Checkpoint Baghdad : Diplomacy

Will Sheik’s Murder Destabilize Anbar?

Larry Kaplow — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 21:49:47 GMT

.Sattar's funeral (AFP/Getty Images)..

As the funeral for Iraqi tribal leader Abdul Sattar Abu Risha was taking place Friday, U.S. and Iraqi officials tried to assess the impact of his death on what had been the showcase province for progress in Iraq. The murdered sheik was the charismatic face of the Anbar Salvation Council, the Sunni tribal movement that late last year started joining forces with U.S. troops in fighting Al Qaeda fighters in western Iraq. In congressional hearings this week, Gen. David Petraeus cited the example of Anbar to counter claims that Iraq was becoming a lost cause for American troops.

How much of a setback, then, is the murder? Abdul Sattar was the dashing, robed thirtysomething figure America could use as an example of what Sunnis can get if they turn against terrorists. His tribesmen were formed into security forces and paid salaries. He grew in stature to the point that he was allowed to meet George W. Bush when the president made his Labor Day visit to Anbar. The sheik died Thursday when, a U.S. military official told NEWSWEEK, a car parked near the entrance to the sheik’s large compound exploded as he passed by. His death could throw the movement into disarray.

That’s the story line, anyway. But nothing in Iraq, especially tribal politics, is that simple. Abdul Sattar was the leader of only one of several factions lining up with the U.S. military, and his influence was always questionable. He was a useful role model, but the other tribal leaders had made their own decisions to oppose Al Qaeda and its violent atrocities. They and their constituent tribe members saw two foreign forces on their turf, the United States and Al Qaeda. When Al Qaeda became too ruthless in its killings of tribe members who failed to support them and too brutal in its enforcement of fundamentalist Islam, the tribes sought the help of the other big force, the Americans. Abdul Sattar was one of the first to emerge and won the biggest public accolades. But Abdul Sattar, who even allies suspected of being a smuggler and opportunist in the great tradition of desert tribesmen, was hardly standing alone.

Abdul Sattar’s death could lead to jockeying and bloodshed among the tribes--but that might have happened anyway. It’s even plausible that he was killed with the help of competitors within his own movement. The death just highlights the tensions and dangers that already existed for a tribal alliance rife with divisions and shifting coalitions, based on a mixture of power, security and money.

.Abdul Sattar with Bush (Jason Reed, Reuters ..

Given America’s unpopularity in the region--and especially in Anbar--it’s hard to say there wasn’t a link between the timing of the killing and the very public meeting with Bush. Indeed, the Islamic State of Iraq, which today claimed responsibility for the assassination, warned that it had formed “special security committees” to trace and assassinate tribal leaders who helped the U.S. forces. “And let those who are left of the apostate and agent heads who are involved in the American project know that the swords of the mujahedin are after them,” the umbrella insurgent group, which includes Al Qaeda in Iraq, said in a statement issued to jihadi Web sites today and reported by the SITE Institute.

“He should never have met with Bush,” said a high-ranking U.S. Marine officer who acts as a liaison with friendly tribes in the region. “He was signing his own death warrant.” But there had been previous attempts on Abdul Sattar’s life, and many of his tribal allies--as well as his father--had already suffered similar deaths. Killers had been targeting Abdul Sattar for months and will continue to pursue others on that path, with the aid of betrayals by disgruntled associates. But that could just feed the anti-Al Qaeda sentiment and keep the movement going. “This is bigger than [Abdul Sattar]; it’s all the tribes,” said the Marine liaison.

If anything, danger is a constant in the Anbar tribal game. The future will likely be decided by other factors. The Shiite-led Iraqi government has slowly started to embrace the Anbar movement, bringing more tribesmen into the ranks of the salaried police forces and promising more than $100 million for reconstruction. Top leaders attended the funeral. With or without Abdul Sattar, the question will be whether the sheiks of Anbar think a deal with the United States and the Iraqi government promises them more of a future than they can get with someone else.

With Ranya Kadri in Amman.

Crocker Disappointed With Progress

Larry Kaplow — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 20:46:04 GMT

U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker hasn't yet written the report to Congress he is supposed to give, along with General David Petraeus, in mid-September on the state of Iraq. Things change so quickly here, he said, that "Lord knows" what the landscape will look like by then. But he acknowledged that, as of now, the work on the political "benchmarks" that American leaders demand of Baghdad "has been extremely disappointing, frustrating to all concerned, to us, to Iraqis to the Iraqi leadership itself." The assessment came with the usual explanations Crocker has stated in the past that the problems facing Iraqi leaders are excruciatingly complicated and difficult and that the U.S. continues to support Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. But he also repeats his warning that the support is "not a blank check."

