostly Sunni—at a secret detention center run by the country’s Interior Ministry. Since then, Shiite militias have become so integrated into the Iraqi government’s security apparatus and their work so organized, systematic, and targeted that they are commonly referred to in Iraq (and in the American media) by their proper name: death squads. The death squads, which have expanded their area of operations from the capital across much of the country, are now believed to be responsible for more civilian deaths than the Sunni and foreign insurgents who are the United States’ ostensible enemies there. By any reasonable measure, Iraq is in a state of civil war, and some of its most ruthless and lawless combatants are members of the government’s own security units.

…

The rise of the death squads corresponds almost precisely to the April 2005 appointment of Bayan Jabr as interior minister in Iraq’s transitional government. The Interior Ministry, which is something like a combined FBI and Department of Homeland Security, controls billions of dollars and more than 100,000 men in police and paramilitary units. Jabr was a former high-ranking member of the Iranian-backed Badr Brigade, the military arm of the fundamentalist Shiite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) that is now the dominant political force in the country. After taking over the Interior Ministry, he quickly purged it of Sunnis, and members of the Badr Brigade were widely incorporated into the ministry’s police and paramilitary units.

Jabr—who in May of this year was named finance minister in a new government headed by Nuri al-Maliki—has disavowed any personal or institutional responsibility for violence committed by the death squads. He has now acknowledged that some groups operated within the Interior Ministry while he headed it, but he insists that they were few in number; he blames much of the sectarian killing on terrorists “using the clothes of the police or the military.” At a press conference last November that followed the discovery of the torture chamber in an Interior Ministry building, Jabr said, “You can be proud of our forces. [They] respect human rights.” (For this article, Jabr did not respond to requests for comment sent to his press office in Iraq.)

Mr. Jabr is just a small taste of the violent nature of the secretive Badr Brigade. While Moqtada al-Sadr’s rag-tag Mahdi Army gets all the press, the well-trained and battle hardened Badr Brigade continue their killing machine with ruthless efficiency.

While SCIRI and the Sadrists are both involved in sectarian violence against Iraqi Sunnis, there are significant and important differences between the two forces. While SCIRI is a pro-Iranian Shia party, the Sadrists are Shia nationalists. The goal of SCIRI, as its name pretty much gives away (Note to Mr. Bush: READ), is to form an Islamic republic in Iraq, and failing that, to form an Islamic state in the south of Iraq. Moqtada al-Sadr’s group, on the other hand, opposes any partition of Iraq. The politics of SCIRI and the Sadrists flow from their respective religious ideologies. SCIRI follows the Qom School of Shia thought, while the Sadrists follow the Najaf School (or quietist approach) of Shia thought. Briefly, the Qom School, that is the Iranian approach, believes that the state should be run by the ulema, the Muslim clerics. The Najaf School, followed by most Iraqi Shia, believes in "quietism", which believes that the ulema should not directly govern but have influence on the government. These two schools of thought are incompatible, and therein lies the conflict between the Iranian-backed SCIRI and the nationalist Shia movement of Sadr. If Iraq is to come through the meat grinder, it is the nationalist Sadrists and the nationalist Sunnis who will have to reconcile; the SCIRI will be left to the mercy of their Iranian backers.

Mr. Bush’s desperate grasp at "diplomacy" is once again ill-conceived. If the goal is to reach out to Iran to resolve the crisis in Iraq, giving legitimacy to its proxy in Iraq is not the best approach. Mr. Bush first must decide what the goal of American foreign policy in the region should be. I don’t believe it should be the expansion of Iranian hegemony into Iraq. Throwing American support behind SCIRI, and no doubt a high profile visit by Hakim to the White House signals American support of SCIRI, is a dangerous course of action. Iran certainly has a legitimate interest in a stable Iraq and the removal of American forces. That should be a starting point of dialogue with Tehran. The starting point should not be support for the Iranian clergy’s puppets in Baghdad. That kind of approach makes an already weak George W Bush look weaker.

In his knee-jerk attempt to isolate Moqtada al-Sadr, Mr. Bush apparently is throwing his weight behind the next Shia he sees. But, that has always been the problem with George W Bush. His bubble is very small and populated with only a few actors. It is this kind of narrow and myopic vision that has led him domestically to cronyism, such as his ill-fated nominations of Harriet Miers and Bernard Kerik, and internationally to charlatans and death squad leaders, such as his backing of Ahmad Chalabi and now Abdul Aziz al-Hakim.

We should demand some curiosity from the leader of the free world. Tomorrow, when the President of the United States shakes hands with a death squad leader and an Iranian puppet, we should all ponder how far the Decider has fallen from his grand visions of democracy in Iraq.

