http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HB17Ak01.html
US struggles with a mutating insurgency
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - Despite reports of growing tensions and even occasional clashes between Islamists and nationalists, the predominantly Sunni insurgency in Iraq appears increasingly united and confident of victory, according to a report released on Wednesday by the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG).

The 30-page report, based primarily on an analysis of the public communications of insurgent groups, as well as interviews and past studies about the insurgency, also concludes that rebel groups have adapted quickly and effectively to changing US tactics - in both the military and political spheres.

"Over time, the insurgency appears to have become more coordinated, confident, sensitive to its constituents' demands and adept at learning from the enemy's successes and its own failures," said the report, "In Their Own Words: Reading the Iraqi Insurgency".

"The US must take these factors into account if it is to understand the insurgency's resilience and learn how to counter it," it said, stressing that the most effective responses included reining in and disbanding sectarian militias responsible for human-rights abuses and repeatedly making clear that Washington had no designs on Iraq's oil resources or on its territory for military bases.

The report, which comes amid intense - but so far unavailing - efforts by the US Embassy to negotiate the creation of a new government in Baghdad that will place prominent Sunnis in key cabinet posts, is based mainly on what insurgents have themselves said on their Internet websites and chat rooms, videos, tapes and leaflets since the invasion, and how those messages have evolved.

While much of the rhetoric is propagandistic, according to the ICG, it also provides a "window into the insurgency" capable of informing the analyst about its internal debates, levels of coordination, its perceptions of both the enemy and its constituency, and changes in tactics and strategy.

Such a textual analysis, according to the ICG, yields conclusions that are substantially at odds with many of Washington's current, as well as past, assumptions about the insurgency. Indeed, "In Iraq, the US fights an enemy it hardly knows," the report asserts.

The notion, for example, that the insurgency is divided between Iraqi nationalists and foreign jihadis, most prominently al-Qaeda's Organization in Mesopotamia (QOM), led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, appears increasingly questionable, according to the report, which notes that there has been a "gradual convergence" in the groups' tactics and rhetoric.

"A year ago, groups appeared divided over practices and ideology, but most debates have been settled through convergence around Sunni Islamic jurisprudence and Sunni Arab grievances," according to the report.

"Practically speaking, it has become virtually impossible to categorize a particular group's discourse as jihadi as opposed to nationalist or patriotic, with the exception of the Ba'ath Party, whose presence on the ground has been singularly ineffective."

During the first half of 2005, when reports of armed clashes between the two kinds of groups first surfaced, that was less true, but, since then and despite intense US efforts to drive a wedge between them, the groups have largely harmonized their rhetoric.

In that connection, "recent reports of negotiations between 'nationalist' groups and the US over forming an alliance against foreign jihadis appear at the very least exaggerated", according to the report. It noted that any such "duplicity" would almost certainly have been exposed and denounced by others.

Moreover, "no armed group so far has even hinted" that it may be willing to negotiate with the US and Iraqi authorities. "While covert talks cannot be excluded, the publicly accessible discourse remains uniformly and relentlessly hostile to the occupation and its 'collaborators'."

That does not mean that differences between the two kinds of groups do not exist and that there could be a day of reckoning - but only after Washington's withdrawal. "To this day, the armed opposition's avowed objectives have ... been reduced to a primary goal: ridding Iraq of the foreign occupier. Beyond that, all is vague."

Meanwhile, the groups have become increasingly mindful of their image and the necessity of cultivating public opinion among Sunnis, other Iraqis and the West, according to the report.

Thus, they promptly and systematically respond to charges that they are corrupt or target innocent civilians and even reject accusations, despite the evidence from suicide attacks against Shi'ite mosques, that they are waging a sectarian campaign.

Similarly, they have abandoned some tactics that proved especially revolting to their various audiences, such as the beheading of hostages and attacking voters going to the polls. And "while [they] deny any intent of depriving the population of water and electricity, restraint does not apply to oil installations, which are seen as part and parcel of American designs to exploit Iraq".

According to the report, four main groups now dominate the communications channels of the insurgency and publish regularly through a variety of media: QOM; Partisans of the Sunna Army (Jaysh Ansar al-Sunna); the Islamic Army in Iraq (al-Jaysh al-Islami fil-'Iraq); and the Islamic Front of the Iraqi Resistance (al-Jabha al-Islamiya lil-Muqawama al-'Iraqiya, or Jami).

QOM, whose operational importance has, according to the ICG, been exaggerated by US officials, sought during the past year to "Iraqify" its image, in part by reportedly replacing Zarqawi, a Jordanian, with an Iraqi leader. Jami, according to some ICG sources, may be a "public relations organ" shared by different armed groups and tends to be somewhat more sophisticated and nationalistic in its rhetoric and communications strategy than the others.

Another five groups that take credit for military actions generally use far less elaborate and stable channels of communication, while four more groups appear to lack regular means of communication to produce occasional claims of responsibility for armed actions through statements or videos.

All groups appear to have become more confident over the past year, according to the report, which noted that their optimism is not only noticeable in their official communiques but in more spontaneous expressions by militants and sympathizers on Internet chat sites and elsewhere.

Initially, according to the report, they perceived the US presence as extremely difficult to remove, "but that no longer is the case".

"Today, the prospect of an outright victory and a swift withdrawal of foreign forces has crystallized, bolstered by the US's perceived loss of legitimacy and apparent vacillation, its periodic announcement of troop redeployments, the precipitous decline in domestic support for the war and heightened calls by prominent politicians for a rapid withdrawal," the report states.

Moreover, "when the US leaves, the insurgents do not doubt that Iraq's security forces and institutions would quickly collapse".

(Inter Press Service)

White House Readies Iraq Spending Request By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer

The Pentagon would receive another $65 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan while hurricane recovery efforts along the Gulf Coast would get an infusion of at least $18 billion under a request coming from the Bush administration on Thursday.

Almost $5 billion more is expected for foreign assistance, including an additional $75 million to promote democratic institutions in Iran as outlined by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in congressional testimony Wednesday. All told, the request for the wars, foreign aid and other anti-terrorism efforts are expected to exceed $72 billion.

The massive supplemental spending request discussed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld before a congressional committee Thursday would bring the total price tag for the Iraq and Afghanistan missions to almost $400 billion.

Last year, Congress provided $50 billion for the war effort for the current budget year. President Bush's budget anticipates another $50 billion for the budget year beginning Oct. 1, though the costs are likely to be much greater.

Pentagon officials have said the latest requests will include about $20 billion to repair and replace equipment worn out or damaged in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In an about-face for the administration, Louisiana would receive $4.2 billion to compensate homeowners for losses from the unprecedented storm. Additional funds for levees, repairing federal facilities and small business assistance are also anticipated.

Despite enduring much worse damage than neighboring Mississippi, Louisiana received a bare majority of $11.5 billion in community development block grant funds — much of which was to be devoted to compensating homeowners — when Congress passed $29 billion in Katrina relief in December.

The latest request would push the total federal commitment for rebuilding to more than $100 billion, according to administration tallies. That reflects about $68 billion in emergency appropriations, $18.5 billion in available flood insurance funds and the new request of approximately $18 billion.

Separately, the Senate on Wednesday passed a bill to extend unemployment benefits for those who've lost their jobs because of Katrina from the current maximum of 26 weeks to 39.




Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?Stor...17-105651-2069r

Outside View: Iraq army making major progress
By Anthony H. Cordesman
UPI Outside View Commentator
Published February 17, 2006


WASHINGTON -- Iraq forces are making major progress that should provide a new degree of legitimacy and popularity to the Iraqi government and allow the Coalition to reduce its forces.

There are, however, still many problems in Iraqi force development, particularly in the security forces in the Ministry of the Interior and in the police forces. Outside aid will still be needed for some years.


Equally important, political and military success are interdependent. The new Iraqi forces can only success if the Iraqi political process succeeds. Political success requires security. At the same time, if a government does not emerge that cannot include a large number of Sunnis, and undercuts popular and political support for the insurgency, the efforts to develop Iraqi forces may be in vain. An Iraqi government that is Shiite and Kurdish dominated, uses its forces against Sunnis and not simply the insurgents, is a recipe for civil war.

In spite of the problems facing Iraqi forces, they have made major progress. Changes in the U.S.-led Coalition advisory effort have led to steadily higher selection and training standards and better equipment and facilities. Embedding U.S. training teams in each new Iraqi unit, and pairing them with U.S. combat units until they could operate on their own, has made a major qualitative difference in the field. More and more Iraqi units have come on-line.

The end result is that the Coalition now sees three pillars for the successful ISF development. The first is proper training and equipping of the ISF. The second is the assignment of transition teams; third is the partnership with coalition forces. The corresponding development of fully effective Ministries of Defense and Interior may well be becoming a fourth.

As of late January 2006, Iraqi forces already totaled some 227,300 personnel. These included 106,900 in the armed forces under the Ministry of Defense: 105,600 army, some 500 air force, and some 800 navy. They included 120,400 in the police and security forces under the Ministry of Interior: 82,400 police and highway patrol, and 38,000 other MOI forces.

A total of some 130 army and special police battalions, with some 500-800 men each, were fighting in the insurgency. This was seven more battalions than in late October. The army alone had built up to 102 battalions, approach a current goal of 110 combat battalions.

By early December, a total of 50 battalions were at Level 1-3 readiness and active in dealing with the insurgency. In March 2005, there were only three battalions manning their own areas --all in Baghdad, 24 battalions were in charge of their own battle space in October and 33 in late December. In January 2006, the U.S. Army transferred an area of operation to an entire Iraqi army division for the first time in Qadissiya and Wassit provinces, an active combat area south of Baghdad. In early February 2006, 40 of the army's 102 battalions had taken over security in the areas where they operated, and in contested areas, such as parts of Fallujah, Ramadi and Samarra.

This progress occurred in spite of the fact that the Sunni Arab insurgents focused their attacks on fellow Iraqis and hit hard at every element of Iraqi forces. The insurgents also struck at virtually every other element of Iraqi society, and attacked Shi'ite Arab and Kurdish political leaders, religious figures and journalists, other members of the Iraqi elite, and ordinary citizens -- often in the form of suicide bombings that created mass casualties. The most extreme Sunni Islamists clearly had the goal of paralyzing the Iraqi political process, and such extremist groups attacked Shi'ite and Kurds in a way that seemed designed to provoke a major civil conflict.

Such progress, however, is not yet sufficient to guarantee either any meaningful force of Iraqi victory.

--

(Anthony H. Cordesman holds the Arleigh A. Burke chair of Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. This article is extracted from the executive summary to his February study on Iraqi force development and is reprinted with permission.)

--

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of World Peace Herald or United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

It adviseable that every concerned and peace-loving American should go see the Eugene Jarecki documentary film, "WHY WE FIGHT", before they are taken for a ride by those with ulterior motives, under the guise of "THINK TANK" ORGANIZATIONS, exisying for the manipulative purpose of driving the world to non-stop wars to enrich certain groups of American and World coroprations and individuals. Sure Jarecki is not creating anything new. But face it, when is it that many Americans, if they are not continuously reminded, will be willing to face or accept reality? As many have often put it: most Americans have short memories!

