VOL. XLVI
No 46
The Political Scene (17 November 2003)
Faced with escalating levels of violence in Iraq and a presidential election in a year’s time, the Americans are suddenly much more interested in handing power to the Iraqis sooner rather than later, although it is far from clear how they propose to do so. Neither Turkish nor Japanese forces will be deployed to help the coalition out in Iraq. Al-Qa'ida has claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing of an Arab residential compound in Riyadh. The Americans disagree with an IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear activities. The Palestinians have a cabinet and a prime minister. And the US Senate has passed the Syrian Accountability Act.
US Changes Tack On Transfer Of Power
If the intensity of the attacks on US and other forces occupying Iraq is a measure of the attackers’ desperation and therefore of the coalition’s success (as proponents of the invasion of Iraq have actually argued), then it has been a week of victories for the coalition. But others might see the 12 November suicide attack in Nasiriya, only 80km north of Basra, in which 18 Italian soldiers and 9 Iraqis died as evidence that whoever is coordinating the campaign against the coalition can now reach well outside the “Sunni triangle” north of Baghdad. On the coalition side, this ominous escalation was matched last week when US aircraft went into action for the first time since the end of hostilities on 1 May against targets in and around Tikrit. That the Americans have been reduced to bombing the people they claim to have liberated is more than a public relations disaster – it is a victory of some magnitude for the opposition. And although administration officials in Washington would (and did) deny it, the deteriorating situation in Iraq and the looming presidential elections in a year’s time were clearly behind the surprise arrival of Iraqi administrator Paul Bremer in Washington on 11 November and the subsequent announcement of the second major modification of American plans for Iraq since the war ended on 1 May (the first being the removal of Jay Garner as American viceroy less than a week later). In essence, the Americans have dropped their insistence that sovereignty cannot be returned to the Iraqis before a constitution had been written and approved in a referendum and elections had been held, and are now seeking to hand power to some form of Iraqi provisional government as quickly and directly as possible.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan indirectly acknowledged that this was something of a volte-face when he said on 12 November that “just like you have to adapt and adjust on the security front to meet the enemy, you need to be willing to adjust and adapt to circumstances on the ground, in terms of reconstruction and in terms of the political front.” Nonetheless, the next day national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on 13 November argued valiantly that “nothing has changed,” since “it is still important that the Iraqi people have a permanent constitution. It’s still important that they have elections for a permanent government,” but added that “what is also important is that we find ways to accelerate the transfer of authority to the Iraqi people.” And according to President George Bush on 13 November, “we want the Iraqis to be more involved in the governance of their country. Ambassador Bremer, with my instructions, is going back to talk to the Governing Council to develop a strategy, and he’ll report back after he’s consulted with the very people that we want to assume more responsibility.” But if the overall goal of the new US policy is as fast a handover as possible, the details of how this is to be done – and what role the existing US-appointed Governing Council (GC) is to play – are anything but clear. Mr Bremer’s arrival in Washington was preceded by a leaked story about the administration’s unhappiness with the GC in the Washington Post on 9 November, and there were even hints that the Americans were considering appointing (or having the GC appoint) an interim leader as in Afghanistan. But Mr Bremer made it clear after meeting with Mr Bush on 12 November that the GC was central to his plans, saying “I have made proposals to transfer more authority to the Iraqi Governing Council. And that is the backdrop for all of these discussions.” The next day the Post quoted a “well placed” official as saying that “the focus is how to get an interim government that can bear the weight of sovereignty and authority to whom we can turn the key over.” As for the GC, “no-one is talking about abandoning the council, but the idea is that it will eventually be replaced or absorbed by the new body or bodies.” So clearly the Americans are still undecided as to how to implement what is equally clearly a major change of policy.
Turkish Troops Plan Shelved
The announcement that the plan to deploy Turkish troops in Iraq has been shelved marks the end of a bad idea and of another dismal chapter in the saga of the Bush administration’s unsuccessful diplomatic campaign to rally international support for its adventure in Iraq. According to a State Department spokesman on 7 November, Secretary of State Colin Powell had phoned Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul and had “thanked the people and government and parliament of Turkey for their offer to contribute… but for the moment this deployment of troops is not going forward.” Mr Gul, for his part, sounded less than heartbroken when he told reporters in Ankara on the same day that “we had already said that we are not that enthusiastic to send soldiers. We had said we would send troops only if we can be of some help. Now we saw that there is not such a situation at the moment and that is why we made this decision.”
