Transcript

Host: This is “On the Line,” and I’m Eric Felten. President George W. Bush says that security in Iraq is improving. Mr. Bush visited Anbar province, previously a stronghold for terrorists and insurgents:

Bush: “Today, Anbar is a really different place. The level of violence is down, local governments are meeting again, police are more in control of the city streets, and normal life is returning. The people of this province are seeing that standing up to the extremists is the path to a better life, that success is possible.”

Host: President Bush credited the leaders of Anbar’s Sunni tribes for the reduction in violence. They “have made a decision to reject violence and murder in return for moderation and peace,” Mr. Bush said. “If Iraq continues to make progress against terrorists,” he said, “the U.S. will be able to reduce the number of troops in the country.” But Mr. Bush said there will be no precipitous withdrawal:

Bush: “We can’t take this progress for granted. Here in Anbar and across Iraq, Al Qaeda and other enemies of freedom will continue to try to kill the innocent in order to impose their dark ideology.”

Host: “America,” said President Bush, “does not abandon our friends, and America will not abandon the Iraqi people.” Is the security situation improving in Iraq? And if so, does this mean U.S. policy and strategy are working? Or are there other factors at work? I’ll ask my guests -- Kimberly Kagan, president of the Institute for the Study of War in Washington and an affiliate scholar with Harvard University, and director of Intelligence Center at Trinity Washington University, James Robbins, and joining us by phone from London, Mina Al-Oraibi, a correspondent with Asharq Alawsat newspaper. Welcome. Thanks for joining us today.

I’d like to start by going to Mina Al-Oraibi in London. Are you there, Mina?

Al-Oraibi: Yes, Eric, I can hear you.

Host: There was a recent report that part of the spark of the Sunni revolt against Al Qaeda in Iraq had to do with issues as simple as Al Qaeda people forcing their members on the local tribes, forcing women in the local tribes to marry Al Qaeda members. How important have those sort of issues been?

Al-Oraibi: You said it’s a simple matter, but in reality, it’s a crucial matter. It’s a critical matter for the people that actually have to put up with these foreign fighters coming and, so to speak, occupying their territories and their areas, not only in Anbar but in districts of Baghdad, the capital itself, where you had Sunni-dominant population. You had quite a few of the Al Qaeda fighters coming and staying there and really terrorizing the people. We have to remember that four years ago now, or perhaps even three years ago, there was an alliance between the Sunni insurgents and, of course, a lot of members of the former Iraqi army and police who basically had no economic viability, were taken out of their positions by the CPA and by Paul Bremer’s decision to expand the army, and therefore chose to work with different groups that were, one, paying them, and, two, made them believe that they were fighting an occupying force. However, in time, they soon realized that Al Qaeda was actually wreaking more havoc in their areas and causing them more damage than any occupying power would be, so they turned around. And reports of Al Qaeda members forcing themselves upon the women of different areas, whether it’s in Iraq, or it’s happened in Somalia and other areas -- Afghanistan -- have been spoken of before, and such reports have been told. So I think there is credibility to this report.

Host: Jim Robbins, what do you think about this? What does this tell us about socially what’s been going on between Al Qaeda in Iraq and perhaps Al Qaeda elsewhere?

Robbins: I think it’s very important to understand that not all of the insurgents in Iraq, not all the people committing violence are on the same side, so to speak. Tribal leaders have their interests. Some other insurgents have their interests. And the Al Qaeda people have their interest, which is basically building a caliphate in Iraq with them in charge. And at first this might have fit the same interests. If a tribal leader used Al Qaeda fighters or gave them support to attack Americans, that was fine. That was in their interests. But more and more, they’ve learned that these people have diverging interests with them. In fact, they want to take over their power base. They want to do away with their tribes and set up their own rule in this area. And this has been true elsewhere, too -- in Pakistan, Afghanistan -- wherever they go. So whereas there can be a temporary alliance of convenience in time, as Mina pointed out, these interests tend to diverge. And now that we see that, the tribal leaders are beginning to understand that working with the regime and working with the coalition is actually more in their interest to drive these foreign fighters out to where they came from the so the coalition forces can depart.

