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| Moderator: | Eric P. Schwartz, senior fellow, Council on Foreign Relations |
|---|---|
| Speakers: | William L. Nash, director, Center for Preventive Action, Council on Foreign Relations |
| Michael Doran, adjunct senior fellow, Council on Foreign Relations | |
| Yitzhak Nakash, Associate Professor of Modern Middle Eastern Study, Brandeis University; Director of the Middle East Program, Brandeis University | |
| Aziz Al-Taee, chairman, American Iraqi Council |
April 1, 2003
Council on Foreign Relations
Washington, D.C.
Robert C. Orr [RCO]: This is the second of our weekly briefing series, “America at War.” We will be doing these indefinitely at this point on Tuesday mornings at this same time. It is a great pleasure this morning to welcome four distinguished panelists, and a distinguished moderator. Eric Schwartz is a senior fellow here at the Council. Recently headed a task force on post-conflict Iraq. Eric is known to many of you here in Washington as a former senior director in the Clinton National Security Council for Multilateral and Humanitarian Affairs. I don’t want to take any time away from this distinguished panel, so Eric, the floor is yours.
Eric Schwartz [ES]: Thanks a lot, Bob. And welcome all to this morning’s session. Let me first describe how we will proceed. I think we’ll start with about 15 or 20 minutes of just general conversation among the panelists in response to directed questions from me. And then we’ll open it up, the rest of the session, to questions and answers from the audience, if that sounds reasonable. But first, let me introduce our panel this morning. First, to my far right we have Dr. Michael Doran, who serves as adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He’s an assistant professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton, where he teaches courses on U.S. policy toward the Middle East, the Arab/Israeli conflict and political Islam. He’s the author of “Palestine, Iraq and American Strategy,” which appeared in this February’s issue of Foreign Affairs.
To my immediate right is Yitzhak Nakash. Dr. Nakash is an associate professor of Modern Middle East Studies at Brandeis, and is director of the program in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. He’s author of “The Shi’is of Iraq” published by Princeton University Press in 1994. And he is working on a new book which seeks to elucidate the interplay between group and national identity among Shi’i communities in the Arab world in the twentieth century.
To my immediate left is Aziz al-Taee. He’s chairman of the American Iraqi Council, an independent, nonprofit, non-governmental organization that advocates the empowerment, the interests in the ideals of Iraqi Americans. He was born in Baghdad to a Shi’i family. As a member of the Shi’i majority, he was forced to flee Saddam Hussein’s regime. He sought asylum in the United States, whereupon finishing his education, he applied his entrepreneurial skills to starting and operating several businesses here.
To my far left is Major General Retired William Nash. He’s a senior fellow and director of the Council’s Center for Preventive Action. He served in the army for 34 years and is a veteran of Operation Desert Storm. He led U.S. troops into Bosnia after the Dayton Accords. Was a former regional U.N. administrator in Kosovo, and is an expert on military logistics and psychological warfare.
So there’s our team this morning. I think I will start the discussion with a question directed at Bill Nash, because if you read The New York Times, as I do on the computer early in the morning, I found a pithy quote from Bill, so I think it’s a good way to start. Tommy Franks was quoted as saying, “There is continuity of operations in our war plan, yet many speculate that we’re currently experiencing an unexpected pause in our advance in order to build up a coalition of forces. The general question, are we experiencing the unexpected? And what comes next?” Bill was quoted this morning in response to criticism of Eric Shinseki, the Chief of Staff of the Army, as saying, “He is as fine a soldier as I’ve ever served with, and his key characteristics are loyalty and professional competence.” General Nash, the article went on to say, added, quote, “It is extremely unfortunate that he has not had more influence on the war planning and the allocation of forces.” I didn’t want to set you up, Bill, but you said that to the press, so (Laughs) I thought it was appropriate to read it. So with that, Bill, I guess the general question is, are things not going according to plans? And if so, what comes next?
Gen. William L. Nash [WN]: Well, I stand by my comments about Rick Shinseki. To my dying day. The campaign, I think, is going well, with plenty of opportunity for upside and downside experiences in the near term. It is on plan. And if you were in the Medina Division of the Republican Guards right now, or had been in the last week, you would have not perceived a pause. And as is our wont here in Washington, we got wrapped around the axle about what somebody said about needing to adjust and the like. And it is a common procedure within the military that forces that are in the lead a long period of time, like the Third Squadron of the Seventh Cavalry, the reconnaissance outfit of the Third Infantry Division who has led that dash across the desert, did they need a rest and get pulled off line a little bit? Did they need a pause, did they pause for a while? Yes, but that had nothing to do with what Fifth Corps was doing, or what Central Command was doing and the like.
I’ve never met a soldier that couldn’t use more forces. I’ve never met a good soldier that couldn’t have employed efficiently additional forces. But General Franks bears a responsibility for that, and he apparently, he obviously said, “I can do it with what I’ve got.” And until he’s proven wrong by acts on the ground, I don’t criticize him. The fact of the matter is, is we’ve seen much more resistance. We’ve seen reasonably organized resistance, though it has certainly appeared to us in ways that I did not imagine. And the ferocity with which the Fedayeen paramilitaries have integrated into the villages and the cities from Basra through Nasiriyah, through up to Karbala. And how they’ve influenced both the populist and the regular army and I assume parts of the Republican Guards has caused much more fighting. And the lines of communications were vulnerable.
