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| Volume XII, Fall 2005, Number 3 |
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| The Third Option in Iraq: A Responsible Exit Strategy |
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| Gareth Porter |
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Dr. Porter is an independent historian and foreign-policy analyst who has published studies of negotiations to end wars in Vietnam, Cambodia and the Philippines. His latest book is Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam (University of California Press, 2005).
For a printable pdf version of this article, click here.
The U.S. military occupation of Iraq is the subject of a political stalemate at home, despite its lack of public support. A CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll survey in mid-June showed that 59 percent said they opposed "the U.S. war with Iraq," while only 39 percent said they favored it. Even more significant, the percentage opposing war with Iraq had increased by 21 points since mid-March. A Harris Poll taken in June revealed that 63 percent of the sample favored bringing "most of our troops home in the next year," while only 33 percent favored waiting until a "stable government" had been established in Iraq.
This popular opposition to continued occupation might be dangerous for the administration, but two factors tend to muffle its political impact. First, the divide
in the country is highly partisan: Republicans
still support the president by a 3-to-1
margin; while Democrats disapprove 7-to-1
and independents 2-to-1. This gives a
Republican president plenty of room for
maneuver.1
Movement toward an exit strategy,
moreover, is still resisted by a large majority
of the political elite. In the first clear
test, on May 26, an amendment calling on
President Bush to devise a plan for withdrawal
from Iraq was defeated in the
House of Representatives 300 to 128.
Thus Congress is far more supportive of a
long occupation than is the populace. This
has enabled the Bush administration to act
as though it were immune to the polling
data, declaring that it has a "victory
strategy" rather than an "exit strategy."
The wide gap between public opinion
and the split in Congress on Iraq is in large
part the result of a failed national discourse
on Iraq. The political elite now have only
two choices: either to set a unilateral
timetable for troop withdrawal or to give
the administration unlimited time to build
adequate Iraqi security forces to replace
U.S. troops – and to determine when they
are adequate. This stark choice has left
even most opponents of the initial invasion
willing to tolerate the administration's
policy of indefinite occupation, because of
their fear of the unknown consequences of
a defeat for U.S. policy in both Iraq and
the United States.
The choice between unilateral withdrawal
and indefinite occupation is artificially
narrow. It excludes a third option
that would limit the period of U.S. occupation
but avoid the pitfalls of unilateral
withdrawal. The third option would use the
political-diplomatic leverage inherent in the
U.S. occupation to draw the Shiites and
Sunnis into serious negotiations on a
comprehensive settlement of political and
military issues, or, failing that, to negotiate a
military settlement with the leaders of the
Sunni insurgency. By actively pursuing a
peace policy, the United States can establish
a terminal date for its military occupation,
help avert a Sunni-Shiite civil war, and
deny foreign terrorists the use of Iraq as a
training camp for an indefinite period.
It must be acknowledged from the
outset, however, that it is impossible to
adopt such a policy alternative without a
fundamental change in the official definition
of the problem. The present understanding
of the problem can only lead to
worsening violence and the long-term
continuation of the foreign terrorist presence
in Iraq. Indeed, the Bush administration
has explicitly stated that it foresees just
such a prolonged war, with increased Shiite
participation against the Sunni insurgents,
as the objective of its policy. A responsible
exit strategy, on the other hand, would call
for a shift in the primary purpose of the
U.S. presence in Iraq from defeating the
Sunni-based resistance organizations to
ending the present conflict and heading off
a sectarian civil war that has already
begun.
REDEFINING THE PROBLEM
Up to now, the political discourse on
Iraq has reflected the administration's view
of the policy problem as one of defeating a
threat to a democratic regime from an antidemocratic
insurgency composed of
Saddam loyalists and foreign Islamic
terrorists. The administration's definition
of the problem has enormous appeal to
Americans, who viewed the January 2005
parliamentary elections as an inspirational
story of people choosing democracy in the
face of terrorist threats. But it has obscured
the underlying problem in Iraq,
which is a sectarian conflict between
Sunnis and Shiites that is already becoming
a civil war. Even worse, the
administration's policy of backing the Shiite
government against the Sunnis rather than
promoting reconciliation between the two
groups has actually encouraged the emergence
of that civil war.
To call the regime produced by the
January elections a liberal democratic
regime is to confuse elections with the real
essence of a liberal democratic regime.
The requirements for such a regime are
not yet present in Iraq and are unlikely to
sprout in the barren soil of a war-torn
country divided by sectarian strife. Neither
Sunni nor Shiite political and religious
leaders have a fundamental commitment to
liberal democratic values and institutions,
whereas the Kurds do not see themselves
as part of Iraq at all.
Given the role that armed force has
played over the last few decades in
maintaining Sunni minority rule over the
Shiite majority, it should not be surprising
that the need for political violence is deeply
imbedded in Iraqi political culture.2 The
leaders and followers of the Baath party
have viewed political violence as necessary
to maintain national unity and stability, but
the leadership of the militant brand of Shiite
Islam that now holds sway in that community is no stranger to the use of violence for
political purposes. After the Islamic
revolution in Iran, Shiite militants began
planning to use force to overthrow what
they considered an "infidel" regime in
Iraq.3 And in the present struggle for
power, both Sunni and Shiite political elites
appear to believe that Iraqi politics is a
zero-sum game in which maintaining
political power depends on actively using
state organs of repression against their
enemies.4
As Ambassador Peter Galbraith has
noted, tolerance and willingness to compromise
– two key elements of a liberal
democratic system – are not apparent in
the political culture of either the Sunnis or
the Shiites in Iraq.5 The Baathist ideology
that undoubtedly still strongly influences the
Sunni elite is dismissive of liberal democracy,
but the two main militant Shiite
parties are hardly more committed to
liberal ideology. The Dawa party waged
armed resistance to Saddam's regime
based on Leninist organizational methods,
and the Supreme Council for Islamic
Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and its armed
militia, the Badr Corps, were born on
Iranian soil under the tutelage and protection
of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
Even taking into account doctrinal differences
between Iraqi Shiite ayatollahs and
their Iranian counterparts, the ideology of
the Iraqi Shiite political movement has far
more in common with that of the clerical
establishment in Iran than it does with
liberal democracy.6
The insistence of Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani and the Shiite political leaders on
direct elections in 2003-04 reflected a
realistic calculation that those elections
would give them the majority in parliament
needed to form a Shiite-dominated government.
