VOL. XLVI
No 16
The Political Scene (21 April 2003)
The war in Iraq is virtually over. Now comes the hard part, as the US tries to hold Iraq together while working out a viable and acceptable political structure for the country. Before that, the Americans want UN sanctions lifted, which is likely to be a contentious issue. Repeated verbal assaults on Syria by senior US officials have spurred speculation that the Americans are planning to attack Syria next, despite the fact that they appear to have their hands full in Iraq. US Secretary of State Colin Powell is to visit the region sometime soon, both to talk to the Syrians and to relaunch the peace process with the famed road map. However, the unveiling of the map awaits the appointment of a Palestinian prime minister, a process which has run into snags. The arrest in Baghdad of a former Palestinian terrorist has been blown way out of proportion by the Americans.
A Short Honeymoon
While the entry of American troops into former president Saddam Husain’s home town of Tikrit on 14 April marked the fall of the last major population center in Iraq to the invaders, the situation throughout the country thereafter was sufficiently messy for the war to be described as won but not over. The whereabouts of the upper echelons of the government and Ba'th party, who disappeared in an apparently coordinated move on 9 April, remained unknown, as did the perpetrators of a series of arson attacks against key, historical, legal, educational and cultural sites and archives in Baghdad. Continued disorder in the capital was matched in the northern city of Mosul – a hotbed of Iraqi nationalism – by demonstrations against the US on 15 and 16 April that degenerated into shooting matches, with considerable loss of life. There were also anti-US protests, albeit peaceful ones, in southern cities such as Kut and Nasiriya. All in all it looked as if the Americans’ honeymoon in Iraq was already over, if it could ever be really said to have begun.
At the same time, various groups, both official and unofficial, were taking the first tentative steps towards a new political order in Iraq. On the official side of the ledger, the Americans convoked a meeting of some 80 exiles, opposition figures and tribal and religious leaders near Nasiriya on 15 April, which was chiefly notable for the absence of the largest Shi'a opposition group, the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), and the Pentagon’s favorite exile, Iraqi National Congress (INC) leader Ahmad Chalabi. (SCIRI’s deputy leader, 'Abd al-'Aziz Hakim explained on 14 April “we will not participate at the meeting in Nasiriya, and we have told this to the Americans…We refuse to put ourselves under the thumb of the Americans or any other country, because that is not in the Iraqis’ interests.” Mr Chalabi, who arrived in Iraq last week ahead of his rival exiles courtesy of the US army, appeared to be trying to put some daylight between himself and his American sponsors by not attending in person.) The meeting produced a kind of lowest-common-denominator 13-point statement and agreement to meet again in 10 days “with additional Iraqi participants.”
The arrival of Mr Hakim in the southern town of Kut on 16 April – reportedly to a rapturous welcome - presumably comes under the “unofficial” (not to say “unwelcome”) heading as far as the Americans were concerned. Somewhat less clear is how Mr Chalabi’s arrival in Baghdad on 16 April should be classified. The INC issued a statement in London same day announcing that the Iraqi Leadership Council - grouping the heads of the INC, SCIRI, the two Kurdish parties (the KDP and PUK) and the Iraqi National Accord (INA) – would meet in Bagdad as soon as practical. This meeting was described by INC officials as complementary to the US-led – the Americans would no doubt say the US-facilitated – consultation process begun in Nasiriya, but it might easily be mistaken for an attempt to outflank it. And the perception that Mr Chalabi was trying to preempt matters – with or without the connivance of his US backers - was only strengthened on 16 April when two of his close associates, Muhammad Zubaidi and Jawdat 'Ubaidi, announced that they had been elected governor and interim mayor (respectively) of Baghdad by tribal and religious leaders with the consent of the US occupation authorities. However, the Americans begged to differ, and a Marine Corps spokesman in Baghdad said that “anyone declaring themselves as mayor or anything else is just not true. The US government has not appointed anyone. Anyone can call themselves anything they want to. But future appointments like this will be handled through USAID.”
Bush Calls For Sanctions To Be
Lifted
Mr Bush,
meanwhile, pulled something of a fast one – and set the stage for some
potentially bruising dickering in the Security Council – on 16 April when he
called for the lifting of UN sanctions on Iraq. “Now that Iraq is liberated, the
UN should lift economic sanctions on that country,” he said, adding that “Iraq
should be able to trade freely and we need to transition from the oil-for-food
program as soon as possible and help restore a normal trading relationship with
the global economy.” It did not escape anyone’s notice that the lifting of
sanctions would transfer responsibility for Iraq’s oil trade, currently
administered by the UN as part of the oil-for-food program, to whoever is or
will be in charge in Iraq (presumably the occupying power), which means that the
removal of sanctions will face a number of legal and political obstacles. Among
the former is the need for the UN weapons inspectors – not Washington’s favorite
group – to declare formally that Iraq has disarmed. Among the latter is the fact
that the lifting of sanctions will remove whatever leverage France and Russia
have in the post-war situation in Iraq, for which they will presumably exact a
price. Coincidentally or not, Russian Energy Minister Igor Yusufov warned on 17
April that Russian oil companies will consider all pre-war contracts valid,
while an unnamed foreign ministry spokesman in Moscow pointed out on the same
day that “regime change in Baghdad is not a condition for lifting economic
sanctions…there is a UN Security Council resolution for this, which clearly
stipulates the disarmament of Iraq – something international inspectors must
decide.” As for France, President Jacques Chirac’s comments on the same day
suggested that he sees the issue of lifting sanctions as a means to insert the
UN deeper into the post-war reconstitution of Iraq and the region. “The lifting
of sanctions is an aim which we have supported for a long time,” he said. “Now
it is naturally for the UN to define the modalities for lifting the sanctions.