According to this film, it was in 1961, that Dwight Eisenhower, in his Presidential Farewell Speech, coined the phrase ‘military-industrial complex’ with a caution warning to ALL Americans that wars will be triggered as a ‘for-profit’ governmental function and disguised as essential in both a foreign policy and an economic policy. Profits will be their goal, whether or not the ultimate results would be disastrous. A five-star General, West Point graduate and military lifer, Eisenhower had said that it scared him to death to think of what would happen to America if any President who should precede him has little or no understanding of the military than him (Eisenhower).

What is scary is how this film exposes the concept of “think tanks” that merely exists to participate, side by side, with the war-profiting corporations and enterprises to promote continuous wars so as to allow governments to keep expanding their military bases, and create profitable contracts to keep the bank accounts of their special interest groups and buddies bloating and nourished.

Indeed, when you see this film, and when you watch what the Bush Regime and its favored members of NeoCons Senators (who themselves had never served in the battle fields) running around with their scare and fear tactics to drive up war after war, you can only sit and squirm and say: How dumb Americans are getting for Eisenhower’s wisdom and warnings have fallen on deaf ears and blind eyes.

Published on Saturday, February 18, 2006 by CommonDreams.org

US Middle East Policy: Between Iraq and the Hard Guys

by Lawrence Pintak


CAIRO, Egypt -- This week’s visit to the region by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice brings with it another reminder that U.S. Middle East policy is firmly wedged between Iraq and the hard guys.

There were never any easy answers to the Middle East morass. Washington’s drunken lurching in search of exactly that has only made matters worse.

Like American consumers, those at the top of the U.S. policy food-chain want instant gratification. It’s not going to happen. The rush to democracy proved that.

“The election of Hamas wasn’t really an example of democracy because there are no democratic institutions in place,” an American diplomat in the region told me the other day. It came off as a classic example of diplomatic double-speak – and double-standards. That’s certainly how Washington’s official pronouncements about Hamas’ stunning victory are being heard by Arabs and Muslims.

But the diplomat had a point. As someone who knows the region – unlike many Washington policmakers – he recognized that without the infrastructure of democracy – a flourishing civil society, well-developed opposition parties, an independent media –elections come down to a choice between the lesser of two evils.

Which is pretty much where U.S. policymakers also sit in the wake of the Hamas victory and the success of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt’s parliamentary elections, seen by many domestic and foreign observers see as a carefully stage-managed affair that put Mubarak in a position to say to Washington, ‘There’s the alternative to me; Is that what you want?’

Rice and other U.S. officials are likely to keep mouthing platitudes about democracy, but it won’t be with much enthusiasm. Their maneuvering room is shrinking by the day, with hard guys on every side: ‘ours,’ ‘theirs,’ and others still up for grabs.

The reinvigorated axis of Damascus, Tehran and Hamas creates linkage between three of the region’s thorniest issues. Moscow’s flirtation with them further complicates the equation.

Arabs don’t want to see Iran get nukes any more than Washington does – Gulf leaders this week were speaking openly about the issue of contamination if something goes wrong (unspoken was the other worry: nuclear blackmail by an Iran seeking to restore the Persian Gulf to its previous status as an Iranian lake). But they also remain frustrated by Washington’s refusal to press Israel to even sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, much less get rid of its nukes.

The Saudis, for whom the Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood election successes provide a respite from U.S. pressure for democratic reform, are spooked by federalism in Iraq, the rise of a hard-line Shi’ite regime on their doorstep, and the prospect of regime collapse in Damascus. The House of Saud’s brief dalliance with former Syrian Vice President Abdel Halim Khaddam, who gave a high-profile interview to the Saudi satellite TV channel al-Arabiya, then quickly dropped out of sight after the Egyptians reminded the Saudis they were playing with fire, demonstrates how the Saudis, too, are flailing about in this dangerous new equation.

The Egyptian intervention underscores the pivotal role the Mubarak regime plays in Arab politics, serving as middle-man in Palestine, Lebanon and even, occasionally, Iraq.

Which is why Hosni Mubarak has the U.S. by the short-and-curlys. Egypt may be the largest recipient of U.S. aid outside Israel, but, as Rice will be reminded again this week, Washington’s annual $2 billion-plus in aid buys it precious little leverage.

Let’s recap: Egypt held both presidential and parliamentary elections last fall, to much fanfare about democracy taking hold. Today, Mubarak’s chief rival in that contest is back in jail serving a ten-year prison sentence. This past week, parliament passed a measure putting off local council elections. In the grand scheme of things, the move seems pretty obscure. But it effectively means that if Mubarak dies or for some reason steps down in the next two years, his party’s candidate – likely to be his son – will run unopposed. Mean while, four judges who accused other judges of election fraud were reportedly hauled in for questioning. The U.S. response to all this: Lukewarm expressions of concern.

The reality is that the Bush administration needs Mubarak right now more than he needs them, especially with the Russians nosing around. Which brings us back to that uncomfortable spot between Iraq and those hard guys.

The Bush administration’s appetite for instant gratification – rewriting the map of the Middle East with the invasion of Iraq; the sudden evangelism for democratic change – paved the road to this dead-end.

“Transformational Diplomacy” is Secretary Rice’s latest formula to get America out. For Arab and Muslim audiences, there’s nothing “transformational” about moving a few foreign service officers from Berlin to the Hindu-Kush if they’re pushing the same discredited policies.

Political reform in the Middle East is a long and gradual process. Government-by-soundbite may work for the domestic audience, but it gets lost in the translation out here.

What does has an effect are the long-term programs aimed at structural change, such as the tens of million of dollars in USAID monies aimed at reforming education, fostering the rise of an independent media, and creating a political and policy infrastructure. It’s a slow, sometimes tedious process; One that produces few soundbites but has the potential to yield real change.


http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0218-30.htm

February 19, 2006
Iraq Is Shaken by More Deadly Insurgent Attacks
By ROBERT F. WORTH
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 19 — At least 15 people were killed in insurgent attacks across Iraq today, and Kurdish officials confirmed that five German businessmen and an Iraqi died in a private plane crash in the north.

Search teams found the wreckage of the plane and the bodies of the six men north of Sulaymaniyah in the snow-capped mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan, The Associated Press reported, citing Kurdish officials. The businessmen worked for a Bavarian company, and their plane had been en route from Azerbaijan to Sulaymaniya when it crashed on Saturday.

In northern Baghdad, the owner of an ice cream shop was shot dead outside his shop this morning, an Interior Ministry official said. A policeman, an Iraqi Army soldier, and a paramilitary officer were killed by gunmen in three separate assassinations, the official said.

North of the capital in Taji, gunmen killed four truck drivers after ambushing a convoy carrying construction materials to an American military base, Interior Ministry officials said. South of Baghdad in the town of Salman Pak, two men who had been kidnapped days earlier were found dead, the police said. Not far away in Mahmuhdiya, a car bomb detonated on a police patrol, injuring two policemen.

In the oil city of Kirkuk, a roadside bomb exploded on a car carrying the city's deputy police chief and two of his bodyguards. The officer, Brig. Hatem Khalaf Matrood al-Obaidi, was the highest-ranking Sunni Arab in the police department in Kirkuk, the police said.

In Baquba, north of Baghdad, a police official said four people — all Shiites — were gunned down in a public market, in what appeared to be the latest of a long series of sectarian killings.

The continuing sectarian violence, including a continuing stream of abductions and murders in the capital, has heightened tensions and magnified the challenges facing Iraq's major political factions, which are struggling to agree on the principles of a unity government.

Several disagreements have slowed progress in the talks. The Kurds and the secular alliance led by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi are pushing for the creation of a supervisory council with executive powers. But the Shiite alliance, which has 130 of the Parliament's 275 seats, has resisted, saying there is no basis for such a council in the Iraqi constitution.

Some Shiite leaders want to exclude Mr. Allawi from the new government, a demand the Kurds say they will not accept. There has also been friction over the issue of Kirkuk, where Kurdish leaders want to expedite the return of Kurds expelled by Saddam Hussein's government. That has angered some Sunni Arab leaders and the followers of the radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr, whose followers have a substantial bloc within the Shiite alliance.

On Saturday, in a rare interview on Al Jazeera, the Arab satellite television channel, Mr. Sadr said that Kirkuk "is owned by all Iraqis," and that "no one has the right to demand Kirkuk."

Under the constitution, Parliament must meet for the first time by Saturday, 15 days after the final results of the December elections were certified. At that meeting, the representatives must choose a speaker and deputy speakers.

But political leaders say the choice of a speaker is tied to decisions on all the other major posts, including president and the prime minister's cabinet. Meeting the deadline is unlikely at this point, with various factions bogged down in disagreements over policy and the distribution of key posts.

"We don't want to violate the constitution before our first meeting," said Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish representative.

The violence came as about 2,000 students demonstrated in Baquba against the Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, the latest in a number of such rallies in Iraq and other Islamic countries. No one was injured in the Baquba protest, police officials said.

Reporting for this article was contributed by Mona Mahmoud and Khalid al-Ansary in Baghdad, and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times in Kirkuk



Copyright 2006The New York Times

February 19, 2006
After Neoconservatism
By FRANCIS FUKUYAMA
As we approach the third anniversary of the onset of the Iraq war, it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention itself or the ideas animating it kindly. By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadist terrorists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at. The United States still has a chance of creating a Shiite-dominated democratic Iraq, but the new government will be very weak for years to come; the resulting power vacuum will invite outside influence from all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran. There are clear benefits to the Iraqi people from the removal of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, and perhaps some positive spillover effects in Lebanon and Syria. But it is very hard to see how these developments in themselves justify the blood and treasure that the United States has spent on the project to this point.

The so-called Bush Doctrine that set the framework for the administration's first term is now in shambles. The doctrine (elaborated, among other places, in the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States) argued that, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, America would have to launch periodic preventive wars to defend itself against rogue states and terrorists with weapons of mass destruction; that it would do this alone, if necessary; and that it would work to democratize the greater Middle East as a long-term solution to the terrorist problem. But successful pre-emption depends on the ability to predict the future accurately and on good intelligence, which was not forthcoming, while America's perceived unilateralism has isolated it as never before. It is not surprising that in its second term, the administration has been distancing itself from these policies and is in the process of rewriting the National Security Strategy document.

But it is the idealistic effort to use American power to promote democracy and human rights abroad that may suffer the greatest setback. Perceived failure in Iraq has restored the authority of foreign policy "realists" in the tradition of Henry Kissinger. Already there is a host of books and articles decrying America's naïve Wilsonianism and attacking the notion of trying to democratize the world. The administration's second-term efforts to push for greater Middle Eastern democracy, introduced with the soaring rhetoric of Bush's second Inaugural Address, have borne very problematic fruits. The Islamist Muslim Brotherhood made a strong showing in Egypt's parliamentary elections in November and December. While the holding of elections in Iraq this past December was an achievement in itself, the vote led to the ascendance of a Shiite bloc with close ties to Iran (following on the election of the conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran in June). But the clincher was the decisive Hamas victory in the Palestinian election last month, which brought to power a movement overtly dedicated to the destruction of Israel. In his second inaugural, Bush said that "America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one," but the charge will be made with increasing frequency that the Bush administration made a big mistake when it stirred the pot, and that the United States would have done better to stick by its traditional authoritarian friends in the Middle East. Indeed, the effort to promote democracy around the world has been attacked as an illegitimate activity both by people on the left like Jeffrey Sachs and by traditional conservatives like Pat Buchanan.

