Training Iraqi Forces Won't Do It, Part II

Last month, I argued against the CW that "training" the Iraqi army is the key:

Training the Iraqi army is important and necessary; I just don't think it's sufficient or the Holy Grail that many assume/assert it to be.

You can train Iraqi forces all you want, but what you ultimately need in addition to capability is  will. That is, you need Iraqi troops willing to fight and die for the Iraqi government.  Insurgents are willing to do that for their cause. As have some Shiite militia and Kurdish peshmerga. But how about Iraqi government troops? Who, on balance, are they loyal to?

Today's NYT suggests an answer--and it ain't pretty. In terms of policy decisions, the only question I see is whether the U.S., with its still substantial (but far from not total)  influence, should, in the interests of trying to skedaddle, be pushing for simply rebadging militia. Or, in my opinion, the better option, should it be trying as best it can to keep them out of the army.  To put it another way: What does the 'training' consist of?  Eric Martin is on my side and makes a crucial point:

Aside from the obvious interest in avoiding a large scale civil war (that could morph into a regional conflict) in the center of the Middle East, there are larger implications in the battle for hearts and minds between the US and al-Qaeda and their fellow jihadists. If in our zeal to stand up an army and beat a hasty retreat from Iraq we end up creating, arming and assisting a military composed primarily of Kurdish and Shiite forces, and that military becomes the fighting force in an eventual civil war, can you imagine the propaganda field-day Osama would have?

The United States (already viewed with suspicion, cynicism and mistrust) will have, in effect, armed, trained and possibly provided air support and other tactical assistance to one side (the Shiites) in a clash of religious sects within the Muslim world. The Sunni population in other Muslim nations (a majority in almost all save Iran), which would no doubt be treated to images of Sunni civilians caught in the grisly cross-fire (and/or intentionally targeted in some circumstances), would be radicalized, horrified, enraged, humiliated and desperate to strike back at the "imperialist crusader" that many would no doubt blame for the carnage - probably inordinately so, but that is to be expected.

Of course, creating a non-ethnically based Iraqi  army may be a fool's errand. In which case, we're back to partition. (Which is where I seem to be ending up a lot these days.)

Comments

[Zathras]

Just out of curiousity, Eric, how "radicalized, horrified, enraged, and humiliated" have Sunni Muslims been in response to the repeated massacres perpetrated by the Iraqi insurgency over the last couple of years? For that matter, how furious have they been about the genocide in Darfur?

You know the answer as well as I do: they haven't been, particularly -- seeing as regional media covers Middle Eastern news more extensively than media outside the region -- in the Arab country. That is one of the largest and for the most part unacknowledged problems with the Bush administration's democratization drive; fundamentally, Arabs in particular are just fine with mass murder as long as they don't know any of the victims personally. Expecting people indifferent or worse to even the most extravagant crimes to live peaceably under the rules and restraints of democracy is expecting a lot.

This isn't to say there are not a lot of bad elements among the non-Sunni Arab Iraqis. We should do what we practicably can to avoid empowering them. But I have to say that you and Eric Martin both have a very peculiar blind eye to the core of the problem with militias in Iraq. The reason Shiite and Kurdish Iraqis want these empowered is the Sunni Arab insurgency. To expect Kurds and Shiites to seek less power for the groups armed to protec them as long as the insurgency continues at close to its present level is not logical. You haven't avoided a civil war if you've confined your efforts to persuading one side not to shoot back.

[Eric Umansky]

Zathra, you write, "The reason Shiite and Kurdish Iraqis want these empowered is the Sunni Arab insurgency. To expect Kurds and Shiites to seek less power for the groups armed to protect them as long as the insurgency continues at close to its present level is not logical."

I actually agree: You can't really expect one side to unilaterily disarm. Which is why the notion of a partion continues to appeal to me. Do you have other suggested paths out of the troubles? I ask that not rhetorically but hoping for an answer.

[!]

While I wouldn't even try to answer for Zathras, I do think it is of interest to submit this:
http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/world/13495329.htm

The Kurds may well be bent towards securing independence despite the political actions of participating within the Process. Since most of the oil resources are in the North, if the Kurds just separate then that would provoke partitioning whether anyone else likes it or not.

If the Knight Ridder article linked to above is even close to correct then it doesn't bode well for the Administration's --and I suppose Tony Blair's --desired goal of a Democratic, unified Iraq. So, if balkanization occurs outside of the current political process how is that good for the goals of building a strong military*, stability, minority representation and Democracy?