And as somebody said in the paper, and it’s an old saying in the army, the enemy has a vote in what happens on the battlefield. And the enemy took their vote with probably the only possible tactic that they could use was to try to hold the cities, try to impact on the lines of communications. Saddam Hussein’s only hope for survival is to delay this war for as long as possible. Delay losing for as long as possible in order to try to cause international opinion to bring the war to a stop.
Everybody from the battalion commanders on the ground to the core commanders to the central commanders to the Secretary of Defense, have taken actions to adapt to what has happened. At the strategic level, they’ve increased, they’ve sped up the flow of forces to the theater. There’s some forces that were going to go by ship; they’re now going by air. Those going by air have a unique capability to deal with the lines of communication security issues. The fourth division that was supposed to go to Turkey and everything, the delay in Turkey deciding, the indecision on what to do with the fourth division has caused a delay in their employment. I think a much more major impact than we recognize completely. That’s happening now. General Franks released use of a number of divisions and separate brigades. The 82nd Airborne Division was moved up early to deal with the lines of communications problems. The 101st is diverted from some other work, is working the line generally parallel to the Euphrates River. And at the battalion brigade division level, and both marine commanders have taken actions to deal with the threats that they impose. They’re clearing out some of the villages, cities, and the like.
I got to just add one thing. Because it’s the song I sang before the war, and I’m going to keep singing it. In the liberated areas of Iraq, it is incumbent that we get to work. Now, this post-war reconstruction has started, or should have started in Iraq and whether it’s Safwan and Umm Qasr to the edges of Basra, to some of the towns along the Euphrates, like that’s going on. There’s some humanitarian going on. The shortage of forces, in my view, is the fact that they’re not the follow and support forces to deal with that issue.
ES: If I may, Bill, let me just follow up on that final point, and then we’ll broaden it, go beyond the military. In the Council sponsored independent task force report on Iraq, one of our conclusions was, and with your great help, was the importance of public security in areas abandoned by, or under nominal coalition control, but in circumstances where coalition forces have gone on to other battles. And I think honestly, there was…when we auditioned this notion to some military officials, the response in some measure was that that probably won’t happen, but it’s probably not going to be a huge problem, either, because the victory’s going to be so swift. In circumstances where the victory, perhaps, hasn’t been as swift as some might have anticipated, you know, how is the absence of that level of force in areas that are outside of formal Iraqi control, but not completely secured, now how is that going to play out in the days and weeks to come?
WN: Well, there’s some other folks here that have some good input on that. Just to start, you and I have discussed, and I have already stolen your sound bite. Public security is the enabler for all the humanitarian action, all the reconstruction and the like. I don’t know a lot about it, but I was the military occupier of Southern Iraq after Desert Storm, and public security was a major issue to me in Safwan, in the area running from Umm Qasr to the west about 30 miles and about 10, 15 miles to the north, not to Basra. But there was a lot of issues because there was an absence of authority. And we were kind of the good guys in those days to everybody, because we had run off the regime folks. But there was some revenge killings or revenge actions taking place while we were there that we tried to put a stop to. And then there was public lawlessness. Because of the absence of authority. And so the perception of chaos, the perception of lawlessness, some of which we’ve already read about in the papers here in town, the disorganized nature of some of the assistance actions. By the way, the scenes that I’ve seen of people grasping for food and the like, and all of you have seen of great confusion and all that, deja vu all over again. I mean, and that just happens, and it’s not nearly as startling as it looks on television and the like. And having had myself chewed out a couple of times for having those scenes (Laughs) appear on television in 1991, I have great sympathy for the soldiers trying to control all of that now. But that happens.
But the point is, a larger issue is, is being organized. And I go back to what I had a discussion with the general 12 years ago, and he was telling me not to build camps and not to get too involved in all this business in Southern Iraq. And I looked at him and I said, “General, I can do it organized or I can do it disorganized, which do you want?” And he kind of decided that organized was better. And I see no reason to change that attitude. That requires resources, requires more people.
ES: If I can turn on this, follow up from this to Aziz al-Taee and then Yitzhak Nakash on this question of, in particular, in the southern areas in Shi’i communities, why we haven’t seen the expected uprisings. And what we can expect, and from the perspective of U.S. strategy, perhaps what efforts might be made to sort of ease conditions for U.S. forces in the south.
Aziz al-Taee [AAT]: Sure. Thank you. Actually, this is the million dollar question that you’re asking.
ES: That’s why you’re here.
AAT: Thank you. (Laughter) The Shi’i ...
WN: You’re not going to get paid that much.