The reaction against democracy promotion and an activist foreign policy may not end there. Those whom Walter Russell Mead labels Jacksonian conservatives — red-state Americans whose sons and daughters are fighting and dying in the Middle East — supported the Iraq war because they believed that their children were fighting to defend the United States against nuclear terrorism, not to promote democracy. They don't want to abandon the president in the middle of a vicious war, but down the road the perceived failure of the Iraq intervention may push them to favor a more isolationist foreign policy, which is a more natural political position for them. A recent Pew poll indicates a swing in public opinion toward isolationism; the percentage of Americans saying that the United States "should mind its own business" has never been higher since the end of the Vietnam War.

More than any other group, it was the neoconservatives both inside and outside the Bush administration who pushed for democratizing Iraq and the broader Middle East. They are widely credited (or blamed) for being the decisive voices promoting regime change in Iraq, and yet it is their idealistic agenda that in the coming months and years will be the most directly threatened. Were the United States to retreat from the world stage, following a drawdown in Iraq, it would in my view be a huge tragedy, because American power and influence have been critical to the maintenance of an open and increasingly democratic order around the world. The problem with neoconservatism's agenda lies not in its ends, which are as American as apple pie, but rather in the overmilitarized means by which it has sought to accomplish them. What American foreign policy needs is not a return to a narrow and cynical realism, but rather the formulation of a "realistic Wilsonianism" that better matches means to ends.




The Neoconservative Legacy

How did the neoconservatives end up overreaching to such an extent that they risk undermining their own goals? The Bush administration's first-term foreign policy did not flow ineluctably from the views of earlier generations of people who considered themselves neoconservatives, since those views were themselves complex and subject to differing interpretations. Four common principles or threads ran through much of this thought up through the end of the cold war: a concern with democracy, human rights and, more generally, the internal politics of states; a belief that American power can be used for moral purposes; a skepticism about the ability of international law and institutions to solve serious security problems; and finally, a view that ambitious social engineering often leads to unexpected consequences and thereby undermines its own ends.

The problem was that two of these principles were in potential collision. The skeptical stance toward ambitious social engineering — which in earlier years had been applied mostly to domestic policies like affirmative action, busing and welfare — suggested a cautious approach toward remaking the world and an awareness that ambitious initiatives always have unanticipated consequences. The belief in the potential moral uses of American power, on the other hand, implied that American activism could reshape the structure of global politics. By the time of the Iraq war, the belief in the transformational uses of power had prevailed over the doubts about social engineering.

In retrospect, things did not have to develop this way. The roots of neoconservatism lie in a remarkable group of largely Jewish intellectuals who attended City College of New York (C.C.N.Y.) in the mid- to late 1930's and early 1940's, a group that included Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, Irving Howe, Nathan Glazer and, a bit later, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The story of this group has been told in a number of places, most notably in a documentary film by Joseph Dorman called "Arguing the World." The most important inheritance from the C.C.N.Y. group was an idealistic belief in social progress and the universality of rights, coupled with intense anti-Communism.

It is not an accident that many in the C.C.N.Y. group started out as Trotskyites. Leon Trotsky was, of course, himself a Communist, but his supporters came to understand better than most people the utter cynicism and brutality of the Stalinist regime. The anti-Communist left, in contrast to the traditional American right, sympathized with the social and economic aims of Communism, but in the course of the 1930's and 1940's came to realize that "real existing socialism" had become a monstrosity of unintended consequences that completely undermined the idealistic goals it espoused. While not all of the C.C.N.Y. thinkers became neoconservatives, the danger of good intentions carried to extremes was a theme that would underlie the life work of many members of this group.

If there was a single overarching theme to the domestic social policy critiques issued by those who wrote for the neoconservative journal The Public Interest, founded by Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer and Daniel Bell in 1965, it was the limits of social engineering. Writers like Glazer, Moynihan and, later, Glenn Loury argued that ambitious efforts to seek social justice often left societies worse off than before because they either required massive state intervention that disrupted pre-existing social relations (for example, forced busing) or else produced unanticipated consequences (like an increase in single-parent families as a result of welfare). A major theme running through James Q. Wilson's extensive writings on crime was the idea that you could not lower crime rates by trying to solve deep underlying problems like poverty and racism; effective policies needed to focus on shorter-term measures that went after symptoms of social distress (like subway graffiti or panhandling) rather than root causes.

How, then, did a group with such a pedigree come to decide that the "root cause" of terrorism lay in the Middle East's lack of democracy, that the United States had both the wisdom and the ability to fix this problem and that democracy would come quickly and painlessly to Iraq? Neoconservatives would not have taken this turn but for the peculiar way that the cold war ended.

Ronald Reagan was ridiculed by sophisticated people on the American left and in Europe for labeling the Soviet Union and its allies an "evil empire" and for challenging Mikhail Gorbachev not just to reform his system but also to "tear down this wall." His assistant secretary of defense for international security policy, Richard Perle, was denounced as the "prince of darkness" for this uncompromising, hard-line position; his proposal for a double-zero in the intermediate-range nuclear arms negotiations (that is, the complete elimination of medium-range missiles) was attacked as hopelessly out of touch by the bien-pensant centrist foreign-policy experts at places like the Council on Foreign Relations and the State Department. That community felt that the Reaganites were dangerously utopian in their hopes for actually winning, as opposed to managing, the cold war.

And yet total victory in the cold war is exactly what happened in 1989-91. Gorbachev accepted not only the double zero but also deep cuts in conventional forces, and then failed to stop the Polish, Hungarian and East German defections from the empire. Communism collapsed within a couple of years because of its internal moral weaknesses and contradictions, and with regime change in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact threat to the West evaporated.

The way the cold war ended shaped the thinking of supporters of the Iraq war, including younger neoconservatives like William Kristol and Robert Kagan, in two ways. First, it seems to have created an expectation that all totalitarian regimes were hollow at the core and would crumble with a small push from outside. The model for this was Romania under the Ceausescus: once the wicked witch was dead, the munchkins would rise up and start singing joyously about their liberation. As Kristol and Kagan put it in their 2000 book "Present Dangers": "To many the idea of America using its power to promote changes of regime in nations ruled by dictators rings of utopianism. But in fact, it is eminently realistic. There is something perverse in declaring the impossibility of promoting democratic change abroad in light of the record of the past three decades."

This overoptimism about postwar transitions to democracy helps explain the Bush administration's incomprehensible failure to plan adequately for the insurgency that subsequently emerged in Iraq. The war's supporters seemed to think that democracy was a kind of default condition to which societies reverted once the heavy lifting of coercive regime change occurred, rather than a long-term process of institution-building and reform. While they now assert that they knew all along that the democratic transformation of Iraq would be long and hard, they were clearly taken by surprise. According to George Packer's recent book on Iraq, "The Assassins' Gate," the Pentagon planned a drawdown of American forces to some 25,000 troops by the end of the summer following the invasion.

By the 1990's, neoconservatism had been fed by several other intellectual streams. One came from the students of the German Jewish political theorist Leo Strauss, who, contrary to much of the nonsense written about him by people like Anne Norton and Shadia Drury, was a serious reader of philosophical texts who did not express opinions on contemporary politics or policy issues. Rather, he was concerned with the "crisis of modernity" brought on by the relativism of Nietzsche and Heidegger, as well as the fact that neither the claims of religion nor deeply-held opinions about the nature of the good life could be banished from politics, as the thinkers of the European Enlightenment had hoped. Another stream came from Albert Wohlstetter, a Rand Corporation strategist who was the teacher of Richard Perle, Zalmay Khalilzad (the current American ambassador to Iraq) and Paul Wolfowitz (the former deputy secretary of defense), among other people. Wohlstetter was intensely concerned with the problem of nuclear proliferation and the way that the 1968 Nonproliferation Treaty left loopholes, in its support for "peaceful" nuclear energy, large enough for countries like Iraq and Iran to walk through.

I have numerous affiliations with the different strands of the neoconservative movement. I was a student of Strauss's protégé Allan Bloom, who wrote the bestseller "The Closing of the American Mind"; worked at Rand and with Wohlstetter on Persian Gulf issues; and worked also on two occasions for Wolfowitz. Many people have also interpreted my book "The End of History and the Last Man" (1992) as a neoconservative tract, one that argued in favor of the view that there is a universal hunger for liberty in all people that will inevitably lead them to liberal democracy, and that we are living in the midst of an accelerating, transnational movement in favor of that liberal democracy. This is a misreading of the argument. "The End of History" is in the end an argument about modernization. What is initially universal is not the desire for liberal democracy but rather the desire to live in a modern — that is, technologically advanced and prosperous — society, which, if satisfied, tends to drive demands for political participation. Liberal democracy is one of the byproducts of this modernization process, something that becomes a universal aspiration only in the course of historical time.

"The End of History," in other words, presented a kind of Marxist argument for the existence of a long-term process of social evolution, but one that terminates in liberal democracy rather than communism. In the formulation of the scholar Ken Jowitt, the neoconservative position articulated by people like Kristol and Kagan was, by contrast, Leninist; they believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practiced by the United States. Neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support.




The Failure of Benevolent Hegemony

The Bush administration and its neoconservative supporters did not simply underestimate the difficulty of bringing about congenial political outcomes in places like Iraq; they also misunderstood the way the world would react to the use of American power. Of course, the cold war was replete with instances of what the foreign policy analyst Stephen Sestanovich calls American maximalism, wherein Washington acted first and sought legitimacy and support from its allies only after the fact. But in the post-cold-war period, the structural situation of world politics changed in ways that made this kind of exercise of power much more problematic in the eyes of even close allies. After the fall of the Soviet Union, various neoconservative authors like Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol and Robert Kagan suggested that the United States would use its margin of power to exert a kind of "benevolent hegemony" over the rest of the world, fixing problems like rogue states with W.M.D., human rights abuses and terrorist threats as they came up. Writing before the Iraq war, Kristol and Kagan considered whether this posture would provoke resistance from the rest of the world, and concluded, "It is precisely because American foreign policy is infused with an unusually high degree of morality that other nations find they have less to fear from its otherwise daunting power." (Italics added.)

It is hard to read these lines without irony in the wake of the global reaction to the Iraq war, which succeeded in uniting much of the world in a frenzy of anti-Americanism. The idea that the United States is a hegemon more benevolent than most is not an absurd one, but there were warning signs that things had changed in America's relationship to the world long before the start of the Iraq war. The structural imbalance in global power had grown enormous. America surpassed the rest of the world in every dimension of power by an unprecedented margin, with its defense spending nearly equal to that of the rest of the world combined. Already during the Clinton years, American economic hegemony had generated enormous hostility to an American-dominated process of globalization, frequently on the part of close democratic allies who thought the United States was seeking to impose its antistatist social model on them.

There were other reasons as well why the world did not accept American benevolent hegemony. In the first place, it was premised on American exceptionalism, the idea that America could use its power in instances where others could not because it was more virtuous than other countries. The doctrine of pre-emption against terrorist threats contained in the 2002 National Security Strategy was one that could not safely be generalized through the international system; America would be the first country to object if Russia, China, India or France declared a similar right of unilateral action. The United States was seeking to pass judgment on others while being unwilling to have its own conduct questioned in places like the International Criminal Court.

