The battles of Fallujah and Najaf in Washington
This is an election year in the United States and the current American administration in Iraq has already committed itself to a transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis by June 30, 2004. The timetable of the election campaigning and the schedule of power transfer coalesced with the Fallujah and Najaf standoffs feeds more confusion, indecisiveness and blurring furthermore the clarity of direction in Iraq.
The moment I met Morton Abramowitz, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and a respected expert on international politics, he handed me his last article published in Time magazine. The title reads "Bush Might Redefine Success and Announce A Quicker Exit Strategy!" After meeting him for an hour and listening to the bleak prospects for the American handling of the Iraqi situation, I moved into a bookstore to find out the latest issue of The New York Review of Books. Its front cover carried the title, "How To Get Out of Iraq," a lengthy and a very interesting article signed by another former U.S. ambassador and an extremely knowledgeable figure on Iraq, Peter Galbraith.
Galbraith was proposing a solution on the former Yugoslav model with three republics, Shiite Arab, possibly an Islamic one, in the south, an Arab Sunni one in the central areas, that also could be an Islamic one, and a secular Kurdish one in the north within the territorial integrity of Iraq. Not very similar to that of the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Leslie Gelb, who had proposed a "three-state solution" for Iraq, but not particularly very different than that.
At a meeting, I came across Geoff Kemp, a former NSC member who has dealt with strategic forecasts on the Middle East. He disclosed his pessimism for a future democratic Iraq and American success to achieve it. The American bookshops’ windows were full of Richard Clarke’s latest book, "Out of Control" that became a major headache for the Bush administration and while Clarke’s ink was still fresh, another book appeared in the windows and on the shelves of every bookshop across the country, that of Bob Woodward’s account on how America went to war against Iraq, "Plan of Attack." Woodward fueled the ongoing passionate debate on the rationale of the war.
There is no sense of triumphalism that was prevalent a year ago. The uncertainties of Iraq seem to cover the minds of the East coast intellectuals and the general American public, warming up for the upcoming presidential elections. This state of mind in America adds to indecision in tackling the hard choices confronting the authorities on the ground in Iraq and conversely, the tough resistance put up in Fallujah and Najaf plays its part in exacerbating confusion in the United States.
The confusion trickles down on the political decision- making to seal the fate of Iraq. The Bush administration is, nowadays, more dependent on the decision of Lakhdar Brahimi, the Algerian, the UN envoy for Iraq rather than Paul Bremer, the American proconsul in Baghdad. The Iraqi Governing Council is also getting more powerless every passing day, as its days in office look numbered. What is needed at this juncture is clairvoyant and sober assessment of the situation in Iraq. As long as the Americans are resolute to bring down the resistance in Falluja and to disband the "Mahdi Army" of the Shiite firebrand Muqtada al-Sadr, the future should not look bleak. After all, those elements that constitute the imminent threat to Iraq’s stability are holed up and encircled in two locations. Iraq is as big as France.
The decisive battles of Falluja and Najaf, if let to run its courses, will be hard blows for the remnants of the former regime and for those who could disrupt the reconstruction efforts any time. The saga could be bloody and painful. But, this will be the price to be paid in order to secure the future for Iraq and to provide stability for a region that exceeds the Iraqi territory and has every reason to benefit from such an outcome. Moreover, the sanity of the whole international system cannot be hold hostage to the Iraqi towns, Falluja and Najaf.
Thus, the main battlefield is not around Falluja and Najaf. It is in the corridors of Washington buildings where the defeatist minds produce "an Iraqi Stalingrad" for Falluja and derives a "Bush’s Vietnam" in Iraq. The Washington battlefield is harder than those of Falluja and Najaf. Yet, it is, still, winnable.
