MG ---------------------------------- America's new strategy in Iraq By Michael Schwartz Asia Times September 28, 2004
Who won in Najaf?
The short answer is Ali al-Sistani, who re-established himself as the preeminent Iraqi leader by resolving the crisis without the destruction of the Imam Ali Shrine or the slaughter of the Mehdi soldiers occupying it. But al-Sistani is having trouble consolidating this preeminence, because the United States has not delivered the reconstruction aid it guaranteed; and Sistani cannot restore an orderly existence without such outside help. Moreover, since al-Sistani's strategy rests upon asking the Shi'ite to forgo immediate demands in the expectation of achieving political domination in the January election, the sustained violence elsewhere is a threat to the elections, and therefore to his credibility.
Did Muqtada al-Sadr win or lose in Najaf? Before Sistani intervened, the Sadrists were faced with a tough choice. They could have fought to the death: this would have been a great political victory that would rally support inside and outside the country and make the Sadrists the primary force within the Iraqi resistance, even while it would mean sacrificing the lives of their most dedicated and experienced activists. Or they could have withdrawn from the shrine: this would have shattered their credibility as revolutionaries, and left them disarmed and discredited.
It looked as though they were going to be martyrs, but Sistani snatched away their victory while saving their lives. This preserved - and perhaps even strengthened - their organization; but their political primacy was preempted by Sistani.
Did the United States win or lose in Najaf? The US lost in two ways. It further alienated the Iraqis, so that neither the US nor its client administration has any credibility on the street. It also lost the opportunity for a smashing military victory that might have won the November US election for President George W Bush and intimidated Shi'ite militants enough to keep them quiet while the US developed and implemented a new program for the Shi'ite areas of the country.
But the US also won two things from Sistani's intervention. First, it was relieved of a terrible choice: either withdraw without dislodging Muqtada al-Sadr, which would have been a monumental victory for Muqtada and would have led to liberated areas throughout the south of Iraq; or smash the shrine and create Islamic-wide outrage that could have led to an immediate insurrection throughout the country. So the Americans lived to try another strategy, which they would not have had the chance to do if al-Sistani had not intervened.
Second, Sistani's preemption provided a template for the new strategy that the US adopted soon afterward. His truce-making provided an orderly process by which the Iraqi police (trained and controlled by the US) took official control of old Najaf. Their authority is guaranteed by the legitimacy of al-Sistani, and therefore they have not had to face a challenge by militant Sadrists or other insurgents - though the police themselves may not remain loyal to the US, a process we have seen elsewhere already. For the United States, this created the vision of parallel developments in other cities: an alliance with "moderates" that legitimated the Iraqi police while effectively removing the militants from the public life of the city.
The new US strategy The new US strategy, then, is targeted at the cities where the guerrillas and their clerical leadership dominate, notably Fallujah, Samarra, Tal Afar and Sadr City, though there are several others that have not been in the news lately. The US method is to negotiate with the clerics, offering extensive reconstruction aid in exchange for calling off the insurgency and perhaps delivering the guerrilla fighters over to the United States. They call this negotiating with the moderates to split with the militants.
If they can get an agreement, then the US marches into town and arrests at least some of the guerrillas, using informants to determine whom to target. If the guerrillas resist arrest, the US annihilates them and the areas in which they take refuge. If they melt into the population, then the Iraqi police and National Guard take up stations within the city to enforce the rule of a re-established local government. US troops outside the city maintain the capacity to intervene against any effort to challenge the police or National Guard.
To force an agreement, the US threatens both economic and military attacks on the city as a whole. Part of the plan is to use brutal air power that can annihilate buildings or whole city blocks in an effort to convince residents and leaders that the cost of resistance is simply too high. The underlying assumption is that the "moderates" will eventually choose to negotiate rather than see their city destroyed. As one marine officer in Fallujah told Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chadrasekaran, the goal is "to split the city, to get the good people of the city on one side and the terrorists on the other".
The new plan is designed to achieve two goals. First, the US hopes to reduce drastically the number of attacks on US convoys and bases outside the cities. These attacks are planned within the cities, the weapons used are stockpiled there, and the guerrillas are protected from detection by their civilian identities as members of local communities. By demobilizing, arresting or killing the guerillas, the new plan holds the potential to reduce direct attacks on US forces drastically.
Second, by replacing guerrillas with police as the source of law and order in the city, the US hopes to obtain control over local public life, including establishing pro-American political leadership, instead of the current clerical leadership hostile to the US presence. This will permit US control of the electoral process in January and guarantee a legislature compliant with US policy.
Full: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FI29Ak01.html