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.