Host: Kimberly Kagan, Mina Al-Oraibi uses the term for the Al Qaeda fighters as being an occupying force. Is that how they’ve come to be seen?

Kagan: I think so. As I visited Iraq in May and again at the end of July, I saw areas in which Al Qaeda was certainly an occupying force. One should consider, for example, the Dora neighborhood in southeastern Baghdad, where Al Qaeda fighters had actually entrenched themselves in a handful of neighborhoods using deep-buried I.E.D.s [Improvised Explosive Devices]. They intimidated the local population into cooperating with them, imposed their own political and religious agenda on the inhabitants of Dora, and fought coalition forces extremely dramatically so that it took about nine battalions of U.S. forces to clear Dora of these Al Qaeda insurgents over the summer -- a stunning accomplishment of the surge.

Host: Mina Al-Oraibi, we also hear reports that part of what’s turned things around against Al Qaeda in Iraq has been atrocities that Al Qaeda has committed against tribal leaders and others who have objected to any of their actions. How extensive has that been?

Al-Oraibi: That’s been quite extensive for some time. There’s two sides to this. One of them is, like you said, clearly they’ve targeted tribal leaders or anyone that decided to take a different path from theirs and decided to have a different agenda, so to speak. There have been those members of Al Qaeda -- again, Al Qaeda has become such a loose word in composing of different elements -- but basically those that had disagreements over weapons supplies or over money. But there’s the other side, that in the end a lot of Iraqis and even those insurgents and those that thought that they were fighting a noble resistance started to realize, really, in the end it was Iraqi citizens who were dying, who were being killed. And that’s, I think, helped to change the tide. I spoke with a tribal leader from Anbar not too long ago, and he was saying to me, “We soon realized that, really, they’re killing Iraqis more than any occupying troops or others. So while some of these tribal shifts are not really looking favorably upon Washington or upon the presence of American troops in Iraq, they definitely have realized that Al Qaeda is not the way to get them out. And you’ll see that they’re more understanding or more accepting of joining the political process, because they realize that’s probably the best way to get an exit strategy for American troops from Iraq.

Host: Jim Robbins, what do you think about that?

Robbins: I think that’s right on the money. If the tribal leaders understand at root that the coalition forces do not want to stay there, that the United States does not want to be an occupying power and is only there to help the Iraqi people set up a stable, safe, democratic government, in which everybody can participate, including them, then I think they’ll understand that giving support to or even being neutral towards people like Al Qaeda fighters and other insurgents is actually counterproductive to their interests, because so long as that goes on, coalition forces will stay. If they could root out the insurgents, root out Al Qaeda, send them packing, then the coalition forces will leave. It’s all very simple. Our interests and their interests coincide very directly.

Host: Kimberly Kagan, there’s a lot of talk and debate in Washington about when and how and how fast to get U.S. troops, coalition troops, out of Iraq, and a lot of concern that if the U.S. packs up and leaves too soon that you’ll have some kind of civil war breaking out or chaos of one sort or another. And yet promising that you’re going to leave perhaps emboldens the wrong elements. Where does this fit, this calculation of promising to leave or saying, “We’re going to stick around and support you until a certain time”? How does that get determined?

Kagan: I think that the military command in Iraq has many judgments to make about whether it is a correct moment to withdraw troops. And time and time again, Generals Petraeus and Odierno have emphasized that it’s important to withdraw troops when conditions are right. So we might step back and ask, “What are coalition troops actually providing for these Sunni and Shi’a and mixed communities throughout central Iraq now that the counterinsurgency strategy is under way?” And one of the things we’ve certainly seen over the past three to six months is that although there might be people within the Sunni tribes and local inhabitants who really wish to throw off the shackles of Al Qaeda, it’s not possible for them to do so unless there are coalition troops there to protect them from the types of reprisal violence that are so common with terrorist groups against those who try to strike their own path. So now that coalition troops are out full time, protecting the Iraqi population and clearing enemy bases from cities like Baquba, it’s actually possible for those people who might have wished to cooperate with the Iraqi government two years ago or one year ago to cooperate with the Iraqi government now.

