Iraq

Shibley Telhami, a leading expert on Arab politics and attitudes, says he is concerned that neither the Sunnis nor Shiites in Iraq will be able to overcome their sharp sectarian differences to form a united, stable government. "The issue is who’s going to be in the best position to build a national government, to deliver stability, and to become a reliable, significant partner for the international community," says Telhami, who is the Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle Eastern Studies. "And I think that no one today has demonstrated the ability to do that.""What made Nelson Mandela great in history was obviously the fact that he was able to look beyond the past and reach out to all South Africans, and I think that the Shiites are going to have to demonstrate that kind of foresight in their dealings if the purpose is a unified Iraq," he says. "And at the moment, we don’t see an assertive and clear Sunni leadership emerging that is capable of making difficult decisions, and I don’t see Shiite leadership that is willing to reach out. What I see is a dynamic that remains sectarian."Telhami also expresses concern about the latest taped statement by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. He says he takes seriously the threat to launch another attack on the United States. "I do not think it’s just rhetorical, and I don’t think that we have been doing enough in our own strategy to confront the fact on some level that the threat from al-Qaeda remains bigger than the threat that any state makes, and that includes Iran and North Korea."He was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on January 20, 2006.The official election results were announced in Iraq today, and they seem pretty much as expected. It looks as if the Sunnis did a little better than some people thought they would and the Shiites have of course won the most seats. What is your overall view of the political scene in Iraq right now?I think the elections themselves are important, even though they will continue to be doubted by many Sunnis, and also by perhaps the majority of people in the Arab world who will still see them as not being legitimate. Nonetheless, when you have an election with its focus on forming political coalitions, on the formation of a government, on discussion of the issues that divide the communities, along with a lot of bargaining and a lot of maneuvering, all of that is good. I think it changes the nature of the discussion, so those things are good. At the same time, I think it is clear that even a successful government—that is a coalition that has some Sunnis in it—is going to be swimming against the tide of sectarianism. The reality on the ground remains one of sectarianism. That trend of sectarianism remains by virtue of the nature of the power, by the makeup of society, by virtue of the nature of the militant attacks and the government responses, and by virtue of the make-up of the bulk of the security forces and the armed services in Iraq. We think we are building national Iraqi forces, but of course, in general, the make-up of those forces remains roughly sectarian. So we are unwittingly just affecting the balance of power on the ground for what remains a largely sectarian game.The security forces are largely Shiite?Largely Shiite and Kurdish. And clearly, those are the ones that are carrying the bulk of the counterinsurgency operations. And those are the ones who have been accused by the Sunnis of essentially being largely in their minds avenging what they have suffered under Saddam Hussein. So there was this notion that when you are a Sunni, you don’t think of the Iraqi security services as representing a neutral party that represents a new Iraq, but you think of them as the enemy. And that obviously, in some ways, is part of the continuing sectarian problem. So our American role, which in some ways has been helping people live in the midst of the sectarian conflict, is in effect changing the balance of power along sectarian lines in a way that does not necessarily assure in the future that you’re going to have a unified, stable Iraq. In fact, it could ensure that if there is an explosion of sectarian conflict, it’s likely to be more bloody because you have far more trained people and far more arms on both sides.Some people, of course, early on had urged for a strict federal state where there’d be three separate governments. You didn’t favor that, did you?Here’s my view on all of this. First, obviously the Sunnis are going to have to come to grips with the fact that they’re no longer a majority, and they’re not. The Shiites are a majority, and they have rights as a majority and they have in fact paid a price in the past for the Saddam Hussein regime. But I think what the Sunnis need to be assured is that they are going to have a significant say in a new national Iraq, particularly when it comes to the division of resources and oil. They are certainly fearful of the Shiites dominating oil in the south and the Kurds dominating oil in the north, and being left with a smaller share of the pie. They also have concerns, beyond the Shiite-Sunni division. The Sunnis have the sense that some of the main Shiite leadership has close ties with Iran. And since most Sunnis still are very resentful of Iran, I think any package between the Sunnis and the Shiites is going to have to take that into account.Well, if they ask your advice, who would you like to see as the new prime minister of the country?I’m a secularist myself and if I were to have a prime minister, I’d hope for a secularist one. But in the end, that’s useless. The issue is not who I like, the issue is who’s going to be in the best position to build a national government, to deliver stability and to become a reliable, significant partner for the international community. And I think that no one today has demonstrated the ability to do that. We don’t know all the players who are being put forth on the table. It’s noteworthy, by the way, that the party of [former Deputy Prime Minister] Ahmed Chalabi, the man initially favored by the United States, has apparently won no seats. Former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who is a secular Shiite, appears to have won twenty-five [seats], which is respectable but certainly does not make him a major player. The Shiites themselves are not unified. They are unified as a coalition that ran and did well, but it’s not a single party with a single ideology, and they are divided over who’s going to be the next prime minister. The two main factions, in particular, within that coalition, are divided over who’s going to be prime minister. It’s not clear what the followers of [firebrand Shiite leader] Muqtada al-Sadr are going to put forth. I think it’s reasonable for them to make the argument that the turnout by the Shiites in those elections was in part due to their effort to rally the poor in many of the neighborhoods in Baghdad and elsewhere, and they would want a say. And they have had a different agenda. So even the Shiites themselves are going to have to sort their options out, sort the leadership issue out before they begin negotiating with other factions.And the Sunnis, of course, have two separate party lists; one, the Iraqi Accordance Front got forty-four seats, and the Iraqi Front for National Dialogue won eleven. What were the differences in those two parties?Remember, Iraqi politics remains largely tribal. And it’s not clear that you have a very significant ideological division in the way people postulate their position. It’s very difficult to have coalitions that are regional and tribal in nature in terms of the make-up of the candidates. But I think it’s likely that no matter what transpires in the negotiations, they’re going to coordinate their position, particularly on matters related to the constitution, which remains the biggest issue. In fact the most important early signals will be on the willingness of the Shiites to address the issue of the constitution. This had taken a setback in the past few days with Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), taking the position that the constitution would not be revised. There’s great suspicion and distrust among the Sunnis.Well, is there any way this election can be translated into ending the insurgency? Let’s think about it theoretically for a moment. Theoretically, if you have a government that signals a willingness to change the constitution—including the allocation of resources—and if you have a government where the Sunnis are participating, supportive public opinion, and Arab governments are persuaded to back it—because Arab governments provide certain signals to the Sunni community in Iraq—then you, theoretically, stand a chance of attracting many of the Sunnis who are not at home with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his al-Qaeda bunch. All the public opinion surveys in the entire region show that most people, when they support al-Qaeda, they support it only because it’s in confrontation with the United States, not because they support its message. Of course, nobody wants Zarqawi to be the ruler, even those within the Sunni community who may be rooting for him to kill Shiites. If you peel off a majority of people who are not at home with Zarqawi’s message, but who are supporting him by default, you stand a chance of minimizing the insurgency and then start building a unified Iraq. That’s the theory. It’s not a bad theory. But the chances of that happening are very small in this environment, because it’s all happening where there’s no clear signal from the Shiites that they want to compromise on most major issues. In the same way that the Sunnis are no longer the majority and they’re going to have to find a way in Iraq where they have to come to grips with the fact that they are the minority, the Shiites are going to also have to come to grips with the fact that if they want a unified Iraq in which they play the central role, they’re going to have to reach out. The great majorities shine when they reach out to the minorities. What made Nelson Mandela great in history was obviously the fact that he was able to look beyond the past and reach out to all South Africans, and I think that the Shiites are going to have to demonstrate that kind of foresight in their dealings if the purpose is a unified Iraq. And at the moment, we don’t see an assertive and clear Sunni leadership emerging that is capable of making difficult decisions, and I don’t see Shiite leadership that is willing to reach out. What I see is a dynamic that remains sectarian.Can the United States play a constructive role at this point?Sure. I U.S. leverage remains, and I think the United States in some ways may have more leverage than people think. In the end, if our aim is to have a unified, stable Iraq, it can only happen if we persuade a majority of the Sunnis on the game. If we are going to persuade the Sunnis, we are going to have to persuade the Shiites to compromise with them. It’s very simple what we have to do. A lot of that has been happening. The United States in fact has been trying to weigh in on behalf of the Sunnis a little bit in the past few months in the negotiations. My own read of it is that, despite the public position that some Shiites take that ultimately they want the United States to withdraw, in the end the current Iraqi government—and that means of course the coalition, the winning coalition in Iraq—does not want to see a rapid U.S. withdrawal because they don’t think they yet have the significant training and power to govern on their own or even to confront a successful sectarian war in Iraq. And I think in some ways they see the United States as empowering them over time. That gives the United States much more leverage in those talks with the Shiites. The talks have to be with the Shiites as much as they are with the Sunnis.I see. At the same time as the electoral results became known, Osama bin Laden’s latest tape became known. What did you get from that?The whole tape is a message to the American people, although of course he’s always talking to his world audience indirectly. And the focal point was to tell the American people that their government is making a big mistake by not withdrawing from Iraq and, quote, "ignoring public opinion polls" in America. He’s actually reading public opinion polls in America that tell him Americans really want the Americans to withdraw. His key point, if you want to see a key point there, was that the president is saying he wants to take war to the terrorists, meaning to Iraq, and not outside, and the point of Osama bin Laden was that, "Yes, you’re taking it there, and you don’t realize how helpful Iraq has been for us in recruiting more people, but we are not limited in penetrating anywhere else and the fact that we haven’t had an attack in the United States now is not limited by our inability to penetrate, we’ve been planning, and you will see that it will pay off."So he puts the threat in the context of, "We can take it to you, don’t think we cannot take it to you; our presence in Iraq isn’t going to undermine our ability to take it to you." See, that’s the context in which this threat comes. He’s talking to the American people, and of course he’s talking to the Arab people, to show them he’s still strong and can threaten. Now, I happen to think that what’s going on here is two things. One is that he of course knows the elections were coming up in Iraq; he’s focused on Iraq and the American withdrawal. He wants to ultimately claim that the partial American withdrawal is due to the success of al-Qaeda in Iraq, and he wants to escalate and exploit that by focusing on the elections to demonstrate they haven’t changed much. The second thing is I think, he’s also reading the polls in the Arab world. And when you look at the polls in the Arab world, like the one I just released with Zogby International where I asked what aspect of al-Qaeda you sympathize with most, only about 6 percent say they sympathize with al-Qaeda’s aim to establish a puritanical Islamic state. Only about 7 percent say they sympathize with their message. The majority say either that they sympathize with the fact that al-Qaeda confronts the United States or that al-Qaeda is speaking for other Islamic causes. So they understand that this is a default support; it’s not a support for their aims. It’s support primarily for confrontation with the United States. And in the polls, the United States is seen by over 70 percent of Arabs as a primary threat. Not only don’t Arabs like U.S. foreign policy, which is nothing new, but they see the United States as a primary threat. Now in that sense, Osama is responding to that. The United States is almost the equal of Israel in Arab minds as a primary threat. And so what he’s doing is he’s saying to his Arab audience through his message to the Americans, "I’m still confronting America, I’m still going to take it to them. Not only are they going to lose in Iraq, but wait and you’ll see, there will be more havoc on American soil."I’m concerned. I do take the threat seriously. I do not think it’s just rhetorical, and I don’t think that we have been doing enough in our own strategy to confront the fact on some level that the threat from al-Qaeda remains bigger than the threat that any state makes, and that includes Iran and North Korea.

Iraq is the most dangerous conflict for journalists since the Vietnam War. More than seventy reporters and media assistants have been killed since March 2003, according to Reporters Sans Frontiers, some by crossfire, others targeted by insurgents. At least thirty-six have been kidnapped. The latest abduction involves an American 28-year-old contributor to the Christian Science Monitor, Jill Carroll, who was kidnapped January 7 by Iraqi insurgents in Baghdad. Many of these episodes end tragically. Last August, for example, a freelance writer from New York City, Steven Vincent, was abducted and killed by a Shiite militia group in the southern city of Basra. Iraq’s postwar environment has grown so perilous that foreign reporters are often unable to leave high-security areas to travel and cover stories. As a result, they must increasingly rely on local Iraqis, who themselves are being targeted by insurgents. As such, most of the journalists killed have been Iraqis. Ann Cooper, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), discusses the difficulties of reporting from Iraq, the role governments play when journalists are abducted, and the current status of press freedoms around the globe. What is the responsibility of governments when journalists are abducted?Western governments do get involved, but largely behind the scenes, and they generally reveal little in public about their efforts -- such as what the Italian and French governments did last year when they had journalists captured in Iraq, or what the U.S. government’s role is currently in the Jill Carroll case. Each kidnapping is different, each has specific characteristics, and a government’s actions may vary depending on where the kidnapping takes place, who the journalist is, what their nationality is, who they work for, and what is known about the kidnappers.In the Iraq situation, if you have an insurgent group kidnapping foreign journalists, is a U.S. government public statement helpful? I’m sure the government would see it as important to express its support if one of its citizens is kidnapped, whether it’s a journalist or someone in a different job. It would also be important for any government to work inclose connection with the family of the person who’s kidnapped as well as the employer of the person.Do you think it’s fair or ethical for U.S. journalists in conflict zones like Iraq to essentially outsource their reporting duties to local journalists, particularly given the dangers involved? This is not a new phenomenon. Western news organizations have always relied on local hires as translators, fixers, or journalists, to help them in their news gathering, especially in ongoing stories like the one in Iraq. The terrible situation that’s developed in Iraq is that as this story goes on and becomes more dangerous for foreign correspondents to dotheir reporting, they must increasingly rely on the Iraqis working with them. Those Iraqis are often in a better position to travel about and gather news. But they, too, are running great risks. If you look at statistics gathered by the Committee to Protect Journalists, most of the kidnappings [in Iraq] have been of foreign journalists, while most of the journalists killed have been Iraqis. Insurgents often target Iraqis as "collaborators" because they are working with Western news organizations. Many have been threatened, "If you don’t’ stop this work, we’ll kill you." Some have stopped working. Some have gone into exile. Some have been killed.Talk about the techniques of journalists. Jill Carroll, for example, had nosecurity detail around her. Do you recommend journalists in conflict areas to “blend in” or to use bodyguards? The most important thing for journalists covering conflict is to take very seriously their personal security. There are a lot of resources they can turn to now, far more than, say, ten or fifteen years ago. Our organization puts out a security handbook. There are also private security firms that will do training courses for journalists and others, or who will provide security on the ground in conflict zones. And the news organizations that send journalists to cover conflicts have to recognize their responsibility for their employees. They need to talk about security in detail and make sure their journalists are properlytrained and equipped. But on specific questions, like whether to travel with bodyguards or not, there are often different opinions -- and no "right" or "wrong" approach.Early on in the Iraq conflict, for instance, there was a huge debate among journalists about the use of armed guards. Television journalists, in particular those working for American television companies, were starting to travel with armed guards. Others, including many European television journalists, said, this is the last thing we want to do. Traveling with gunmen, they argued, tainted the image of journalists as neutral observers.What about the U.S. military treatment of Iraqi journalists? Seven of them were reportedly arrested last year, right?A number of [Iraqi] journalists have been held for weeks, sometimes months, at a time by the U.S. military and then released without any charge. The same has happened to many other Iraqi civilians. But one group that seems to be particularly vulnerable is Iraqi journalists, especially those working as photographers or cameramen for Western media. They may be out taking pictures in the aftermath of a story, such as a suicide bombing. The situation is often quite tense, and they get picked up by the U.S. military. Sometimes these journalists have been detained after soldiers look at the contents of their digital cameras or some of their video footage and decide these pictures give them reason to suspect the cameramen may be something more than just journalists.Don’t they have press credentials?There are credentials but the credentialing system [in Iraq] has been fraught with problems. For example, sometimes in the past it’s been shut down for months at a time. And credentials or no credentials, the U.S. military often looks upon local Iraqi journalists with great suspicion. Yet we know of no cases where any of the journalists detained by the U.S. military have actually been charged with a crime. What we have said repeatedly to the military is: if you have a reason to hold this person, bring that charge and make it public. If you don’t, release them. It’s a process that has no due process for detainees. And it’s a terrible example that the U.S. is setting, in a country where one of the statedgoals is to establish democracy. One of the fundamental tenets of justice in a democracy is that when people are detained, they’re told of the charges against them or they’re released. And that’s not happening -- not even when the detained journalists are employed by well-established, mainstream media organizations that vouch for them.Is the U.S. military detaining journalists outside of Iraq as well?There is one other journalist who’s imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay. He’s Sudanese and was working as an assistant cameraman for al-Jazeera when he was detained in late 2001 while crossing the border from Pakistan to Afghanistan.The Committee to Protect Journalists also released a report claiming murder is now the leading cause of death for journalists. That has long been true; it’s not a new development.The report shows fewer overall deaths of journalists in 2005 versus 2004, but a greater percentage of these deaths were a result of murder, correct?A lot of attention is focused on the dangers of covering conflicts, particularly for foreign correspondents. But in any given year, most of the journalists killed because of their work are local journalists, and most of them are murdered -- meaning someone ordered or hired gunmen to kill that reporter or editor because of his or her journalistic work.And to reiterate, you’re saying it doesn’t help you as a journalist, if detained, to have a big organization lobbying on your behalf?It has not in the case of the journalists detained in Iraq. But in other instances, a larger media company may have greater resources to help its journalists, including getting attention to their case. In this country, more attention is paid when an American journalist is in trouble, because that’s a "local" story, in effect. But American media also pay considerable attention to press freedom stories in other parts of the world, for example, China’s terrible record of imprisoning journalists -- thirty-two imprisoned last month. It’s the seventh year in a row that China has been the world’s leading jailer of journalistsDoes that include murders—that is, does China lead in that category as well?No. Last year Iraq was the deadliest country for journalists. Twenty-two were killed, almost all of them Iraqis.What about press freedoms in Russia?CPJ wrote an article over a year ago saying that with only a handful of exceptions, there is less press freedom today in the countries that made up the Soviet Union than there was in the glasnost years of Soviet power when Mikhail Gorbachev was in office [in the late 1980s]. That would describe the dismal situation for press freedom in Russia as well. Allnational broadcasting is controlled or heavily influenced by the Kremlin now, and only a handful of newspapers, with small circulation, are truly independent.The U.S. is known around the world as the gold standard for press freedoms, so anytime you see that eroding it sends a negative message to other governments. It makes it harder for journalists in those countries. What’s the significance of the recent Reporters Without Borders’ 2005 World Press Freedom Indexthat ranks the United Statesforty-fourth out of 167 countries, a drop of about twenty spots from previous years? Doe this hurt our standing in the world?That is not an index that CPJ compiles. But it is certainly true that restrictions on press freedom in the United States are closely watched around the world. For example, if the U.S. jails a journalist, it sends a message to governments that have much less respect for press freedom and are much more likely to jail journalists. Leaders in those countries can say, "Don’t talk to me about press freedoms. Look at the U.S, which has [former New York Times reporter] Judy Miller in prison. The U.S. is known around the world as the gold standard for press freedoms, so anytime you see that eroding it sends a negative message to other governments. It makes it harder for journalists in those countries.What about bloggers? Are they being harassed or arrested as often as regular journalists abroad?Definitely. There are countries where the controls on traditional media are very strong, but the Internet has offered new opportunities and ways to get around those controls; China is a great example of that. Many of those thirty-two journalists in prison are people who use the Internet to disseminate information and then ran afoul of the government. There are certainly people you would define as bloggers who we have taken up as cases. Iran is another country where the controls have become so severe that more people are looking toward the Internet and setting up websites or blogs to comment. There have been some arrests in Iran. I can’t remember if there is anybody sitting in prison because of their Internet work, but the government has certainly acted against some of them.

