Washington Post Putting Politics to Work in Iraq By Jim Hoagland Thursday, April 15, 2004
Abrupt changes in military tactics by the United States in Iraq and a sharp rise in casualties are sending shock waves through that country and through U.S. public opinion. President Bush did little Tuesday night to reduce those tremors. Click here! Bush's laudable determination to show that the United States is in Iraq as a "liberating power," not a long-term occupier, was undermined by his studied vagueness on his plans to prove that proposition on June 30. The administration can still surmount this growing challenge -- but only if it stops mishandling the politics of security in Iraq. In its final 10 weeks, Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority should stop fencing local politics out of the governance and protection of Iraq. Unrealistic efforts by its occupiers to hold Iraq to standards of political purity that no nation in the world meets should be abandoned. In practical terms this means that significant powers should be transferred on June 30 to Iraqi politicians, not just to Iraqi technocrats who may be more malleable to U.S. demands. There can be no effective (or morally justifiable) hidden American agenda of keeping power behind a facade of ending the occupation. The CPA and the White House must also accept that not all Iraqi militias were created equal, or evil. There are Iraqi security forces willing and able to fight against the Baathist remnants, foreign gangs and Shiite brigands who have put sections of the country in flames. But Kurdistan's pesh merga commandos and fighters from the Iraqi National Accord, the Iraqi National Congress and other political organizations have been devalued and restrained by the CPA's apolitical occupation strategy. Those with a political vision of an Iraq worth fighting for have largely been disqualified from defending it at the side of American forces. Instead, the CPA championed a hastily trained, three-tier Iraqi internal security force of army, police and civil defense guards vetted and signed up by Americans with no way of verifying the backgrounds of the people they recruited. The CPA-designed structure crumpled when U.S. Marines launched the siege of Fallujah and fighting flared with Shiite militiamen. Many Iraqi police and troops abandoned their posts. The important exceptions to this pattern of flight have been kept unpublicized, apparently for operational reasons. The 36th Battalion of the Iraqi Army, fighting under U.S. command, has performed well in Fallujah. This became known in Baghdad after the unit was praised by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez at a meeting with the Iraqi Governing Council on Monday. "Shouldn't we form more like it?" asked Jalal Talabani, whose Patriotic Union of Kurdistan has joined its once bitter rival, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, and Arab political organizations in contributing 700 soldiers to the 36th Battalion. Bremer immediately opposed Talabani's suggestion, according to meeting participants. Adding militiamen would "politicize" the army, Bremer reportedly said. Tell that to the Marines, who have suffered heavy casualties as they moved to establish control in Fallujah after taking over from more static U.S. Army units a few weeks ago. Gen. John Abizaid, U.S. theater commander, may have other views on the future. He met on Tuesday with Iraqi political leaders who have contributed troops to the 36th Battalion. The assigning of the Marines to the hottest of Iraq's hot spots was a conscious decision to pit the best-trained fighters and the most advanced urban combat tactics in the U.S. arsenal against the spreading insurgency. The Marine campaign in Fallujah is perhaps the decisive battle for the Sunni Triangle that was not fought a year ago. But to succeed now, it must be integrated with clear political objectives. Many Iraqis and Americans will not offer their support if they do not better understand what this administration intends for Iraq's political future. If you think it was puzzling and dispiriting for Americans to hear Bush and Bremer say on television this week that they don't know who will be in political power in Baghdad in 10 weeks, think of the effect it had on the Iraqis who heard them. Bremer is a skilled, smart and experienced senior civil servant, a breed trained never to acknowledge in a crisis that you don't have a plan -- above all if you don't. His evasion cleared the way for U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to announce in Baghdad yesterday that a "caretaker" government he will design should take over on June 30. (Brahimi also denounced the siege of Fallujah as "collective punishment.") Even with time short, the American mission in Iraq can succeed if it is a matter of correcting well-intended but faulty theories of governance. A hidden agenda to keep real power away from Iraqis and in American hands -- even if blessed by U.N. civil servants -- cannot remain long hidden, nor would it long survive. It would only bring new and irrevocable disaster. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