Another problem with benevolent hegemony was domestic. There are sharp limits to the American people's attention to foreign affairs and willingness to finance projects overseas that do not have clear benefits to American interests. Sept. 11 changed that calculus in many ways, providing popular support for two wars in the Middle East and large increases in defense spending. But the durability of the support is uncertain: although most Americans want to do what is necessary to make the project of rebuilding Iraq succeed, the aftermath of the invasion did not increase the public appetite for further costly interventions. Americans are not, at heart, an imperial people. Even benevolent hegemons sometimes have to act ruthlessly, and they need a staying power that does not come easily to people who are reasonably content with their own lives and society.

Finally, benevolent hegemony presumed that the hegemon was not only well intentioned but competent as well. Much of the criticism of the Iraq intervention from Europeans and others was not based on a normative case that the United States was not getting authorization from the United Nations Security Council, but rather on the belief that it had not made an adequate case for invading Iraq in the first place and didn't know what it was doing in trying to democratize Iraq. In this, the critics were unfortunately quite prescient.

The most basic misjudgment was an overestimation of the threat facing the United States from radical Islamism. Although the new and ominous possibility of undeterrable terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction did indeed present itself, advocates of the war wrongly conflated this with the threat presented by Iraq and with the rogue state/proliferation problem more generally. The misjudgment was based in part on the massive failure of the American intelligence community to correctly assess the state of Iraq's W.M.D. programs before the war. But the intelligence community never took nearly as alarmist a view of the terrorist/W.M.D. threat as the war's supporters did. Overestimation of this threat was then used to justify the elevation of preventive war to the centerpiece of a new security strategy, as well as a whole series of measures that infringed on civil liberties, from detention policy to domestic eavesdropping.




What to Do

Now that the neoconservative moment appears to have passed, the United States needs to reconceptualize its foreign policy in several fundamental ways. In the first instance, we need to demilitarize what we have been calling the global war on terrorism and shift to other types of policy instruments. We are fighting hot counterinsurgency wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and against the international jihadist movement, wars in which we need to prevail. But "war" is the wrong metaphor for the broader struggle, since wars are fought at full intensity and have clear beginnings and endings. Meeting the jihadist challenge is more of a "long, twilight struggle" whose core is not a military campaign but a political contest for the hearts and minds of ordinary Muslims around the world. As recent events in France and Denmark suggest, Europe will be a central battleground in this fight.

The United States needs to come up with something better than "coalitions of the willing" to legitimate its dealings with other countries. The world today lacks effective international institutions that can confer legitimacy on collective action; creating new organizations that will better balance the dual requirements of legitimacy and effectiveness will be the primary task for the coming generation. As a result of more than 200 years of political evolution, we have a relatively good understanding of how to create institutions that are rulebound, accountable and reasonably effective in the vertical silos we call states. What we do not have are adequate mechanisms of horizontal accountability among states.

The conservative critique of the United Nations is all too cogent: while useful for certain peacekeeping and nation-building operations, the United Nations lacks both democratic legitimacy and effectiveness in dealing with serious security issues. The solution is not to strengthen a single global body, but rather to promote what has been emerging in any event, a "multi-multilateral world" of overlapping and occasionally competing international institutions that are organized on regional or functional lines. Kosovo in 1999 was a model: when the Russian veto prevented the Security Council from acting, the United States and its NATO allies simply shifted the venue to NATO, where the Russians could not block action.

The final area that needs rethinking, and the one that will be the most contested in the coming months and years, is the place of democracy promotion in American foreign policy. The worst legacy that could come from the Iraq war would be an anti-neoconservative backlash that coupled a sharp turn toward isolation with a cynical realist policy aligning the United States with friendly authoritarians. Good governance, which involves not just democracy but also the rule of law and economic development, is critical to a host of outcomes we desire, from alleviating poverty to dealing with pandemics to controlling violent conflicts. A Wilsonian policy that pays attention to how rulers treat their citizens is therefore right, but it needs to be informed by a certain realism that was missing from the thinking of the Bush administration in its first term and of its neoconservative allies.

We need in the first instance to understand that promoting democracy and modernization in the Middle East is not a solution to the problem of jihadist terrorism; in all likelihood it will make the short-term problem worse, as we have seen in the case of the Palestinian election bringing Hamas to power. Radical Islamism is a byproduct of modernization itself, arising from the loss of identity that accompanies the transition to a modern, pluralist society. It is no accident that so many recent terrorists, from Sept. 11's Mohamed Atta to the murderer of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh to the London subway bombers, were radicalized in democratic Europe and intimately familiar with all of democracy's blessings. More democracy will mean more alienation, radicalization and — yes, unfortunately — terrorism.

But greater political participation by Islamist groups is very likely to occur whatever we do, and it will be the only way that the poison of radical Islamism can ultimately work its way through the body politic of Muslim communities around the world. The age is long since gone when friendly authoritarians could rule over passive populations and produce stability indefinitely. New social actors are mobilizing everywhere, from Bolivia and Venezuela to South Africa and the Persian Gulf. A durable Israeli-Palestinian peace could not be built upon a corrupt, illegitimate Fatah that constantly had to worry about Hamas challenging its authority. Peace might emerge, sometime down the road, from a Palestine run by a formerly radical terrorist group that had been forced to deal with the realities of governing.

If we are serious about the good governance agenda, we have to shift our focus to the reform, reorganization and proper financing of those institutions of the United States government that actually promote democracy, development and the rule of law around the world, organizations like the State Department, U.S.A.I.D., the National Endowment for Democracy and the like. The United States has played an often decisive role in helping along many recent democratic transitions, including in the Philippines in 1986; South Korea and Taiwan in 1987; Chile in 1988; Poland and Hungary in 1989; Serbia in 2000; Georgia in 2003; and Ukraine in 2004-5. But the overarching lesson that emerges from these cases is that the United States does not get to decide when and where democracy comes about. By definition, outsiders can't "impose" democracy on a country that doesn't want it; demand for democracy and reform must be domestic. Democracy promotion is therefore a long-term and opportunistic process that has to await the gradual ripening of political and economic conditions to be effective.

The Bush administration has been walking — indeed, sprinting — away from the legacy of its first term, as evidenced by the cautious multilateral approach it has taken toward the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea. Condoleezza Rice gave a serious speech in January about "transformational diplomacy" and has begun an effort to reorganize the nonmilitary side of the foreign-policy establishment, and the National Security Strategy document is being rewritten. All of these are welcome changes, but the legacy of the Bush first-term foreign policy and its neoconservative supporters has been so polarizing that it is going to be hard to have a reasoned debate about how to appropriately balance American ideals and interests in the coming years. The reaction against a flawed policy can be as damaging as the policy itself, and such a reaction is an indulgence we cannot afford, given the critical moment we have arrived at in global politics.

Neoconservatism, whatever its complex roots, has become indelibly associated with concepts like coercive regime change, unilateralism and American hegemony. What is needed now are new ideas, neither neoconservative nor realist, for how America is to relate to the rest of the world — ideas that retain the neoconservative belief in the universality of human rights, but without its illusions about the efficacy of American power and hegemony to bring these ends about.

Francis Fukuyama teaches at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. This essay is adapted from his book "America at the Crossroads," which will be published this month by Yale University Press.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

Influential Iraqi cleric Sadr rejects constitution:

Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has said he rejects the Iraqi constitution backed by his partners in the biggest parliamentary bloc, threatening a new crisis over one of the country's most explosive issues.
http://tinyurl.com/od87c

Iraqi Political Parties Hit Big Obstacles
By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer
Sun Feb 19, 3:57 PM ET



Iraqi political parties have run into obstacles in talks on a new national unity government, officials said Sunday, raising the possibility of a major delay that would be a setback to U.S. hopes for a significant reduction in troop levels this year.

In northeastern Iraq, search parties alerted by a shepherd found the wreckage of a German private plane that went missing in bad weather three days earlier with five Germans and one Iraqi on board. Iraqi and U.S. officials said there was no sign of survivors.

Gunmen ambushed a convoy of trucks carrying construction material to the U.S. military north of Baghdad on Sunday, killing four Iraqi drivers. A police general also died in a roadside bombing in northern Iraq.

U.S. officials hope a new government that includes representatives of all Iraq's religious and ethnic communities can help calm violence by luring the Sunni Arab minority away from the Sunni-dominated insurgency so that U.S. and other foreign troops can begin to head home.

But prospects for a broad-based coalition taking power soon appeared in doubt after officials from the Shiite and Kurdish blocs told The Associated Press that talks between the two groups had revealed major policy differences.

The political parties have decided to negotiate a program for the new government before dividing up Cabinet posts — a step that itself is also bound to prove contentious and time-consuming.

Leaders from Iraq's Shiite majority oppose a Kurdish proposal to set up a council to oversee government operations, the officials said. Shiites also reject a Kurdish proposal for major government decisions to be made by consensus among the major parties rather than a majority vote in the Cabinet.

"If the position of the Shiite alliance is final, then things will be more complicated and the formation of the government might face delays," Kurdish negotiator Mahmoud Othman said.

Shiites believe the Kurdish proposals would dilute the power that Shiites feel they earned by winning the biggest number of seats in Dec. 15 parliamentary elections. But while Shiite parties control 130 of the 275 seats, that is not enough to govern without partners.

"Some parties are trying to undermine efforts to form a new government," Shiite politician Ammar Toamah said. "These blocs should not necessarily participate in government."

He also said the Kurdish coalition, which controls 53 seats, was pushing for a role for a secular group led by former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a Shiite whose party won 25 seats.

Many Shiites oppose Allawi because of his secular views and his role in the U.S. attack on Shiite militias in Najaf and Karbala in 2004 when he was prime minister.

Shiites and Kurds were partners in the outgoing interim government, and talks with Sunni Arabs are likely to be even more difficult because Sunnis refuse to brand all insurgents as terrorists. U.S. officials believe a strong Sunni role is essential if the new government is to undermine the insurgency.

Forming a new governing coalition is crucial to the U.S. strategy for drawing down its forces in Iraq. Under the new constitution, the new government is supposed to be complete by mid-May, but some U.S. officials believe the process could take longer.

A long delay could affect American plans to hand over more security responsibility to the Iraqi military — a move that could be risky without a civilian government in place.

The wrecked German plane had been en route to Iraq from Azerbaijan carrying five Germans and an Iraqi — employees of a Bavarian construction company — when it went missing during stormy weather Thursday night over the rugged mountains near the border with Iran.

Shahou Mohammed, the regional administrator in Sulaimaniyah, said the wreckage was found about 25 miles northeast of Sulaimaniyah by a Kurdish shepherd tending his flocks on a 4,200-foot ridge.

In Baghdad, U.S. Embassy official Peter McHugh said an American adviser who accompanied the Iraqi search team reported from the scene that the aircraft wreckage was scattered over a fairly large area and "there appear to be no survivors."

"Everything I've seen suggests this is an aviation accident," and was not the result of any "hostile intervention," he said.

The convoy ambush occurred near Nibaie, about 35 miles north of the capital, police Lt. Khalid al-Obaidi said. He said insurgents killed four drivers and set several vehicles afire.

In Baghdad, a car bomb exploded Sunday afternoon near a Shiite political office in the Jadiriyah district, killing two people, including a policeman, and wounding five, three of them police, officials said.

Minutes later, a suicide bomber detonated explosives strapped to his body at an Iraqi army checkpoint protecting the Defense Ministry in central Baghdad. Three civilians were injured, police said.

Also Sunday, police found bodies of six men — bound, blindfolded and shot execution-style — in two locations of the capital. They appeared to be the latest victims of sectarian tit-for-tat killings.

