Will Iraq Start to Unravel?

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Will Iraq Start to Unravel?
27
Wed, 02-11-2004 - 1:44pm

Kurdish calls for autonomy are generating fears of ethnic conflict that could complicate U.S. exit plans.


http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040216-588398,00.html?cnn=yes


If you want a glimpse into the challenge the U.S. faces as it tries to prevent Iraq from coming apart, consider the plight of Salim Izzat. Five months before the U.S. invasion last March, Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime ordered Izzat to vacate his farm outside the northern-Iraq town of Dibagan, 50 miles southeast of Mosul. The command was part of the regime's systematic, 15-year-long campaign to populate the predominantly Kurdish reaches of northern Iraq with ethnic Arabs. Kurds like Izzat were pushed out of their homes by force; dissenters, including Izzat's brother, were executed. A few days before the war, most of the Arabs who had taken up residence in Dibagan left town, but not before they demolished houses, ransacked shops on the main street and plundered every scrap of metal that would move. Izzat's Arab tenants razed his crops, stole more than 200 chickens and ran off with his life savings. Now Izzat lives with his wife and nine children in a crumbling three-room guardhouse in a parking lot in Dibagan; every day a policeman comes to tell him he has to move off city property. Izzat isn't ready to forgive the people he blames for his predicament. "I hate the Arabs," he says.


Ethnic grudges die hard in Iraq. In towns like Dibagan all across the country, long-simmering disputes between Arabs and Kurds, Sunnis and Shi'ites, and even secular and religious Iraqis are bubbling to the surface—all of which has complicated the U.S.'s plan to transfer power to a new Iraqi government by June 30 and raised questions about whether Iraq will remain whole after it does. And so it was not entirely surprising that the Bush Administration last week scrambled for help in sorting out the mess. In a meeting at the White House, President Bush asked U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to come up with a plan for Iraqi self-rule that the country's squabbling factions could accept. A U.N. team arrived in Iraq last week to evaluate the coalition's plans for transition and assess the feasibility of holding broad-based elections before the June 30 deadline. The elections have been demanded by Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, Grand Ayatullah Ali Husaini Sistani, but are resisted by U.S. officials, who say a general vote cannot be held safely. The intrigue deepened last Thursday when Sistani's bodyguards said the cleric had escaped an assassination attempt outside his home in Najaf. Sistani aides later told U.S. military officials that accounts of the purported attack had been fabricated.


Still, the rumors seemed to underscore fears that the country could quickly slide toward chaos. Retired General Anthony Zinni, the former top commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, told TIME that foreign jihadists are trying to incite a civil war in Iraq. "They want Iraq to come apart," he says. "They want the U.S. to fail, and they want to see it become three theocratic states. They don't want to see Iraq hold together as a democracy." Says Herro Kader Mustafa, a Kurdish-American coalition official in Mosul: "We are doing our best to make sure things don't erupt."

Nowhere is that task more delicate than in northern Iraq, home to most of the country's 4 million Kurds. The area has been among the nation's most peaceful since the overthrow of Saddam, but that calm was shattered on Feb. 1 when a pair of suicide bombers detonated themselves in the offices of the two main Kurdish political parties in the city of Arbil, killing more than 100. The attacks raised fears that the violence plaguing the rest of Iraq might now routinely spill into the Kurdish areas and might have strengthened the Kurds' determination to defend the autonomy they have enjoyed since 1991, when the U.S. established a no-fly zone in northern Iraq to protect the Kurds from Saddam. The U.S. has assured the Kurds that the new government in Baghdad will allow them to maintain their own parliament and security forces. But many observers believe such a federal structure is only the first step toward the Kurds' ultimate goal: independence. "The Kurdish problem is the most difficult for Iraq's long-term territorial integrity," says Phebe Marr, a veteran Iraq expert retired from the Pentagon's National Defense University, "because they are really separatists."

