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Gamble does not pay off

It has been evident for a long time now that the Iraq policy of the United States has been a calamitous failure. President George Bush’s attempt to reverse the trend by despatching 30,000 troops to augment the occupation force was a desperate throw of the dice. This gamble has not paid off even though the U.S. and its fast-dwindling cohort of allies have been able to put some sort of lid on the insurgency over the past month or so. While attacks on the foreign troops and Iraqi civilians have not stopped, the impression gathered from media reports is that the levels of violence over the last few weeks have been low compared with the earlier part of the year. However, there was never any doubt that success in military terms would be meaningless unless followed up with political action, specifically an attempt by the Shia-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to reconcile with the disgruntled Sunnis. The Maliki regime, which has made no serious effort to do this, is unlikely to do anything different in future. The Shia take on the situation was lucidly brought out in a recent New York Times article by a group of Non-Commissioned Officers of the U.S. army. In their analysis, Iraq 217;s majority community regarded the invasion as a process that would enable it to attain ascendancy; goal accomplished, it now wants to consolidate. In such a context, the sergeants write, the Shias are not going to come to an accommodation with the Sunnis because “reconciliation without consolidation risks losing it all.”

With Mr. Maliki not sticking to the occupation political script, several American politicians have pressed the Bush administration to work for his replacement. It is conceivable that the civilian component of the occupation machinery can achieve the purpose by engineering defections from the ruling coalition but such an intervention will derail the ‘democratisation project’ Mr. Bush is supposed to be promoting. Worse, it will almost certainly provoke a Shia backlash. As it is, the political factions closely aligned with Mr. Maliki are agitated over the U.S. decision to provide arms to Sunni groups in Anbar province. These newly minted militias have been quite active in the operations against the non-Iraqi jihadists who claim to be part of the insurgency. However, these Sunni groups have fought in their own interest and not on behalf of the government. In short, the occupation forces appear to be barely holding back two antagonistic, heavily armed communities who will go for each other’s throats once the restraints are removed.

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