They knew that most of the Shiite
faithful would vote for the ticket as a
religious duty in response to a fatwa from
Sistani. The top Shiite religious authority in
Iraq, the marjiya, is determined to ensure
that the new constitution and subsequent
law will not violate the highly restrictive
sharia law.7 Its commitment to tolerance
of minority beliefs and rights is less clear.
Ironically, the Bush administration had
not even intended to hold national elections
when it invaded Iraq. Instead it had
planned to set up a hand-picked government
and postpone direct elections indefinitely,
fearing that the Shiite parties, which
they viewed as much too close to Iran,
would use them to gain power. The
administration's plan was derailed only
because the Shiites proved that they were
capable of mobilizing a very large opposition
to the U.S. occupation if it refused
direct elections.8 It was only after the
elections became a fait accompli that the
administration cast them as a strategic part
of an offensive against Islamic terrorism
and for democracy throughout the Arab
world.
The administration has also refused to
recognize that the Sunni insurgency was
not organized against an existing democratic
state but against a foreign occupation
that had excluded all those Sunnis who
had even remote ties to the previous Iraqi
state. Although the initial organization of
an armed resistance was planned in
advance by Saddam's security services,
the insurgency almost immediately swelled
to much larger proportions because of a
combination of Sunni anger at the tactics
used by the U.S. occupation forces in the
Sunni region and a fear of marginalization
and revenge at the hands of the Shiites.9
Adnan al-Janabi, a leading Sunni tribal
leader and a minister of state until January
2005, estimates that more than 80 percent
of the insurgency is based on generalized
Sunni fears of the Shiites in power and
their experience of repression at the hands
of the Americans.10
Perhaps the most egregious feature of
the administration's Manichean definition
of the problem is the practice of referring
to the Iraqi insurgents as "anti-Iraqi
forces," as though they were somehow
alien rather than representing broader
Sunni interests. Administration officials
insisted through most of 2004 that there
were only 5,000
men active in the
insurgency; only in
October did it raise
the official estimate
to 8,000 to
12,000, with
another 10,000
"sympathizers."
That was too much
for the head of the
U.S.-sponsored
Iraqi intelligence
service, General
Mohammed
Abdullah
Shawhani. He contradicted the administration
by making public his estimate that the
insurgents had at least 40,000 full-time
volunteers and another 200,000 men
actively involved on at least a part-time
basis – twelve times more men than the
administration was then admitting, at least
publicly. Shawhani asserted, moreover,
that they had close links with the major
Sunni tribes and enjoyed widespread
support in the Sunni provinces.11
Given these realities, holding national
elections for a new government before any
political accommodation had taken place
between Sunnis and Shiites could only
deepen the political divide and further
strengthen popular Sunni support for the
insurgency. Given the virtual certainty that
the Shiites would dominate the voting, such
early elections could only be interpreted by
Sunnis as a U.S. decision to ally with the
Shiites to punish them. As Leslie Gelb and
Peter W. Galbraith wrote in late 2004,
"National elections will make Iraq's Sunni
center less governable, not more."12
That is exactly what happened. In late
2004 and the first weeks of 2005, the U.S.
military occupied
key Sunni urban
strongholds such
as Mosul and
Ramadi and
carried out intensive
sweeps,
aiming to ensure
that the majority of
Sunnis in those
areas would be
able to vote.13
Instead, the armed
resistance organizations
mounted a
devastatingly
effective demonstration of their unchallenged
authority in the Sunni community.
Reporting from journalists on the scene
suggests that the level of voting by Sunnis
was about one percent or even less of the
adult population in one Sunni stronghold
after another.14
While the administration has continued
since those elections to portray the conflict
in Iraq as part of a global struggle between
the forces of democracy and terrorism, the
Shiite government and the Sunni opposition
have been sliding into sectarian civil war.
Before the elections, the Shiites had held
their own use of violence in check. Once
they had control of the interior ministry,
however, violence between the two
communities began to spiral out of control.
One cause of the vastly increased tensions
has been the seizure of Sunni mosques,
especially in Baghdad, by Shiites who claim
they were taken from them during the
Saddam regime. 15
But the escalation of politically motivated
violence by police and paramiliatary
units against each others' leaders and
political and paramilitary agents has been
an even more direct cause of the descent
into sectarian strife. Before the handover
of power to the new government in May,
the strongly U.S.-influenced interim
government was forced to admit that its
police had tortured and killed three Shiite
militiamen while they were in custody.
Upon taking office, Shiite leaders reportedly
purged Sunnis from middle- and highlevel
positions in the Interior Ministry and
the military and replaced them with officials
loyal to the two leading Shiite parties.
Within days of the takeover of the Interior
Ministry by a Shiite appointee, Sunni clerics
accused Shiite militia, the Badr Brigade, of
killing some of their number. Now the
Badr Brigade and the Wolf Brigade – a
2,000-strong force mostly poor Shiites
under the command of a militant Shiite
member of SCIRI – have become key
paramilitary elements deployed in Sunni
zones. There is now credible evidence that
such paramilitary operations have involved
mass arrests, torture and in many cases,
killing of Sunnis, all outside any legal
framework.16
Former interim Prime Minister Iyad
Allawi warned in July that Iraq is "practically
in stage-one of a civil war as we
speak."17 The emergence of an
unacknowleged war by Shiite paramilitary
forces against Sunnis alongside the officially
sanctioned war against the insurgency
waged by U.S. forces means that
American troops are fighting on behalf of
one side in a sectarian civil war. The last
time the United States committed such a
strategic blunder in the Middle East was
when U.S. troops were drawn into the
conflict between the Christian-led government
in Lebanon and the Shiite Hezbollah
guerrillas fighting the Israelis there in 1983.
The consequences of that policy – the
killing of hundreds of U.S. marines in the
suicide bombing of the their base and the
U.S. military withdrawal from Lebanon –
should be a warning signal about the
present policy in Iraq.18
Thus the official definition of the
problem in Iraq as a conflict between a
democratic nation and an anti-democratic
insurgency is a dangerous fiction. In fact,
it is a struggle between two rival sectarian
communities over the distribution of power
in post-Saddam Iraq. Each side is using
the means available to it to defend its
interests in that power struggle. The more
the United States insists on ignoring that
central fact and treats the insurgency as an
enemy allied with the forces of global
Islamic terrorism, the more it alienates the
Sunni population, widens the rift between
the two communities and accelerates the
momentum toward a Sunni-Shiite civil war.
