VOL. XLVI
No 19
12
The Political Scene (12 May 2003)
Against the background of a continuing political and administrative vacuum in Iraq, the Americans have appointed a new administrator/coordinator to supersede retired general Jay Garner as the senior civilian in the country. They are also trying, under the cover of lifting sanctions, to obtain UN endorsement for what looks very much like a colonial mandate in Iraq. Secretary of State Colin Powell has gone to Damascus to warn the Syrians to mend their ways in the new Middle East.
US Appoints New Administrator
As a generalization, it would probably be true to say that in the aftermath of the US conquest of Iraq and the removal of Saddam Husain, the Iraqis have turned out to be far less divided than expected and the Americans far more so. In Baghdad and elsewhere, the famously fractious Iraqis have so far failed to turn on each other, whereas in Washington the Americans continue to indulge in turf fights and ideological guerrilla warfare so internecine as to have resulted in virtual paralysis on the ground in Iraq. In other words, both the pessimists, who believed that without a firm hand Iraq would fall apart, and the optimists, who assumed the Americans had a plan, have been proved wrong, with results that are frequently confusing and sometimes little short of inexplicable (not to say bizarre). For example, the senior US civilian in Iraq, retired general Jay Garner, announced out of the blue on 5 May that in addition to the existing three administrative regions in Iraq, a fourth would be created in the south around Basra to be headed (as “coordinator”) by a Muslim Danish diplomat Ole Wohlers Olsen. Similarly, on 6 May Poland revealed that the US is planning to divide Iraq into four military sectors, each patrolled by a “stabilization force” of 7,000-9,000 troops from the US, the UK and Poland. (How these sectors might relate to the administrative regions, if at all, was anything but clear.) Even more bizarrely, Polish Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimosewicz suggested on the same day that there is a “need to engage as many as possible other partners” in this endeavor, “including the Germans.”
Perhaps in an attempt to put an end to this kind of confusion, President George Bush, in what looked very much like a change of horses in midstream, on 6 May announced the appointment of former State Department counterterrorist expert Paul Bremer as the top US civilian official in Iraq. Just what this move will mean in practical terms will have to wait until Mr Bremer arrives in Iraq next week, although Mr Garner – who is to stay on as Mr Bremer’s subordinate – indicated that “he will get more involved in the political process.” In terms of Washington politics, however, his appointment should probably be regarded as something of a compromise, since his State Department background is seen as a victory for Secretary of State Colin Powell, whereas his relatively hawkish views and the fact that he is to report directly to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld are counted as concessions to the civilian hawks at the Pentagon.
In the meantime, the process of putting together an interim government in Iraq, while painfully slow, has not been entirely static, with Mr Garner claiming on 5 May that “by the middle of the month, you’ll really see the beginning of a nucleus of an Iraqi government with an Iraqi face on it that is dealing with the coalition.” Mr Garner referred specifically to the leadership council which met under the auspices of the US in north Iraq in February and comprises Kurdish Democratic Party leader Mas’ud Barzani, Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress, Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Iraqi National Accord leader Iyad 'Allawi and ΄Abd al-΄Aziz Hakim, the brother of leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. According to the US official, “the five opposition leaders have begun having meetings and they are going to bring in leaders from inside Iraq and see if we can’t form a nucleus of leadership as we enter into June…I think what you may see is as many as seven, eight, nine leaders working together to provide leadership.” (Subsequently, after a meeting of the council on 8 May, Mr Talabani announced that “we have decided to enlarge the leadership committee by adding two seats,” one for the representative of the Shi΄a group al-Da΄wa and one for Nasir Kamil Chaderchi, a liberal Sunni Arab.) The idea is for the expanded council to act as contact point for the US and others and to form a committee to organize a national congress representing all political and religious groups in the country to put together an interim government in the next few weeks. (Mr Talabani also said after the 8 May meeting that four parties – al-Da΄wa, the Iraqi Islamic Party, the Communist Party of Iraq and the Arab Socialist Movement – had agreed to join the organizing committee.) However, one prominent Iraqi exile, former foreign minister Adnan Pachachi, who arrived in Baghdad from the UAE on 6 May, indicated that he was not entirely happy with the idea of joining the council or with the course being charted by it, saying: “What is important now is not the leadership council but the interim government, which has to be elected and not nominated by someone else. It has to be elected by a broadly-based Iraqi conference in which all political forces and persuasions in Iraq are represented. As for myself taking part, I will only accept a role if elected.”
