Informed Comment

Polk Guest Editorial: Pros and Cons of ISG

The Baker-Hamilton Study: Pluses and Minuses

William R. Polk

‘In recent days, as you know, there has been a great deal of publicity on the Baker-Hamilton plan for dealing with the problems the United States faces in Iraq and for restarting the peace process on the Palestine problem. I have found, however, very little analysis of the plan in the press. Clearly, it focuses on issues so important , one is tempted to use that often misused term “vital,” not only for Americans but for the whole world that it deserves the closest possible scrutiny. As you will see in the following comment, I find serious weaknesses in it. The most serious is that it sets out objectives or desires without identifying feasible means to achieve them.

In the last few days, various moves have been made by the Bush administration that call into question its serious evaluation of Baker-Hamilton. One that received a great deal of attention is the announcement of its intent to add another 20,000 troops to the American contingent in Iraq. Those of us who remember Vietnam will hear echoes. There we were told time after time that just a few more thousand troops and a few more months would lead us to “victory. One difference from Vietnam is of critical importance. It is that there we were not seriously considering, as apparently we are, further action in another country. Today, there are signs that we have hovered on the brink of war with Iran for at least the last six months. As you may know, I have written on this danger on my website (www.williampolk .com). I think we are edging closer. Among the signs – and there are many — that point in this direction is one that I do not find reported in the American press: the Selective Service System announced three days ago that it is preparing its first test since 1998 of the draft.

All the above considerations make a careful consideration of American options on the Middle East a prime civic duty for all Americans. These include the detailed plan which Senator George McGovern and I developed in Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now (New York: Simon and Schuster, October 2006) and the Baker-Hamilton study, The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward – A New Approach (New York: Vintage, December 2006). Mr. Hamilton graciously wrote to say that “The report has helped to spark a renewed debate about the direction of U.S. policy, and he appreciates the substantial contribution that you and Senator McGovern have made to that debate.” Our book speaks for itself; here I want to [analyze] the Baker-Hamilton Plan:

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The most important positive element in the Baker-Hamilton study is to focus attention on the central predicament of the Middle East – the Arab-Israeli problem. Like a cancer, this issue has infected Middle Eastern affairs for over half a century. No American administration has chosen to attack it head-on. Simply giving Israel a blank check to do anything it decides to do is not an American policy. Indeed, as many thoughtful Israelis have pointed out, it is bound to bring out the worst in Israeli politics. For alerting the government and the public to the need to do something to solve or at least put into remission this problem is important and for doing so Baker-Hamilton deserves praise.

However, there are two minuses on this issue: Baker-Hamilton does not give more than a hint as to what an intelligent American policy would involve. The only concrete step it proposes is indirect – to return the Golan Heights to Syria – in the hope that the Syrians will then help persuade the Palestinians to opt for peace. As in other parts of Baker-Hamilton, this is to replace objectives or desires for means to achieve them. The Palestinians have their own agenda which arise from such issues, which Baker-Hamilton does not address, as illegal settlements, release of the 10,000 or so long-term prisoners in Israeli camps, severe and growing restrictions on the ability of Palestinians to work, move or even remain in their homes. Land for peace is a good slogan, but it is apparently not supported in Israel and probably is no longer regarded as feasible by Palestinians. Moreover, the explicit support for Mahmud Abbas rather than the group that won the last election, Hamas, will be seen by most Palestinians as an attempt to divide them. Finally, here as in the rest of the study, Baker-Hamilton fails to lay out concrete steps much less indicate what such steps would require, how much they would cost, what the likelihood of success for each would be or indicate their cumulative effect. What they have done is merely to indicate a goal, not the means to reach that goal.

The second positive element in Baker-Hamilton is their suggestion that America turn toward diplomacy in its relations with Iran and Syria.

Baker-Hamilton put this suggestion in the context of America’s desire to solve the Iraq dilemma. That is an understandable desire. But it is not a policy. It does not lay out a means to achieve our desire. Moreover, even the desire rests on intelligence appreciations that are weak or even unlikely. Briefly put, they include these:

First, why should Iran or even Syria wish to assist America in solving the Iraq problem? Baker-Hamilton suggests that Syria be “bought” by the return of the Golan Heights which the Syrians believe are legally theirs, but there is little reason to believe that the Syrian government puts so much emphasis on getting back the Golan Heights that it would radically alter its policies. Those policies arise in part at least from considerations that have nothing to do with the Golan Heights. Any Syrian and most outside observers will affirm that the lodestar of the Syrian government is fear of America. Thus, unless or until the United States forswears its often repeated proclamations that point toward invasion of Syria, change of its regime, and ostracizing it for alleged support of terrorism, the Syrians have insufficient reason to help America in any fashion. Moreover, the Syrians observed that in the conflict between Lebanon and Israel, the United States treated Israel as a surrogate military force; so, whether right or wrong, the Syrians would almost certainly require some sort of guarantee that it will not use force itself or allow Israel again do so before even considering helping the United States even if, which is doubtful, it could in any appreciable degree dampen the Iraqi insurgency or put a stop to the Palestinian resistance.

Iran, similarly, must see that a solution to America’s mistakes in Iraq is more likely to be detrimental than beneficial to its national and governmental interests. The Bush administration has repeatedly told Iran that it is an enemy, the third member of the Axis of Evil, a suitable candidate for preemptive attack. Those pronouncements set out what the Bush administration wants. What has held back is that it could not carry out such an attack because it was bogged down in Iraq. Would a rational government wish to help America free up its military force which might then be used to attack it? Baker-Hamilton substantiates the Iranian belief that this is a possibility in its recommendation #18 which points to “resources that might become available as combat forces are moved from Iraq.” (See the March 2006 National Security Strategy of the United States of America for substantiation of this potential threat to Iran.)

Second, even if Iran wished to help the United States solve the Iraqi dilemma, could it do so? Baker-Hamilton not only does not address that question. The probable answer is that it has far less leverage in Iraq than Baker-Hamilton posit. During the Iraq-Iran war, the Iraqi Shiis fought determinedly against Iran. Moreover, the Iraqi Shiis are internally divided with many determined not to allow Iran to determine their agenda. Baker-Hamilton also fails to tell us what specifically it would want Iran to do. Presumably Baker-Hamilton wants the Iranians to tell the Iraqi Shiis to do what America wants them to do, but presumably the Iraqi Shiis do what they are doing from their estimate of what is fundamental to their interests or even to their survival. If this is so, it is unlikely that Iran can lead them to do otherwise. The idea that they are simply the puppets of Iran is based on an ignorance of history and current politics. Even if Baker-Hamilton believe America should make the attempt, it does not lay out a plan specifying what America would be willing to do to get Iran to act as it wishes. Simply to invite Iran to a conference is hardly a sufficient inducement. As with Syria, America would have to forswear in some meaningful way the threat of force. And, more difficult than with Syria, it would have to back off – and get Israel to back off – from its statements and threats on Iran’s acquisition of a nuclear capacity. Baker-Hamilton does not address these issues. My own belief is that the only feasible way they can be addressed now is serious movement toward both general and regional nuclear arms control. Regional nuclear arms control must involve Israel which has a huge nuclear arsenal. Is forcing a reluctant Israel into giving up some or all of its nuclear arsenal feasible for any American government? Baker-Hamilton does not even raise the question.