AAT: No, I don’t get paid for freedom. For fighting for freedom I don’t get paid. The Shi’i, the majority of the Iraqi populations, Shi’i Muslims, they are 75 percent without the Kurds, Shi’i, 78 with the Kurds, Shi’i. So any solution to Iraq has to be pretty much coordinated with the Shi’i. And any war of liberation should have the Freedom Fighters somewhere in the equation. I agree with you the war is going okay. It will be much better and faster if we have, at this point, included all the Iraqi Freedom Fighters, like we are doing with the Kurds in the north, at this point we should invite the Shi’i to, at this juncture in history, we have to make a choice. We either have to listen again to Saudi Arabia and Egypt government telling us we don’t have democracy in Iraq, the Shi’i, all that, is up to power.
We have to understand the meaning of the word Ayatollah. It’s not only Khomeini who’s Ayatollah. We have to get familiar with all the terminologies of the Shi’i doctrine. And you have to understand that for a long time to come, we’re going to be getting very close to the Shi’i population, to the Iraqi populations. We must understand how they think, what do they think about us, what they been through. One of the things that we should immediately, as military planners, they should immediately do, is start immediate contacts with all these Shi’i groups. The reason I say that, because first, I’m a Shi’i. I lived here 20 years and I’m very close, so there’s nothing to worry about Shi’i. Like the Egyptians want us to believe. We listened to them the first time, in 1992, and look what happened. The Iraqi people never forget. Actually, 300,000 of them had to be slaughtered by Saddam because we wouldn’t help. After we asked them to rise up and then to further insult Iraq. They didn’t forget that, that scar’s still in their heart.
The second, by getting them to the populations, you want the army to do the fighting, you don’t want them to run cities and deal with the distribution of food. We must get the army to do the fighting and advance to Baghdad. You’ve seen al-Sahhaf, their information minister of Iraq, what is he saying about cutting the United States’s arms. Army supply lines, into like cutting a snake. Well, actually he forgot that we should, as the coalition forces, cut the head of the snake, which is Saddam. And all the snake will die, which is all these resistance parties we have. So using his terminology, obviously, what he’s been saying on the media.
Al-hakim(?) group, al-Chalabi, Laythko(?), a lot of these leaders have fellowship. When I go to the city of Baghdad, which people know who I am, and al-Taee family knows who I am, and the tribes know who we are, we cannot use a stick without a carrot is one of the things we should have done a lot before even the conflict started, and we should do now, like Saddam is doing. If you bring in American soldier, I’ll give you $25,000. If you bring me this…this is like old techniques that works. You know, basically tell the people, “This is what you get, and we are not here to control you.” It worked in Afghanistan when we had this meeting with the tribal leaders. And we didn’t have to fight as much. Let’s taking Afghanistan as example, Mazar-i-Sharif, we tried to take it for three weeks. We couldn’t. When we get the northern alliance involved, we took it in two days. And this is the same thing, with the Shi’i have religious authority. They’re listened to pretty much. So they have also political authority, which is like the Supreme Council, serious, they have al-Chalabi, the Iraqi communist party. Hezb-I(?), that one, you know, all of these parties. And also they have some of them who are with the government at this point, but they really want to defect.
When they came out from Basra, they were looking for Iraqi Freedom Fighters to face them. When they came out they saw the British soldiers, a lot of them went back to Basra. Because you cannot communicate…you have seen that device the army has, they play that loudspeaker. They’re telling the population, “Here is the water, here is ...” the people don’t want that. They want to see a human, Iraqi human, there are four million of Iraqis in exile. We could lose a lot of them. I know we have some of them in Hungary and we have some of them in Iran. We definitely have to involve their better brigade, which is the Iraqi opposition brigade that wants to help to run the cities. In other words, at this point, it’s going well, but we should integrate the Iraqi Freedom Fighters into the process. That will definitely fasten and accelerate our drive to Baghdad. And obviously Saddam is the head of the snake, and when he’s cut, the whole snake will die.
ES: Let me turn to Yitzhak Nakash on that sort of same general area.
Yitzhak Nakash [YN]: Yes. I come to you as a historian of modern Iraq. I guess from my point of view it’s very important that you’ll understand that when we talk about Sunnis and Shi’is in Iraq, we talk about two groups that are, by and large, Arabs. And when we hear the word Shi’i, we have this tendency to associate Shi’ism in Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world, with Iran. Shi’is in Iraq are by and large Arabs. Like the Sunni minority, they are committed to the territorial integrity of Iraq. The tension between Sunnis and Shi’is in modern Iraq is not cultural or ethnic, but primarily political. And it reflects the competition of the two groups over the right to rule and to define the meaning of nationalism in the country.
Now I’d like to say a few more words about the cautious behavior of the Shi’is in Iraq, in southern Iraq, in the past two weeks. And to give a few reasons that can help explain this sitting on the fence type of behavior that we have witnessed. We heard a lot about the fact that they are fearful. That they feel betrayed by the United States as a result of the call of senior President Bush for them to rebel. And then when they did, America did not come to their help. There’s other things that I’d like to highlight. In 1991, the uprising took place in the wake of a military defeat. Shi’is had access to heavy arms. Army units composed of Shi’is were retreating from Kuwait with heavy arms. This is how the Intifada, if I understand it correctly, started in Basra.
