Iraq and Afghanistan

There are again many discussions of the fact that violence is not abating as the elections come nearer. Violence directed at all those involved with or guarding the election process seems actually to be increasing in intensity in the Sunni Arab areas. Iraq’s President has discussed the possibility of postponement; the defense Minister has talked of it in Cairo; the Prime Minister even spent time on the phone with Bush discussing the problem. It is hard for the Americans to allow a delay as long as the Ayatollah Sistani says no. What the Americans face is that they now have the Kurds and most of the Shi’a on their side, and these groups, particularly the Shi’a leadership, are counting on the January elections giving them control of the country. Even a follower of Muqtada al-Sadr in Sadr City is now campaigning for a new ticket that will support al-Sadr’s cause if elected (this in addition to the twenty or so Sadrites already have on the list of the more general Shi’a establishment). Delay, and we may begin losing them. Hold the election, and we will at least look good to this large “constituency”.

The problem with delay is that a short delay is unlikely to change the situation very much. On the other hand, a long delay would reinforce the idea that we are simply an occupying power, that we have no intention of actually leaving. This idea would be easy to sell in the already anti-American Sunni Arab world, and might start being believed elsewhere as well. Meantime, the Coalition determination to stay no matter what would be weaken as time passed. What, then, could be done to make a short delay more useful?

Perhaps the place to start would be to make a much greater effort to seal the border with Syria while at the same time putting more pressure on Syria to stop the movement of men, materiel, and money into Iraq. The Syrian government might even be encouraged to arrest or expel some of the Iraqi Baath leaders in Syria that are maintaining the violence. Another approach would be to allow Shi’a militias to be reactivated. These could be used to guard main thoroughfares and squares in Baghdad, as well as being deployed along major transportation arteries. They could be paid for their efforts: in the past they have consisted largely of unemployed young men. Of course, they would not be the best of troops. But they might do as well as, and be able to supplement usefully, the police forces that are now the weakest reed in the election protection effort. These two measures, along with the already occurring increase in American forces, could conceivably bring the violence down immediately before and during an election held in April instead of January.