This publication is now archived. What role will Kurds play in Iraq’s future government? Kurds are expected to play a kingmaker role in forming Iraq’s new coalition government. Kurdish parties look likely to win around fifty-five seats in the 275-member parliament, making them vital players in Iraqi politics. No political bloc won the two-thirds majority required to form a government. Hence, Shiite and Sunni Arabs have courted Kurdish leaders to form a governing coalition. Some experts suggest that Kurds, most of them secular, may partner up with secular Shiite and Sunni parties to prevent Iraq from becoming too Islamist. But most experts expect the Kurds to align themselves again with the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA), Iraq’s ruling Shiite bloc, which is expected to win around 130 seats. In general, Kurdish leaders have provided a moderate influence on Iraqi politics, arbitrating between Iraq’s more polarized Sunni and Shiite leaders. Kurds have also pushed for further decentralization of Iraq’s government and to exert greater regional autonomy, including issuing visas, establishing a foreign ministry, and negotiating exploration deals with foreign oil firms. Iraq’s Sunni leadership has accused Kurds, who have enjoyed near autonomy since 1991, of trying to split up Iraq. But most experts say Kurds are within their constitutional rights in their demands for self-government in Kurdistan. “All they’re doing is institutionalizing the authorities they already had, which are included in the constitution,” says Peter Galbraith, a former ambassador to Croatia and senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation. What do the Kurds want from a political standpoint? The biggest issue for Iraq’s 4 million-plus Kurds is federalism. Since 1991, Iraqi Kurdistan, a mountainous area in northern Iraq, has enjoyed “special status” as a semiautonomous region protected as a U.S.-enforced no-fly zone. Kurdistan has its own regional parliament, judicial system, and security forces—the 100,000-strong peshmerga. Kurds do not want to cede control of these institutions to Baghdad. “The federalism concept is non-negotiable for the Kurds,” said Qubad Talabani, Washington representative of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and son of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, in a May 2005 Council on Foreign Relations meeting. A poll taken last year indicates the majority of Iraqi Kurds prefer outright independence to federalism. Kurdish leaders, however, have been more moderate with their demands, experts say. “They would prefer a world in which they were independent but their deal under the constitution gives them substantial autonomy,” says Brendan O’Leary, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and former constitutional adviser to Kurdistan’s government. Kurds also want to incorporate Kirkuk, an oil-rich and ethnically diverse city 150 miles north of Baghdad, into Iraqi Kurdistan. Many of the city’s Kurds were forcibly removed under Saddam Hussein as part of his “Arabization” program to alter the city’s demographics and bring in more Arabs. Thousands of Kurds have repatriated the city since Saddam’s ouster and have assumed control of many of its municipal institutions. Kurds are looking to 2007, when a referendum will be held to decide Kirkuk’s status. For Kurds, “Kirkuk is not about oil,” says Tanya Gilly-Khailany, director of democracy programs at the Washington-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. “It’s the place of their ancestors that they want to go back to. It has sentimental value.” Some Kurds have called the city “our Jerusalem.” Regardless of the referendum’s outcome, which is expected to go in the Kurds’ favor (the issue of Kirkuk’s future boundaries is less certain), O’Leary says some form of power-sharing arrangement will be required to make room politically for the city’s diverse population of Turkmen, Christians, and Arabs. Which Kurds will remain influential in Iraqi politics? Jalal Talabani, Iraq’s current president, may keep his position, experts say. “He has the natural charisma and legacy of being an overall unifier,” says Howar Ziad, the Iraqi ambassador to Canada. Talabani had threatened to withdraw his candidacy unless given more powers, partly to counterbalance the growing influence of the UIA. The Kurds say they are not involved with the UIA’s selection process for prime minister, but experts say they favor Adel Abdul Mahdi, Iraq ’s finance minister and member of the Shiite Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), over current Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who heads the UIA’s Dawa Party and has had testy relations with Talabani. Under the constitution, most executive powers go to the prime minister. While Ziad does not predict this constitutional rule will be formally amended, he foresees a “gentlemen’s agreement” to transfer more authority to the president. What rights did Kurds win under the constitution? Kurds voted overwhelmingly in favor of Iraq’s constitution in October’s referendum. That is because of the number of concessions Kurds won during the drafting process. For example, they were able to secure Kurdish, in addition to Arabic, as Iraq’s official language. Phrases on Iraq’s Arab identity were watered down (Kurds, though predominantly Muslim, are not Arabs), as was the role of religion (most Kurds are secular). Other important concessions include: Stronger regional authority. The constitution gives the federal government authority over foreign affairs, finance, trade, and other issues. All other powers go to regional governments. Whenever a dispute between local and federal law arises, the constitution gives priority to regional authorities. Sunnis have sought to overturn this clause of the constitution, but with both Shiites and Kurds behind it, experts say the issue of federalism will not likely be amended. Rights to future oilfields. Although “oil and gas is the property of all the Iraqi people,” experts say this applies only to existing oilfields. Revenues from future oilfields would ostensibly be collected by regional authorities. Sunnis, many of whom reside in Iraq’s oil-scarce center, have protested, fearing they may fall behind economically. Galbraith says their claims are overblown because of Iraq’s uneven development. “In terms of revenues, the north and south have been vastly underdeveloped compared to the center,” he says, “so these regions will be catching up.” The constitution further provides some form of compensation for regions “unjustly deprived” of oil revenues under Saddam Hussein’s rule, which includesKurdistan. Recognition of Kurdistan’s existing laws. Laws passed byKurdistan ’s regional government since 1992, including all contracts and court decisions, are recognized. Kurds say this includes production sharing agreements (PSAs) signed between Kurdistan’s government and outside oil firms. Sunni Arabs disagree, claiming the constitution does not validate all Kurdish laws and agreements. What steps have Kurds taken toward asserting greater autonomy? Much to the chagrin of Iraq’s Sunni Arabs, Kurds have made a number of recent moves to assert greater autonomy in the north. These include issuing visas, establishing a ministry of foreign affairs, and circumventing the Ministry of Oil by negotiating directly with foreign energy firms. Jonathan Morrow, legal adviser with the United States Institute of Peace, says these actions are nothing new and are allowed under Iraq’s constitution. Kurds “have made no secret of maintaining their own relations with foreign governments, and it’s not as if Kurds are suddenly entering talks with oil companies.” O’Leary says Kurds are not allowed a ministry of foreign affairs, per se, but can constitutionally operate a ministry of external relations and have Kurdish representatives in Iraq’s embassies and missions abroad. Why do Iraq’s Kurds want more autonomy? Because of their sense of victimization, experts say. “Kurdish identity is born out of a century of betrayal, brutality, and disappointment,” wrote former CFR Fellow David Phillips in a June 2004 Wall Street Journal op-ed. In Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, which recognizes self-determination, Kurds were promised regional autonomy, but they never won their rights. Later, under Saddam, Kurds were killed and displaced en masse from their homes. As many as 1.5 million Kurds were emptied out of Kurdish villages during the so-called Anfal campaign of the late 1980s. At Halabja, thousands were killed by chemical weapons in 1988. Proponents of federalism say this strategy of self-rule will defend against future discrimination of Kurds. “The danger has been eighty years of centralized dictatorship,” Galbraith says. “ Iraq has been a scene of great violence as Sunni Arabs have sought to hold it together by force.” What is Turkey’s stance on a semiautonomous Kurdistan in Iraq? Generally, Ankara has discouraged Kurds in the region from pushing for greater autonomy as it might encourage Turkey’s 6 million-plus restive Kurds to rise up and demand independence. That position has shifted in recent years, experts say. According to Qubad Talabani, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan sent a letter last year to Iraqi President Jalal Talabani supporting for the first time the concept of federalism. For one, Turkish businesses have close ties to Kurdistan. Turkey has actively promoted oil firms to negotiate production-sharing agreements with Iraq’s Kurds, while other Turkish firms have built two new airfields and are involved in a number of public-works projects in the region. Also, Turkey realizes that “a de facto independent Kurdistan” in Iraq no longer poses a security threat to Turkey, Galbraith says. If anything, Turkey supports a buffer zone toIraq, which has grown less stable. On the other hand, some Turkish nationalists may protest if Iraqi Kurdistan incorporates Kirkuk, a city ruled by Turkey until 1923. What will be the role of Kurdistan’s armed forces in the new government? Kurdistan’s local ministry of interior will retain control over the regional peshmerga forces. There is a law, supported by Iraq’s constitution, which bans the deployment of Iraq’s army on Kurdistan. A small number of Kurdish battalions will be incorporated into Iraq’s security forces but will be stationed in Iraqi Kurdistan. Most experts envision Kurdish forces policing Iraq’s north, Shiite forces policing the south, and a mixed force in the middle.