Today Shi’is don’t have easy access to arms, that’s number one. Number two, in 1991, the uprising started at a time when the grip of the regime over its population was loosening. Today, thus far, it looks like the regime is pretty much in control of the major cities. The image of an invincible Saddam is still there. Then there is another factor. It has to do with the point that you were discussing, of lack of organization, which I would like to tie to the fact that one of the problems of the Shi’is in Iraq is that they lack a clear leader that can inspire and direct an insurrection in the south. We saw it already in 1991, when the Intifada, or the uprising in its initial stages was spontaneous and very disorganized. It’s happening again today.
Then, there is another issue that we need to take into account. The Iraqi Shi’is, they feel themselves to be Iraqi nationalist. We have to come to terms with this fact. Now, this plays itself on two ways. When they rebelled in 1991, after Saddam crushed the insurrection, there were accusations leveled against the Shi’is of Iraq that they are a fifth column within Iraq, and collaborators with the West. I think the Shi’is would like to avoid such thing once again. And it helps explain their cautious behavior. Now, another aspect that relates to the nationalist aspect of their behavior has to do with the fact that, as Iraqi nationalist, although they would like to see the Ba’ath regime eradicated, they feel uncomfortable with the fact that they are not sure what U.S. long term goals are in Iraq. They probably dislike the idea of a lengthy U.S. occupation. And in spite of repeated assurances by Bush administration officials that the oil of Iraq belongs to the Iraqi people, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people think that actually the U.S. is after the Iraqi oil.
Before I finish this wrap-up of the insurrection, and by the way, I’m very short here. Anyone here who is interested in more details, I wrote a lengthy op-ed piece about it in Le Figaro. It was published on Saturday. But I’d like to say something about the insurrection. There’s a lot of expectation that an insurrection in southern Iraq can be of great help for the military operation. My sense is that an insurrection in southern Iraq in and of itself is not a substitute for a military victory, this is number one. Number two, and we know it from the experience of 1991, even if we will witness a large scale insurrection in southern Iraq, the critical question is whether the Shi’is of Baghdad, who constitute at least half the population of the capital, would join that insurrection. In 1991 they did not, and that enabled the regime to continue to maintain its control of the capital and eventually to regain control of the south. So this is a critical question, how the Shi’is of Baghdad would behave in the coming days. Whether they decide to remain passive, to sit on the fence, so to speak. Or whether they decide to take matters into their own hands, is an extremely important question. And we have to look very carefully at what will happen in Baghdad.
ES: Thank you, that was terrific. Before we open it up, and we will in a minute or two, I wanted to ask Michael Doran a question which doesn’t yield a short answer, but I’m going to ask you to give us a short one anyway. So we can open it up to the floor. Which is your impressions of the implications for the nature of this conflict, the way in which the conflict seems to be playing out, more difficult than it had been imagined, with media imbedded in U.S. forces, images in the Arab world. The broader implications for U.S. interests in the region, both vis-a-vis our efforts in the current campaign and in post-war Iraq, but also more broadly. So it’s a very simple question.
Michael Doran [MD]: (Laughs) Okay. First of all, we have a serious problem on our hands. We may be winning the war militarily, but there’s a public relations war, or a political war in the larger region, that we’re not winning, I think. In a sense, we can’t win it, but we could do a lot better. When I say we’re not winning the war, I mean, I don’t think the…the mood in the Arab world about all this, I think, is something between rage and fury. So there’s a serious problem there for us, but I don’t think that it’s taking the kind of form that could actually stop the war. I think the only force in international politics that could stop the Americans from actually going all the way to Baghdad is the American themselves, American public opinion. So this mood in the Arab world is not going to stop us. I say that because I don’t see anything happening there that suggests to me that there’s going to be some kind of regional destabilization as a result of this public mood.
Now, Saddam has based his whole strategy on this from the beginning. I mean, even from 1991, we know from the memoirs of one of his advisors that he had a name for this strategy, which is called “holding on to the trunk of the elephant.” And America’s the elephant, and this trunk is moving around, and he just has to hold on long enough until the elephant gets tired out. And what’s going to tire the elephant out is opposition in the Arab world, opposition in Europe or opposition in the United States. Like a lot of dictators, he believes his own distorted view of things. And I think he’s taking a lot of comfort in the opposition that we see in all of the press and the demonstrations and, of course, all the opposition in the Arab world.
There’s a little bit of good news in that, I think, for us, if I can digress a little bit. And that’s, I think that the chance of him using chemical weapons is really very minimal in all this. Because he knows that his war is a public relations war. What he wants to do is put the maximum number of bloody images, images of bloody Iraqi civilians on TV, in front of the Muslim world, in front of all the opponents of the war in the West. And he wants to drag this thing out as long as possible, because he thinks the elephant then will get tired. He knows that if he uses chemical weapons, that that’s going to be very bad for this strategy. So I think the good news is that it’s probably unlikely that he’s going to use them.
