Failed abstersion?

Iraq’s interior minister said all 24 of his officers who had been arrested in a security crackdown this week would be released. And in a bold gesture of defiance, he publicly condemned his own government’s investigation, calling the accusations false and motivated purely by politics. -NY Times

As Robert Farley said, the purge did not seem to work out exactly how Maliki seemed to have intended. Joe Klein says there are two ways to look at the situation:

Glass half full: The nascent Iraqi democracy is apparently supple enough to derail this attempt at anti-democratic mayhem.

Glass half empty: We are witnessing the return to Iraqi politics as usual--a constant succession of coups and attempted coups that will produce something less than a democracy in the not-too-distant future.

I'll go with the glass half empty. I think Maliki thought he could get away with the firing but his support was not strong enough at the present time. I do not think they were released out of respect for abstract democratic ideals; the reasons were doubtless much more pragmatic. In any case, the situation does not bode well for Maliki.

Attempted coup on Maliki?

It's being spun as a thwarted coup on Maliki but I don't buy it. It looks more like Maliki is trying to strengthen his control of the government by slowly removing opponents so that he can become the next Iraqi strongman. As I said after SOFA passed, now that the endgame is in sight we will see a power struggle for control of the country in the post American era. Maliki looks like he is doing pretty well for himself for now.

BAGHDAD — A senior spokesman at the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior confirmed publicly on Thursday that 23 of its officials had been arrested in recent days under suspicion of being affiliated with a banned political party related to Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. The ministry, in a statement, also said the scope of the investigation was wider than originally reported, with officials in other security ministries also arrested.

(...)

According to senior security officials in Baghdad who revealed the arrests earlier this week, up to 35 officials in the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior ranking as high as general have been detained this week.

The arrests, according to those officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, included at least three generals. The officials also said that the arrests had come at the hand of an elite counterterrorism force that reports directly to the office of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. -NYTimes

Whatever your opinion of Bush is...

You have to admit the man is good at dodging shoes.



On an unrelated subject, normal posting will resume in a few days when the final exams period is over.

Quote of the Day: Lessons of Iraq

My own (provisional) view is that the Iraq War tells us a great deal about the limits/costs of using large-scale military force in situations where the stakes are vastly higher for our opponents than for ourselves, a great deal about America's ability, or lack thereof, to transform dysfunctional societies through occupation, a fair amount about the limits of pro-democracy sentiment as a north star for policymaking, and a fair amount about the limits of American power, period. I think it tells us less than many liberals and conservatives think about the particular incompetence of Bush's war cabinet (though clearly it tells us something on that score!), less than many liberals (and some realists) think about the importance of international organizations and their utility for crisis management in high-stakes situations, and less than many progressives and paleoconservatives think about whether the U.S. should radically scale down its involvement in Middle Eastern politics, and more broadly abandon its informal-empire commitments around the world. -Ross Douthat

Iraq post American occupation

From Michael Totten in Commentary:

Many American soldiers agree. “Everyone says things will implode after we leave,” Lieutenant Eric Kuylman told me. “They’ll blame it on politics and religion, but it’s not going to be any of that. It’s going to be about straight power. It’s going to be guys trying to one-up each other. It’s going to be key people in cities just like this who will want to seize the power gaps. It’s going to break down along tribal lines and these militias that we’ve put in place. When we pull out, there will be power vacuums. There will be pockets of people that we’ve put in power. I mean, everybody already has shaky alliances as it is. So what you’re going to see is the straight seizing of power. People are going to try to put their own tags on it, but it’s just about the seizure of power. It’s not going to be Sunni or Shia, nothing like it. It’s just going to be men who want control.”

I mostly agree with this. There will be more violence following USA withdrawal from Iraq because there will be power vacuums in a country overflowing with armed men used to settle conflicts with violence (because of their experiences of the last 5 years of course, not because they are inherently violent). But this does not mean that long term instability will follow; in my opinion, the odds that it goes the Somalia route are low, the internal stability in Vietnam after the Fall of Saigon (if you discount war against external enemies) is a more likely route. Why? Because unlike the Southern Vietnamese government, Maliki wants the US gone. It means he is fairly confident he can retain power even if they leave within a few years. It was Sadr and the Sunnis who were more uneasy about withdrawal; they are probably less confident in their abilities. As Totten writes at the end of the article:

He thinks Iraq will be okay, even so. The Iraqi Army and Iraqi Police are still shaky institutions at best, but they are much more competent than they were a few years ago. The Iraqi Army proved itself earlier this year, against nearly all expectations, when it took back areas under the control of Moqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia in Basra and Sadr City with only a limited amount of help from Americans.