This publication is now archived. IntroductionU.S. officials in Iraq claim to be holding talks with Sunni Arab members of the insurgency, according to recent news reports. The talks coincide with a recent spike in suicide bombings that have left more than 200 dead. With Iraq ’s permanent government set to get off the ground and the United States looking to draw down its forces in 2006, the Sunni-led insurgency shows no signs of waning. Yet there appears to be signs of strain between the insurgency’s local and foreign components, a rift that U.S. officials are hoping to exploit. Negotiating with the enemyU.S. officials say talks with Iraqi insurgents are nothing new but are only now being reported in the press. In the aftermath of the March 2003 invasion, there were talks between ex-Baathists and U.S. officials in Mosul. Military officials later negotiated, unsuccessfully, with Moqtada al-Sadr, who led a Shiite insurgency against U.S. forces in Najaf in 2004 before agreeing to a ceasefire. More recently, before parliamentary elections in December 2005, U.S. Marines met in Ramadi with tribal leaders, many with ties to the local insurgency, to broker a security deal. “Every insurgency is defeated politically,” says a senior Pentagon official, who prefers not to be named. But can this strategy work? Experts are unsure. On one hand, “once an insurgency gets underway, there can never be a military solution,” Toby Dodge, a London-based expert on Iraq , told the Financial Times, “There has to be a negotiated settlement.” On the other hand, “you can’t just go and have a chat with these people and try to strike a deal,” says a Washington-based Middle East expert who preferred not to be named. “You have to know who you’re talking to and know they’re willing to enter the political process and not destroy it.” Another problem, experts say, is that no one fully understands this insurgency or comprehends its command structure. “The issue,” says Jeffrey White, an insurgency expert with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, “has always been whether the Sunni leaders who come forward and say they have contacts with the insurgency actually have those contacts or simply are using this to enhance their own status.” Local insurgents have grown disillusioned by the indiscriminate car bombings and suicide attacks preferred by al-Qaeda in Iraq, the organization led by the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. U.S. officials are reportedly in contact with a number of high-ranking Sunni officials, in addition to local leaders, acting as middlemen to the insurgency, including Tarik al-Hashimy, head of the Iraq Islamic Party. Hashimy told the New York Times that negotiations have been hampered by the insurgents’ demands for a U.S. timetable for withdrawing its forces, something the White House has so far refused. Much of the behind-the-scenes negotiations with insurgents are occurring against the wishes of the Shiite-led leadership in Baghdad, experts say. According to the Times, Shiites were further incensed by the United States’ “goodwill gesture” to release twenty Sunni detainees, including Satam Quaood, a former henchman of Saddam Hussein.  Divided they standNews reports suggest U.S. officials may be trying to exploit a rift in the insurgency’s ranks. The insurgency—a ragtag collection of Sunni nationalists, Islamic extremists, ex-Baathists, and common criminals—has shown signs of division in recent months. Local insurgents have grown disillusioned by the indiscriminate car bombings and suicide attacks preferred by al-Qaeda in Iraq, the organization led by the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Many of al-Qaeda’s attacks have targeted Sunni civilians.Take the events of January 5, among the most violent days in post-war Iraq. The largest attack occurred in the insurgency stronghold of Ramadi. A suicide bomber, most likely an operative of Zarqawi, blew himself up along with seventy police recruits. Beyond the sheer brutality of the act, the bombing was significant because many of the victims were Sunni Arabs looking to sign up for Iraq ’s predominantly Shiite police force. U.S. military officials say these kinds of attacks, however gruesome, may help their cause by turning Sunni Iraqis against the foreign elements of the insurgency loyal to Zarqawi. “This is the best thing to happen to us lately,” says the Pentagon official. “There is potential to turn the Sunni insurgents against the foreign fighters. That’s an avenue that is being worked.” White agrees. “The attack in Ramadi was pretty interesting because it was in the Sunni heartland and affected Sunni tribes and killed locals,” he says. “This could eventually lead people to eventually inform on [Zarqawi].” Even Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s deputy, warned Zarqawi by letter last fall that his televised beheadings and massive attacks would not win the “media battle” for the “hearts and minds” of Iraqis.  Foreign versus homegrown insurgentsRegardless, Zarqawi has ramped up his efforts to disrupt the political process and orchestrate mass-casualty suicide attacks. Of the estimated 20,000 insurgents in Iraq, between 700 and 2,000 are foreign-born jihadis, most of them loyal to Zarqawi, according to the Brookings Institution’s Iraq Index (U.S. intelligence officials put the number of insurgent sympathizers as high as 200,000). Yet Zarqawi has enlisted an increasing number of Iraqis to his cause, as evidenced by the November 9, 2005, suicide attacks against a pair of hotels in Amman, Jordan, at the hands of Iraqis loyal to Zarqawi. “He’s clearly turned a corner in terms of his operations in Iraq,” says Nibras Kazimi, an Iraqi native and visiting scholar with the Hudson Institute. “He’s become a media star and has been tagged the head of the ‘dead-enders.’ All of a sudden more money comes to Zarqawi independent of the ex-Baathists. With his allure, strength, and ability to avoid capture, this starts drawing Iraqi recruits. He becomes a hub of money and activity and buys out the logistical networks that used to operate under the aegis of the ex-Baathists.”  Yet some elements of the insurgency, including Sunni nationalists, have disassociated themselves from Zarqawi’s violent tactics and have expressed a growing willingness to participate in Iraq’s political process. Buoyed by high Sunni turnout at the December 15 parliamentary elections, these insurgents hope to improve Sunnis’ representation in parliament—just seventeen out of 275 seats in the interim government—to revise the constitution and achieve their political goals. The more mainstream elements of the insurgency supported Sunni participation during the recent elections and even provided security at polling stations in heavily Sunni places like Ramadi. As such, the elections were relatively free of violence and voter intimidation. White sees an emerging split among insurgents on what constitutes legitimate resistance. The recent attacks in Ramadi, he says, “sent a message that Sunnis who collaborate with the government can and will be targeted.” Others suggest the recent series of attacks may have been in response to the outcome of the elections, which a number of Sunnis and secular Shiites say was marred by voting irregularities and electoral fraud. “People like the Islamic Party [a Sunni party that supported the elections] have egg on their face,” Kazimi says. “It’s as if the insurgents are cleansing themselves of the ceasefire they were talked into for the elections.” In a recent hour-long speech posted on the web, Kazimi says, Zarqawi blames the Islamic Party and other Sunni groups for participating in the U.S.-led political process, reminding the resistance of Iraq’s colonial history and even quoting T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Zarqawi blames the Islamic Party and other Sunni groups for participating in the U.S.-led political process, reminding the resistance of Iraq’s colonial history and even quoting T.E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom. It’s unclear how much sway Sunni members of the insurgency hold over Zarqawi’s supporters, experts say. The fact that mainline Sunni leaders were able to persuade Zarqawi to suspend attacks on election day may suggest their influence may be greater than previously realized, experts say. “Generally speaking, the nationalists and former regime elements are capable of controlling the behavior of Zarqawi’s group because they are alien elements in Iraq, so [the Sunnis] have leverage over them,” White says. “Whether they can decisively defeat [the foreign jihadis] is another story.” Other experts say the rift between the two main strands of the insurgency is exaggerated. True, the two groups hold different, sometimes opposing, objectives in Iraq. The Sunni nationalists and ex-Baathists primarily want to eject U.S. forces from Iraq, as well as restore Sunni power in Baghdad. On the flipside, the foreign insurgents, in addition to ejecting U.S. troops, have broader aims to sow sectarian violence and establish an Islamic caliphate in Iraq, a theocracy based on Islamic law that spanned the Muslim world for twelve centuries. Yet for now, Zarqawi remains useful to the Iraqi insurgents, experts say. “He delivers human torpedos and in return gets money and logistical help from the Baathists,” Kazimi says. Can insurgents be talked into surrendering?As the war in Iraq approaches its three-year mark in March 2006, the insurgency continues to rage on incessantly. Last September was the most violent month in post-war Iraq, resulting in 481 casualties and more than 1,000 wounded from multiple-fatality bombings. U.S. officials have had scant success thwarting al-Qaeda in Iraq’s suicide attacks. “No one can constrain suicide attackers,” admits the Pentagon official. “The Israelis have been trying to do it since 1983. Unfortunately, this is the future of war and what we’ll be fighting for the next hundred years.” The only two ways to defeat an insurgency, he adds, are “to kill them all or to negotiate.” Although U.S. officials have begun the latter, they continue to train and equip Iraqi security forces to be able to militarily fight the insurgency without U.S. backup. Much also depends on Iraq’s political process. “If I knew what the Sunni politicians were going to do,” says the Pentagon official, “then I could answer the question of when this insurgency will end.” White is less optimistic. “This notion that Sunni participation in the elections will mark the beginning of the end of the resistance is the wrong notion,” he says. Insurgencies, after all, are generally fought over years, not months, say most counterinsurgency strategists. “In modern military history they have lasted, on average, ten to fifteen years, and many—Palestine, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam—have gone more than a quarter-century,” wrote Thomas X. Hammes, a former Marine colonel, in a widely quoted April 2005 New York Times op-ed.

L. Paul Bremer III, who headed the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq from May 2003 to June 2004 before the United States returned sovereignty to Iraqis, says terrorists would achieve “a big victory” if the United States pulls its troops from Iraq too soon. “To stop now, to set a deadline, to set timetables, would really give the terrorists a big victory, and we mustn’t do that. Whatever you think about the war itself—you can be against having gone in, I happen to be very much in favor of having gone in—but we are where we are now and we’ve got to see this through.”Even though in his new book, My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope, written with Malcolm McConnell, Bremer describes his unhappiness with what he regarded as overly low U.S. troop levels and low quality of the Iraqi security forces, Bremer says there has been an improvement in the abilities of the Iraqis. He also says he believes the various political factions will find a way to include the different groups in a federal government.Bremer, a career foreign service officer who has been involved in anti-terrorist work for twenty years, was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on January 12, 2006. In your new book, My Year in Iraq: The Struggle to Build a Future of Hope, you’re quite candid about the differences you had with Secretary of Defense [Donald H.] Rumsfeld and the Pentagon leadership over troop levels in Iraq, which you felt were too low. And in May, 2004, just before you departed for home you sent a personal message to Rumsfeld, again saying the troop levels in Iraq were inadequate. The troop levels since then have been about the same and the insurgency still continues. What is the problem with getting more troops into Iraq?Well, the disagreement here is a view that I had while I was there that our primary responsibility was for law and order. In particular, in the aftermath of the invasion, we had not cracked down on the looting, which set an example on our apparent unwillingness to enforce law and order. On the other side of it, military people in our government argued that, first of all, they believed they had enough forces to accomplish their mission, and secondly, that adding more forces would, in their view, make the situation worse because you’d have more soldiers on the street and in their Abrams tanks. That’s a respectable view but I just don’t happen to agree with it. So, that was the key argument: Do the American troops actually need more troops—and by the way, I never heard a military man while I was there say he needed more troops. And the president had said and still says if they ask for more he will give it to them. So those are the two sides of it.Since then, the insurgency has continued at the same or higher levels. Of course, now the sovereign Iraq government is in charge and the quality of the Iraqi troops, I guess, will be the deciding factor.Yes.I guess you can’t really tell at this time how good they’re going be, right?No, but you can tell they’ve gotten a lot better in the last year and a half. Basically, I think the administration came to the realization that we needed to re-do the training for both the Iraqi army and the police. And the main way they have done that—and I think they’ve had terrific success—is to focus on leadership and on quality and a little bit less on the quantity. Obviously, you still need quantity, too, but the real key is to have good leadership. And I think they’re doing much better on that now.Are the Iraqi armed forces now staffed heavily by former Iraqi army people? That’s been a controversial question since you disbanded the Iraqi army in 2003.Yes, and they always were. I mean basically it’s something the news reporting has not focused on. If you go back and look at the statements that we made when we disbanded the Iraqi army—which was an unfortunate use of words, because there was no army to disband—they had already gone home and broken ranks. I said very clearly at the time that members of the former army would be welcome in the new security forces, the army, the police, the National Guard. And by the time I left, 80 percent of the enlisted men in the Iraqi army and civil defense force were in fact former members of the army and 100 percent of the officers and NCOs [noncommissioned officers]. So, there’s nothing new in that. They have in fact been there, but we weren’t going to recreate an army the size of Saddam’s, which was more than a half million strong, the fifth largest in the world. So there was never going to be enough room in the new army for everybody from the old army, which was grossly overbalanced toward officers anyway. They had twelve thousand generals in the Iraqi army. We had, by the way, in an army of about the same size, only 307 generals at that time.That’s an interesting footnote.I thought I’d bring up just one other point. You read the book so you know it. We knew we had to make room in society for these guys, and so we established a system of paying them a monthly stipend as we called it, which was designed to be slightly more than they would have gotten if they’d had a pension from the Iraqi government. And that stipend was paid every month from then until the end of the occupation and then past that. So to argue that these people were sort of thrown out on the streets with no money [and became insurgents as a result] is simply factually wrong.Another interesting point I thought you made was on the intelligence-gathering capability that was so heavily focused on finding weapons of mass destruction [WMD] that not until the end of 2003 did the intelligence agencies begin focusing on the insurgency. Did you have the feeling when you left, and since then, that the intelligence has gotten much better? Because we still seem to be surprised every time there’s an insurgency attack. There’s no question that, certainly by the end of 2003, we had rebounded. The [CIA] station had gotten many, many more counterterrorist experts instead of just having WMD experts. These people are not fungible. It’s not as if we could just take the guys we already had who were experts in biological warfare and say, “OK, now, let’s see what you can learn about the insurgency.” We had to really get additional people with different skills. And by the end of 2003, the station had pretty well beefed up in that respect. It’s still hard to get information on an insurgency like this because it is a highly diverse network; it doesn’t appear to have—or didn’t anyway when I was there—a central command and control you could get at, or if it did we were having trouble finding it. I think—again a somewhat underreported point in the last year—that the Iraqi people are now coming forward, just normal citizens coming forward with many, many more intelligence tips. The figures that I’ve seen from the Pentagon suggest there are ten times as many tips coming in now as there were a year ago from Iraqi citizens. And in the end that’s really the key intelligence; it’s the people who come and say, “Listen, this crowd down in the third building in the right is speaking Arabic with a Yemeni accent or something; you know, these are bad guys over there and you ought to take a look at it.” That’s again how you begin to really pick it apart. I’d like to also focus a little bit on the Iraqi politicians. At one point you quote yourself as being very disparaging of the Governing Council, the group that you set up in 2003. You say that they couldn’t do anything, but many of those same people are still high-profile politicians. Do you think they’ve improved?I think the problem when they were in the Governing Council was more structural than individual. They just could not get themselves organized to hire enough staff to run the country, to oversee the ministers they had appointed. This takes a lot of work, they weren’t working very hard as I pointed out; at one point, I thought they worked as many hours in a week as we worked in a day. So it wasn’t so much that the individuals were incapable; it was that as an organization, the Governing Council simply could not bring itself to accept responsibility, particularly for overseeing the activities of the ministers. I think that that’s a different game now because now you have ministers who were appointed on the basis of the election a year ago, and you’ll get new ministers now in this new government. I think they’ll begin to function as a government, as they have basically in the last year or so, maybe not as effectively as you’d like, but they have been functioning.Now, a key issue in this most recent election was whether the Sunnis would participate, and obviously they did participate, but now the question is how much of a share of the government they should get. What’s your feeling about the type of government that will emerge?Well, I think it will be a federal system. And there are two things that have to happen. First of all, they have to reach agreement on the new government, and the constitution, which basically reflects the one we helped them write two years ago [the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL)]. The constitution is structured in such a way that there’s a lot of balance of power. You’ve got a two-thirds vote to approve the presidential council and so forth. There’s a lot of checks and balances built in that are going to force compromises and hopefully will force the Shiites and Kurds to pay attention to the need to get the Sunnis into the government. I think they will do that; many of the responsible Shiites and Kurds have said “we need a government of national unity.” Then there’s the question of addressing some of these issues, like federalism, and defining it somewhat more precisely in the constitution. The constitution provides for this new parliament to revise the constitution as it deems appropriate and then put it to the people again in another referendum, a revised constitution, later this year. That’s where the question about the federal issues will come up—how much power the provincial authorities really have vis-à-vis the central government and so forth. That is an issue for the Sunnis, but they’re only 20 percent or so of the population and they need to understand that they’re not running the country anymore. Democracy means majority rule. It also means—the Shiites need to understand this—respect for minority rights.There’s a story in the papers this morning about this key Shiite figure, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who doesn’t seem to want to do much compromising on the constitution. Or do you think this is just political posturing?I think it’s probably largely part of the pressure-politicking that’s going on now in the very difficult discussions that are going on behind the curtains about how to put together the government. I experienced it a number of times, where they make statements publicly and it becomes part of their negotiating strategy and then eventually, hopefully, they take a more moderate position. It would be a real problem if they did not put together a government of national unity.There’s another story in the press today about the Iraqi insurgents talking about having fights with al-Qaeda. Do you put much credibility in that?Oh yes. I think we’ve seen that alliance beginning to come apart. The Iraqis have a strong sense of their own country, whether they’re Sunnis, Shiites, or even Kurds. You have to remember—and this again goes back five thousand years, however long you want to go back to the Mesopotamian culture—they are a proud people, and they don’t like foreigners coming in and mucking about in their country. The Shiites I often found to be very unhappy with Iranian meddling in the South. So it doesn’t surprise me that there’s a split out there, particularly in western Iraq where these foreign terrorists are operating, and I think it’s an encouraging sign to see them killing each other. I prefer dead terrorists to live terrorists in every circumstance.Well, you certainly had enough experience with terrorism. How many years have you been involved in dealing with terrorism? Well, it’s more than twenty years, now.Is that when you first took on that job at the State Department?Twenty years ago now [I was appointed ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism under Ronald Reagan], but I actually was involved in some ways when I was ambassador to the Netherlands, because there I had twenty-four-hour protection from police against terrorism. So it’s been a long time.Do you think the public here appreciates the threat enough? Some Democrats have been calling for an early withdrawal of troops from Iraq. The president has been very firm on staying the course, and in your last chapter you say an early withdrawal would be very dangerous.I go at it form the perspective of somebody who has been involved in this for the better part of twenty years now, and I keep pointing out that we are facing a very new terrorist threat. I chaired, as you know, the National Commission on Terrorism, a bipartisan group that reported fifteen months before 9/11 that we faced a new terrorist group, a new terrorist threat—Islamic extremism—that wanted to kill us by the tens of thousands, and that we should expect mass casualty attacks on the American homeland, which unfortunately came true on 9/11. I think it is a new world and actually, if you look at polls, a lot of Americans understand that we really do have a major threat. It is, of course, sad that American men and women are still dying over there. But it’s an essential part of this war on terrorism, and certainly, as I say in my book, in that last afterward, to stop now, to set a deadline, to set timetables, would really give the terrorists a big victory, and we mustn’t do that. Whatever you think about the war itself—you can be against having gone in, I happen to be very much in favor of having gone in—but we are where we are now and we’ve got to see this through.Your book gives an early eyewitness account of how the president and his top associates operated in this crisis situation. The president is often accused of not paying attention, that [Vice President Dick] Cheney runs the government and that sort of thing, but you had a lot of one-on-ones with the president. What’s your impression of him as a leader?I was impressed with the president as a leader. I think the sort of cartoon portrayal of him as not focused, not very smart, all the rest of this, is just simply wrong. I did not know him before the war, before I went over there. But I was always impressed. He was very much engaged both in the National Security Council meetings and in the private meetings I had with him in person or by telephone. He’s on top of the details, and he has got a clear vision. He reminds me a lot, in many ways, of Ronald Reagan, with his clear vision of where he wanted to go. And Reagan was of course condemned, particularly by the Europeans, as a grade-B actor and nothing else. Well that grade-B actor got rid of the Soviet Union, which is not insignificant.Also in your book [former] Secretary [of State Colin] Powell comes out more important than most people figured in the Iraq discussions. He was a major supporter of yours, right? He supported you very strongly?I think he and I agreed on a number of things. He certainly shared—and he’s spoken publicly about it since so it’s no secret—my concern that we not underestimate the need to have sufficient combat capability on the ground, whether that meant more troops or better-trained Iraqi forces, elements of the same thing. He was quite clear on that a number of times.

