[Reader-list] Civil war most likely outcome in Iraq

[Rana Dasgupta]

Report: Civil war most likely outcome in Iraq
Major British institute says breakup of Iraq is a likely scenario.
by Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0906/dailyUpdate.html

While America's attention was focused last week on the Republican 
National Convention in New York, and the world was watching the hostage 
tragedy unfold in the small Russian town of Beslan, the prestigious 
British Royal Institute of International Affairs (known as Chatham 
House) issued a report saying a major civil war that would destablize 
the entire Middle East region is the mostly likely outcome for Iraq if 
current conditions continue. Reuters reported Friday that the report 
said the best outcome Iraq can hope for is "to muddle through an 
18-month political transition that began when Washington formally handed 
over sovereignty on June 28."

The Los Angeles Times reports that the fragmentation of Iraq is the 
"default scenario" in the eyes of the Chatham House team.

     'Under this scenario,' the report says, 'Kurdish separatism and 
Shia assertiveness work against a smooth transition to elections, while 
the Sunni Arab minority remains on the offensive and engaged in 
resistance. Antipathy to the US presence grows, not so much in a unified 
Iraqi nationalist backlash, but rather in a fragmented manner that could 
presage civil war if the US cuts and runs,' it says. 'Even if the US 
forces try to hold out and prop up the central authority, it may still 
lose control.'

The Chatham House report, called 'Iraq in Transition: Vortex or 
Catalyst?' was released last Wednesday. (Chatham House is often the 
scene of regular international news events; British Foreign Secretary 
Jack Straw recently gave a major speech there in August where he called 
for the overhaul of the United Nations.) The organization's Middle East 
team came up with three possible scenarios for Iraq, two of which would 
create real problems for the US and its allies:

   # If the Shiite, Sunni, and Kurd factions fail to adhere to the Iraqi 
Interim Government (IIG), Iraq could fragment or descend into civil war.
   # If the transitional government, backed up by a supportive US 
presence, can assert control, Iraq may well hold together.
   # A 'Regional Remake' could overtake the other two scenarios if the 
dynamics unleashed by Shiite and Kurdish assertiveness trigger 
repercussions in neighboring states. Other Kurds would want their own 
independence, and Shiites in other countries would be more aggressive.

"The first scenario is the most likely," says the report.

     Shiite Arabs will not settle for a subservient position, Kurds will 
not relinquish the gains in internal self-government and policing during 
the 1990s and Sunnis will neither accept a Shiite-led central 
government, nor a Kurdish autonomy in the north. If the IIG or its 
successors fail to assert itself as an organization capable of appealing 
across Iraq’s societal cleavages, Iraq will fragment.

In an article in the New York Review of Books, former US ambassador to 
Croatia, UN official in East Timor, and current senior diplomatic fellow 
at the Center for Arms Control and Non- Proliferation Peter Galbraith 
writes that "It is a measure of how far America's once grand ambitions 
for Iraq have diminished that security has become more important than 
democracy for a mission intended not only to transform Iraq but with it 
the entire Middle East." Mr. Galbraith, who recently returned from his 
second long trip to Iraq, agrees with the Chatham House worst-case 
scenario and also says it is the most likely outcome. He writes that 
Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is a troubling choice to 
create the political stability that the US and its allies so desperately 
need to keep Iraq from falling apart.

     Allawi's colleagues speak of him with evident affection, but even 
his allies point to his shortcomings. Several of the INA's [Iraqi 
National Accord, which Allawi founded] most respected leaders left the 
organization because they objected to Allawi's authoritarian style, 
including an unwillingness to heed advice and inability to delegate 
authority. As an anti-Saddam activist, fellow exiles described Allawi as 
routinely embellishing his credentials. He would claim to have had 
meetings with world leaders that turned out to be fictional, and has 
said that he controlled operatives inside Iraq who, in fact, never existed.

But in an interview with the Nashville Tennessean on Sunday, Gen. 
Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said 
that the recent 'successful' resolution of the siege of Najaf is a 
positive sign of things to come.

     I think what we saw in Najaf was actually very good from the 
viewpoint of Iraqis handling their problem. The solution there was the 
prime minister and his cabinet working with (Grand Ayatollah Ali 
al-Husseini al) Sistani, the cleric, and private leaders and government 
leaders working in partnership with the multinational forces coalition 
there and finding the solutions — which they found and which hopefully 
will last. Although the fellow (rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al) Sadr is 
not particularly reliable. He changes his mind frequently, but for now 
Iraqis are in charge.

An editorial in the Jerusalem Post last Thursday argues that what 
happened in Najaf was actually the "best that could be made of a bad 
job." It said if the US and the interim government had rolled over 
Moqtada al-Sadr and his forces, they would only have reinforced in the 
minds of Iraqis the lesson that they have been learning again and again 
since 1958: "he who is capable of killing the most, wins a political 
battle." But the intervention of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani may have 
changed the equation very much for the better.

     Sistani's intervention, however, changed the nature of the game. By 
deploying what could only be described as "people's power," the grand 
ayatollah succeeded in discrediting the tradition of political violence 
established by the 1958 coup d'etat. He showed that one can win a 
political battle without having to kill large numbers of people. The 
whole episode could be seen as a lesson to Iraqis that politics need not 
be a win-lose, let alone a zero-sum, game.

Finally, freelance writer Yusuf Al-Khabbaz, writing in Media Monitor 
Networks, looks at the occupation and rebuilding of Japan 60 years ago, 
and the current day occupation and attempted rebuilding of Iraq, and 
finds the two events have little in common, despite what politicians may 
claim. (For instance, he says, Japanese offered little or no resistance 
to American soldiers, and "by most accounts not a single one of the 
150,000 American soldiers in the occupying forces was attacked and 
killed by Japanese citizens.") If Iraq is to be rebuilt, Mr. Al Khabbaz 
says, the successful rebuilding of Japan cannot serve as a model because 
of significant differences in the two occupations.