In the marble-lined palace housing most of the U.S. Embassy staff on Tuesday, around a table with the coffee, bottled water and cookies offered at these briefings, it was unclear exactly why Crocker wanted to hold the briefing, which was scheduled a few days ago. He gave no opening statement before throwing it open to questions that he answered in characteristic modesty--noting when he had doubts or didn't have answers. He likely wants to downplay the emphasis and expectations around the September report. Crocker said that even if the Iraqi government had tackled all the benchmark issues, the country could still be headed in the wrong direction. And even if it tackles none of them, but leaders are talking, bonding and building their capacity for peaceful politics, Iraq could be on the right track.

Downplaying Expectations? Ambassador Crocker, speaking to Baghdad store owners this past weekend, says just about everyone is unhappy with work on the ‘benchmarks’.

Crocker, five months into his job here, pointed to the items you'll probably hear repeated in September as glimmers of hope--but each had a counterpoint the ambassador was also willing to point out. Sunni tribes in western Iraq have turned against al Qaeda and parallel steps are seen in other Sunni areas. But he said that goes on separately from the Sunni-Shiite reconciliation that is so key and lacking in resolving the country's violence. Sectarian violence in Baghdad, he claimed, has dropped since the American troop build-up started in February--though Iraqis in some neighborhoods have reason to dispute that. But he allowed that Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi militia was still active and that southern Iraq is seeing "mafia-type" violence among Shiites themselves.

Crocker said Iraq's top political leaders are meeting face-to-face daily for hours on end to try to resolve their disputes. But in a comment that I thought spoke to the veteran diplomat's awareness of the pitfalls facing people in his job, Crocker said he might be finding "silver linings where you shouldn't."

He wouldn't directly address the comments made by Sen. Carl Levin, who said that if there is not political progress soon the Iraqi parliament should vote Maliki out of office. While saying Maliki is genuinely trying to move his country forward and is as frustrated as anyone else by the political and government chaos, he said, "In a parliamentary system, no government is forever."

For those tallying the growing list of U.S. allegations of Iranian meddling in Iraq, Crocker almost hinted that the Islamic Republic might have been behind the recent assassinations of southern Iraqi governors. He said he did not have any evidence, but it couldn't be ruled out as part of a "Hezbollization" strategy in Iraq's Shiite heartland. That could be a word we hear again in the September report, as Crocker warns of the dangers if America quits Iraq. And for anyone who remembers the "Year of the Police," in 2006, in which U.S. military officials repeatedly touted the progress of the Iraqi force, Crocker stated what most Iraqis have long known to the contrary. He said it might take years to reverse the fear and mistrust of the Shiite dominated police, rife with corruption and militia infiltration, and referred to the "fairly awful experiment" of building a national, rather than locally based, police force.

The Iran Connection

Babak Dehghanpisheh — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 16:26:46 GMT

For months, U.S. military officials in Baghdad have put together elaborate briefings with Power Point displays and defused munitions to highlight the questionable activities of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, specifically the Qods Force branch, in Iraq. These briefings were generally missing one thing: a clear assertion that the Revolutionary Guards, or IRGC, are directly responsible for American deaths. That assertion came in a briefing with Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, the U.S. military spokesman, today. Bergner said that the IRGC had helped plan an attack in Karbala last January that killed five American soldiers. He added another twist: the Qods Force have been using Hizbullah operatives as a "proxy" to help train Shia fighters in Iraq and carry out attacks against the Coalition and Iraqi security forces. "They are killing Iraqis," he said. "They are killing Iraqi security forces. In addition to the threat that they are to the Coalition force. So this is a threat for the government of Iraq as much as it is for the Coalition."

The bulk of the information Bergner presented today was pieced together from a March 20 raid in Basra that nabbed three key individuals along with computers and documents. Two of the detainees, Qais Khazali and his brother Laith, had been previously identified. Qais once worked as a spokesman for radical cleric Moqtada Sadr but splintered off from the movement at the end of 2004. According to Bergner, Qais headed up the "Secret Cells" or "Special Groups," Shia militia elements "funded, trained and armed" by the Qods Force. Documents found with Qais showed he had ordered several attacks against Coalition forces in Basra. Asked about Sadr's current influence over these groups, Bergner said, "They're operating outside his control." Laith was a smaller player in these Special Groups which, Bergner claimed, receive somewhere between $750,000 and $3 million dollars a month from Iran.