The third positive element in Baker-Hamilton is the admission that we need to get out of Iraq. The negative aspect of Baker-Hamilton is that it does not realistically face what that means. What it does, understandably given its origin and composition, is to attempt reach a compromise. Such compromises, of which diplomatic history affords many examples, are attractive because they preserve reputations, cover over mistakes and seem statesmanlike.

Baker-Hamilton’s chosen move is reduction of combat forces and their replacement by Iraqis. This is what the administrations of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon tried in Vietnam. In fact the numbers proposed are eerily similar. But is this a practical move in Iraq? Was it in Vietnam? Consider where we are in Iraq, mired down in an unwinnable war and where we were in Vietnam in 1968 when the Tet offensive had shown that we had failed militarily. It was not firepower that defeated us. It was politics. We could not “win” while our being there taints our surrogates. That is the reality to which we must adjust.

In our book, Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now (which was published shortly before Baker-Hamilton), George McGovern and I have urged that this be done cleanly, clearly, definitively and over a six months period. Baker-Hamilton thinks that it should be done piecemeal over a much longer but unspecified period. Why? Their argument is that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war and without the restraining hand of America troops there would be a bloodbath. Their proposal would cut down on combat forces but keep a large American training and advising force in Iraq.

We believe that such a force would inevitably be drawn into the fighting. In evaluating the Baker-Hamilton proposal, bear in mind that in Vietnam force reduction did not stop the war: in fact, in the following years as it was slowly implemented, almost 21,000 Americans were killed and over 50,000 were seriously wounded. Are Iraqi likely to stop fighting while we slowly reduce our combat troops but keep a significant presence of “advisers” to train – or as the insurgents will charge, control — Iraqi security forces? We find that hope highly unlikely.

Baker-Hamilton appears to recognize the weakness of this hope and so urges that while American combat units are reduced more attention be given to improving the quality of the Iraqi army. We strongly disagree as we said in our plan. Iraqi history shows that building an army is a dangerous strategy. It was, after all, the relative strength of the Iraqi army vis-à-vis such relatively weak institutions as representative government, an independent judiciary, a free press and “grass roots” organizations that caused coup d’état after coup and dictator after dictator. Thus, in the quest for a short-term solution to America’s Iraqi dilemma, Baker-Hamilton may have opted for long-term catastrophe.

A less costly, more acceptable (to the Iraqis) and more likely-to-succeed approach, Senator McGovern and I assert in our book Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now is to introduce into Iraq what we have called a “stabilization force.” That force, we argue, must be made up of non-Americans, drawn from mainly Arab and Muslim countries, working for the Iraq government but under the umbrella of the United Nations, with an American financial subvention. This force would operate in Iraq during the transitional period, when we can expect the current civil war to continue but also to gradually wind down. Is this just a pious hope? We think not. It has happened in all guerrilla wars during the last two centuries. Once the principal aim of the insurgents, usually to get the foreigners to leave, is met, the insurgency abates. Not immediately, to be sure, to meaningfully. During this period, with its sovereignty assured, it needs help: help to create minimal public security for schools, hospitals, government buildings etc. which is the role we propose for the multinational stability force, help in building an effective national police force, and help in getting the economy going so that the unemployed can earn decent livings and a significant portion of the refugees be lured back.

During this period, we advocate that the Iraqi army, on which we are spending $2.2 billion and which Baker-Hamilton finds (rightly) to be dysfunctional, be converted into what Iraq really needs, an organization somewhat like our Corps of Engineers. Such a group could provide the infrastructure on which an Iraqi economy could reconstitute itself.

Overall, we have proposed a series of programs to accomplish our objectives, given estimates of cost, analyzed the chances of success, provided a timetable, and shown how they would save the American tax payers about 97% of what the occupation is now costing. That is, we provide in our book exactly what Baker-Hamilton does not address, a practical plan to get us out of Iraq with the least possible damage to ourselves, to the Iraqis, and to America’s position in world affairs.

A key proposal in Baker-Hamilton is a regional conference. The idea of a regional conference sounds appealing. We all like the idea of sitting down together and thrashing out our differences. It appears sensible, positive, practical and “diplomatic.” But a review of all international gatherings since the 1814 Congress of Vienna shows that a conference is meaningless, or sometimes even counter-productive, unless fundamental issues either have been resolved or at least narrowed beforehand. Merely to meet to discuss an issue which is worrying one party but not the others, us but not them, is hardly a recipe for success. Put bluntly, a conference is not the first step, the means, but the last step, the ratification, of the process.

Baker-Hamilton states that there are four “alternative approaches for moving forward”– “Precipitate Withdrawal,” “Staying the Course,” “More Troops for Iraq” and “Devolution to Three Regions.”

Baker-Hamilton rejects precipitate withdrawal. We do too. The word “preci
pitate,” of course, gives the answer but obscures the question. Everyone agrees that the United States must withdraw. The question is when and under what conditions. In the action plan contained in Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now, we lay out a definite timetable and specify measures, each analyzed in terms of cost, effectiveness and likelihood of success, designed to bring about withdrawal in an orderly fashion with the least possible damage to American soldiers and interests and to Iraqis.

President Bush has repeatedly called for “staying the course” which Baker-Hamilton does not favor and recognizes will simply continue the casualties and huge expenditures without positive result. We agree.

The third alternative is to send in more troops. Baker-Hamilton believes that this will not work and will “hamper our ability to provide adequate resources for our efforts in Afghanistan or respond to crises around the world.” If we cannot control a small country, most of which is uninhabited desert, or contain a guerrilla force estimated at less than 20,000 with 150,000 American troops, it is just wishful thinking to believe we can do it with another 10,000 or so Americans. We agree with Baker-Hamilton on this. We also point to the history of Vietnam where we were told, time after time, that just a few tens of thousands more of American soldiers would bring victory. Victory proved elusive but casualties were ever-present.

