Is This a 'Victory'? By Peter W. Galbraith

New York Review of Books
Volume 55, Number 16 · October 23, 2008
Is This a ‘Victory’?
By Peter W. Galbraith
1.
We hear again and again from Washington that we
have turned a corner in Iraq and are on the path
to victory. If so, it is a strange victory.

Shiite religious parties that are Iran’s closest
allies in the Middle East control Iraq’s central
government and the country’s oil-rich south. A
Sunni militia, known as the Awakening, dominates
Iraq’s Sunni center. It is led by Baathists, the
very people we invaded Iraq in 2003 to remove
from power. While the US sees the Awakening as
key to defeating al-Qaeda in Iraq, Iraq’s Shiite
government views it as a mortal enemy and has
issued arrest warrants for many of its members.
Meanwhile the Shiite-Kurdish alliance that
brought stability to parts of Iraq is crumbling.
The two sides confronted each other militarily
after the Iraqi army entered the
Kurdish-administered town of Khanaqin in early
September.
John McCain has staked his presidential candidacy
on his early advocacy of sending more troops to
Iraq. He says he is for victory while Barack
Obama is for surrender; and polls suggest that
voters trust McCain more on Iraq than they do
Obama. In 2006, dissatisfaction with the Iraq war
ended Republican control of both the House of
Representatives and the Senate. This year, in
spite of being burdened with the gravest
financial crisis since 1929 and the most
unpopular president since the advent of polling,
the Republican presidential nominee is running a
competitive race.
The US sent more troops into Iraq in 2007 and
violence has declined sharply in Anbar, Baghdad,
and many other parts of the country. Sectarian
killings in Baghdad are a fraction of what they
were in 2006, although that city remains one of
the world’s most dangerous places. In recent
months, US casualties have been at their lowest
level of the entire war. While it is debatable
how much of this is the result of the “surge” in
US troop strength, as opposed to other factors,
the decline in violence is obviously a welcome
development.

Less violence, however, is not the same thing as
success. The United States did not go to war in
Iraq for the purpose of ending violence between
contending sectarian forces. Success has to be
measured against US objectives. John McCain
proclaims his goal to be victory and says we are
now winning in Iraq (a victory that will, of
course, be lost if his allegedly pro-surrender
opponent wins). He considers victory to be an
Iraq that is “a democratic ally.” George W. Bush
has defined victory as a unified, democratic, and
stable Iraq. Neither man has explained how he
will transform Iraq’s ruling theocrats into
democrats, diminish Iran’s vast influence in
Baghdad, or reconcile Kurds and Sunnis to Iraq’s
new order. Remarkably, neither the Democrats nor
the press has challenged them to do so.
2.
In January 2007, President Bush announced that he
was sending 25,000 additional troops to Baghdad
and Anbar province. Under a military strategy
devised by the newly appointed Iraq commander,
General David Petraeus, US troops moved out of
their secure bases and embedded themselves among
the population. The forces of the surge were
intended to provide sufficient protection to the
local population so that they would cooperate
with the Iraqi army and police and US troops
fighting insurgents and subversive Shiite
militias. By living with their Iraqi
counterparts, the US troops could provide
training, advice, and confidence, making the
Iraqi forces more capable.
Politically, the surge was intended to provide a
breathing space for Iraq’s diverse factions to
come together on a program of national
reconciliation. This was to include revision of a
law excluding Baathists from public service, new
provincial elections so that Sunnis might be
fully represented on the local level, a law for
the equitable sharing of oil revenues, and
revisions of the Iraqi constitution to create a
more powerful central government. Except for a
flawed law on de-Baathification, these goals have
not been achieved, although the parliament
recently passed a law to allow elections in parts
of the country. Militarily, however, the surge
worked as General Petraeus intended. In Baghdad
and other places wracked by sectarian violence,
Sunnis and Shiites welcomed the increased
presence of US troops.
