December 06, 2006

Memos Everywhere

It is the season of the memos. Hadley's. Rumsfeld's. More soon, perhaps. These were leaked (purposefully by their respective authors, or on their express direction, in my view) rather transparently so as to say: 'see, we've got ideas too!'--before the much more detailed Baker-Hamilton recommendations are released tomorrow. A somewhat pitiable display of bureaucratic butt-covering, it would appear, but there it is. Regardless, and while we await the release of the ISG's recommendations, it is worth noting perhaps the massive disconnect between the rather clinical recommendations captured in these memos and the actual situation in Iraq. For instance, both Hadley and Rumsfeld appear keen to lessen Shi'a influence in the Ministries, but alas, much more easily said than done, it would appear.

Hadley:

Compel his ministers to take small steps — such as providing health services and opening bank branches in Sunni neighborhoods — to demonstrate that his government serves all ethnic communities;

Bring his political strategy with Moktada al-Sadr to closure and bring to justice any JAM actors that do not eschew violence;

Shake up his cabinet by appointing nonsectarian, capable technocrats in key service (and security) ministries;

Announce an overhaul of his own personal staff so that “it reflects the face of Iraq”;

Demand that all government workers (in ministries, the Council of Representatives and his own offices) publicly renounce all violence for the pursuit of political goals as a condition for keeping their positions...

Next, Rumsfeld: "Aggressively beef up the Iraqi MOD and MOI, and other Iraqi ministries critical to the success of the ISF — the Iraqi Ministries of Finance, Planning, Health, Criminal Justice, Prisons, etc. — by reaching out to U.S. military retirees and Reserve/National Guard volunteers (i.e., give up on trying to get other USG Departments to do it.)"

And then, grim realities, via Nir Rosen:

With the January 30, 2005, electoral success of the Shia parties, the balance of power between Shias and Sunnis shifted, initiating an apartheid process. In the ministry of health, pictures of Muqtada and his father were everywhere, along with pictures of Shia saints and banners celebrating Shia holidays. Traditional Shia music reverberated through the hallways. Doctors and ministry employees referred to the minister of health as “imami,” or “my imam,” as though he were a cleric. And in the ministry of transportation, walls were adorned with Shia posters, including some specifically supporting Muqtada. Sadrists instituted a program they called “cleansing the ministry of Saddamists,” with “Saddamist” defined so broadly that all Sunnis felt vulnerable. Ousted Sunnis were replaced by Shias with no apparent qualifications. In one case, a Sunni chief engineer in the transportation ministry was fired and replaced with an unqualified Shia who wore a cleric’s turban to work. Efficiency dropped; the ministries of health and transportation barely functioned, and the ministry of the interior operated an anti-Sunni death squad. Its secret prisons were uncovered in November 2005.

Although SCIRI controlled the ministry of the interior, which nominally controlled the security forces, the rank and file were poor, young Shia men, often members of the Mahdi Army. Local police forces thus fell under the control of the Sadrists. Iraqi police stations and army bases were decorated with posters of Muqtada, as were police and military vehicles. Even in the Sunni Anbar province, the Iraqi army was composed of Sadrists. In the spring of 2006, when Sunni soldiers from the Anbar province graduated as new members of the Iraqi army and were told that they would serve outside their home province, among Shias, they rioted and tore off their uniforms. (The Americans had established police forces in Anbar, composed of local Sunni men selected by their tribes. When I visited them in the spring of 2006, these police had not been paid in months, because the ministry of the interior was not sending the money.)

Sunnis had initially courted Muqtada, who opposed Iranian intervention, in the hope of establishing a united front against Americans. But Muqtada’s Mahdi Army was in fact primarily responsible for the attacks against Sunnis. The Mahdi Army could claim, as it did, that it had handed over its weapons after battling Americans in Najaf, Sadr City, and other Shia enclaves, that it was a purely “spiritual army,” but since Mahdi Army soldiers pervaded the police force, they were still armed and in control. And although the ministry of the interior had been implicated in attacks against Sunnis, it was the police themselves that conducted such attacks regularly.

Posted by Gregory at December 6, 2006 06:00 AM