The fourth scenario is to break up Iraq which, Baker-Hamilton believes (in our opinion rightly) would be a political, military and humanitarian disaster, which, should it happen, would require that the United States “manage the situation to ameliorate humanitarian consequences, contain the spread of violence, and minimize regional instability,” each of which is a likely result. As Baker-Hamilton rightly points out, the map showing Iraq divided into three areas is misleading: virtually every town and all cities are mixed. Thus, a division of Iraq would literally tear the society apart and would so “balkanize” it as to sow the seeds for future wars. Certainly, an independent Kurdistan would invite intervention from Turkey and possibly also from Iran.

Implicit throughout Baker-Hamilton is that stability must be achieved in Iraq before America can leave. History suggests that the sequence is wrong: only when the central objective of insurgents, usually getting the foreigners to leave, has been realized can “security” be attained. This is the lesson of insurgencies from the American Revolution against the British, the Spanish guerrilla against the French, Tito’s Yugoslav partisan war against the Germans, the Algerian war of national liberation from the French and so on. In each of these wars, to be sure, there was a period of chaos immediately after the foreigners pulled out — they had been unable to prevent chaos with their massive armies — but, once they were gone, the fighting died down.

Why did this happen and is it likely in Iraq? The answer was given to us by that great practitioner of guerrilla warfare, Mao Tse-tung: there are two elements in guerrilla wars, he said, the combatants and those who support them. He called the combatants the “fish” and their supporters “the water.” Without water, fish die. What has happened in guerrilla war after war is that the people, Mao’s “water,” get tired of the suffering that is inherent in guerrilla war and when the object for which they have sacrificed has been won, they don’t want to continue to sacrifice. So they stop supporting the “fish.” Then, one of two things happens: either some of the fish take over the government (which is the most common) and then themselves suppress the more radical combatants (as happened in America, Spain, Ireland, Yugoslavia, Algeria, etc.). The second possible outcome is that the combatants become outlaws or “warlords” (as happened in Afghanistan after the Afghans forced the Russians out). This is already happening under the guise of religious strife among Shia and Sunni Muslims in Iraq. Foreigners cannot prevent this; the only way it can be prevented, or at least the only way it has ever been prevented or stopped, is by natives. They can be helped, however, as we have urged in our plan with an international stabilization force during the period when a national police, no longer tainted by appearing to be collaborators with foreigners, become functional. In short, sovereignty is the first, not the last step in the process. Once sovereignty, not just a collaborationist government, is established, the steps lead (and can be helped to move with all deliberate speed) toward security.

That is why the plan we have proposed contains the interlocking elements that together constitute Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now.

William R. Polk

William R. Polk taught at Harvard from 1955 to 1961 when he was appointed the member of the State Department’s Policy Planning Council responsible for the Middle East. In 1965 he became professor of history at the University of Chicago where he founded its Middle Eastern Studies Center. Subsequently, he also became president of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs. Among his books are The United States and the Arab World; the Elusive Peace: The Middle East in the Twentieth Century; Neighbors and Strangers: the Fundamentals of Foreign Affairs; Understanding Iraq; and together with Senator George McGovern, the just published Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now. ‘

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Guerrillas Kill 7 GIs, blow up 52 Iraqis

AFP rounds up the violence in Iraq on Tuesday. 7 more US GIs were killed, and bombings in Baghdad and Kirkuk killed and wounded scores. Fighting broke out between US troops and Mahdi Army militiamen in East Baghdad.

Emily Miller’s op-ed on her brother in Iraq is worth reading.

If you didn’t see it yesterday, look at my “top ten myths about Iraq in 2006.”

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Ford and Foreign Policy: Snapshots from the 1970s

Former President Gerald Ford has died at 93. A Wolverine star of the early 1930s at the University of Michigan, Ford passed up an opportunity to play for the Detroit Lions in the new NFL, going instead to law school. He was Richard Nixon’s vice president during the Watergate scandal and so became president when Nixon resigned. Ford was well liked as president, but faced seemingly intractable problems. These included the increasing price of petroleum after the 1973 OPEC boycott, the simultaneous economic stagnation and inflation (something many economists had considered impossible), relatively high unemployment, the fall of South Vietnam, the Soviet and Cuban challenge in Angola, the beginnings of the Lebanese Civil War, nuclear proliferation threats in Israel, India, Brazil and Iran, and the Cyprus controversy with Turkey.

Ford did the country the enormous favor of allowing it to transition out of the poisonous Nixon and Vietnam eras, with a gentleman at the helm of state. I can remember the enormous relief I experienced when I saw the picture of him striding confidently once he had become president. Many of us had been afraid Nixon would stage a military coup. Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, I have been told by one interviewee then in government, shared that fear and ordered the senior officers to accept no command directly from Nixon unless they checked with Schlesinger first.

Ford was clearly unwilling to risk further military entanglements in Asia. The one exception was his aggressive response to the Cambodian capture of the Mayaguez, which was enormously popular at the time, though critics argued that the strike was premature since the Cambodians had begun releasing their captives. 41 Americans died in the course of this operation.

Ford pursued “detente” with the Soviet Union (though the Right made him give up the term). He renewed US bases in Franco’s Spain, though half of Spaniards opposed them, in part because they objected to them being used to resupply Israel in its battles with the Arabs. He worried about the Communist parties of France, Italy and some other Western European allies. He had Kissinger conduct “step by step” and then “shuttle” diplomacy with the Egyptians and the Israelis, pushing them toward accommodation and peace and setting the stage in important ways for Jimmy Carter’s later Camp David negotiations.

One of the things Ford was proudest of in his 1976 presidential campaign was that under his administration, the country was at peace.

Ford did not come in strong on foreign policy, and he had some difficulty reining in Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. He also faced challenges from a triumphal Democratic Congress that frequently over-ruled him on foreign policy. He fired Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger, who was too much of a hawk for Ford. Ford believed in negotiating with one’s enemies where possible and where fruitful, and in cutting one’s losses in the face of overwhelming odds, so as to live to play another day.

Ford faced a powerful challenge from Ronald Reagan and the then-small far-right wing of the Republican Party, which accused him of under-estimating Soviet military strength and the Soviet threat, blamed him for losing Angola and was suspicious of Ford’s increasing skittishness about dealing with white supremicist Rhodesia. Although it is often pointed out that many officials in the George W. Bush administration got their start under Ford, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and (in a supporting role) Paul Wolfowitz, in fact these individuals went on to convert to Reaganism and to abandon the moderate Republican principles of Ford.

I thought readers might enjoy some news clippings from that era on foreign policy, skewed because of my interests toward the Middle East.

January 18, 1975. The Economist reports that Ford warned that American support for Israel cannot be taken for granted.

