"The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence
Created a War Without End" by Peter W. Galbraith
Peter Galbraith, a sometime U.S. diplomat,
journalist and foreign-policy analyst, has a
solution to stop the ever-widening cyclone of
sectarian violence that has engulfed Iraq and made a
mockery of U.S. goals there.
Let the country fall apart, he writes in "The End of
Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War
Without End." That, he says, is the only way to give
the region the framework it needs to restore
stability in the post-Saddam Hussein era.
To a large extent, that has already happened. The
Kurds have effectively had their own state since
1991, when the U.S. guaranteed their security with a
no-fly zone after the first Gulf War. Farther to the
south, Iraq's Shiites and Sunnis are now pulling
away from each other, even as they carry out
increasingly horrible vendettas. Eight of Iraq's
nine southern provinces are dominated by the
country's main Shiite party.
Galbraith's book tracks his own itinerary through
the Iraq story. His first trip was in 1987 when, as
a U.S. Senate staffer, he witnessed Saddam's
murderous policies against the Kurds, the country's
largest minority.
He is not a man to hide his agenda. In 1991,
Galbraith broke the Senate staff's code of silence
with a public campaign to rescue Iraq's Kurdish
population from the wrath of Saddam's army. As U.S.
ambassador to Croatia from 1993 to 1998, he showed
an obvious sympathy for the Croats as they sought to
even the score with the Serbs during the Yugoslav
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Return to Iraq
Galbraith returned to Iraq several times before
2003, when he went to cover the Iraq war for ABC
from the region under Kurdish control. His book is
unabashedly pro-Kurdish independence, justified
because of their suffering under Arab rule and by
the success of their autonomous regional government.
He's got no use at all for the U.S. administrators
in Iraq, particularly L. Paul Bremer, who became
head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in May
2003. In Galbraith's telling, the CPA chief matched
his overlords in Washington in his ignorance and
arrogance, relying largely on an inexperienced
staff, including young recruits from right-wing
think tanks. A 24-year-old former White House aide
without legal experience helped negotiate the
Transitional Administrative Law (which was later
largely ignored).
The incompetence and even corruption on display
during the first two years continue to haunt Iraq,
Galbraith writes. In the meantime, the U.S. clings
to an illusion of a united Iraq, which he says flies
in the face of the deepening distrust among the
country's three major communities.
Federalism
In Galbraith's view, the new Iraqi Constitution,
adopted by referendum on Oct. 15, 2005, helped
create a loose federalism that works — at least for
now. What isn't working, he argues, is the U.S.
presence, which has not only failed to provide
security but is a lightning rod for suicide bombers.
When it comes to a formula for pulling out U.S.
troops, Galbraith's analysis is a bit tenuous, and
even disingenuous. He argues that Iraq's Sunni
Arabs, who dominated the country under Saddam
Hussein and have since fought against the
dissolution of central authority, "may come to see
the formation" of their own separate region as
necessary for their self-protection. Then, he
writes, the U.S. could withdraw, provided the Sunnis
guarantee that they won't give free run to al-Qaida.
Wishful thinking
There is more wishful thinking in Galbraith's
scenario. He sees signs that Turkey, which has long
opposed a Kurdish state, will accept an Iraqi
Kurdistan as a buffer to an Islamic Arab state to
the south. He suggests that a theocratic Shiite
state in the south could become a U.S. ally in the
fight against al-Qaida and other Sunni
fundamentalists.
There are, however, problems for which Galbraith
provides no solution, such as the mushrooming civil
war in Baghdad. He is certain only that a continuing
U.S. presence is making a messy situation worse.
"By invading Iraq and mismanaging the aftermath, the
United States precipitated Iraq's collapse as a
unified state, but did not cause it," he says. The
de facto partition in much of the country now in
place should be accepted. "In Baghdad and other
mixed Sunni-Shiite areas, the United States cannot
contribute to the solution, because there is no
solution, at least in the foreseeable future."
Which is where the wishful thinking ends.
© Peter W Galbraith 2006
Extracted from The End of Iraq by Peter W Galbraith,
published by Simon & Schuster tomorrow at £17.99.
Copies can be ordered for £16.19 including postage
from The Sunday Times BooksFirst on 0870 165 8585.
Peter Galbraith is a former US ambassador with a
long involvement in policy on Iraq
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