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What is Iraq'd? Click to find out.
04.02.04
EYEBALLING:
Cofer Black is the eyeball guy. As director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center on 9/11, he prepared a briefing for the president detailing how the agency was prepared to capture and kill Al Qaeda leaders--in his phrase, to ensure that flies would be walking on their eyeballs. In his new job as the State Department's senior counterterrorism official, Black continues the fight against terrorism that he's spent years waging. Yesterday, however, he gave a House International Relations subcommittee some dubious information about its progress as it relates to Iraq.
Iraq is currently serving as a focal point for foreign jihadist fighters, who are united in a common goal with former regime elements, criminals and more established foreign terrorist organization members to conduct attacks against Coalition and Iraqi civilian targets. These jihadists view Iraq as a new training ground to build their extremist credentials and hone the skills of the terrorist. We are aggressively rooting out the foreign fighters in Iraq, and we will continue to devote the resources necessary to ensure that al-Qaida and other terrorist groups will be unable to use Iraq as a training ground or sanctuary.
This dutifully toes the administration's line that Iraq is the "central front" of the war on terrorism. The problem is the evidence doesn't seem to fit the contention that Iraq is "currently serving as a focal point for foreign jihadist fighters ... to build their extremist credentials." After a few months when every explosion in Iraq was followed by administration spokesman hollering "Zarqawi!" apprehensions don't yield foreign terrorists. As John F. Burns reports from Baghdad,
only a small number of the 12,000 detainees currently held at American-run camps across Iraq are foreigners from the swath of Muslim countries across Asia, the Middle East and Africa who have been the principal activists of Al Qaeda and its associated groups elsewhere. American officials have said that fewer than 150 of the detainees are foreigners, the rest Iraqis. The United States command has occasionally announced the arrest of a suspected Islamic terrorist, but has then fallen silent.
On Tuesday, before the Falluja attacks, General [Mark] Kimmitt, the American military spokesman, appeared to back off at least somewhat from the emphasis on Islamic militants as the principal enemy. At a briefing, he offered an overview of the war in which he suggested that what has occurred, in effect, is a merging of the Saddamist insurgents and the Islamic terrorists into a common terrorist threat, and that, either way, "we just call them targets."
Now, it's surely imprecise to judge foreign infiltration by arrest numbers. But this means foreigners account for only 1.25 percent of suspected terrorists/insurgents/bad guys in custody in Iraq. Surely the terrorists can't be so stealthy as to escape coalition detentions in such overwhelming numbers. Even if you assume the Zarqawi memo to be a pinpoint accurate portrait of jihadi activity in Iraq, it explicitly bemoans how an Iraqi willing to make his home a nest of terrorist activity is "rarer than red sulphur," which has led to Zarqawi's confreres wearing "ourselves out on many occasions sheltering and protecting the brothers." Furthermore, Black's testimony terms the next generation of Al Qaeda and affiliated terrorists "no longer the seasoned veteran Al Qaeda trainers from Afghanistans camps or close associates of Al Qaedas founding members." If the new terrorists are greener, they're probably not so overwhelmingly wily as to consistently evade over 100,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Which suggests that the administration is confusing where the terrorists are for where they'd like them to be.
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04.01.04
BLACK HAWK DOWN, CONT'D:
According to an outstanding report from Ivan Watson of NPR, for the equivalent of 50 cents, you can buy "surprisingly sophisticated" DVDs and cassettes glorifying the Iraqi resistance. Amazingly, the propagandists operate with impunity, listing the name and Fallujah address of their production studio and the name of each DVD, secure in the knowledge that the U.S. hasn't--and won't--shut them down. Titles like "Fallujah" and "Rage" intersperse TV news footage of the occupation with "traditional Sunni Arab songs of praise." In one DVD, scenes from a Libyan movie showing Arab tribesmen killing European soldiers in a pitched desert battle are displayed while a voice chants:
Good for you, brave men. You have terrified America, and its Army. America will lose. We will pave the roads for them with bullets. The prophet Mohammed's flag will fly high over this land, and America will retreat from this defeat.