By redefining the problem to respond
to the stubborn realities in Iraq, the United
States could open the way to a new policy
option of negotiating on the withdrawal of
the U.S. military presence in order to end
the Iraqi insurgency and lay the basis for a
more comprehensive settlement of the
Sunni-Shiite conflict. At a minimum, that
policy would avoid involving U.S. troops in
an Iraqi sectarian war, but its purpose
would be to leave in place arrangements
that would enable the two sides to live in
peace with one another.
NEGOTIATING WITH THE
INSURGENTS
The idea of peace negotiations with
Iraqi insurgents, which seemed all but
unthinkable until a few months ago, must
now be considered a central element in any
exit strategy for Iraq. That option has
emerged because of a series of approaches
to U.S. officials from resistance
groups, usually through local Sunni Arab
religious or tribal leaders with close ties to
them. Abdul Salaam Kubaysi, a leading
member of the Muslim Scholars Association,
has said he knows of at least three
such approaches to the U.S. embassy for
the specific purpose of negotiating a peace
agreement. The insurgents have communicated
not only a willingness to negotiate but
their general political and military conditions
for ending their resistance.19 A
former minister in the interim government,
Aiham al-Sammarae, who also runs a
consulting firm in the United States, reports
that he has talked with leaders of Iraqi
insurgent groups, and that four major
organizations –Army of Muhhamad, Army
of Freedom Fighters, the Islamic Army and
Ansar al-Sunnah – representing a large
proportion of the insurgency as a whole,
have given him their conditions for ending
their armed resistance. The primary
condition is a timetable for U.S. military
withdrawal from Iraq, but al-Sammarae
reported that they wanted U.S. troops to
remain for at least one year, but not more
than three, to ensure an orderly transition
from war to a peaceful political system.20
Although Iraqi officials have expressed
skepticism that the individuals with whom
al-Sammarae and other intermediaries had
met were genuine resistance leaders, one
of the most independent and respected
journalists in Iraq, newspaper editor Ismail
Zayer, says he is certain that the individuals
in question are indeed leaders of the
resistance and that the identities of some of
them have been confirmed by U.S. intelligence.
General George Casey, the top
U.S. commander in Iraq, indirectly confirmed
that U.S. intelligence takes the
approaches very seriously when he commented
that the "preliminary talks" could
lead to actual negotiations with leaders of
the insurgency.21
The internal situation in these insurgent
organizations regarding peace talks is
undoubtedly more complex than this, with
at least some in those organizations violently
opposed to negotiating. Nevertheless,
the information from Sunni intermediaries
represents a potential opening for
peace that the United States should put to
the test.
The main question about peace negotiations
with the insurgents is not whether
they are feasible but whether the Bush
administration is willing to negotiate
seriously. Contradicting General Casey,
U.S. embassy officials have made a point
of saying the United States will not negotiate
with the insurgents and that U.S.
representatives have told the intermediaries
the insurgents should "go talk to the Iraqi
government." U.S. officials know very
well that taking that position would eliminate
any possibility of a negotiated settlement
with the insurgents.
Many Americans who oppose the
occupation have assumed that the militant
Shiite leaders merely wanted to use the
occupation to gain power through elections
and that they would not countenance a
prolonged U.S. occupation once they had
formed a national government. But that
has not turned out to be the case. Although
they have state power in theory, the
Shiites know they lack the military means
to dominate the Sunnis. What they want
above all else at this stage is to build an
Iraqi state structure that will assure Shiite
rule against all contingencies. For that they
believe they need at least a few more
years of reliance on U.S. occupation
forces.
Thus an agreement in the short-run on
both U.S. withdrawal
and an end
to the insurgency
would not serve
the interests of the
Shiite leadership as
they now define
them. Hussain
Sharistani, one of
the founders of the
winning United
Iraqi Alliance slate
and one of Grand
Ayatollah Sistani's
closest political
aides, declared in
mid-April, "I don't think the insurgency can
be beaten by negotiations…. We think it's
surrender, and the Iraqi people will not
accept surrender." 22
To get peace negotiations started and
to ensure they produce a meaningful
agreement, the United States will have to
use the considerable leverage on the
Shiites inherent in the new government's
dependence on U.S. occupation forces.
Washington can exert that leverage by
informing government and political leaders
that they have a limited period – measured
in months, not years – in which to enter
into peace negotiations with legitimate
Sunni leaders, including the leaders of the
nationalist Iraqi insurgency, on a serious
proposal for a broad political-military
settlement, including provisions for an end
to the insurgency and the withdrawal of
U.S. forces on a timetable. If no serious
negotiations were forthcoming within the
time specified, the United States would go
ahead and make a separate deal with the
insurgents on a timetable for mutual
disengagement from the war. In the latter
case, the timetable would be far shorter
than one adjusted
to the course of
peace negotiations.
Given this choice,
the government
would certainly
come up with an
offer to start
negotiations with
its Sunni rivals on
such a settlement,
in which the
United States
would necessarily
play a key role.
That role would be
to continue to use the possibility of a
shorter timetable for withdrawal as leverage
on the Shiites, while letting the Sunnis
know that any foot-dragging on their part
would have the opposite effect.
Although the Bush administration may
argue that pushing an unwilling government
into serious peace negotiations would
undermine its political legitimacy, it has
shown little regard for that government's
claim to independence in the past. U.S.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
publicly warned the Shiite leadership last
April not to purge ex-Baathists from
military-security organs of the government,
and the administration later let it be known
to the media that it had pressed the Shiite
leadership to add Sunni delegates to the
commission writing a new constitution. The
real problem appears to be that the administration
lacks interest in playing a central
role in forging an agreement that would
bring the insurgency to an early end.
The administration's lack of interest in
peace negotiations with leaders of the
insurgency is paralleled by its lack of
motivation to avert a civil war between
Sunnis and Shiites. Even former interim
Prime Minister Allawi, who is well known
to have been a client of the CIA for many
years, has criticized the U.S. attitude
toward that imminent danger. The problem
is," Allawi lamented in July, "that Americans
have no vision and no clear policy" on
helping to prevent the further downward
spiral of Sunni-Shiite violence. 23
The United States could demonstrate
vision in Iraq only by abandoning its
partisan role in the Sunni-Shiite struggle
and drawing both sides into serious negotiations
on a peace settlement. The
centerpiece of that settlement would be an
agreement to end the present
counterinsurgency war and the violent
resistance movement by the Sunni insurgents.