This publication is now archived. Has Iraq sponsored terrorism? Yes. Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship provided headquarters, operating bases, training camps, and other support to terrorist groups fighting the governments of neighboring Turkey and Iran, as well as to hard-line Palestinian groups. During the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam commissioned several failed terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities. Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the State Department listed Iraq as a state sponsor of terrorism. The question of Iraq’s link to terrorism grew more urgent with Saddam’s suspected determination to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which Bush administration officials feared he might share with terrorists who could launch devastating attacks against the United States. Was Saddam involved in the September 11 attacks? There is no hard evidence linking Saddam to the attacks, and Iraq denies involvement. Many commentators have noted that Baghdad failed to express sympathy for the United States after the attacks. Does Iraq have ties with al-Qaeda? The Bush administration insists that hatred of America has driven the two closer together, although many experts say there’s no solid proof of such links and argue that the Islamist al-Qaeda and Saddam’s secular dictatorship would be unlikely allies. What evidence does the administration offer? Some Iraqi militants trained in Taliban-run Afghanistan helped Ansar al-Islam, an Islamist militia based in a lawless part of northeast Iraq. The camps of Ansar fighters, who clashed repeatedly with anti-Saddam Kurds, were bombed in the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In February 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell told the UN Security Council that Iraq was harboring a terrorist cell led by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a suspected al-Qaeda affiliate and chemical and biological weapons specialist. Powell said al-Zarqawi had both planned the October 2002 assassination of a U.S. diplomat in Jordan and set up a camp in Ansar al-Islam’s territory to train terrorists in the use of chemical weapons. Powell added that senior Iraqi and al-Qaeda leaders had met at least eight times since the early 1990s. Czech officials have also reported that Mohammed Atta, one of the September 11 ringleaders, met an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague months before the hijackings, but U.S. and Czech officials subsequently cast doubt on whether such a meeting ever happened. Al-Qaeda members fleeing Afghanistan have reportedly hid in northern Iraq, but in areas beyond Saddam’s control. Why did the United States declare war on Iraq in March 2003? There is still some debate surrounding the Bush administration’s case for going to war with Iraq. Initially, the war was built on the need to remove Saddam Hussein, described by the administration as a dictator who was “building and hiding weapons that could enable him to dominate the Middle East.” According to the president, the invasion of Iraq was also an integral part of the larger war on terrorism, despite a lack of support from allies such as France and Germany—both of which refused to send troops. Intensifying the debate is the fact that no WMD have yet to be recovered and the belief that initial intelligence findings on Saddam’s weapons program were inaccurate. But in the almost three years since the U.S.-led invasion took place, the dialogue surrounding the war has changed. The administration now says it also went to war to bring democracy to Iraq, in hopes it would set an example for other autocratic states in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein was captured in December 2003 and is currently standing trial. There have been three elections held in Iraq, the first in January 2005 for a preliminary government, the second in October 2005 for a constitution, and the last in December 2005 for a new government. But despite some political achievements, the insurgency remains committed and U.S. casualties have surpassed the two thousand mark, leaving many Americans doubtful that a U.S. victory is possible. What type of terrorist groups did Iraq support under Saddam Hussein’s regime? Primarily groups that could hurt Saddam’s regional foes. Saddam has aided the Iranian dissident group Mujahadeen-e-Khalq and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (known by its Turkish initials, PKK), a separatist group fighting the Turkish government. Moreover, Iraq has hosted several Palestinian splinter groups that oppose peace with Israel , including the mercenary Abu Nidal Organization, whose leader, Abu Nidal, was found dead in Baghdad in August 2002. Iraq has also supported the Islamist Hamas movement and reportedly channeled money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. A secular dictator, however, Saddam tended to support secular terrorist groups rather than Islamist ones such as al-Qaeda, experts say. Have U.S.-Iraq relations always been hostile? No. In the 1980s, following the Iranian revolution and the subsequent hostage crisis in Tehran , the United States saw Saddam as a useful regional counterweight to the Ayatollah Khomeini. Indeed, when Iraq launched a long, brutal war against Iran in 1980, the Reagan administration provided Saddam’s regime with arms, funds, and support. When did relations sour? U.S.-Iraq relations ruptured in August 1990, when Iraqinvaded its tiny, oil-rich neighbor of Kuwait . That prompted the UN to impose economic sanctions and eventually authorize war. In the winter of 1991, a U.S.-led coalition drove Iraqout of Kuwaitbut stopped short of ousting Saddam. After the war, the UN Security Council maintained economic sanctions on Iraq ; established two “no-fly” zones patrolled byU.S.and British planes to protect Kurds in the north and Shiites in the south; and imposed international weapons inspections to prevent Saddam from rebuilding his arsenals of WMD. TheClintonadministration sought to contain Saddam with a combination of sanctions and arms inspections, but ultimately concluded that Saddam had to go. Bush administration officials took up the anti-Saddam cause, especially after September 11. Officials characterized Saddam’s regime as an immediate threat to America—because of its history of attacking its neighbors, using chemical weapons, supporting terrorist groups, defying UN Security Council resolutions, and seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. In his first State of the Union address after September 11, President Bush said Iraqbelonged to an “axis of evil.” Has Iraq ever used weapons of mass destruction? Yes. In the 1980s Iran-Iraq War, Iraqi troops repeatedly used poison gas, including mustard gas and the nerve agent sarin, against Iranian soldiers. Iranian officials have also accused Iraq of dropping mustard-gas bombs on Iranian villages. Human Rights Watch reports that Iraq frequently used nerve agents and mustard gas against Iraqi Kurds living in the country’s north. In March 1988, Saddam’s forces reportedly killed thousands of Iraqi Kurds in the town of Halabja with chemical weapons.

This publication is now archived. IntroductionAs Iraq forms its first constitutionally mandated postwar government, one looming issue is how best to manage and share the country’s energy resources and revenues. Most of Iraq’s major oil fields are found in the north and south, which, respectively, are heavily Kurdish and Shiite, whereas Sunnis predominantly inhabit Iraq’s oil-scarce center. This has led to friction over dividing the revenues. There also remains the issue of how to rebuild Iraq’s oil infrastructure. In spite of its vast oil reserves, Iraq has had to import its energy needs. Smuggling, sabotage, and other security dilemmas have caused energy production to fall well short of its pre-war levels. Prior to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, U.S. government officials predicted the postwar reconstruction could be financed by oil revenues. Experts say their calculations were grossly optimistic, given Iraq’s poor machinery, lack of development, and political instability. Even major oil companies have been hesitant about investing in the country. What is the status of Iraq’s oil production?Iraq is producing below 2 million barrels per day (bpd), a 10 percent drop from last year’s average. (By comparison, in 1990, prior to the first Gulf War, oil output in Iraq was around 3 million bpd.) Oil exports hit a new two-year low in November. Current output has been hindered by a number of factors, including sabotage by insurgents, antiquated equipment, and ongoing legal disputes. Iraqi officials say oil output should increase in the coming years. Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum, Iraq’s oil minister, predicts that production should hit 3 million bpd by the end of next year, but Jamal Qureshi, an analyst with PFC Energy, told Reuters he expects output to either stay flat or fall to 1.7 million bpd in 2006. How much oil is Iraq estimated to have?Experts estimate Iraq’s known oil reserves contain more than 110 billion barrels, the third largest in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Canada. Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi deputy prime minister, speaking at a November 11 Council on Foreign Relations meeting, said Iraq’s oil reserves, which have not undergone any exploration since the 1960s, may be the world’s largest. Antoine Halff, director of the Eurasia Group’s gobal energy division, agrees with Chalabi’s assessment. "I think it’s real," he says. "Iraq has very attractive prospects from a geological standpoint." But despite Iraq’s vast reserves, Iraq must import the bulk of its energy needs because of inadequate security and production infrastructures. Most of its oil is bought from neighboring states like Turkey and Kuwait at a cost of $2 billion to $3 billion per year. Why are major oil companies not investing more in Iraq?Iraq’s poor security environment, experts say. Companies are reluctant to pay the high costs of protecting pipelines and refineries against insurgent attacks. "Almost all the money is going toward security, which leaves a lot to be desired," says Robert Mabro, president of the British-based Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. For example, at Iraq’s largest oil refinery in the northern town of Beiji, production was recently suspended after truck drivers received death threats from insurgents. Another reason for the slow investment is Iraq’s lack of political and legal stability. Major oil companies, Halff says, are waiting for Iraq’s constitution and legal framework to be finalized. Issam al-Chalabi, Iraq’s former oil minister, recently told the Associated Press that "nothing of substance from the large foreign oil companies is likely to happen in 2006." There is reportedly legislation in the works to create a central oil company in Iraq as early as next year. Is there any outside investment in Iraq’s oil sector?Yes, but mostly by smaller oil firms, which tend to be less risk-averse, experts say. "Their strategy is more venture-oriented, versus the major oil firms, which are inherently more conservative," Halff says. A number of firms, including Petoil and General Energy Corporation of Turkey and DNO of Norway, have recently signed so-called production-sharing agreements (PSAs) with the Kurds to explore and develop new oil and gas fields in Kurdistan. These agreements keep ownership of oil reserves in the hands of the state—or regional authorities, in this case—while providing foreign investors with legal protections if, for example, no oil was found or if global oil prices plummeted. According to a recent study by the Global Policy Forum, sixty out of Iraq’s eighty known oil fields may be explored under PSAs, handing at least 64 percent of Iraq’s known oil reserves over to foreign investors. How is Iraq’s oil revenue to be distributed?This is a complicated issue, about which the newly approved constitution is purposely ambiguous, experts say. According to Article 109, oil belongs to "all the Iraqi people in all the regions and provinces." Article 110 states that oil revenue shall be "distributed fairly in a manner compatible with the demographical distribution all over the country." However, there is some dispute, particularly among those who reside in the oil-rich regions of northern and southern Iraq, as to whether the constitution gives federal control to future oil fields or only to existing fields. Sunni Arab officials say it is unconstitutional for Kurds to bypass Baghdad and negotiate agreements on developing future oil fields directly with outside oil firms. Kurds, however, say the constitution implies that future fields fall under regional management and allows for some form of compensation for regions "unjustly deprived" under Saddam Hussein’s rule, which includes Kurdistan. Further, they argue that under Article 111, whenever there is conflict between regional and federal laws, the constitution gives priority to regional authorities. Jonathan Morrow, legal adviser with the United States Institute of Peace, says the Kurds are more interested in securing rights to manage their oil fields than simply reaping the profits. This includes the flexibility to negotiate PSAs with foreign firms. Part of the revenues from these agreements would then be sent to Baghdad, not the other way around. "It’s a question of which direction does the check go," Morrow says. Many of these revenue-sharing disputes are expected to be addressed early next year when the government begins to propose amendments to the constitution. But Nathan Brown, an Islamic law expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says nothing substantial will be changed on the subject of revenue-sharing. "[The parliament] won’t agree to reopen this subject, something that’s been so difficult to hammer out. It’ll probably just tinker with some of the wording," he says. Why did the government raise fuel prices in December 2005?For a number of reasons, experts say. First, the current system of subsidies, which stretches back decades and currently costs Baghdad upwards of $5 billion per year, is overly generous, says Howar Ziad, Iraq’s ambassador to Canada. "In the long run, this situation is untenable," he says. "You cannot have almost half of your budget going toward subsidizing oil." Second, the price increase is part of a larger debt-forgiveness deal with the International Monetary Fund, which demands that Iraq cut its fuel subsidies before agreeing to a $685 million loan. Third, the Iraqi government says the price hikes will help raise $500 million needed to spur investment and production in its underdeveloped oil industry. Finally, the higher fuel costs are expected to curb smuggling. Smugglers buy subsidized fuel in Iraq at artificially low prices and then re-export it to countries like Iran, Turkey, and Jordan. "Anywhere in the world where you have a country with deeply subsidized oil next to countries with higher prices, you’re likely to see smuggling," Halff says. More than $2 billion-worth of gas and diesel-fuel supplies are reportedly smuggled out of Iraq every year. What was the public reaction to the price hike?The move ignited protests among many Iraqis, including Iraq’s oil minister, who threatened to quit his post. A governor in the southern district of Misan said he would refuse to comply and raise gas prices. For Iraqis, a quarter of which live on less than $1 per day, the rise in prices will be economically painful, experts say. "Given Iraq’s current situation, is this a priority?" Mabro asks. "If you want to mend the economy, the first thing to do is put resources into fixing the infrastructure and providing water and electricity. Once that’s done, then you can turn your mind to macroeconomic issues like reducing subsidies." Iraqi officials, however, counter that these fuel subsidies mostly benefit Iraq’s rich, not its poor. "Poor people don’t have cars," Ahmed Chalabi told the Council on Foreign Relations. "Every time somebody fills their car with gas in Iraq, the government gives them a present of $30." How much has the price of fuel increased?Since the December 15 elections, the price of fuel has risen fivefold. Last summer, Iraqis were paying roughly five cents per gallon; now they pay close to sixty-five cents. Experts expect future hikes in 2006 will bring fuel prices in line with Persian Gulf norms, currently around $1 per gallon. Because of its heavy subsidies, "Iraq had the lowest gas prices in the world," an International Monetary Fund (IMF) spokesperson recently told the Los Angeles Times. Other petroleum products, including diesel, kerosene, and cooking gas, can also expect to see similar price increases in 2006.