A hard-line Sunni clerical group renewed accusations that the Shiite-dominated interim government is operating death squads to kill Sunni civilians and called on Muslim countries to support Iraq's Sunni community.

Sheik Ismaiel al-Badri of the Association of Muslim Scholars said more than 300 Sunni Arabs have been assassinated in Baghdad over the past four months. The figure could not be independently confirmed.

___

Associated Press writers Sameer N. Yacoub and Sinan Salaheddin in Baghdad and Yahya Barzanji in Sulaimaniyah contributed to this report.



Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


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From Monsters and Critics.com

US Features
U.S. experts explore Iraq exit strategies
By Lucy Stallworthy
Feb 20, 2006, 19:00 GMT



WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- More than 2,270 Americans have lost their lives in the ongoing war in Iraq. The recent elections there and the establishment of democracy have not solved the main problems. As the bloody insurgency continues, the search for a viable exit strategy has intensified.


At the Washington D.C. launch of the Independent Institute, a non-partisan think-tank, analysts recently said U.S. withdrawal hinges on a successful counter-insurgency strategy, yet there was little agreement on the form this should take.

Many observers believe a specific timetable for withdrawal would greatly diffuse the insurgency. Lawrence Korb, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress argued that timetabled extraction should remove the bulk of U.S. troops by 2008.

\'This would give the Iraqis the incentive to get their act together\', Korb said. Many Iraqis want an end to U.S. `occupation`, and these, as yet unfulfilled demands, are fueling guerilla warfare. \'There are large numbers of Iraqis, particularly in Sunni areas who think its ok to kill Americans\', he said.

Timetabled retreat may bring additional domestic benefits for the U.S. Withdrawal would ease pressure on the currently over-stretched army, and would enable the National Guard to return home.

In addition, Korb argued troop extraction could benefit the U.S. in the international arena. Withdrawal would enable the military to deploy personnel in other theatres of the War on Terror; indeed he estimated an additional 20,000 troops are required in Afghanistan.

This is endorsed by Lt. Gen. William Odom, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute. According to Odom, the U.S. \'has lost all strategic and diplomatic flexibility\' by becoming entrenched in Iraq, and thus \'we cannot get our troops out of there fast enough\'.

Moreover, timetabled retreat may galvanize neighboring countries to foster stability. According to the rules of Islam, all Muslims have a duty to repel non-Muslim invaders of an Islamic territory. This faith in defensive jihad has transformed post-invasion Iraq into a magnet for foreign jihadists.

U.S withdrawal could reduce this flow, and provide nearby nations with a real interest in Iraq`s future. \'None of the countries in the region want an Iraq which becomes the homeland of radical jihadists\', Korb said.

Troop extraction has many advantages, but U.S. withdrawal needs to be conducted in a way which will allow the administration to save face, according to Ivan Eland, Senior Fellow and Director of the Centre on Peace and Liberty at the Independent Institute. He said a decentralized Iraqi government would fulfill these criteria.

In his policy paper `The Way out of Iraq: Decentralizing the Iraqi Government`, Eland suggested a confederation or partition as the most effective way to approach \'Iraq`s multitude of ethnic, religious, and tribal factions\'.

Shiite Muslims make up 65 percent of the Iraqi population, with the Sunnis and non-Arab Sunni Kurds each accounting for 15 percent. A history of single-group dominance -- under Saddam Hussein, the Sunnis held power -- has encouraged a climate of suspicion in which each group jostles for its place.

According to Eland, self-determination could provide the solution. \'If all local areas in Iraq were allowed to govern themselves the way they wanted, there would be much less potential for conflict\'.

To support this proposal, Eland referred to Iraqi history. Eland wrote that the absence of a collective national identity makes it difficult to realize the Bush administration`s vision of a united free Iraq. \'These provinces have never been united politically, had no feeling of collective nationality, and contained three different ethnic/religious groups subdivided by tribal loyalties. This situation has made the Iraqi state dysfunctional from the start\', he wrote.

Current world examples also suggest a confederation or partition may be effective, Eland said. Addressing the Independent Institute conference, he pointed to the recent agreement in Sudan. The black Christian south has been granted autonomy from the Muslim Arab government.

In his study, Eland wrote, \'If such an agreement for decentralization can be reached amid the internecine hostility of this devastating war ... some hope exists that one can be reached in Iraq\'.

However, while some observers advocate timetabled withdrawal, others argue the insurgency can be most effectively diffused through investment and reconstruction. Peter Brookes, Senior Fellow for National Security Affairs at the Heritage Foundation cited limited reconstruction as a barrier to stability.

According to Brookes, \'the greatest danger is that we are losing the support of the common Iraqi\'. Investment flows have steadily declined. At a 2003 Madrid conference, the international community pledged $13 billion. To date, only $3 billion has been sent. \'It is time to twist some arms and get people to pay up\', he said,

In addition, Brookes said existing funds need to be directed to improving the economic situation. Large portions of investment earmarked for power and water supplies have been siphoned off to satisfy mounting security costs.

Moreover, Brookes also emphasized the value of high visibility projects such as schools and hospitals. These will give \'locals a stake in the future of communities\', he said, and reduce support for an insurgency which threatens such improvements to quality of life.

Copyright 2006 by United Press International



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February 20, 2006
Attacks Kill 26 in Iraq as U.S. Warns Against Divisions
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
and ROBERT F. WORTH
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 20 — The American ambassador to Iraq issued an unusually strong warning today about the need for Iraq's political factions to come together, hinting for the first time that the United States would not be willing to support institutions plagued by sectarian agendas.

The ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, spoke as a fresh wave of violence swept the country. A string of bombing attacks, including one inside a crowded commuter bus in Baghdad and another in a restaurant in northern Iraq, left at least 26 people dead and more than 60 wounded, the bloodiest day in Iraq in almost two months.

Mr. Khalilzad, speaking at a news conference in Baghdad, underscored the hope of American officials that Iraqi political leaders, who are deep in negotiations over the formation of a new government, would choose new cabinet ministers who would place the interests of their country over those of their political party and sect.

More than two months have passed since Iraqis voted in parliamentary elections, but signs of serious disagreement over the shape of the government persist. The new parliament is required by law to meet for the first time on Saturday.

"The United States is investing billions of dollars" into Iraq's new police and army forces, Mr. Khalilzad said. "We are not going to invest the resources of the American people to build forces run by people who are sectarian."

Mr. Khalilzad was responding to a question about reports of Shiite death squads operating within Iraq's Interior Ministry and killing Sunni Arabs. Such reports have grown in recent months, with hundreds of Sunni men being rounded up by men in police uniforms and found dead days or weeks later. The killings have infuriated Iraq's Sunni Arab community, sharpening distrust of the Shiite-led government that took power last April.

Drawing Sunni Arabs whose radical fringe dominates the insurgency into the new government is a key American goal in the long-term effort to build a stable government and begin withdrawing American troops.

Today's violence rekindled fears that those radicals would unleash more attacks. The worst of the day's violence began shortly after 7 a.m. in Mosul, in northern Iraq, where a suicide bomber walked into the Abu Ali Restaurant, and detonated his payload, spraying shrapnel into diners, leaving at least six dead and as many wounded, the police and local officials said. The attack was a clear strike against Iraq's police force: the restaurant is situated near a police station and is popular among the officers, many of whom were eating breakfast at the time the bomb went off.

"I could not hear anything, and there was heavy smoke," said Said Tharwat, a 30-year-old man who was injured in the attack.

Several hours later in Baghdad, a man wearing a suicide vest boarded a bus in the bustling Shiite neighborhood of Kadamiya, blowing himself up around 12:30 p.m., killing at least 12 Iraqis and wounding 15 others, most of them Shiite commuters, a Ministry of Interior official said. One witness said that the force of the blast had scattered body parts throughout the bus and that a traffic police officer standing nearby had also been killed.

The wounded, many with burns on their hands and faces, were evacuated to Kadamiya Hospital. A hospital official said that 17 people had been killed in the blast.

The ambassador has sharply criticized Interior Ministry abuses in the past, echoing Sunni concerns about the ministry's failure to stop the killings. In recent weeks he has amplified his concerns, urging Iraqi leaders to compromise on security issues. He repeated and amplified those concerns today, urging the leaders to appoint interior and defense officials who are "non-sectarian, broadly accepted and not tied to militias."

If Iraq cannot control the sectarian agendas within its government, Mr. Khalilzad said, it "faces the risk of warlordism that Afghanistan went through for a period." Mr. Khalilzad was born in Afghanistan and served as an American envoy there before coming to Iraq last year.



Copyright 2006The New York Times

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Outside View: Iraq war outcome remains uncertain
By Anthony H. Cordesman
UPI Outside View Commentator
Published February 20, 2006


WASHINGTON -- Current trends in the Iraq conflict do not mean the insurgency is "winning."

It is not able to increase its success rate, establish sanctuaries, win larger-scale military clashes, or dominate the field. It is active largely in only four of Iraq's 18 governorates. (Some 59 percent of all U.S. military deaths have occurred in only two governorates: Al Anbar and Baghdad.) Much of its activity consists of bombings of soft civilian targets designed largely to provoke a more intense civil war or halt the development of an effective Iraqi government, rather than progress towards control at even the local level.


So far, the insurgency has done little to show it can successfully attack combat-ready Iraqi units, as distinguished from attack vulnerable casernes, recruiting areas, trainees or other relatively easy targets.

At the same time, the insurgents are learning and adapting through experience. They have shown the ability to increase the number of attacks over time, and they have hit successfully at many important political and economic targets. Provoking civil war and undermining the Iraqi political process may not bring the insurgents victory, but it can deny it to the Iraqi government and the United States, and the Sunni insurgents continue to strike successfully at politically, religiously, and ethnically important Shiite and Kurdish targets with suicide and other large bombings.

The insurgents continue to carry out a large number of successful killings, assassinations, kidnappings, extortions, and expulsions. These include an increase in the number of successful attacks on Iraqi officials, Iraqi forces, and their families, and well over 2,700 Iraqi officials and Iraqi forces were killed in 2005.

The Department of Defense estimated that 2,603 members of the Iraqi forces had been killed in action by October 2005, far more than the 1,506 members of U.S. forces that had been killed in action up to that date. The insurgents continue to succeed in intimidating their fellow Sunnis. There is no way to count or fully assess the pattern of such low level attacks, or separate them from crime or Shi'ite reprisals, but no one doubts that they remain a major problem.

Suicide attacks have increased, and killed and wounded Iraqis in large numbers. The number of car bombs rose from 420 in 2004 to 873 in 2005, and the number of suicide car bombs rose from 133 to 411, and the number of suicide vest attacks rose from 7 in 2004 to 67 in 2005. In case after case, Shi'ite civilians and Sunnis cooperating with the government were successfully targeted in ways designed to create a serious civil war.

The use of roadside bombs (improvised explosive devices, or IEDs) remains a major problem for U.S. and other Coalition forces. The total number of IED attacks nearly doubled from 5,607 in 2004 to 10,953 in 2005. While the success rate of IED attacks dropped significantly, from 25-30 percent in 2004 to 10% in 2005, they still had a major impact.

During 2005, there were 415 IED deaths out of a total of 674 combat deaths, or 61.6 percent of all combat deaths. IEDs accounted for 4,256 wounded out of a total of 5,941, some 71.6 percent of the wounded. From July 2005 to January 2006, IEDs killed 234 U.S. service members out of a total of 369 total combat deaths, or 63.4 percent. They accounted for 2314 wounded out of 2980 total combat wounded, or 77.7 percent.