The surge, however, has not been the main reason
for the decline in violence. In 2006, Sunni
tribal leaders in Anbar decided that al-Qaeda and
like-minded Islamic fundamentalist fighters were
a greater threat than the Americans. The
fundamentalists were a direct challenge to the
local establishment, assassinating sheikhs and
raping their daughters (sometimes under the
pretext of forced marriage to jihadis). More
importantly, the tribal leaders came to realize
that the Americans would sooner or later want to
leave while the fundamentalists intended to stay
and rule. The tribal leaders obtained American
money to create their own militias and, in a
brief period of time, forced al-Qaeda and its
allies out of most of Sunni Iraq. Denied their
base in Sunni areas, the fundamentalists have
been less able to stage the spectacular attacks
on Shiites that helped fuel Iraq’s Sunni-Shiite
civil war.
Meanwhile, the radical Shiite Moqtada al-Sadr
responded to the increased US military
deployments by ordering his militia, the Mahdi
Army, to stand down. At the time, this seemed
like a sensible tactical approach. He, too,
realized that the US presence-in particular the
surge in troop numbers-was a temporary
phenomenon. By not fighting the Americans, he
could wait out the surge, recall his troops, and
eventually resume battle with the Sunnis and
rival Shiite factions.
Al-Sadr’s Shiite rivals, however, outfoxed him.
In 2006, the support of al-Sadr’s
parliamentarians enabled Nouri al-Maliki to win
the nomination of the Shiite caucus to be prime
minister by one vote over Adel Abdul Mehdi, the
candidate of Iraq’s largest Shiite party, the
Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq (SCIRI). In 2008, however, al-Maliki broke
his connection to al-Sadr and aligned himself
with SCIRI (since renamed the Supreme Islamic
Iraqi Council, or SIIC). In March, he used the
Iraqi army, a Shiite-dominated institution built
around the SIIC’s militia, the Badr Corps, to
oust the Mahdi Army from much of Basra.
Subsequently, the Iraqi army and police have made
inroads against the Madhi Army in its stronghold
in Sadr City, Baghdad’s sprawling Shiite slum.
Al-Maliki launched the Basra operation without
first telling the Americans, and when the Iraqi
forces ran into difficulty, he had to ask for
American support. Once it became clear that the
government and the Americans were bringing
substantial resources to both the Basra and
Baghdad campaigns, the Mahdi Army chose to
negotiate a halt in the fighting rather than
engage in full-scale combat.
Thus in 2007 and 2008, both the Sunnis and the
Shiites fought civil wars within their
communities. Among the Sunnis, the Awakening
emerged as the decisive victor over al-Qaeda and
the other fundamentalists. Among the Shiites, the
ruling Shiite political parties have undercut
Moqtada al-Sadr politically and diminished the
Mahdi Army militarily. But al-Sadr has not been
defeated and has significant residual support.
In both the Shiite and Sunni communities,
relative “moderates” have emerged from the
intracommunal fighting. This is one key factor in
the reduced violence. The Sunni Awakening does
not use car bombs against Shiite pilgrims and it
has diminished al-Qaeda’s ability to do so. The
SCIRI-controlled Iraqi Interior Ministry had run
its own death squads targeting Sunnis, but they
were not as murderous and cruel as the death
squads of al-Sadr. The surge had little to do
with Sunnis turning against al-Qaeda (although US
funds were critical) but it did have a part in
undermining the Mahdi Army.
Although the Bush administration would never say
so, it has in effect adopted the decentralization
strategy long advocated by Senator Joseph Biden
and now also supported by Senator Obama. Biden’s
plan would devolve almost all central government
functions-including security-to Sunni or Shiite
regions with powers similar to those now
exercised by Kurdistan. Until late 2006, the Bush
administration tried to defeat al-Qaeda with a
US-backed Shiite- dominated Iraqi army. The
approach failed and the US Marines even concluded
that Anbar, Iraq’s largest Sunni province, was
lost to al-Qaeda. While the Sunnis have yet to
set up a region (as allowed by Iraq’s
constitution), they now have, in the Awakening, a
Sunni-commanded army. And it has defeated
al-Qaeda.
3.