Now, what can we do about this? I have to concur with everything that Mr. al-Taee said. We’re in a serious problem. We have a credibility problem in the Arab world, especially with regard to the Arab media, but Arab peoples in general. I don’t think they believe a word that our spokesmen say. I don’t blame us for that, by the way. That’s a very complex issue that can’t be discussed in a short answer. But it’s a reality, it’s a political reality that we have such a credibility gap. And we’re in a position right now where we have images of dead children on the one hand, and then a Centcom briefer saying, “We’re doing everything we can to minimize casualties.” We’re not…the moral complexity of the war that we feel, even people here that were opposed to the war still see it one of moral complexity. And they see the situation on the battlefield as one of great moral complexity. That I don’t think is a feeling that a lot of people in the Arab world have. I think that the general climate there is that the morality of this is simple. We’re aggressors and we’re killing children. It’s unfortunate to me that we don’t have more Arabic speaking Iraqis on the television saying that this is justified, that Saddam is putting civilians in the way of the guns and so on. And that’s a result, I think, of a mistake on our part, of not supporting some kind of Iraqi political organization to work along with us in this military operation.
Now, I’m not quite as critical of Washington as a lot of people are, because I was among the idiots who thought that the victory was going to be very swift. And that the swiftness of the victory itself was going to be a great propaganda victory. That was a mistake, and it’s embarrassing for me to have to admit it. I didn’t go around saying that. But it was something that I really thought. I thought at the time. Having said that, this mistake has been made, it’s not too late to rectify it. We can’t, if we are concerned about our image, then we can’t have Centcom briefers versus images of Iraqi children. There has to be a voice out there that can present the moral complexity of this issue to the Arab world.
Now, one last sentence about the whole regional thing. I’ll just put out a big, bold statement, and then we can perhaps discuss it. There is something interesting here going on from an historical point of view. From 1798, if I can just talk about recent history, from 1798 up until yesterday, the Western powers have been the dominant powers, militarily, in the region. Up until yesterday, meaning the fall of the Soviet Union, there has always been more than one Western power. This is the first time in history that there’s only one. I mean, this is unipolarity. We have never had unipolarity in the Middle East. The Defense Department in the United States was, I think, the first organization in the American government that has recognized that. And wants to capitalize on that.
Now, what that means, so there is a vision of regional and of world order that is being tested in the Middle East here. I don’t pretend to know the answer to it. But the states in the region don’t have the luxury of engaging in open conflict with the United States. Because it has a kind of military power that it can bring to bear against them. Now, they can engage in a lot of clandestine opposition. But we don’t have a great power rival, and that’s going to bring about a new political order in the region. Exactly what that’s going to look like when it’s all finished I don’t know. But it is the big experiment that’s being carried out here.
Unknown: It’s just the beginning, it’s not going to be finished. (Laughs)
ES: We’re going to open it up. But first, with respect to your statement about being wrong on the war, I have to confess some admiration for your…and I guess some puzzlement…for your willingness to come clean, when your prior statements were not publicly articulated. That’s unusual for Washington, but be that as it may. (Laughter) With that, let me open it up for questions. Yes?
BP: I’m Bob Pelletreau former Assistant Secretary of State. A question to our experts on the Shi’i. It involves how should we be looking at Iran? Both during this conflict phase and the day after. Iran has the longest border with Iraq. The Sirri(?), the Dawa(?), other Iraqi Shi’i, have gotten support from Iran. Secretary Rumsfeld warns Iran. Yet shouldn’t we be trying to involve all of the genuine opposition groups, whether or not it happens to be the Iranians that can talk to some of them better than the United States could? I’d like to hear you, and you, Dr. Nakash, comment.
ES: I think this is a very good question. At this point we have to understand that this movement of Islamist governments that came through the eighties, they have had their chance for 20 years to prove that they can bring a better life to their people. What happened is they became corrupt as they got to power, and they start doing exactly what other politicians do. Accumulating wealth, oppressing people in certain areas. However, at this point, after September 11, the Wahhabism(?), and what they showed us, these regimes that we have supported all along, these dictatorships in the area, without naming governments, they have failed not only to provide better life. And also we have had all these terrorist organization rising up, like al-Qaeda, and mainly actually in some of the countries we thought the regimes are so friendly to us that the people should love us. Now the truth is that the people of Iraq and the people of Iran, they love the United States culture, they love the way of life, they love the people, they have no problem. Actually in the Shi’i doctrine, freedom and liberty is the high point of (Inaudible) Hussein(?) gave his life, who’s the grandson of the prophet of Islam, gave his life for freedom and liberty of all people.
So there is a lot of things in common in ideology between the American culture and the Shi’i doctrine. At this point we should not be making more enemies. We should not make the Iranian government an enemy. The Iranian government is not trying to hurt our interests in the area. They have change of rhetoric. They have had actually a reform movement. The reform movement is going very, very good. That’s why it’s very important that, when talking about foreign relations and politics, we should have the State Department doing that. You know, everybody has a specialty.
