Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

'Pie in the Sky' Report Won't Fix Iraq

by Peter W. Galbraith [contact information]

Published by Boston Globe on December 7, 2006

"DEAD ON ARRIVAL" seems the likely verdict on the much-awaited Report of the Iraq Study Group. Former secretary of state James A. Baker III, who chaired the panel with former Indiana congressman Lee Hamilton, demonstrated his skills as the great deal maker by getting the group's five Democrats and five Republicans to endorse every word of the report.

Consensus came at the expense of candor. Iraq has broken up and is in the midst of a civil war, but this is never acknowledged in the report. The panel seems to assume that nation building is still possible in Iraq, and this underlies its recommendations. The result is a report that, on the most essential points, is pie in the sky. The Iraq Study Group recommends a tough love approach to Iraq's internal problems. It proposes to condition US support to the Iraqi government on it meeting certain benchmarks. These benchmarks include constitutional revision to subordinate Iraq's virtually independent regions to control from Baghdad, revising de-Ba'athification laws to permit Saddam's supporters (who were mostly Sunni) a greater role in public life, regulating militias, and amnesty for Sunni insurgents.

Parts of this program are questionable. Iraq's 80 years as a unified state produced nonstop misery, including mass killings and genocide, for its Shi'ite majority and Kurdish minority. The new Iraqi constitution allows the Kurds, the Shi'ites, and the Sunnis to form powerful regions with their own militaries and substantial control over natural resources. It is an antidote to Iraq's deadly centralism and was adopted by nearly 80 percent of Iraq's voters. It is hard to understand why it should be gutted.

More important, however, the Baker-Hamilton program is unachievable. Kurdistan's voters would have to agree to the constitutional amendments, and having voted 98.7 percent for independence, are not likely to do so. Iraq's constitution currently prohibits militias and a law regulating them is not likely to have a greater impact. Both Shi'ites and Sunnis consider militias, and other irregular forces, essential for prosecuting the civil war. Amnesty is for losers, and the Sunni insurgents believe they are winning. They have wrested control of large parts of Sunni Iraq -- including west Baghdad -- from the US-led coalition and the Iraqi government, and bombing Shi'ite civilians has triggered a civil war. If the insurgents were prepared to trade their gains for amnesty, they would never have taken up arms in the first place.

The panel's most publicized recommendation is for US combat troops to be mostly withdrawn by 2008 with the remaining forces training and supporting the Iraqi Army and police. This seems to assume that Iraq's police and army are, or can be, neutral guarantors of public safety. In fact, they are Shi'ite or Sunni, and combatants in a civil war. The Shi'ite police include the death squads that have abducted, tortured, and killed thousands of Sunnis. The Sunni police are insurgents or insurgent sympathizers. American training can make the Iraqi security forces more effective killers but it cannot make them loyal to the idea of an inclusive Iraq.

As to the recommendation that US combat forces be withdrawn, this is a step in the right direction since US troops are doing little today to contain Iraq's civil war or put the country back together. President Bush, however, has signaled he will not accept this proposal, and the newly Democratic Congress lacks the will and the votes to force a withdrawal.

The panel rightly recommended US engagement with Iran and Syria, but neither country can improve significantly the situation in Iraq nor will they want to as long as the administration pursues -- however ineffectively -- regime change.

On June 21, 1991, Baker flew into Belgrade to warn Yugoslavia's leaders not to break up the country. Four days later, Slovenia and Croatia declared themselves independent. Baker had misdiagnosed the problem. By focusing on the hopeless task of saving Yugoslavia, he missed an opportunity to prevent the war that followed.

By not facing up to the reality of a disintegrated Iraq, Baker's panel has missed an opportunity to forge a consensus around concrete steps that could contain Iraq's civil war and extricate the United States from the quagmire.