France wants the UN to play a central role, both in the next steps over Iraq and
in the context of stability which must be reestablished on the region.”
Syria Under Attack
Flushed with battlefield success in Iraq, the Americans lost little time in opening a verbal offensive on what many regional observers assume – unsurprisingly – to be the next target in the neoconservatives’ sights, Syria. Broadly speaking, the Syrians are being pilloried in Washington on four counts, three of which are unproven and the fourth a matter of opinion: giving refuge to fleeing members of the Iraqi regime; concealing Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD); developing WMD of their own, in particular chemical weapons; and supporting terrorist groups such as the Palestinian rejectionists and Hizbollah in Lebanon.
In regard to the first count, President Bush declared on 11 April that “we expect them to do everything they can to prevent people who should be held to account from escaping in their country. And if they are in their country, we expect the Syrian authorities to turn them over to the proper folks.” (Perhaps wisely in the present circumstances, Mr Bush failed to specify who the “proper folks” might be.) On 12 April Pentagon adviser Richard Perle resuscitated a favorite Israeli claim – that since no WMD have been found in Iraq, they must have been moved to Syria – in a typically bellicose fashion. “It would be an act of such foolishness on Syria’s part,” he said. “Our first approach would be to demand that the Syrians terminate that threat by turning over anything they have come to possess, and failing that, I don’t think anyone would rule out the use of our full range of capabilities.” Mr Bush returned to the fray on 13 April to assert that “there are chemical weapons in Syria,” while Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed on 14 April that Syria had conducted a chemical weapons test during the past 12-15 months. Also on 14 April, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer stigmatized Syria as “indeed a rogue nation… they do indeed harbor terrorists. Syria is a terrorist state.”
All is not lost for Damascus, however. The message from Washington is that there is still time for the Syrians to mend their ways and acknowledge the new reality of the American imperium in the Middle East. “Gone is the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Husain,” Mr Fleischer declared. “Next, hopefully, is a reexamination by Syria and perhaps others about how they conduct their affairs…What the president is hopeful of is that, in the outcome of this war, nations will examine the decisions they have previously made and hopefully make new decisions based on new reality in the Middle East.” Secretary of State Colin Powell had a similar message for the Syrians on 14 April, saying that “we believe in light of this new environment they should review their actions and their behavior, not only with regard to who gets haven in Syria and weapons of mass destruction but especially the support of terrorist activity.” He also warned that “we will examine possible measures of a diplomatic, economic or other nature as we move forward.” The next day, though, Mr Powell evidently decided that Syria-bashing (and speculation that Syria was next on the US hit list) had gone far enough when he said that “there is no list, there is no war plan right now to go attack someone else either for the purpose of overthrowing their leadership or for the purpose of imposing democratic values.” But even then, he could not resist adding that “we hope that Syria understands now that there is a new environment in the region with the end of the regime of Saddam Husain, and that Syria will reconsider its policies of past years and understand that there are better choices it can make than the choices it has made in the past.”
Powell To Visit
The Syrians appeared to be more bemused than frightened by the heated rhetoric emanating from Washington. Syrian Foreign Minister Faruq al-Shara' reacted to the claim that Syria was developing WMD by saying on 16 April that “the Syrian Government is ready to sign a treaty under UN supervision to make the whole Middle East a zone free from all mass destruction weapons, nuclear, chemical and biological” – which is the Syrians’ typically oblique way of pointing out that Israel has more WMD than all the Arab states put together. At the foreign ministry, spokeswoman Buthaina Sha'ban was equally oblique when she said on the same day that “Syria will always cooperate in things that serve the Iraqi people’s interest…Syria is a peace-oriented country that would like to see this region stable and secure, but of course with the full return of Arab rights.” She also said that relations with the US are “not so bad” and that “I think diplomatic channels are much quieter and much more constructive than what the media presents,” adding that Mr Powell had visited Syria before and that “if he would like to visit Syria once more he would be most welcome.” Surprisingly, Mr Powell promptly accepted this invitation, although at an unspecified date in the near future and as part of a wider effort to relaunch the peace process. “As we get ready to release the roadmap that will get us jump started in the Middle East peace process, there will be an opportunity for me to travel to the region in the not too distant future,” he said on 17 April. “I would expect, as part of those travels, I would ask to see President Asad, and I look forward to it.” However, it remained to be seen whether Mr Powell’s proposed visit to Damascus would be the occasion for a dialogue or a lecture, since he again emphasized that “we should make it rather clear to the Syrian government” that its behavior “would not be satisfactory…in light of these changed circumstances.”
'Arafat Rejects Cabinet
Mr Powell’s vagueness as to the date of his visit to the region probably stems from the fact that the Americans are waiting on the Palestinians to ratify the appointment of Mahmud 'Abbas as their first prime minister before unveiling the much-vaunted road map to peace, and this process faced a delay of uncertain length after Palestinian leader Yasir ‘Arafat rejected the cabinet proposed by Mr 'Abbas on 13 April. Mr 'Arafat’s objections reportedly centered on the interior ministry, which Mr 'Abbas awarded to himself after the initial nominee, Muhammad Dahlan, proved unacceptable, as well as on the demotion of several ‘Arafat loyalists. Theoretically, of course, Mr 'Arafat has no power to block Mr 'Abbas, who only needs to obtain the approval of the Palestinian Legislative Council for his cabinet. But it appears that in reality Mr 'Arafat retains sufficient influence and status within the Palestinian political structure to wield a de facto veto over cabinet appointments, a fact which will no doubt be seized upon by the Israelis as an excuse to delay the unveiling of the road map yet further.