http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/090804X.shtml Report: Civil War Most Likely Outcome in Iraq
By Tom Regan
The Christian Science Monitor
Sunday 06 September 2004
Major British institute says breakup of Iraq is a likely scenario.
While America's attention was focused last week on the Republican National Convention in New York, and the world was watching the hostage tragedy unfold in the small Russian town of Beslan, the prestigious British Royal Institute of International Affairs (known as Chatham House) issued a report saying a major civil war that would destablize the entire Middle East region is the mostly likely outcome for Iraq if current conditions continue. Reuters reported Friday that the report said the best outcome Iraq can hope for is "to muddle through an 18-month political transition that began when Washington formally handed over sovereignty on June 28." The Los Angeles Times reports that the fragmentation of Iraq is the "default scenario" in the eyes of the Chatham House team.
'Under this scenario,' the report says, 'Kurdish separatism and Shia assertiveness work against a smooth transition to elections, while the Sunni Arab minority remains on the offensive and engaged in resistance. Antipathy to the US presence grows, not so much in a unified Iraqi nationalist backlash, but rather in a fragmented manner that could presage civil war if the US cuts and runs,' it says. 'Even if the US forces try to hold out and prop up the central authority, it may still lose control.'
The Chatham House report, called 'Iraq in Transition: Vortex or Catalyst?' was released last Wednesday. (Chatham House is often the scene of regular international news events; British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw recently gave a major speech there in August where he called for the overhaul of the United Nations.) The organization's Middle East team came up with three possible scenarios for Iraq, two of which would create real problems for the US and its allies:
If the Shiite, Sunni, and Kurd factions fail to adhere to the Iraqi Interim Government (IIG), Iraq could fragment or descend into civil war.
If the transitional government, backed up by a supportive US presence, can assert control, Iraq may well hold together.
A 'Regional Remake' could overtake the other two scenarios if the dynamics unleashed by Shiite and Kurdish assertiveness trigger repercussions in neighboring states. Other Kurds would want their own independence, and Shiites in other countries would be more aggressive.
"The first scenario is the most likely," says the report.
Shiite Arabs will not settle for a subservient position, Kurds will not relinquish the gains in internal self-government and policing during the 1990s and Sunnis will neither accept a Shiite-led central government, nor a Kurdish autonomy in the north. If the IIG or its successors fail to assert itself as an organization capable of appealing across Iraq’s societal cleavages, Iraq will fragment.
In an article in the New York Review of Books, former US ambassador to Croatia, UN official in East Timor, and current senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non- Proliferation Peter Galbraith writes that "It is a measure of how far America's once grand ambitions for Iraq have diminished that security has become more important than democracy for a mission intended not only to transform Iraq but with it the entire Middle East." Mr. Galbraith, who recently returned from his second long trip to Iraq, agrees with the Chatham House worst-case scenario and also says it is the most likely outcome. He writes that Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is a troubling choice to create the political stability that the US and its allies so desperately need to keep Iraq from falling apart.
Allawi's colleagues speak of him with evident affection, but even his allies point to his shortcomings. Several of the INA's
most respected leaders left the organization because they objected to Allawi's authoritarian style, including an unwillingness to heed advice and inability to delegate authority. As an anti-Saddam activist, fellow exiles described Allawi as routinely embellishing his credentials. He would claim to have had meetings with world leaders that turned out to be fictional, and has said that he controlled operatives inside Iraq who, in fact, never existed.
But in an interview with the Nashville Tennessean on Sunday, Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the recent 'successful' resolution of the siege of Najaf is a positive sign of things to come.
I think what we saw in Najaf was actually very good from the viewpoint of Iraqis handling their problem. The solution there was the prime minister and his cabinet working with (Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al) Sistani, the cleric, and private leaders and government leaders working in partnership with the multinational forces coalition there and finding the solutions — which they found and which hopefully will last. Although the fellow (rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al) Sadr is not particularly reliable. He changes his mind frequently, but for now Iraqis are in charge.
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