In July, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
interjected himself into the US presidential
campaign, telling the German magazine Der Spiegel
that “US presidential candidate Barack Obama
talks about sixteen months. That, we think, would
be the right time frame for a withdrawal, with
the possibility of slight changes.” Al-Maliki’s
endorsement of the main plank of Obama’s Iraq
plan undercut both President Bush and Senator
McCain. The US embassy prevailed on al-Maliki’s
spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, to say that Der
Spiegel had mistranslated his boss. Al-Dabbagh,
however, wouldn’t issue the statement himself, so
it was put out by CENTCOM in his name. A few days
later, al-Maliki met the visiting Senator Obama
and again endorsed his deadline. This time
al-Dabbagh explained that al-Maliki meant it.
Some conservative commentators suggested that
al-Maliki had decided Obama was going to win and
wanted to have good relations with the next US
president. Others suggested that al-Maliki was
playing to Iraqi public opinion and didn’t mean
what he said. Bush loyalists grumbled that
al-Maliki was an ingrate.
Few grasped the most obvious explanation: Nouri
al-Maliki wants US troops out of Iraq. He leads a
Shiite coalition comprised of religious parties,
including his own Dawa party, which is committed
to making Iraq into a Shiite Islamic state. Like
his coalition partners, al-Maliki views Iraq’s
Sunnis with deep-and justifiable-suspicion. For
four years after Saddam’s fall, Iraqi Sunnis
supported an insurgency that branded Shiites as
apostates deserving death. Now the Sunnis have
thrown their support behind the Awakening, which
is portrayed by American politicians, including
Senator McCain, as a group of patriotic Iraqis
engaged in the fight against al-Qaeda. Iraq’s
Shiite leaders see the Awakening as a
Baathist-led organization that rejects Iraq’s new
Shiite-led order-an accurate description.
Until 2007, the Americans fought alongside the
Shiite-led Iraqi army against the Sunni
fundamentalists. The Shiites were more than happy
to have the Americans do much of their fighting
for them. When the US created and began to
finance the Sunni Awakening in 2007, the Shiite
perspective on the American presence shifted. Now
the United States was backing a military force
deeply hostile to Shiite rule. Al-Qaeda could-and
did-kill thousands of Shiites but it was no
threat to Shiite rule per se. It was a shadowy
terrorist organization operating with small cells
and unable to mobilize or concentrate large
forces. Further, both the US and Iran, the two
most important external powers in the Iraqi
equation, were certain to support the Shiites
against al-Qaeda.
With some 100,000 men under arms, the Awakening
is, at least potentially, a strong military force
in its own right. Its leaders are not only
ideologically linked to Saddam’s anti-Shiite
Baath regime, but many served in Saddam’s army.
And most importantly from a Shiite perspective,
the Awakening has powerful outside support-from
the United States. Al-Qaeda could never take over
Iraq, but the Awakening might-or at least so
Iraq’s Shiite government fears.
Since the US created the Awakening, its goal has
been to integrate the Sunni militiamen into
Iraq’s armed forces. Al-Maliki’s government has
repeatedly promised the Bush administration that
it would do so, and then reneged. (Iraqis learned
in the early days of the occupation that
President Bush and his team were readily
satisfied with promises, regardless of whether
any actions followed.) At the end of 2007,
General Jim Huggins, who oversaw the Iraqi police
in the Sunni belt south of Baghdad, submitted
three thousand names-most from the Awakening but
also including a few hundred Shiites-to the Iraqi
government for incorporation into the security
forces. Four hundred were accepted. All were
Shiites. As of October 1, the Iraqi government is
supposed to take over responsibility for the
54,000 Awakening militiamen in Baghdad, including
paying their salaries. By all accounts, the
militiamen are deeply skeptical that this will
happen, as apparently are their American
sponsors. US commanders have been reassuring the
Awakening that the US will not abandon them.
As many as one half the members of the Awakening
have been insurgents or insurgent sympathizers.
