VOL. XLVI
No 22
The Political Scene (2 June 2003)
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has accepted the international road map (with reservations, of course), setting the stage for a visit to the region by President Bush. Iran (rather than Syria) is now the target of American threats for its alleged sheltering of al-Qa’ida personnel and interference in Iraq. For reasons which are far from clear, the Americans have dissolved the Iraqi army.
Israel “Accepts” Road Map
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did two unexpected things last week, although no one, whether Israeli or Palestinian, appeared to believe that he meant either of them. After US Secretary of State Colin Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said in a statement on 23 May that “the US government received a response from the government of Israel explaining its significant concerns about the roadmap. The US shares the view of the government of Israel that these are real concerns, and will address them fully and seriously in the implementation of the road map,” Mr Sharon persuaded his cabinet to approve the international Quartet’s road map to peace by 2005 on 25 May by 12 votes to 7 with four abstentions. Naturally it was not quite as simple as that, since Mr Sharon’s acceptance of the three-phase road map came with 14 conditions attached, which Mr Sharon described to the cabinet as a “red line.” (As an example, one of these stipulates that “full performance will be a condition for progress between phases and for progress within phases. The first condition for progress will be the complete cessation of terror, violence and incitement. Progress between phases will come only following the full implementation of the preceding phase. Attention will be paid not to timelines, but to performance benchmarks (timelines will serve only as reference points).) The Americans welcomed the cabinet decision as “an important step forward,” but the Palestinians, who have accepted the road map as it stands, were understandably warier, and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmud 'Abbas told the Israeli daily Haaretz on 28 May that “we do not accept each side picking and choosing only those specific elements that are convenient for them in the road map.” However he added that “we understand from the Americans that there are no changes in the road map” and that the Americans had suggested he should not pay any attention to talk of Israeli comments and reservations. How this squares with the Powell/Rice statement of 23 May is less than clear, but a spokesman for the US embassy in Tel Aviv said on 28 May that “as we move forward with implementation, we will address legitimate concerns of both sides regarding specific elements of the road map, fully and seriously.”
The State Department emphasized in a statement on 25 May that “the president has affirmed his determination to move ahead and make progress…using the roadmap as a practical guide,” and Mr Bush is now scheduled to travel to the region after the 1-3 June G8 summit in France for a meeting with President Mubarak of Egypt, Saudi Crown Prince 'Abd Allah, King 'Abd Allah of Jordan, King Hamad of Bahrain and King Muhammd of Morocco in Sharm al-Shaikh, Egypt, on 3 June. Moreover on 28 May White House spokesman Ari Fleischer announced that “conditions permitting,” Mr Bush would hold a summit with Mr Sharon and Mr 'Abbas in 'Aqaba in Jordan on 4 June, so it may not be too long before it becomes clear whether the Americans are willing to put enough muscle behind the road map for it to stand any chance of success.
And Mr Sharon’s second surprise? On 26 May he actually called a spade a spade when he defended the cabinet’s decision to accept the road map by describing the West Bank and Gaza as occupied, saying “we don’t like the word, but this is occupation. To keep 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation is bad for Israel and the Palestinians.” However the impact of this sudden attack of honesty was considerably diluted the next day when his office issued a statement saying that he had meant “control over a Palestinian populace in disputed areas.”