To put these numbers in perspective, IEDs caused 900 deaths out of a total of 1,748 combat deaths, or 51.5 percent during the entire post-Saddam fall from March 2003 and January 2006. IEDs caused 9,327 wounded out of a total of 16,606 or 56.2 percent. However, the numbers of personnel killed and wounded by IEDs are scarcely the only measure of insurgent success. Casualties may have dropped but the number of attacks has gone up. IED attacks tie down manpower and equipment, disrupt operations, disrupt economic and aid activity, and interact with attacks on Iraqi civilians and forces to limit political progress and help try to provoke civil war.

Insurgents carried out more than 300 attacks on Iraqi oil facilities between March 2003 and January 2006. The end result was that oil production dropped by eight percent in 2005, and pipeline shipments through the Iraqi northern pipeline to Ceyhan in Turkey dropped from 800,000 barrels per day before the war to an average of 40,000 barrels per day in 2005. In July 2005, Iraqi officials estimated that insurgent attacks had already cost Iraq some $11 billion. They had kept Iraqi oil production from approaching the 3 million barrel a day goal in 2005 goal that the Coalition had set after the fall of Saddam Hussein, and production had dropped from per war levels of around 2.5 million barrels a day to an average of 1.83 million barrels a day in 2005, and level of only 1.57 million barrels a day in December 2005. These successes have major impact in a country where 94 percent of the government's direct income now comes from oil exports. ...

In short, there are cycles in an evolving struggle, but not signs that the struggle is being lost or won.

--

(Anthony H. Cordesman holds the Arleigh A. Burke chair of Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. This article is extracted from the executive summary to his February study on Iraqi force development and is reprinted with permission.)

--

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of World Peace Herald or United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

February 22, 2006
Blast Destroys Golden Dome of Sacred Shiite Shrine in Iraq
By EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 22 — Insurgents dressed as police commandos detonated powerful explosives today inside one of Shiite Islam's most sacred shrines, destroying most of the building and prompting thousands of Shiites to flood into streets across the country in protest.

Religious leaders called for restraint after the attack on the golden-domed shrine, located in the volatile town of Samarra. The shrine housed the tombs of two revered leaders of Shiite Islam and symbolized the place where the Imam Mahdi, a mythical, messianic figure, disappeared from this earth. Believers in the imam say he will return when the apocalypse is near, to cleanse the world of its evils.

Sunni Arab politicians said that more than 25 Sunni mosques across Iraq had been attacked in retaliation, although there was no independent confirmation of the number.

The blast in Samarra took place at about 7 a.m. and shook the city, a Sunni-dominated area that is nevertheless sacred to Shiites. The gunmen entered the shrine and handcuffed guards in the building, then set about planting the explosives, an official of the provincial governorate said. There were no immediate reports of casualties, but the golden dome was entirely destroyed, as well as three-quarters of the structure.

Samarra has long been one of the most violent cities in Iraq, and American forces there have struggled to contain a virulent Sunni-led insurgency. The American military has tried various offensives, only to have insurgents regroup and carry out further strikes. The Americans have also had little success in propping up Iraqi security forces in the town.

In the holy city of Najaf, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shiite cleric in Iraq, called for a period of mourning and asked that government offices be closed for the next three days.

Shiites protestors took to the streets shortly after the explosion.

In Baghdad, militiamen loyal to radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who is a fervent believer in the prophecy of the Imam Mahdi, drove through the streets of Sadr City with Kalashnikovs.

Stores were closed and locked, as shop owners retreated to their homes in a day of mourning. Men stood on street corners, discussing the bombing. Many blamed the American military. Others said that Islamic radicals were responsible.

"If I could find the people who did this, I would cut him into pieces," said Abdel Jaleel al-Sudani, a 50-year-old employee of the Health Ministry, who said he had marched in a demonstration earlier.

"I would rather hear of the death of a friend, than to hear this news."

Still, many Shiites expressed hope that their friends and neighbors would not resort to violence, and said that they would follow their religious leaders, who called for calm.

"It was a cowardly act," said Emad al-Watani, a 37-year-old employee at a sports club.

"The terrorists believe this will move us to act," he said, sitting on a couch with his small son at his knees. "They are wrong."In a news conference after the attack, Tarik al-Hashimi, the head of the Iraqi Islamic Party, one of the country's most prominent Sunni Arab political groups, said that more than 25 Sunni mosques had been burned, taken over or attacked with a variety of weapons, and that their party headquarters in the southern city of Basra was attacked.

In Baghdad, the American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said in a televised statement that the attack on the shrine was a "heinous crime" deliberately intended to foment strife, and that the United States would help to rebuild the structure.

The bombing of the shrine in Samarra came after two days of vicious bloodshed and political turmoil. A marketplace bombing in Baghdad and other attacks on Tuesday that killed 28 people, and violence on Monday that killed at least 26 people, signaled that a period of relative calm during political talks had come to an abrupt end.

Negotiations over the formation of a new government are taking place slowly and with much acrimony. Parties representing Shiite Arabs, Sunni Arabs and Kurds are jockeying for control of various ministries and making demands on several crucial issues, like changing the makeup of the population around the northern oil fields.

The volatility of the political process was exacerbated Monday by suggestions from Mr. Khalilzad, the American ambassador, that the United States might decrease financial help to a government that excluded some sects and ethnic groups.

Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting for this article from Baghdad and Christine Hauser contributed reporting from New York..



Copyright 2006The New York Times

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0222/dailyUpdate.html?s=mesdu


World > Terrorism & Security
posted February 22, 2006 at 11:00 a.m.

Dome of Shiite shrine destroyed in attack

Some Iraqi Shiites call for revenge after mosque in Sunni city of Samarra is heavily damaged.

By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

The day after a bomb on a Baghdad street killed 23 people, another bomb in the mainly Sunni city of Samarra destroyed the golden dome of one of the Al Askari Mosque, one of the holiest Shiite shrines in Iraq. The Associated Press reports that although no one was killed in the blast, the destruction of the mosque's dome sparked demonstrations and calls for revenge.
"This criminal act aims at igniting civil strife," said Mahmoud al-Samarie, a 28-year-old builder. "We demand an investigation so that the criminals who did this be punished. If the government fails to do so, then we will take arm and chase the people behind this attack."
The BBC reports that Robert Hillenbrand, the professor of Islamic Art at Edinburgh University, said that while the shrine was not of tremendous architectural importance, it has "enormous spiritual value" for millions of Shiite Muslims worldwide.




02/21/06

Arab nations say they will offset funds withheld by Israel

02/20/06

Report: Pentagon ignored repeated warnings on torture and abuse

02/17/06

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The Washington Post reports that Shiite Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari called for a three-day mourning period. "I call on my people to express their condemnation," Jaafari said. He asked Iraqis to "close the door to all those who are fishing in the troubled water."

Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the spiritual head of Iraq's Shiite Muslims, called for peaceful demonstrations, and urged his followers not to attack Sunni Muslims or their holy places. The Sunni Endowment, the government agency in charge of maintaining Sunni mosques and shrines, also condemned the destruction of the mosque. The agency said it would investigate the attack.

The greatest concern after the blast was a rise in sectarian violence. The Chinese news agency Xinhua reported that eight Sunni mosques in Baghdad were attacked and damaged, although no one was hurt since the mosques were empty at the time.

Last week Knight Ridder reported on the troubled city of Samarra, where the bombed mosque was located. Although the US military claimed to have retaken the city from Sunni insurgents 15 months ago, the city has steadily seen a rise in attacks on US and Iraqi troops, as well as an increase in sectarian violence.

Many of the American troops who patrol the city say they don't see much hope for Samarra. Some officers privately worry that the city will fall to insurgents as American troops withdraw.
"Samarra is one example of many towns in Iraq that are barely functioning," said Capt. Ryan Edwards, 31, of Plain City, Ohio, who majored in Middle Eastern studies at West Point. "What the insurgents know is that we lack the will to go after them. It's not the American Army that lacks the will; it's the American people and their leadership."

Knight Ridder also reports that explanations from the US military for the failure in Samarra vary: "US officials don't fully understand the city's tribal structure and its connections to the insurgency ... Insurgents have infiltrated and intimidated the Iraqi police and army, rendering them ineffective ... Nearly three years after the United States toppled Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, Samarra still has no effective city government ... Insurgent attacks have created a violent and dangerous environment in which American forces sometimes kill innocent civilians, further alienating the populace."
Meanwhile, in another development that may lead to more problems for the US in Iraq, the BBC's program Newsnight reports that almost 100 prisoners have died in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since August 2002, according to US group Human Rights First. Of the 98 deaths documented in the report, which drew upon information from the Pentagon and other US official sources, 34 were suspected or confirmed homicides. The Pentagon told Newsnight that it had not seen the report, but took allegations of abuse very seriously and would prosecute if necessary.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle...ticle347140.ece

from The Independent & The Independent on Sunday
23 February 2006 03:10 Home > News > World > Middle East
Destruction of holiest Shia shrine brings Iraq to the brink of civil war
By Patrick Cockburn
Published: 23 February 2006

Iraq took a lethal step closer to disintegration and civil war yesterday after a devastating attack on one of the country's holiest sites. The destruction of the golden-domed Shia shrine in Samarra sparked a round of bloody sectarian retaliation in which up to 60 Sunni mosques were attacked and scores of people were killed or injured.

The bomb attack has enraged the majority Shia population, who regard the shrine in the same way that Roman Catholics view St Peter's in Rome.

In a number of respects civil war in Iraq has already begun. Many of the thousand bodies a month arriving in the morgues in Baghdad are of people killed for sectarian reasons. It is no longer safe for members of the three main communities ­ the Sunni and Shia Arabs and the Kurds ­ to visit each other's parts of the country.

"Iraq is in a Weimar period like Germany in the 1920s which will either end with the country disintegrating or in an authoritarian government taking power," said Ghassan Atiyyah, an Iraqi political commentator.

The Golden Mosque in Samarra, north of Baghdad, was attacked at 6.55am yesterday when men dressed in police uniform tied up the guards and planted explosives. It was the third and most devastating attack on the Shia in Iraq in three days. A car bomb had killed 22 people in a Shia district of Baghdad late the previous night. The day before 12 died when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a bus in the Shia stronghold of Khadamiyah in west Baghdad.

"We should stand hand in hand to prevent the danger of civil war," warned President Jalal Talabani. "We are facing a major conspiracy that is targeting Iraq's unity." He called for the formation of a national unity government that "will bring stability to Iraq".

There was little sign of stability yesterday. Some 50 Sunni mosques were either burnt, blown up or taken over in Baghdad alone. At least three Sunni clerics were among 22 reported deaths nationwide.

Gunmen in police uniforms seized a dozen Sunni men suspected of being insurgents from a prison in the mainly Shia city of Basra yesterday and later killed 11 of them. Among those killed in the apparent reprisal attack for the bombing of the Samarra shrine were two Egyptians.

Armed militiamen of the Mehdi Army supporting the radical nationalist clergyman Muqtada al-Sadr took up positions on the streets of Baghdad and in the Shia cities of the south yesterday. Mr Al-Sadr himself is returning quickly to Iraq after cancelling a meeting with the Lebanese President. One of his aides said: "If the Iraqi government does not do its job to defend the Iraqi people, we are ready to do so." A Sunni politician, Tariq al-Hashimi, urged clerics and politicians to calm the situation " before it spins out of control".

