By Robert Dreyfuss, TomPaine.com.
Posted January 25, 2006.

Friday's election results make it nearly impossible to stop the country from descending into full-blown civil war.

There's no one left to put Humpty Dumpty together again in Baghdad. Zalmay Khalilzad, America's feckless ambassador in Iraq, is trying. But, unwilling or unable to reach out to the Iraqi resistance, Khalilzad instead finds himself immersed instead in gooey egg mass. The Iraqi body politic is shattered, with little hope now of avoiding an all-out civil war. That's the only conclusion that can be reached by looking at the results of the Dec. 15 elections in Iraq, whose official returns were announced on Friday.

Those results gave the Shiite religious bloc 128 seats out of 275. Their junior partners, the two Kurdish warlord parties, got 53. The religious Sunnis got 44, the secular Sunni parties got 11, and Iyad Allawi's non-ethnic, secular alliance got 25. So the coalition of Shiite fundamentalists and Kurdish warlords controls 181 seats, at least, just a few votes shy of the two-thirds majority needed to form a government. Let's look at the bad news, item by item.

First, the Arab League's peace initiative for Iraq is dead. It was, I've written, perhaps the last best hope for holding Iraq together and avoiding an ethnic-sectarian war. The effort began last fall, when Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan organized an initiative to hold talks between Iraq's Shiite-Kurdish government, the Sunni-led opposition, and the resistance. Scheduled for Cairo last November, the first meeting failed when the two fundamentalist Shiite parties, Al Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, said that they would not talk to the insurgents, whom they describe as "terrorists." (That word, in fact, is increasingly used by SCIRI and Al Dawa to refer to all Sunnis in Iraq, not just to Abu Musab Al Zarqawi's Al Qaeda or even to the Baathist-military resistance.)

In December, I wrote for TomPaine.com that the Arab League effort would collapse if the SCIRI-Dawa forces, augmented by the fanatical Mahdi Army of Muqtada Sadr, won big in the elections. They did, winning nearly half of the seats in the new parliament. So, no surprise: on Saturday, Iraq's foreign minister, a Kurd, announced that the scheduled Arab League follow up meeting in February, which had been dubbed a National Accord Conference, would not be held.

Second, the notion that Iraq can form a "national unity government" now, led by the SCIRI-Dawa-Mahdi Army coalition, is beyond absurd. Khalilzad, described by The New York Times, as the "unabashedly hands-on U.S. ambassador," is pushing hard for the inclusion of some docile Sunnis in the new government. "The advice of Zal, as he is known here, will not be subtle," says the Times , hopefully. And listen to the pathetically naïve musings of a "senior U.S. official" in Iraq, quoted by Reuters:


For us Iraq can't build on a relatively narrower sectarian or ethnic basis. It has to be inclusive. We support a unity government as the best means of bringing Iraqis together after a hard-fought election contest, and we are encouraging all sides in this to look to the advantages. In the end it's an Iraqi decision not an American decision. We are prepared to help the Iraqis in any way we can to reach an agreement that brings the country together, broadens the base of support of the Iraqi government and results in a competent and capable government.

In fact, however, the all-or-nothing sectarianism of Iraq is now set in stone. That is thanks to nearly three years of U.S. mismanagement in Iraq, during which time the United States first insisted on installing in power the creatures that populated Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress and its exile allies, then forced every Iraqi institution from the 2003 Iraqi Governing Council to the interim government of Iyad Allawi on down to apportion its power according to some ethnic and sectarian census, meanwhile encouraging the SCIRI-Dawa alliance to establish its power, and its paramilitary forces, throughout southern Iraq.

Why is a national unity government impossible? Because the 55 Sunnis who were elected to the parliament do not represent the resistance, and so they cannot exercise influence over the fighters opposed to the U.S. occupation. And, even among those Sunnis who will now take up seats in the parliament, only a handful -- perhaps the Iraqi Islamic Party and a few others -- are willing to join the Shiite-dominated regime. Therefore, Khalilzad cannot succeed in creating a broad-based Iraqi government that can successfully appeal to the resistance. All the king's horses and all the king's U.S. troops can't do it.

Making everything worse is the fact that the hard-line Shiites, especially Abdel Aziz Al Hakim and Adel Abdel Mahdi of SCIRI, have ruled out even minor compromises with the Sunni opposition. Their policy is: No to "the terrorists," no to changes in the divisive Iraqi constitution, and no to the Arab League. By refusing to change the constitution, the Shiites insist on the imposition of sharia-style Islamic courts, insist on grabbing nearly all of Iraq's future oil revenues for the Shiite south, insist on creating breakaway "federal" states in the Kurdish north and the Shiite south, insist on giving Kirkuk to the revanchist and expansionist Kurds, and more.