This publication is now archived. IntroductionThe December 15 parliamentary elections in Iraq were the first since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in which Sunnis actively participated. Their cooperation and the high turnout—about 70 percent of registered voters—raised hopes that Sunnis would finally join with Kurds and Shiites to build a new country and diminish the Sunni-led insurgency. The main Shiite party won 59 percent of votes in preliminary results, while the main Sunni party took 19 percent and the secular, non-sectarian party of former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi won 14 percent. What impact, if any, will the election of Sunni politicians have on the insurgency?"The best news of the election was the participation in the political process by Sunnis," says Major General William Nash, director of CFR’s Center for Preventive Action. Experts say these elections are critical for both the future of the insurgency and Iraq’s Sunnis. "We’re hoping Sunni participation in the elections will reduce violence across the country," says Paul Hughes, an Iraq program officer for the Washington-based U.S. Institute of Peace. "This is really the last chance for Sunnis to get some power," says Kenneth Katzman, senior Middle East analyst at the Congressional Research Service. But many experts question whether the newly elected Sunni politicians can stop the violence. "I don’t think those who participated in the election as candidates have much influence over the insurgency," Katzman says. Only the conservative Sunni religious group, the Muslim Clerics Association, has influence over the insurgency, he says, and they chose not to run any candidates in the December poll. "If the United States pulled out now, Sunni politicians couldn’t control the insurgency," he says. What kind of links do Sunni politicians have to the insurgency?Experts say they are strong. The views of the Iraqi Accordance Front, the Sunni party that won the most votes, "are fairly representative of those of the mainstream insurgency," says Jeffrey White, an Iraq security expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Another party, the National Dialogue Front, has strong ties to Baathist former regime elements. The hard-core terrorists linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi have condemned the political process and did not participate. The clear ties between insurgency groups and Sunni parties lead some experts to question the dedication of Sunni politicians to the political process. "Are these candidates a replacement for the insurgency or a front for it?" asks Nibras Kazimi, a visiting scholar at the Hudson Institute. In addition, experts say it’s not entirely clear who leads the Sunnis. "The people who are going to represent the Sunnis in Parliament speak for the Sunni community, but they don’t decide for them," says Kazimi. The Iraqi Accordance Front had called for Sunnis to approve the constitution in October’s referendum; instead, Sunni voters overwhelmingly rejected it. That raises the question of whether this party really represents the Sunni community, Kazimi says. "At this point, there’s a lot of muddle as to who’s in the Sunni leadership," he says. The clear ties between insurgency groups and Sunni parties lead some experts to question the dedication of Sunni politicians to the political process. "Are these candidates a replacement for the insurgency or a front for it?" asks Nibras Kazimi, a visiting scholar at the Hudson Institute. Would Sunni insurgents respond to political gains?Possibly, experts say. It depends what the politicians are able to achieve. "If Sunni politicians can’t get substantial movement [on major issues], most Sunnis will think the political process is a waste of time," Katzman says. Sunnis still harbor significant grievances about the change of regime, which they are not likely to forget. "Sunnis controlled Iraq [under Saddam Hussein]," Kazimi says. "All the money, all the cushy jobs. At what point will a Sunni government say they should stop the insurgency? Violence works. It’s been successful for them." In addition, "elections do not equal a government," Nash says. "It took a long time to form a government the last time around [after the January 2005 elections for an interim government] and there’s still a lot of work to be done." What do Sunnis want? A few issues are critically important to Sunnis, who mostly voted for sectarian parties because they "they feel threatened in the new Iraq," Kazimi says. Their major concerns are: Revising the constitution. The constitution was drafted by Shiite and Kurdish members of the interim government, with limited Sunni involvement, after Sunnis boycotted the January elections. The document has strong provisions for federalism that Sunnis oppose. Beginning in January, there is a four-month constitutional review period in which Sunni politicians will push hard to revise the constitution, Katzman says. Ending the occupation. Experts say getting the U.S. and other foreign troops out of Iraq is another major demand of many Sunnis.Reversing de-Baathification. Many Sunnis feel unfairly shut out of major jobs in the military and government because of their former membership in Saddam Hussein’s party. This policy is already being partially reversed in many areas, including the new Iraqi military.Gaining significant leadership posts in the new government. Sunnis will seek to head major ministries like Finance or Oil—or even the presidency, experts say. There’s a good chance they could get the Defense Ministry, White says, although he points out that this would set up a potential conflict with the Shiite-led Interior Ministry. Strengthening the central government. Sunnis oppose federalism, which they see as encouraging regions of the country to separate or declare independence. Instead, they want to centralize power in Baghdad, as in Saddam Hussein’s time.Guaranteeing that oil revenue is shared. Sunnis are very nervous that Iraq’s major oil reserves, which are predominantly located in the Kurdish north and Shiite south, will be claimed by those groups, leaving them without a share of the country’s most lucrative resource. Opposing widespread counterinsurgency operations. Massive military operations that target urban areas—which have been predominantly Sunni areas that see major insurgent activity—and affect civilians, like the anti-insurgent campaigns in Fallujah, will be much harder to stage with Sunnis in government, experts say. Will Sunnis keep the option of armed resistance?Yes, experts say. "They’ll play the traditional Middle Eastern game of talk and shoot," White says. Zarqawi and the most extreme former Baathists will "stay out of the political realm and continue a strategy of pure violence," he says, while the nationalist Sunnis will likely experiment with the political process and see how far it gets them before turning again to the insurgency. "We might see a situation like [that] in Northern Ireland, where Sinn Fein took part in the political arena while the Irish Republican Army remained in case they couldn’t achieve their objectives through politics," Hughes says. Since the Sunnis "want back everything they had," the U.S.-led coalition and the new Iraqi government will have to convince them to compromise on their demands, he says. This may not be easy, some experts say. "The Sunnis have been fundamentally humiliated and want to overturn their humiliation," Katzman says. "They’re just waiting for us to leave so they can grab a greater share of power." Kazimi is equally doubtful. "I think this was a census in Iraq, not an election," he says. "The people who are talking about Iraqi identity are losing ground. Everyone is still voting for their own interests. Voting was an allegory for civil war—maybe even a prelude," he says. But other experts see progress. "The Sunnis still have many options, but the fact that the political process is one of them is a good thing," Nash says. "The Shiites have been fundamentally humiliated and want to overturn their humiliation," Katzman says. "They’re just waiting for us to leave so they can grab a greater share of power." Will Sunnis join the legitimate Iraqi security forces?One source of tension in Sunni areas has been the presence of Shiite-dominated police and army units, some of which are accused of torturing Sunni prisoners and conducting revenge killings. Sunnis are generally not represented in the security forces because most of them have been fighting in the insurgency. And the most prominent experiment of incorporating Sunni militias into the Iraqi security forces failed. After taking the city of Fallujah, U.S. forces turned it over to Sunni militias, known as the "Fallujah Brigade," in the summer of 2004, only to see the city overrun with insurgent activity. "The bad example of a Sunni division is the Fallujah Brigade," White says. "It failed miserably," Hughes agrees. "It was effectively putting the militia into new shirts."However, the U.S.-led coalition has recently lifted the 2003 ban on former officers from Saddam’s army joining the new Iraq National Army, a move experts say has had little practical impact. "Some have joined, but it doesn’t look like it’s happened in any large numbers," White says. Experts say the Sunni fighters who do join must be co-opted into a new Iraqi army and police force, which will take time. Sunnis have pushed for their own division to patrol Sunni areas. "Undoubtedly, some insurgents will come into the fold after a Sunni brigade is created," White says. Then the challenge will be to train the new recruits to develop an Iraqi frame of mind instead of the traditional tribal, sectarian one. Will Sunni politicians be willing to compromise? "There’s a mix of Sunni politicians," Hughes says. "Some recognize the art of compromise, some don’t." White says, however, many Sunni leaders are realizing they must participate in the political process in order to keep from being shut out of decision-making in the new Iraq. When considering the role of a central government, "the current Sunni leaders buy into a unified Iraq because the pie is a lot bigger that way, and they don’t want to be reduced to a rump state with no significant economic resources," he says. The Sunni areas in central Iraq, unlike the Shiite south and Kurdish north, have few significant natural resources. Many Sunnis are also wary of cooperating with Shiites because they accuse them of being unduly influenced by Iran. "The thing that drives the nationalist Sunnis nuts is the perception that Shia politicians are selling Baghdad to Tehran," Hughes says. Will the Kurds and Shiites be willing to compromise with Sunnis? "Kurds and Shias won’t be happy [working with Sunnis], but they’ll have to live with it," White says. "They’re now dealing with the legitimately elected representatives of the Sunni people." The Americans are working hard to convince Kurds and Shiites that bringing Sunnis into the government is the only way to stem the insurgency and move the country forward. Shiites and Kurds are wary of a strong Sunni political role after decades of abuse by Saddam’s Baathists, nearly all of whom were Sunni. "I think the Shias and Kurds are going to give ground reluctantly, if at all," Katzman says. But he points out that Iraqi politicians follow the internal political debates in the United States very closely, and are starting to realize that domestic pressure could make Americans pull out of Iraq. That would result in a very difficult situation for Kurds and Shiites if a unified government capable of keeping security is not in place in the event of a Sunni-led civil war after a U.S. military withdrawal, he says. What does the Bush administration want to happen?The administration has said that increasing Sunni political participation will lessen the insurgency, lead to a decrease in violence, and allow Iraqis to build up their own security capacity, allowing U.S. troops to gradually draw down. "The more [security operations] take on an Iraqi face, the greater the chances it will lessen the violence," Nash says. "Or, at least, reduce peoples’ willingness to allow violence to take place in front of them." Is there any way to stop the insurgency?"I don’t think anyone has control over the insurgency per se, so the politicians don’t necessarily hold any great sway" over the fighters, Nash says. Experts say Iraqis needs to build strong security institutions—particularly the army and police—that are independent, well-resourced, and sustainable. "A well-organized police force and reestablishment of the rule of law is what’s going to stop the insurgency," Hughes says. How do Iraqis view the recent elections?"The Iraqis are optimistic," says Hughes, who was last there in the summer. "They really think they can make things work better for their children and grandchildren." Some 11 million Iraqis out of 15 million eligible voters cast their ballots, for a turnout estimated at 70 percent. International observers praised the poll as free and fair, but experts warn real progress will take time. "We have to think in generations here, because that’s what it’s going to take to turn this thing around," Hughes says.

James M. Lindsay, CFR vice president and director of studies, says President Bush’s decision to robustly defend his Iraq policies underscores how much Iraq is dominating his second term. Noting that Bush is in his "lame duck" term because he cannot be reelected, Lindsay says, "As you look at the president’s foreign policy, it’s likely to be dominated by Iraq as the first priority, Iraq as the second priority, and Iraq as a third priority." Lindsay, who served on the national security council staff during the Clinton administration, notes that all other foreign policy issues, such as North Korea and Iran, have been muted by the administration to concentrate on Iraq. He says the decision to emphasize Iraq so heavily recently was due to the polling showing great dissatisfaction with the way Iraq was being handled. "You’re in the White House and you realize that somewhere between six and seven of every ten Americans think you’re doing a bad job handling Iraq. That’s a message that it’s time to change your approach," he says. Lindsay was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on December 19, 2005. We’re now at the end of the year and we’ve just witnessed a rather extraordinary amount of public relations work personally by the president. Four speeches on Iraq; a speech in the Oval Office on Saturday defending a hitherto unknown domestic surveillance program; a speech to the nation on Iraq Sunday; and today a press conference, almost entirely devoted to Iraq. What do you make of all this? The administration is trying to regain momentum on the issues. Go back a year ago, the president had won a fairly comfortable victory over Senator John Kerry (D-MA), and he spoke at great length about how he earned political capital that he intended to spend. As the administration entered 2005, it was optimistic that it would be able to dominate the domestic and foreign policy agenda. But twelve months later, the wheels have come off the administration’s vehicle in many respects, and an administration used to dominating events was finding itself being dominated by them. So clearly, the administration decided it was time to change its tune. At this point, has he succeeded? The president did himself a big favor with the speeches on Iraq because he did two important things. First, he acknowledged that his administration had made mistakes and it’s a reality of American politics that the public likes humility and likes contrition, and the administration had stood out in some ways because of its refusal to acknowledge what was obvious to everyone—that mistakes had been made. The second important thing the president did, particularly in the speech on Sunday night to the nation from the Oval Office—the first time he’d done so since the announcement of the invasion of Iraq—was to reach out to those people who disagreed with the war. He said in effect, "I understand you disagree with my decision. What I’m asking for is your support in achieving the objective we all hold dear, which is making a success of our policy in Iraq." I think it was very important, because to this point, the administration had pretty much refused to acknowledge the validity of the criticism of its handling of the war, indeed often acting in ways suggesting that it believed that people who disagreed with the White House on policy were being unpatriotic. And it’s true, I guess, the administration until now had really been speaking to the already converted. You’re in the White House and you realize that somewhere between six and seven of every ten Americans think you’re doing a bad job handling Iraq. That’s a message that it’s time to change your approach. Would you agree that he has, on Iraq, about three to four months because of the politicking that has to go on in Iraq before we see what this government looks like? Today’s preliminary results, at least in the province of Baghdad, show again the Shiite religious parties pretty much have the majority. But there was a strong showing, I thought, by the Sunnis. It looks again as if the secularist parties led by such politicians as former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi are not doing well. I don’t know what that tells us. Well, it’s too early right now to infer too much from the preliminary election results because two things have to happen. First, we have to have a count of the votes to determine which parties won and by how much. Then comes the second round, which is going to determine who is going to control the Iraqi government. It’s not clear whether we’re going to have a majority victory, whether a coalition will emerge, and how different government ministries will be parceled out among groups. If we go back to the elections we had in January 2005, it actually took more than a month for the various parties to agree on a government portfolio, which is why for the Bush administration, there’s still an awful lot of work to be done. The administration can quite rightly take credit for having a successful election, but as we all know in democracies, elections are the beginning, not the end of the process. Let’s talk a little broadly about Bush’s second term. He’s a lame duck president now, and the further you get into the lame duck term, the power seems to wilt. On the other hand, foreign policy is the president’s purview. Should we expect that’s going to be his main subject now from here on? Well, second-term presidents are vulnerable to "lame duckitis." George Bush knew that as he was running for reelection, and on occasion, joked about becoming a lame duck. What is surprising about the Bush administration is that the president began waddling and quacking a lot earlier than most people figured. And again, part of the recent effort by the president to speak to the nation on Iraq is designed to try to recover some of the momentum. The bigger problem the president is going to face in foreign affairs comes less from his being a lame duck than from the consequences of the decisions made during his first term, particularly on the Iraq war. The administration right now has its agenda largely filled up by Iraq. It’s clear that this administration’s legacy is going to be determined by how well Iraq turns out and that getting Iraq right is very hard in good part because this administration’s missteps along the way—and there were many—have made what was always a difficult task even harder. As you look at the president’s foreign policy, it’s likely to be dominated by Iraq as the first priority, Iraq as the second priority, and Iraq as a third priority. And indeed the administration, which at many times during its first term had rather ambitious notions on what it could accomplish on foreign affairs, seems to have recognized this almost implicitly by its effort to go out and try to pull back a number of the other foreign policy issues that were clearly surging toward the forefront during the first term. Think of North Korea; think of Iran and a variety of other issues. The administration has been much more solicitous of its allies and much more inclined to find ways to tamp things down rather than to build them up. As a result, I guess, the major effort started this year to revise social security is largely dead. Privatization of social security is in intensive care for the time being, if not dead. It’s hard to imagine the White House is going to be in a position to resurrect the issue of privatization. There’s going to be bigger challenges in terms of the deficit, in terms of whether it should change its approach to tax policy, and issues related to health care. The Patriot Act is a major domestic issue with foreign policy implications. It’s been held up in the Senate by a filibuster. There’s a few more days left before the act expires. Do you think these speeches have had much effect on changing the voting on the Patriot Act? The president came out swinging in his Monday morning news conference on the Patriot Act. He clearly is trying to put pressure on senators—mostly Democratic senators but not solely Democratic—who are opposed to the Patriot Act. He has tried to point out that some of the senators who are now opposing the Patriot Act have criticized the intelligence community for failing to connect all the dots before September 11. At the end of the day, we’re going to get some version of the Patriot Act. The debate on Capitol Hill has been complicated by the news that the president since September 11 has pursued this policy of conducting warrant-less electronic surveillance. This either violates the law—if you believe the president’s critics—or the president’s allowed to do [this] because of his constitutional powers or because of the wording of the resolution Congress passed immediately after September 11. The net result of that debate is to further complicate the Patriot Act. But I would expect at some point you’ll get some version of the Patriot Act. Or at least, a temporary extension of it. Or a temporary extension. The president points out the provisions are scheduled to elapse on midnight of December 31. The president in all likelihood could have a very powerful political argument, or either be put in a position where he could say the Senate of the United States is allowing the country to lose its most important tools for defeating terrorists. The president said in his news conference today the law may expire on December 31, but the terrorist threat won’t. I had lunch today with a journalist who said his personal opinion is that he has no problem with domestic surveillance as long as it is—as the president said—on foreign calls to and from the United States. He said he also, personally, has no problem with torture on a select few. What do you think the public feels on these issues? If we look at public opinion polling on torture, the message from the public seems to be along the following lines: "We don’t especially like torture, but we believe in some instances it’s justified or necessary." So the public won’t totally rule it out, but there’s no evidence to suggest the public wants to see wide-scale use of torture. On the issue of domestic surveillance, we don’t have a great deal of public opinion data to this particular program. My guess is that most Americans wouldn’t be particularly concerned about this, because of the reason your friend pointed out, that it is about communication between people in the United States and people outside the United States. That would all change if news comes to light that it is truly domestic—spying on people who clearly have nothing to do with terrorism, which is why there may be more of this story to unfold politically. Of course, one of the problems always in judging intelligence programs is we don’t know much of the specifics. We get some summaries from hardworking reporters based on conversations with people who refuse to identify themselves. But I would expect much of the debate over domestic surveillance is above the public’s head and the broader public is not likely to be interested. In Congress, some members were briefed about it but didn’t make much of a fuss about it, apparently. This is where we, once again, have some vague outlines of the story but we don’t know the particulars. Apparently, some members of Congress said they voiced objections, but one of the realities when you are briefed in these programs is that you can speak in the private briefing but you’re not allowed to run to the podium and speak about it. The administration apparently thought there might be legal questions surrounding what it was doing at one point. It supposedly stopped the program and conducted another review of its legality. I would expect we’re going to get some more details to trickle out on this whole issue. This is probably more of an "inside the beltway" issue than a mainstream issue. Are these issues on Iraq and intelligence activities going to have any influence on next year’s congressional elections? Iraq has the potential to affect next year’s congressional mid-term elections. The reason Iraq matters so much is that if the public comes to believe that Iraq is hopeless—a point the public is not at right now—politicians will be the first to know and then you’re likely to see a fracturing of the Republican coalition. The coalition is frayed at its edges right now. Look, for instance, at the passage of Senator John McCain’s [R-AZ] bill on banning torture. But for the most part, it’s still intact. If you get to late spring and early summer, however, and the public is still not seeing progress in Iraq, it will be very difficult for the administration to be able to dominate the policy. You will likely see growing calls for withdrawal and that can play in the election. That may actually be more significant for Senate races than it will be for House races because of the nature of gerrymandering of districts in the House. It’s hard to imagine having enough Democratic wins in the House side to change the balance of power. It’s also hard to imagine that in the case of the Senate, but perhaps not so much because Senate races tend to be more competitive and attract better challengers. Right now, the Democrats don’t seem too united on any particular policy. Do you think they’ll be able to come together in a significant way, or is it going to be a division between the more liberal and the more conservative senators? Democrats don’t agree on foreign policy and when you don’t agree it makes it hard to have a unanimous or united policy platform. There is a debate within the party between those who have been full-throated in the denunciation of the war and of the administration’s handling of intelligence data, and those more centrist Democrats who have argued that unless we have a workable and credible alternative to what the administration’s done, what we’re doing is painting ourselves as defeatists and thereby helping the Republicans in their efforts. If you look at the president’s recent speeches, he’s clearly trying to drive home that split in the Democratic Party. The word "defeatist" is popping up in a lot of administration talking points and the purpose is clearly designed to reframe the debate between those who are willing to try to fight to make something good happen in Iraq and those who are eager to quit.