‘ Asked if there were any limits on America’s commitment to Israel, he replied:
It so happens that there is a substantial relationship at the present time between our national security interests and those of Israel. But in the final analysis we have to judge what is in our national interest above any and all other considerations. ‘

The Economist noted that many Americans felt that Israel could hardly expect to get peace if it continued to sit on land it occupied from Arab states in 1967, and implied that they could not see why they should pay various sorts of price for Israeli expansionism and intransigence.

February 8, 1975: Facts on File reports that the US Congress cut off military aid to Turkey because of lack of progress on the Cyprus issue.

‘President Ford immediately called on Congress to restore the aid, warning that the cutoff would “affect adversely not only our Western security but the strategic situation in the Middle East.” He stressed that military aid to Turkey was based “on our assumption that the security of Turkey is vital to the security of the eastern Mediterranean and to the U.S. and its allies.” ‘

Turkey’s acting prime minister responded angrily and threatened to rethink Turkey’s commitments in NATO.

March 1, 1975: Ford approved in principle the proposal by the Shah’s Iran that it take a 10% share in the troubled PanAm airline. Iran was flush with petrodollars and Kissinger had worked out with the shah ways of recycling them back into Western economies. Among the major such methods was sophisticated arms sales, a direction criticized by presidential contender Jimmy Carter of Georgia.

April 12, 1975: A Harris poll summarized in the Economist showed that over 60% of Americans supported sending Israel whatever military hardware it needed in its struggle with the Arabs. The poll showed groundless the fear voiced by some pro-Israel advocates that the Arab oil weapon might cause Americans to turn against Zionism. On the other hand, there were some indications in the poll that Americans felt that Israel was taking US support for granted.

April 14, 1975: Newsweek reported on the fall of South Vietnam:

‘ Misery became a way of life in Indochina long ago, but the tide of human suffering that suddenly engulfed South Vietnam last week swept forward with unprecedented cruelty. Along the coastline of the South China Sea, major cities tumbled like tenpins, and exhausted and terrified refugees died by the hundreds in their desperate forced marches to escape the onrushing troops of North Vietnam. The toughest generals of the army of South Vietnam abandoned their command posts, and ARVN soldiers turned to banditry, shooting their way aboard the few evacuation ships that made the beachheads . . . a mercy flight evacuating war orphans . . . crashed and burned only minutes after leaving Saigon – a capital whose own life expectancy dwindled with every passing hour. ‘

May 24, 1975: Facts on File reports that 76 US Senators sign a letter to President Ford opposing any attempt to reduce military aid to Israel. (Ford was trying to get the Israelis to make peace with Egypt and was using aid as an incentive. The Israelis used their Lobby on the Hill in an attempt to paralyze Ford and Kissinger on this front.)

June 9, 1975: Newsweek reports on Ford’s European tour, where he met with 12 European leaders in Brussels, and had one on one meetings with Helmut Schmidt of Germany, the Pope, the premier of Turkey, Anwar El Sadat and others. Ford

‘ also conferred privately with no fewer than twelve European leaders during his two days in Brussels – receiving all but Giscard in the rococo reception room of the American ambassador’s residence in a manner somewhat reminiscent of an eighteenth-century European monarch. . . . He and West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt spent the opening moments of their meeting discussing the pleasures of pipe smoking, and Ford revealed that the Presidential pipe collection now numbered 50. When Kissinger told Turkish Premier Suleiman Demirel, “I gained 50 pounds in Turkey last week,” Ford interrupted with a booming laugh and retorted. “He’s using the trip as an alibi. It’s an old problem.” ‘

and on the Middle East, Newsweek said,

‘ there were several signs that virtually all sides wanted a compromise. Both Saudi Arabia’s conservative King Khaled and the militant socialist government in Iraq have recently expressed – in terms never heard before – their willingness to accept the existence of the state of Israel if it withdrew from all occupied Arab territories. What’s more, Syria, which only two weeks ago extended the mandate of the United Nations peace force on the Golan Heights for six additional months, indicated that it could accept a second-stage Egyptian-Israeli accord before the extent of further Israelis withdrawals on the Golan Heights was settled. Syria’s ambassador to Washington predicted “that Sadat will be bringing good signs to Ford.” ‘

August 2, 1975. Facts on File summarizes an interview by Ford with the NYT on his accomplishments. The first was restoration of confidence in the presidency on the domestic front. The second was its restoration internationally. He was also proud of having “kept our cool” in the face of both recession and inflation. He added:

‘ As his largest disappointments, Ford mentioned the fall of non-Communist governments in South Vietnam and Cambodia and the breakdown of negotiations in the Middle East in March.

The President said there was “no possibility” of re-establishing a U.S. presence in Vietnam or Cambodia under current circumstances. As for the Middle East currently, he felt that an agreement could be reached if both Israel and Egypt were “more flexible.”

Ford reaffirmed his policy to go to Helsinki, Finland to sign the international accord on European security, but he was cautious on the strategic arms limitation talks with the Soviet Union. ‘

October 25, 1975: Egypt and Israel each pressure Ford not to sell the other certain weaponry.

December 20, 1975: Facts on File reports:

‘ American and Israeli sources said Dec. 15 that President Ford had urged Premier Yitzhak Rabin to consult with Washington on any future Israeli military action against Arab guerrillas in Lebanon. The Ford message, reportedly discussed by the premier in a cabinet meeting Dec. 14, also contained a pledge to oppose any attempt by the U.N. Security Council to impose a peace settlement in the Middle East.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz, reporting on the Ford note, said the President had “expressed his wish . . . that there should be coordination between the two countries or at least Israel should let the United States know ahead of time what its intentions are.”