This would open the door for a U.S.
military exit. But it would also have to
include a serious process of conflict
resolution to achieve agreement on the
most sensitive political issues dividing the
two groups.
ROLLING MUTUAL DISENGAGEMENT
The main task in negotiating a military
settlement would be to devise arrangements
that would provide each side with
assurances that the other would carry out
its military commitments. Such an agreement
would consist of a timetable in which
the processes of phased disengagement
from the war by the two sides are closely
linked both in time and space. One process
would be the withdrawal of U.S.
troops from a series of agreed urban areas
or larger regions. The other process would
be the public return of insurgent leaders
and their fighters to participation in the
legal political system in the same series of
cities or regions.
These two processes of phased
disengagement could begin, for example, in
Ramadi, one of the Sunni cities where U.S.
troop presence has been unable to root out
the insurgency, despite one "cordon and
search" operation after another. The first
step would be the withdrawal of U.S.
forces and any other security forces not
indigenous to the city from bases used to
operate in Ramadi to a more distant
location, from which they would eventually
be moved to the airbases for their return to
the United States. This U.S. withdrawal
would be followed immediately by the
movement of insurgents out of their
hideouts to a designated public space. The
end of their resistance could be marked by
a ceremony symbolizing the return of all
the insurgent forces in the city to a legal
status. This would also allow their Sunni
supporters to recognize their service in the
anti-occupation cause. The insurgents
might also be required to bring with them
the information on the locations of
safehouses and bomb-making facilities.
Once the surrender of the insurgents
known to be operating in the area is
verified and the cessation of insurgent
attacks continues for an agreed period of
time, the agreement could call for the
contingent of U.S. combat troops previously
engaged in the area, along with an
appropriate unit of support, to return to the
United States. The same sequence of
interrelated mutual steps toward disengagement
and peace would then be
undertaken in a new location. The processes
of phased withdrawal from war
could be reversed at any time by either
side, if it felt that the other side had not
carried out the agreement in good faith.
The primary problem in such a military
settlement with a decentralized set of
organizations such as the insurgency in
Iraq is that some Iraqi resistance groups
can be expected to refuse to participate in
the settlement. These holdouts could step
up their own attacks after most of the
insurgents in the area have ended their
armed resistance. However, the rollingdisengagement
approach would help to
minimize the problem of holdout violence in
various ways. If a critical mass of insurgent
groups were to go ahead with the
settlement, it would increase the pressure
on holdouts to go along with the agreement,
both through formal public statements as
well as informal communications. As the
public mood in each Sunni area in which
the agreement was implemented shifted in
favor of peace, those who refuse to
participate in the settlement would be
increasingly isolated and find it more
difficult to justify continuing to carry out
violent resistance. Furthermore, those
leaving the resistance to enter into legal
political life would have considerable
knowledge of the mode of operations of
any holdouts, so anyone who rejected the
agreement would have good reason to
reevaluate that decision. As news of the
implementation of the initial phases of
implementation reaches other Sunni
communities, it would change the political
atmosphere throughout the Sunni Triangle.
That would increase the pressures on those
holding out to join in the implementation of
later phases of the process.
In short, the "bandwagon" phenomenon
could reduce the number of resistance
groups that refuse to end their
attacks and deprive violent organizations of
the popular support that the insurgency
now enjoys in Sunni strongholds. That
would be far more than the present policy
has been able to accomplish in more than
two years of U.S. military operations in the
Sunni zone.
The foreign jihadists aligned with al-
Qaeda, who would not be involved in any
peace negotiations, represent a special
holdout problem. Although they are a very
small proportion of the insurgency –
perhaps 2 to 5 percent – they have accounted
for a much larger proportion of the
car-bombings and other high-profile actions
against U.S. troops and Iraqi security
personnel. In addition, their leaders in Iraq
and outside are using the Sunni zone as an
al-Qaeda training camp for new recruits
from all over the Arab world, the role
previously played by the war in Afghanistan
in the 1980s.
It might be argued that this kind of
mutual disengagement would allow foreign
terrorists to operate freely and al-Qaeda to
have a "terrorist haven" in Iraq. But such
an agreement should be far more effective
than present administration policy in ending
the jihadist violence and the terrorist haven
itself in Iraq. The foreign jihadists operate
with impunity because of an alliance of
convenience between Iraqi Sunni insurgents
and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's net38
work of foreign Islamic extremists, based
on their common aim of forcing the end of
the U.S. occupation. But that alliance has
been under severe stress across the Sunni
zone from multiple conflicts between the
Iraqi nationalists and the foreign jihadists.
The extremist Wahhabi Islamic views
of the jihadists, which they have imposed
on whole towns and urban neighborhoods
in which they have operated; their bombing
of Shiite mosques, and their other terrorist
tactics have all deeply alienated the secular
ex-Baathist leaders of the resistance as
well as the Sunni clerics who have supported
it and many in the Sunni population.
In early 2005, anti-occupation fighters in
Ramadi distributed fliers denouncing the
foreign extremists' tactics and even
threatening them. Iraqi tribal insurgents
actually attacked foreign followers of
Zarqawi in a former al-Qaeda stronghold
on the Syrian border in early July.24
This broad Sunni antagonism toward
the foreign terrorists – eclipsed up to now
only by their desire to be rid of the U.S.
occupation – would give most Sunni
resistance leaders and fighters ample
motivation to help track down the foreign
jihadists, once the U.S. occupation forces
are indeed on their way out of Iraq. An
internet posting by a pro-al-Qaeda group in
the wake of reports of contacts between
insurgents and U.S. officials expressed
concern that Iraqi insurgents would "exploit
their knowledge of the mujahideen and
their methods and their supply routes and
the way they maneuver" if they ended
their resistance.25 Negotiators for the
insurgents might well be willing to agree to
share their knowledge of the foreign
terrorists' operations with the government
under a broader settlement between Sunnis
and Shiites. Knowing that their welcome
among Iraqi Sunnis would quickly come to
an end in the event of such an agreement,
the foreign jihadists are unlikely to wait for
the agreement to go into effect before
beginning their exit from Iraq. A negotiated
peace and withdrawal strategy thus
offers the best chance of shutting down the
present "terrorist haven" in Iraq.
