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roachboy · 06-23-2007, 08:17 AM

here's an interesting look at the iraq debacle.
ther argument is clear enough: what do you make of it?

Quote:

Partition may be the only solution

On Thursday the Guardian's Ghaith Abdul Ahad won the prestigious James Cameron award for foreign reporting. On Wednesday Rajiv Chandrasekaran won the Samuel Johnson prize for his chronicle of life in the Green Zone. Here the two reporters discuss how the conflict has unfolded - and what the future holds for Iraq. Listen to a podcast of the discussion.

Saturday June 23, 2007
The Guardian

Ghaith Last time I saw you was, when, 2004? Baghdad was burning as usual.

Rajiv Comparatively speaking, Ghaith, those were the good old days. We could sit around a table, enjoy a cold drink and at least while away a few hours of the evening chatting, perhaps even with a bit of optimism about the future.

Ghaith So what do you think? Why did this happen in the last three years?

Rajiv I see a lot of the roots back in decisions made in 2003. I wouldn't blame the US for the civil war in Iraq, but I certainly think an awful lot of decisions made by Ambassador Bremer, the first American viceroy to Iraq, have helped to fuel the instability we see today. The commonly discussed ones: de-Ba'athification; the dissolving of the army. But it goes beyond that. It was an American effort at social engineering in Iraq. And there was a simplicity to it. It was almost binary: Sunnis equal bad guys; Shia equal oppressed. We must empower the Shia, we must marginalise the Sunnis.

Ghaith In Baghdad, in 2003 or 2004, it was kind of impossible to say that's a Sunni or that's a Shia neighbourhood.

Rajiv Or even that's a Sunni or that's a Shia person. Nobody identified themselves as that. You'd ask any man on the street "Who are you?" They would say first, "I'm an Iraqi"; then he'd say his tribe; and finally, maybe on the third or fourth try, they might identify themselves as Sunni or Shia. Now ...

Ghaith Now we can draw a sectarian map of Baghdad right down to tiny alleyways and streets and houses. Everything has changed. As an Iraqi I go anywhere (not only in Iraq, but also in the Middle East), the first thing people ask me is: "Are you a Sunni or a Shia?"

Rajiv So the sectarian genie is out of the bottle. In Iraq there was historical tension between Sunnis and Shias, but also a great deal of accommodation, right? More Sunni/Shia inter-marriages than any other Arab/Muslim country.

Ghaith Now, an average Iraqi is still in this sort of delusion, and will tell you: "Oh, the Sunnis and the Shias; we've no problem, only militias on the street." But I think the problem we have now on the ground is a civil war. Call it whatever you want, it is a civil war.

Rajiv We're going to see thousands and thousands more Iraqis killed. Fundamentally these internecine conflicts don't end until both sides' view of their strength is commensurate with their actual strength. [It]'ll never come to any negotiated peaceful settlement until both sides see it in their interest to compromise. And we're not there yet.

Ghaith On the ground level, at the mid-level of the commanders, [the war] is huge business. I was talking to Sunni insurgents and Shia militiamen, and they told me: "The kidnapping process, you do it in the name of Allah, and religion, and cleansing your town from the Sunni extremists, or Shia militias, or whatever you want to call it. But at the end of the day, every person you kidnap is to get money out of him." They already call it the "spoils of war". It's a booming business. $50,000 a week for a mid-level commander who is kidnapping people inside the city.

This is what I really want to know. The Americans. What's the American psyche? How do they see it in DC?

Rajiv Both sides in Washington are thoroughly disconnected. I think they both fundamentally misunderstand. The view in the White House is, if you send more troops to Iraq and you take more forceful action against the terrorists and the insurgents ... you'll be able to improve security. And that will then lead the political elites to come together and forge national and political compromise. And once they forge these grand compromises, ordinary Iraqis will put a degree of trust in their government; as a result, violence will attenuate, Iraq will become more stable, you'll have a strong central government.

At the same time, what Democrats say on Capitol Hill is: "We must give a clear timetable. We must tell al-Maliki we will pull out our troops within six months if you don't do X, Y and Z; if you don't pass this legislation; if you don't bring in more personnel into the military and the security forces." Well, when you put a gun to somebody's head like that, I think they will do just the opposite of what you want. Maliki won't bring in more Sunnis into his cabinet. He'll bring in his Shia cronies. He'll circle the wagons, as they would say out west.

Ghaith Exactly. Everyone knows that at some point the Americans will have to leave, and the Shia will try to take over.

Rajiv Iraq's leadership right now, they are all ensconced in the Green Zone. They are in many ways just as disconnected from the real Iraq as Bremer and Co were back then.

Ghaith You see these media operations by Maliki - flying in a helicopter to a street in Baghdad and having a photo-opportunity meeting, just like Saddam used to, surrounded by hundreds of soldiers - half of them foreign mercenaries. The level of disconnect between the political leadership in the parliament, in the Green Zone, and the people is so obvious ... When there was an attack inside parliament killing a few MPs, people shrugged their shoulders. They couldn't care less about those MPs.

Rajiv Let's put something controversial on the table, and let's debate. I see the situation as polarised ... perhaps the only reasonable approach, going forward, is to think about a degree of partition and accept the inevitability of the way things are headed.

Ghaith Sorry, I'm interrupting you before you finish your idea, but I just can't see it happening. If it stopped the violence, I'd say let's have it tomorrow.

Rajiv But people are already voting with their feet. They're dividing themselves on their own, people are moving from one community to another, one neighbourhood to another in Baghdad. In some cases they're leaving Iraq outright. This is the direction things are headed. It's not going to be a nice, easy, clean line. I don't mean to suggest India and Pakistan was anything like a clean, easy line - that you'd have one single border. You may well have various cantons. Or even within Baghdad, this neighbourhood's Sunni; this neighbourhood's Shia. But you'd essentially start to create various zones where one group predominates and has a degree of control, and (this is what I think) give the Sunnis a sense of at least controlling some elements of their own destiny, as opposed to feeling like they have no voice in the national government. Look, if things are left unchecked, the proxy war already taking place there will just get worse.

Ghaith The problem with this argument is it has no precedent in Iraq's history.

Rajiv The Iraqis don't want this. But I think that's because each side thinks it ultimately will emerge victorious. Give this conflict some more time, and I wonder to what degree people will embrace this [zoning] as a way to end the fighting. Right now they are not there yet. But what do you think?

Ghaith I see a de facto split in the country, I see a de facto cantonisation between Sunnis and Shia. To enshrine this in some form of process will be messy, it'll be bloody. The main issue is for the Americans to recognise they don't have an Iraqi partner. The first thing is to rebuild national consensus; this government will never do this. Second is, someone should tell the Sunnis and the Shia they'll never be able to defeat the other. What's happening is this race to taking as much land as possible before the Americans leave. Because everyone knows they'll leave, and then the real civil war will start.

Rajiv I don't think that anybody can tell each side they can't defeat each other. They'll have to come to that conclusion on their own. Unfortunately, I think it's going to take many, many more months, if not years, and it will continue to be bloody and dark and chaotic.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2109546,00.html