As news spread of sectarian clashes and demonstrations people in Baghdad rushed home before dark and some started to stock up on food. In Najaf, another Shia holy city, protesters chanted: "Rise up Shia! Take revenge! "

The destruction of the Golden Mosque will be an immense psychological blow to Iraqi Shia who have endured so much down the centuries. The shrine contains the tombs of the 10th and 11th imams, Ali al-Hadi who died AD868 and his son Hassan Ali al-Askari who died AD874. His son, the last of the 12 Shia imams, Mohammed al-Mahdi, disappeared and is known as the "hidden imam". Shias believe he is still alive and will bring justice to humanity.

The shrine is very difficult to defend. The majority of people in Samarra are Sunni and in 2004 the city was taken by Islamic extremists before being recaptured by the Americans. Although I was searched the last time I visited the mosque, it has large gateways through the outer wall into an inner courtyard which armed men would find easy to storm. The shrine guards, who might detect a single bomber, were evidently not able to stop a unit of armed and determined men posing as police.

In one of the most serious acts of retaliation Shia protesters set fire yesterday to a famous Sunni shrine on the outskirts of Basra. It contains the tomb of Talha bin-Obeid-Allah, a companion of the Prophet Mohamed. The extent of the damage was not known.

Iraq has always been riven by sectarian divisions. Saddam Hussein's regime was primarily Sunni, though they are only 20 per cent of the population, while the Shia were politically marginalised. Friction between Shia and Sunni has increased since the US invasion as the Sunni resisted the occupation while the Shia demanded elections which they were bound to win because they are a majority of the population. If the Shia do hold power it will be the first time they have had their own state in the Arab world since the 12th century.

The parliamentary election on 15 December confirmed the Shia dominance, with their coalition winning 128 out of 275 seats. The vote was almost entirely along sectarian or ethnic lines.

The Shia clerical leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called for a week of mourning, forbade attacks on Sunni mosques and asked people to protest peacefully. He made a rare appearance on television yesterday, being shown meeting in his house in Najaf three other grand ayatollahs to discuss the destruction of the mosque in Samarra. There was no audio but a statement from Ayatollah Sistani's office said: "We call upon believers to express their protest ... through peaceful means. The extent of their sorrow and shock should not drag them into taking actions that serve the enemies who have been working to lead Iraq into sectarian strife."

In the past his appeals for calm have been heeded, despite a long series of atrocities by suicide bombers against the Shia beginning in August 2003 which has left several thousand dead.

There are signs that the Shias' patience is now growing thin. Death squads targeting Sunni operate in Baghdad.

The prolonged negotiations to form a new government underlines the difficulty the Shia, Kurds and Sunni are having in reaching an accommodation which will hold Iraq together. The Kurds have always demanded a degree of autonomy under a federal system which would give them quasi-independence. Under the constitution supported in a referendum by Kurds and Shia last October, the nine Shia provinces of the south would also become a canton largely independent of Baghdad. One Iraqi minister laments that "the Iraqi government may end up as a collection of buildings in the Green Zone" .

Although the US and the Kurds are demanding a national unity government, Shia leaders suspect that this is a manoeuvre by the US to keep them out of power. Washington has long been worried that the outcome of its invasion and overthrow of Saddam would be a Shia-dominated Islamic republic closely linked to Iran. It is also concerned with the rise of Mr al-Sadr, always against the occupation, to the position of power broker in the Shia coalition.

There are signs of increasing anti-American feeling among the Shia as they see the Americans allying themselves with the Sunni. As news spread of the attack on the Golden Mosque yesterday, thousands of young men marched shouting anti-American slogans through Sadr City, the great Shia slum with a population of two million. About 3,000 people marched through the Shia city of Kut shouting slogans against America and Israel and burning US and Israeli flags.

The extent of Shia retaliation may also depend on the Iranian government. The Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urged Shia not to seek revenge against Sunni Muslims, saying there were definite plots "to force the Shia to attack the mosques and other properties respected by the Sunni. Any measure to contribute to that direction is helping the enemies of Islam and is forbidden by sharia."

Instead Ayatollah Khamenei blamed the intelligence services of the US and Israel for being behind the bombs in Samarra.

Iraq took a lethal step closer to disintegration and civil war yesterday after a devastating attack on one of the country's holiest sites. The destruction of the golden-domed Shia shrine in Samarra sparked a round of bloody sectarian retaliation in which up to 60 Sunni mosques were attacked and scores of people were killed or injured.

The bomb attack has enraged the majority Shia population, who regard the shrine in the same way that Roman Catholics view St Peter's in Rome.

In a number of respects civil war in Iraq has already begun. Many of the thousand bodies a month arriving in the morgues in Baghdad are of people killed for sectarian reasons. It is no longer safe for members of the three main communities ­ the Sunni and Shia Arabs and the Kurds ­ to visit each other's parts of the country.

"Iraq is in a Weimar period like Germany in the 1920s which will either end with the country disintegrating or in an authoritarian government taking power," said Ghassan Atiyyah, an Iraqi political commentator.

The Golden Mosque in Samarra, north of Baghdad, was attacked at 6.55am yesterday when men dressed in police uniform tied up the guards and planted explosives. It was the third and most devastating attack on the Shia in Iraq in three days. A car bomb had killed 22 people in a Shia district of Baghdad late the previous night. The day before 12 died when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a bus in the Shia stronghold of Khadamiyah in west Baghdad.

"We should stand hand in hand to prevent the danger of civil war," warned President Jalal Talabani. "We are facing a major conspiracy that is targeting Iraq's unity." He called for the formation of a national unity government that "will bring stability to Iraq".

There was little sign of stability yesterday. Some 50 Sunni mosques were either burnt, blown up or taken over in Baghdad alone. At least three Sunni clerics were among 22 reported deaths nationwide.

Gunmen in police uniforms seized a dozen Sunni men suspected of being insurgents from a prison in the mainly Shia city of Basra yesterday and later killed 11 of them. Among those killed in the apparent reprisal attack for the bombing of the Samarra shrine were two Egyptians.

Armed militiamen of the Mehdi Army supporting the radical nationalist clergyman Muqtada al-Sadr took up positions on the streets of Baghdad and in the Shia cities of the south yesterday. Mr Al-Sadr himself is returning quickly to Iraq after cancelling a meeting with the Lebanese President. One of his aides said: "If the Iraqi government does not do its job to defend the Iraqi people, we are ready to do so." A Sunni politician, Tariq al-Hashimi, urged clerics and politicians to calm the situation " before it spins out of control".

As news spread of sectarian clashes and demonstrations people in Baghdad rushed home before dark and some started to stock up on food. In Najaf, another Shia holy city, protesters chanted: "Rise up Shia! Take revenge! "

The destruction of the Golden Mosque will be an immense psychological blow to Iraqi Shia who have endured so much down the centuries. The shrine contains the tombs of the 10th and 11th imams, Ali al-Hadi who died AD868 and his son Hassan Ali al-Askari who died AD874. His son, the last of the 12 Shia imams, Mohammed al-Mahdi, disappeared and is known as the "hidden imam". Shias believe he is still alive and will bring justice to humanity.

The shrine is very difficult to defend. The majority of people in Samarra are Sunni and in 2004 the city was taken by Islamic extremists before being recaptured by the Americans. Although I was searched the last time I visited the mosque, it has large gateways through the outer wall into an inner courtyard which armed men would find easy to storm. The shrine guards, who might detect a single bomber, were evidently not able to stop a unit of armed and determined men posing as police.

In one of the most serious acts of retaliation Shia protesters set fire yesterday to a famous Sunni shrine on the outskirts of Basra. It contains the tomb of Talha bin-Obeid-Allah, a companion of the Prophet Mohamed. The extent of the damage was not known.
Iraq has always been riven by sectarian divisions. Saddam Hussein's regime was primarily Sunni, though they are only 20 per cent of the population, while the Shia were politically marginalised. Friction between Shia and Sunni has increased since the US invasion as the Sunni resisted the occupation while the Shia demanded elections which they were bound to win because they are a majority of the population. If the Shia do hold power it will be the first time they have had their own state in the Arab world since the 12th century.

The parliamentary election on 15 December confirmed the Shia dominance, with their coalition winning 128 out of 275 seats. The vote was almost entirely along sectarian or ethnic lines.

The Shia clerical leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called for a week of mourning, forbade attacks on Sunni mosques and asked people to protest peacefully. He made a rare appearance on television yesterday, being shown meeting in his house in Najaf three other grand ayatollahs to discuss the destruction of the mosque in Samarra. There was no audio but a statement from Ayatollah Sistani's office said: "We call upon believers to express their protest ... through peaceful means. The extent of their sorrow and shock should not drag them into taking actions that serve the enemies who have been working to lead Iraq into sectarian strife."

In the past his appeals for calm have been heeded, despite a long series of atrocities by suicide bombers against the Shia beginning in August 2003 which has left several thousand dead.

There are signs that the Shias' patience is now growing thin. Death squads targeting Sunni operate in Baghdad.

The prolonged negotiations to form a new government underlines the difficulty the Shia, Kurds and Sunni are having in reaching an accommodation which will hold Iraq together. The Kurds have always demanded a degree of autonomy under a federal system which would give them quasi-independence. Under the constitution supported in a referendum by Kurds and Shia last October, the nine Shia provinces of the south would also become a canton largely independent of Baghdad. One Iraqi minister laments that "the Iraqi government may end up as a collection of buildings in the Green Zone" .

Although the US and the Kurds are demanding a national unity government, Shia leaders suspect that this is a manoeuvre by the US to keep them out of power. Washington has long been worried that the outcome of its invasion and overthrow of Saddam would be a Shia-dominated Islamic republic closely linked to Iran. It is also concerned with the rise of Mr al-Sadr, always against the occupation, to the position of power broker in the Shia coalition.

There are signs of increasing anti-American feeling among the Shia as they see the Americans allying themselves with the Sunni. As news spread of the attack on the Golden Mosque yesterday, thousands of young men marched shouting anti-American slogans through Sadr City, the great Shia slum with a population of two million. About 3,000 people marched through the Shia city of Kut shouting slogans against America and Israel and burning US and Israeli flags.

The extent of Shia retaliation may also depend on the Iranian government. The Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urged Shia not to seek revenge against Sunni Muslims, saying there were definite plots "to force the Shia to attack the mosques and other properties respected by the Sunni. Any measure to contribute to that direction is helping the enemies of Islam and is forbidden by sharia."

Instead Ayatollah Khamenei blamed the intelligence services of the US and Israel for being behind the bombs in Samarra.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-02-22-voa84.cfm


US Downplays Civil War Threat in Iraq Despite Horrific Mosque Attack
By David Gollust
State Department
22 February 2006



State Department officials are downplaying the prospect of civil warfare in Iraq despite Wednesday's bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra which they say was aimed at promoting sectarian conflict. They say the current social tensions are partly a legacy of Saddam Hussein.


Damaged Shi'ite mosque in Samarra
The bombing of one the holiest sites in Shi'a Islam led to crisis meetings among senior administration officials and vigorous condemnations of what the White House termed a senseless crime.

