Posted on 06/15/2006 10:27:30 AM PDT by RobFromGa
Iraq: Next Moves for the Shia By George Friedman
In "Break Point," a piece we published about three weeks ago, we made the argument that the war in Iraq had reached the critical point. A basic political deal had been made between the three major groups in Iraq -- the Sunnis, Shia and Kurds -- and that the Sunnis at that point either would begin to contain the insurgency, or the situation could not be contained. As we put it then, "First, in response to the deal that has been made, can the Sunni political leadership move decisively to end the insurgency, or at least reduce its tempo? And second, is it willing to do so?"
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of the Sunni jihadist organization operating in Iraq, is dead -- killed by Americans. On his death turns the answer to the question posed above: whether the Sunnis are prepared to rein in the insurgency. Two very different explanations for al-Zarqawi's death are possible. To be more precise, the manner in which al-Zarqawi died -- whether by a bomb or a bullet -- is much less important than how the Americans got the intelligence about his location. If it was the result of a free-standing American intelligence operation that managed to subvert someone close to al-Zarqawi, then his death, while important, has no lasting political significance. On the other hand, if the intelligence was provided to the Americans by senior Sunni officials, then al-Zarqawi's death is an indication that the political deal that created the Iraqi government is being translated into concrete actions to bring the violence under control.
Answering this question is the key to understanding what is happening in Iraq, and it is a very difficult question to answer. Even on the ground, U.S. intelligence officials might not be able to distinguish their own efforts and luck from a cold-blooded political decision by the Sunnis to terminate al-Zarqawi. The Sunni leaders would want to keep their distance from the betrayal, at least on the ground, and therefore would provide any intelligence through a conduit designed to look like a stand-alone agent. He would not be carrying a sign saying "Working for Senior Leaders." Indeed, he might not even know he was working for them. A Sunni leader might have fingered someone known to be close to al-Zarqawi, allowing nature to take its course from there. Between all of the potential permutations and the deliberate and reasonable desire of U.S. intelligence to confuse the issue of exactly what happened, no judgment can be drawn.
Judging simply by events in Iraq following al-Zarqawi's death, it is difficult to see any political hand in any of this. The level of violence after his death was not reduced to an obvious degree. If the Sunni leadership had made a decision to curb the insurgency, the only part of it that clearly was curbed was al-Zarqawi himself. Other Sunni groups do not appear to have backed off at all. From this, we would have to conclude that his death came about as the result of a successful American intelligence operation and not from any political deal.
And yet, there is an oddity: The air strike that killed al-Zarqawi took place at 6:15 p.m. Baghdad time on Wednesday, June 7. His death was announced publicly at 11:37 p.m. At 12:17 a.m. Thursday, 40 minutes later, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki announced that the last three positions in the Cabinet had been filled, and that a Sunni had been appointed defense minister. There had been no indication prior to the appointment that the last remaining deadlock over the Cabinet had been settled, and no reason why such an important announcement should be made after midnight rather than at a full-blown press conference in the morning. Yet there it was. Al-Zarqawi's death was announced, followed minutes later by a compromise on the Cabinet.
There is another point. During the night in question, U.S. forces said they conducted raids on 17 other locations in and around Baghdad. They said the raids were based on intelligence gathered at the home where al-Zarqawi was killed, which had been blown up by two 500-pound bombs. That's possible. But it is hard to imagine finding the material, analyzing it and tasking 17 separate raiding parties in the timeframe involved. It could be the case, but a more easily believable scenario is that the same source that provided the intelligence on the location of al-Zarqawi's safe-house also provided intelligence about 17 other locations.
That gets interesting. Al-Zarqawi didn't survive as long as he did by being sloppy. In any insurgency, information must be compartmentalized carefully. Having and divulging details about al-Zarqawi's location, plus 17 other operational sites, could take down most of al Qaeda's network in the Baghdad area. It is hard to imagine a single source, no matter how senior, having that much information. But it is not hard to imagine several senior Sunni officials, fully aware of al-Zarqawi's operations in their villages and neighborhoods, being able to paint a picture for the Americans.
Again, this analysis assumes that there was not enough time to mount all the attacks from intelligence gleaned from al-Zarqawi's safe-house, that no single person knew the full structure of al-Zarqawi's organization in Baghdad and, therefore, that the intelligence came from senior Sunnis whose own networks of sources would know where al-Zarqawi's people were. But even if we don't buy this argument, how do we explain the timing of the Cabinet announcements? The best counterargument would be that al-Maliki, having announced the death of al-Zarqawi, decided to routinely announce the Cabinet decisions in the wake of that death. That just doesn't work. The two were linked.