The U.S. is worried that Kurdish hopes for greater autonomy could spark clashes with Arabs living in northern Iraq, especially if the Kurds claim control over Kirkuk, an ethnically mixed city in an area prized for its vast oil reserves. The prospect of an oil-rich, autonomous Kurdish state also frightens Iraq's neighbors—Syria, Iran and Turkey—all of which have large, restive Kurdish populations that might be emboldened and financed by wealthy Iraqi Kurds. Turkey, which has fought a 15-year war against Kurdish separatists, has threatened to send its army into Iraq to prevent the Kurds from attempting to secede. In a press conference in January, the deputy chief of staff of the Turkish army, General Ilker Basbug, warned that "Iraq's future might be very bloody if there was a federal structure, especially based on ethnicity."

The U.S. has so far been able to ward off sectarian violence between Kurds and Arabs. "There isn't obvious ethnic hatred in the north," says Mustafa, the U.S. official in Mosul. "But there is a real conflict that political parties are exacerbating with their attempts to manipulate public opinion." Some locals say Kurdish authorities have incited ethnic hostility by giving benefits to their kinsmen. Nasser Rahim Jusef, a Turkish employee of the Northern Oil Co., says the former regime's program of "Arabization" is being replaced by "Kurdization": at the expense of other ethnic groups, Kurds are being recruited back into jobs Saddam's regime pushed them out of. "The oil business needs to be a meritocracy," says Jusef, who has worked at the company for 28 years, "not one based on racial discrimination."

Yehya Assi Mahmoud, an Arab attorney in Kirkuk, says he saw Kurdish militias seize 28 Arab homes in his village of Shaheed last April. In June he quit the city council to protest what he considered to be American favoritism toward the Kurds; now he fears that the coming transfer of power will result in wide-scale reprisals by Kurds against their Arab neighbors. "If the U.S. left now, Kurds would move in to ethnically cleanse the remaining Arabs in Kirkuk," he says.

Kirkuk may be the most combustible place in northern Iraq. The city is fairly evenly divided among Arabs, Kurds and ethnic Turkomans. Kurdish leaders want the city and its environs, which hold some 40% of the country's oil reserves, to be part of Kurdistan within a federal Iraq. That way, says a U.S. official in Kirkuk, the Kurds hope to secure a sustainable source of oil income for themselves in case a new government in Baghdad proves incapable of running the country once the U.S. hands over power. U.S. and Iraqi officials fear that Kurdish authorities may try to run Arabs and Turkomans out of Kirkuk and move Kurds south into the city, then hold an independent referendum to decide whether Kirkuk should join Kurdistan. Says Rogar Ali, a political adviser to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (P.U.K.), one of the two large Kurdish political groups: "Elections will decide the destiny of Kirkuk and other Kurdish areas."

For their part, the Kurds say autonomy is their only safeguard against the possibility of oppression by Iraq's Arab majority. And as mostly Sunni Muslims, the Kurds fear domination by a directly elected Shi'ite government. While the perpetrators of the suicide bombings in Arbil are unknown—some Kurdish officials suspect loyalists of Saddam's regime, whereas others finger foreign terrorists from Ansar al-Islam, a radical Islamist outfit linked to al-Qaeda—the attacks served as a grisly reminder to the Kurds of the ruthlessness of their enemies. At the P.U.K. headquarters, where a suicide bomber blew up more than 50 partygoers on the first day of the Muslim feast of 'Id al-Adha, colorful streamers still hang from charred walls pockmarked by shrapnel and bits of human flesh. There had been so much carnage to remove, the cleanup crew had missed a severed right hand that still lay on the floor, between an overturned couch and a stereo speaker. Across town, at the headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, Shwan Hala Salih surveyed a similar scene of devastation. His cousin had been killed in the blast. "Terrorists are of many kinds," he said, holding a hand-colored photograph of his relative. "Most are enemies of the Kurdish people."