That's the ersatz constitution, you will recall, that passed in a referendum on Oct. 15, despite the fact that 50 of its 130 clauses hadn't yet been finished, despite the fact that copies of the document weren't printed and circulated to the population that was voting, despite the fact that it was written in secret (under U.S. supervision) by the Shiite-Kurd majority over the objections of the token Sunnis in the room. The Sunni community was tricked into voting on Oct. 15 and then Dec. 15 by promises that the constitution's bad provisions could be amended. Now, SCIRI says: No such luck.

Making things even worse, the Shiites continue to insist that Sunnis who were elected to the parliament are too close to the resistance and are therefore "terrorists." This is not an argument calculated to win friends among the Sunni bloc. If SCIRI demands that Sunni politicians disavow the armed resistance, they will succeed only in recruiting a handful of quislings into the quisling-run regime in Baghdad.

It's part and parcel of the dead-end "de-Baathification" scheme that was pushed so far by Chalabi that has now been twisted to the most extreme interpretation. "The Shiites have turned de-Baathification into de-Sunnification," according to Salman Al Jumayli, spokesperson for the Sunni Accordance Front, which has 44 seats in the coming parliament. "They're only targeting Sunnis and they've turned it into a weapon to get rid of all their political opponents." Khalilzad seems genuinely distressed by this, but he is at a loss over what to do about it. What seems clear is that the signals put out by Khalilzad before the election, about being willing to talk to the resistance, have been extinguished, along with Allawi's hopes of getting enough seats to create a nonsectarian, centrist (and pro-U.S.) government.

So what's left is an increasingly Iran-leaning, Shiite fundamentalist theocracy with a rump Kurdish republic attached to it. And you can put this in your signs-of-things-to-come file: Muqtada Sadr, the cherubic (and Rubenesque) militant young cleric, said on Sunday that the Mahdi Army, which is now a big part of the Iraqi government to be, says that his forces will fight alongside Iran's if Iran is attacked by the United States over its nuclear program.

So it's curtains for Bush's "victory or defeat" policy. The insurgency will strengthen, so that won't help. The Shiites are likely to move in an increasingly radical (and pro-Iranian direction), so that won't help. The violence will get worse.

Robert Dreyfuss is a freelance writer based in Alexandria, Va., who specializes in politics and national security issues.

Inevitable? It's already there! http://www.forbes.com/technology/feeds/ap/2006/02/16/ap2531557.html

"Death Squad" Investigated; Widespread Attacks Kill 14 in Iraq
By PAUL GARWOOD , 02.16.2006, 08:11 AM

Iraq's Interior Ministry has launched an investigation into claims that a police death squad has been operating in the country, a top official said Thursday. Attacks around the country killed 14 people, including six Iraqis in a car bombing and three sheiks in a drive-by shooting.

Iraq Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari also condemned the latest images of detainees abused in the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in 2003, but noted that those responsible had already been punished.

The investigation into the death squads was announced as police found the bodies of 10 more men who had been shot execution-style and dumped in three different areas of Baghdad's predominantly Shiite suburb of Shula.

Maj. Gen. Hussein Kamal, Iraq's deputy interior minister in charge of domestic intelligence, said the investigation followed U.S. military claims that soldiers had detained 22 Iraqi men wearing police uniforms who were about to kill a Sunni Arab man last month.

"We have been informed about this and the interior minister has formed an investigation committee to learn more about the Sunni person and those 22 men, particularly whether they work for the Interior Ministry or claim to belong to the ministry," Kamal told The Associated Press.

A U.S. general said American forces had found evidence of a death squad operating in Iraq's Interior Ministry, the Chicago Tribune reported on its Web site Wednesday evening. Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson, who commands the civilian police training teams in Iraq, said the men were employed by the Interior Ministry as highway patrol officers.

An American military official in Baghdad confirmed the report but declined to provide further details. He spoke on condition of anonymity as he was unauthorized to speak to the media.

The bodies of Sunni Arabs, bound and gagged and shot in the head, have been turning up in Baghdad for months, fueling allegations of sectarian killings, which Sunni Arab leaders say are often carried out by Shiites in army or police uniforms.

Shiites have also been systematically massacred by Sunni extremists in Baghdad, Diyala province and mixed areas to the south of the capital.

Human Rights Minister Nermine Othman said she believed lower-level Interior Ministry officials were using criminals to kill Iraqis.

