Surge Politically

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

By Patrick Doherty, Middle East Online

February 17, 2007

Patrick Doherty spent 10 years working on post-conflict reconstruction in the Middle East and the Balkans and is currently director of communications at the Center for National Policy in Washington, D.C. These views are his own.

Despite partisan noises to the contrary, there remains at least one path forward for Iraq that is neither a blind surge nor a precipitous withdrawal. The recently released National Intelligence Estimate sets out the key to solving the Iraq problem: political reconciliation. Indeed, that is what our uniformed military have been saying for months, if not longer.

The problem is how and time is running out. The President’s plan to surge 21,000 troops relies on the Shi’ite-controlled government of Nouri al-Maliki to lead that reconciliation process. That’s hardly credible when the Defense Department is reporting that Shi’ite militias are importing and using powerful new weapons supplied by Iran.

Leading Democrats, in calling for a phased re-deployment, are also missing the big picture. They recognize the need for increasing leverage over the al-Maliki government but are using a counter-productive lever -- American troop levels. Reducing troop levels increases the insecurity, strengthening the hands of radicals, insurgents and militias.

Congress must use its Constitutional powers to insist that the President develop a new political strategy and adapt our military mission to support it. The American people still support the broad goal of an Iraq that can sustain, govern, and defend itself -- and certainly want to avoid the global economic crisis that would flow from failure.

It is hard diplomatic work, but possible. It starts with recognizing the Iraqi government for what it is. The NIE describes Iraq as a series of militias, tribes, gangs and enclaves fighting in a multi-dimensional civil war. Prime Minister Maliki, indebted to Muqtada al-Sadr, is a party to that civil war.

President Bush's plan does not do this; it is designed to fight an insurgency and support a legitimate government. Phased redeployment merely undercuts that illegitimate government. A political strategy to end a civil war requires forcing all the parties to the table, forging a viable agreement, and then implementing its terms without fear or favor.

The United States must create the conditions, the framework, and the leverage for a durable consensus within Iraq. To create the conditions, our military must shift from a counter-insurgency mission focused on Sunni fighters to a stability operation designed to minimize inter-communal violence. The new commander in Iraq, General Petraeus, knows how to make this happen. His mission should allow the Sunni community to organize politically, punish the Shi’ite militias and stop the forced displacement occurring in the Kurdish areas.

To create a new political framework the United States will have to report to the U.N. Security Council that the al-Maliki government is a failed state, incapable of protecting its own population. This will allow the U.N.’s ‘Responsibility To Protect’ provisions, affirmed by the U.N. Security Council in 2005 and supported by the United States, to generate the legal framework necessary for a new peace process in Iraq.

Once authorized and backed by the international community, the United States must launch and protect a new Dayton-style process built of three concentric layers: a regional process for the neighboring countries, an inter-communal process among Shi’ites, Sunnis, and Kurds and an intra-communal process, to ensure legitimate representation within each community.

Finally, more leverage is needed. No amount of diplomatic finesse and military muscle will work without the properly calibrated pressure on the parties. Shi’ites and Kurds are too comfortable in their relative autonomy to make the concessions necessary for peace. That means the U.S. must crank up the pain on the Shi’ites and Kurds -- but military withdrawal is an empty and counter-productive threat. Instead, what must be threatened is what matters. There remains only one mechanism for that leverage: targeting Iraqi oil exports.

Under the aegis of the United Nations, the international community must use the flow of Iraqi oil exports as a lever with both the Kurds and the Shi’ites. Like Saddam before them, oil revenues are the major source of funding for the Shi’ites and the Kurdish militias and their affiliated political parties. Locked-in to a finite number of export routes, oil exports can be effectively threatened in order to bring parties to the table. Should the parties fail to participate in and respect the results of the U.N.-backed peace process, shutting-in Iraqi oil over the long term would do much to retard a massive source of funding to regional extremists.

All together, these three major shifts -- military, political, and economic -- can merge into a strategy that uses force and diplomacy to support a conclusion to the Iraqi civil war.

Shifting from counter-insurgency to stability operations allows U.S. forces to pull back from some of the worst and most counter-productive fighting. Freed from that meat grinder, U.S. forces can be put to more effective use, deterring large-scale inter-communal violence, protecting the peace process and routing-out al Qaeda.

Whatever happens next, our troops deserve a strategy that is worthy of their sacrifice. That’s why Congress must not make the mistake of taking positions on Iraq for partisan purposes, and instead force the White House to get a viable plan. Like it or not, Iraq is an American problem now, not just a Republican problem. We cannot deceive ourselves that we can wait until someone new moves into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

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