While the Sunni militiamen can gain tactical
advantage by joining the Iraqi army and police,
they are no less hostile to the Shiite-led Iraqi
government than when they were planting roadside
bombs, ambushing government forces, and executing
kidnapped Iraqi army recruits and police. The
Shiites understand this and so, apparently, do
some of the Americans. As General Huggins told
USA Today, if the Sunnis “aren’t pulled into the
Iraqi security forces, then we have to wonder if
we’re just arming the next Sunni resistance.”
>From 2003 until 2007, the Bush administration
helped Iraq’s most pro-Iranian Shiite religious
parties take and consolidate power. Naturally,
the Shiites-and their Iranian backers-welcomed
the US involvement, at least temporarily. Now the
United States is putting heavier pressure on
al-Maliki to include the Sunni enemy in Iraq’s
security forces. It has created a Sunni army
that, as long as the US remains in Iraq, can only
grow in strength. Al-Maliki and his allies want
the US out of Iraq because the American presence
has become dangerous.
Without American troops, the Iraqi army and
police would be able to move against the
Awakening. Should Sunni forces prove too
powerful, Iran is always available to help.
4.
In early September, al-Maliki sent Iraqi troops
into Khanaqin, a dusty Kurdish town on the
Iranian border northeast of Baghdad. While
technically not part of the Kurdistan Region, the
Kurdistan Regional Government has administered
Khanaqin since 2003. The forces of the Kurdish
Peshmerga army, who liberated the town from
Saddam that April, have provided security. It is
widely expected that Khanaqin will formally be
incorporated into the Kurdistan Region as part of
the process specified in Article 140 of Iraq’s
constitution for determining Kurdistan’s borders.
By sending Arab troops to Khanaqin, al-Maliki
deliberately picked a fight with the Kurds, who
have been the Shiites’ partner in governing Iraq
since 2003.
Iraq’s Kurds have had a very large part in
post-Saddam Iraq. Iraq’s president, deputy prime
minister, foreign minister, and army chief are
all Kurds. The Peshmerga fought on the US side in
the 2003 war and is the one indigenous Iraqi
force that is reliably pro-American. Iraqi Kurds
are secular, democratic, and pro-Western. Both
militarily and politically, they have supported
US policy, even when they have had reservations
about its wisdom.
In recent months, al-Maliki has tried to
marginalize the Kurds. In ordering troops to
Khanaqin, he did not consult Jalal Talabani,
Iraq’s Kurdish president, and he did not involve
General Babakir Zebari, the Kurd who supposedly
heads Iraq’s army. In order to bypass Hoshyar
Zebari, Iraq’s Kurdish foreign minister,
al-Maliki has appointed his own “special envoys.”
President Talabani, who was in the US for medical
treatment at the time, helped defuse the Khanaqin
crisis by persuading both the Peshmerga and the
Iraqi army to withdraw. But the incident has been
seen by the Kurds as a danger sign. When Iraq’s
defense minister proposed acquiring American
F-16s for the Iraqi air force, Iraq’s
neighbors-including Iran and Kuwait-said nothing.
But the Kurdish deputy speaker of the Iraqi
parliament strongly protested, expressing fear
that the planes’ most likely target would be
Kurdistan. As a condition of the proposed US-Iraq
security agreement, the Kurds want assurances
that the Iraqi army will not be used in Kurdistan.
5.
The surge was intended to buy time for political
reconciliation. In January, Iraq’s parliament
revised the country’s de-Baathification law, thus
meeting a long-standing US demand. While the new
law restored the rights of some former Baathists,
however, it imposed an entirely new set of
exclusions on Baathists in so-called sensitive
ministries. Iraq’s Sunni parliamentarians mostly
opposed the law, which was supposed to help them.
The Sunnis had demanded early provincial
elections since they had boycotted the previous
local elections in 2005 and were largely
unrepresented on the provincial councils, even in
Sunni areas. The Shiite-dominated parliament
inserted a poison pill into the election law, a
provision that would invalidate the “one man, one
vote” principle in the Kirkuk Governorate-the
administrative unit that includes the major city
of Kirkuk on the Kurdistan border-in favor of a
system of equal representation for each of
Kirkuk’s three communities: Kurds, Arabs, and
Turkmen. Naturally, the Kurds, who are a majority
both in the Governorate and on the Governorate
Council, opposed a system that would give their
foes two thirds of council seats.
