Chaos under heaven, and more to come
By Jim Lobe
Washington, DC, Jan. 24 (IPS) Retired Gen
Anthony Zinni began warning that ousting Saddam Hussein, let alone invading
Iraq, risked destabilizing the entire Middle East back in 1998, when
he led US Central Command and testified against the Iraq Liberation
Act that made regime change official US policy.
And just six months before the actual invasion last March, in October
2002, he told the annual Fletcher Conference on National Security Strategy,
we are about to do something that will ignite a fuse in this region
that we will rue the day we ever started.
While President George W. Bush tried hard to project a sense of confidence
and control concerning Iraq and the larger Middle East in his State
of the Union Address on Jan. 20, a careful look at the news this week
suggested that Zinnis fears were not unfounded.
Talk of possible civil war in Iraq finally reached the front pages of
US newspapers, while reports that at least some elements of the administration
are pushing for military action against Hezbollah in Lebanon and targets
in Syria surfaced for the first time since last summer.
At the same time, by omitting any reference to the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict in his speech, Bush indicated he has no intention of seriously
pressing either party toward a cease-fire, let alone peace talks designed
to meet the goal of the roadmap: securing Palestinian statehood
by next year.
In other words, the outlook for the region between the eastern Mediterranean
and Iran 10 months after US troops launched their drive from Kuwait
to Iraq is for more possibly a lot more turbulence.
Long before this week, demands by Iraqi Kurds for near total autonomy,
including the retention of their own pesh merga force,
in a new, federal Iraq have been drawing grim warnings from neighboring
Turkey, Iran and Syria which all have large and restive Kurdish
populations.
But last weeks rejection by Iraqs most powerful Shiite
cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani of a US plan to
transfer sovereignty to a transitional government that will not be directly
elected by the Iraqi people, has brought home the message that whatever
progress Washington is making in suppressing the insurgency in the Sunni
Triangle of central Iraq could very quickly be overwhelmed by
the lack of a credible political strategy.
CIA officers in Iraq are warning that the country may be on a
path to civil war, was the lead sentence in a front-page
article in the Philadelphia Inquirer on Jan. 22.
The article, written by veteran Knight-Ridder reporters who have consistently
led the mainstream media in uncovering secrets the Bush administration
would rather not have exposed, quoted senior US officials as saying
that failure to satisfy demands for direct elections could spark an
uprising by much of the heretofore friendly Shia population, who
make up 60 percent or more of Iraqs 24 million people.
That message was underscored by the mobilization of hundreds of thousands
of Shiites in protest demonstrations over the past week a display
of discipline and organisation that clearly surprised the administration.
If the Shia turn against the US-led coalition, this would
be like losing the Buddhists in Vietnam, Anthony Cordesman, a
Mideast expert at the conservative Center for Strategic and International
Studies (CSIS) here, told the Financial Times on Jan. 23, referring
to the US war against the Asian country in the 1960s and 70s.
It would mean losing the war.
However unattractive that option seems, holding the direct elections
Sistani is demanding which almost certainly would bring a Shia-dominated
government to power is also considered distinctly dangerous.
We cant simply walk away and let the Shia dictate
the shape of the new government, warned John Hamre, Deputy
Defense Secretary under Bushs predecessor Bill Clinton, earlier
this week, because that will likely unleash a civil war in Iraq.
Hamre, who as CSIS president led an independent task force to
Iraq last August to review the situation at Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfelds
behest, described the administration as caught in a box.
A box with more than a few sharp edges, too. Sistani and his followers
have made clear that they, as well as the Sunnis, strongly oppose a
federal system that would give Kurds the autonomy they seek, particularly
if the northerners were to claim oil-rich Kirkuk as theirs.
Deadly clashes between the pesh merga and Turkomen and Arab residents
in Kirkuk and parts of the northern Sunni Triangle have been a constant,
albeit under-reported, feature of the landscape for months, but they
might only be a warm-up to a much bigger struggle, unless the administration
prevails on the Kurds to stand down.
The fact that Washington has permitted the pesh merga to retain its
arms has not helped matters.
Meanwhile, tensions between Shias and Sunnis, who have dominated
Iraqi governments since independence, have mounted steadily since Dec.
9, when three Sunnis were killed in an explosion at a Baghdad mosque.
While Washington says it agrees with Sistani that direct elections are
best, it insists there is not enough time to hold them before the scheduled
June 30 turnover, a date that was decided more out of concern for Bushs
re-election campaign than by a commitment to build viable democratic
institutions in Iraq.
If the complicated caucus system that Washington proposed
in November will not work, the administration appears poised to back
the creation of an enlarged Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) as the transitional
government, although there is no agreement on how its members would
be chosen.
Washington hopes that Sistani, who has indicated he will abide by the
recommendations of UN experts as to how to proceed, will be willing
to deal.
In this context, the administration appears increasingly frantic about
involving the United Nations, which plans to send a team to Iraq to
assess the situation next week.
While it hopes the world body can devise an agreement that will keep
all parties calm and its transition timetable on track, Washington also
clearly sees it as a convenient scapegoat if things go bad.
Not content with the mounting signs of civil war in Iraq, however, the
Pentagon, presumably with the help of Vice President Dick Cheneys
office, was reported this week by Janes Intelligence Digest to
be drawing up plans for carrying out raids on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon
and Syria, in what would be a notable expansion of Bushs war
on terror.
Some of the same personnel who worked in the Pentagons Office
of Special Plans, which reviewed intelligence for evidence allegedly
linking Saddam to the al-Qaida terrorist group and weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) programs before the Iraq invasion, have reportedly been working
on a similar effort regarding Syria.
David Warmer, a neo-conservative who has long advocated destabilizing
Damascus through Lebanon and Iraq, joined Cheneys staff as his
Mideast adviser last September.
An administration ally, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts,
also suggested this week that Iraqs alleged WMD stockpiles were
transported to Syria before the war.
Most observers here believe the administration is unlikely to authorize
such operations before the November presidential elections, if only
because it would fuel voter concerns and Democratic charges that the
presidents conduct of the war on terror has
been reckless and far too costly in blood, treasure and alliances.
They suggest the reports are being deliberately circulated to intimidate
Syrias Assad regime into complying with a series of US demands,
including cutting off aid to Hezbollah and Palestinian groups.
Janes noted, however, that US attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon
could well destabilize that country only a decade after its last civil
war.