There are peripheral factors that play into this as well. At about this same time, Iran softened its rhetoric concerning its nuclear program and said it was ready for negotiations with permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. It has long been our view that Iran's blessing would be needed for any political deals forged in Baghdad and that Tehran has used the nuclear issue as a means of securing its interests there. Thus, the sudden shift, which also coincided with al-Zarqawi's death, seems noteworthy.
To our minds, the intelligence on al-Zarqawi's location was the down payment for the political settlement that the Sunnis said they wanted. The Sunni payment must now be reciprocated by a Shiite payment: a resolution on the status of the Shiite militias, which have been killing Sunnis in reprisal for jihadist attacks and torture suffered under Baathist rule, among other reasons. The plan that al-Maliki previously had laid out was that the militias would be integrated into the Iraqi army. The response from the Sunni head of Iraqi intelligence, which came shortly after al-Zarqawi's death, was that this was not an acceptable solution. If the militias were simply integrated into the Iraqi army as whole units, they would be able to continue carrying out their political function in uniform. The solution, he said, was to disarm them and turn them into unarmed civil servants.
The notion of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army being turned into clerks at the Iraqi Department of Motor Vehicles is surely worth thinking about, but after we get serious again, it's clear that that isn't going to happen. The Shia now have a problem. Al-Zarqawi is dead and al Qaeda is badly disrupted, but it can recover if the Sunnis want it to. The Shia -- for the moment -- can decide to move the political process forward or, by inaction, allow it to collapse and return to the status quo. Bringing the militias under control is a difficult process that will cause wrenching shifts in the Shiite community. But that is the price for a unitary Iraq in which Shiite power dominates but is limited by Sunni and Kurdish interests.
Shiite Options
The question now is whether the Shia want this deal. Obviously, they want to dominate Iraq without limitations. That isn't going to happen. Both the Sunnis and the Kurds are in a position to resist this. The Americans are still there, and they can block the Shia. Should the Americans leave, the Shia could wage a more effective war -- but only if they had the direct and open intervention of Iran. So, the path to domination depends on many variables and could fail under any circumstances. But under any circumstances, that path leads to an Iranian presence -- and likely domination -- in Iraq.
The other alternative is to let the process collapse, not respond to al-Zarqawi's killing and allow the civil war to intensify. The Shia would do relatively well in fighting the civil war, but again, there would be complexity. The Saudis in particular do not want to see Iraq divided into three independent entities. The southern entity would be Shiite -- and the Shia, the Saudis have to calculate, would be dominated by the Iranians. That would leave Saudi Arabia vulnerable to Iranian attack, with the only counterweight being the U.S. Army. The last thing Saudi Arabia wants is U.S. forces deployed on its soil. It is also the last thing the United States wants. The result would be Saudi and U.S. support being poured into the Sunnis. That, in turn, would increase Shiite dependency on Iran or else force the Shia to turn to the Americans. Civil war would be untidy, to say the least, for the Shia.
Note that in these two scenarios, there is a substantial probability of massively increased dependence on Iran. With that dependence comes the likelihood of Iraqi Shia being turned into puppets of the Iranians. Obviously, the Shia of Iraq and Iran have some common interests and common perspectives. During the rule of Saddam Hussein, Iran played an important role in preserving some of the interests and power of the Iraqi Shia. But the relationship between the two communities isn't as simple as one might think. There are theological differences between An Najaf and Qom, the two religious centers of the Iraqi and Iranian Shia. There is the difference between Arabs and Persians. And then, not to be crude, there is oil.
The Shia dominate the southern oil fields of Iraq and would dominate the central government in Baghdad. With oil prices at $70 a barrel -- or even $40 a barrel -- those southern fields represent an enormous amount of money. After investment, production levels could rise substantially. Whatever the communal relations between the two Shiite communities, control of the oil fields around Basra has tremendous financial significance. Thus, the more dependent the Iraqi Shia became on Iran, the more Iran would try to shape -- or usurp -- control over the oil fields. This is not a certain outcome, but it is certainly possible. And it is an enormous and unacceptable risk for the Iraqi Shia. It is essential that they control the business processes around that oil. With that amount of money involved, the Iranians would be tempted to assert control, and that is not something the Iraqi Shia want to see. With fighting flaring among Shia in Basra (where, incidentally, protesters stormed the Iranian consulate on Wednesday), the question is already very much on the table. The Shia do not want to be caught fighting on two fronts.
