Saturday, December 01, 2007

Twisted plans and hollow talks

Dec.1, 2006

Twisted plans and hollow talks


THE sole positive outcome of talks that US President George W Bush held with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki in Amman on Thursday was an agreement that Iraq should not be partitioned into separate, semiautonomous zones. None of the other agreements could be considered as positive since they are based on not only a continued US military presence in Iraq but also on increased use of military force to tackle the insurgency there. Those agreements sidestep the reality that there could be no military solution to the conflict in Iraq, and that the US would not be able to realise its prime objectives of pacifying the people of Iraq, stabilising the country and using it was a springboard for action against regional players (not to mention protecting US energy interests).
Even the Bush-Maliki agreement against autonomous regions in Iraq that would lead into eventual division of the country along ethnic lines could be described as wishful thinking because the lines drawn in post-war Iraq have already grown into deep chasms that are nearly impossible to be bridged. The concept has already been written into the post-war "constitution" of Iraq.
Hopes for a compromise that would be acceptable to the majority Shiites and the minority Sunnis and Kurds and would bring the three communities together back to the pre-war shape of Iraq are not based on realism. If the split does not happen today, it would happen tomorrow or someday but sooner than later, and there is nothing anyone could do about it. Such a view of the course of events is based on the historical realities of modern Iraq that the US and its allies overlooked/ignored/brushed aside when they drew up plans to invade and occupy that country as an advance military post in the Gulf that would serve American/Israeli interests in the region.
Surely, no regional player wants the division of Iraq because that would not but be coupled with major spillovers of the crisis across the borders to the country's neighbours and the wider region. The regional players, if they decide to get together in good faith, might be able to come up with a formula that could pre-empt a division of Iraq, but serious doubts cloud that possibility as long as the US military remains in Iraq.
In the short term, Bush's affirmation on Thursday after talks with Maliki was that the US would stay the course in Iraq and help the Iraqi prime minister boost his firepower against armed elements that challenge efforts to shore up internal security. The US president's assurances should been seen against the backdrop of his National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley's opinion that "reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests Maliki is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action."
For all the world knows, Maliki might not find himself out a job when he returns to Baghdad because of the declared decision of Moqtada Sadr to withdraw his political support for the prime minister. Against that backdrop, whatever decisions and agreements made during the Amman meeting seem to have lost any relevance until and unless Maliki comes up with a formula to persuade Sadr not to quit the coalition in power.
No doubt, Bush was sending an implicit message to Iraqi groups when he described Maliki as "the right guy for Iraq," and pledged increased support for his efforts to shore up security, but the impact of such expressions of backing remains to be seen (barring a dramatic turnaround in the avowed US promise to "democratise" Iraq).
No matter what happens in the short-term in Iraq, nothing that the US does within the framework of realising its objectives of the invasion and occupation of that country would help stabilise the situation. Talk of genuine peace in Iraq through any other course of events could be nothing hollow.