The shock of such a brutal atrocity is likely to bolster calls for revenge. Yet in towns where Arabs and Kurds have lived together for generations, members of both groups say they are determined to stay. In Mukhmur, 30 miles south of Arbil, locals have painted over the portrait of Saddam with a picture of an Arab and a Kurd holding a flagpole. Hanging together above the two men are the Kurdish and Iraqi flags, and above these fly the American and British flags. Naffisa Abdullah, an Arab woman dressed in a black head scarf and a navy blue aba, says she will resist any attempts to force her out of her home. "I consider this area my native place," she says. "We just want to have a good life and get along with each other."

Such sentiments seem wishful in a land where so many still have grievances to settle. In Arbil last week, Hajji Maluwd, 62, a mechanic, walked in the funeral procession for a Kurdish leader who was killed in the 'Id bombings and ran down a list of personal demands: he wants his demolished home rebuilt, and he wants to move back to the land that Saddam's regime took away. At the same time, Maluwd doesn't think a civil war will erupt between the Kurds and the Arabs, and he says he's willing to wait for his house and his land and let democracy work. Gesturing his cigarette at the procession of Kurds mourning the death of a fallen leader, he says, "We've walked in too many of these." Iraq's only hope is that many more of his countrymen feel the same.


What does it take to hold national elections in Iraq?


>"Some Iraqis do not understand why the 30 June date has become sacred. They suspect it has more to do with the American democratic process than their own."<


Quote from............


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3416793.stm


Dozens die in Iraq car bomb blast.

 

At least 50 people have been killed and dozens injured in apparent suicide attack outside an Iraqi police station, hospital officials say.


 

 

Car bomb kills Iraq army recruits.


In one of the bloodiest 24 hours since the war in Iraq ended, a second suicide bomber has killed dozens of Iraqis working for the US-led coalition.

Up to 47 people died in the latest attack - a car bomb detonated outside an army recruiting centre in Baghdad.

On Tuesday, a similar attack at a police recruitment centre south of Baghdad killed at least 50 people.

The US military said the bombs bore the hallmarks of al-Qaeda or its affiliate group in Iraq, Ansar al-Islam.


More.............


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3478339.stm


Witness sensed something was wrong before bomb attack.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/02/11/sprj.nirq.blast.reut/index.html



 

cl-Libraone





 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Tue, 02-17-2004 - 12:41pm

>"Allawi has paid prominent Washington lobbyists and New York publicists more than $300,000 to help him make contacts with policy makers in Washington."<



>"Ahmed Chalabi"<


The more I read about the influence of Iraqi exciles it appears they fed this admin. with much of the erronious info. about Iraq.


Allawi sounds like a real reprobate. Chalabi is not much better, if the rumours are true.

cl-Libraone~

 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 02-17-2004 - 12:52pm
How on earth can we purport to be setting up a democratic government when Bremer lets these sorts of gems drop from his lips: "Our position is clear, and the text that is in there now is as I say. It can't become law until I sign it."? Granted, he has justifiable concerns about a nation that slips under the control of sharia, fundamental Islam. But he sounded downright autocratic, not democratic when he voiced his objections.

One of my biggest concerns goes beyond the unraveling of Iraq into our response. The military implements policy but once that implementation starts, it takes on a life of its own. The military has two choices: accomplish the mission or admit to failure to accomplish the mission. The latter does not come easily and so more resources are used, more manpower is thrown at the mission, and quite frequently, more cover-up of the mission progress becomes likely. It happened in Vietnam. It could happen in Iraq. If that does take place, public support for the military wanes fast. Ironically, it's not the decision makers, civilian or military, whose lives are put on the line, it's the grunts. Grunts pay the price in every way.

This war has the potential to go in that direction. For instance, commanders have said that attacks have decreased in number since November. They're attributing that to factors like the capture of Saddam and success in arresting insurgents. But at one time, they hoped Saddam's capture would stop virtually all attacks and that didn't happen. And there's another more sinister read to the lessening of the number of attacks. The guerillas are consolidating and instead of mounting large numbers of unsuccessful attacks are planning and implementing a smaller number of "successful" attacks. I just hope I'm wrong about all this but only time will tell.