(Laughter)
AAT: And no, I’m serious. It’s very important that everybody sticks to his specialty. We must stick to what we are good at, and that’s why you have all different branches of government. I think the Iranians can be a big help in this war. I think the Shi’i…and I talked to them, even two days ago, I talked to the political consultant of Hakim(?), of Sirri, he said, “Tell the Americans whatever they want to meet, wherever they want to meet. And we want to prove to them that we don’t take orders from the Iranian intelligence service. And that we are independent Iraqi operating from a land close to Iraq.” The Shi’i, at this point, after September 11, the Shi’i didn’t come here and terrorize us. The Shi’i fundamentalist organizations didn’t blow our buildings and embassies. The Shi’i didn’t do none of that. The Shi’i actually are calling for a dialogue of civilizations. That was the Iranian president’s idea, the Shah of Iran. The government of Iran, I have a lot of disagreement with them. However, if I have to choose between them and the people who support ideologies like bin Laden and you know, Wahhabis are the natural enemies of Shi’i. They’ve been killing Shi’i since I can remember, okay?
And that’s why at this point must be a shift in policy from dealing with the Wahhabis and the regimes that supports them, and to dealing with all the public opinion poll says that the Iranian’s Shi’i, who are 99 percent, Iraq Shi’i, 75 percent, they don’t have any problem with our culture, with our way of thinking. And also we must make new friends and new allies. Now we know who’s the real ally. We thought Turkey and Saudi Arabia and Egypt were allies. Now we know for sure that this is not the case.
YN: Yes, I have a few things to say. In my book on the Shi’is of Iraq, there’s a lot of discussion about the historical relationship between Iraqi Shi’ism and Iranian Shi’ism, including the fierce competition between the two. I would say this: the issue of Iran’s involvement right now, I think it’s a very delicate issue and I’d like to explain why. Iran is not the only neighboring country surrounding Iraq. There’s Turkey, there’s Iran and there are Arab states. We saw already how much sensitivity the prospects of a Turkish intervention in northern Iraq created. And there is also the fear of a domino effect here. Because the more involved Turkey becomes, the more involved Iran would inevitably seek to be involved by trying to influence Shi’i affairs in the country. And the more involved Iran is, the more involved Arab states would like to be by claiming to save god, the interest of the Sunni minority.
So the attempt to keep as much as possible the neighboring countries from meddling right now in Iraqi politics is in itself, I think, is a logical policy to pursue. However, if you look at the nature of the relationship historically between Iraqi Shi’ism and Iranian Shi’ism, there has always been a healthy level of competition that I think after the war can re-establish itself. For example, for many years, Najaf has been the leading Shi’i academic center in the Shi’i world. In 1946 it lost this standing to Pume(?) in Iran. In the wake of the war, a revival of Shi’ism in Najaf can increase contacts between the two cities, but it can also generate that kind of competition, which I perceive as a healthy competition. So the question of how much to expect Iran to be involved at this point, I think it’s a very sensitive one. And the fact that people have reservations about it seems to me as something that we should accept and say, “Yes, we need to be a little bit worried about that.” We do want to create a situation where in a new Iraq, there are conditions for not just to prosper, and to offer an alternative to Shi’is elsewhere in the Arab world. We can find ways to reach out to the reformers in Iran other than involving Iran in Iraqi politics.
ES: Michael Doran?
MD: One of the things I think is interesting about this situation is the Iranian American relationship. And it seems to me that one of the results of this war, a possible result that we should keep our eye on, is the improvement of relations between the United States and Iran. Despite the Axis of Evil rhetoric, there’s a lot of signs of sort of tacit cooperation and probably behind the scenes, real cooperation between the two countries. From the Iranian point of view, on the one hand it’s very uncomfortable to have so much American military power right on the borders of Iran. On the other hand, we’ve been doing good service for the Iranians. In the cosmology of the hard-liners in Teheran, the most evil person in the world is Mullah Omar. The second one is Osama bin Laden, the third is Saddam Hussein and the Americans and the Jews are really down there in four, five and six. The Americans are going and one by one taking out the most, from a hard-line Iranian point of view, the most reprehensible groups in the region. So it’s a bit threatening to have so much American military power there, but watching Saddam Hussein go and watching the Taliban go doesn’t do anything but bring pleasure and joy to the Iranian heart.
Iran is, in many ways, a natural ally of the United States. It’s been cooperating with the United States in Afghanistan, as I say. And that’s something that needs to be watched. Can I just make a word about the Kurds?
ES: Sure.
MD: People have been talking about using indigenous forces. And, in fact, I just brought that up as well, in Iraq. And I hear more and more calls on the media now to engage the Kurds as they just did, and take the Kurds down towards Baghdad. That’s a recipe for disaster for the reasons that Professor Nakash just pointed out. But especially with regard to the Turks. The Turks have a, I think, a very clear red line. And that is that they don’t want…red lines…they don’t want an independent Kurdistan, they don’t want an autonomous Kurdistan with control over the oil resource of Kirkuk. Because they feel that this will have a deleterious effect on their relations with their own Kurds in Turkey. Obviously I’m too distant from it to read it, but it seems to that these are the issues on which they would actually intervene. And a Turkish intervention would enormously complicate the whole situation.
