The Lost Reports

There's a new study on Afghanistan warning of impending crisis, with an ineffective government losing power and influence to the Taliban, full-scale corruption and severe breakdowns in security. But there's also a report on Iraq that dampens the boasts of victory through surge that we keep hearing.

WASHINGTON -- A nearly completed high-level U.S. intelligence analysis warns that unresolved ethnic and sectarian tensions in Iraq could unleash a new wave of violence, potentially reversing the major security and political gains achieved over the last year.

U.S. officials familiar with the new National Intelligence Estimate said they were unsure when the top-secret report would be completed and whether it would be published before the Nov. 4 presidential election.

Um, I can assure you that it won't be.

The report lays out the structural challenges which have let to be dealt with:

U.S. officials say last year's surge of 30,000 troops, all of whom have been withdrawn, was just one reason for the improvements. Other factors include the truce declared by anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of an Iran-backed Shiite Muslim militia; and the enlistment of former Sunni insurgents in Awakening groups created by the U.S. military to fight al-Qaida in Iraq and other extremists.

The draft NIE, however, warns that the improvements in security and political progress, such as the recent passage of a provincial-election law, are threatened by lingering disputes between the majority Shiite Arabs, Sunni Arabs, Kurds and other minorities, the U.S. officials said.

Sources of tension identified by the NIE, they said, include a struggle between Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen for control of the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk; and the Shiite-led central government's unfulfilled vows to hire former Sunni insurgents who joined Awakening groups.

McCain will use this to walk that "we're winning but have not yet won" tightrope and argue that withdrawal equals surrender. But in actuality, our presence has done nothing to reduce sectarian tensions apart from the violence. The NIE is saying that the conditions still exist for civil war or sectarian strife, and having our troops act as a proxy army for Maliki, who wants to be a strongman, actually exacerbates the problem, increases frustrations, and heightens instability. Nobody has forced the factions to come together and reconcile - in fact, Bush decentralized the government but simultaneously empowered Maliki's militia and has now handed over control of the Sunni Awakening forces to him, which is bound to shock the system as the Prime Minister tries to consolidate power. Creating what amounts to a theocratic dictatorship allied with Iran is not a good prospect for Iraq or the world, and makes hollow the focus on violence and security in the short term.

Peter Galbraith makes a similar point in the New York Review of Books:

Less violence, however, is not the same thing as success. The United States did not go to war in Iraq for the purpose of ending violence between contending sectarian forces. Success has to be measured against US objectives. John McCain proclaims his goal to be victory and says we are now winning in Iraq (a victory that will, of course, be lost if his allegedly pro-surrender opponent wins). He considers victory to be an Iraq that is "a democratic ally." George W. Bush has defined victory as a unified, democratic, and stable Iraq. Neither man has explained how he will transform Iraq's ruling theocrats into democrats, diminish Iran's vast influence in Baghdad, or reconcile Kurds and Sunnis to Iraq's new order. Remarkably, neither the Democrats nor the press has challenged them to do so [...]

From 2003 until 2007, the Bush administration helped Iraq's most pro-Iranian Shiite religious parties take and consolidate power. Naturally, the Shiites—and their Iranian backers—welcomed the US involvement, at least temporarily. Now the United States is putting heavier pressure on al-Maliki to include the Sunni enemy in Iraq's security forces. It has created a Sunni army that, as long as the US remains in Iraq, can only grow in strength. Al-Maliki and his allies want the US out of Iraq because the American presence has become dangerous.

Without American troops, the Iraqi army and police would be able to move against the Awakening. Should Sunni forces prove too powerful, Iran is always available to help [...]

Al-Maliki's agenda is transparent. The Kurds and Sunnis are obstacles to the ruling coalition's ambitions for a Shiite Islamic state. Al-Maliki wants to eliminate the Sunni militia and contain the Kurds politically and geographically. America's interest in defeating al-Qaeda is far less important to him than the Shiite interest in not having a powerful Sunni military that could overthrow Iraq's new Shiite order. The Kurds are too secular, too Western, and too pro-American for the Shiites to share power comfortably with them [...]

John McCain says that partly because of his persistent support of the surge, we are now winning the Iraq war. He defines victory as an Iraq that is a democratic ally. Yet he advocates continued US military support to an Iraqi government led by Shiite religious parties committed to the establishment of an Islamic republic. He takes a harder line on Iran than President Bush, but supports Iraqi factions that are Iran's closest allies in the Middle East. He praises the Awakening and but seems not to have realized that the Iraqi government is intent on crushing it. He has denounced the Obama-Biden plan for a decentralized state but has said nothing about how he would protect Iraq's Kurds, the only committed American allies in the country.

George W. Bush has put the United States on the side of undemocratic Iraqis who are Iran's allies. John McCain would continue the same approach. It is hard to understand how this can be called a success—or a path to victory.

One great tidbit in there is that Maliki was kind of picked up at the last minute by the US when they needed a new Prime Minister, and that initially, they got his first name wrong. Yet in the name of increasing security, we've given him all kinds of power, seemingly ignorant that he's a longtime Dawa Party member who spent 20 years in exile in Iran.

Condi Rice is meanwhile crying that Iraq has been harder than she personally imagined. Perhaps it's because you have to actually pay attention to it.