Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Testimony by Peter Galbraith to the House Appropriations Committee

by Peter W. Galbraith [contact information]

Statement of Ambassador Peter W. Galbraith to the Committee on House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs.

March 6, 2007

Chairwoman Lowey, members of the Subcommittee:

I thank you for this invitation to testify on US strategy toward Iraq in advance of the mark up of the supplemental appropriations legislation.

In spite of the violence, it is possible to argue that most Iraqis are today better off than they were before the 2003 war. Eighty percent of Iraq's people are Shiites or Kurds. Thanks to the American invasion, Iraq's Shiite majority has now taken control of the central government after being repressed by Iraq's Sunni Arab minority for the entire eighty year history of the modern Iraqi state. The war allowed Iraq's Kurds consolidate their de facto state in the north which is today secure, booming, and on the cusp of the full independence every Iraqi Kurd desires.

The test of US strategy in Iraq, however, is not whether it benefits some of Iraq's peoples but whether it enhances the national security of the United States.

So far, the Iraq war has not served a single major US foreign policy interest. The WMD we invaded Iraq to eliminate turned out not to exist but, while US forces have been tied down in Iraq, Iran has resumed enrichment of uranium and North Korea withdrew from the NPT and detonated a plutonium device. Far from spreading democracy to the Middle East, the Iraq war has strengthened the Middle East's authoritarian regimes. In particular, it has given the Assad regime in Syria a new lease on life and may have strengthened Iranian radicals, like President Ahmad-Nejad, at the expense of the reformers. Al-Qaeda and like minded Salafi jihadi terrorist groups now have a base in the Sunni parts of Iraq that they did not have prior to 2003, and enjoy a measure of popular support in Iraq and among Sunni Muslims elsewhere that they never before enjoyed. Because of Iraq both the flawed case for war and the bungled management of the post war---, American prestige and credibility in the world is at its lowest point in decades. Among the many consequences is the reluctance of other countries to credit American assertions about Iran's nuclear program or to join in effective collective action.

Ironically, Iran is the major beneficiary of the American invasion of Iraq. The Shiite parties that Iran supported for decades now dominate Iraq's central government in Baghdad. In Iraq's south, these parties have created local theocracies where Iranian style

Islamic rule is enforced by Iranian-supported militias. Iran is a principal beneficiary of oil smuggling out of Basra that costs Iraq at least $2 billion a year, but more likely twice that amount.

Today, the Administration's rationale for continuing the war has less to do with the national security benefits of success than with avoiding the worst consequences of failure. The President's surge strategy is intended to contain the Sunni-Shiite civil war being fought in Baghdad and to combat Sunni terrorists. It does not address larger goals. Even if successful, the surge will not reverse Iran's strategic gains. Indeed, Iran has a strong interest in the success of a surge strategy that will consolidate the position of Iraq's Shiite-led government. Nor is a Shiite- dominated Iraq in the throes of a civil war likely to offer much inspiration to pro-democracy movements in Sunni Arab states.

"SURGE" AND IRAQ'S CIVIL WAR

But, the real question is whether President Bush's surge strategy can even accomplish its limited goal of a stable, self-sustaining Iraq. While it may produce a temporary decline in violence (as have past US security operations), the surge strategy prospects rests on two pillars: First, an inclusive national unity government that can reach out to a sufficient number of Sunni Arabs to isolate the insurgents and, second, Iraqi security forces that behave like neutral guarantors of public safety and are capable of taking over from US forces.

Iraq's Shiite-led government has no intention of transforming itself into an inclusive government of national unity. The parties that lead Iraq define themselves-and the state they now control-by their Shiite identity. For them, Saddam's overthrow and their electoral victory is a triumph for Islam's minority sect that has been 1,300 years in the making and a matter of historic justice. They are not going to abandon this achievement for the sake of a particular Iraqi identity urged by an American president.

