Breaking Up Ain't Hard to Do - James Baker prepares the exits in Iraq

In Washington, there is a frequent step before old soldiers die and after they’ve faded away; recruitment into a blue ribbon panel established to resolve one administration headache or other. The bipartisan Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by a former secretary of state, James Baker, and a former congressman, Lee Hamilton, is one such venture. The group, whose creation was urged by Congress, is tasked with recommending new ways for the Bush administration to deal with the war in Iraq. Its report will come out after the November elections, to avoid being politicized.

The group includes establishment stalwarts, including former CIA director Robert Gates, Bill Clinton advisor Vernon Jordan, Reagan administration attorney general Edwin Meese, retired Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor, former Clinton White House chief of staff Leon Panetta, former defense secretary William Perry, former senator and Virginian governor Charles Robb, and former Wyoming senator Alan Simpson. While the conclusions of these insiders, well-lubed in the etiquette of American power, are not binding, President George W. Bush will have to take them seriously, because the next Congress is bound to be hostile to “staying the course” in Iraq and might oblige him to do so.

It’s still unclear what the group will recommend. Baker, in an interview on ABC last weekend, played his cards close to his chest, but did throw out hints: “I think it’s fair to say our commission believes that there are alternatives between the stated alternatives, the ones that are out there in the political debate, of ‘stay the course’ and ‘cut and run.’” He dismissed as unworkable a plan by Senator Joseph Biden thee Council on Foreign Relation’s Leslie Gelb to decentralize Iraq and give Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis their own regions, distributing oil revenue to all. Baker argued “there’s no way to draw lines” between the three groups in Iraq’s major cities, where the communities are mixed.

However, an article in The Times of London suggested a different plan. The group would recommend breaking Iraq up into “three highly autonomous regions.” According to “informed sources” cited by the paper, the Iraq group “has grown increasingly interested in the idea of splitting the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish regions of Iraq… His group will not advise ‘partition,’ but is believed to favor a division of the country that will devolve power and security to the regions, leaving a skeletal national government in Baghdad in charge of foreign affairs, border protection and the distribution of oil revenue. The Iraqi government will be encouraged to hold a constitutional conference paving the way for greater devolution. Iran and Syria will be urged to back a regional settlement that could be brokered at an international conference.”

It’s not clear how the conclusions of The Times square with Baker’s own dismissal of the Biden plan. However, the likelihood is that the differences are in the details, not in the overall principle of distributing power away from the center, a process explicit in the federal structure mandated by the Iraqi Constitution. In addition, Baghdad’s control over Iraq has all but disintegrated, so that any practical plan must take this into consideration. But just how much is unclear. The proposal outlined by The Times, if it is proven true, would suggest substantial dissemination of power. This would create a confederal structure in form, but the partition of Iraq in fact, regardless of claims that the Iraq Study Group has no such agenda.

What of Baker’s admission that the mixed nature of urban areas makes the Biden plan unworkable? His focus on Iraqi cities, as opposed to surrounding rural areas, might mean his group will propose some sort of mechanism to leave Iraqi cities “open” to all communities, under separate administrations. If that’s the case, however, the scheme would have little practical meaning in places like Kirkuk, where Kurds have the means, and the wherewithal, to pressure their adversaries. As for Baghdad, the challenge would be to isolate the city from the ambient ethnic and sectarian fighting. Like Sarajevo, the Iraqi capital is likely to end up being a mere extension of the wars around it, with the battle lines already drawn between “pure” sectarian neighborhoods.

In reality, the Baker-Hamilton group is less there to engineer a stable future for Iraq than to create conditions for American forces to leave the country. Baker doesn’t want to “cut and run”, but there is an awful lot of cutting, and not a little hurried walking, in his thinking. The idea is that once Kurds and Shiites fully take security into their own hands in their autonomous areas, the US will be able to substantially reduce its troop levels and withdraw the remainder to safe areas, probably to Kurdistan.

However, partition is a dangerous proposition. A favored course of action of uninspired diplomats, the partitioning of territories has usually visited little more than trauma on countries, accompanied by war. That’s what happened in India, Palestine, Korea, Vietnam, Cyprus, and Bosnia, and nothing suggests that Iraq will be any different. Iraqis may today have fallen back on their ethnic or sectarian identities, but that doesn’t mean they will accept a foreign plan for effective partition. If anything, this may provoke their hostility and that of many Arabs who will certainly interpret the proposal as an effort to fragment Iraq to Israel’s benefit. You will hear the familiar tropes that this is all part of a vast neoconservative project to weaken the Arab world, though members of the Baker-Hamilton team—particularly Baker, a sleek facilitator between big oil and Arab custodians of stalemate—would shudder at such an association.

Finally, asking Iran and Syria to guarantee this process means asking the two states most responsible for destabilizing Iraq since 2003 to oversee its stabilization. That’s a typical realist habit, and Baker has long enjoyed transacting with American foes. Syrian President Hafiz Assad allowed Shiite Islamists to kill American soldiers and civilians in Lebanon in the 1980s, but was nonetheless rewarded by Baker and President George H.W. Bush with a blank check for total hegemony over Lebanon in 1990. What Baker can’t understand, or won’t, is that the Syrian regime survives thanks to the instability of its neighbors. A peaceful Iraq threatens to make Syria, its intelligence services, and the artificial state of insecurity the regime has created to sustain itself, superfluous. Bashar Assad won’t feel any compulsion to do the US favors as it prepares to exit from Iraq.

