[Mb-civic] Where Iraq Goes Now - Jim Hoagland - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Where Iraq Goes Now

By Jim Hoagland
Thursday, January 26, 2006; A25

Iraq's official election returns bring glad tidings for Ibrahim Jafari, 
the country's nebulous interim prime minister. For a chastened Bush 
administration, Jafari becomes something better than an unknown entity: 
He is a known nonentity.

Jafari's sudden strength in his bid to stay on stems entirely from his 
weakness: He does not command a major political party or militia. He has 
done little since taking office nearly nine months ago but give poetic 
and confusing speeches. If some leaders suck all the oxygen out of a 
room, Jafari fills it with mist and will-o'-the-wisp.

It is this elusive quality that belatedly recommends him to Zalmay 
Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad and crafty overseer of 
American efforts to be a midwife to a new coalition government.

Iraq's Dec. 15 balloting was orderly and inspiring, but it has created 
an aftermath that is neither of those things. It has also forced the 
Bush administration into a silent reassessment of where Iraq is going 
and how it is going to get there. Increasingly, the country drifts 
toward the future as two relatively stable autonomous regions and a 
violently unstable central zone, all linked by a weak central government 
and a reduced, reactive U.S. military presence.

All things considered, such a loose, imperfect federalism is not the 
worst outcome that could befall Iraq. Totalitarian systems, whether run 
by Saddam Hussein or Soviet commissars, create weak power centers when 
they collapse. A decade of managing their own affairs and security could 
provide an important transition stage for Iraq's Shiites, Sunnis and 
Kurds to sort out oil revenue, relations with neighbors and other 
troublesome issues.

That kind of future -- and a renewal of Jafari's term in office that 
would make it more likely -- did not figure in the hopes and predictions 
of U.S. policymakers before the December parliamentary election. Back 
then, the word passed to Iraqi officials visiting Washington was to form 
a strong central government, much more quickly and transparently than 
after the January 2005 election, when Jafari emerged from electoral 
stalemate as the lowest common denominator in Iraqi leadership.

The administration now gives no sign of trying to hurry things along as 
it concedes it must deal with the election results it has, not the 
results it wanted. Those were canceled by the poor showing of Ayad 
Allawi and Ahmed Chalabi -- secularists who conceivably could have been 
strong, independent executives -- and successful electioneering by 
Iranian-backed Shiite parties distrusted by Washington.

As the largest bloc in parliament, the United Iraqi Alliance -- 
dominated by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and 
the radical cleric Moqtada Sadr -- will ultimately choose the prime 
minister. Jafari's Dawa party is a junior partner in the alliance and, 
unlike its Shiite allies, does not have a large militia.

The release of the final results has triggered a new round of 
three-dimensional chess to allocate cabinet positions among Iraq's three 
major population groups -- the Shiite majority of the south, the Kurds 
of the north and the Sunni minority that is the source of central Iraq's 
continuing violent rebellion.

The Sunnis voted in greatly increased numbers this time and now have a 
serious claim on cabinet posts. President Bush has hailed this as a 
breakthrough, portraying voting as an alternative to insurgency.

But a renewal of violence since the election suggests that the Sunnis, 
egged on by neighboring Arab regimes and Baathist remnants, may be 
adopting a long-term "vote and fight" strategy to reclaim the kind of 
power they wielded under the Baathists. That is one outcome far worse 
than a de facto partition of Iraq, if it comes to that.

Working with nudges, winks, long sit-downs with Iraq's fledgling 
politicians and inexhaustible patience -- qualities alien to L. Paul 
Bremer and John Negroponte, his two predecessors as U.S. proconsul -- 
Khalilzad seems to be maneuvering toward a cabinet that would 
effectively be run by strong deputy prime ministers while Jafari floats 
effortlessly above the hard work.

Allawi, both proud and lazy, is reportedly resisting U.S. entreaties to 
take such a post under Jafari. Chalabi and Sadoun Dulaimi, a Sunni who 
is currently defense minister, are other possibilities. But Khalilzad's 
dealmaking talents will be stretched to their limits in getting the 
Shiite parties to accept U.S.-inspired limits on the political victory 
they have achieved.

Reality has bitten the Bush administration in Iraq and forced the 
president to settle for less than he wanted. Let's hope that reality can 
now do the same with Iraq's newly empowered Shiite leaders.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/25/AR2006012501781.html?nav=hcmodule
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