To complicate things, the Sunnis being miffed at the preliminary election results is not good either. If Kurdistan happens and natural resources and monies go with it then the Sunnis are indeed left out in the cold. That likely won't sit well with the Sunnis even if it strengthens their want for an effective political solution. Part of the problem with the expectations of powerful representation of the Sunnis in the parliment is that the Sunnis are indeed few in numbers. They were screwed from the outset in the Process. Once that is understood...it might get uglier--in addition to the Kurds angling for territory at any costs-- for realizing the goal of One Nation.

*One thing which has always bugged me is that if the greatest military in the world can't stablize Iraq is the intention to make Iraq's army the world's second greatest and expect greater results in acheiving stability and security? It seems so fallacious even when factoring in that the reconstituted military would be acting in their country's best, vested, interests. [/ramble]

[!]

File this under I-don't- know-what-to-believe-in- anymore and add it to the above linked to article from Knight-Ridder....

Speaking of vested interests pertaining to Kurds, Iraq and the Status Quo, or the Craptacular Quo:

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113572887635032543-MBBcaDkXJAQBlIrm5UujD1fj5qw_20061227.html?mod=rss_free

"In addition to his Iraq political work in the U.S.,[Republican political strategist Sal] Russo has an open-ended political-advertising contract with the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq for whom he produces advertisements that run in the U.S. seeking investment in Kurdistan. Some critics accuse him of having a vested financial interest in prolonging the U.S. presence there.... And they say there is no conflict between the organization's advocacy work and Mr. Russo's financial ties to the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq."

[Gandalin]

Eric,

I think you are succumbing to the pessimisstic wishful thinking of the left when considering the Iraqi political process. The Iraqi politicians who persevered underground throughout the Saddam years are going to drive some hard bargains, but they know where their interests lie, and they have been at the power game, as sheikhs of tribes, for example, for a long time. I think they just may make a go of it.

But, if your worst fears are realized, and Iraq devolves, so what? "Irag" was always a fictional state, created by the British out of a carved-off rump of the Ottoman Empire. Why should the Iraqi borders drawn by the India Office and the Foreign Office be sacrosanct, if the people living within them don't care to be caged together by them any longer?

And why, tell me, is the left so exercised by what it sees as the dire need to establish a state in Palestine for a nation that has no national history, no national language, and no national identity, and yet so antagonistic to the idea of a Kurdish State for the Kurdish nation -- which exhibits a shared and unique language, history, and culture in a contiguous territory it has occupied for over a millenium?

[Eric Umansky]

Ah Gandalin, I don't exactly think fear of a civil war is limited to those stuck in the "pessimistic wishful thinking of the left." The issue isn't a fear of Iraq splitting into multiple countries--at least, as I've written time and again, that's not my fear. What I'm so "exercised about," what I'm wondering how we can avoid, is a civil war. You might not be so exercised about that. But you're just about the only one--on the left or right.

[Gandalin]

War is always a terrible thing. But a civil war, an intercommunal civil war, has been going on in Iraq for decades. The Sunni Arab minority, under the Tikriti leadership of Saddam Hussein even used weapons of mass destruction -- chemical and biological weapons -- against their Kurdish brethren, and tried to hide hundreds of thousands of murdered Shi'ites in mass graves. Why are you only worried about civil war when it is Shi'ites and Kurds who have the upper hand?

[praktike]

"Why are you only worried about civil war when it is Shi'ites and Kurds who have the upper hand?"

Can you prove this, G?

[Zathras]

I hate to sound pessimistic, Eric, but I don't even see partition as a way out of the troubles in Iraq. It might be if Sunni Arabs were willing to accept it -- and the exclusion of their community from oil revenues it would mean -- but I doubt they would be. I'm not sure how well disposed Shiites in Iraq would be toward Kurdish secession either, once push came to shove. And, frankly, a rump Shiite state confronted with more or less permanent Sunni Arab hostility and terrorism would be much more likely to yield to Iranian influence, one of the things American policy has sought to prevent since 1979. Meanwhile a Sunni Arab rump state might actually be at greater risk of becoming a base for regional terrorists than Sunni Arab territory kept busy fending off the authority of a central Iraqi government.

All of which does not really answer your question, which -- phrased as it needs to be, with what is implicit stated openly -- is how do we avoid civil war if the Sunni Arabs keep fighting? All of the policy options being discussed, from the administration's efforts to establish an elected, legitimate government to its attempt to split Iraqi insurgents from fanatic non-Iraqi jihadis to the partition idea: every one of them is based on the assumption that there is something we can offer that will induce the Sunni Arabs to accept less -- a lot less -- than they had under the former regime and stop fighting. That assumption may be wrong. If it is, if Sunni Arabs will always maintain some level of violent resistance to any regime that does not give them all the power, then the answer to your question of how we avoid civil war is, we don't.

