dittologica

Over the past two weeks the U.S. and its Iraqi allies acted out what appears to have been a well orchestrated campaign to bolster the Bush/neo-con objective of maintaining a long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq. First came the ill-fated assault on Basra by Iraqi government troops. Then, before the smoke of battle had cleared, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq and the U.S. ambassador to that country appeared before Congress to argue the need to maintain large U.S. military forces in Iraq. In the final act, President Bush accepted the recommendation of his commander to call off reductions of U.S. troop levels in Iraq.

On the 25th of March, Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki deployed government troops to take control of the city of Basra. The official explanation for the action was that it was an operation to disarm “outlaws” in the southern Iraqi city. Far from strengthening Maliki’s hold on the country, the assault resulted in renewed challenges to his authority and further destabilization of the country.

Alongside the official reason given for Maliki’s action, there are other more credible explanations. One widely mooted reason for the attack was that Maliki, whose powerbase is in the Shi’ite Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) and the Islamic Dawa Party, wanted to cripple the faction of his main Shi’ite rival, Moqtada al-Sadr, in advance of upcoming local government elections. Another plausible explanation of the attack relates to U.S. unease at the fact that the streets of Basra, Iraq’s chief oil port, are controlled by Sadr’s anti-occupation Mahdi Army.

Before bogging down and being checkmated by Sadr’s forces, Maliki’s operation was portrayed in the mainstream press as the latest positive step in the “Iraqization” of the U.S.-driven war. But because U.S. troop withdrawals are linked to the existence of a viable Iraqi force to take their place in the fighting, Maliki’s failed operation left a question mark over the viability of a “draw-down” of U.S. forces.

The Bush administration’s troop “surge” tactic, initiated in the spring/summer of 2007, was supposedly intended to create a more favorable military situation for “Iraqization”, and, implicitly, to facilitate subsequent U.S. troop reductions. Predictably, however, the surge failed to significantly influence the political-military situation. As Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies argues, the decline in fighting attributed to the “surge” had more to do with other factors, including U.S. cash payments to buy off Sunni insurgents who joined the “Awakening Councils”; the cease-fire implemented by Sadr’s forces; and the completion of ethnic cleansing in the formerly mixed Sunni-Shi’a neighborhoods of Baghdad and other cities. [link]

In recent months, signals from the U.S. administration about significant troop withdrawals have been increasingly ambivalent. For instance, on the 25th of March - the day Maliki’s offensive began - the Washington Post quoted U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney as saying, “there’s no reason now to decide what the force level is going to be in December of ‘08… [The criterion] is how do we make certain we succeed in Iraq? It may be that we can make judgments about reductions down the road… But I don’t think [Bush] is likely to want to try to say now what the force level ought to be at the end of the year.”  [link]

The British government was also being cagey about troop reductions in its zone in southern Iraq. As the BBC reported on the 1st of April, British Defence Secretary Des Browne reported to the House of Commons that “in the light of the last week’s events” (Maliki’s abortive assault on the Sadr forces) plans to continue reduction of the British contingent have been put on indefinite hold. [link]

Given the reluctance exhibited by U.S. and U.K. leaders to seriously consider disengagement from Iraq, yet another explanation for Maliki’s Basra operation becomes plausible. This is that the U.S. pushed Maliki into taking action on the assumption that he would fail and indeed be weakened, thus demonstrating that further troop reductions by the U.S. and Britain would be premature. This impression is reinforced by the dependence of Iraqi government forces on British and American air and artillery support in the recent campaign, as well as by their inability to prevent mortar attacks on the U.S. “Green Zone” bastion in Baghdad.

President Bush characterized the campaign as “a test and a moment [sic] for the Iraqi government”, and as “an interesting moment for the people of Iraq, because in order for this democracy to survive, they must have confidence in their government’s ability to protect them and to be even-handed.” [link]

Maliki failed Bush’s “test” on both accounts: he neither enhanced the Iraqi people’s confidence that he can protect them nor showed any evidence of being “even-handed”. He failed to realize the goal of disarming the Sadr forces, failed to weaken their hold in Basra and elsewhere in the country, and failed to bring about the “defining moment” referred to in the strikingly similar words of both Maliki himself and President Bush.

By the 3rd of April, U.S. military and government officials had begun to publicly distance themselves from the unfolding debacle, as related in a New York Times article of that date. [link], In contrast to the praise offered to Maliki by Bush a few days earlier, the U.S. officials blamed him for acting rashly and contrary to their advice. The maudlin style in which the NYT article is written suggests that it was a sanctioned propaganda exercise, and it begs the question as to whether those quoted were truly embarrassed by the ostensibly maverick actions of Maliki or whether they had actually egged him on, only to dissociate themselves from his actions later.

General David H. Petraeus provided his assessment of the situation in Iraq to the Congressional Committees on the 8th and 9th of April. With the ruins of Maliki’s campaign smoldering in the background, he argued that there had been “significant but uneven” progress in Iraq. On the basis of this “unevenness” he built his case that troop reductions should be frozen at pre-”surge” levels pending further evaluation. U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker and Republican presidential candidate John McCain were on hand to second Petraeus’ verdict. [link], [link]

Immediately following the hearings, President Bush ordered a halt to reductions of U.S. forces beyond the pre-surge level, freezing the number deployed at 140,000.

The upshot of these events is a perpetuation of the U.S. and British role in continuing the tragic violence that has plagued Iraq for the past five years. A virtually permanent foreign occupation of Iraq is needed to achieve the current goals of U.S. policy, whether these are “merely” to secure that country’s vast oil reserves or are part of a grander plan to ensure a dominating strategic presence over the entire region.

As for Maliki, he has succeeded in demonstrating his willingness to engage in factional fighting; the ineffectiveness of his forces; and his dependence on the firepower of the occupiers. From his perspective, this is not an entirely bad thing, as departure of the occupying forces would almost surely sound the death knell for his regime. Both the U.S. occupiers and their Iraqi accomplices are well aware of the symbiotic relationship which exists between them.