Seeking security - The best strategy for the US to adopt in Iraq

The Times (UK) ^ | 9/3/03

[saquin]

The funeral of Ayatollah Muhammad Baqr al-Hakim yesterday witnessed vast crowds, understandable emotion and sharp oratory. Most important of all, the march and the memorial service passed off peacefully. The angry speech delivered by the late Ayatollah’s brother, Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, will doubtless attract considerable and disproportionate attention. Mr al-Hakim sought to blame the Americans for the car bomb at Najaf on Friday on the ground that they had failed to provide sufficient security at the Shia shrine of Imam Ali. He then went on to assert that outside forces should leave the country as soon as possible. These are hardly consistent positions. The US military would scarcely provide better protection to the Shias if it departed Iraq, and had kept a distance out of deference to the shrine.

In truth, while Shia Muslims are extremely concerned about their welfare, they have little to gain and much to lose from a split with Paul Bremer, the principal American administrator in Baghdad. They have enjoyed greater religious and political freedom in the past four months than the preceding three decades. All the major factions want to continue to co-operate with the coalition and they are backed by the senior ranks of the clergy led by Grand Ayatollah Ali Hussein al-Sistani. The greater danger to a stable Iraq is intercommunal violence prompted by suspicions about who perpetrated the Najaf atrocity. The next 40 days (the traditional Shia mourning period) will be particularly sensitive.

The minimum that the Shias will ask for, however, is the right to expand their own security network. As other sections of the population in Iraq, notably the Kurds, already have the authority to manage themselves in this way, it will be hard for Mr Bremer to deny moderate Shias that privilege. He hinted as much yesterday when he spoke of giving the Iraqi people “more responsibility” for law and order.

Recent events have prompted an internal reassessment of American policy, but not a wholesale reappraisal. Much of the outside analysis of the debate conducted in the Bush Administration has verged on the incredible. The argument is allegedly polarised between a State Department supposedly desperate to involve the United Nations at any price and a Pentagon dogmatically opposed to soliciting help from any source and disinclined to commit more troops to Iraq because Donald Rumsfeld wants to hold them back for Iran and North Korea. There are differences in emphasis in Washington, but not division on this epic scale.

The political reality is shaped by more practical factors. The United States already has 140,000 soldiers in Iraq, many of them operating in peaceful areas. It would not be viable just to call up another set of men and simply drop them into the unfamiliar territory of Baghdad. The notion that remnants of the old regime, Sunni militants, or terrorists linked to al-Qaeda would return to civilian life if only American soldiers were replaced by others drawn from Belgium, Bolivia or Botswana wearing the insignia of the United Nations is fanciful. The best strategy would be for the US to look again at its own resources, search for partners who can provide genuine policing expertise and steadily transfer more autonomy to a reformed Iraqi police force and reconstituted army.

Not many nations are volunteering huge numbers of soldiers for this enterprise. But between the likes of Denmark, willing to help with nation-building activities, Eastern European states capable of logistical support and others such as India, Pakistan and Turkey who might dispatch troops, there is a plausible and useful coalition. It should be possible and desirable to make arrangements that permit security in Iraq to be shared more broadly over time without sacrificing military efficiency. A quick fix to satisfy politicians in the West is surely not in the long-term interests of the Iraqi people.