But officials here are insisting that considerable progress has been made over the last two years toward a multi-confessional and multi-ethnic Iraqi society, and that the Samarra bombing should not tip the country toward civil war.

The first official U.S. reaction to the attack was an unusual joint statement by the American ambassador in Baghdad Zalmay Khalilzad and the U.S. military commander in Iraq, General George Casey.

In the statement read to local television outlets, the ambassador said Iraqis, in their sadness and anger over a despicable crime, must not allow themselves to be divided.

Ambassador Khalilzad said those who commit acts of violence in the wake of the bombing are only serving the interests of terrorists led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who want to see Iraq descend into sectarian violence:

"This is a critical moment for Iraq," he said. "We call on all Iraqis to unite against terror and violence. Coming together in unity to condemn this barbaric act, and working for Iraq's salvation will be the right response. This desperate and despicable act shows that terrorists stop at nothing and care for nothing."

Ambassador Khalilzad and General Casey, in a gesture later endorsed by President Bush, said the Samarra mosque will be rebuilt and restored to its former glory and that the United States will contribute to its reconstruction.

Briefing reporters, State Department Deputy Spokesman Adam Ereli said Iraq's current religious and ethnic tensions are partly a legacy of 30 years of divide and rule tactics by Saddam Hussein, aggravated more recently by the insurgents.

But he insisted that significant progress has been made toward building a democratic system and society and that talk of a civil war would be overstating the current situation:

"There are some savage and unprincipled elements out there that are going to stop at nothing, including attacking one of Shi'a Islam's holiest shrines to promote the kind of unrest that the great majority of Iraqis have clearly demonstrated they don't want to see," he said. "I don't call that civil war, I call that attempts to undermine understanding and an emerging compact among Iraqi society for a peaceful political future."


Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, right, meets with Condoleezza Rice in Cairo, Feb. 22, 2006
The situation in Iraq is expected to be a key issue for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as she continues a Middle East mission Thursday in Abu Dhabi and talks with delegates of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

The Bush administration wants U.S. Gulf allies to increase their diplomatic presence in Baghdad, while stepping up aid and forgiving Iraqi debts left over from the Saddam Hussein era.

February 23, 2006
Sectarian Fury Turns Violent in Wake of Iraq Shrine Blast
By EDWARD WONG and ROBERT F. WORTH
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 23 - At least 95 people, some of them prominent Sunni Arab clerics, were killed in revenge in Baghdad and the surrounding areas in the chaotic 24 hours following the bombing Wednesday morning of one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines, in the town of Samarra, an Interior Ministry official said today. More bodies were being discovered throughout the day across Iraq.

Sunni Arab politicians broke off talks with Shiite and Kurdish leaders over the formation of a new government, saying they would not engage in discussions until those responsible for the attacks on Sunnis had been brought to justice.

At least 16 Iraqis were killed, half of them soldiers, when a powerful bomb exploded by an Iraqi Army patrol this morning northeast of the capital, in the volatile provincial capital of Baquba. At least 20 people were injured.

Thousands of Shiites took to the streets across Iraq in a second day of protests against the insurgent attack in Samarra, which destroyed the golden dome of the Al Askariya shrine, the burial place of two revered Shiite imams. The protests today were largely peaceful, though the crowds expressed unbridled fury. In Baghdad, militiamen loyal to firebrand Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr helped organize some of the most vocal demonstrations.

Three journalists working for the Al Arabiya network were ambushed and killed by gunmen on the outskirts of Samarra on Wednesday as they were reporting on the shrine bombing, the network said today.

The attack on the shrine has sparked the worst sectarian conflict in Iraq since the American invasion, with Iraqi leaders and clerics calling for restraint and trying to steer the country away from exploding into full-fledged civil war. The top American military commanders and the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, have been talking with Iraqi leaders to try to defuse the groundswell of anger among Sunni and Shiite Arabs.

Of the 95 bodies discovered since the bombing, 48 were in Baghdad, believed to be Sunnis living in or near Shiite enclaves, the interior ministry official said. The other 47 were found in a farming area south of Baghdad called Nahrawan, where Shiite militiamen and Sunni fighters clashed last fall in a battle that left dozens dead.

The violence began on Wednesday morning, when a powerful bomb shattered the golden dome of the Al Askariya shrine and set off a day of sectarian fury in which mobs formed across Iraq to chant for revenge and attacked dozens of Sunni mosques.

The bombing, 60 miles north of Baghdad, wounded no one but left the famous golden dome at the site in ruins. The shrine is central to one of the most dearly held beliefs of Shiite Islam, and the bombing, coming after two days of bloody attacks that have left dozens of Shiite civilians dead, ignited a nationwide outpouring of rage and panic that seemed to bring Iraq closer than ever to outright civil war.

Shiite militia members flooded the streets of Baghdad, firing rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns at Sunni mosques while Iraqi Army soldiers who had been called out to stop the violence stood helpless nearby. By the day's end, mobs had struck or destroyed 27 Sunni mosques in the capital, killing three imams and kidnapping a fourth, Interior Ministry officials said.

Thousands of grief-stricken people in Samarra crowded into the shrine's courtyard after the bombing, some weeping and kissing the fallen stones, others angrily chanting, "Our blood and souls we sacrifice for you, imams!"

Iraq's major political and religious leaders issued urgent appeals for restraint, and Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari called for a three-day mourning period in a televised address. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most senior Shiite cleric, released an unusually strong statement in which he said, "If the government's security forces cannot provide the necessary protection, the believers will do it."

Most Iraqi leaders attributed the attack to terrorists bent on exploiting sectarian rifts, but some also blamed the United States for failing to prevent it. Even the leader of Iraq's main Shiite political alliance said he thought Mr. Khalilzad, the American ambassador, bore some responsibility. The Shiite leader, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, said Mr. Khalilzad's veiled threat on Monday to withdraw American support if Iraqis could not form a nonsectarian government helped provoke the bombing. "This declaration gave a green light for these groups to do their operation, so he is responsible for a part of that," Mr. Hakim said at a news conference.

The shrine bombing came as Iraq's political leaders continued to struggle under heavy American pressure to agree on the principles of a new national unity government. As in past moments of political transition here, violence has mounted during the uncertainty, and the attacks, mostly against Shiite civilians, seemed aimed specifically at creating more conflict between Iraq's Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni Arab populations. That effort had at least a momentary success on Wednesday, and the streets of the capital emptied as Iraqis hurried home early, fearing further attacks by Shiite militia members or possible reprisals by Sunni Arabs.

Mr. Khalilzad issued a joint statement on Wednesday with Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, in which he deplored the bombing as a "crime against humanity" and pledged American help in rebuilding the dome. In Washington, President Bush issued a statement extending his sympathy to Iraqis. "The United States condemns this cowardly act in the strongest possible terms," Mr. Bush said. "I ask all Iraqis to exercise restraint in the wake of this tragedy, and to pursue justice in accordance with the laws and Constitution of Iraq."

Mr. Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia led many of the violent protests on Wednesday, placed some blame on what he called the "occupation forces" for the bombing but did not give more details. Mr. Sadr told the Arabic satellite network Al Jazeera that he was cutting short his visit in Lebanon because of the bombing.

The attack in Samarra began at 7 a.m., when a dozen men dressed in paramilitary uniforms entered the shrine and handcuffed four guards who were sleeping in a back room, a spokesman for the provincial governor's office said. The attackers then placed a bomb in the dome and detonated it, collapsing most of the structure and heavily damaging an adjoining wall.

The shrine is one of four major Shiite shrines in Iraq, and the site has special meaning because 2 of the 12 imams revered by mainstream Shiites are buried there: Ali al-Hadi, who died in A.D. 868 and his son, the 11th imam, Hassan al-Askari. Also, according to legend, the 12th Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, known as the "Hidden Imam," was at the site of the shrine before he disappeared.

These figures resonate with Iraqi Shiites, whose traditions have long been shaped by violence with the rival Sunni sect. At an earlier time of rising tensions, the 10th imam was forced from his home in Medina by the powerful Sunni caliph in Baghdad and was sent to live in Samarra, where he could be kept under closer supervision. Both he and his son were believed to have been poisoned by the caliphate.

Fearing such persecution, Muhammad al-Mahdi, who was just a child when he became the 12th imam, was hidden away in a cave, where he held forth through intermediaries for about 70 years. Then he is said to have gone into what Shiites call occultation, a kind of suspended state from which it is believed he will return before the Judgment Day to bring justice during a time of chaos.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack, but some Iraqi officials pointed a finger at Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the terrorist group believed to be responsible for many of the attacks on Shiite civilians and mosques in the past two years.

Samarra's population is mostly Sunni Arab, and it was a haven for insurgents until 2004, when American and Iraqi troops carried out a major operation to retake the city and the Golden Mosque from guerrilla fighters. But the insurgents have filtered back since then, and American troops in and around the city are now regularly attacked.

Shops soon closed across the country as angry mobs filled the streets. In Kirkuk, about a thousand Shiites marched in the streets, chanting against America, members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, and Takfiris, a word used to describe militant Islamists who denounce other Muslims as infidels. Similar demonstrations broke out in Baquba, Najaf, Karbala, and other cities. In the southern Shiite city of Basra, Shiite militia members damaged at least two Sunni mosques, killing an imam, and launched an attack on the headquarters of Iraq's best-known Sunni Arab political party. One man was killed in the gun battle that ensued and 14 were wounded, the police said.

Later, the Basra police took 10 foreign Arabs who had been jailed in connection with terrorist attacks from their cells and shot them dead, apparently in retaliation for the shrine bombing, a police official said.

Ayatollah Sistani issued another statement on Wednesday warning the faithful not to attack any Sunni holy sites. But it was too late: angry mobs had already begun shooting and firing rocket-propelled grenades, and setting some mosques on fire. Imams at three Baghdad mosques — Al Sabar, Al Yaman, and Al Rashidi — were killed, Interior Ministry officials said. A fourth imam, Sheik Abdul Qadir Sabih Nori of the Amjed al-Zahawi mosque, was kidnapped, the officials said.

Sunni Arab political leaders mixed their denunciations of the shrine bombing with anger at the attacks on Sunni mosques. Tarik al-Hashimi, the leader of the Iraq Islamic Party, Iraq's best-known Sunni political group, urged Iraqis to "confront the criminals and put a stop to these crimes before it is too late."

In Sadr City, the vast Shiite slum in Baghdad, flatbed trucks bristled with black-clad militia fighters carrying guns. Leaning out car windows, men with grenade launchers pointed them menacingly.

"If I could find the people who did this, I would cut him into pieces," said Abdel Jaleel al-Sudani, a 50-year-old employee of the Health Ministry, who said he had marched in a demonstration earlier. "I would rather hear of the death of a friend than to hear this news."



Copyright 2006The New York Times

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/02/23/news/iraq.php

Shiite fury explodes in Iraq; scores are killed
By Edward Wong and Robert F. Worth The New York Times

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2006


BAGHDAD At least 47 people, some of them prominent Sunni Arab clerics, were killed in revenge attacks in Baghdad in the chaotic 24 hours following the bombing of one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines, in the town of Samarra, an Interior Ministry official said Thursday. At least 40 more bodies were found south of Baghdad, and more were being discovered throughout the day across Iraq.

Sunni Arab politicians broke off talks with Shiite and Kurdish leaders over the formation of a new government, saying they would not engage in discussions until apologies had been made for dozens of attacks that took place Wednesday against Sunni mosqu