The present policy, on the other hand,
offers no prospect of forcing the jihadists
out of Iraq. The U.S. military has made no
progress in reducing the level of operations
by foreign jihadists or in the use of Iraq as
an al-Qaeda training ground. Nor is there
any reason to expect that a primarily Shiite
counterinsurgency force under U.S. military
protection and guidance would be any more
successful in the next few years, as the
present war continues to morph into a U.S.-
sponsored civil war. In a little-noticed
public statement in June, Brig. Gen. Donald
Alston, the chief U.S. military spokesman in
Iraq, conceded that "this insurgency is not
going to be settled, the terrorists and
terrorism in Iraq is [sic] not going to be
settled, through military options or military
operations." It could only be settled, he
said, through political agreement.26
This conclusion puts in sharper relief
the question of whether the administration
has essentially conceded al-Qaeda its
terrorist haven in Iraq for many more years
to come. In this regard, Secretary of
Defense Rumsfeld made a highly revealing
statement in a late June press briefing that
"insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight,
ten, twelve years" 27 It can reasonably be
inferred that Rumsfeld and other key policy
makers have decided to accept continued
war and a "terrorist haven" In Iraq for the
indefinite future.
IS DECENTRALIZATION AN EXIT STRATEGY?
Although a stand-alone military agreement
with a rapid timetable for U.S.
withdrawal would be a last resort if U.S.
efforts to facilitate a broader peace
settlement failed, both the United States
and the Sunni insurgents have reason to
link negotiations on military and political
issues. The insurgents themselves will
certainly demand at least some political
concessions from the government, apart
from amnesty for themselves, in return for
an end to their armed resistance to the
government.
According to Sunni
intermediaries, the
leaders of armed
groups have
mentioned the
release of Sunni
detainees who are
not charged with a
crime, assurances
against paramilitary
abuses of
Sunnis and limits
on the pro-Iranian
bias in foreign policy.
Equally important, however, such
linkage is probably the only way the Sunni
and Shiite leaders are going to negotiate on
the real issues dividing them. The Bush
administration has touted negotiations
within the Iraqi constitutional committee,
enlarged by the addition of 25 more Sunni
representatives chosen by leaders of the
Sunni community, as the way to bring
peace between Sunnis and Shiites. But
even under an extremely optimistic scenario,
those negotiations are not likely to
settle the deeper political conflicts that
have already led to the early stage of a
sectarian civil war.
For one thing, neither Bush administration
officials nor their Kurdish and Shiite
allies have viewed the constitutional
negotiations as a mechanism for building
trust between the two communities.
Kurdish and Shiite leaders have seen the
constitutional committee as an opportunity
to press the advantages each of them has
in the national parliament, thanks to the
results of the January election, to achieve
their respective power goals. The Bush
administration, on the other hand, has
treated the committee as a way to demonstrate
to the
insurgents – and to
the American
people –that the
political process is
on track and on
schedule.
Rumsfeld has
insisted that the
new constitution be
adopted by the
August 15 deadline,
despite
warnings from a
broad range of Sunnis that a constitution
written under war and occupation would
not have legitimacy in their community.28
Whether the outcome will be regarded by
the Sunni community as legitimate or not
appears to be a secondary concern, at
best.
The Sunnis have seized the opportunity
to be full partners in constitutional negotiations,
but most Sunni leaders remain
unconvinced that they should adopt any
constitution as long as the U.S. occupation
continues. They refused to join the committee
except on terms that would give them
an effective veto over the text, which
finally led to the compromise in mid-June
that added the 25 Shiites to the committee
and, more important, stipulated that it
would operate by consensus. The Sunnis
regard as illegitimate the rules imposed by
the interim constitution of 2004, written in
secret by a small group picked by the
Americans from exile groups and widely
regarded by Iraqi Arabs as favoring the
Kurds. They are unsympathetic, therefore,
to the haste urged on the committee by
Rumsfeld and U.S. allies on the committee
to meet the deadline of August 15 imposed
by the interim constitution. Nor do they
honor the one-time extension of up to six
months under the same document.29 In
fact, the Sunni representatives on the
committee have every incentive to hold out
against pressures on them to agree to a
new constitution immediately. Their
bargaining position in the constitutional
negotiations would obviously be strengthened
if they could link the agreement on a
constitution with the ending of the military
resistance by nationalist Iraqis.
Despite warning signals of a failure of
the constitutional talks, the Bush administration
appears to believe that Sunni
representatives can be induced to accept
Shiite control over the relatively weak
central government the constitution provides
for, and a Sunni-controlled federal
state embracing the Sunni triangle. That is
the solution proposed by David Phillips, a
former adviser to the Coalition Provisional
Authority, in a paper for the Council on
Foreign Relations. Phillips rejects a "threestate
solution," arguing that it would
"intensify ethnic and sectarian divisions."
Instead, he proposes five or six federal
states, one of which would be Baghdad
and two or three of which would be carved
out of Shiite-dominated southern and
central provinces. The Kurds would get a
Kurdistan and the Sunnis would get a state
encompassing the three provinces of the
Sunni heartland.30 Phillips's proposal
leaves a number of powers, such as fiscal
and tax policy, commercial regulations and
management of energy resources, in the
hands of the central government. It was
translated into Arabic for circulation among
Iraqi government officials and parliamentarians,
obviously with the administration's
approval and therefore to be taken as
reasonably close to the administration's
thinking.31
Critics of administration policy have
advanced alternative proposals for an Iraqi
constitution that would go much farther
toward complete autonomy for Kurdish,
Shiite and Sunni states. Separate versions
of a "three-state solution" were proposed
by Leslie Gelb and by Peter Galbraith in
2004, both based on interpretations of the
post-Tito Yugoslav confederal model, in
which three republics would control their
own natural resources, whereas the central
government would control only foreign and
defense affairs, the sharing of oil wealth
and such matters as health.32 Ivan Eland,
who believes even these confederal
schemes are not likely to be viable in Iraq,
takes the decentralization solution to its
ultimate conclusion. He proposes either
three autonomous states that would control
even foreign and defense policies or an
outright partition of the country into three
fully independent states.33
These proposals for decentralization of
power in Iraq are all based on the assumption
that the actual separation of Sunni and
Shiite authorities and military-paramilitary
forces would reduce the likelihood of
armed conflict as the United States withdraws.
