"I think we are winning. Okay? I think we're definitely winning. I think we've been winning for some time." - Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Iraq War 04/26/05
"I just wonder if they will ever tell us the truth." - Harold Casey, Louisville, KY, October 2004.
Gareth Porter warns that the US-Shiite Struggle Could Spin Out of Control Inter Press Service 12/27/05. He pulls together a number of pieces of information to argue that the Bush administration is in a high-stakes political struggle with the Shi'a-dominated regime in Baghdad to professionalizes its internal security services and make them into truly national institutions.
As others have observed and Porter's article reminds us, the US could wind up being overtly and actively opposed by the Iraqi government. And it could happen within months.
But at the moment, the administration is using things like the Iraqi torture houses to bring public pressure inside and outside Iraq on the Shi'a parties to broaden the control of the security services:
The looming confrontation is the result of U.S. concerns about the takeover of the Interior Ministry by Shiites with close ties to Iran, as well as the impact of officially sanctioned sectarian violence against Sunnis who support the insurgency. The Shiite leaders, however, appear determined to hold onto the state's organs of repression as a guarantee against restoration of a Baathist regime.
The new turn in U.S. policy came in mid-November, when the administration decided to confront Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari publicly over the torture houses being run by Shiite officials in the Ministry of Interior at various locations in Baghdad.
The decision was not the result of a new revelation, because the U.S military command and U.S. Embassy had known about such torture houses for months, from reporting by U.S. military officers. ...
[After the US raid on a torture house on Nov.13,] The embassy then used the torture house revelation to issue a public demand that the militant Shiite parties give up their power over the key state security organs. On Nov. 17, the embassy said, "There must not be militia or sectarian control or direction of Iraqi Security Forces, facilities or ministries."
As Porter recounts, the administration has pressed the Shi'a parties before over the security services. They had a face-down, and Bush blinked:
Nevertheless, [US Ambassador Zalmay] Khalilzad still has the Kurdish card to play. The UIA will need the support of the Kurds to form a new government, and the Kurds, whose military alliance with the United States is central to their political strategy, have now signaled that they will demand the inclusion of Sunni representatives in the government. ...
The last time the UIA was in the process of trying to form a government after the first parliamentary election in January, Kurdish demands played a major role in delaying the formation of the new government for three months. That Kurdish negotiating strategy dovetailed with U.S. efforts to exert pressure on Shiite leaders to allow former Baathist officers to keep leading positions in the military and Ministry of Interior.
When the SCIRI leadership refused to back down on control over the Interior Ministry, the Bush administration relented rather than create a political crisis. This time, however, the stakes are higher. If sectarian violence continues to worsen, the White House risks a collapse of political support at home. And the administration has already warned publicly that it will not accept a continuation of the status quo.
This Knight-Ridder report is not encouraging, either: Kurds in Iraqi army proclaim loyalty to militia by Tom Lasseter 12/27/05. See also Pat Lang's comments on it in his post "Old Wine in New Bottles" Sic Semper Tyrannis blog 12/28/05.
Juan Cole's recent post on what he ses as ten myths of the Iraq War is a useful piece to read in connection with Porter's article: Top Ten Myths About Iraq in 2005 Informed Comment blog 12/27/05. Cole is making a plea for realism in judging what's happening in Iraq, and not letting one's own prowar or antiwar positions lead us into wishful thinking.
Cole, who personally experienced the Lebanese civil war, thinks it's an exaggeration and misjudgment to call the current levels of sectarian conflict a civil war. He also continues to argue that although Ayatollah Sistani insists on Islamic law (sharia) being enforced, Sistani does not favor Iranian-style clerical domination. Cole suggests that the leading Shi'a parties, SCIRI and Da'wa, are notably more pro-Iranian and more in favor of Iranian-style governance than Sistani is.
The Iranian connection can be spun so many different ways that it's especially hard to judge individual news stories on that. What seems very clear is that the dominan t Shi'a parties have strong ties to Iran. One report that I haven't seen convincingly refuted, claimed that an Iranian interrogation specialist was supervising the torture operations being conducted by the Iraqi Interior Minister. (Critical scrutiny is required on all such stories.)
But it's also not as though Iran is going to annex the Shi'a provinces of Iraq. The new government, when it is formed, can be expected to be cooperative with Iran, not subordinate to it.
Liberals and libertarian war critics have been looking with various levels of chagrin and/or bitterness at the pro-Iranian slant of the new Iraqi regime and at the imposition of sharia. Both are genuinely negative developments for the United States. US leverage on Iran over issues of terrorism and nuclear proliferation as been seriously compromised by the US war in Iraq. The fact that someone from Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress group leaked signals intelligence to Iran didn't help either.
Teheran knows that a US invasion of Iran is infeasible as long as the Army's being stretched to the breaking point (or beyond) in a counterinsurgency war in Iraq, they have tremendous potential to cause trouble for American troops in Iraq if the US attacks Iran or presses Iran too hard.
Not all forms of sharia are as extreme as that practiced by the Taliban in Afghanistan or that in force in Iran. But even the milder forms can seriously disadvantage women. And it often features abusive curbs on freedom of expression, such as outlawing blasphemy or criminalizing proselyzation of Muslims by adherents of other faiths, i.e., mostly Christians.
Christians in Iraq are already felling pressures against practicing their religion that are more serious than under Saddam's reign.
"Wars are easy to get into, but hard as hell to get out of." - George McGovern and Jim McGovern 06/06/05
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