The U.S. was said to have been embarrased by the Israeli air strike on Palestinian camps in Lebanon Dec. 2 at a time when the U.S. was attempting to block anti-Israeli resolutions before the Security Council. ‘

March 15, 1976: Newsweek reports on Iranian ambassador Ardeshir Zahedi’s Washington parties, which it deems the best in the city at that time:

‘ With an entertainment budget the size of an oil field, the 47-year-old Zahedi is legendary for his kilos of caviar (flown in twice a month from Iran), his seemingly limitless supply of Dom Perignon champagne (dispensed as presents like candy canes at Christmas-time), and his sophomoric sense of partying, which includes impromptu congalines, smooth-tummied belly dancers and drinking and kissing games guaranteed to take the prude out of Washington protocol. In an average month, Zahedi may give three formal dinner dancers for 75, two or three buffet dinners for 300, one or two large receptions for 150, and countless business lunches, late-night suppers or poolside barbecues at his own residence. “It’s business and pleasure at the same time,” says the debonair Zahedi, who once trickled droplets of champagne into Cristina Ford’s cupped hand, then kissed each one away. “If you see your friends at a party, you exchange ideas and views without actually being committed to each other.” ‘

April 17, 1976: Facts on File reports:

‘ Israeli officials April 9 criticized U.S. Ambassador Malcolm Toon for having accused Israel April 8, of trying to pressure the U.S. Congress to approve more aid [than] requested by President Ford. Toon had spoken at a news briefing and had asked that he be referred to only as “a Western diplomat,” but his identity was subsequently disclosed by an Israeli television analyst. . . Toon had said that Israel’s alleged pressure was close to interference in the internal affairs of the U.S. and that Israel was “playing dirty pool.” He also said it was unwise for Israel’s Finance Ministry to budget sums not actually received. ‘

Toon made his remarks because Ford had threatened to veto a $550 million “transitional” grant to Israel by Congress, on top of the $2.2 billion already approved.

June 19, 1976: Facts on File reports:

‘ Francis E. Meloy Jr., the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon, and Robert O. Waring, his economic counselor, were kidnapped and shot to death by unidentified gunmen in Beirut June 16. Zoheir Moghrabi, their Lebanese driver, also was slain. Palestinian security agents reported June 17 the arrest of three Lebanese in connection with the assassinations. ‘

This incident foreshadowed the subsequent decades of US involvement in Lebanon, including the taking of hostages and Iran-Contra, the blowing up of the US embassy in Beirut, the assassination of the CIA station chief, the blowing up of the Marine Barracks, and more recent involvement on the side of the anti-Syrian political coalition.

July 31, 1976: The Economist reports on American unhappiness about a German company’s willingness to supply the entire nuclear fuel cycle to countries like Brazil and possibly Iran:

For Germany’s major nuclear power station company, Kraftwerk Union (KWU), the Brazil deal represented great leap forward . . . Early in July KWU landed a contract from Iran for two nuclear power stations in a deal worth more than DM 7 billion. This did not include a reprocessing plant, but Iran is known to be shopping around for one. Is KWU to be barred from trying for a follow-up contract? After all, Iran, in contrast to Brazil, has adhered to the nonproliferation treaty. But for the Americans the prospect of a national reprocessing plant on the fringe of the Middle East brings nightmares. Americans have suggested to Iran that it should share with an industrialised country control over any reprocessing plant built there. And they have advocated the creation of multinational regional enrichment centres. But Iran is likely to feel insulted at being picked on in this way. . . ‘

Of course, it had been the Eisenhower Administration’s “atoms for peace” program that had encouraged the Iranians to develop nuclear reactors in the first place . . .

August 7, 1976: Facts on File reports that the US will sell Saudi Arabia sophisticated missiles and “laser-guided bombs” previously given only to Israel.

October 30, 1976: As the presidential campaign heats up, the Economist reports that President Ford was constrained to apologize for remarks by the Chairman of his Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. George Brown, to the effect that Israel is a military burden on the United States. Ford called the statement “very ill-advised.”

Jimmy Carter attacked Ford for presiding over a situation in which the US was becoming “the arms merchant of the world.” But he seemed to contradict himself by demanding that more arms be sent to Israel. Ford responded by loosening some restrictions placed by his bureaucrats and sending more weapons to Israel.

Carter also attacked Ford for not being more confrontational with Arab states about their boycott of Israel, and about the possibility that they might deploy an oil boycott against the West again. He insisted that if he became president, there would be no boycott.

Carter said that under Ford, diplomacy had been conducted with too much secrecy, and that the public needed to be kept fully informed. He accused Ford of being insufficiently awake to changes in southern Africa and of being complacent toward the Soviet Union. But Carter pledged that he would never go to war over a Soviet occupation of Yugoslavia.

Kissinger in response expressed alarm that Carter seemed to be giving the Kremlin a green light in the Balkans. [Tito had pursued an autonomous Communist policy in Yugoslavia, now the independent states of Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Slovenia, Montenegro and . . . I can't keep up.]

When he presided over intelligence reform in the wake of earlier abuses, Ford wrote,

‘I believe it essential to have the best possible intelligence about the capabilities, intentions and activities of governments and other entities and individuals abroad. To this end, the foreign intelligence agencies of the United States play a vital role in collecting and analyzing information related to the national defense and foreign policy.

It is equally as important that the methods these agencies employ to collect such information for the legitimate needs of the government conform to the standards set out in the Constitution to preserve and respect the privacy and civil liberties of American citizens.’

He was against just assassinating people, and insisted on warrants for the wiretapping of US citizens.

All presidents make errors, and some abuses occurred on Ford’s watch, though they often were initiated by Kissinger. But Ford faced with no illusions the challenges of his era, of detente with the Soviet Union, continued attempts to cultivate China, the collapse of Indochina, the fall-out of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, and the beginnings of the Lebanese Civil War. Ford was right about detente, right about China, right about Arab-Israeli peace, right about avoiding a big entanglement in Angola, right to worry about nuclear proliferation (one of his worries was the increasing evidence that the Middle East had a nuclear power, Israel, and India was moving in that direction).

Ford’s challengers on the Reagan Right were wrong about everything. They vastly over-estimated the military and economic strength of the Soviet Union (yes, that’s Paul Wolfowitz). They wanted confrontation with China. They dismissed the Arab world as Soviet occupied territory (even though the vast majority of Arab states was US allies at that time) and urged that it be punished till it accepted Israel’s territorial gains in 1967. They insisted that the Vietnam War could have been won.

But despite its illusions and Orwellian falsehoods, the Reagan Right prevailed. Ford only momentarily lost to Carter. Both of them were to lose to Reagan, who resorted to Cold War brinkmanship, private militias, death squads, offshore accounts, unconstitutional criminality, and under the table deals with Khomeini, and who created a transition out of the Cold War that left the private militias (one of them al-Qaeda) empowered to wreak destruction in the aftermath. The blowback from that Reaganesque era of private armies of the Right helped push the US after 2001 toward an incipient fascism at which Ford, the All-American, the lawyerly gentleman, the great Wolverine, must have wept daily in his twilight years.

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Top Ten Myths about Iraq 2006

1. Myth number one is that the United States “can still win” in Iraq. Of course, the truth of this statement, frequently still made by William Kristol and other Neoconservatives, depends on what “winning” means. But if it means the establishment of a stable, pro-American, anti-Iranian government with an effective and even-handed army and police force in the near or even medium term, then the assertion is frankly ridiculous. The Iraqi “government” is barely functioning. The parliament was not able to meet in December because it could not attain a quorum. Many key Iraqi politicians live most of the time in London, and much of parliament is frequently abroad. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki does not control large swathes of the country, and could give few orders that had any chance of being obeyed. The US military cannot shore up this government, even with an extra division, because the government is divided against itself. Most of the major parties trying to craft legislation are also linked to militias on the streets who are killing one another. It is over with. Iraq is in for years of heavy political violence of a sort that no foreign military force can hope to stop.