Anthony H. Cordesman, a leading expert on political and military affairs in Iraq, says it may take several months to evaluate the results of the elections for the National Assembly just held in Iraq. In fact, he says the chances for success or failure in Iraq are about even right now."What I’m optimistic about is that the elections have taken place, and Iraqi leaders have emerged who are inclusive, who believe in the country, and who are willing to compromise," says Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for International and Strategic Studies in Washington. "Iraqi security forces are becoming stronger and more effective and there is a process here which can work. But if you ask me if the odds are strongly in favor of success, I’d have to say no. Are they strongly in favor of failure? The answer has to be no as well."Even when we have all the election results, we have no way to predict how the process of forming the government [will go]; and then having the new government deal with the issues Iraq faces is going to come out," he says.Cordesman was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on December 15, 2005.What’s the significance of the vote that has just occurred in Iraq?One key point to make is that we don’t know and we’re not going to know the actual results probably for a week or two. But one key factor of some significance is that most of the Iraqi people in public opinion polls favored the election and most believed it really can help in terms of shaping the future of the country. In the places where you can poll—which exclude the worst areas of the insurgency—there is support for a united country and for the creation of a new government. That is the positive side.The great uncertainty is that most Iraqis are voting ethnically or by sect or for vaguely defined goals of nationalism. None of the people are voting for candidates they know, or who have a proven track record. On the day the results are final, all of the various factions that have run in this election will have to form a government and make the nation work. Even when we have all the election results, we have no way to predict how the process of forming the government [will go]; and then having the new government deal with the issues Iraq faces is going to come out.Is that why in your latest paper you called this election "a trigger and not a turning point," meaning this could start a process?Well, it will start a process. Now a great deal will depend on whether any party gets a majority. But because the Shiites have splintered and the UIA [United Iraqi Alliance], the coalition party for the Shiites, has split, I’d say it’s much more likely that you’re going to have to form some kind of national unity government. The difficulty is that there is no national unity now. Once that government is formed, you then have a four-month period in which to complete the constitution, and [during] which you can amend it by a simple majority. That is going to force Iraq’s political structure to deal with virtually every major issue in some form. Key issues are federation, control of money and revenues, the future of oil, the role of religion in the state, and how the legal code is really going to be interpreted and managed. You can go down the list and look at issues like who controls taxation, how does oil exploration progress, what do human rights really mean, and ask to what extent will you have secular versus Islamic interpretations. Because all of these are not only immediate issues, but issues involved in clarifying the constitution. It’s going to be a very demanding period.So we really won’t know for several months what the outcome is going to be, right?What you have is a reasonable opportunity to work out compromises that will include enough Sunnis to seriously undermine the insurgency, to move the country toward a national government, to reach some kind of solution where federalism protects the Kurds but doesn’t divide the country between Arab Sunnis and Shiites.To reassure people about where the money and the power will go, it is necessary to make it clear to both sides, Sunni and Shiite, that the new military, security, and police forces are going to be used to fight the insurgency. They’re not going to be a means through which the Shiites basically attack the Sunnis or get revenge. These things can all happen, and I don’t think there is reason to be discouraged, but there certainly is a great deal of opportunity for division, for more civil conflict, for things that could make worse things worse. The difficulty is if you get through six months, if all of this works well and the Iraqi forces come on line, you haven’t solved things, you’ve just created a climate where things are better and there is a process that can go on over a matter of years, which may solve things. Looking for deadlines or making turning points is going to be just as unrealistic six months from now as it is today.You’re talking, I guess, indirectly here about the call for an early U.S. troop withdrawal.I am not talking indirectly about that, I’m happy to address the issue. I think the real problem is we’ve ended up with a polarized debate between "better-enders" and the "bugger-outers," and what we really need to consider is, Can we find ways of reducing U.S. troops and then getting them out of the direct day-to-day interface with Iraqis and day-to-day combat? Part of the goal is certainly to reduce casualties and costs, but it also is to have Iraqi forces take over. Iraqi forces are seen as far more legitimate than we are. About 80 percent of Iraqis, at least in the areas you can poll, accept them. The goal here is not to get out. It is to phase down at a rate where the Iraqi forces can take over while there is still a stable structure in which the political evolution is backed by security.One thing we have to bear in mind is that when we look at today’s polls in this debate in the United States—if we were talking about 70,000 Americans at the end of 2006, most of whom aren’t in day-to-day combat and with a strong Iraqi force in place, and an Iraqi political process—would any of today’s debate really be relevant? On the other hand, if Iraq should devolve into civil war, or the Iraqi forces should fail in the next six months or so, would today’s debate in any way reflect the polarization of the Congress and the American people? I think frankly what we have is a badly defined, highly polarized debate between extremes that really doesn’t serve our interests or the Iraqi interests, or reflect either the pace of the calendar or the facts on the ground.Is there any particular government that might evolve that you think has a better chance of putting all the pieces together than any other government? Obviously, you’d want a coalition government that has strong Sunni participation, I suppose.You want Sunni participation, strong Kurdish participation, a mix of Shiite nationalists and Shiite religious figures. It’s not a matter of given parties—it’s obvious we’d have more problems with some than others. It’s obvious we don’t want Shiite leaders who believe in federation or would believe in the use of militias or security forces to repress the Sunnis. We don’t want Sunnis who believe in paralyzing the government or the constitutional process. We don’t want Kurds who believe in separatism. But the exact balance of who should be in the government, that’s something we need to be very, very careful about. There are a lot of emerging leaders, but these are going to be Iraqi choices. Far too often Americans either condemn someone with limited information and experience or find "a new hope" with equally little understanding. Nobody today can really predict which coalition is the right one or be certain which coalition will be the wrong one.How do you think the insurgency is going to develop now that Sunnis will be in the government?First, let me just interrupt, there is a great illusion here that because Sunnis went out and voted to try to use the government to counter Shiite and Kurdish power, somehow Sunnis are not going to support the insurgency. You can both vote and hold a rifle. And there have been plenty of past insurgencies where this happened. We just don’t know as yet how many of the Sunnis who voted or participated in this process are really committed to a peaceful political process. We don’t know how many Shiites at this point are really willing to be inclusive or say they want a Shiite party at the expense of Sunnis, to an extent where no compromise is going to be stable. We need to give this process of forming the government and watching how it behaves some months before we know what we’re really looking at. The deputy president of Iraq, Adel Abdul Mahdi, put it quite wisely in a conversation I had with him. He said, "How on earth do you Americans think you understand us and predict what’s going to happen when we don’t know?"So all the talk about whether Ayad Allawi [a secular Shiite] would be a good leader is all too premature?Well, no, I think it’s fine to speculate as long as you don’t take yourself seriously. These are Iraqi decisions, they’re going to be made by Iraqis. Whatever happens, our role is going to be—and I think [U.S.] Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has done a brilliant job already of recognizing this—trying to influence the government as positively as we can. It is to accept the Iraqi decision and do everything possible we can to make it work. There is no way we can choose, there is no way we can alter what is going to go on, aside from influence through the embassy, and that influence is inevitably going to be limited. The Iraqis basically are worried about their future—not the specific quality of their ties to the United States on a given day.How do you feel yourself? You’ve been struggling with this war since it started, and your analyses have been very helpful to everybody. Do you feel a bit more optimistic on this election day, with the heavy turnout, or not?I’m not optimistic because of turnouts. I think turnouts are irrelevant until you find out what people have turned out for—and basically most of them are going to have to vote for an ethnic or sectarian ballot, where they may know the leader but they have very little idea of what he really will do, and they in general know very little about most of the candidates.What I’m optimistic about is that the elections have taken place, and Iraqi leaders have emerged who are inclusive, who believe in the country, and who are willing to compromise. Iraqi security forces are becoming stronger and more effective and there is a process here that can work. But if you ask me if the odds are strongly in favor of success, I’d have to say no. Are they strongly in favor of failure? The answer has to be no as well.I think, to paraphrase another military analyst, it’s going to be a very close-run thing. And when I say I think the odds are even, it’s simply because at this point in time I don’t know what the odds are, and I don’t think anybody will until the spring of this coming year. By that time, the military and security forces will either really have demonstrated their capability and what the trend is, or they won’t, and we’ll have a much bigger picture of what the political process really means. Now, Americans are used to voting for known quantities. When an election occurs in the United States, you don’t have to ask, Who is the government? What does it really mean? How well will it govern, what is the security situation, and how will it shape the economy? You know all of these things. We can’t answer one of those questions today as to the future of Iraq.

Nathan Brown, an expert on Arab constitutions, who has devoted particular attention to the Iraqi political scene, says that the makeup of the new Iraqi government after Thursday’s parliamentary elections will be crucial to that country’s future. He is concerned that the Shiite-Kurd coalition that has run the country since last January’s elections will keep a narrow-based government to press its program of decentralizing power away from the central government.“Basically, we’re looking at a parliament which will resemble the current one, with more Sunni representation,” says Brown, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, on leave from George Washington University. “So what kind of coalition comes out?…Some of the Shiite leaders have swung very hard behind the idea of decentralization, which of course the Kurds are extremely enthusiastic about….It could make the people who feel the country is on the brink of dissolution really fearful.”He says the United States would prefer a more broadly based coalition including Sunnis that might be able to halt the insurgency. “What would end the insurgency, would be an incorporation of Sunni parties into the government, giving them some credibility within their constituencies, perhaps some resources being devoted to these communities and meeting some of their demands with regard to a timetable for withdrawal and a limitation. It’s going to be very hard to meet all these demands.”Brown was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on December 13, 2005. What should we look for in this week’s Iraqi elections?One thing will be how well the main existing blocs do. Essentially, the government has been run since the January 2005 elections by a Kurdish and Shiite coalition. One major question will be how many seats those parties in power will obtain. A second question is how many seats will be obtained by parties that aren’t based on ethnic and sectarian identities. I’m not so optimistic there, but I think over the long run, a lot of people think one of the best ways to put Iraq together is to diminish the role of parties with those identities. I think a third question will be how the Sunnis actually vote. Most people are expecting a great increase in Sunni turnout, but because they haven’t voted in the past, we don’t have a very strong sense where their electoral loyalties lie. Former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is running on a secular slate. Does that slate have a chance? And where?It’s not extremely clear. He’ll be strongest probably among those people who identify themselves as “Iraqi first-ers.” He may also have appeal to some Sunnis because he is opposed to the extreme de-Baathification that has been taking place in Iraq over the last couple of years. If you ask where those people are located, it may be to some extent in Sunni provinces and to a great extent in Baghdad. The backbone of this support is not so much geographic, but from that sector of society with an educated middle class and people from mixed Sunni-Shiite families.I would also add, although it is dangerous to make any predictions, that last January you had the same calculations going on and you had added into that the fact that Allawi was an incumbent and had all of the advantages of incumbency, and yet did not turn in a very impressive electoral performance. I’m not sure he’s all that well set to improve on that performance. He’ll still control a significant number of parliamentary seats, but those people who are expecting a horde of Iraqis to vote Iraqi first and ethnic or sectarian identity second may be disappointed. How soon do we expect to know results?The electoral commission gets very high marks for accuracy under incredibly difficult circumstances, but not for speed. We saw the last two times before— they checked, they re-checked the certified results. We may be looking at a week or two before we have any results. Then this new parliament is supposed to sit by December 31?No, it’s supposed to be called within fifteen days after the certification of results. We’re probably looking at sometime in January. The Shiites have a very strong coalition, right? You have all the major parties in one slate, or am I mistaken on that? For the most part, yes. We see the same slate that we had going into the elections last January with a couple of smaller elements like [Deputy Prime Minister] Ahmad Chalabi or [Shiite parliamentarian] Ali al-Dabbagh having left the party.They were part of the governing Shiite coalition?Yes. While the coalition lost those two, who have some national name recognition, they have gained some members of the Sadr movement [named after radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr], which could be significant. But we don’t know how well the Sadrist movement is going to be unified in order to pull its supporters into the polls to vote for this ticket. Did the Sadrist movement take part in the January elections?For the most part it stood on the sidelines. Some individual members of the movement did participate in various ways, on various lists. But the movement as a whole seemed to stand on the sidelines. If the U.S. government had its druthers, what would it like to see result from the elections? I think the U.S. government would like to see first, that the parties that are not ethnically or religious or sectarian in their identification do very well; and second, I think they would love to see a leadership emerge that is committed to pursuing a path to national reconciliation from whichever political party.Is it likely that the current prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, will emerge as head of the government again, or is it more likely another prime minister will be chosen?I think it is fairly likely that the prime minister will come from the Shiite alliance. Jaafari himself does not get very high marks. The government’s performance hasn’t been impressive and he has a rather underwhelming public persona. A lot of people are expecting the coalition to make a switch but it hasn’t tipped its hand yet.Except for the heads of tickets, the names of individual candidates are not known, right?That’s absolutely right. You have a system in which people vote for electoral lists or political parties, not for individual candidates. In most countries that have that kind of system, you at least know who is on the list. But in the Iraqi system, the names are held secret by the electoral commission and the political parties themselves.Let’s talk a bit about the Sunnis. I guess in the current parliament they are hardly represented right?There’s a very small number of Sunni representatives.In this new election, assuming they do well in the Sunni provinces, how many more seats would they get?If they get seats in accordance with their share of the population, most people will guess something like 20 percent, or some forty to fifty seats in the new parliament. We don’t know for sure because there hasn’t been a reliable census, but that’s most people’s guess. Do the Sunnis have a program?They have a host of parties, but we really have very little sense of how much electoral support any of these parties have. It is also possible that some Sunnis would vote not for a narrowly-based Sunni party, but perhaps for Allawi’s list. Is there any chance that these Sunni parties could bring their influence to bear to stop the insurgency?That’s a hope, but I would say that’s probably a long-term hope, rather than a short-term one. A lot depends not simply on what will happen in the elections, but also what happens after the elections in terms of meeting some of the Sunni depends about de-Baathification, the presence of American troops and so forth and so on.The Sunnis, of course, were unhappy with the constitution. They voted very heavily against it and they were almost able to veto it. What’s going to happen with the constitution? There’re some provisions for it being revised, right?Exactly. That was a last-minute concession offered to one of the key Sunni parties. The constitution as it was finally passed includes a provision that the parliament will form a commission after the elections that will take four months to come up with a set of constitutional amendments, and then present them to the parliament. Assuming parliament approves them, they would be sent to the entire population for ratification. It’s a process that makes constitutional amendments difficult, but it was enough of a concession at least to bring one of the Sunni parties on board to support the constitution.What are the key issues of the constitution that is dividing the country right now?I would say the most critical issue is that which has been referred to as “federalism,” but goes much deeper than that and connects with all kinds of other issues. It really has to do with the relative strengths of the central government and of the regional and provincial governments. The constitution seems to tip the balance very much in the favor of the latter. I would say that’s connected to other issues: These include oil resources and revenues and how those are going to be distributed; the make-up of the security forces; and to even some extent, ethnic and sectarian issues. The provincial borders tend to reflect some ethnic and sectarian division in Iraq. There are some other issues that are controversial as well, such as those regarding Islam and the country’s identity and to what extent it can be described as an Arab country. But I would say the key, practical differences really relate to the division of powers between the center and regional governments.There is sort of an ambiguity over who is responsible for developing oil resources in the current constitution, isn’t there? Yes, the constitution has a couple of revisions on this that seem to promise something to everybody. The central government is going to have a role; the local governments are going to have a role. These are going to be distributed equitably, but on the other hand, there is going to be a reflection of past grievances from regions, especially Kurdish and Shiite regions, which felt they had been discriminated against in the past in the receiving of revenues. It seems to distinguish between existing oil fields and new production in a way that is so vague that it really has to be spelled out by legislation the new parliament will have to pass, probably by negotiation between the federal government and the regions.So that’s a key issue that has to be worked out. But if the elections produce a parliament very heavily Shiite, then will the Shiites be able to dictate along with the Kurds? To me that’s really the big question. What kind of coalition comes out from this election and, in a sense, the precise results don’t matter that much because everybody is expecting the Shiite coalition to do fairly well [and] the Kurds to go down a bit because the Sunnis are participating.Basically, we’re looking at a parliament that will resemble the current one with more Sunni representation. So what kind of coalition comes out? In terms of the Shiite-Kurd alliance, there’s an awful lot of tension and some bad blood there. Some of the Shiite leaders have swung very hard behind the idea of decentralization, which of course the Kurds are extremely enthusiastic about. I think that lays the basis for a central government that is dominated by political parties that are actually trying to decentralize the government. It could make the people who feel the country is on the brink of dissolution really fearful. There are other possible coalitions that could come out of this, but when I look at the coincidence of interests, even though I see a very strong divide between the Kurdish and Shiite leadership, I also see strong forces pushing them together to push for decentralization.That will leave the Sunnis on the outside?That will leave the Sunnis on the outside. It may also leave the Sadrists, who are perhaps participating in this Shiite coalition, on the outside because they’ve taken a very strong line against decentralization. Chalabi is running on a Shiite secular ticket?Yes, that’s probably how to describe it. He’s very strong on de-Baathification. He’s also very strong on the southern region. But he is also criticizing the existing government for being too religious in orientation. How will the new government deal with the very controversial subject of the American troops? After all, the recent Arab League meeting in November attended by the various Iraqi factions voted for having an early timetable for withdrawal.The meeting in Cairo had a very interesting outcome. On the one hand, they declared there was a political consensus, that there should be some timetable for the withdrawal of American troops. But very few people noticed that at the same time, the same statement expressed support for the recent UN Security Council resolution [passed in November] that extended the mandate for American troops through the next calendar year. So there was something for everybody to take away from it. The new government is going to be in a very tough position because it can’t be all things to all people; it’s going to have to take a stand. I would be very surprised if the Shiite parties and the Kurdish parties pushed very hard for American withdrawal. I think they might make general and symbolic noises about restoring Iraqi sovereignty and eventual American withdrawal, but I don’t think they’re going to push the issue very quickly.Under this setup there would be no incentive to end the insurgency, right?What would end the insurgency would be an incorporation of Sunni parties into the government, giving them some credibility within their constituencies, perhaps some resources being devoted to these communities, and meeting some of their demands with regard to a timetable for withdrawal. It’s going to be very hard to meet all these demands. Allawi has no chance of being prime minister, obviously. The best he can do is to get some seats in the cabinet or get a seat in the cabinet or something, right?I think so. I think there might be some pressure to form a very broad-based government. That might bring him in and might bring the Sunni parties in as well. A broad-based government would be something the U.S. government would like, right?I think so. They would very much like the various Iraqi political forces to be dealing directly with each other, hammering things out within the cabinet, rather than fighting things out in the streets.We don’t know whether that will eventually come. We don’t know if the Shiites and the Kurds will agree to that.No, we don’t know. I think there is a very strong possibility that they will try to do so. The question is will they be willing to make the concessions necessary to bring other parties on board?