The insurgents are not portraying themselves as Baathists, surely for the reason that they know they can generate no popular support that way. They show footage of bleeding Iraqis in a Fallujah hospital with the visible date "April 2003." That was when panicked American soldiers reacted to a Fallujah mob by firing into the crowd. For the insurgents' propaganda purposes, this is their origin myth: that they are an authentic liberation force reacting to the brutality of a foreign conqueror.
Watson observes that one disc contains scenes, purported to be from Iraq, that actually show Russian armored vehicles exploding in Chechnya. I wonder if that's really an "inconsistency," as the report terms it, or if the insurgents are trying deliberately to draw parallels. Those would be, first, that the U.S. occupation, like the despicable Russian war in Chechnya, is a relentless engine of carnage; and that second, no matter what deprivations they suffer, the Iraqi resistance will be as ultimately indomitable as the Chechen one.
That's not the only parallel the insurgents seek to convey. Another DVD, "The Gates of Baghdad," draws heavily on footage from Black Hawk Down. "Fallujah," a voice exhorts, "attack their troops, and no one will be able to save their injured soldiers. Who brought you to Fallujah, Bush? We will serve you the drink of death." Remember, in Black Hawk Down, the movie doesn't show the ignominious American departure from Somalia--though that outcome hovers over the film, and, indeed, the Middle East--it just depicts the gruesome murder of our Army Rangers at the hands of a nihilistic mob. That suggests that for the insurgents in the Sunni Triangle, the point isn't so much kicking the U.S. out of Iraq; it's their ability to murder our soldiers while they're there.
The fact that Fallujah has not been incorporated--politically or economically--into a post-Baathist order means that the presence of the resistance itself is a huge defeat for America. Our goal is to help create a democratic Iraq. If we don't invest Fallujah in that democratic Iraq, then, in essence, the insurgents triumph over the mighty U.S. just as surely as they do if we packed up and left. (The fact that the CPA is publicly ticking off the days until it dissolves doesn't help, either.) According to former CPA officials in the Sunni Triangle, our political presence in the heart of the resistance has been sporadic, a result of our inability to pacify the area. The problem is that pacification may very well be linked to political development. As Juan Cole explains:
The only hope is political. The Sunni Arabs have to be convinced that they are not playing a zero-sum game. A zero-sum game is one where there is only one pie, and it always stays the same size. In a zero-sum game, if your rivals get a bigger piece of the pie, then your piece will inevitably shrink.
But politics does not have to be a zero-sum game. The Iraqi economy has the potential to expand greatly. So the pie won't stay the same size, and Shiites could get richer without robbing the Sunni Arabs. Likewise, in a parliamentary system, the Sunni Arabs could make coalitions with Kurds and moderate Shiites in such a way as to be a key player and to retain a great deal of political power and to forestall the radical Shiites from taking over. A minority can leverage its power by being a swing vote.
The military isn't talking to reporters about what it hints is an imminent response. But the CPA needs as well to explain how, politically, it plans to respond to the Fallujah murders. That response will be the one that ultimately determines if we win or lose the war.
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03.31.04
BLACK HAWK DOWN:
Young men and boys in Fallujah are cheering as the charred carcasses of American contractors hang from bridges as trophies. Look at this photograph and then read General Mark Kimmitt's response:
Fallujah remains one of those cities in Iraq that just don't get it. It's a former Baathist stronghold. This was a city that profited immeasurably and immensely under the former regime. They have a view that somehow the harder they fight, the better chance they have of achieving some sort of restorationist movement within the country.