I do think the course most likely to lead to success is the one Khalilzad is following now. "Most likely" is, of course, a relative term, but we have I think one thing going in our favor that the President's sunny rhetoric about freedom obscures somewhat. This is that an Iraqi democracy, which under American pressure treats the Sunni Arabs fairly though it cannot give them all the preferences and power they enjoyed before the war, is a possibility that may seem more attractive if the alternative is catastrophe -- catastrophe being defined as a Shiite-dominated government determined to assert its authority using the same methods the insurgents have up to now, while the Americans prepare to leave.

This is no radical thought. Most free governments first got established under conditions of threat. President Bush's stock rhetoric notwithstanding, there is nothing magical about freedome and the rule of law; they will most often flourish if people think the alternative is worse. The alternative for Iraq's Sunni Arabs could be a lot worse. Whether Khalilzad -- who appears to be absolutely the essential figure here -- can persuade them of this before that alternative is upon them I don't know.

[Gandalin]

Zathras,

Agreed that the prospect of civil war is undoubtedly chilling to all Iraqis, Sunni, Shi'ite, and Kurd, and all will do their best to avoid it.

Praktike, what is it that you think requires "proof?" My impression that the Shi'ites and the Kurds currently have a stronger hand than the Sunnis, or my impression that many of those who now warn of the dire consequences of intercommunal strife in Iraq were entirely silent about the matter when Kurds were being gassed and Shi'ites buried in mass graves by the tens of thousands?

[!]

An idea I mentioned in an early comments section is enacting Lani Guinier's idea of super-representation, or, proportional representation ( i forget the exact term she uses).

Basically, giving the minority populations, in this case both Kurds and Sunnis, a chance to have representation within the parliment each equal to number of Shiite representatives. If your unfamiliar with her theory it is basically giving minorities extra votes to roughly match the number of votes that the majority has. So, instead of one person, one vote, for minorities it would be 1.5 or more votes per person.

Politically, especially in the near term, it levels the playing field for all three factions and allows--in my guesstimating opinion--a real chance for the three sides to have a chance at a fair shot at forging their own political solution. Because each side would have the same number of reps in the Parliment, the power would be fairly dissemenated in at least the branch of government.

Obviously, there are probably already fissures within each of the three communities. But, such a hypothetical solution (proportional rep. ) would presumably force those factions to work not only with one another but also with the other two groups to make One Iraq work.

Obviously, population trends like immigration, repatriotization, etc would skew the basic make up of Iraq. But, suppose the population make up remains similar to what it is now and that Guinier's ideas were enacted...

Does anyone have any thoughts on that?

If it IS an absolutely horrible idea then I'm afraid I must admit I have no other optimistic notions left.

[Gandalin]

!,

It sounds a lot like Saddam's system, where he had disproportionate superrepresentation such that his one vote equalled the rest of the country's.

I don't think your idea would work.

Tweaking the technical details is not the issue. The problem is all sides simply facing the reality that they have got to live with each other as messy as that might be, and just get on and do the best that they can.

The Sunni Arabs will not regain their mastery of the country. They do not have any allies anymore, and they no longer dominate the Iraqi armed forces. They will have to settle for second best.

[!]

That's slightly disingenous.
Saddam was the supermajority. Even if he had the Sunni minority's best interests at heart, it was his personal interests which reigned supreme.
My suggestion, quite simply, is to level the playing field in terms of the Parliment. Sure, it smacks of socialism and the in-practice system Saddam. However, the system of governance and the policies Saddam had was a form of a dictatorship. My suggestion doesn't even come close to enabling another totatlitarian regime. Nor is it about favoritism. The suggestion is just about trying to ensure stability and ensuring the democratization process isn't snagged on resentments and revenge tactics by any of the three interests.

For president, prime minister and the ministries, I'm not saying the suggestion would be to have trinumverate presidency or that the exec branch should be proportioned. All sides would have to live with who is chosen for the top posts. Then the legislature would check the Exec. The suggestion is just for representation in the Parliment.

It just seems like the best way to establish power sharing in the country is to actually have power sharing in the country--in the legistlative branch. Heck, it could even be temporary until stability is established. As a fast track suggestion goes, I don't think it is the worst one. But, there are plenty who are smarter than I, so...

[Gandalin]

Well, a bicameral legislature in which one house is apportioned in accordance witht he population and the other house apportioned in accordance with a fixed formula might just work. Who knows? It has certainly worked elsewhere . . .