Host: Mina Al-Oraibi, what’s your sense of what Iraqis want in terms of how long the U.S.-led coalition is going to stay in Iraq?

Al-Oraibi: It really depends on which Iraqis we’re talking about. I think for ordinary citizens, they’re not too bothered if it’s American troops or Iraqi troops or anybody providing them with some sort of security. And there really was a security vacuum for quite some time, and there continues to be. While there are positive indicators that there could be a rooting out of Al Qaeda, it’s still very much there. So I think for ordinary Iraqis, they just want some sort of stability and security in order to think forward, “What happens next?” However, if you come to different politicians and different political groupings and militias, that’s a different story. I think one element that really has played a part in bringing a closer cooperation between the MNF forces and particularly the American troops with Sunni leaders is a fear of Iran. And as statements of Washington have gotten louder about Iranian infiltration in Iraq, which is what Sunni leaders and Sunni politicians were saying from the start, there was more and more cooperation between them. So I think one thing that you’ll hear a lot of Sunni politicians and tribal leaders saying is that, “We don’t want an end of the American presence in Iraq only to have an Iranian occupation of Iraq.” And so I think they are very clear in demanding the remainder of the time in Iraq to be consolidating Iraq as an independent state and not to be infiltrated by Iranian weapons and Iranian politicians or Iranian-backed politicians, even.

Host: Jim Robbins, how does the coalition and the Iraqi government go about, at this point, seeing that you don’t have Shi’a militias, death squads going about supported by Iran, armed and funded by Iran?

Robbins: This is a critical question. The Iranians and the Syrians, I might add, have been supporting the insurgents in various ways, with money, personnel, and particularly with weapons that have done a great deal of damage to coalition forces and also to Iraqi security forces. Iran has definitely been a de-stabilizing force in this whole conflict. President Ahmadinejad has recently stated that in a post-coalition Iraq, Iran wants to play a decisive role. And I think there are a lot of --

Host: “Fill the power vacuum” is the word he used.

Robbins: Fill the power vacuum, yes, which implies that Iraq is not going to have any say in the matter, that Iran will just come in and say, “This is how it’s going to be.” And naturally, a lot of Sunnis and, I think, Shi’ite Iraqis who aren’t too happy about Iranian influence in their country took umbrage at this statement, are very concerned about that. It is good that the United States is finally starting to make a public issue of this covert support that Iran has been giving the insurgents and the negative role it’s played in Iraq. Hopefully more of this will bring the Iraqis to understand that the choice is not between just freedom on their own and dealing with the coalition, but there are other players involved in this, much more powerful players who, if the coalition just leaves and leaves this so-called power vacuum, that the Iranians will be more than willing to fill it, as they have publicly stated.

Host: Kimberly Kagan, how do you think the coalition in Iraq can temper Iran’s push for power in Iraq?

Kagan: I think that the coalition has been, throughout August, been going after the networks of secret cells sponsored by the Quds Force in Iran, but within Iraq itself. And they have destroyed numerous leaders of these secret cells, either captured them or killed them, and likewise have focused on the lines of supply between Iran and Iraq, which were left uncovered because of lack of forces in 2006 and early in 2007. The result has been, I think, very startling within Iraq because the Shi’a militia groups that do receiving funding and weapons from Iran are suddenly finding themselves without battalion and brigade commanders, as well as without the weapons smugglers and providers who may have relied on, in the past, causing some of the political friction, presumably, that we now see with the Jaish al-Mahdi and Muqtada al-Sadr’s political party within Iraq.

Host: Mina Al-Oraibi, let’s talk a little bit about the political situation in Iraq. So much of the coalition efforts have been to try to stand up the national government and built support for it and built its strength. And yet when President Bush went to Iraq, instead of going to visit the national government leaders in Baghdad, he went to Anbar providence, where the Sunni sheikhs have been turning things around, met with them, and had the national government leaders in Iraq come meet there. Does that signal a different emphasis on where the political develop in Iraq is going to be?