The Bush administration’s mishandling of relations with Turkey before and after the invasion of Iraq has clearly left a deep residue of suspicion among the Turks as to the Americans’ ability to deal with the complexities of the task they face. Mr Gul said on 8 November that Turkey had the “clear impression” that the US favors the Kurds over other groups in Iraq in most matters and that “we hope this does not lead to potential dangers in Iraq in the future.” The Kurds, he said, “are a reality of Iraq, but there are also several other ethnic groups… if one wants to preserve Iraq’s integrity within Iraq’s structure, one should avoid moves that could upset the balance in Iraq.” He also said that Turkey reserved the right to intervene in Iraq to preempt any threat from the separatist Turkish Kurds of the PKK, saying that “if there is a threat or attack against Turkey, we will have no reservations and do whatever is necessary.” The next day, the chief of staff of the Turkish army, Gen Hilmi Ozkok, appeared to be warning openly that Washington’s policies in Iraq could lead to the country’s disintegration when he said that “if Iraq is divided, the area other than the north of the country will be mainly Shi'ite. This would increase the influence of some countries in the region and sharpen their appetite. A formation in the north would draw in Iran, Syria and Turkey, as well as Iraq, and who knows where it would end.” And he added that “we, the military, have to make preparations in order to respond to such events and we are.”
Japanese Think Twice About Deployment
Coincidentally or not, the day after the attack on the Italians in Nasiriya there was more bad news for the Americans when the Japanese announced that the conditions were not right for them to send troops to Iraq. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told a press conference on 13 November that “if the situation allowed our Self-Defense Forces to participate, they could go at any time. Unfortunately, it is not such a situation.” If that sounds like less than a categorical refusal to send troops, the Americans should perhaps remember that Japanese officials are not given to overstating themselves in public. When Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s surrender in 1945, with Tokyo in ruins around him, the American fleet in Tokyo Bay, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki recently obliterated, he described the situation in the following terms: “Despite the best that has been done by everyone… the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.”
Al-Qa΄ida Declares War On Saudi Arabia
There are a number of things that might be said about the 9 November suicide bombing of a residential compound in Riyadh that left 17 Arabs dead. One is that al-Qa΄ida (which claimed responsibility) is now turning its attention to destabilizing Saudi Arabia, presumably with the intention of replacing the government with one that is not exactly what the neoconservatives in Washington have in mind when they talk enthusiastically about regime change in Riyadh. Another is that al-Qa΄ida is not likely to do itself any favors as far as public opinion is concerned by attacking Arab Muslims. And a third is that only two days before the bombing, the US embassy in Riyadh warned of a serious threat of attacks in Saudi Arabia, which suggests that the Americans are succeeding to a certain extent in penetrating extremist Islamic groups. A fourth, and curious, feature of the attack was the claim on 13 November by Muslim theologian Safar al-Hawali that Crown Prince ΄Abd Allah had agreed to meet with some 40 religious scholars in an effort “to open a dialogue between the government and the extremists as well as the wanted men.” Not only does that sound wildly uncharacteristic, it flies in the face of statements by both King Fahd, who said the kingdom would act with an “iron fist,” and Interior Minister Prince Nayif, who said of the perpetrators, “we can talk to them only with the gun and the sword.” Moreover Mr Hawali’s remarks were emphatically denied by an official quoted by the Saudi Press Agency who said “this information is categorically false and there is no will to open any form of dialogue with the terrorists. The country’s position is clear and firm… to fight terror until it is eliminated and uprooted completely.”