This publication is now archived. IntroductionAs Iraq prepares to hold elections for a new government, cfr.org looks at the country’s rapidly expanding media options. "Iraqis are avid listeners, watchers, and readers of news," says Jane Arraf, former CNN Baghdad bureau chief and the Edward R. Murrow press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "After all, these are life and death issues in many cases." And while Iraq’s media industry is not yet entirely established, "there’s a degree of press freedom in Iraq right now that’s very unusual in the Arab world," says Hussein Ibish, the former Washington correspondent for Lebanon’s Daily Star. How many media outlets are there in Iraq?Dozens, experts say. "There’s a massive proliferation of print publications," says Gary Gambill, a Middle East expert at Freedom House and former editor of the Middle East Intelligence Bulletin. "Daily newspapers, weeklies, semi-weeklies—anyone with something to say and a little bit of money can put out a paper." Most of these publications were started after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, when there was "an explosion" of newspapers, Ibish says. Judith Yaphe, a Middle East expert at the National Defense University, says that at one point after the fall of Saddam, there were over 200 "newspapers" in Iraq, some of them just simple printed sheets. How many are run by Iraqis?Most are, Arraf says. Many of the mainstream papers are run by former Iraqi exiles who returned after the fall of Saddam with journalism experience in London, the United States, or the Persian Gulf. But other, newer papers are run by former Iraqi government journalists—who worked for publications widely seen as mouthpieces for Saddam during his rule—or "people who had no connection to journalism at all," Arraf says. Are many of them politically influenced?While several publications are sometimes overtly manipulated by political parties or the government, most are "still trying to develop their own independence," Ibish says. "There really isn’t a tradition of independent media in Iraq, and most newspapers are tied to political parties or business people or various factions," Arraf says. "Every politician and faction has its press and publicist," Yaphe says, and the newspapers they create "reflect the political views of the parties that own them," says Kathleen Ridolfo, an Iraq analyst at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which also runs its own "Radio Free Iraq" network. In addition, some publications are funded by foreign governments or non-governmental organizations but run by Iraqis, Arraf says. Iraqi television is still state-run, experts say, a fact that former interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi tried to exploit to his advantage in the run-up to the January 2005 elections for a provisional Iraqi government. Allawi dominated the airwaves, but all his media exposure didn’t help his coalition, which won only 14 percent of the seats in parliament. Ibish cites this fact as evidence that official media outlets have little influence with Iraqis. Allawi’s constant presence on state television "didn’t help him much," Ibish says. Are local newspapers credible?Al-Jazeera is a unique case. The network has been banned indefinitely by the government from operating in Iraq since February 2004, "which is a major violation of press freedom," Ibish says. There are varying degrees of competence, experts say. "Often, you’ll read a newspaper story without one of the five Ws: who, what, where, when, why," Ridolfo says. Logistical problems also have an impact. "There are dailies that publish once or twice a week" due to lack of funds, she says. Some newspaper websites have no archives, so their stories are not searchable. In addition, each publication delivers only the perspective of their party. "You’ll never get the whole story from one paper," Ridolfo says. Other experts say the Kurdish newspapers, with a ten-year head start on operating freely, are well ahead of their counterparts in other parts of the country. "Some of the most interesting journalism [in Iraq right now] is happening in Kurdistan," Ibish says. What is the quality of reporting done by Iraqi news sources?It’s not up to Western standards, experts say. "The journalistic standards—checking facts, verifying sources—aren’t what we’d consider up to par," Arraf says, but points out that in Iraq up until only two years ago, journalists either worked for the government or operated under severe restrictions. "Are [Iraqi news sources] credible in the sense of having the rigorous fact-checking of a New York Times story? No. But they have some credibility in the Arab world," Gambill says. And while Ridolfo says standards are "not anywhere close" to Western levels, the situation is improving, largely through the training Iraqi journalists get from foreign writers and editors. Canada, the United States, Germany and the Czech Republic are among the countries that have sent journalism trainers to Iraq. How do most people get their news?From a myriad of outlets: television, radio, Internet, and print media, both local and foreign. Arraf says many Iraqis still rely on the radio for news. "Radio was how Iraqis got their news before the war," she says. "Satellite TV was banned, which left only Iraqi government channels for most people, but they could always listen to foreign radio in the privacy of their homes." Do Iraqis trust local sources or international ones more?Al-Arabiya and al-Jazeera, both Arab-owned satellite channels and based in the Persian Gulf region, are widely watched, experts say. To a lesser extent, so are Western networks like CNN and the BBC. "The BBC has a very good reputation in the Arab world," Ibish says, while American sources like CNN are viewed with greater skepticism. But no one accepts everything they see or read. "People in the Middle East tend to be mistrusting of things they hear," Gambill says. This is particularly true in Iraq, Arraf says. "Iraqis know their government and journalists lied to them when Saddam was in power, and they expect the same from the media in other countries." In addition to local newspapers, London-based publications like al-Hayat, and al-Quds al-Arabi are widely read, as are state-sponsored publications from neighboring countries, like Egypt’s al-Ahram.Al-Jazeera is a unique case. The network has been banned indefinitely by the government from operating in Iraq since February 2004, "which is a major violation of press freedom," Ibish says. However, the network is not banned from broadcasting to Iraq. "If you have a satellite hookup in Iraq or can get to one, you can watch it," Gambill says. Ibish says many regular Iraqis watch al-Jazeera, particularly its influential talk shows, which often feature incendiary figures supporting the "resistance movement" in Iraq. "The Shiites and Kurds in the government hate al-Jazeera" because they see it as encouraging the insurgency, Ibish says. Has Iraqi journalism improved since the war?Definitely, experts say. Arraf, who was based in Iraq for many years both before and after the fall of Saddam, says "it’s been really heartening to see the evolution of the Iraqi media." She says she’s noticed a real change in Iraqi reporters, who went from being unsure about asking questions at early press conferences to now being "persistent and aggressive and much more confident," she says.Arraf, who was based in Iraq for many years both before and after the fall of Saddam, says "it’s been really heartening to see the evolution of the Iraqi media." "The media under Hussein was a travesty of a travesty," Ibish says. "At least people now have their choices." Ridolfo agrees. "In the short term," she says, "the strength of party and tribe is so strong it’ll be difficult to develop a fully free media, [but] in the long run, I’m sure it’ll improve greatly." How do Iraqis feel about U.S.-backed media like Radio Free Iraq?It’s a detrimental association, experts say. "Having a clear U.S. link to a network or newspaper can be the kiss of death right now, literally and figuratively," Arraf says. "All journalists in Iraq now are under threat, but those linked to the United States even more so. If Iraqis are skeptical of what they hear in their own media, they’re doubly so of what they hear from sources they know are funded by the United States." The U.S.-funded al-Hurra television network is not as successful as the Arab channels, and hasn’t done as well in Iraq as the United States had hoped, she says. What has been the effect of the reports of Pentagon interference in Iraqi newspapers?In early December, revelations emerged that a secret program run by a Pentagon media contractor—the Washington-based Lincoln Group— had paid Iraqi newspapers to run stories by U.S. soldiers. They were not identified as such, but offered as independent news stories. The Pentagon also reportedly paid Iraqi reporters to write "positive" stories about U.S. accomplishments in Iraq. The reports raised great alarm and dismay in Iraq and the United States. Many commentators decried the policy as cynical, hypocritical, and counterproductive to efforts to develop a free, independent Iraqi media. "It’s disgraceful that the DoD [Department of Defense] is bribing journalists," Ibish says. "It’s not exactly the kind of ethos you want to see developed toward the press."

This publication is now archived. IntroductionAs Iraq prepares for the upcoming elections on December 15, a number of leading politicians and influential religious leaders are promoting various coalition candidates with the hope of gaining more seats in parliament. Alliances have been forged between the leading Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish parties, and several prominent and familiar names will be on the ballot. Some of the powerbrokers behind the national political scene in Iraq include: Ayad AllawiIraq’s former prime minister, Allawi is a well-connected politician who enjoys U.S. backing for his secular principles. He was born in 1945 to a prominent Shiite merchant family, studied to be a neurologist, and joined the Baath Party before its rise to power in Iraq. In the early 1970s, he fell out of favor with Saddam Hussein, who many believe ordered Allawi’s assassination. The attempt failed but left him severely wounded. He was then exiled to the United Kingdom, where he lived until Saddam’s fall in 2003. During his tenure, Allawi’s critics say, the Iraqi Interim government was marked by corruption. He recently created the Iraqi National List coalition, a group of mostly secular Shiite and Sunni Arab parties, to compete in the December 15 parliamentary elections. Massoud BarzaniA longtime figure in Iraqi politics, Barzani has led the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) since the death of his father Mullah Mustafa in 1979. The KDP has been a dominant force in Iraqi politics for more than fifty years, and Barzani has led the group through decades of conflict with Saddam’s government and the rival Kurdish group, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). Barzani is also the commander of the peshmerga, a Kurdish militia with numbers in the tens of thousands that controls much of northwestern Iraq. He’s worked closely with President Jalal Talabani—a fellow Kurd and leader of the PUK. As the result of a deal struck by the two men to give Kurds as much autonomy in Iraq as possible, Barzani was named the regional president of Iraqi Kurdistan in June 2005. Ahmed ChalabiOne of the more controversial figures in Iraqi politics, Chalabi gained widespread notoriety ahead of the U.S. invasion as a favorite of the United States. The relationship nearly severed after the administration withdrew its support of Chalabi amid claims he was one of the sources for faulty intelligence about Iraq’s WMD program—an accusation he denies. In 2004, his home was raided and arrests warrants were issued against him while he was out of the country. The charges, allegedly for counterfeiting, were quietly dropped by an Iraqi judge. He also is wanted by the government of Jordan for alleged misappropriation of banking funds. Despite the myriad accusations and complications, Chalabi has risen to serve as one of two deputy prime ministers in Ibrahim Jaafari’s cabinet. A secular Shiite, Chalabi was born to a wealthy banking family and lived mainly in the U.S and London, where he was educated. Chalabi broke with the Iraqi National Congress, which he founded in 1992 while in exile, and started the National Congress Coalition, a group of mostly Shiite and Sunni candidates that considers itself a less Islamist alternative to the United Iraqi Alliance. Abdul Aziz al-HakimA popular opponent of Saddam Hussein’s regime, Hakim is the chairman of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which was founded as a guerilla movement in 1982 in Iran. Its militia, the Badr Brigades, staged armed attacks against Hussein’s regime. Hakim’s beliefs align with Shiite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’s, in that he supports a secular democracy that recognizes the importance of Islam but bars clerics from overtly exercising political power. He lived in exile in Iran for more than twenty years before returning to Iraq to serve as a member of the Governing Council and advocates autonomy for the south and close relations with Iran. Tariq al-HashimiHashimi heads the Iraqi Islamic Party, which now operates under the umbrella of the Iraqi Accord Front—the first major alliance established within the Sunni Arab community. He is loosely associated with Egypt’s fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood and his party was the sole Sunni group to participate in the January 2005 elections. Hashimi strongly opposes autonomous regions in Iraq, supports removing Shiite militiamen from security forces, and undoing the purging of former Baathists. Ibrahim JaafariPrime Minister Jaafari is a member of the Dawa Party, one of the oldest Shiite Islamist movements in Iraq. Jaafari emerged as a favorite of the Iraqi people in the January 2005 elections. Jaafari was born in Karbala in 1947; he was educated as a medical doctor and joined the Dawa party to fight against Saddam Hussein’s regime in the 1970s. He was first exiled to Iran and later to the United Kingdom and did not make an appearance again until he became the preferred candidate for the January 2005 elections as part of the United Iraqi Alliance, the main Shiite coalition in Iraq. He has openly made statements advocating religious law in Iraq. Bayan JabrA senior member of the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, Jabr currently serves as Iraq’s minister of interior, a prominent post. He previously served as minister of housing and reconstruction in Iraq’s first interim government. A Turkmen, Jabr is described as an "old-time revolutionary." He is a Shiite activist from Maisan province and was exiled by Saddam Hussein’s regime during the 1970s. Jabr later joined the SCIRI and headed the organization’s Syrian and Lebanese offices during the 1990s. He holds a degree in civil engineering from Baghdad University. Jabr stands accused by Sunnis of allowing militia members in Iraq’s police force and of turning a blind eye to prisoner abuse. Adel Abdul MahdiOne of two current vice presidents and a former finance minister in the Iraqi interim government, Mahdi is a candidate for the United Iraqi Alliance and is a member of SCIRI. He is a trained economist who left Iraq in 1969 for exile in France after being arrested, tortured, and jailed under Saddam’s regime. He has two masters’ degrees from universities in France, where he worked for several think tanks and edited magazines in French and Arabic, and even dabbled in Maoism before returning to Iraq and "finding" Islam again. Mahdi favors an Islamic-style democracy, with strong regional governments, and opposes setting a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. forces. Adnan PachachiAt one time, Pachachi was believed to be the United Nations’ favorite to lead post-war Iraq. One of the few prominent secular Sunni figures, he heads the Assembly of Independent Democrats, a coalition of Sunni Arabs, Kurds, and Christians, which competed in the January 2005 elections. He served as foreign minister before Iraq’s 1968 Baathist coup. Pachachi also served on the Iraqi Governing Council after the March 2003 invasion and later turned down an offer to be president of the interim government. Muqtada al-SadrRadical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has denounced the interim government and openly called for the removal of foreign troops, whom he calls "invaders." In 2003, he established a militia called the Mahdi Army, a group pledging to protect Shiite religious authorities in Najaf, which led an uprising against U.S. forces. Poor Shiites in Sadr City, a predominantly Shiite slum outside Baghdad formerly known as Saddam City, account for most of his followers. They regard him as a religious figurehead but also a symbol of the resistance to the United States. Believed to be in his thirties, Sadr was influenced by his father, Muhammed Sadiq Sadr, a senior Shiite cleric and opponent of Saddam Hussein’s who was assassinated in 1999, allegedly by the Iraqi Government. Ayatollah Ali al-SistaniIraq’s most senior Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is one of only five living grand ayatollahs. He’s known for his more moderate views—he supports an Islamic state but rejects an Iranian-style theocracy. He is revered by conservative and mainstream Shiites, both in Iraq and abroad, for his authority to interpret Islamic law and provide guidance on day-to-day matters. He tacitly supports the United Iraqi Alliance, the leading Shiite coalition that supports strong regional governments, prosecuting ex-Baathists, and strictly enforcing the constitution. At times he’s been critical of the U.S. handling of post-war Iraq. He has remained a critical figure on the national political stage; in 2004, he was instrumental in ending the three-week standoff between Sadr’s army and U.S. and coalition forces. His penchant for speaking through aides rather than directly to the media has left some question as to where, exactly, he stands on some issues. Jalal TalabaniLeader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and current President of Iraq, Talabani’s main goal is to protect the autonomy of Iraq’s northern region. As a youth, Talabani was a founding member and leader of the KDP’s Kurdistan Students Union. In 1961, he joined the Kurdish revolt against the government. He founded the PUK in 1975 and began an armed campaign against the central government. But in 1988 Talabani was forced to seek refuge, which he did in Iran. As leader of the PUK, he commands a militia force of more than 20,000 men.