They also assume that both
communities would be willing to sacrifice
their interests in wider geographical power
in return for the security of control over
their respective heartlands. But the
carving up of Iraq into three to six states
on ethnic and religious lines will certainly
evoke powerful Sunni Iraqi memories of
the division of the Arab Middle East into
just such mini-states after the collapse of
the Ottoman Empire, which the Baath
party always portrayed as a particularly
painful and even humiliating experience for
Arabs.34 Salih al-Mutlak, one of the
fifteen Sunnis added to the constitutional
committee, has already objected to Kurdish
demands for federalism as "the beginning
of dividing Iraq."35
Another problem with decentralization
of power as an approach to the Sunni-
Shiite conflict is that it fails to resolve the
central problem of metropolitan Baghdad.
The capital area has roughly 4 million
Sunnis and 2.2 million Shiites living in close
proximity to one another.36 It is also the
primary cockpit of organized violence by
Sunnis and Shiites against one another,
because of the presence of Sunni and
Shiite political leaders and organizations,
contested mosques, and the militias and
other paramilitary forces of both groups.
Shiite religious and political leaders would
certainly find it unacceptable that millions
of their followers should fall outside the
authority of the central government. They
also assume that the Sunnis retain the
ambition to seize power in the capital. This
has reinforced the Shiite government's
determination to retain a monopoly on the
means of violence in the area. So giving
the Baghdad region special status as a
separate federal state in a decentralization
plan would not help stabilize the tense and
violent atmosphere in the city.
Nor would decentralization help
resolve the conflict over control of Iraq's
oil wealth. Whether the management of oil
resources resides in the central government,
as in the Phillips plan, or with the
autonomous states, decentralization would
not reduce the Sunni need for assurances
that they could protect their interests at the
national level. The central problem is that
the Sunni heartland has no oil resources,
unlike both the Shiite and the Kurdish
zones. The constitutional committee might
therefore negotiate a formula for sharing
the revenues from Iraq's oil reserves. But
in the absence of special arrangements for
joint control over oil resources in national
politics, the Sunnis would be completely
dependent on the good will of the Shiites
and Kurds for carrying out that constitutional
agreement – something no Sunni
politician could accept.
Thus a constitutional formula for
decentralization of power to federal or
autonomous states is not the antidote to the
burgeoning Sunni-Shiite violence. Furthermore,
the constitutional negotiations, at
least in their present form, cannot be
expected to address the deeper causes of
the violence, since they are being conducted
amid continuing U.S. military
operations against Sunni areas on behalf of
the predominantly Shiite government. A
peace settlement between the two can only
be reached in conjunction with an end to
the insurgency and a timetable for U.S.
withdrawal.
MINORITY RIGHTS AND PARAMILITARY VIOLENCE
Two central political challenges would have to be addressed directly in any negotiations on a political settlement:
minority rights and the threat of paramilitary violence by both sides. Sunnis are
unlikely to accept Shiite control of the
central government unless the rule of the
Shiite majority in parliament and the
executive is diluted to protect their interests.
This would require a mechanism for
joint control over policy making and
administration on certain particularly
sensitive issues, such as natural resources,
internal security and foreign and defense
policy. In effect, such special arrangements
would require consensus in order to
make decisions on certain subjects. Shiite
leaders are unlikely to agree to this kind of
compromise unless the United States
makes it clear that it cannot maintain
troops for a transition period without Shiite
willingness to offer a reasonable formula
on minority rights.
Second, extraordinary legal and
administrative controls must be imposed to
prevent the use of government organs of
repression against political rivals, as well as
to crack down on violence by paramilitary
groups. Particularly important in allaying
Sunni fears would be an agreement to
neutralize the mukhabarat (secret police)
and other military and paramilitary agencies,
so that they could not be used by a
Shiite majority government to physically
repress Sunni political figures, organizations
and movements. But the Shiites also need
to be reassured that they need not maintain
exclusive control over those same agencies
in order to keep the Sunnis from being able
to use paramilitary force to plot against the
government.
Unfortunately, Bush administration
policy has added fuel to that fire rather
than damping it down. The fundamental
issue underlying the Sunni-Shiite (and U.S.-
Shiite) contention over "de-Baathification"
has been who is to control the means of
violence in the Iraqi state structure.
Militant Shiites have insisted on complete
de-Baathification, primarily to exclude
veterans of the Saddam regime from
security positions in the government that
would give them control over the means of
violence. But the CIA reintroduced
veterans of Saddam's secret police and
military services into high positions in the
Interior Ministry and a new secret-police
organization. By mid-2004, the staff of the
National Intelligence Service was reported
to be two-thirds Sunni and only one-fourth
Shiite.37
The political implications of a secretpolice
network staffed and controlled by
ex-Baathists would have been far reaching.
Despite a formal CPA order that the
intelligence service and secret police were
not to carry out covert activities against any
"legal" political party, some American
officials acknowledged privately that, if the
new spy agency were dominated by either
Sunnis or Shiites, it could be used as a
political tool against the other group.38 The
administration's motive in staffing the
agency with ex-Baathists was to have
reliable allies in the Iraqi state structure
with whom it could collaborate against Iran
– a state with which the Shiite government
clearly intended to have friendly relations.39
This issue of paramilitary forces is not
on the agenda of the constitutional committee.
If it is to be addressed at all, the
United States will have to work with both
sides to devise creative ways to curb the
power of government agencies to carry out
extralegal repression and to bring all Sunni
and Shiite militias (as well as Kurdish
peshmerga units in non-Kurdish areas)
under government control. For example,
all police and paramilitary units could be
placed under joint Sunni-Shiite command
from the local level up to the top of the
interior ministry in a process vetted by a
joint committee. Military units could
similarly operate under special arrangements
that would make it impossible for a
unit to be deployed without both sides
agreeing. Special laws to punish extralegal
violence by both official and unofficial
paramilitary groups would be needed, along
with carefully balanced legal and judicial
institutions geared to adjudicating such
issues.
No settlement of the problem of
sectarian paramilitary violence is feasible,
however, without an end to the existing
war to suppress Sunni insurgents. The
routine killing by U.S. forces, Iraqi government
units, the insurgents and international
terrorists in Iraq encourages secretarian
vendettas and would inevitably undermine
any agreement on the constraining of
paramilitary forces. Linking these sensitive
Sunni-Shiite issues with a military settlement
would enhance the ability of the
United States to push both sides to make
major concessions for peace. The declared
willingness of the United States to
withdraw its forces much more rapidly if
the two sides continue to head toward a
sectarian civil war, balanced by a willingness
to maintain the U.S. presence longer
in the context of real progress toward a
peace settlement, would be critical to any
possibility of a successful political deal.
