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Debate
Debt relief: “Responsibility goes both ways”
Aggressors, not peacekeepers in Iraq
01/2007 |
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Aggressors, not peacekeepers
Last Month, the Iraq Study Group presented its analysis in Washington. Its assessment that there is no safe way to success for the USA, is correct, but its advice of supporting Iraq’s official army seems dubious.
[ By Hans Dembowski ]
It is highly welcome that the Iraq Study Group, the expert-commission headed by James Baker, the former secretary of state, and Lee Hamilton, the former congressman, has publicly acknowledged the terrible mess US intervention has made of Iraq and thus backed away from President George Bush’s faith in military shock and awe. Many of the commission’s recommendations make sense. Yes, it will be necessary to engage in talks with both Syria and Iran, if violence is to be stemmed. Yes, stability in the Middle East does depend on Israelis settling their conflict with Palestinans, and sustained American pressure in that direction will be needed. Yes, in a situation as desperate as in Iraq today, success is an uncertain goal and no “magic formula” can resolve the crisis.
In one central aspect, however, the advice of the Iraq Study Group is flawed. Baker, Hamilton et al believe that the Bush administraion should reduce the number of US combat troops in Iraq and, instead, boost the number of soldiers training Iraq’s official security forces. The underlying assumption is that, whereas foreign troops can’t win the war, domestic troups can. That logic is still a primarily military one – and it is unlikely to work out.
What is going on in Iraq is a brutal civil war. In that setting, no armed forces, be they domestic or other, can stay neutral once they have become involved in the fighting. In the eyes of most people affected, the distinction between a “legitimate, national army” and “criminal militias” is hard to make – and blurry in any case. What matters is whether the men with guns are likely to become dangerous for family and friends, not whether they have any mandate from some kind of official government. Attrocities committed by US troops from Abu Ghraib to Haditha have compounded the problem – and so has the failure of the political leadership in Washington to do anything else than blame “a few rotten apples”, even though official policy obviously had encouraged the culprits. Today, it is inconceiveable that the national Iraqi army can become any kind of neutral peacekeeping force. In that respect, US support – whether in terms of training or fire power – will not make much difference. It is improbable that the very aggressor who set off violence in the first place will ever be viewed as an honest broker, able to mend fences between Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds and the sub-groupings of these communities that are now bent on killing one another.
On the other hand, it is likely that mayhem would only grow worse if US troops withdrew fast. Obviously, the world’s super power cannot wreak havoc somewhere, and then simply walk away. What might help, though, would be putting US troops under a different command than that of the Pentagon. The UN, for instance, might still enjoy enough credibility in the region to handle the military dimensions of peacekeeping. The idea may seem utopian – but so is the one of US commanders doing the job.
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