Gettingahandle

Ignorance is Nature's most abundant fuel for decision making.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Wed, 02-18-2004 - 11:37am
<>

This would be the attacks on US personnel? What about the attacks on Iraqis. As I understand it the US military has withdrawn from daily contact, therefore, are not as accessible to attacks. Instead they are sending the partially trained Iraqis into the fray.

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Wed, 02-18-2004 - 11:41am
<>

What are we doing putting such men in power in a country on the verge of chaos? Only answer I can propose is that they are hoping to foster their own interests--gain power.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Wed, 02-18-2004 - 11:55am

>"What are we doing putting such men in power"<


It's unfortunately a case of history repeating itself.


Then X amount of years down the road it'll be another 'situation' that needs to be dealt with.


What a mess!


My hope is the UN can help organise fair elections, if it's not too late.

cl-Libraone~

 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Thu, 02-19-2004 - 11:30am
Sounds like more "poor judgement" to me, in fact, the whole Iraqi situation reflects flawed reasoning.

______________________________

U.S. Presidential Politics and Self-Rule for Iraqis

By STEVEN R. WEISMAN



ASHINGTON, Feb. 18 — In the Bush administration, it is considered heresy to suggest postponing the planned return of sovereignty to Iraq. Turning over control by June 30, administration officials say, is crucial to assuaging Iraqi distress over living under American occupation.

Yet in recent weeks, diplomats and even some in the administration have begun to worry that the date reflects more concern for American politics than Iraqi democracy. Their fear is that an untested government taking power on June 30 may not be strong enough to withstand the pressures bearing down on it.

"When we went into Iraq, our plan was to have a government, build a structure and write a constitution that would be a source of longterm stability," said an administration official. "Now that's out the window."

Many in the administration say that while they have no proof that the urgency to install a government is politically motivated, it feels to them like part of a White House plan to permit President Bush to run for re-election while taking credit for establishing self-rule in Iraq.

"I can make all kinds of arguments about why we need to establish democracy in Iraq on an urgent basis," said another administration official. "But when you hear from on high that this is what we must do, and there can be no questioning of it, it sounds like politics."

This week, the administration is in the odd position of insisting on Iraqi self-rule by June 30, while awaiting a recommendation from the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, on how the interim government should be chosen and the form it should take.

Mr. Annan's special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, went to Iraq to meet with Iraqi leaders, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, to work out some sort of consensus on the shape of an interim government.

The United States wants that government to rule while elections are held later in the year or in 2005 for a constitution-writing legislature. Eventually, elections are to be held to ratify the constitution and establish a permanent Iraqi government.

Administration officials say that Mr. Brahimi was told that one option he must not accept is postponement of the June 30 date for the transfer of power.

"It is holy writ," said an administration official.

Yet many experts, including some in the administration, also say they are worried that such a rapid transition entails enormous risks. What happens, some worry, if a major crisis were to occur, resulting from an assassination or bomb explosion in which many Iraqis die?

What happens, moreover, if by accident American forces — which are still likely to retain wide autonomy and authority over security throughout the country — kill a large number of Iraqi citizens? Would a shaky Iraqi government lacking in perceived legitimacy survive a blow like that?

It makes no sense, many experts say, to set a fixed date to hand over sovereignty before having any idea of what sort of government will be given power on that date.

"This is entirely a schedule dictated by Karl Rove," said an Arab diplomat who maintains close contacts with the administration, referring to the White House's political director. "Anyone who thinks otherwise is naïve."

One of the paradoxes of the situation is that France, Germany and other European countries were among those who last year pressed for an early transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government and for the United Nations to take over the political process of moving to a permanent democracy.

Now these countries are likely to insist that if the United States hands over power early, it must fulfill the other side of the bargain by agreeing to a central role for the United Nations.

Last year, the administration insisted that there should be no rush to transfer sovereignty to Iraq, citing the need to get a constitution written first. That plan changed on Nov. 15, when L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator in Baghdad, set the June 30 date.

Administration officials bridle at the suggestion that politics have played a role in Mr. Bremer's announcement.

