Reconciliation - Such a Nice-Sounding Word Posted by David Shorr

...and I'm all for it, but to paraphrase Forest Gump's mama, "reconciliation is as reconciliation does." While the Administration and all the Codels have us looking under the lamppost -- where, as the old joke goes, the light is better -- at all the disjointed, sketchy and out-of-context evidence of supposed military progress, somehow we stopped looking for the original object of our search: political progress.

Even this is a limited critique, though. Political progress is framed as follows: if those darn Iraqi politicians would only get serious about reconciliation... Such an if-only-they-would frame makes it sound like a solution is just around the corner, merely a matter of Iraqi leaders buckling down to it.

But this is a figment. Since I can't put it any better, let me again quote what the 82nd Airborne soldiers said about the prospects for reconciliation in their "War as We Saw It" Times piece (now moved into TimesSelect): "There will be no magnanimous solutions that please every party the way we expect, and there will be winners and losers ... Trying to please every party in the conflict -- as we do now -- will only ensure we are hated by all in the long run." It is time (long past, really) to drastically adjust our expectations

In our desperation to have everything come out okay, the US keeps working with a play book that might have worked years or months earlier, but in the meantime is a hail Mary pass at best. As CAP reminded us, for instance, the Iraq Study Group's proposals were a great idea for nine months ago. As a result, we pursue ends that bear little relation to our means, or even to reality.

What would reconciliation really entail? With true reconciliation, factional leaders would trust that they can work through the channels of governance to protect their interests and political power. Security forces, ministries, revenues would be national, viewed by the whole population as beneficial. Can anyone see a way from here to there?

Anthony Cordesman has his doubts and is fairly measured about it:

The US cannot afford illusions about how far such conciliation and compromise will go. The US needs to face the reality that Iraq will not be the stable and democratic country the US originally tried to create for years to come – if ever. Iraq s central government will long be a weak and ineffective answer to governance and much of Iraq has already split into different sectarian and ethnic subregions...

The key question is whether the brutal nature of Iraq’s ongoing sectarian and ethnic division can be eased, and whether the mixed areas that are subject to ongoing conflict can be made relatively stable without indefinite periods of “cleansing” and killing.

At this point, this is about damage control, and if we fail yet again to adjust expectations, we will blow our chances to achieve even those. At this point, political progress doesn't mean reconciliation; it means working with factional leaders, provincial authorities, and militia commanders just to fend off the worst escalations of violence and ethnic cleansing. It means enlisting the help of the neighboring states toward the same end. We are wasting valuable time waiting for political leaders at the national level to deliver a unified Iraq. It gives me no joy to say it, but they just aren't going to.

Comments

[Cal]

At this point, political progress doesn't mean reconciliation; it means working with factional leaders, provincial authorities, and militia commanders just to fend off the worst escalations of violence and ethnic cleansing.

Right now, one in every 6 Iraqis is a refugee, and this has only accelerated under the surge. It's hard to see how, when our influence is sure to soon decline, we'll be able to "fend off the worst escalations of violence and ethnic cleansing."

Second, what makes you think "factional leaders, provincial authorities, and militia commanders[!]" are any more interested in ending the killing than the Green Zone gov't? The British have already attempted what you suggest and failed, and the Brits had the advantage of operating in a Shia dominated area. In Anbar, the Sunnis take our money and admit that they're saving their strength for the future fight against the Shias.

[Don Bacon]

private individuals are doing what our State Dept. (do we still have one?) ought to be doing.

from news reports:

Iraqi Shia and Sunni Arab officials met in Finland on Saturday to discuss ways to end the sectarian violence crippling the country, a spokeswoman for the group organising the gathering said.

”The seminar has started well,” Crisis Management Initiative director of operations Meeri-Maria Jaarva told Reuters. Jaarva said Sunni and Shia representatives were attending, but declined to name them.

An official from the powerful Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) said one of its senior officials, Akram al-Hakim, was at the meeting. Hakim is a minister of state for national dialogue in the Iraqi cabinet. The official, speaking in Baghdad, said Sunni Arab politician Saleh Al Mutlaq and a senior official from the Shia Dawa party of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki were also there.
-------
In a way there is hardly a better figure than Martin McGuinness to take the lead in an extraordinary session of Iraqi peace talks which, it has just emerged, secretly took place in Helsinki. The 16 representatives of Sunni and Shia factions who for four days, sat together in uneasy proximity, know that Mr McGuinness, now Northern Ireland's number two public figure, was an IRA commander.

[David Shorr]

Cal--
I don't see the status quo of an occupation in the middle of a low-grade civil war as exerting leverage over these dynamics. We may think that we are carefully navigating this minefield of a conflict, but we are only getting more deeply enmeshed without progress toward a solution.

Bad as they are, things could get worse. Escalation will not be a matter of spontaneous combustion but cleansing of a more systematic nature, attacks between parties or in places that had been relatively spared, new disputes over control of local areas...

What I'm arguing is that our efforts, energy, and (limited) leverage are wasted on reconciliation to bolster a unitary state, or even a new confederal arrangement. Can I promise that sheiks, warlords, or imams have an interest in moderating their actions? No. My contention is that this is a better focus and objective, with better prospects.

[SteveB]

At this point, political progress doesn't mean reconciliation; it means working with factional leaders, provincial authorities, and militia commanders just to fend off the worst escalations of violence and ethnic cleansing.

When we were "working with" the Iraqi central government, it meant providing weapons and training to the military and police forces of the central government. Now, we're "working with" Sunni militias (or warlords, or whatever) in Anbar, and that seems to mean providing weapons, sans training, to those militias.

I don't know how much more "working with" the Iraqi people can stand, when the result is clearly to arm both sides of the Iraqi civil war.

Here's a novel idea: Let's just stop. Let's not give any more weapons to anybody. Iraq is already awash in weapons. Let's stop pulling the strings, or playing one side against the other, or arming Peter to kill Paul.

We've been in Iraq for nearly five years, and what have we done? Are the people there better off because of our "involvement"? On what basis to we have any reason to think we can "manage" the situation there, or use our "leverage" to good effect, or "fend off" anything?

What will it take before our nation's foreign policy elites learn some small sense of humility? If the Iraq fiasco hasn't taught them the limits of American power, I don't know what will.

[David Shorr]

More humility is badly needed, I agree, tho' I don't know whether you'd find my concept of humility sufficiently humble.

Yes, equiping and training feeds into the problems, and it's time to get out of that business.

Having already said that the military occupation is not serving as a lever on stability, I will also say that nor is equiping, training, and occupying the only lever we have. As I say, the objective should be encouraging all parties to keep their heads and keep the levels of violence as low as possible. Humility dictates that our ability to do this is limited, which is why it's so imnportant to work with the neighbors.

[SteveB]

As I say, the objective should be encouraging all parties to keep their heads and keep the levels of violence as low as possible.

Imagine you're an Iraqi who lost your home, and perhaps some of your family, in the near-total destruction of Fallujah. Now suppose the Americans came to advise you to "keep the levels of violence as low as possible."

Would you listen to them? No, me neither.

We have zero credibility in Iraq, the only thing we have that anyone values is weapons, and so we give out weapons. And we will continue to do so as long as we're in the country. Glad to hear you don't support continuing this practice, but the practice will continue, all the same, as long as we continue to occupy Iraq.

As for "working with the neighbors", if this means not launching a massive bombing campaign on the neighbors, then I'm all for it.

[Chandra Walter]

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