For a year now, the Pentagon has blithely dismissed the violence in the Sunni Triangle as being the work of regime "dead-enders" who "just don't get it." The truth is that we don't get it. We have yet to find any meaningful way of giving Fallujah a stake in the new Iraq. And with the CPA website ticking off the days until it dissolves like a prisoner awaiting his release, our political influence is diminishing rapidly. Here's what a Fallujah police chief says about the carnage:
The violence is increasing against the Americans. ... They took over the country and they didn't give us anything. They came for democracy and to help the people, but we haven't seen any of this, just killing and violence.
Those aren't just keffiyeh-masked terrorists dancing in the streets, they're also little children. And they're not going anywhere. Fallujah will still be part of Iraq the day after the CPA shuts its doors for good. There's a very good reason the mob in Fallujah dragged the corpses of American contractors through the streets: They know the image that it sends--Mogadishu, the Army Rangers, Black Hawk Down. What they also know is that there's more than one way to thwart the U.S.: they just have to remain "dead-enders." One year after the invasion, we've allowed that to happen.
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COME ON DOWN:
Are you an experienced diplomat eager to please policymakers who hold an abiding and implacable hatred for the entire U.S. foreign service? Are you a man of clear principles who will betray every last one of them when Karl Rove reads you the latest numbers from Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia? Are you able to manage a tumultuous relationship with a charlatan angling to attain high political office even as he's more loathed by his countrymen than one of the 20th century's most bloodthirsty dictators? (Are you able to ensure that a new anti-corruption commission will neglect his shady business dealings and hoarding of intelligence documents from the former regime's secret police and terror squads?) Are you equipped to argue that the balkanization of a multiethnic and multiconfessional nation is just part of the "bumpy" road to democracy? Are you neglectful of actual power centers in a foreign country to the point where you needlessly and counterproductively antagonize them--all because they don't project the sort of image that plays well in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia? Are you prepared to tut-tut an entrenched and murderous frenzy that shows no signs of abating as the work of a small corps of "dead-enders" that just "doesn't get it"?
Have we got a job for you!
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03.30.04
TERROR EXPERT AND BODICE RIPPER:
As many, many readers have gleefully observed, I screwed up in my March 23 post. Richard Clarke's best-seller is called Against All Enemies, not Against All Odds. Against All Odds is Patricia Rosemoor's riveting 1988 Harlequin superromance. I kind of don't regret the error, though.
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TOO TIRED TO SPIN:
The way I like to imagine it, Paul Bremer's desk in his Green Zone office has two phones flanking either well-scuffed oak edge. The first is his hotline to the White House; the second is the direct connection to the Pentagon. After yesterday's press briefing, Bremer walks to his chair, loosens his tie, kicks his combat boots up onto of a sheaf of papers scattered in between the phones, pours himself a drink and waits for the Pentagon line to start ringing. He lazily swirls his ice cubes in his glass as the inevitable trilling begins. On the other end, Donald Rumsfeld is scowling, holding the receiver in one hand and a transcript of Bremer's comments in the other. Bremer, looking to spare himself the hassle, doesn't bother to pick up. His eye spots his calendar and he notes to himself: just ninety-five days left.
In the real world, Bremer's press conference probably did cause Rumsfeld indigestion. While Rumsfeld never tires of telling reporters what a smashing success the United States has achieved by creating an Iraqi police force in the blink of an eye, the U.S. proconsul for the very first time admitted what's been obvious for months: The Iraqi police are a woefully poorly trained and insufficient force, vastly ill-equipped to provide security for a security-starved populace. He stopped short of taking the next step--that the breakneck rapidity with which Rumsfeld has ordered the Iraqi security services whipped up has led to poor training and even poorer vetting, allowing mercenaries, assassins and murderers into the ranks--but take a look at Knight Ridder's account of Bremer's remarks:
In an uncommonly downbeat assessment of Iraq's security challenges, U.S. Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer told local officials Monday that it will take at least a year for the country to hire, equip and train enough police and border guards to meet its needs.
"There is no way to speed it up; it simply can't be done," he said. "And it's going to take another year. We just have to be honest about that."
. . .
In contrast to the optimistic tone often used in public by coalition officials, the meeting featured grim assessments of Iraq's policing and border challenges.