"All these people who think that not moving the deadline helps Bush politically are just wrong," one official said. "I can't understand why everybody thinks that if the handover is as messy as some say, that would be advantageous to the president."

According to administration officials, the early date was chosen by Mr. Bremer last fall because of his frustrations at not persuading the American-picked Iraqi Governing Council to agree on a procedure to write a new constitution. The deadline, he is said to have reasoned, would light a fire under the council.

Mr. Bremer, an aide said, telephoned Condoleezza Rice in the fall, reaching her at a Washington Redskins football game on a Sunday, and she urged him to come back to confer with President Bush on changing the date.

"Arbitrary deadlines in Middle East diplomacy are a bad idea, especially when they correspond, however coincidentally, to our electoral schedule," said Noah Feldman, a law professor at New York University, who has advised the Iraqi Governing Council on writing its constitution.

"It's not as if the Iraqis don't have television," Mr. Feldman added. "Everybody in Iraq believes that these deadlines are chosen by American electoral politics. Regardless of whether the June 30 deadline originated in Baghdad or Washington, it clearly reflected a coordinated administration policy to jump-start the process. That's an extremely high risk strategy."

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/19/politics/19DIPL.html?hp

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Thu, 02-19-2004 - 11:57am

>"Last year, the administration insisted that there should be no rush to transfer sovereignty to Iraq, citing the need to get a constitution written first. That plan changed on Nov. 15, when L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator in Baghdad, set the June 30 date."<

Right......... Bremer changed his mind. Pinocchio

 


Photobucket&nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Thu, 02-19-2004 - 5:48pm
Harsh of me, but I suspect the dead and injured Iraqis are seen in policy making circles as "collateral damage".

Gettingahandle

Ignorance is Nature's most abundant fuel for decision making.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Thu, 02-19-2004 - 6:24pm
Maybe this is Karl Rove's agenda but it sounds like it's built on a whole lot of things coming together perfectly (and unrealistically--sort of like the plans that were made for the war). If Iraq is stable enough to hand over the reins of power, then the troops can come home. And Bush would look good come election time. But nothing coming out of Iraq right now sounds like this is do-able. Are the policy makers getting bad intelligence again or just showing it?! It will be summer in Iraq, come June 30, and unless the electrical infrastructure is sound and sabotage-free, the heat is going to build, literally, and tempers flare. There were water shortages last summer. There are gasoline shortages now. With all the factions, sects, tribes, and power-hungry types now in play, it seems to me like the chances of a viable government, being set up by the Iraqis for the Iraqis, are slim to nil. Nobody seems to have the good of the whole country at heart. Iraqi security forces are tempting targets for those trying to destabilize the situation. What's Bush going to do, wash his hands like Pilate if there are massive displays of civil unrest? And American troops are still there--sitting ducks in a way. What role will they play? I just don't get it and agree whole-heartedly with Noah Feldman that "Regardless of whether the June 30 deadline originated in Baghdad or Washington, it clearly reflected a coordinated administration policy to jump-start the process. That's an extremely high risk strategy."

Gettingahandle

Ignorance is Nature's most abundant fuel for decision making.

iVillage Member
Registered: 01-29-2004
Thu, 02-19-2004 - 10:34pm
Yes, I'm sure the U.N. can run in and fix things in Iraq. They did such an excellent job monitoring and controling Saddam Hussein for a decade!

The fact that the Iraqi people are impatient with the process of setting up a democratic government is a good thing. They want to be autonymous and self-sufficient and will be in time. The U.S. has to be sure not to rush this or it will backfire on EVERYONE. The Iraqis are being attacked because the former supporters of Saddam and the foreign terrorists are beginning to see that they are losing this fight. They are betting on just what the liberals are falling into...Kill enough Americans, and they will give up and leave.

I don't remember the day this week, but there was a news article conveniently blown off by most papers...A message was intercepted from an al Qaeda leader to resistence groups in Iraq saying that they needed to try to spark civil war because the Americans were drying up their resources and kicking their asses.