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

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Fri Dec 1 01:30:28 PST 2006


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.



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