The third individual grabbed in the raid, Ali Musa Daqduq, had not been previously identified by the U.S. military. Efforts to pin down his identity may have been delayed because he initially claimed to be a deaf mute and gave U.S. military officials an alias. Bergner said in the briefing today that Daqduq's identity had been corroborated through interviews with other individuals linked to the Special Groups as well as documents found during the raid. Daqduq, who's Lebanese, joined Hizbullah in 1983 and commanded a special operations unit. He also coordinated protection for Hizbullah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah. According to Bergner, Daqduq was sent to Iran in 2005 to meet with representatives from the Qods Force. In the past year, Daqduq made four trips to Iraq to liaise with the Special Groups and help train their fighters in the use of mortars, rockets and IEDs as well as the use of kidnapping techniques. "He was tasked to organize the Special Groups in ways that mirrored how Hizbullah was organized in Lebanon," Bergner said. Qods Force and Hizbullah instructors, Bergner claimed, train groups of 20 to 60 Iraqis at a time in three camps near Tehran.

Since February, approximately 21 high-level members of these Special Groups have been nabbed and three have been killed. Still, Bergner said that these groups "remain a serious concern." And they're involved in all kinds of nasty business: "planning and execution of bombings, kidnappings, extortion, sectarian murders, illegal arms trafficking." But the most high-profile attack attributed to these Special Groups is the raid on the Provincial Joint Coordination Center in Karbala. That attack, on January 20, showed a level of sophistication that Iraqi insurgents, both Shia and Sunni, had not demonstrated before. The attackers used American-style uniforms, IDs and cars to get into the Karbala compound. Iraqi security officials interviewed at the time said the attackers also spoke English. Five American soldiers were cuffed and pulled out of the compound during the raid and they were later shot when Iraqi security forces closed in on the attackers. The Qods Force, Bergner said today, "had developed detailed information regarding our soldiers's activities, shift changes and defenses and this information was shared with the attackers." The man thought to have led the attack, Azhar al Dulaymi, an Iraqi, was killed by U.S. forces on May 19.

For their part, Iranian officials have repeatedly denied any links to the Karbala attack or any role in supporting Shia militias. Asked about the Karbala attack in a NEWSWEEK interview last February, Iran's ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kazemi-Qomi, said, "We don't have a role in any of these kinds of actions. And these accusations, from our standpoint, are condemnable." It's puzzling why the U.S. military would roll this information out now. A few weeks ago, Qomi met with U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker in Baghdad, one of the few times in the past quarter century that representatives of the two countries have met face to face, and it seemed like the diplomatic efforts were on track. According to Bergner, the point of the briefing today was to bring about a "reconciliation of intent" – in other words, pressure the Iranians to match their diplomatic rhetoric with their actions on the ground. And he pointed his finger at the top. "Senior leadership in Iran are aware of this activity," Bergner said. He also said it would be "hard to imagine" that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wasn't aware of the activities of the Revolutionary Guard.

It's harder to imagine how the diplomatic efforts between Iran and the United States can proceed after today's briefing.

Of Coups and Conspiracies

Melinda Liu — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 17:52:06 GMT

Maliki (left) and Allawi. Reuters/Azad Iashkari; AP Photo/Hadi Mizban

As if Nouri al-Maliki didn't have enough to worry about. Aside from rising violence and his government's laggardly progress on a slew of political and legislative benchmarks set by the U.S., the Iraqi prime minister also seems increasingly consumed by fears of coups and conspiracies. Iraqi media reported this week that Maliki once again accused certain Iraqi politicians of "conspiring" against the government with the help of "foreign intelligence." And Al-Hayat newspaper reported that Iraqi security officials had detained a number of tribal chiefs and former Iraqi Army officers in Dhi Qar province "for their proven links to the intelligence services of an Arab state . . . and for supplying moral, material and logistical support for armed groups that operate in southern Iraq."

Though Maliki hasn't publicly named the alleged coup mastermind, Iraqi media and everyone else assumes he means former prime minister Iyad Allawi, a secular Shiite politician who spent many years in exile in London. The fact that Allawi and his aides have been circling Arab capitals for months--popping up in Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and so forth--to drum up regional support has further unnerved Maliki's team.

For his part, Allawi derides the notion that he's plotting a coup. "Due to its own failures, the government has been trying to blame others. It's a joke," Allawi told NEWSWEEK in a recent phone interview, "They've been saying this for a year--what kind of coup would take a year to materialize?"

Still, Allawi makes no secret of the fact that he's trying to form a new parliamentary bloc. He and his colleagues hope to gather enough votes to replace Maliki's administration, which has become increasingly identified with sectarian bloodshed and lack of progress on political reconciliation. "What we want to do is stop the country's continuing slide into a black tunnel of sectarianism, chaos and anarchy," says Allawi. His group is attempting--so far without success--to cement alliances among his own Iraqi National List, the Sunni Islamic party and "Iraqi National Dialogue" front, plus smaller Shiite, Kurdish and Turkomen groups.