The United States cannot “win” in the sense defined above. It cannot. And the blindly arrogant assumption that it can win is calculated to get more tens of thousands of Iraqis killed and more thousands of American soldiers and Marines badly wounded or killed. Moreover, since Iraq is coming apart at the seams under the impact of our presence there, there is a real danger that we will radically destabilize it and the whole oil-producing Gulf if we try to stay longer.

2. “US military sweeps of neighborhoods can drive the guerrillas out.” The US put an extra 15,000 men into Baghdad this past summer, aiming to crush the guerrillas and stop the violence in the capital, and the number of attacks actually increased. This result comes about in part because the guerrillas are not outsiders who come in and then are forced out. The Sunni Arabs of Ghazaliya and Dora districts in the capital are the “insurgents.” The US military cannot defeat the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement or “insurgency” with less than 500,000 troops, based on what we have seen in the Balkans and other such conflict situations. The US destroyed Falluja, and even it and other cities of al-Anbar province are not now safe! The US military leaders on the ground have spoken of the desirability of just withdrawing from al-Anbar to Baghdad and giving up on it. In 2003, 14 percent of Sunni Arabs thought it legitimate to attack US personnel and facilities. In August, 2006, over 70 percent did. How long before it is 100%? Winning guerrilla wars requires two victories, a military victory over the guerrillas and a winning of the hearts and minds of the general public, thus denying the guerrillas support. The US has not and is unlikely to be able to repress the guerrillas, and it is losing hearts and minds at an increasing and alarming rate. They hate us, folks. They don’t want us there.

3. The United States is best off throwing all its support behind the Iraqi Shiites. This is the position adopted fairly consistently by Marc Reuel Gerecht. Gerecht is an informed and acute observer whose views I respect even when I disagree with them. But Washington policy-makers should read Daniel Goleman’s work on social intelligence. Goleman points out that a good manager of a team in a corporation sets up a win/win framework for every member of the team. If you set it up on a win/lose basis, so that some are actively punished and others “triumph,” you are asking for trouble. Conflict is natural. How you manage conflict is what matters. If you listen to employees’ grievances and try to figure out how they can be resolved in such a way that everyone benefits, then you are a good manager.

Gerecht, it seems to me, sets up a win/lose model in Iraq. The Shiites and Kurds win it all, and the Sunni Arabs get screwed over. Practically speaking, the Bush policy has been Gerechtian, which in my view has caused all the problems. We shouldn’t have thought of our goal as installing the Shiites in power. Of course, Bush hoped that those so installed would be “secular,” and that is what Wolfowitz and Chalabi had promised him. Gerecht came up with the ex post facto justification that even the religious Shiites are moving toward democracy via Sistani. But democracy cannot be about one sectarian identity prevailing over, and marginalizing others.

The Sunni Arabs have demonstrated conclusively that they can act effectively as spoilers in the new Iraq. If they aren’t happy, no one is going to be. The US must negotiate with the guerrilla leaders and find a win/win framework for them to come in from the cold and work alongside the Kurds and the religious Shiites. About this, US Ambassador in Baghdad Zalmay Khalilzad has been absolutely right.

4. “Iraq is not in a civil war,” as Jurassic conservative Fox commentator Bill O’Reilly insists. There is a well-established social science definition of civil war put forward by Professor J. David Singer and his colleagues: “Sustained military combat, primarily internal, resulting in at least 1,000 battle-deaths per year, pitting central government forces against an insurgent force capable of effective resistance, determined by the latter’s ability to inflict upon the government forces at least 5 percent of the fatalities that the insurgents sustain.” (Errol A. Henderson and J. David Singer, “Civil War in the Post-Colonial World, 1946-92,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 37, No. 3, May 2000.)” See my article on this in Salon.com. By Singer’s definition, Iraq has been in civil war since the Iraqi government was reestablished in summer of 2004. When I have been around political scientists, as at the ISA conference, I have found that scholars in that field tend to accept Singer’s definition.

5. “The second Lancet study showing 600,000 excess deaths from political and criminal violence since the US invasion is somehow flawed.” Les Roberts replies here to many of the objections that were raised. See also the transcript of the Kucinich-Paul Congressional hearings on the subject. Many critics refer to the numbers of dead reported in the press as counter-arguments to Roberts et al. But “passive reporting” such as news articles never captures more than a fraction of the casualties in any war. I see deaths reported in the Arabic press all the time that never show up in the English language wire services. And, a lot of towns in Iraq don’t have local newspapers and many local deaths are not reported in the national newspapers.

6. “Most deaths in Iraq are from bombings.” The Lancet study found that the majority of violent deaths are from being shot.

7. “Baghdad and environs are especially violent but the death rate is lower in the rest of the country.” The Lancet survey found that levels of violence in the rest of the country are similar to that in Baghdad (remember that the authors included criminal activities such as gang and smuggler turf wars in their statistics). The Shiite south is spared much Sunni-Shiite communal fighting, but criminal gangs, tribal feuds, and militias fight one another over oil and antiquities smuggling, and a lot of people are getting shot down there, too.

8. “Iraq is the central front in the war on terror.” From the beginning of history until 2003 there had never been a suicide bombing in Iraq. There was no al-Qaeda in Baath-ruled Iraq. When Baath intelligence heard that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi might have entered Iraq, they grew alarmed at such an “al-Qaeda” presence and put out an APB on him! Zarqawi’s so-called “al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia” was never “central” in Iraq and was never responsible for more than a fraction of the violent attacks. This assertion is supported by the outcome of a US-Jordanian operation that killed Zarqawi this year. His death had no impact whatsoever on the level of violence. There are probably only about 1,000 foreign fighters even in Iraq, and most of them are first-time volunteers, not old-time terrorists. The 50 major guerrilla cells in Sunni Arab Iraq are mostly made up of Iraqis, and are mainly: 1) Baathist or neo-Baathist, 2) Sunni revivalist or Salafi, 3) tribally-based, or 4) based in city quarters. Al-Qaeda is mainly a boogey man, invoked in Iraq on all sides, but possessing little real power or presence there. This is not to deny that radical Sunni Arab volunteers come to Iraq to blow things (and often themselves) up. They just are not more than an auxiliary to the big movements, which are Iraqi.