Sunni Arabs are implacably opposed to an Iraq ruled by Shiites who want to define their country by the religion of the majority. Most see the current Iraqi government as alien and disloyal to the Iraq the Sunni Arabs built. (On the gallows, Saddam spoke for many Sunni Arabs when he warned against the Americans and "the Persians," by which he clearly meant Iraq's Shiite rulers.) The Sunni Arabs will not be reconciled with what they see as small measures, such as a guaranteed share of petroleum, a relaxation of de-Baathification laws, or constitutional amendments. They object to the very things that are quintessential to the claims of the Shiites, namely Shiite rule and the Shiite character of the new Iraq.

The surge strategy depends on the Iraqi police and army eventually taking over from US forces. This presupposes that Iraq's army and police are somehow exempt from the country's sectarian and ethnic divisions. In reality, both the army and police are as polarized as the country itself. US training will not make these forces neutral guarantors of public security but will make them more effective killers in Iraq's civil war. It is hard to see how this is in the US interest. The execution of Saddam-in which, as Iraqi officials subsequently admitted, members of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army participatedillustrated just how pervasive is the militia penetration of Iraq's security services. No part of the surge strategy is aimed at making Iraq's police and army more committed to an inclusive Iraq for the simple reason that it cannot be done.

At best, the surge strategy postpone the day of reckoning in Iraq. But it also risks a major escalation of our military mission in Iraq.

A RISKY ESCALATION OF THE US MILITARY MISSION IN IRAQ

Until now, US forces in Iraq have been fighting, almost exclusively, the Sunni Arab insurgency. Under the surge, US forces are intended to clear Baghdad of the Shiite militias, including the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia numbering some 60,000. So far, the Mahdi Army has chosen to wait out the surge which is, of course, a classic guerilla strategy. Should they change tactics, the US could become involved in all out urban warfare throughout Baghdad (a city of five million) as well in other parts of Iraq where the Mahdi Army and its allies have support.

As we ratchet up pressure on Iran over its nuclear program, the Iranian government may see a broad-based Shiite uprising against the coalition as its best insurance against a US military strike. It has every incentive to encourage-and assist-the Mahdi Army in organizing such an uprising. Iran has sufficient influence with Iraqi Shiite groupsincluding SCIRI-to ensure at least their neutrality in a clash with the Mahdi Army.

Since the beginning of the war, the Bush Administration has underestimated the number of troops required to accomplish the mission in Iraq. It has now adopted a strategy that could lead to the US military fighting powerful new adversaries with just 15% more troops.

IMPLICATIONS FOR US ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS

The implications for the programs you appropriate is clear. There is no point in funding programs that support an Iraqi central government committed to a sectarian agenda and which is, in any event, largely powerless. We should not be funding the training and equipping of the Iraqi army and police where the effect is to make for more lethal combatants in a civil war.

Resources should be directed to the level of government where power actually exists: the governorates and regions. As the Shiite south moves to form one or more regions, we should support the process with technical assistance focused on issues of governance: rule of law, taxation, and transparency. While the Shiite south will remain theocratic when (and if) it forms a region, it is clearly better for it to be run institutionally rather than by the current ad hoc arrangements of political parties and militias. If the Sunni center moves to form a region, we should offer to assist the process and, to the extent Sunni region leaders take on al-Qaeda, provide substantial economic assistance.

Since 2003, the United States reconstruction assistance has been disproportionately allocated to the parts of Iraq most hostile to our presence. It is an approach that has not bought many supporters among the Sunni Arabs but which has consistently short changed the one Iraqi community that is wholeheartedly on our side-the Iraqi Kurds. I believe we would do better to support our friends financially and militarily. Kurdistan would welcome-and benefit from-US technical assistance in a number of fields, including governance. The Kurdistan military (or peshmerga) fought alongside US Special Forces in the 2003 invasion, losing more soldiers than any other ally. We should be enhancing Kurdistan's military capabilities, as the peshmerga are the only reliably pro-American military force in Iraq and valuable ally against al-Qaeda.

The continued US presence in Iraq (except for Kurdistan) is demonstrably damaging to US national security. With our forces tied up in Iraq, we have let slide other more serious national security challenges. Maintaining an indefinite commitment to a failed strategy in Iraq is a misallocation of resources that I urge you to correct.