They also don't want to be caught fighting among themselves. It is never clear to us the extent to which there are splits among the Shia and the extent to which various Shiite factions are used by the Shiite leadership to create "good cop, bad cop" situations. In other words, in watching their actions, it frequently seems to us that the Shia are more unified than it might appear. In any case, this is showdown time among the Shia. Just as the delivering up of al-Zarqawi represented a critical step in showing the Shia that there did not have to be permanent civil war with the Sunnis, getting control of the militias would be the Shiite way of demonstrating that the Sunnis don't have to fear the Shia permanently. This is, if you will, the next break point.
In studying the Shiite calculus, it seems to be in their interest both to avoid a grab for absolute power and to avoid allowing a civil war to collapse the central government. This is not about loving democracy or their fellow man. The Shia have gotten the best politico-military situation they are going to get, and there is a lot of oil money sitting on the table that could actually slip away from them if they aren't careful. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is not a careless man, and he is likely to be seeing what we are seeing. A space exists in which most of the aspirations of the Iraqi Shia can be realized; move much further, though, and they could be reduced to puppets of the Iranians.
Iranian Goals
It is interesting to note that over the weekend, Abdel Aziz al-Hakim -- who leads the United Iraqi Alliance coalition in parliament, went to Tehran for consultations with Iranian leaders. Clearly, al-Hakim, a major Shiite political figure, needed to sound out the Iranians on their view of Iraq after al-Zarqawi's death. The Iranians liked what al-Zarqawi was doing -- not only because he was tying up the Americans, but also because his attacks against Iraqi Shia rendered them more dependent on Iran -- and it was rumored that they were helping him. Al-Hakim went to Tehran to find out the Iranian leadership's views, but also, we suspect, to tell the Iranians that the Iraqi Shia were looking for a formula to make their next move. The message was delivered delicately, but it was delivered.
We thought for a moment that there would be direct and open talks between Iran and the Americans. It didn't happen. Nevertheless, talks of some sort are critical -- not because of the nuclear issue, but rather because the Iranians have the ability to disrupt the process in Iraq. The question is what the Iranians really want. The answer is that they want to be the dominant power in the region. Neither the Americans, the Saudis or, for that matter, the Iraqi Shia are really interested in seeing this happen. On the other hand, the Americans want to see a settlement that gets them out of a mess. They may agree to something, with the private reservation that they will work to contain the Iranians later. The Iranians may know that is the American thinking but will figure that they will deal with the Americans later.
It gets murky at this point. How the Iranians will react to the situation is a great uncertainty. However, what appears clear to us is that at the break point, the Sunnis tilted toward a resolution of the conflict by delivering up, by whatever devious means, al-Zarqawi. That solves part of the problem. The next step is for the Shia to show how they will bring their militias under control. The fighting obviously continues: The non-jihadist Sunni forces continue to fight, as do the Shiite militias. Al Qaeda is badly hurt but could regenerate. But given the logic of the Shiite position -- caught between the death of al-Zarqawi and the Iranian problem -- solving the question of the militias seems to be in their interests.
Therefore, we would expect to see increasing tension within the Shiite community and between Iraqi and Iranian Shia in the near future. U.S. President George W. Bush's visit to Baghdad this week celebrated one moment in the process, and it was an important one. The next step in the drama will be difficult and painful, but the logic now is on the side of a long-term settlement and a long-term decline in the war.
That is the logic -- but then, this is the Middle East.
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bump
That's a good analysis. But I'm surprised the author didn't mention Jordan. Jordan claimed that their intelligence agents played a big role in locating the Zarkman.
I'm looking forward to reading the books in ten years...
The 17 raids conducted immediately after the Zarquawi hit were based on intelligence previously gathered from other sources, and involved known terrorists who were being tracked for the purpose of locating the main target. Once they had him, there was no need to leave the others free.
Since that day, over 400 ADDITIONAL raids, based on new intelligence gathered post-Zarq have taken place, capturing or killing nearly a thousand bad guys, with much more to come.
I heard Mr. Friedman on Dennis Prager last week and it was FASCINATING!! His explanation about the minister deal seems to be right on!
bttt
This type of double and triple dealing is soooooo Iranian. When it's complex beyond necessity, Iranians are involved.
ping
There had been no indication prior to the appointment that the last remaining deadlock over the Cabinet had been settled, and no reason why such an important announcement should be made after midnight rather than at a full-blown press conference in the morning. Yet there it was. Al-Zarqawi's death was announced, followed minutes later by a compromise on the Cabinet.
Sounds like politics to me. And YES that's a good thing.
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