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Iraqis, American military prepare for
possible policy shifts
11.11.2006
By Aamer Madhani
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November 11, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq - With President Bush set to
meet Monday with a bipartisan Iraq study group
co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker,
Iraqis are bracing for a significant shift in U.S.
strategy as the White House considers a bevy of
ideas, proposals and options on how to move forward
in Iraq.
After Tuesday's overwhelming Democratic election
victory and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's
abrupt resignation, Iraq's parliamentarians and
political operatives believe that the U.S. approach
to their war-torn country is about to undergo a
major overhaul.
But the view from Baghdad is that many of the
proposals floating around Washington-such as a
phased withdrawal of U.S. troops, using U.S. forces
only in emergencies from outside the country, or
persuading Iran and Syria to get more involved - are
fraught with problems, none assuring a certain and
quick solution.
"It is probably a good thing for Iraq that there has
been this big change in Washington, because it will
force the Bush administration to consider new
ideas," said parliamentarian Haider al-Ebadi, a
senior member of the Shiite Dawa Party. "The concern
is that Washington will impose changes too fast and
further than the Iraqis are ready to go."
On Friday, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, said that the military would be
doing its own review of its Iraq strategy.
"We have to give ourselves a good honest scrub about
what is working and what is not working, what are
the impediments to progress and what should we
change about the way we are doing it to make sure
that we get to the objective that we set for
ourselves," Pace told CBS's "Early Show."
Said Stephen Hadley, the president's national
security adviser, "The president said the other day
that what was going on in Iraq in terms of our
efforts (was) not working well enough and not
working fast enough. And the question is, that being
the judgment, how can we do better? And I think
there's an opportunity for Republicans and Democrats
to share some ideas on how to do that."
The 10-member Iraqi Study Group, led by Baker and
former Sen. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., has made several
fact- finding missions to Iraq and has interviewed
hundreds of officials and experts since it was
formed in March.
Before the end of the year, it is expected to hand
President Bush a set of recommendations on how to
accelerate
progress in Iraq.
Baker is a longtime confidante and adviser to the
president's father, President George H.W. Bush.
Robert Gates, the former CIA director picked by the
president to replace Rumsfeld, also has been a
member of the group, although White House spokesman
Tony Snow said Friday he would be resigning from the
panel.
The group will meet Monday with the president, Vice
President Dick Cheney and Hadley.
For months, various proposals for an alternative
Iraq strategy have been bouncing around Washington,
with several Democratic leaders and think tanks
forwarding their own programs. The election results
gave the Democrats and administration outsiders an
opening to push them again.
Even before the panel was convened, Sen. Joseph
Biden, D-Del., a member of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, and Leslie Gelb, president
emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations,
published a proposal that Iraq should be divided
into three loosely connected states - Kurds in the
north, Sunnis in central Iraq and Shiites in the
south-that would share oil revenues.
In the past, Bush has expressed strong opposition to
such a plan, and the program has little support in
Iraq.
Even Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, whose fellow
Kurds in the relatively peaceful north would have
the most to gain from a partition of Iraq, has said
that such a plan is unfeasible for the time being.
Others have predicted that such a plan would
destabilize the region and mark the first step to a
civil war.
Baker and other members of the Iraq panel have tried
to keep their observations and conclusions close to
their vests. But in public statements, Baker has
indicated he opposes an immediate withdrawal of
troops but believes there is an alternative to the
"stay the course" stance of the White House.
Biden and others have suggested setting a deadline
for most troops to be redeployed outside of Iraq,
perhaps as early as the end of 2007. A Democratic
proposal in the U.S. House would begin the
redeployment before the end of this year. And some
have proposed pulling troops back just to Kurdistan
or Kuwait and deploying them quickly only when
Iraq's own security forces run into trouble.
But Iraqi officials on the ground say that it is too
soon to think about shifting U.S. troops out of the
country.
Various polls, including one commissioned by the
U.S. State Department, show that a vast majority of
Iraqis want the U.S. military to withdraw from Iraq.
But Iraqi leaders, even from factions opposed to the
presence of U.S. forces, say a pullout must come
only after a semblance of normalcy has been
established.
Talabani said Thursday that he had spoken with
Democratic leaders who assured him there were no
plans for a quick withdrawal of U.S. forces.
"One of them told me that any early withdrawal will
be a catastrophe for the United States and the
world," Talabani told Al Jazeera satellite TV
station. "We are being subjected to a foreign
invasion (of non-Iraqi, anti-U.S. insurgents), and
we don't have enough forces to fight this invasion."
Saleem Abdullah, a spokesman for the leading Sunni
bloc in parliament, said that he has conflicting
views about the American presence in Iraq.
Realistically, Iraqis will need U.S. forces to stay
in the country for the next 7 to 10 years, he said.
"Personally, it tears at me every day to see these
occupiers in our country," Abdullah said. "They are
to blame for the broken political system they have
put in place and all our hardships. But if they
leave too soon it will be chaos."
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., an almost certain
contender for the GOP presidential nomination in
2008, has suggested the polar opposite to calls for
withdrawal. He says the answer may lie in
significantly increasing troop levels on the ground
in Iraq, at least in the short term, beyond the
149,000 already there.
On Wednesday, as McCain told reporters in Arizona he
thought part of the U.S. military needs to focus on
eliminating anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
The radical cleric controls the Mahdi Army militia
and is blamed by the U.S. for much of the sectarian
killing in Iraq, but he also enjoys an alliance with
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a fellow
Shiite.
"I believe al-Sadr has to be taken out," McCain
said.
Gates, the defense secretary designate, has said in
the past that the U.S. should be open to holding a
summit with Iran and Syria to seek their help in
securing Iraq's borders from outside insurgents and
influencing the different factions inside the
country.
Baker, who recently has met with top Syrian and
Iranian officials, has indicated he believes that
directly engaging both countries is in the U.S.
interest, even though the Bush administration has
refused to consider talking to those countries and
other perceived enemies.
Baker, who in the past played a significant role in
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, also has hinted
that he believes solving broader Mideast issues
could help in Iraq.
"It's not appeasement to talk to your enemies,"
Baker told reporters last month.
Abbas al-Bayati, a Shiite parliamentarian, said he
is hopeful the Iraq panel also will push the White
House to repair its relationship with much of the
European community, which was marginalized in Iraq
because of its opposition to the war.
"I think the Baker-Hamilton report will make it
possible (for) the approach to solving Iraq's
problems (to be) internationalized," al-Bayati said.
"I think the Americans and European community
understand that Iraq is just a square in the Middle
East problem that has to be solved and the
international community has an interest in solving
it."
Moderate Democrats and others who support the phased
withdrawal of troops suggest that only that threat
may force Iraqi leaders to make difficult decisions
toward promoting national reconciliation, defining a
federalist system and setting up a way to equitably
divvy up the countries oil revenues.
Bush has expressed opposition to such timelines,
because he believes it would gives insurgents the
ability to wait out the Americans. Iraqi officials
also object.
"To come to this country and leave it without a
security force that can protect us . . . that would
be immoral and would leave us in a very difficult
situation," al-Bayati said.
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