> French or not, this is what Ivo Daalder thinks Bush will do in a couple
> of months (interview just posted to
> <http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html> - Nov 6 show). Create
> a Karzai-like government, reduce the military footprint to a small
> counter-insurgency force, and hope everyone forgets about Iraq by
> election time.
People talk glibly about a Karzai-like government, but I don't think this solution is possible for several reasons, starting with the fact that they haven't got a Karzai and the Kurds aren't the Northern Alliance and they aren't in Baghdad.
Chalabi basically was their Karzai. He was the best they had available for an imposed strategy like that, and he was a 100th of the man they needed, with a 100th the legitimacy and charisma of Karzai. Karzai's local and personal political strength vis a vis the Northern Alliance lies almost entirely in his international standing and in international aid. No leader in Iraq could have equivalent standing unless the Iraq occupation were similarly internationalized.
It was also vital to the success of the Karzai shtick that it happened immediately. People knew the loya jirga was completely stage managed, but everyone was still stunned by the sudden change in everything, so everyone gave it a chance. And thus the jirga bestowed upon the operation the forms of legitimacy when it ratifyied it. If you run such a game now the result would be DOA even if you had a loya jirga structure. It would be immediately assumed to be a second IGC with no more legitimacy
But that brings us to the real problem -- you don't have a loya jirga structure in Iraq. For all the reinvention of tradition, at least there was a tradition in Afghanistan. And much more important, there was a reality: tribes and family-based qawms really are the basic units of Afghani society. They're the molecules of war, politics and solidarity. And that was true even when there was a king, and even when there was a communist government so far as the mass of the population was concerned. So when you hold tribal caucusing, there are real mechanisms to communicate upwards and downwards.
But to make tribes the basic units of central government legitimacy in Iraq would be huge reactionary transformation backwards in national organization and stability. The central politics you get from a tribal alliance is extremely weak. In Afghanistan, that's par for the course and everyone expects it. In Iraq, you have had years of much stronger integration in terms of economics, politics and infrastructure than you have in Afghanistan. And you need it. You don't want to undermine the central government structures you've already got unless your plan is to create permanent chaos by subdividing the place into fiefs.
In short, what counts as peace in Afghanistan is that there isn't civil war. In Iraq you need a lot more than that. It's an urban society. It can't just sit there and take care of itself. It's got to function at a much higher level of administrative competence.
Which bring us back the starting point. If in the end by by "karzai solution" or "loya jirga" people mean "loya jirga but not with tribes," the term doesn't really have much meaning. You're back with the same process of ad-hoc inter-group bargaining that created the IGC, except perhaps with some more openings for local Shias and less for exiles. But basically you'll have the same thing you've got now with the same problems and two strikes against it because how badly things have done so far. The rosy dawn expectations phase is long over.
Karzai was legitimated by the loya jirga and international recognition. Those are the basis of his limited power. A Karzai solution minus both is just wordplay. It solves the problem by renaming it the solution.
One last thing. An absolutely crucial element of the Karzai solution was that it provided representation of the Pashtuns, the main base of the Taliban, in the form of Karzai himself. In Iraq, to have an equivalent solution, you'd have to have someone represent the secular Sunnis which were the base of the Baath. But until you have elections of some sort, all you have to represent secular Iraqis of any stripe are ex-Baathites, and they're taboo. So the only representatives of the Sunnis that would be available for a pseudo-Karzai solution would be Sunni religious leaders. In which case, you not only wouldn't have incorporated the one key group you need to co-opt, you'd be providing extra legitimacy to a tendency you don't want to politically encourage, and no legitimacy to the secularism you want to encourage. Again, just like the IGC.
On the other side of the ledger, I'm going to have to listen to what Dalder says about the small military footprint. It could be that he's right about what some Bushies think. But if they do, it seems based on a real self-delusion. It means they must really believe what they say: that the frequency, sophistication and intensity of the attacks have been steadily increasing because the opposition is getting weaker, more desperate and flaming out. If you, however, you disdain that peculiar reasoning and believe the opposite -- that it means the opposition is getting stronger and more effective -- then there is no reason to believe it wouldn't double and quadruple its effectiveness when the US suddenly removed all its troops and their only opposition was badly trained police.
And since the country is covered with an obvious pressure point that even our troops have been unable to defend -- the oil pipelines -- I can't see how under the cut and run scenario the oil would ever come on line.
So without oil income; and with growing random attacks driving away all NGOs (up and including the UN and the ICRC); and with investors being a lot less hearty than those folks and staying away even further; you'd be looking at complete and permanent mess. Even if they managed to keep it off the news, there would be no way to make that look like success. It would reek of a failure where we fucked things up and then ran, like Lebanon only worse. And there'd be no way to keep it out of the campaign. It'd be a hammer point. And if they reversed course and went back it'd really look like Vietnam.
All of which brings us back to the provisional government. If it is to work, it has to have legitimacy. And if they want it to have legitimacy, they're going to have to hold elections of some sort.
Beyond that, they need elections if they want to develop at least some leaders for the future hand-off stage that are secular, have local legitimacy, and are at all well-disposed to the US -- which is only outcome that would justify this whole operation.
Lastly, if the US wants the provisional government to have international legitimacy and the resources it needs -- again, purely for self-interested reasons that it won't work any better than the IGC without it, and there's no point in shuffling at all if it won't be any better -- then they'll have to share power through with the international community. And if they insist on a pseudo-Karzai solution (with consultations instead of elections), that step would be even more essential, because it would be its only basis of legitimacy.
None of which I'm banking on. But I think the "cut bait and forget about it option" is impossible if they want to win the 2004 election here.
The cut bait and forget about it solution would be perfectly possible right after the election, though.
If they are already planning it, though, I wonder why they made Bush give that National Endowment for Democracy speech.
Michael