ES: Just want to make a statement, neither the Kurds or the Shi’i or anybody has said that they want to make their own states. Or like the Turkish bringing that subject, the Kurdistan leaders, the Berzani(?) and the Talibani, the Shi’i, they all met in Kurdistan, Iraq. And they have actually a full blueprint for the future transition of Iraq. I think all Iraqis are in agreement that this regime must be removed, that this regime has started the war by Saddam refusal to go into exile. That there is a war that nobody talks about, that Saddam has been waging a war and a holocaust on the Iraqi people that has cost us two million, and six million in exile. But no Iraqi really, including the Shi’i, which I am from, want a different Iraq or divide Iraq.
Unknown: No, no doubt. But the Turks look at this from a military point of view, where capabilities create intentions. So Kurds on top of oil resources (Overlap) ...
Unknown: I think they are more looking from sectarian problem, they are worried about a Shi’i presence in Iraq than military. They have put this in, since the Ottomans left Iraq, something unwritten, that no Shi’i should be a president of Iraq, even if they are 75 percent of the population. It’s unwritten, but they’ve been going by that doctrine. This is about to change, obviously.
ES: I really think the Kurds issue is the biggest one now. I think this conversation points up the critical importance of considering the regional discussions, regional security arrangements, regional forum, et cetera. And looking at the Afghan model, in fact, where the United States needed to work with governments that neighbored Afghanistan, including Iran. And the result has been a dispensation in which, although progress has been very uneven, it’s been recognized by the region, the Afghan state. And so it’s going to be a very important issue. Other questions? Jamie?
JM: Hi, Jamie (Overlap) ...
ES: Before Jamie, we’ve got about 15 minutes, so I’d take the questioners keep their questions short. And if I could also ask the panelists to think in terms of sound bytes rather than longer answers. Please.
JM: All right, Jamie Metzl, Council on Foreign Relations. This morning the Washington Post reported a conflict between the State Department and the Defense Department regarding who would lead a transitional administration in Iraq. And according to the article, the Defense Department seems to be on the path towards ascendance. And one of the people who is being considered is the former CIA director as the information minister, as the person minding the information ministry of Iraq. I would be interested in your impressions on what type of message that might send to the region.
Unknown: The wrong message, definitely. And I think this is a big mistake. (Laughter) A big mistake. Iraqis don’t like to be ruled by military governor, or we don’t like none of that. We are very sovereign people, we believe in very nationalistic people. And I think Iraqi civil authority should be left to the Iraqis, and it should be a combination of all of the above. The State Department, the Defense Department. This is what’s interesting. The State Department made their working groups first, and the Defense Department made their own working groups. And you got all these Iraqis, we made our own working groups for the transitional period. I think it should be all combined, there is room for everybody. And I think we should work that out. I think this is a time to be very mature and to grow up for all of us. This is about the blood of innocent Iraqis, blood of these brave men and women who have already give their ultimate sacrifice for the liberty of the Iraqi people. And the protection of all the American people. I think the best thing we can do is to get together and put our differences aside. The worst thing we can do is to start fighting on these kind of things. This is exactly what Saddam wants, and that’s what he wants to do, divide and conquer.
ES: David Ensor.
DE: David Ensor of CNN. What ...
MD:…the indications are that they’re going to make it. The country that worried me the most before it began was Jordan. And I expected to see much more disruption in Jordan than we have seen. So there’s no sign of it really destabilizing Jordan. Egypt, so far, has been able to manage its problems. Obviously the shorter the better. A daily diet of these images of dead civilians is profoundly disturbing to the governments that are allied with the United States. But so far nobody’s broken with the United States and there’s no sign of any kind of revolutionary forces developing.
WN: I’m a little bit more pessimistic. I guess I’m concerned that the military operations are going to start to lose relevance to the discussion. And I think there are larger implications for the region. And they’ve only had 12 days to overthrow Jordan and Egypt and everything like that. In other words, this is going to mature more, I think, in the region. And I would just say that we don’t have cause yet to be optimistic about the fallout from all this, as yet.
Unknown: I think that the implications will be that has been pretty much influenced by the media. Now before, in all the wars before, we didn’t have, like, 30 or 50 Arab satellite channels. And especially we didn’t have al-Jazeera back then. But this conflict is being watched, and I’m watching all these channels. And actually they are really not acting as a journalist as much as people who are agitating the emotions. I think the governments in the region are playing very smart. They are letting the demonstrations go on, they are controlling them in a way. I think they will survive this implication. And one more time, I see very much clear that the sectarian thing is playing through, that there is a feeling in these governments that if this dictatorship goes, we could be next. And so they are putting all their energy. They don’t show us on that TV, but all Syrian dictator, Egyptian, Saudi Arabia, all of them, putting a lot of resources in the media to try to prevent the fall of Saddam Hussein.
ES: Yes?
Unknown: I’m Jessica (Inaudible). Very short question. Syria, after Secretary Rumsfeld’s comments of last week, could you explain to us first of all, what Syria hopes for, or worries about in this war in Iraq? And secondly, who has influence on Syria?