9. “The Sunni Arab guerrillas in places like Ramadi will follow the US home to the American mainland and commit terrorism if we leave Iraq.” This assertion is just a variation on the invalid domino theory. People in Ramadi only have one beef with the United States. Its troops are going through their wives’ underwear in the course of house searches every day. They don’t want the US troops in their town or their homes, dictating to them that they must live under a government of Shiite clerics and Kurdish warlords (as they think of them). If the US withdrew and let the Iraqis work out a way to live with one another, people in Ramadi will be happy. They are not going to start taking flight lessons and trying to get visas to the US. This argument about following us, if it were true, would have prevented us from ever withdrawing from anyplace once we entered a war there. We’d be forever stuck in the Philippines for fear that Filipino terrorists would follow us back home. Or Korea (we moved 15,000 US troops out of South Korea not so long ago. Was that unwise? Are the thereby liberated Koreans now gunning for us?) Or how about the Dominican Republic? Haiti? Grenada? France? The argument is a crock.

10. “Setting a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq is a bad idea.” Bush and others in his administration have argued that setting such a timetable would give a significant military advantage to the guerrillas fighting US forces and opposed to the new government. That assertion makes sense only if there were a prospect that the US could militarily crush the Sunni Arabs. There is no such prospect. The guerrilla war is hotter now than at any time since the US invasion. It is more widely supported by more Sunni Arabs than ever before. It is producing more violent attacks than ever before. Since we cannot defeat them short of genocide, we have to negotiate with them. And their first and most urgent demand is that the US set a timetable for withdrawal before they will consider coming into the new political system. That is, we should set a timetable in order to turn the Sunni guerrillas from combatants to a political negotiating partner. Even Sunni politicians cooperating with the US make this demand. They are disappointed with the lack of movement on the issue. How long do they remain willing to cooperate? In addition, 131 Iraqi members of parliament signed a demand that the US set a timetable for withdrawal. (138 would be a simple majority.) It is a a major demand of the Sadr Movement. In fact, the 32 Sadrist MPs withdrew from the ruling United Iraqi Alliance coalition temporarily over this issue.

In my view, Shiite leaders such as Abdul Aziz al-Hakim are repeatedly declining to negotiate in good faith with the Sunni Arabs or to take their views seriously. Al-Hakim knows that if the Sunnis give him any trouble, he can sic the Marines on them. The US presence is making it harder for Iraqi to compromise with Iraqi, which is counterproductive.

Think Progress points out that in 1999, Governor George W. Bush criticized then President Clinton for declining to set a withdrawal timetable for Kosovo, saying “Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the president to explain to us what the exit strategy is.”

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Shiite Militias and Iran in Iraq

Another US soldier was killed on Christmas Day, bringing the number of GIs killed in Iraq to one more than the number of persons killed in the 9/11 attacks.

AP reports that the British raided a police HQ and prison in Basra when they heard that the unit was infiltrated by Shiite militiamen and planning to kill their prisoners. Some of the released prisoners showed signs of torture. The British destroyed the prison.

Police found some 47 bodies in Baghdad. Two major bombing operations were conducted in the city, killing 17 and wounding dozens.

The US military conducted raids against the Badr Corps militia of the Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, in the course of which it arrested four Iranian officials. It had to let two of them go when it transpired that they were diplomats invited into Iraq by President Jalal Talabani, a close US ally. SCIRI and Badr were in exile in Iran for over two decades and have close ties to the Iranian regime. Nevertheless, the Bush administration hosted SCIRI leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim recently.

The US military has for the most part characterized the Badr corps as disciplined and not the main security problem in Iraq. US troops have never had an engagement with Badr. The Badr Corps has been accused of infiltrating the special police commandos of the Interior Ministry and of using that unit to engage in ethnic cleansing of Sunni Arabs they suspected of membership in the guerrilla movement.

That Badr had close ties to Iran was well known, so it is a little unclear what new developments could have provoked this raid.

The US has accused Iran of training Badr’s Shiite rival, the Mahdi Army, in Lebanon and of providing it with shaped charges. That these officials were with Badr instead does not advance that case, and may weaken it.

Talabani’s invitation is yet another wrinkle. I have long argued that Mam Jalal had close back channel relations with Tehran. Do the Peshmerga, the Kurdistan military, benefit from Iranian military advice, as well?

Stay tuned.

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Christmas in the Middle East

Silent night,

Al-Zaman reports that “The Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad appeared almost deserted on Christmas Eve. Christian celebrations of Christmas were limited to private homes. Iraqi Christians had announced last week that they would suspend official celebration, out of solidarity with the tragedy of the Iraqi people.” Iraqi Christians, who had enjoyed relative freedom under the regime of Saddam Hussein, now face fear of attacks by powerful Islamic groups or Shiite militias. Few are making any use of the Christmas lights and decorations of yesteryear. There were some 600,000 Iraqi Christians in a population of 27 million, but some say the number is now less than 450,000. Thousands have been forced to flee to Syria. The Archbishop of Canterbury has argued that the policies of the British and American governments in Iraq have endangered Middle Eastern Christians and that nothing is being done to protect them.

holy night,

The Archbishop of Canterbury, in Bethlehem, sharply condemned the Israeli government for the Separation Wall it is building on Palestinian, West Bank land, which is having a deleterious effect on Bethlehem:

‘ “The wall which we walked through a little while ago is a sign not simply of a passing problem in the politics of one region; it is sign of some of the things that are most deeply wrong in the human heart itself,” Williams told his fellow church leaders, according to Britain’s Press Association. “We are here to say that security for one is security for all. For one to live under threat, whether of occupation, or of terror, is a problem for all, and a pain for all,” he was quoted as saying . . .

Bethlehem Mayor Victor Batarseh says the barrier separates residents of this town of 30,000 from jobs, studies, medical facilities and relatives in nearby Jerusalem. He told the visiting clergy the town had been “transformed into an open prison” by the barrier. “Your presence is challenging this ugly wall,” Batarseh was quoted as saying. ‘

All is calm,

It was announced on Christmas Eve that “Six soldiers were killed in bomb attacks in and
around Iraq’s capital Baghdad on Dec. 23, bringing this month’s death toll to at least 82, the U.S. military said in four statements e-mailed yesterday.”

all is bright

McClatchy reports that 29 bodies were found on Christmas Eve around Baghdad.

Two bombings in Baghdad wounded 8 civilians. A mortar attack on Zawra’ Soccer Stadium wounded 7 athletes.

Round yon virgin mother and Child.