US Introduces Resolution To Lift Sanctions
On the face of it, the 7 May American announcement that the US would end unilateral sanctions against Iraq and introduce a resolution in the Security Council to lift UN sanctions sounded reasonable enough. According to Mr Bush “the regime that the sanctions were directed against no longer rules Iraq, and no country in good conscience can support using sanctions to hold back the hopes of the Iraqi people,” while for Secretary of State Colin Powell, “I think it’s a resolution everyone will rally around.” However, a closer examination of the draft resolution (for details of which see A Section) reveals at least one fairly major drawback from the Iraqi point of view, insofar as it establishes an “Iraqi Assistance Fund” into which all proceeds from the sale of oil and products are to be paid “until such time as a new Iraqi government is properly constituted and capable of discharging its responsibilities.” In the meantime, money in the fund “shall be disbursed at the direction of the Authority” – a euphemism for the US and UK as the occupying powers – in consultation with an Iraqi interim administration, a relationship that the Iraqis, and others, are bound to see as essentially colonial. But that is not all. The draft resolution “endorses the exercise of the responsibilities stated in this resolution by the Authority for an initial period of 12 months…to continue thereafter as necessary unless the Security Council decides otherwise,” which gives the US the power to continue the arrangement indefinitely by vetoing any change. In other words, the Americans are seeking UN endorsement not just for what amounts to a colonial administration, but one of potentially indefinite duration.
It remains to be seen whether the other members of the Security Council, and Russia and France in particular, will allow the Americans to get away with this not very subtle piece of sleight of hand. So far, such objections as have been voiced have come from the Russians rather than the French and have focused on the legal aspects of lifting sanctions rather than the Authority’s powers and duration. These were summed up by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov on 7 May when he said that the lifting of sanctions required proof that “Iraq does not possess weapons of mass destruction and the means of producing them. This question has not been clearly addressed yet, and UNMOVIC” – the UN disarmament agency – “and the IAEA need to present reports which would close this dossier.” However, that is emphatically not how the Americans see it. Undersecretary of State John Bolton declared on 5 May during a visit to Moscow that “I don’t think there is any role for the UN in the short term in searching for or identifying or securing weapons of mass destruction.” And UN ambassador John Negroponte was even more categorical on 8 May when he said that “the coalition has taken over the process of inspecting for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We don’t see any role for UNMOVIC for the foreseeable future.”
Powell In Syria
Mr Powell Insisted before his 3 May visit to Syria that he was not going to Damascus to deliver a lecture to the Syrians, but to judge from his remarks afterwards, his attitude in his talks with President Bashar al-Asad was not unlike that of a housemaster dressing down a recalcitrant schoolboy who he feels has not been pulling his weight on the house rugby team. An unnamed State Department official traveling with Mr Powell was quoted as saying that “we didn’t come here bearing carrots” and that the US message was that the situation in the region has changed and “there are a lot of things that you ought to think about changing too, and if you do that, you’ll have a better relationship with us.” Other unnamed State Department officials were more specific as to what the Americans would like to see changed – to wit, Syrian support for the Palestinian groups Hamas, the PFLP-GC Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and, of course for Hizbollah in Lebanon. Mr Powell gave the Syrians a mixed report card in Beirut on 3 May, saying that “they did some closures. I expect them to do more with respect to access and appearance of various officials of these organizations. We’ve provided some other suggestions to the Syrians that they’ve taken under advisement, and I expect to hear back from them in future.” He also warned on 4 May that “there are consequences lurking in the background” if the Syrians do not develop some team spirit, and that “what counts now is performance…we’re looking for a new attitude on the part of Syria. We’re looking for changed behavior.” The Syrians, for their part, played their cards close to their chests, as usual. The official news agency SANA on 3 May described the talks as “constructive, candid and positive,” adding – uninformatively – that “it has been agreed to maintain contacts and coordination of efforts in manner that serves the interests of both countries.”
Charles Snow