The Bush Administration has effectively signed Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s Death Warrant. The memo from National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley that undermined the Bush-Maliki summit in Jordan has now made Nouri al-Maliki a marked man in Iraq. Whether that was the intention of the leaked memo is unclear, but it will certainly be its effect, regardless of whether Maliki meets Mr. Bush or not.

Most of the reporting on the memo has focused on the aspects which have called into question Mr. Maliki’s commitment or his competence. Those parts of the memo may have been designed to embarrass Mr. Maliki, however the parts that deal with what the United States wants Mr. Maliki to do are the most explosive. It is these latter parts that most likely contributed to Mr. Maliki’s snub of Mr. Bush.

The memo proposes that Maliki create a new political support base independent of the Dawa party and Moqtada al-Sadr. The memo proposes steps that Maliki should take, as well as support that the United States will provide, to achieve this end:

There is a range of actions that Maliki could take to improve the information he receives, demonstrate his intentions to build an Iraq for all Iraqis and increase his capabilities. … Maliki should:

…

Bring his political strategy with Moktada al-Sadr to closure and bring to justice any JAM actors that do not eschew violence;

…

If Maliki is willing to move decisively on the actions above, we can help him in a variety of ways. We should be willing to:

…

If it is Maliki’s assessment that he does not have the capability — politically or militarily — to take the steps outlined above, we will need to work with him to augment his capabilities. We could do so in two ways. First, we could help him form a new political base among moderate politicians from Sunni, Shia, Kurdish and other communities. Ideally, this base would constitute a new parliamentary bloc that would free Maliki from his current narrow reliance on Shia actors. (This bloc would not require a new election, but would rather involve a realignment of political actors within the Parliament). In its creation, Maliki would need to be willing to risk alienating some of his Shia political base and may need to get the approval of Ayatollah Sistani for actions that could split the Shia politically. Second, we need to provide Maliki with additional forces of some kind.

This approach would require that we take steps beyond those laid out above, to include:

Actively support Maliki in helping him develop an alternative political base. We would likely need to use our own political capital to press moderates to align themselves with Maliki’s new political bloc;

Consider monetary support to moderate groups that have been seeking to break with larger, more sectarian parties, as well as to support Maliki himself as he declares himself the leader of his bloc and risks his position within Dawa and the Sadrists;

…

We should waste no time in our efforts to determine Maliki’s intentions and, if necessary, to augment his capabilities. We might take the following steps immediately:

…

Tell Maliki that we understand that he is working his own strategy for dealing with the Sadrists and that:

• you have asked General Casey to support Maliki in this effort

• it is important that we see some tangible results in this strategy soon;

Nouri al-Maliki is being asked to sever his ties with the Dawa party to which he owes his loyalties for most of his life and to undercut his power base by throwing Moqtada al-Sadr under a bus. To add to this fanciful agenda, Hadley suggests this absurd gem at the end of the memo:

If Maliki seeks to build an alternative political base:

• Press Sunni and other Iraqi leaders (especially Hakim) [Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Maliki rival] to support Maliki

• Engage Sistani to reassure and seek his support for a new nonsectarian political movement.

I will just make two brief observations here. First, trading Moqtada al-Sadr for Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, SCIRI and the Badr Brigade is not exactly moving in the right direction. I should add that al-Hakim was the head of SCIRI’s Badr Brigade and that SCIRI is Iranian backed and believes that Iraq should be ruled as a Shia Islamic state. Second, the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani does not exactly believe in a nonsectarian political movement. He believes that Iraq should be rightly ruled by the Shia majority.

The notion that Maliki wants to be Washington’s man in Baghdad is misplaced and it has been misplaced from the start. Maliki is a prominent member of the Dawa party which has a long history of anti-Western activities. When Maliki was first chosen as Prime Minister in April of this year, amid all the euphoria, I wrote the following:

Lost in all the euphoria at seeing progress in Iraq is whether or not this is progress in the right direction for Iraq or the United States. I had written in an earlier article that the likely replacement for al-Jaafari would either come from his own Dawa party or from the SCIRI. I had also suggested that neither outcome would be a positive outcome. We now have our answer. Ibrahim al-Jaafari has been replaced by another Dawa party member albeit one that is more hard-line. In fact while Ibrahim al-Jaafari has been the titular head of the Shiite alliance, al-Maliki has done all the heavy lifting. It is no surprise then that he would ascend to the Premiership.

Jawad al-Maliki has been the spokesman for the Dawa party and the Shiite alliance. He was involved in the drafting of the Iraqi Constitution and more significantly was a member of the de-Baathification committee set up by the United States. He has been a critic of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and has close ties with the Shiite militias, especially the Mahdi Army.