In response to Gov. Abdulah Hassan Rasheed's plea for more police officers in his province of 1.2 million people, Bremer said: "The key is to have professional police, not just to add people who aren't trained. Many of these people who are already in the police force are corrupt, they don't understand human rights and some of them are engaging in attacks on the coalition."
He added sharply: "We're not going to bring in any more untrained police. It's not going to happen."
Bremer has less than three months to go before his job ends. Meanwhile, his headaches continue. The U.N. is in-country to try to come up with a way to convene an interim government. Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani is demanding the interim constitution be changed. Moqtada Al Sadr is causing more trouble. Maybe yesterday's briefing is a sign that we should start to expect a lot more candor from Bremer about the occupation's flaws.
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03.29.04
ONCE MORE FOR OLD TIMES' SAKE:
According to a Kuwait-based aide to Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani, the powerful Shia cleric is not playing around when he says he's angry with the Transitional Administrative Law's formula to approve a permanent constitution. Reuters:
"If article 61 of the interim constitution is not changed, Imam [Ayatollah Ali] al-Sistani may issue a fatwa declaring illegitimate all those [Iraqis] to whom power is transferred in June," said Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Mohri.
Article 61 of the TAL contains the infamous tortured-language provision declaring the permanent constitution "ratified if a majority of the voters in Iraq approve and if two-thirds of the voters in three or more governorates do not reject it." It's the second clause that pisses off Sistani, since the Kurds have the political infrastructure in place to turn out two-thirds of their voters across three provinces to vote against a constitution, if their political leadership so desires. According to a recent estimate by Juan Cole, Article 61's ratification formula could mean that as little as 10 percent of Iraq's population can doom the constitution.
I noticed that The New York Times yesterday described this provision as providing "minority guarantees." That misses the mark. Article 61--and the rest of the TAL--is about ethnic power politics. The elected Kurdish leaders on the Governing Council are the only Iraqi leaders that can legitimately claim to represent the Iraqi faction for whom they presume to speak. As a result, their ability to maneuver in negotiations over the TAL was unconstrained to a degree that no Sunni or Shia leader enjoyed. The Kurds, therefore, at the height of their power, forced this provision through. Now Sistani wants it out.
Of course, it would be naïve to think that he's not also playing ethnic power politics. In this case, though, he has the stronger argument. Anti-majoritarian protections for approving a constitution are desirable things, but this goes too far. Luckily, viewing the problem through the lens of ethnic power politics provides the basis for a fair compromise: approve the constitution through a nationwide referendum by a two-thirds majority. The rough demographics of Iraq mean that under this formula the Shia, Sunnis, and Kurds would all have to caucus with one another to either accept or reject the constitution.
But that would mean reopening the TAL, which the CPA is not going to want to do. Last week, administrator Paul Bremer delivered a speech that, essentially, begged Iraqis (read: Sistani) not to reject the TAL. ("In a country as broad and diverse as Iraq it is not possible for every interest to have all it wants.") To be sure, revising the TAL at Sistani's behest would run the risk of encouraging other factions to seek the same option. But I'm not sure we have a choice. Sistani doesn't screw around. Everything he's said he would do he has done--from seeking that the permanent constitution be approved through direct elections to rejecting the U.S.'s original caucus plan for transferring sovereignty to demanding the mediation of the United Nations. In all these cases, he's given the CPA an opportunity to move toward his position before taking any action. And in all these cases, the United States has initially thought Sistani would either not follow through on his word or that he wouldn't make too much of an impact. Wrong on both counts. The U.S. needs to learn from its mistakes and work out a compromise with Sistani that provides protections for the Sunnis and the Kurds. If Sistani goes ahead with his fatwa, then there's no way the provisional government can work, and the handover of power will be a disaster. Avoiding that fate should trump other objections. We have less than 100 days before the handover. That has to be enough to learn from our previous mistakes, and to avoid repeating them.
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