US Targets Iran
The Americans have any number of axes to grind with Iran, including the Iranians’ alleged program to acquire nuclear weapons and their opposition to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, but in the last week the focus of their attention (and bellicose rhetoric) has been on Iran’s alleged harboring of members of al-Qa'ida and interference in Iraq. As far as concerns the former, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Richard Myers, asserted on 26 May that “we have to eliminate the safe havens where the terrorists are, and Iran of course has some of the al-Qa'ida members. The reports are that al-Qa'ida has been in Iran off and on for some time.” Iran’s UN ambassador, Javad Zarif, replied on the same day that “we have had a number of al-Qa'ida people in custody, and we continue to keep them in detention, and we continue to interrogate them, and once we have any information from them, we will pass them to friendly governments.” White House spokesman Ari Fleischer in turn said on 27 May that “the steps that the Iranians claim to have taken in terms of capturing al-Qa'ida are insufficient. There’s…a concern about whether or not the top level Qa'ida that are in Iran are being arrested.” At the Pentagon, Defense Undersecretary Douglas Feith declared on 28 May that following the bomb attacks in Riyadh “there is a renewed intensity to the reasonable demand that the Iranians stop harboring al-Qa'ida terrorists…It’s a demand that is in Iran’s interest to heed.” To which Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi replied on 28 May by referring to the Americans’ flirtation with the Mojahedin-e-Khalq, an Iraq-based Iranian opposition group that is on the State Department’s own list of terrorist organizations, saying that “we believe America is not serious about fighting terrorism. It adopts a double standard policy in confronting them which shows its indecision on dealing with terrorists.”
With the present US administration’s track record as far as Iraq’s WMD and collaboration with al-Qa'ida are concerned, it would probably be appropriate to take unsubstantiated assertions about Iran and al-Qa'ida with a pinch of neoconservative salt. A much more serious bone of contention, and one that is likely to take center stage in the near future, is the American claim that the Iranians are actively intervening in Iraq. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned on 27 May that “interference in Iraq by its neighbors or their proxies – including those whose objective is to remake Iraq in Iran’s image – will not be accepted or permitted,” adding “indeed, Iran should be put on notice: efforts to try to remake Iraq in Iran’s image will be aggressively put down.” The senior US official in Iraq, Paul Bremer, followed up the next day by saying that “we have seen a rather steady increase in Iranian activity here, which is troubling…What you see here at the most benign end of it is Iranian efforts to sort of repeat the formula which was used by Hizbollah in Lebanon. That is to send in people who are effectively guerrillas and have them get in the country and try to set up social services and decide that these social services are their ticket to popularity. And then they start to arm themselves and you wind up with a serious problem if you let it go too far.” He was echoed on 29 May by the senior British official in Iraq, John Sowers, who said that “there is clear evidence of the Iranians trying to put in place a mechanism for them to exert influence.” And on 30 May the coalition radio station in Baghdad claimed that “fundamentalists under foreign command have entered Iraq with aggressive intent” and urged Iraqis to inform the authorities of infiltrators, saying “it is in the interest of the Iraqi people to help the coalition.” Coming at the end of a week in which four US soldiers were killed in Iraq, and coupled with reports of US plans to reinforce its military presence in the country, that underlines the fact that Iraq has the potential to become not another Vietnam but the Americans’ Afghanistan
Iraqi Army
It is hard to know what to make of US overseer Paul Bremer’s 23 May decree dissolving Iraq’s regular army and the republican guard (as well as the defense and information ministries). A “senior coalition official” said that “these actions are part of a robust campaign to show the Iraqi people that the Saddam regime is gone and will never return” (a fact of which the Iraqi people are probably all too aware at the moment). But the same official also said that “the coalition provisional authority plans to create, in the near future, a new Iraqi corps. This is the first step in forming a national self-defense capability for a free Iraq. Under civilian control, that corps will be professional, non-political, militarily effective and representative of all Iraqis.” Clearly, if the new “corps” (or reconstituted army) is to be professional, the obvious place to start would be with the personnel of the existing armed forces, minus senior officers deemed too tainted by Ba'thism, a fact acknowledged by the commander of coalition ground forces, Gen David McKiernan, who said on 23 May that “it has not been approved yet, but everyone in the coalition agreed that this is something we will move forward with this summer. It’s a concern when you have a large segment of the population, young and male, who are former soldiers and who are unemployed.” So if the Americans plan to hire back most of the personnel they have just dismissed, it is legitimate to question what the point of the whole exercise might be, other than dismantling the apparatus of the Iraqi state without so far putting anything in its place.
Charles Snow