Maliki's conspiracy theories predate his becoming prime minister. In preparation for Iraq's December 2005 elections, a group of intelligence chiefs representing neighboring nations with Sunni majorities, plus the United States and Britain, began meeting to discuss ways "to help encourage Sunnis to participate in the elections, and to contain Iran," says Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. He told NEWSWEEK that many politicians who ultimately became part of Maliki's Shiite-led government frowned on the activities of this group--dubbed "six plus two"--because it funneled "intelligence capability and financial muscle" to certain, presumably Sunni, groups. (The "six" refer to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Jordan and Kuwait.)

After Maliki became prime minister, the "six plus two" continued to meet without Iraqi participation. "I complained that they were discussing Iraq, but we weren't even present," says Zebari. Maliki and his aides were especially irritated when some junior "six plus two" officials gathered for a meeting in Cairo, just before the Sharm el-Sheikh foreign ministers' conference on Iraq security. Allawi and some of his political allies chose that moment to visit Cairo as well, Zebari said, and speculation swirled that the ex-PM or his cohorts had met some members of the "six plus two" crowd.

One name at the center of this spy-versus-spy controversy is Irshad Zebari, who allegedly made contact with Arab intelligence officials in Cairo. A Kurdish tribal leader and former Saddam-era minister, he launched a new party not long ago. (He also happens to be a cousin of the Iraqi foreign minister, though the two remain on opposite sides of the political spectrum.)

Iraq's two most prominent mainstream Kurdish leaders--Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Masoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan region -- were infuriated to hear of Irshad Zebari's alleged role. They accused Allawi of allying with "notorious traitors of the Kurdish people, orphans of the butcher Saddam." The criticism was a "serious blow" to Allawi's political aspirations, as Iraq's foreign minister put it. (Allawi says rumors that Irshad Zebari had acted on his behalf were "misinformation" and insisted, "he is not one of the groups or individuals we've targeted in our dialogue; we have nothing in common with him.")

Still, Maliki remains insecure, and has sought reassurances from his American and British backers. In a May meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Baghdad, Maliki brought up his worries about being ousted. That prompted Blair to volunteer that he had not met Allawi in London, that he didn't intend to meet Allawi and that both he and U.S. President George Bush backed Maliki's government.

U.S. leaders have also sought to convince Maliki that they're not maneuvering to replace him. "He is the man in the job," says American Ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker, who told NEWSWEEK that politicians such as Allawi "can serve Iraq's interests better by being here [in Baghdad], not in foreign capitals." But the clock is ticking, and Maliki's government is slipping further and further behind in achieving the benchmarks that Washington had hoped could be met by September. The question is whether Maliki's desperation to cling to the top job is holding him back from doing that job properly.

Milestone U.S.-Iran Talks Make Minimal Progress

Larry Kaplow — Mon, 28 May 2007 18:39:04 GMT

After the most formal, direct talks between the United States and Iran in decades, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker today said the two sides found "broad agreement" in their declared policies and principles about the war in Iraq. That is, both sides say they want a stable, democratic Iraq. But stated policies and principles don't add up to much amid conflict that is becoming more and more a proxy war between the United States and Iraq's most powerful neighbor. Crocker, who gave a 15-minute news conference after the four hours of talks here today, said the United States told Tehran to stop supporting Iraqi militias with weapons, training and money. He said the Iranians denied the allegations.

The Iranians proposed setting up a trilateral security group consisting of the United States, Iran and Iraq to work on Iraqi security issues. Crocker says he told them the purpose of the meeting was not to discuss further meetings. Instead, the purpose was "to lay out concrete concerns, as we did, and our expectation that action would be taken on them." And, for good measure, he said he told the Iranians that before Washington would have another meeting, "we're going to wait and see, not what is said next, but what happens next on the ground, whether we start to see some indications of a change in Iranian behavior."

So much for agreement. The Associated Press reported later that the Iranian envoy, Hassan Kazemi Qomi, claimed another meeting would be held within a month. He said Iran offered to help train Iraqi security forces. Crocker did note that the Iranians had criticized the U.S. effort to train the Iraqi troops, which Crocker rebuffed by pointing out the "billions" of dollars already spent on the U.S. training effort.