Things might go as planned, but if Maliki plays his cards right he will probably be able to fill the power vacuum.

Via Andrew Sullivan

SOFA conditionally approved

The Iraqi Parliament has approved the Status of Force Agreement, which sets the timetable for withdrawal of American troops, who are to stay in Iraq through 2011. It seems the concessions that Sunnis demanded yesterday, such as amnesty for Baath related crimes and the release of 16 000 Sunni prisoners was not mentioned today. Maybe they have been dropped or maybe there were some back-door deals that were done to ensure Sunni's support.

But there will be a referendum on SOFA in July 2009. If the Iraqis vote no, then the Americans will have one year to get out of the country under the terms of the deal, which incidentally would fit almost exactly with Barack Obama's proposed timetable. So we might not have a definitive timetable for withdrawal, but it will be either a year and a half from now or a bit more.

Sadr is opposing the deal, but he was not strong enough to torpedo it. We will see if his faction can convince the population in a few months.

Iran calls Iraq to resist the Security deal

The Iranian parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, has called the Iraqis to reject the US security pact.
He said Washington's goal was to "strengthening comprehensive U.S. hegemony in Iraq." and he called for continued resistance: "The Iraqi nation and parliament should realize that the time for resistance is not over yet,".

That should give pause to those who bemoan the massive influence of Iran in Iraq. But why would Iran be opposed to a deal that effectively makes Iraq a nation independent from "US meddling" in about 2-3 years if they thought they could control it? The logical conclusion is that their influence is not that deep inside Iraq despite religious similitude with the new rulers of the country; else they should welcome the withdrawal of the US.

The reality is that Arab Iraqis, even Shiites, see Iranians as Farsi foreigners. During the Iran-Iraq war, Shiites and Sunnis fought Iranians side by side and there are no history of widespread Shiites opposition to the war based on sectarian arguments. Iraqis and Persians might share a religion but there does not appear to be any sign that the former will be submissive to Iran. We saw the relevance of Iran's opposition in the cabinet vote which went 27-1. The lone dissenter was Sunni, so the odds that he voted no because of Iran pressure are, let's say, fairly low. We will see what kind of influence Iran has in the parliament vote, but I doubt it will be impressive.

Now that is not to say that Iran will not have an influence in Iraq. It is one of the major power in the region, along with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and it will have more power than during the Ba'ath years. But those hyperventilating about how the US gave Iraq to Iran can calm down; Iraqis are proud enough not to let foreigners run the show.

There are a few caveats to my argument. Ali Larijani is not Ali Khamenei or Ahmadinejad, what he said should be taken with a grain of salt before we assume that it is the position of the Iranian government. Also, it is possible that Iran oppose the deals because they believe if Iraq waits until BO takes over, it will get a better deal and a faster withdrawal. But it is hard to see why they would get worked up on a 6-12 months earlier withdrawal; the end result would be the same.

Endgame

The Iraqi Cabinet has approved the Security Pact with the US. The importance of this Pact is that it has set a timetable for withdrawal; the Coalition will have to start moving in the summer of 2009 and be out of the country by 2011. The final approval by the parliament is probably going to be a mere formality.

However this is by no mean a time for wild optimism for Iraqis. The next few years will be vital to ensure stability of the country. Now that everyone knows when Americans will be gone, the fight for power in post-USA Iraq will begin (or continue). Let's hope it will be a fight in the parliament or in debates and not fighting in the streets. I am slightly skeptical that this will happen without any violence, but we will see. Maliki appears stronger than ever, and if he continues his shrewd management, it would not be impossible for him to impose his power even without US backing.

As Kevin Drum mentions, this also has powerful implications on the domestic scene here in America. BO will not have to fight to secure American withdrawal from Iraq; he will be able to claim with a straight face that he is merely following the previous administration's policies while spending his political capital on other issues. At the same time it reminds everyone of Barack's good judgment regarding Iraq.

Obama is a dove?