This publication is now archived. IntroductionIraqi voters going to the polls in elections to choose a permanent parliament will face a diverse list of candidates and coalitions. All told, more than 220 political groups and more than 7,000 candidates have registered for the December 15 elections. The party lists are designed to ensure that one-quarter of the parliament’s seats are filled by women. Organizers say they expect a higher voter turnout than the interim parliamentary elections held January 30, mostly because Sunni Arabs, which comprise at least 20 percent of Iraq’s population, are not boycotting the elections this time around. As such, most experts predict Shiite and Kurdish parties should win fewer seats than in January. What are the main Shiite coalitions?United Iraqi Alliance (UIA). This bloc of conservative Islamist parties, the so-called clerics’ list, which currently holds 140 seats in the 275-member Transitional National Assembly, is again expected to receive the most votes in the upcoming elections. The UIA is led by two parties: the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), a cleric-led party with close ties to Iran, and the Dawa Party, an Islamist party led by Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari. The UIA also includes some supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr, the anti-U.S. cleric who heads the Mahdi Army. The UIA claims to enjoy the tacit support of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the reclusive spiritual leader of Iraq’s 16 million Shiites. On the UIA’s platform: strictly enforcing the Iraqi constitution, strengthening Iraq’s regional governments, and prosecuting ex-Baathist criminals. However, the coalition, which includes more than sixteen parties, has suffered from political infighting in recent months. Some of its more secular members, including Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi, defected from the coalition this year because of the UIA’s increasingly Islamist orientation. Some experts say the coalition will not win the same number of seats as before. “The Shiite religious parties aggregated into the United Iraqi Alliance have not distinguished themselves in government in these last seven or eight months,” said Larry Diamond, senior research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, in a November 21 Council on Foreign Relations meeting. “There’s a lot of dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Jaafari—his performance, his party’s performance, the coalition’s performance.” Diamond does not expect the UIA to win more than 40 percent of the vote.Iraqi National List (INL). This recently created coalition, led by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, encompasses a wide political spectrum of seventeen mostly secular Shiite, Sunni Arab, and Kurdish parties. The bloc calls for a united and democratic Iraq that “renounces sectarianism,” improved relations with Iraq’s Arab neighbors, and a strong national army. Allawi, a Shiite, dismisses accusations that his coalition is anti-Islam or pro-Baathist. “We represent all of Iraq, not just one party,” he said in a November 28 interview with al-Arabiya. Allawi’s bloc won only 14 percent of the vote in January. Yet according to the Christian Science Monitor, Allawi’s support among secular and better-educated Iraqis has surged in recent weeks. Some Iraqis say they will support him because of his reputation as a strongman. Others, however, are expected to vote against Allawi for this very same reason. Shiites and Sunnis alike remember the anti-insurgency crackdowns he orchestrated as prime minister in 2004 in Fallujah, Najaf, and Sadr City; during a December 4 visit to a shrine in Najaf, Allawi was attacked by armed Shiite militia members. Ads by rival Shiite parties refer to him as “Saddam without the mustache.” His interim government was also widely known for corruption. Further, Allawi is seen by some Iraqis as a lackey of the United States, not to mention a Baathist sympathizer. His new alliance includes a number of ex-Baathists—Allawi himself was a former Baath Party member—most notably former Defense Minister Hazim Shalan, who was charged with corruption. Yet he also has reached out to Adnan Pachachi, an octogenarian and popular Sunni leader who led the Iraqi delegation to the United Nations in 2003. National Congress Coalition. A coalition of liberal Shiite and Sunni candidates, the National Congress Coalition, founded by the former Pentagon favorite Ahmed Chalabi, considers itself a less Islamist alternative to the United Iraqi Alliance. Chalabi said he hopes to appeal to Iraq’s Muslims who favor “a democratic, pluralistic, and federalist system of government.” One of the coalition’s primary goals is to better develop Iraq’s oil sector. Chalabi claims Iraq has the largest oil reserves in the world, “bar none.” As deputy prime minister, he has pushed for a policy of de-Baathification, drawing the ire of Sunni leaders. He also has a past clouded by allegations of embezzlement, theft, and forgery in Jordan. His coalition also includes moderate parties like the Constitutional Monarchy Movement, led by Sharif Ali bin al-Hussein, a former exile and first cousin of Iraq’s king who was overthrown in 1958. Many of these parties, like Chalabi’s, defected from the UIA. What are the main Sunni Arab coalitions?Iraqi Accord Front. The first major alliance established within the Sunni Arab community, the Iraqi Accord Front rejects the U.S. occupation but has participated in the political process in Iraq. The bloc comprises the Iraqi Islamic Party, the National Dialogue Council, and the Conference of the People of Iraq. The Iraqi Islamic Party, headed by Tariq al-Hashimi, is loosely associated with the Egypt’s fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood and was the sole Sunni group to participate in January’s elections. More recently, the party was instrumental in urging Sunnis to vote in the constitutional referendum that passed last October. The National Dialogue Council, a powerful Sunni group led by Khalaf al-Ulayyan, boycotted January’s elections but voted “no” in the referendum. The Council has been highly critical of the Defense Ministry’s policy of demolishing civilian houses suspected of harboring insurgents. The Conference of the People of Iraq, led by Adnan Dulaimi, has strongly criticized anti-Shiite terrorist attacks in Iraq and called for more national reconciliation. Dulaimi,a powerful Sunni leader who fought against the constitution’s position on federalism, has pleaded for a high Sunni turnout on December 15. The Iraqi Accord Front, which says it is not sectarian-based, has three main goals: expelling U.S. forces from Iraq, ending de-Baathification, and amending the constitution, which the group’s spokesperson, Zafir al-Ani, called a “readymade recipe for civil war,” in a recent interview. Iraqi Front for National Dialogue. This is the more secular and nationalist of the major Sunni coalitions. It’s led by Saleh al-Mutlaq, a prominent Sunni Arab leader who favors establishing a clear timetable for a U.S. withdrawal, amending the constitution, negotiating with insurgents, and releasing Iraqis unfairly held in U.S. prisons. Mutlaq has called the constitution a “minefield” that will “blow up anytime.” The bloc—which comprises several Sunni Arab parties, including the Iraqi National Front and Arab Democratic Front—is expected to fare well in insurgent strongholds like Ramadi and Mosul. What are the main Kurdish coalitions?Kurdistan Coalition List. This coalition—which won seventy-five seats (or 26 percent of the vote) in January’s election—includes the two leading Kurdish parties, the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), led by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. The KDP, led by Massoud Barzani, commands the 100,000-strong Kurdish militia known as the peshmerga. The PUK, founded in 1975, is a social democratic party that promises to rebuild Kurdistan along “modern and democratic lines.” The coalition as a whole has several goals:protecting Kurdistan’s semi-autonomous status, maintaining its Kurdish militia, and strengthening its control over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. But Kurdistan’s main coalition has come under attack in recent weeks for its failure to democratize and provide security from the Kurdistan Islamic Union, which recently broke away from the coalition. On December 6, at least five people were killed in clashes between supporters of the coalition and the KIU when demonstrators stormed the party’s office.  Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU). Formerly a member of the Kurdistan Coalition List, the Kurdistan Islamic Union accuses the Coalition of dominating Kurdish politics, failing to reform Kurdistan’s economy, root out corruption, and falsely reporting a higher voter turnout among Kurds during the October constitutional referendum. Yet the KIU’s Secretary-General Salaheddin Mohammed Bahaeddin told the newspaper Yekgirtu that “the PUK and KDP interpret a single list as the unanimity of the parties and campaign for it as such.” Some experts say by splitting off, the KIU may actually dissipate votes and hurt Kurds’ representation in the new parliament.

This publication is now archived. IntroductionAs the debate over drawing down U.S. forces from Iraq continues, questions have arisen about the likely configuration of a long-term U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf region. Experts agree some kind of U.S. military footprint will remain in the region. The most likely scenario involves a redeployment of troops from Iraq to form a so-called quick-reaction brigade based in Kuwait or another neighboring country, enabling the U.S. to rapidly reenter and support Iraqi forces if the security situation were to deteriorate. "Kuwait’s become a place d’armes for us," says Barry Posen, professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Seymour Hersh, writing in a recent New Yorker piece, quotes U.S. officials as saying the presence of a "special-mission unit" in the region could also be aimed at striking insurgents crossing the Syrian-Iraqi border. What other U.S. troops are deployed in the region?Outside of the 140,000-plus U.S. forces deployed to fight in Iraq or support combat operations in the region, the U.S. military has more than 6,000 active troops stationed throughout the Middle East, according to the Department of Defense’s own Defense Manpower Data Center. The biggest presence is in Bahrain, where the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet is also headquartered, followed by Qatar, home to a large U.S. Air Force base, which has about 415 U.S. personnel; just under 400 are based in the continuing multinational observer force, created in Egypt’s Sinai Desert by the Camp David Accords for Middle East peace in 1978. Another 2,000 troops, most of them U.S. Marines, are stationed on amphibious vessels in the Persian Gulf. What is the history of U.S. troops in the region?The United States has always kept a small presence of troops in the region stretching back to World War II. In 1955, a military base was established at Incirlik—then called Adana—in Turkey. In 1958, some 5,000 U.S. marines were briefly stationed in Lebanon during its civil war, and in 1982, Marines returned, but with tragic results. The U.S. military kept a strong naval presence in the Arabian and eastern Mediterranean Sea throughout the Cold War. In 1990, after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and several neighboring countries invited American and other foreign forces onto their soil and joined in the liberation of Kuwait. U.S. and British warplanes based in Incirlik and Kuwait patrolled no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq and regularly bombed anti-aircraft sites in Iraq throughout the 1990s to protect the country’s Kurdish and Shiite populations. In Saudi Arabia, U.S. troops—between 15,000-20,000 at various times—stayed on through the 1990s and right up to the launch of the Iraq war in March 2003. Most U.S. forces left Saudi soil soon after Saddam Hussein fell from power. "Is a base in Iraq essential? No. For putting pressure on Iran and Syria, it’s not necessary. We still have a presence in Central Asia, Afghanistan, and the Gulf," says Dan Goure, vice president of the Lexington Institute. Does the United States plan to establish permanent bases in Iraq?The Bush administration says it opposes establishing a permanent military presence in Iraq. In his November 31 speech in Annapolis, President Bush emphasized that more than a dozen bases had been handed over to the Iraqi forces, including Saddam Hussein’s former palace in Tikrit. Experts say a permanent military base in Iraq would only undermine the U.S. attempts to democratize the region. "Is a base in Iraq essential? No. For putting pressure on Iran and Syria, it’s not necessary. We still have a presence in Central Asia, Afghanistan, and the Gulf," says Dan Goure, vice president of the Lexington Institute. "Now, would there be American involvement if there’s a truly democratic government in Iraq? I’d say not only yes, but hell yes." What are some of the specific troop-redeployment scenarios being proposed?Several plans have been proposed by official and nonofficial sources. Among them:Strategic redeployment. This plan, devised by Lawrence Korb and Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress, envisions redeploying large segments of the 140,000-plus troops in Iraq in two phases: 80,000 out by the end of 2006 with the remainder out by the end of 2007, leaving behind only a small contingent of Marines to guard the U.S. embassy, a few military advisers, and counterterrorist units to train the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF). Of the first group, around 20,000 would be redeployed to support counterterrorist efforts in Afghanistan, Asia, and Africa. The reserve forces would return home and the remaining 14,000 would relocate to Kuwait or offshore in the Persian Gulf. If no timetable for withdrawal is set, Korb and Katulin argue, the Iraqi government will continue to "use the United States as a crutch."Immediate pullout. This is the proposal, famously put forth by Congressman Jack Murtha (D-PA), a decorated Vietnam War veteran with thirty-seven years of Marines experience who makes frequent trips to Iraq. He claims the U.S. troop presence in Iraq is what’s fueling the insurgency and favors a complete withdrawal within six months. His evidence: Attacks in Iraq have skyrocketed from 150 a week to more than 700 a week over the past year. Republicans were critical of Murtha’s plans for an immediate withdrawal. Military experts, however, say such a scenario is virtually impossible, given the situation in Iraq and after a series of recent speeches by President Bush indicating he would stay the course in Iraq. Phased withdrawal. This Democratic plan, first proposed by Ike Skelton (D-MO) in late October, calls for a phased withdrawal of U.S. brigades based on the progress levels of Iraqi security forces. For every three Iraqi brigades that attains a readiness rating of Level I—or fully capable to carry out counterinsurgency missions with no coalition forces support—the Pentagon would redeploy a U.S. brigade from Iraq. Not every expert supports this exit strategy. "I can’t believe there’s a true technical analysis that supports this [ratio]," Posen says. "It may not be implausible but it sounds like a judgment call." Others say this redeployment plan, given the slow pace of training Iraqi soldiers, would leave U.S. forces in Iraq indefinitely. Over the summer, the Pentagon revealed that the number of combat-ready brigades among Iraqi forces had dropped from three to one. Gradual drawdown of forces. This is the Bush administration’s "as they stand up we’ll stand down" proposal. After the December 15 elections in Iraq, the plan is to draw down 23,000 troops that were added in the lead-up to Iraq’s election to provide additional security. Two brigades, from Kansas and Kuwait respectively, were scheduled to be sent all at once to Iraq after the elections. Instead, as Pentagon officials told the New York Times, the brigade from Kansas, comprising some 5,000 troops, will be sent to Iraq in smaller units to help train Iraqi security forces and guard important facilities. The latter brigade is expected to remain in Kuwait as a "quick-reaction brigade," though if the security situation in Iraq stabilizes after the election, soldiers may be sent home. Officials expect by the latter half of 2006 that there should be roughly 100,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Is a permanent U.S. military presence in the region popular among experts?Experts disagree on the issue. There "should not even be the perception of an American land grab," Goure says. However, Stephen Biddle, research professor of national security studies at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute, says no other country or international organization can provide the necessary security other than the United States. "We’re the only show in town at the moment," he says. "If we leave, you get a region-wide conflagration." William Nash, director of Council’s Center for Preventive Action, favors U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq but envisions some form of limited military presence remaining in the region. "We need to keep sufficient force in the region to ensure the survival of this government [in Iraq]," he says. "This is not a case of getting in our helicopters and saying, ’You’re on your own.’ The training mission will need to continue, but it doesn’t mean it has to be as robust as it is now."