IAEA Report On Iran
Ahead of the 20 November meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of governors to discuss Iran’s compliance with the 31 October deadline set last September for full disclosure of its nuclear activities, the IAEA on 10 November released a confidential report that appeared to come down firmly on both sides of the fence. This said, on the one hand, that Iran had “concealed many aspects of its nuclear activities with resulting breaches of its obligation to comply with” Non Proliferation Treaty (NTP) safeguards and that “Iran has now acknowledged that it has been developing, for 18 years, a uranium centrifuge enrichment program and for 12 years, a laser enrichment program.” On the other, however, there was “no evidence that the previously undeclared nuclear material and activities… were related to a nuclear weapons program,” although “given Iran’s past pattern of concealment” time is needed before Iran’s nuclear program can be certified as “exclusively for peaceful purposes.” Predictably, this did not go down too well in Washington, where Undersecretary of State John Bolton said on 12 November that “after extensive documentation of Iran’s denials and deceptions over an 18-year period and a long litany of serious violations of Iran’s commitments to the IAEA, the report nonetheless concluded that ‘no evidence’ had been found of an Iranian nuclear weapons program. I must say that the report’s assertion is simply impossible to believe… the US believes that the massive and covert Iranian effort to acquire sensitive nuclear capabilities make sense only as part of a nuclear weapons program.” Mr Bolton made it clear that the US would like the forthcoming IAEA board meeting to declare that Iran had failed to comply with the IAEA’s demands (which would entail the matter being referred to the UN Security Council and possible sanctions): “The international community now has to determine whether Iran has come clean on this program and how to react to the large number of serious violations too which Iran has now admitted. If Iran takes all the steps called for in the September 12 resolution, that would represent a major advance toward its integration into civilized society. If it is continuing to conceal its nuclear program and has again lied to the IAEA, the international community must be prepared to declare Iran in noncompliance with its IAEA safeguards obligations.” However it is open to doubt whether the international community – and particularly the UK, Germany and France, which prefer to engage rather than ostracize Iran on the issue – is ready to do the Americans’ bidding at this point. In marked contrast to the intemperate tone of Mr Bolton’s remarks, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said on the same day that “we should be reacting calmly to the latest report from the IAEA. This report, which certainly is very worrying in terms of what it discloses, also shows a pretty high level of cooperation,” adding that “we want to see a process by which Iran comes fully into the democratic modern fold while being able to show full respect to its Islamic roots and the fact that it is an Islamic republic.”
A Palestinian Cabinet
The endorsement of a 24-member Palestinian cabinet by the Palestinian parliament (by a vote of 48 to 13) on 12 November could be seen as more of a victory for Palestinian Authority (PA) President Yasir ΄Arafat than the prime minister designate, Ahmad Qurai΄, since the post of interior minister went to ΄Arafat loyalist Hakam Bal'awi rather than Mr Qurai΄’s candidate, Gen Nasir Yusif. (In a rather lopsided compromise on control of the security services, Mr Bal'awi will oversee the police, civil defense and the preventive security service, while the five other Palestinian security services will be overseen by a national council chaired by Mr ΄Arafat.) When the new arrangements were announced on 9 November, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared that “this is probably a sad day for democracy and democratic reforms in the PA because we still see that the cartel of terror headed by ΄Arafat is the body that calls the shots when it comes to security.” But after it became apparent that the Palestinians were not going to form a government more to the Washington’s liking, the Americans, in a reluctant concession to reality, decided to be pragmatic, with State Department spokesman Richard Boucher saying on 11 November that “whatever the structure, good or bad, the only criterion that matters is dismantling the terror groups.” The Israelis, too, adopted a wait-and-see attitude, with an unnamed senior government source saying that Israel would give Mr Qurai΄ a “grace period” to “prove he is not ΄Arafat’s lapdog.” But the new Palestinian prime minister appears to have very little room for maneuver between Israel’s definition of Mr ΄Arafat’s lapdog and launching an assault on groups such as Hamas that would terminally alienate Palestinian public opinion.
Senate Passes Syrian Accountability Act
Following its approval by the House of Representatives last month, the Syrian Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Act was duly voted through the US Senate by a vote of 89 to 4 on 11 November, opening the way to US economic and diplomatic sanctions against Syria because it will not do as it is told by Washington. One of the few senators to oppose the act, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, explained that in his view while “the US is justified in seeking to apply political and economic pressure on Syria to change its foreign policy,” sections of the bill “build a case against Syria, and I fear that these provisions could later be used to build a case for a military intervention against Syria.” In particular, Mr Byrd pointed to a section of the bill referring to “hostile actions” by Syria against US forces in Iraq, saying “I have not seen any evidence that would lead me to believe that it is the government of Syria that is responsible for the attacks against our troops in Iraq. Such insinuations can only build the case for military action against Syria, which unfortunately is a very real possibility because of the dangerous doctrine of preemption created by the administration.” Somewhat earlier an influential senator, Foreign Relations Committee chairman Richard Lugar, aptly illustrated what Mr Byrd was talking about with a bellicose warning to the Syrians that “it is in their interests to recalculate their approach towards the US. Syria shares a 400-mile border with Iraq. With more than 135,000 troops deployed in Iraq, Syria needs to reconsider where its future security interests lie.” Mr Lugar described these threats as “a statement of the new reality on Syria’s borders,” but the Syrians did not seem unduly worried, perhaps because they believe either that this new reality will not last very long or that, if it does, the US will have more than enough on its plate in Iraq to preclude a second military adventure against Syria.
Charles Snow