[lbo-talk] Iraq experts mock stupidity of Hadley memo

[Michael Pollak]

    http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/16125300.htm

    11/29/2006
    San Jose Mercury
    Knight Ridder Wire

    Experts question proposals in leaked Iraq memo
    By Jonathan S. Landay and Nancy A. Youssef

    WASHINGTON - It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to
    implement most of the key ideas for quelling the Iraqi civil war that
    are outlined in a classified Nov. 8 memo to President Bush from
    National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, experts said Wednesday.

    Trying to push anti-U.S. Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada al-Sadr out of
    the ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, as the
    memo suggests, would be throwing gasoline on a fire, they said.

    Sadr's party is the largest in parliament, with 32 seats, and Maliki
    became prime minister only with his support. Sadr's Mahdi Army militia
    controls large parts of Baghdad and southern Iraq, and many Iraqi
    Shiites hail him as their only protection from attacks by rival Sunni
    Muslims, which American and Iraqi forces have failed to stop.

    "Sadr is aware of the considerable extent to which his forces ...
    constitute a significant part of the power in the streets, and there
    is no reason why he would simply want to surrender that leverage,"
    said Paul Pillar, the former top U.S. intelligence analyst on the
    Middle East.

    In what appeared to be a warning from Sadr to Maliki, Sadr followers
    suspended their participation in the government and parliament to
    protest Maliki's plan to meet Bush on Wednesday in Jordan. Within an
    hour of the statement, Jordanian officials announced that the meeting
    had been postponed.

    Hadley's memo was leaked to The New York Times on the eve of the
    Bush-Maliki talks. He wrote the five-page classified document after
    meeting with Maliki on Oct. 30 in Baghdad.

    Since then, the violence in Iraq has surged to its worst level since
    the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. It's been especially fierce in the capital
    since bombings last Thursday killed more than 200 people in Sadr City,
    a Shiite slum in Baghdad that the Mahdi Army controls.

    In the memo, Hadley expressed doubts about Maliki's ability or
    willingness to go beyond the Shiite sectarian agenda and forge a unity
    government.

    Hadley recommended steps that Maliki could take to curb the violence
    and measures that the United States could implement to strengthen him,
    including sending more forces into Baghdad.

    Hadley's central suggestion was to bring Maliki's political reliance
    on Sadr "to closure" and pursue Mahdi Army members who "do not eschew
    violence."

    Trying to force Sadr out of the government - in which his followers
    control some of the key ministries - and crack down on his militia
    almost certainly would lead to the government's collapse.

    It also would ignite a wave of violence by his militia and supporters
    in Baghdad and the Shiite-dominated south, much of it probably aimed
    at the U.S.-led multinational force.

    "Sadr is not going to rein in the Mahdi Army," said Vali Nasr of the
    Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, Calif., and the author of a
    new book on modern political Shiism.

    Hadley suggested that Maliki overhaul his Cabinet by replacing key
    members of Shiite and Sunni religious parties with "nonsectarian,
    capable technocrats."

    But the Iraqi Constitution requires that new ministers be approved by
    two-thirds of parliament, a vote that Sadr could block. A Cabinet
    shakeup also would unravel the power-sharing deal on controlling the
    ministries that took the religious parties months to negotiate.

    "The ministries are run like fiefdoms," Nasr said. "Most ministers
    don't even come to Cabinet meetings."

    Experts also were skeptical of a Hadley proposal that the United
    States provide "monetary support" for forming a new coalition of
    moderate Shiite, Sunni and ethnic Kurdish parliamentarians to keep
    Maliki in power if he's unable to cut loose from Sadr.

    Several experts wondered what moderates Hadley was referring to.

    Moreover, such an alliance would require Maliki to forge stronger
    bonds with Sadr's chief rival, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim. He's the head of
    another Shiite party that belongs to the ruling coalition and whose
    militia maintains even closer ties to the Islamic regime of
    neighboring Iran than the Mahdi Army does.

    Finding Sunnis to join such a grouping would be impossible, because
    Hakim has been a leading proponent of purging members of deposed
    dictator Saddam Hussein's Baath Party from the bureaucracy and the
    military, Nasr said.

    Hakim met with Jordan's King Abdullah hours before Bush arrived in
    Amman, and was scheduled to travel to Washington, where he was
    expected to visit the White House.

    Maliki already has tried unsuccessfully to implement some of Hadley's
    ideas, several experts noted. These include attempts to purge the
    police and Interior Ministry of sectarian death squads and to disarm
    militias.

    Phebe Marr, a leading U.S. expert on Iraq, said that some of the more
    modest ideas that Hadley proposed in the memo - such as appointing
    technocrats to the government and cleaning up the Interior Ministry -
    were achievable.

    "I think these small steps can be done. I think Maliki is doing them.
    But we have very different perceptions of time and timetable," Marr
    said, referring to growing political pressure in the United States to
    withdraw troops.

    As for a "spectacular breakthrough" from the Iraqi government in the
    near future, "forget it," she said.

    Youssef reported from Amman, Jordan. Warren P. Strobel in Washington
    contributed to this report.

    © 2006, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.