McClatchy says that in Diyala Province, northeast of Baghdad, a suicide bomber wearing a police uniform detonated his payload inside the police HQ of Muqdadiya, killing 7 policemen and wounding 30 others. Two more policemen were killed at a club west of Baquba, Diyala’s capital.

Holy Infant, so tender and mild,

In the far-southern city of Samawa, clashes broke out again on Sunday between Mahdi Army militiamen and local police [the police corps is dominated by the rival Shiite Badr corps militia]. McClatchy says, “This morning clashes broke out again in semawa at about 9 o’clock between MAHDI army and Iraqi forces after one night truce between the Iraqi government and sadr office when the Iraqi government released some sadrist detainees. This morning clashes led to the deaths of 7 civilians and police; 19 others were wounded.” Four more persons were killed in similar clashes in nearby Rumetha.

The LA Times reports that the cleric leading a renegade faction of the Mahdi Army in Samawa, Shaikh Ghazi Zarqani, is not under the authority of Muqtada al-Sadr. Tribes have chosen up sides in Samawa between SCIRI and the Sadrists, and the major tribe is even internally divided. The local Sadrist offshoot is demanding the release of 30 of its men from prison. Al-Zaman says that the Mahdi Army in Samawa violated the ceasefire by attacking the government HQ, demanding the prisoner release.

Sleep in heavenly peace,

This Christmas, Lebanon is teetering on the brink of major instability, with Christians divided against Christians and a major fault line running between the March 14 Movement and Hizbullah. The Israeli attack on the country, during the last three days of which it released a million clusterbombs destined to kill civilians and children, appears to have put a nail in the coffin of the national unity government. Israel did not destroy Hizbullah or even seriously degrade its capabilities in the medium term, and Hizbullah was hugely strengthened in Lebanon and throughout the Muslim world. So the war was for nothing. The Daily Star reports that even Christmas has been politicized this year, in the small country of 3.8 million, about a third of whom are Christians.

Sleep in heavenly peace.

Iran will defy the United Nations Security Council and press ahead with its uranium enrichment program. The UNSC demanded that Iran clear up the unresolved question of whether it has a military nuclear weapons program in addition to its announced and fairly transparent civilian energy research program. The International Atomic Energy Agency has been unable to prove a weapons program but has been unable to rule one out, either. Iran is now threatening to withdraw from the IAEA. Iran does not yet have the capability to enrich uranium to the grade necessary to run nuclear energy plants. It would take many times that level of enrichment to make a bomb. The US National Intelligence Estimate is that Iran is 10 years away from that capacity even if it is trying hard and assuming the international atmosphere was permissive. The UNSC resolution is aimed at denying Iran the equipment necessary for a weapons program, assuming it has one.

The Bush administration, now hobbled in pressing for any further formal wars by a Democratic Congress, may take a leaf from Reagan’s playbook and engage in illegal, covert activities in Iran aimed at overthrowing the theocratic government.

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Sistani Rejects New Sunni-Shiite Coalition
6 Dead in Samawa Clashes
47 Bodies in Baghdad

Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani has rejected a plan for a new coalition in the Iraqi parliament that would ally the Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq with the Sunni Arab Iraqi Islamic Party and the Kurdistan Alliance. The plan aimed at isolating the 32 Sadrist members of parliament and depriving them of the ability to bring down the prime minister. The Sadrists follow young Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army paramilitary has emerged as a major security threat to Baghdad.

A delegation of mainly Da`wa Party members went to the Grand Ayatollah about the plan, floated by friendly rival SCIRI. Sistani rejected the plan on the grounds that it would split the Shiite majority. A coalition of Sunni Arab fundamentalists and Kurds with SCIRI would reduce the Shiites to junior partners in the government and allow the Kurds (also Sunnis) and the Sunni Arabs to dictate policy to them. Shiites are 60 percent of Iraqis, and Sistani is insistent that their majoritarian position be recognized and they receive the consequent power and influence.

Sistani’s rejection of the plan, however, essentially continues to empower the Sadrists, who were let into the Shiite coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance, about a year ago and who thereby gained pivotal power within it, going on to help elect the prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki. Sistani seems more worried about Shiite-on-Shiite violence and political rivalry than he is about Shiite conflicts with Sunnis.

Negotiations between the UIA and Sadrist deputies about coming back in to an active role in the alliance and in parliament proved inconclusive on Saturday, according to al-Sharq al-Awsat in Arabic. One stumbling block is that the Sadrists want a timetable to be set for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, whereas the top leaders of the UIA are reluctant to press the US on this front. The Sadrists had suspended their participation because of PM al-Maliki’s recent meeting with Bush.

Sistani’s veto puts Abdul Aziz al-Hakim in a difficult position. He is a relatively junior cleric and mainly a politician, and does not have the standing openly to repudiate a ruling from Sistani. On the other hand, Sistani depends heavily for his security on the Badr Corps of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which al-Hakim leads. Still and all, it would be a major change in power dynamics in Iraqi religious politics if al-Hakim defied Sistani on this matter. He would risk losing face if a significant number of UIA MPs declined to join him in this defiance.

Update: More on this story in Arabic in al-Sharq al-Awsat for Monday

Al-Hakim seems to be blinking, since on Saturday a SCIRI spokesman said that the allegation that SCIRI wanted to sideline the Sadrists was untrue and a mere rumor.

A propos of the dangers of Shiite-on-Shiite violence, fighting has erupted in Samawa between Sadrists and local police (dominated by the Badr Corps). The clashes left at least 6 dead on Saturday. The NYT says that Sadrists are claiming that 12 of their number have been killed in the clashes, along with 6 others, including police.

Sabrina Tavernise at the NYT chronicles how Shiites are taking over once-mixed districts of Baghdad. They are riposting after a Sunni push to take the city in 2004 and 2005. Some 10 formerly mixed districts are now largely or wholly Shiite.

McClatchy reports that on Saturday, police found 47 bodies in Baghdad, and guerrillas set off 3 bombs in the capital. One of the blasts killed 2 Iraqi soldiers.

In Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, fighting has raged for several days in the town of al-Sa’ida al-Kabira between Sunni Arab guerrillas and local police. McClatchy says, “Police said recent attacks against the city claimed the lives of 5 Iraqi citizens, including one policeman. Residents said the violence has increased today as 14 shops were set to fire and increased numbers of kidnappings in the city and its outskirts.”

[Ar.] 450 Iraqi pilgrims trapped at Basra airport have now gone on strike there. They had hoped to fly to Mecca in Saudi Arabia for pilgrimage, but faced constant delays.

It is too soon for the Iraq newspapers to have responses to the UN Security Council’s sanctions on Iran. Will report on that on Monday.

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