…

After pushing hard for al-Jaafari’s ouster, the United States has gotten a more pro-Iranian Dawa party member. We have certainly come full circle in the Middle East. We have put in power in Iraq a person Saddam Hussein had sentenced to death. We have put in power a person who was involved in terrorist activities against not only Iraq but also Western and American targets in the Middle East. We have put in power a party, the Dawa party, that invented the modern suicide car bombing - a party that was involved in bombing the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait and in the killing of 241 U.S. Marines in Beirut.

We have brought democracy to the Middle East. We have handed over Iraq to an Iranian nurtured and funded Islamist alliance (Dawa and SCIRI). I do not believe this is what the American people bargained for when we embarked on the invasion of Iraq. If we are holding out the hope that these Islamist parties whose stated goal is to bring about an Islamist revolution in Iraq will somehow smell the sweet scent of Democracy and become torchbearers of freedom and liberty, we are likely to be as disappointed as Dick Cheney was when we were not greeted as liberators. This is a far cry from the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction and the defeat of al Qaeda.

There was no reason to suspect, even back then, that Maliki would actively work against al-Sadr and the Mahdi Army. Unsurprisingly, the Bush Administration ignored reality in pursuit of a fantastical agenda of misplaced hope and ignorant ideology.

Today, having failed to ride Maliki to "victory" in Iraq, the Administration has chosen to undermine him. They have called him out as their patsy. They have designated him as their man to break apart the Shia hold on Iraq. I doubt that those who are the targets of Washington’s plan, the Dawa party and Moqtada al-Sadr, will take too kindly to Mr. Maliki upon his return to Baghdad. With the leaked memo, Washington has ensured Mr. Maliki’s political demise, and perhaps his death as well. Mr. Maliki’s demise will also ensure that future Iraqi leaders will keep their distance from Washington, lest they suffer the same fate.

So, it is unsurprising that Mr. Maliki had no appetite for dinner with Mr. Bush in Amman. When he finally does sit down to breakfast with Mr. Bush, it may very well be his last meal.

The talk of Washington is the Iraq Study Group. Everyone, including the Democrats, is waiting for the two beltway sages, James Baker and Lee Hamilton, to rescue them from the chaos in Iraq. You will recall that some time ago Washington was eagerly awaiting a similar sounding group, the Iraq Survey Group, to rescue George W Bush from his temper tantrum in Iraq, although in a different way. The Iraq Survey Group failed to find any Weapons of Mass Destruction (remember them?) buried in the Iraqi desert, so now its successor, the Iraq Study Group will try to dig out George W Bush’s legacy from the sands of Iraq.

George W Bush, however, is not so easily saved. Rumor has it that Barney has blessed the "stay the course" strategy in Iraq. While others see civil war in Iraq, Mr. Bush and Barney see a mission in need of completion:

President Bush, rejecting what he called "pessimistic" assessments of his Middle East policy, pledged Tuesday to make necessary changes in Iraq but vowed never to pull out U.S. troops before completing the mission there.

…

Bush said, "We will continue to be flexible, and we’ll make the changes necessary to succeed. But there’s one thing I’m not going to do. I’m not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete."

The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are "part of a struggle between moderation and extremism that is unfolding across the broader Middle East," he said. "And in this struggle, we can accept nothing less than victory for our children and our grandchildren."

Apparently, the mission in Iraq has been "accomplished" but not yet "completed".

Save Mr. Bush’s determination to achieve "victory", the parlor game in Washington is all about when the United States will withdraw and how much damage will be caused, both to the United States and to Iraq, before the withdrawal takes place. Now that the mainstream media has started calling the Iraq Civil War a civil war, we can also now discuss what the possible outcomes of this war will be and what role, if any, the United States should play in that outcome.

In order to not be left out of the parlor game, I offer below my thoughts on the future of Iraq.

Last summer Harvard Professor Monica Toft discussed the three possible ways civil wars can end in an article for the Nieman Watchdog Journalism Project:

Civil wars end in one of three ways: (1) negotiated settlement; (2) partition; or (3) military victory. U.S. support for any of these options comes with considerable costs and only a slim possibility of an outcome that advances U.S. interests beyond what they were at the close of Saddam Hussein’s rule in April of 2003.

She does not see a negotiated settlement as a long term solution in Iraq:

In a negotiated settlement, warring factions agree both to end violence and to become partners in a new government. Although negotiated settlements are the most popular policy option (promising high short-term benefits and low risk), they may not be best if we want a permanent settlement to civil war.