And yet liberals and anti-war types should not declare the new president a kindred spirit too hastily. As Obama himself said in the now famous 2002 speech denouncing the Iraq adventure: "I am not opposed to all wars." It's true that he avoids the phrase "war on terror". But that is not because he thinks there is no war to be fought. His disagreement with Bush was that the latter had failed to define America's enemy clearly. -Jonathan Freedland

This should not surprise anyone who has read about Barack Obama's opinions or anyone who is reading Daniel Larison (if you aren't, you should start now). But the MSM has largely ignored this very important point until now. Obama is a hawk who will merely tilt USA foreign policy slightly. Yes he is for diplomacy with Iran and Syria, but Bush was for diplomacy with Iraqi Sunnis and North Korea; both of which are certainly in the same league as Iran and Syria. So it's not that much of a change. If diplomacy were to fail, Obama has constantly refused to rule out military action against Iran. On the subject of Pakistan and the Taliban, Obama has been more hawkish than the Republicans, favoring strikes within Pakistan itself.

It will be interesting to watch how he acts once in power, but big changes should not be expected. Except, of course, in the tone and general attitude.

World: anti-american?

For the past eight years, I regularly argued against the claim that anti-Americanism was on the rise in Europe and beyond. On the contrary, I said, most Britons and Europeans remained remarkably well-disposed to the United States: it was just the Bush administration they couldn't stand.

The global reaction last week suggested I wasn't wrong. Witness the sheer speed with which - once George Bush had been dispatched - the citizens of the world rushed to embrace America once more. It turns out the world was not just ready but eager for the US to lead again; it just didn't want Bush to do the leading. -Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian

That's the position I've been defending those past years, which wasn't a very popular argument a few years back. The deep unpopularity of the US in the rest of the Western World* was due to Bush administration's attitude. It wasn't necessarily the actions of the US government but the tone, the attitude, the lack of considerations for allies and the general arrogance of the administration. Europeans and other westerners understand that the US is the leading superpower, but they do not want to have their face rubbed on their subordination and their general powerlessness. If, prior to the Iraq war, after having failed to convince most of his European allies of the need to invade, Bush had said something along the lines of "I understand that we have disagreements and I respect your position on this issue. However, I believe that it is in the world's interest to remove Saddam Hussein from power and I hope that in the months to come we will be able to convince you that it was the right decision.", you can be sure that very few would care about Iraq.

I predict that despite a very similar amount of involvement in the world's affair, an Obama administration will have a much easier relationship with Europe and the West just by changing the general attitude emanating from Washington.

* Russia and the Middle East's relationship with the US have deteriorated for reasons other than mere attitude, but that'll be the subject of another post.

Sadr crumbling?

From the LATimes:

Sadr's troubles are rooted in the fighting between his militia and Iraqi security forces that erupted in March after Prime Minister Nouri Maliki ordered the army to clear the militia's strongholds in the southern city of Basra. The clashes there ended only when Sadr commanded his militia to stand down, and then did the same in Sadr City six weeks later.

The cleric's retreat was hailed as a victory for Maliki. Former Sadr supporters expressed relief at the end of the fighting and resentment toward the Mahdi Army for endangering them.

With his armed wing formally frozen, Sadr looked to repair his movement's image. He announced in June that his fighters should form a new social and religious education organization, named Mumahidoon, which aims to teach Iraqis about Islam.

(...)

"To avoid having his organization continually targeted, he had to do something with them, so he followed the Islamic Brotherhood and Hezbollah model," a U.S. military intelligence officer said, referring to other Islamist movements that provide charitable services and enjoy popularity in the Arab world.

As Kevin Drum wrote, we do not have enough information on what exactly happened in Basra in March and how strong Sadr really is before we start making judgments on his long term strength. But there is one thing for sure; it is much harder to build a Hezbollah-like organization in a country that is ruled by fellow Shiites than a country like Lebanon that has been ruled by Christians, Sunni Muslims (who despise Shiites as poor and uneducated in Lebanon) and from time to time Israeli invaders. Hezbollah succeeded by being the only organization that defended Lebanese Shiites, in an environment where they had almost no access to "legitimate" power. Iraq would appears to be different; I have no doubt that Maliki is trying hard to integrate Shiite from Sadr's area into the government's patronage system, undercutting Sadr's influence. I do not believe that the Hezbollah strategy will be any effective in such an environment; although it might become powerful if Sunni were to take over the government again.

But Muqtada Sadr has surprised observers of the region before, so I wouldn't count him out just yet.