The Next Iraq Offensive
By WESLEY K. CLARK
Doha, Qatar
WHILE the Bush administration and its critics escalated the debate last
week over how long our troops should stay in Iraq, I was able to see the
issue through the eyes of America's friends in the Persian Gulf region.
The Arab states agree on one thing: Iran is emerging as the big winner
of the American invasion, and both President Bush's new strategy and the
Democratic responses to it dangerously miss the point. It's a
devastating critique. And, unfortunately, it is correct.
While American troops have been fighting, and dying, against the Sunni
rebels and foreign jihadists, the Shiite clerics in Iraq have achieved
fundamental political goals: capturing oil revenues, strengthening the
role of Islam in the state, and building up formidable militias that
will defend their gains and advance their causes as the Americans draw
down and leave. Iraq's neighbors, then, see it evolving into a
Shiite-dominated, Iranian buffer state that will strengthen Tehran's
power in the Persian Gulf just as it is seeks nuclear weapons and
intensifies its rhetoric against Israel.
The American approach shows little sense of Middle Eastern history and
politics. As one prominent Kuwaiti academic explained to me, in the
Muslim world the best way to deal with your enemies has always been to
assimilate them - you never succeed in killing them all, and by trying
to do so you just make more enemies. Instead, you must woo them to
rejoin society and the government. Military pressure should be used in a
calibrated way, to help in the wooing.
If this critique is correct - and it is difficult to argue against it -
then we must face its implications. "Staying the course" risks a slow
and costly departure of American forces with Iraq increasingly
factionalized and aligned with Iran. Yet a more rapid departure of
American troops along a timeline, as some Democrats are calling for,
simply reduces our ability to affect the outcome and risks broader
regional conflict.
We need to keep our troops in Iraq, but we need to modify the strategy
far more drastically than anything President Bush called for last week.
On the military side, American and Iraqi forces must take greater
control of the country's borders, not only on the Syrian side but also
in the east, on the Iranian side. The current strategy of clearing areas
near Syria of insurgents and then posting Iraqi troops, backed up by
mobile American units, has had success. But it needs to be expanded,
especially in the heavily Shiite regions in the southeast, where there
has been continuing cross-border traffic from Iran and where the
loyalties of the Iraqi troops will be especially tested.
We need to deploy three or four American brigades, some 20,000 troops,
with adequate aerial reconnaissance, to provide training, supervision
and backup along Iraq's several thousand miles of vulnerable border. And
even then, the borders won't be "sealed"; they'll just be more
challenging to penetrate.
We must also continue military efforts against insurgent strongholds and
bases in the Sunni areas, in conjunction with Iraqi forces. Over the
next year or so, this will probably require four to six brigade combat
teams, plus an operational reserve, maybe 30,000 troops.
But these efforts must go hand-in-glove with intensified outreach to
Iraqi insurgents, to seek their reassimilation into society and their
assistance in wiping out residual foreign jihadists. Iraqi and American
officials have had sporadic communications with insurgent leaders, but
these must lead to deeper discussions on issues like amnesty for
insurgents who lay down their arms and opportunities for their further
participation in public and private life.
Iraq, for its part, must begin to enforce the ban on armed militias that
was enshrined in the new Constitution, especially in the south. Ideally,
this should be achieved voluntarily, through political means. But
American muscle will have to be made available as a last resort. The
Iraqi government should request that for the next two years, six to
eight American brigades serve as a backup, available as a last resort if
there is trouble in cities with large militia factions like Baghdad,
Basra and Najaf. And it is vital that the Pentagon provide our forces
with better crowd-control training and many more translators than they
have now.
As important as these military changes are, they won't matter at all
unless our political strategy is rethought. First, the Iraqis must
change the Constitution as quickly as possible after next week's
parliamentary elections. Most important, oil revenues should be declared
the property of the central government, not the provinces. And the
federal concept must be modified to preclude the creation of a Shiite
autonomous region in the south.
Also, a broad initiative to reduce sectarian influence within government
institutions is long overdue. The elections, in which Sunnis will
participate, will help; but the government must do more to ensure that
all ethnic and religious groups are represented within ministries,
police forces, the army, the judiciary and other overarching federal
institutions.
And we must start using America's diplomatic strength with Syria and
Iran. The political weakness of Bashar al-Assad opens the door for
significant Syrian concessions on controlling the border and cutting
support for the jihadists. We also have to stop ignoring Tehran's
meddling and begin a public dialogue on respecting Iraqi independence,
which will make it far easier to get international support against the
Iranians if (and when) they break their word.
Yes, our military forces are dangerously overstretched. Recruiting and
retention are suffering; among retired officers, there is deep concern
that the Bush administration's attitude on the treatment of detainees
has jeopardized not only the safety of our troops but the moral purpose
of our effort.
Still, none of this necessitates a pullout until the job is done. After
the elections, we should be able to draw down by 30,000 troops from the
160,000 now there. Don't bet against our troops.
What a disaster it would be if the real winner in Iraq turned out to be
Iran, a country that supports terrorism and opposes most of what we
stand for. Surely, we can summon the wisdom, resources and bipartisan
leadership to change the American course before it is too late.
Wesley K. Clark, a former Democratic presidential candidate, was the
commander of NATO forces from 1997 to 2000.
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