…

A negotiated settlement is what the U.S. has attempted to implement for the last two years in Iraq and it has failed. The process of writing and adopting a constitution and electing a president and parliament were all designed to give each of Iraq’s different communities a say in the government. Although the Kurds and the Shiites fully participated in the process, the Sunnis did not.

…

A key factor in the failure of negotiated settlements has been that both sides maintain a capacity to harm each other by force of arms, and because the fighting has not reached a clear outcome, both sides can claim legitimacy in their pre-cease-fire resort to violence. Negotiated settlements by their very design leave a state’s offices divided, both in terms of physical infrastructure and human capital. … The bottom line is that most often civil wars ended by negotiated settlement re-ignite within five years, often leading to escalated violence and destruction (and not inconsequently increasing levels of authoritarianism). This is Iraq today.

She also does not see partition as a viable option in Iraq:

Theoretically, partition is an ideal way to end a civil war and keep it ended; especially when that violence involves identity groups that live in largely separate enclaves.

…

In effect, Iraq is becoming partitioned today, with the Kurds maintaining their grip on the north and the Sunnis and Shiites consolidating their control over the west and south respectively. The unmixing of mixed neighborhoods in Baghdad is only consolidating the populations into concentrated and mutually hostile enclaves. Concentrated enclaves turn out to be one of the most dangerous settlement patterns of ethnic and religious groups in terms of the likelihood of violence and civil war. Think of Chechnya, which continues to fight Russia for independence.

…

Partition of Iraq would work only if two conditions held: (1) the parties were consolidated into internationally recognized states and Iraq’s resources were distributed in a way that made each state economically viable; and (2) the partition into independent states was enforced by a generation of occupation by skilled and politically well-supported troops (preferably Muslims). Given that Iraq’s Sunni minority has been implicated in decades of persecution of both Kurds and Shiites, getting Kurds and Shiites to agree to support creation of a viable Sunni state will be difficult to achieve. Moreover, one can hardly imagine a third party both capable and willing to maintain an occupation of Iraq for twenty years to insure the interests of each of the parties, but this is what would need to be done. … Finally, given the long-standing reluctance of the international community to support partition as a general solution to civil wars, the U.S. is unlikely to find much support for partition from its allies. Regional actors will be even more intransigent: Kurds, for example, currently inhabit four of the region’s states (Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey). These bordering states would steadfastly resist the creation of an independent Kurdistan.

She sees victory by one of the warring sides as a more lasting option:

A final option is military victory: one side in civil war – rebels or incumbents – demonstrably defeats the other side by force of arms. Military victory is not only the most common type of civil war outcome historically, but also the one which most often results in enduring peace: military victories are far less likely to break down than are negotiated settlements. 

…

The U.S. can choose to support either the Sunnis or Shiites. Supporting either side to achieve victory would be difficult and costly in terms of time, taking as long as a decade to succeed given Iraq’s porous borders and the support each of the sides receives from across those borders.

Supporting one of the two sides in the civil war comes at a cost of tipping the regional balance of power either toward the Arabs or toward Iran.

Finally, she suggests the throwaway option of pulling out of Iraq and letting the chips fall where they may. She also suggests a way that Mr. Bush could walk away and declare victory:

Having gone to Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein, the U.S. has discovered that what the people of Iraq wanted most was to be free of Saddam Hussein; but once free (a negative objective), positive objectives varied. The Shiites wanted representation in the control of Iraq commensurate with their population (and many wanted revenge for the persecution they suffered under Sunni rule). The Sunnis wanted to maintain their preferential status. The Kurds wanted their own state. To the extent that the war in Iraq, under U.S. auspices, has become a civil war, the civil war itself represents the success of a U.S. policy of bringing freedom to the people of Iraq.

Although Professor Toft’s listing of the three outcomes of civil wars is sound, she only discusses the three options in the context of an American occupation. She does not discuss fully the throwaway option of an American pullout, and what the three possible outcomes in Iraq then look like. To me, the latter discussion is much more interesting and more relevant since the United States has, dare I say, decided to pull out of Iraq.

I think there is a strong case to be made that the American presence in Iraq is fueling the civil war by delaying its resolution. That is not to say that the United States has effective control of the situation on the ground - it does not, but the presence of American troops gives the respective parties cover to arm and consolidate control of areas of the country. Without a doubt, the American presence guarantees that the Kurds in the north are able to consolidate their hold on Kirkuk and beef up the peshmerga. The American presence also allows the Shia factions to consolidate power in the various arms of the government, especially the security forces. The American forces also act as a buffer between the Shia and the Sunni by providing some measure of protection to the Sunni community to arm and consolidate their power in the western parts of Iraq. The American presence has also allowed the systematic ethnic cleansing of Iraq by Shia, Sunni and the Kurds. The ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods in Baghdad and other parts of the country has now effectively drawn geographical battle lines in Iraq’s civil war. The American presence also holds together a fractious Shia coalition that would otherwise collapse, and probably needs to if Iraq is to survive as a nation.