But don’t expect Baker to care by then. His brief is to find an “honorable” way for American soldiers to pull out; what comes afterward is no longer in his hands. It’s best to wait before judging the final Iraq Study Group report, and Baker is too much of a calculator to cross Bush. But what he ends up writing will be an American document for Americans. Pity the Iraqis if they are once again secondary in deciding their own fate.

Reason contributing editor Michael Young is opinion editor of the Daily Star newspaper in Lebanon.

"Yes, I think that was also called the CONSTITUTIONAL ELECTION. "

Thank you. (though I think there was also a poll just a week or 2 ago confirming that they didn't want their country split up)
I agree. The Iraqi's need to make the decision. And their strength against outsiders is in staying unified.

They are not going to accept it if the oil revenue isn't divied up. It's reality.

They have nothing to bargain with. The current government benefitted the Sunnis more than the Kurds or Shia. They've been sabotaging it. They've been pi$$ing in the well, and now they don't like the way the coffee tastes.

Am I going to care if the Sunnis start a war with the Shiites or the Kurds, and they get their @sses thoroughly kicked?

Not likely...not in this lifetime anyway.

There is only one former diplomatic "star" any more incompetent than Jim Baker.

That is Lee Hamilton (discounting Kean, of course) *S*

I suspect it is either the water these turkeys drink -- or, perhaps the fatal disease of believing one's own press clippings.

Two over-the-hill losers from the discredited "realist" camp.

Pox on them -- and their already discredited report.

You said -- "But if they don't want it, how can it be successful?"

Well..., first of all, I think you're going to have a "shoo-in" with the Kurds, over this issue. So, I would say that they are "in" with it.

Then, I would suspect you can split off the other minority group, that Saddam Hussein belonged to -- because they feel repressed in their own country now. They would probably go for their own autonomy, of sorts.

Then, that would leave the *one group* by itself -- and it was be "de facto" -- done -- since the other two had already split off. There would be nothing for them to do.

Regards,
Star Traveler

I've got a prediction on how this is going to play out. The US will get the UN to negotiate a split of the country into the aforementioned autonomous zones. Saddam's trial will either end in a not guilty verdict, or he'll be freed by his followers shortly after the US announces a drawdown of forces. Saddam wiil get control again and attempt to destroy the Kurds and reunite Iraq. There's a reason he isn't dead yet. He'll be back in power yet. Like Castro, he'll outlast his nemesis, GWB.

Maybe they prefer to relentlessly kill each other as one nation under Allah.

Or maybe a few hotheads on each of the 3 sides prefer that, and the wants of the majority of each group be dammed.

You said -- "The US will get the UN to negotiate a split of the country into the aforementioned autonomous zones. Saddam's trial will either end in a not guilty verdict, or he'll be freed by his followers shortly after the US announces a drawdown of forces. Saddam wiil get control again and attempt to destroy the Kurds and reunite Iraq. There's a reason he isn't dead yet. He'll be back in power yet. Like Castro, he'll outlast his nemesis, GWB."

Are you sure you're not having a *nightmare* while still awake. That's what this sounds like.

I guess (if this turns out that way) -- that the people of Iraq were right in not trusting and/or believing the U.S. when they were told that Saddam Hussein would never be back in power again. If he comes back again, it's like the U.S. just dumped billions of dollars down a rat-hole and wasted thousands of lives in the war over there. I can't overstate how much of a nightmare that would be.

Oh, and by the way, isn't this *exactly* what the Democrats want to happen?

Regards,
Star Traveler

1) Saddam, a mass murderer, will go nowhere but to Hades. 2) Any scenarios for Iraq will assuredly be done in coordination with the Pentagon - the end result of it all may be the civilian group putting an official stamp on more-or-less the Pentagon's plan.

Bush & Co. want to have substantial troop reductions prior to their leaving the White House in January 2009, probably before fall 2008. Since pacification is failing with no signs of improvement, we must find a way to withdraw our troops to our isolated bases and to friendly regions in Iraq, primarily Kurdistan.

One or two dictators will dominate the two Arab regions. There will be ongoing warfare between the two Arab factions. The persecution of Christians will escalate, possibly to genocidal levels, resulting in their flight from Arab Iraq.

There is oil in the Kurdish North, Oil in the Shiite South, and bupkis in the middle where the largest population the Sunni live. They are not going to accept it if the oil revenue isn't divied up.

What's not to accept? The Sunnis will be poor, and badly outnumbered. 80% of the Iraqi population will have plenty of oil money coming in, and won't think twice about killing Sunnis who cause trouble. Once we're out of the way, and the Iraqis can settle their own mess, the Sunnis will wish they had played ball earlier. When it mattered whether or not they 'accepted' what was going on, that is.

Since pacification is failing with no signs of improvement, we must find a way to withdraw our troops to our isolated bases and to friendly regions in Iraq, primarily Kurdistan.

You'll start to see this happening soon. Within the next 12 months at the latest. There's a growing sense that our large-but-not-large enough troop presence is making the problem worse. Since adding more troops isn't an option, and staying the course simply isn't working, the Administration is being corraled by wiser heads, like James Baker, into a position of having less troops.

Why ask a bunch of politicians (and Supreme Court Justice!) how to win a war. Why not convene a panel of military experts?

Because Iraq is too politically sensitive to be handled by military experts. It's the same reason we're got politicians and lawyers running the show from DC. And, pretty much the reason why people who have failed to produce results have not been replaced. Issues relating to Iraq have political considerations that negate or subordinate other, more practical concerns.

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