Were these talks as unprecedented as some reports are saying? That depends on just how much you qualify "unprecedented". U.S. officials were with Iranians in the Iraq "neighbors" meeting in Egypt a few weeks ago. Officials from Washington and Tehran also sat at the same table at a Baghdad conference back in March. Some commentators get around that by calling this the first "public" and "bilateral" meeting between the two sides in about 25 years. But the meeting was hosted, moderated and participated in by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his security advisor, which would make it trilateral. Anyway, there were low expectations among Iraqis for any significant progress and, in a day that saw a car-bombing that killed more than 20 people near a historic mosque in downtown Baghdad, the talks played second or third in the local television news.

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It's probably inevitable that public meetings like this will start slowly, with the hope that they could eventually foster U.S.-Iranian relations further down the road. But the dispute over Iran's nuclear program makes the whole situation that much more complicated--especially as the United States has been leading the charge to punish Iran for Tehran's ongoing non-compliance with the monitoring requirements of the United Nation's nuclear watchdog agency. Another problem for jumpstarting talks like this: The U.S. military "surge," in Iraq, that slow influx of additional troops upon which so much of the American end game is riding, also gives the diplomacy a preliminary feel. If there's big progress in pacifying Baghdad once all the additional troops are on the ground (not something that's happened yet), the Bush administration might feel it doesn't need to ask favors of Iran and can keep a hard line on the nukes issue. If the troop escalation doesn't work, the Iranians may feel they have the upper hand. For Iraqis who feel more and more like their country is a card in a bloody game between the other powers, it looks like Iran wants the surge to fail--and is helping nudge it that way--to increase Iranian leverage. In parallel, many Iraqis also say that, in addition to oil and regional dominance, one of America's reasons for staying in Iraq is to scare Iran next door.

In his comments to open the meeting, Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki almost pleaded for Iraq's needs to not get lost in all the geopolitics. "Our participation will not be incidental and we are not mediators between two adversaries," he said. "We are an essential side which seeks . . . . results that would push Iraq toward security and stability." In the end, according to Crocker, the meeting did not stray from the subject of Iraq into anything else. Not even the issue of seven Iranians held by U.S. forces in Iraq was raised, he said. As for what they did for four hours, Crocker said, "As you surely know, among diplomats you don't need a lot of substance to take up a lot of time."

(Photos: Crocker in Baghdad and the aftermath of a suicide bombing in the capital. Taken by Hadi Mizban and Khalid Mohammed, Associated Press.)

Blair's Final Stop in Baghdad

Babak Dehghanpisheh — Sat, 19 May 2007 20:55:31 GMT

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British Prime Minister Tony Blair parachuted into Baghdad on an unannounced visit Saturday, his last trip to Iraq before leaving office on June 27. It wasn't a quiet send-off: a couple of hours before Blair spoke to reporters, a volley of mortars or rockets crashed down in the Green Zone where the press conference was held.

Blair met with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for about an hour Saturday morning before the conference. He said there were real signs of progress in the country and the British government would continue to support the Iraqi people even after he leaves office. But he was less composed when asked about the mortar attacks earlier in the day. "There are mortar attacks and terrorist attacks happening every day. That's the reality," he said. "The question is, what are we going to do in the face of those attacks? Those attacks, by a minority of people, want to destroy the progress here. And the answer is we don't give in to them." And he couldn't resist a dig at the media. "The very purpose of the attacks, the suicide bombs, the mortars aimed in here so you will carry nothing but that on your news and won't actually talk about the progress that's happening here."

The exchange got more heated when a BBC reporter said the claims of progress sound like "fantasy" to Iraqis. "Well, you say that," Blair shot back. "Why don't you actually listen to what the person who is the president of Iraq says about Iraq? With the greatest respect to you, you're no more qualified than me to talk. But he's qualified and he's qualified [pointing to Talabani and Maliki]. Because they're actually Iraqis who are elected to govern."

Despite Blair's pledge for continued support, his visit coincides with the last stages of a withdrawal of approximately 1,600 Brits from Basra, leaving about 5,500 troops on the ground. Although Blair has unwaveringly supported the Iraq war effort, sometimes to his own political detriment, his successor may find it more difficult to follow the same path. The security situation in Basra has deteriorated in recent months as gunmen from rival Shiite parties have repeatedly clashed with each other. That hasn't stopped the militiamen from targeting the Brits: last month, 12 British troops were killed, the highest casualty rate since the 2003 invasion. For his part, Blair said that the fight against Al Qaeda or any other group that hindered the country's progress had to continue. He also sounded a warning to the Iranian government, which has a lot of influence in southern Iraq. "Iran has got to understand that it can't support terrorism and want to work with us at the same time," he said.

There's little doubt that Blair had his eye on the history books when planning his final visit, trying to shore up his legacy before departing. And he was clear that he still feels the Iraq war was the right decision. "I have no regrets about removing Saddam, no," he said.