VOL. XLVI
No 15
14
The Political Scene (14 April 2003)
The abrupt collapse of central authority in Iraq has created chaos on the ground in Baghdad and uncertainty in both Iraq and Washington as to the country’s political future. The Americans appear to have averted Turkish intervention in the north following the seizure of Kirkuk by Kurdish forces. Buoyed by military success, the Washington hawks have been making menacing noises about Syria. In the general confusion, few people have noticed that Israel has torpedoed the international quartet’s “road map” to regional peace.
Confusion Follows Collapse
The abrupt and wholesale disappearance of the upper echelons of the Iraqi Government and the Ba'th party from Baghdad on 9 April led inevitably to speculation that President Saddam Husain had been killed by a targeted US air strike on 7 April. But whatever the reasons for the unexpected disintegration of the regime, it left behind a power and security vacuum which the Americans appeared initially unwilling or unable to fill. It was followed first by scenes of mass jubilation and then by looting and anarchy as the implications of the lack of any authority began to sink in. The initial targets of the population’s anger were the symbols of the regime’s power, such as the houses of Mr Husain’s family and colleagues and government buildings, and at MEES press time on 11 April it was reported that the ministries of information, trade, education, higher education and industry were ablaze. (Interestingly enough, the only building the Americans appeared to be actively protecting was the ministry of oil.)
The confusion on the ground in Baghdad – where there were still pockets of resistance to the Americans – and elsewhere in the country was mirrored in the Americans’ plans (or lack of them) for the country’s political future, which appeared to depend at least as much on a turf battle in Washington as on the physical battle in Iraq. In a move that was widely seen as a preemptive strike by the neoconservative hawks in the Pentagon against their opponents in the State Department and CIA, the Americans installed the leader of the opposition Iraqi National Congress (INC), Ahmad Chalabi, and 7,000 of his followers in Nasiriya on 6 April. (In a similar move, the Americans also installed a prominent exiled Shi'a cleric, Sayyid 'Abd al-Majid al-Khoei, in Najaf in central Iraq, presumably in order to preempt any attempt to seize power by the Iranian-backed [and based] Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq [ SCIRI]. The 10 April assassination of Sayyid Khoei was only the first indication of the kind of problems the Americans are likely to face as they try to manipulate Iraq’s political reconstitution.) This was presumably intended to give the INC some kind of edge when it comes to forming the Iraqi Interim Authority (IIA), the body defined by Defense Undersecretary Paul Wolfowitz on 6 April as “a bridge from the coalition administration that’s going to start to ultimately form a legitimate and competent government for Iraq,” and Mr Chalabi lost little time in announcing on 9 April that the US had identified 43 Iraqi politicians – 14 exiles and 29 from inside the country – who would attend a 12 April meeting near Nasiriya to discuss the immediate political future. Vice President Dick Cheney also announced on the same day that the meeting would take place on 12 April – but that was before the opposition in Washington went to work., and after White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that “the timing of the meeting will depend on a number of factors, including the security situation on the ground,” Mr Cheney issued a statement saying that the meeting would take place “after” 12 April. At the State Department, an unnamed “senior official” was considerably more specific about the disagreements within the administration, saying that “the people who are talking about Nasiriya are people who see this as a coronation for Chalabi, and that is definitely not what this is going to be.” On the same day State Department spokesman Richard Boucher confirmed on the record that “it’s not a coronation. It’s not a choice of some kind of government…It’s a meeting with a significant number of Iraqis representing a wide range of Iraqi groups.” What the State Department has in mind, according both to reports and MEES sources, is a series of such meetings in various parts of the country leading to a larger conference in Baghdad at which the interim authority would be chosen. As a plan, that sounds reasonable enough, but with the Bush administration seemingly (and improbably) almost as deeply divided as the Iraqi opposition, it is anyone’s guess at the moment which side will prevail in Washington.
Kurds Take Kirkuk
International attention, which had been focused on the dramatic events in Baghdad on 9 April, abruptly shifted to north the next day when Kurdish forces (the peshmergas) moved in to the city of Kirkuk after the Iraqi civil administration and regular army evaporated. In doing so they crossed a political red line agreed between the US and Turkey and set alarm bells ringing in Ankara, where Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said on the same day that “we will not permit either armed people or those without arms who would try to destroy the demography and the structure of these towns. We will not allow any fait accompli.” The nightmare prospect of the Turkish army intervening to evict the Kurds from Kirkuk while the limited US forces in the north looked on was unnerving enough for the Americans to take swift action, and after speaking to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Mr Gul reported that “Powell gave his word new US forces will be sent to Kirkuk in a few hours to remove the peshmerga who have gone in there…they will send their parachute units to Kirkuk and will not allow any de facto situation or fait accompli.” (Mr Powell would have been within his rights to point out to Mr Gul that if the Turks had allowed the US to deploy adequate forces in north Iraq via Turkey, the situation might never have arisen in the first place.) Mr Fleischer confirmed on 10 April that “American forces will be in charge of Kirkuk,” and the next day a Kurdish commander in Kirkuk said that Kurdish forces had been ordered to vacate the city and that “we are waiting now for the US forces to arrive.” So for the moment at least, it would seem that the Americans have managed to avert a Turkish intervention in the north.
Syria In The Hawks’ Sights
The unexpectedly swift collapse of Iraqi resistance to the US invasion has encouraged the Pentagon hawks to indulge in bellicose rhetoric against other regional antagonists, with Syria squarely in their sights. Mr Rumsfeld on 9 April repeated earlier claims that Syria had been assisting Iraq, stating that “I have accurately advised them that they not provide military assistance to Iraq. They seem to have made a conscious decision to ignore that. Senior regime people were moving out of Iraq into Syria and Syria is continuing to send things into Iraq. We find it notably unhelpful.” In view of the fact that the Americans have yet to find any weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, it was perhaps unwise of Under Secretary of State for International Security John Bolton to say on the same day that “we are hopeful that a number of regimes will draw the appropriate lesson from Iraq that the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction is not in their interest. This is a wonderful opportunity for Syria to forswear the pursuit of WMD and as with other governments of the region see if there are not new possibilities in the Middle East peace process.” Vice President Dick Cheney, for his part, appeared to expand the administration’s policy of preempting attacks on the US into a duty to prevent terrorist attacks everywhere when he said on 9 April that “in removing the terror regime from Iraq, we send a very clear message to all groups that operate by means of terror and violence against the innocent. The US and our coalition partners are showing…we have the capacity and the will to wage was on terror and win decisively. We have a further responsibility to help keep the peace of the world and to prevent the terrorists and their sponsors from plunging the world into horrific violence.”
So Farewell, Roadmap…
Before recommending the “new possibilities in the Middle East peace process” to the Syrians, Mr Bolton should perhaps have a word with the Israelis, who now appear to have put paid to the only possibility on the table, the famed road map drawn up – but not unveiled – by the international quartet (the US, UN, EU and Russia). According to a senior aide to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Dov Weisglass, on 5 April, “we will submit 15 reservations on the road map to the US, and if we find that a refusal of our proposed changes could jeopardize Israel’s security, we will not accept. On these issues we will not make any concessions, and if we have to, we will leave the negotiating table and come home.”
Charles Snow