It seems to me that it is essential that the United States pull out of Iraq. After an American pullout, the Iraqi civil war may start to resolve itself. The Iraqi civil war has regional implications. Those regional forces can, without the constraints of American occupation, begin to pull Iraq toward a resolution.

As cited above, one possible outcome is military victory by one warring side. The conventional wisdom is that if the Americans leave the Shia will prevail in a civil war by virtue of their majority. I do not believe that is likely to occur for three reasons. First, the Sunni Arab countries of the region would see a Shia victory in Iraq as an expansion of Iranian hegemony into Arab territory. Without an American presence, the Sunni Arabs are likely to get significant support from regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Syria. The risk of a regional conflagration is likely to dampen any hopes of a Shia military victory in Iraq. Second, the Shia in Iraq are fractured between pro-Iranian groups such as SCIRI and more nationalistic Shia such as the Sadrists. Moqtada al-Sadr, like his father the Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr, represents an Iraqi nationalist Shia movement. Sadr’s Shia movement and the Mahdi Army are likely to come into open conflict with the Iranian backed SCIRI and the Badr Brigade when the American occupation ends. Al Maliki’s Dawa Party sits in the uncomfortable middle between Sadr and SCIRI while being at the mercy of both. With an American exit, the Dawa Party is likely to see its fortunes dwindle. Lastly, the Shia cannot prevail over both the Sunni and the Kurds. Any military victory by the Shia would have to accept an independent state in the Kurdish north.

The other possible outcome of a civil war is partition. However, any partition of Iraq that leaves the Kurds with an oil-rich independent country in the north of Iraq will be fiercely opposed by Turkey, and to a lesser extent by Iran and Syria. Turkey has between 25 to 30 millions Kurds who have been long persecuted. Any Kurdish country to Turkey’s east will endanger Turkish territorial integrity and will be a non-starter. The Sunnis in the west and center of Iraq also cannot form a viable country without having access to the oil rich north and south of Iraq. There is no three country map that can be carved out of Iraq that does not deny one of the group’s much needed oil revenue.

The only remaining outcome for Iraq is then a negotiated settlement. The negotiated settlement may however come after an attempt at all out military victory is fought to a stalemate. The negotiated settlement will happen not because it is the preferred outcome, but because it is the only viable outcome. A negotiated settlement will certainly have to include the major regional players such as Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey. The negotiated settlement will come after realization by the Arab states, and acceptance by Iran, that Iraq is, and historically has been, the Arab bulwark against Persian influence. Iran will find once again that the Iraqi Shia are not Iran’s fifth column in Iraq. An American departure from Iraq will eventually lead to a restoration of the balance of power in the region between the Arabs and the Iranians.

The Kurds of Iraq will once again be denied an independent homeland. But that denial will likely come at a price for Turkey. Turkey may be forced to give autonomy to its Kurds as a condition for Kurdish guarantee of Iraq’s territorial integrity.

The Iraq that is likely to emerge through the meat grinder of civil war will owe its stability to a regional need for stability, not to some gift of freedom given by George W Bush. Ironically, Mr. Bush is likely to see this precarious yet stable Iraq emerge from the ashes of his failed policy. Yet, it will emerge because Mr. Bush will finally have left it alone, and not because of his efforts at playing puppet master to the Arabs.

This week marks the beginning of the Iraqi Civil War. The American mission in Iraq is over. We can either stay and fight everyone, pick sides, or leave. No choice open to America now will improve the situation on the ground.

The events kicked off by the Samarra bombing have now been book-ended by the attack on the mosque in Baghdad. We have entered the fray in a big way with the attack on the mosque. Images of the dead lying in a prayer room in the mosque and reports that the 80-year-old imam of the mosque has also been killed are being beamed continuously to everyone with a TV and electricity in Iraq. The American military’s protestations that the mosque was not entered will fall on deaf ears. We have no credibility there - not only because we are not trusted, but also because we have been unable or unwilling to stop the bloodletting there.

The ingredient missing from Iraq’s slide into civil war was mainstream outrage and anger and an embracing of the sectarian militias as the only guarantors of security. We have, perhaps unwittingly, provided the last piece of the puzzle and now the civil war picture is complete.