There is no guarantee that a negotiated
withdrawal strategy would succeed in
leaving behind a stable and peaceful Iraq.
The depth of mutual fear, suspicion and
hostility between Sunnis and Shiites should
temper optimism about the possibility of a
peace settlement. If such a diplomatic
effort were to fail and the two sides
continued to descend into civil war, however,
it should be clear that the United
States would not continue to leave its
troops to fight on behalf of one side in a
sectarian struggle. It could withdraw its
forces to safety in the knowledge that the
civil war was not the result of the withdrawal
but precisely the opposite. Nevertheless,
the negotiated-withdrawal approach
is the only one that offers realistic
hope for achieving all three main elements
of a responsible exit strategy: an end date
for the U.S. occupation, avoidance of a
sectarian civil war, and the elimination of
the foreign-terrorist haven in the country.
1 For the results of these and other polls taken in 2005 and the trends going back to the beginning of the
occupation, see http://pollingreport.com/iraq.htm.
2 See Ofra Bengio, Saddam's Word: Political Discourse in Iraq (Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 14, 33.
3 See Amatzia Baram, Culture, History and Ideology in the Formation of Baathist Iraq, 1968-89 (Macmillan,
1991), p. 89; Phebe Marr, The Modern History of Iraq (Westview and Longman, 1985), p. 237.
4 Commenting on reports of police commandoes seizing, torturing and killing people, government spokesman
Laith Kubba has said, "I'm sorry to say that we are living in a society where the culture now accepts these
violations." Mariam Karouny, "Iraqi government admits abuses by security forces," Reuters, July 3, 2005.
5 Peter Galbraith, "How to Get Out of Iraq," New York Review of Books, 51, May 13, 2004.
6 Graham E. Fuller, Islamist Politics in Iraq after Saddam Hussein, United States Institute of Peace Special
Report No. 108, August 2003,.pp. 3-4; Mahan Abedin, "Dossier: The Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution
in Iraq (SCIRI)," Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, Vol. 5, no. 10, October 2003; Reuel Marc Gerecht,
The Islamic Paradox: Shiite Clerics, Sunni Fundamentalists and the Coming of Arab Democracy (Washington,
D.C.: AEI Press, 2004), pp. 25-26. After meeting Shiite political leaders in January 2004, a team of American
specialists on democratic institutions visiting Iraq at the invitation of the Coalition Provisional Authority
concluded, "It is fair to say that the two largest [Shiite] parties, Dawa and the Supreme Council for Islamic
Revolution in Iraq, do not at present share a fundamental commitment to the kind of political system that
would be defined as ‘democratic' in the West." Michael Rubin, "Exit Poll," The New Republic, May 3, 2004.
7 Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, December 1, 2004; Mohamad Bazzi, "The al-Sistani factor in Iraq's
Election," Newsday, January 30, 2005; Jill Carroll, "United and Divided," Salon, February 8, 2005. For a
contrary view, portraying Sistani and the Shiite clerical establishment in Iraq as essentially pro-democratic,
see Gerecht, The Islamic Paradox. Gerecht's view of the Shiite clerical elite, which is presented in the context
of an argument for the Bush administration's view that democracy is "on the march" in the Arab world, is
based on little more than their approval of elections and democracy in the abstract and their rejection of
Khomeini's theocratic rule. Gerecht does not deal systematically with Shiite clerics' views of issues of
tolerance of minority rights and other features of liberal democracy, but does concede that they are "often
vague about how they see democracy intersecting with Shari'a." (p. 38).
8 Rajiv Chandrasekaran, "How Cleric Trumped U.S. Plan for Iraq," The Washington Post, November 26,
2003.
9 On the role of anti-American nationalism and hatred of the occupation's tactics in fueling the insurgency, see
Carl Conetta, Vicious Circle: The Dynamics of Occupation and Resistance in Iraq, Cambridge, MA: Commonwealth
Institute Project on Defense Alternatives, Research Monograph #10, 18 May 2005.
10 Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, "‘The US is Behaving As If Every Sunni Is a Terrorist'," The Guardian (London),
January 26, 2005.
11 "Iraq Index: Tracking Variables of Reconstruction and Security in Post-Saddam Iraq," June 20, 2005,
Brookings Institution, www.polity.org.za/pdf/index20050620.pdf; Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, "Estimates
by U.S. See More Rebels with More Funds," The New York Times, October 22, 2004; "Iraq Battling
More Than 200,000 Insurgents: Intelligence Chief," Agence France-Presse, January 3, 2005; Johanna
McGeary, "Mission Still Not Accomplished," Time Magazine, September 2, 2004.
12 Peter W. Galbraith and Leslie H. Gelb, "Why Jan. 30 Won't Work," Los Angeles Times, December 3, 2004.
13 "Elections promised for Falluah, Ramadi, But Details Secret," Agence France-Presse, January 18, 2005;
Anne Bernard, "Fear Clouding Elections in Sunni Areas," Boston Globe, January 27, 2005; "Fighting Rages in
Iraq's Rebel-held Ramadi," Reuters, December 8, 2004.
14 On evidence of rates of Sunni voting in Ramadi, Tikrit, Baqubah, Samarra, Fallujah, West Baghdad and the
Sunni section of Mosul, see "Iraqis Vote as Attacks Kill 33," The Guardian (UK), January 30, 2005; Ibon
Villebaeitia, "In Samarra, Fear Keeps Voters Away," Reuters, January 30, 2005; Steve Fainaru, "Despite
Troops' Pleas, Fear Keeps Many Away from the Polls," The Washington Post, January 31, 2005; Tom
Lasseter, "Iraqi Voters Not Intimidated," Knight-Ridder Newspapers, January 31, 2005; Dexter Filkins, "Low
Voting Rate Risks Isolation for Sunni Iraqis," The New York Times, February 3, 2005.
15 Yasser Salihee, "Sunnis, Shiites in Struggle for Control of Mosques in Iraq," Knight Ridder News Service,
May 20, 2005,
16 Anne Barnard, "In Iraq, 3 Deaths Spur Calls to Revamp Police," Boston Globe, April 1, 2005; Bassem
Mroue, "Iraqi Office Weeding Out Ex-ists," Associated Press, May 9, 2005; Hannah Allam and Warren P.