"I think there are many people inside the Interior Ministry involved with these deaths or giving the uniforms of colleagues to criminals," she said. "These officials are helping the criminals by informing them on where targeted people are going or where people are living. They are helping them in different ways."

A Sunni Arab political group, the Iraqi Islamic Party, praised the investigation and said perpetrators should be brought to justice.

"Since a very long time, we have been talking about such violations and we have been telling the Interior Ministry officials that there are squads that raid houses and arrest people who are found later executed in different parts of the capital," said party member Nasser al-Ani.

In the latest violence, a car bomb targeting a U.S. military patrol killed six civilians and wounded 11 Thursday in northern Baghdad's Shula neighborhood, said police Maj. Moussa Abdul Karim.

Three prominent tribal figures driving to a funeral were killed by gunmen spraying machine-gun fire from a minibus in Khan Bani Saad, about 25 miles northeast of Baghdad, Diyala police's Joint Coordination Center said.

Police identified the victims as Sheik Mindab al-Khafaji, 55, a clan leader and head of Khan Bani Saad tribal council; Sheik Hanash al-Moussaoui, 45, a member of Khan Bani Saad's local council; and Raad Ahmed Chibish al-Jibouri, 45, a Sunni Arab member of the tribal council.

"We condemn these criminal acts directed against our brothers," said Abdul-Rassoul Saeed, head of Khan Bani Saad council. "The aim of this attack is to ignite civil strife, but such efforts will fail."

Khan Bani Saad is a predominantly Sunni Arab town of about 40,000 people on the edge of Diyala province, which borders Baghdad. It has been the scene of previous attacks targeting religious leaders and supporters of U.S.-led reconstruction

In downtown Ramadi, gunmen also killed the brother of the deputy governor of the volatile western Anbar province, police Lt. Khalid al-Dulaimi said.

An Iraqi policeman was killed and three bystanders were wounded by a car bomb in Baghdad's Karradah neighborhood, while gunmen killed an Iraqi Army captain and his driver in the northern city of Kirkuk, police said.

Three prominent Iraqi tribal members were also fatally shot in a drive-by attack on their car north of Baghdad, police said. A Jordanian Embassy driver of Iraqi nationality was seriously wounded in a drive-by shooting in western Baghdad, said a hospital official who initially said the victim had died.

Another car bomb blast in Baghdad targeted the convoy of Nouri al-Nouri, a former government human rights official who was dismissed in December over the discovery of tortured detainees in a Baghdad government building. Al-Nouri escaped the blast unharmed but four civilians were wounded, police Lt. Mohammed Khayoun said.

The motive for the attack was unclear, but it came as Othman, the human rights minister, said several Interior and Justice Ministry employees were expected to be prosecuted over the torture about 170 Iraqis, most found in November at the Jadriyah Interior Ministry facility in Baghdad.

Othman said her ministry will release a final report on the torture claims next month.

In a statement on the detainee abuse photos broadcast on an Australian TV station Wednesday, al-Jaafari said "the Iraqi government condemns the torture practices revealed through the recent pictures that show Iraqi prisoners being tortured."

But he welcomed the U.S. denunciation of the pictures, which date back to 2003, when earlier images were released of U.S. forces abusing detainees.

    STEPHANOPOULOS: What does civil war look like?

    WILL: This. This is a civil war.

    Now, does Iraq have a government? Let me just postulate the question. A government exists when it has a reasonable monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. As long as the militias are out there, the existence of an Iraqi government is questionable. Think of Los Angeles. If Los Angeles said the Bloods and the Crips are going to be tolerated, they’re going to be armed and police their areas and enforce the law in certain areas, what sense would Los Angeles have of government?

    ZAKARIA: It was a very bad week for iraq. The fundamental problem here remains the original one, which is when people don’t have a sense of security because there were not enough American troops, they will revert to their script, their tribal loyalty, the Sunni and Shiite. This happens in every society. That is what is happening, a pervasive sense of insecurity has made them search for security in the things they can find, which is their sectarian identities. But the fact that a few hundred people died — and it is a terrible tragedy — it does not necessarily mean we’re on the brink of civil war. India goes through sectarian violence from time to time. Nigeria does —

    STEPHANOPOULOS: What does civil war look like?

    WILL: This. This is a civil war.

George Will: “This Is A Civil War”

Whatdayasay: Feingold/Will in '08!

To paraphrase Mark Hannah - that lunatic is one heartbeat away from the presidency. It would be fun watching heads spin, but mine would be one of them.

    "They failed to incite an Iraqi civil war"? "for the sake of our nation's security, this will not happen on my watch."

  "I know some fear the possibility that Iraq could break apart and fall into civil war.  I don't believe these fears are justified.