Al-Oraibi: I think it was clear that the administration wanted to send two messages, the first being what we were talking about here -- that there’s been a change in Anbar, that they’re happy with the developments there, that it’s becoming a more secure area. And, you know, there’s talk that the next province that will have its security handed over to the Iraqi security force is actually going to be at Anbar, which would be quite a development, because no one expected that only a few months ago. So that was definitely one side of it. The second side, yes, was clearly that, you know -- President Bush was saying that, “I’m not coming to Baghdad to show my support for this particular government. I’m showing my support for Iraq, for developments there.” It’s still unclear where everybody stands on Prime Minister al-Maliki, and there’s been conflicting messages as to how much support he will continue to have. But I think too much emphasis has been really put on the personality of Prime Minister al-Maliki. It’s much more about the political process that is currently being played out in Iraq. And sadly, as our conversation over the past few minutes has shown, it’s become very sectarian and entrenched in the political system that we have now. How long can that last? I’m not sure, and I think we will see more and more problems emerging as different sectarian groups try to prove themselves and we get more and more difficulties in trying to have a more secular agenda in the country. Again, parliament has just convened yesterday. We have to see what will happen in Parliament over the next few weeks and which legislation will be passed and not. And again, the same Shi’as and others in the Sunni areas that have shown a willingness to cooperate with the U.S. and with the government, in terms of security, will not be as willing to cooperate on quite a few of the laws that we’re expecting, and particularly the hydrocarbon law that will, once again, once it’s being played out again, bring about quite a bit of controversy.

Host: Jim Robbins, so much of the expectation has been if there was going to be some kind of reconciliation in Iraq, it would come from the top down. And in fact, when General Petraeus comes to brief Congress this coming week on developments in Iraq, there have been all these benchmarks he’s supposed to report on, which have to do with -- Other than security benchmarks, they have to do with progress of the national government. It’s all about what’s happened or hasn’t happened at the national government. And yet there seems to be this shift to trying to achieve some kind of reconciliation from the ground up, from the grassroots, as opposed to from the central government. How’s that ever going to play out? And politically in Washington, is there going to be the ability to change the focus from whether or not the national government is succeeding in Iraq.

Robbins: Part of the problem with those benchmarks that we laid out is the fact that they rely on the Iraq political system as it currently stands to do certain things, to pass certainly laws, and we’ve pegged our success on their ability to do these things. But what that does is it places power in the hands of people like Muqtada al-Sadr to kind of walk out of Parliament and say, “We’re not going to play ball with that, and it puts egg on our face because it makes it look like we haven’t succeeded in what we’re trying to do.” What the coalition is doing on the ground in terms of security is great. There have been dramatic improvements, particularly in Baghdad in the security equation, because that’s something that we can more keenly control. What’s going on in the Iraqi political system -- It’s a new system. It’s a parliamentary system. It’s very rough-and-tumble. Things are going to happen there that are beyond our control. So the United States, from a political point of view -- from our own domestic political point of view -- should not place so much emphasis on getting things done, like passing an oil law or whatnot, because all you’re doing is allowing a minority group within the Iraqi parliament to, at the last minute, make demands, walk out, or do whatever, and guarantee that that metric is going to fail.

Host: We have less than a minute, but, Kimberly Kagan, quick sense of how the debate in Congress is going to affect U.S. policy going forward in Iraq.

Kagan: I think it’s not clear because it depends on what the president actually decides to do and what General Petraeus recommends to him, which I assume will be part of his decision-making process. After all, we do not actually live in a parliamentary system but in a congressional system, and the president has the final say over this issue.

Host: Mina Al-Oraibi, we have just a few seconds left -- your last thoughts?

Al-Oraibi: September is going to be an interesting month. There’s been quite a few people who have said August has been the calm just before the storm, so let’s see where the storm takes us.

Host: I’m afraid that’s going to be the last word. That’s all the time we have for today. But I’d like to thank my guests -- Kimberly Kagan of the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, and from the Intelligence Center at Trinity Washington University, James Robbins, and joining us by phone from London, Mina Al-Oraibi, a correspondent with Asharq Alawsat newspaper. Before we go, I’d like to invite you to send us your questions or comments. You can reach us through our website at www.voanews.com/ontheline. For “On the Line,” I’m Eric Felten.