Talabani vetoed the entire bill and as a result
the Kurds were blamed for blocking national
elections that the Shiites and some Sunnis also
did not want to hold. (The SIIC was afraid it
might lose some Governorates it now controls,
including Baghdad, to Moqtada al-Sadr, while some
Sunni parliamentarians feared the Awakening’s
electoral strength would underscore the fact that
they do not represent the Sunni community.)
Recently, the parliament passed a law to allow
elections in 2009 in Sunni and Shiite Iraq, but
not in Kirkuk or Kurdistan. The maneuverings left
the Kurds politically isolated while, as a bonus
to the Shiite ruling parties, providing more time
for them to deal with al-Sadr. The Shiites are
also pursuing changes in Iraq’s constitution that
would strengthen the central government at the
expense of Kurdistan, knowing full well that
these changes will be rejected by the Kurds.
Al-Maliki’s agenda is transparent. The Kurds and
Sunnis are obstacles to the ruling coalition’s
ambitions for a Shiite Islamic state. Al-Maliki
wants to eliminate the Sunni militia and contain
the Kurds politically and geographically.
America’s interest in defeating al-Qaeda is far
less important to him than the Shiite interest in
not having a powerful Sunni military that could
overthrow Iraq’s new Shiite order. The Kurds are
too secular, too Western, and too pro-American
for the Shiites to share power comfortably with
them.
This should not be a surprise. Iran, not the US,
is the most important ally of Iraq’s ruling
Shiite political parties. The largest party in
al-Maliki’s coalition is the SIIC, which was
founded by the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran in
1982. By all accounts, Iran wields enormous
influence within Iraq’s ruling Shiite coalition
and has an effective veto over Iraqi security
policies. In 2005, Iran intervened in Iraq’s
constitutional deliberations to undo a
Shiite-Kurdish agreement on Kurdistan’s powers,
only to relent after Kurdistan President Massoud
Barzani made clear that there would be no
constitution without the deal; many Iraqis have
told me that one reason that the US and Iraq have
been unable to agree on a new security
arrangement is that Iran opposes anything of the
kind.
Nor is al-Maliki a Western-style democrat, in
spite of President Bush’s attempts to portray him
as just that. Rather, he is a Shiite militant
from the hard-line Dawa Party. Before returning
to Iraq in 2003, he had spent more than twenty
years in exile in Iran and Syria. As late as
2002, State Department officials sought to
exclude Dawa from a US-sponsored Iraqi opposition
conference because of Dawa’s historical links to
terrorism, including a 1983 suicide bomb attack
on the US embassy in Kuwait. (There is no basis
for linking al-Maliki or other mainstream Dawa
leaders to that attack.)
Al-Maliki is an accidental prime minister, having
secured the job only after internecine Shiite
rivalries (and Kurdish opposition) derailed more
prominent candidates. The Bush administration
knew so little about him that it initially had
his first name wrong. He had never been
considered important enough to meet the many
senior US officials traipsing to Baghdad. But
President Bush has embraced him as the embodiment
of American values and goals in Iraq.
John McCain says that partly because of his
persistent support of the surge, we are now
winning the Iraq war. He defines victory as an
Iraq that is a democratic ally. Yet he advocates
continued US military support to an Iraqi
government led by Shiite religious parties
committed to the establishment of an Islamic
republic. He takes a harder line on Iran than
President Bush, but supports Iraqi factions that
are Iran’s closest allies in the Middle East. He
praises the Awakening and but seems not to have
realized that the Iraqi government is intent on
crushing it. He has denounced the Obama-Biden
plan for a decentralized state but has said
nothing about how he would protect Iraq’s Kurds,
the only committed American allies in the country.
George W. Bush has put the United States on the
side of undemocratic Iraqis who are Iran’s
allies. John McCain would continue the same
approach. It is hard to understand how this can
be called a success-or a path to victory.
-September 25, 2008

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