Strohbel, "US Afraid of Iran-Friendly Iraq," Knight-Ridder News Service, May 9, 2005; Hamzah Hendawi,
"Iraq Denies Shiites Killing Sunni Clerics," Associated Press, June 2, 2005; Patrick Cockburn, "Zarqawi's
Pledge to Target Shia Militia Fuels Tension," The Independent (London), July 7, 2005; "Profile: Iraq's Wolf
Brigade, " BBC News, June 11, 2005; Peter Beaumont, "Revealed: Grim World of New Iraqi Torture Camps,"
The Observer, July 3, 2005.
17 Hala Jaber, "Allawi: This is the Start of Civil War," Sunday Times (London), July 10, 2005.
18 For the background to that blunder, see Robin Wright, Sacred Rage: the Wrath of Militant Islam (Touchstone
Books, 1985 reo.ed., 2001), pp. 75-79.
19 For reports on meetings at which intermediaries passed on these conditions, see "U.S. Embassy Holds
Indirect Talks with Iraqi Insurgents," Los Angeles Times, June 9, 2005; "Amnesty in Iraq?" June 14, 2005; Jill
Carroll, Christian Science Monitor, March 24, 2005; "Iraq Insurgents ‘Ready in Disarm'," BBC News, June
7, 2005.
20 Middle East Institute, "Insurgency and Iraqi Politics," (Speaker: Aiham Al Sammare), July 19, 2005, http://
www.mideasti.org/articles/doc397.html; Associated Press, "Amnesty in Iraq? Talks Have Begun," June 14,
2005; Hala Jaber, "US ‘in Talks with Iraq Rebels'," Sunday Times (London), June 26, 2005; Dana Priest,
"U.S. Talks with Insurgents Confirmed," The Washington Post, June 27, 2005; James Hider, "Insurgents Are
Ready to Lay Down Arms, Says New Party," Sunday Times (London), June 30, 2005.
21 Hider, Sunday Times (London), June 30, 2005; Al Pessin, "US in Preliminary Talks with Iraqi Sunnis
Connected to Insurgency," Voice of America, June 27, 2005, http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-06-27-
voa47.cfm; Alastair Macdonald, "US Says Insurgent Peace Feelers More Frequent," Reuters, July 1, 2005.
22 Ellen Knickmyer, "Iraqi Alliance to Oust Top Officials of Hussein Era," The Washington Post, April 18,
2005.
23 Hala Jaber, "Allawi: This is the Start of Civil War," Sunday Times (London), July 10, 2005.
24 Edward Cody, " ‘Foes of US in Iraq Criticize Insurgents," The Wasshington Post, June 26, 2004; Dan
Murphy, "Fallujah is Now Emerging as Symbol of the Splintering Iraqi Resistance," Christian Science
Monitor, July 12, 2004; Fawaz Gerges, The Bleeding of Iraq and the Rising Insurgency, Institute for Social
Policy and Understanding, Policy Brief, September 2004, p. 4; Karl Vick, "Insurgent Alliance is Fraying in
Fallujah," The Washington Post, October 13, 2004; Richard Sale, "Divisions Widen among Iraq Insurgents,"
Washington Times, September 20, 2004; Hamza Hendawi, "Iraqi Insurgency Still a Threat But Signs of
Division Are Emerging," Associated Press, April 9, 2005; Oliver Poole, "US Delight as Iraqi Rebels Turn their
Guns on al-Qa'eda," The Telegraph (London), July 4, 2005.
25 Stephen Ulph, "Islamist Insurgents Seek to Contain PR Disaster: Notes of Defeatism," Global Terrorist
Analysis, Vol. 2, No. 13 (July 13, 2005), http://jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=2369741.
26 Tom Lasseter, "U.S. Officers: No Military Solution to Iraq Insurgency," Knight-Ridder News Service, June
14, 2005.
27 The Washington Post, June 27, 2005.
28 Will Dunham, "Rumsfeld Rejects Notion Iraq War is a ‘Quagmire'," Reuters, June 23, 2005; report by
Mark Willacy, "AM" Program, Australian Broadcasting Company, June 30, 2005, http://www.abc.nhet.au/
am/content/2005/s1403799.htm. Over the past decade, the average time required to draft a constitution, even
in far more peaceful states than Iraq, has been 12 to 24 months. See International Crisis Group, Iraq: Don't
Rush the Constitution, Middle East Report no. 42, June 8, 2005, p. 1.
29 International Crisis Group, Iraq: Don't Rush the Constitution.
30 David L. Phillips, Power Sharing in Iraq, CSR no. 6, Council on Foreign Relations, April 2005, p. 21. The
Phillips proposal is very similar to the one found in Ali Allawi, "Federalism," Iraq Since the Gulf War:
Prospects for Democracy, ed. Fran Hazelton (London and New Jersey, Zed Books, 1994), p. 219.
31 "U.S. Weighs Plan to Make Iraq a Federation of Six States," Special to World Tribune.Com, May 20, 2005,
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune.
32 Leslie H. Gelb, "What Comes Next? How to Leave Iraq with Our Heads High," Wall Street Journal, May
20, 1964; Galbraith, "How to Get Out of Iraq."
33 Ivan Eland, "A Way Out of Iraq: Decentralizing the Iraqi Government," The Independent Institute, October
13, 2004, http://www.independent.org/publications/policy_reports/detail.asp?type=full&id=16.
34 See Bengio, Saddam's Word, pp. 14, 35, 121.
35 Associated Press, July 9, 2005.
36 "Iraq's 2003 Official Census by Ministries of Trade and Planning for the Food Coupon Distribution for the
UN Oil-for-Food Program," http://www.faair.org/images/Iraq-Census-Total-2003.pdf
37 Daniel Williams, "New Ministry to Recruit Paramilitary Force in Iraq," The Washington Post, September 1,
2003; Dana Priest and Robin Wright, "Iraq Spy Service Planned by U.S. to Stem Attacks," The Washington
Post, December 11, 2003; Walter Pincus, "Analysts Say Iraqi Agencies Unlikely to Follow U.S. Rules," The
Washington Post, May 10, 2004; Edward Cody, "Chalabi, Shunted to Sidelines, Shares His Playbook for
Iraq," The Washington Post, June 30, 2004; Edward Wong and Erik Eckholm, "Allawi Presses Effort to Bring
Back ists," The New York Times, October 12, 2004.
38 Ellen Knickmyer, "Iraqi Alliance Seeks to Oust Top Officials of Hussein Era," The Washington Post, April
18, 2005.
39 Jim Hoagland, "Picking the Right Iraqi to Rule Iraq," The Washington Post, May 23, 2004.
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