MD: (Laughs) Syria is, as I said before, there’s this unipolar moment. Which is very dangerous for Syria. Much more troubling to Syria than, say, for Iran. Because if the Turkish/Israeli alliance weathers all of these disruptions in Turkish politics and it probably will, that’s very scary for Syria with regards to its relations with the United States. The basic rule in the Middle East in general is that neighbors are enemies. That’s particularly true with Syria. And now it’s going to be ringed by countries that all have strong relations with the United States. Syria can’t ever hope to have its voice heard in Washington as much as the Turkish or the Israeli or the new Iraqi voice, assuming that we put something stable in place there. And that’s profoundly threatening to the Syrians. We don’t have a lot of direct influence over them. We can warn them, we can talk to the Russians, we can threaten them. Ultimately, though, even though we don’t have direct influence, we have this sort of control of the strategic environment. And they have to be concerned about how we’re going to regard conflicts between them and Turkey, between them and Israel afterwards. So one of the things you heard before the war, in terms of some of the nightmare scenarios, was that Hezbollah was going to be deeply involved in all this. So far we’ve seen no sign of that. And I’m sure that the Syrians and the Iranians are both putting pressure on…I’m not sure…I assume that Syria and Iran are putting pressure on Hezbollah. Syria pulled some troops out of Lebanon prior to the war, which was a signal to the Americans that they’re going to behave. So I think what we’re going to see is a lot of very powerful anti-American rhetoric, but on the part of the Syrians, but attempts to make sure that they don’t get into any kind of direct conflict with us.
ES: Yes.
SL: It’s Steve Ludlow from The Financial Times. I wondered if General Nash, and anyone who had an opinion on it, would comment on the effectiveness or otherwise of a U.S. psychological operations in the current campaign.
WN: I must admit I had great hopes at the beginning. The line was so solid. The initial operations, I’m talking about the first 72-96 hours, seemed to match forces with words. And the like. I go back to the comment about the dead baby on television and the sitcom spokesman. Keep reiterating. That is not a successful campaign. I think tactically over time it’ll have more impact, as the Medina division and the Baghdad division and the others of the Republican Guards, in fact, the leaflets come true that if they fight, they die. Then that’ll have more effect tactically. But I’m not sure strategically it’s having an effect. They’re now trying to smoke out Saddam... by claiming that he’s not around.
Unknown: I think that the leaflets play a very important role. Like, for example, this missile that fell on the shallow, we’ve called Iraq and Baghdad. And there is a lot of indication that people do know that Saddam has something to do with it. That’s why he removed the air defenses commander from Baghdad. They should prepare more leaflets that reflect any group. For example, we have reports that some of the Republican Guards in Baghdad are regular army. They want to surrender, but they have no communication. By dropping leaflets on them, we can show them by pictures how we treating the Iraqi prisoners of war. And for the Iraqi people, proving to them also by leaflets that we didn’t do this missile attack on al-Salomarq, that Saddam did that. That is going to become more powerful as we try to cut Saddam communication through the TV with Iraqi people.
ES: We’re going to have time, I think, just for one or two more questions. Yes?
GM: Gloria Murray, I’m a consultant with ABC News. Can I just do a follow-up question on the psychological warfare. Is the fact that…and we’ve been trying to make a lot of this…that Saddam Hussein is using civilians and the Fedayeen are using civilians, Iraqi civilians, having any resonance in the region in terms of reaction to the Iraqi misuse of civilians and improper treatment of civilians during war?
Unknown: I think at this point, the people have so much hatred for the United States policy in the Middle East, regarding other subjects, they are not even using their head. I’ve showed them this books many times. This is a book of the chemical mask of Hallabja(?). I’ve showed Muslims and Arabs what Saddam did to our kids. This is what he did. People forgetting, they have such a short memory, such an emotional culture that people forget that in one minute, Saddam killed 5,000 people by gas. I’ve already explained to them that Saddam has killed more than two million Muslims. But people seems like they are taken by the moment and by their hatred, and which is not something good. They should actually see that Saddam has killed my family in Baghdad, which is last week, took all the male members of the family, anybody who’s 15, even to 79, and asked my family to clear one room in the house for (Inaudible) Saddam to use, to resist their incoming forces. Now obviously, behind these population, there is the death squads of Fedayeen, taking the babies, and taking them hostages that if the father doesn’t go commit a suicide act, the baby will be executed. How can we show that on the TV? We cannot because we cannot get pictures of that. I think the people should put their emotion aside and know that Saddam is hiding behind the civilian population. He keeps, as we speak, they threaten my family, they will burn them alive if I continue to speak to the media here. These are the kind of things Saddam is doing. They’re going around labeling people. If somebody waved to the American soldiers, you’re a traitor. You are doomed, we’re going to burn you alive. This is the kind of things. But how can I put them on the media? I cannot yet, but when Saddam is gone we will see that these people that are being unbalanced, they will know what Saddam was really about. Was about death and killing.
ES: We have time for one more question. And I will invite each of the panelists either to answer the question or to make a final comment on anything that you’d like. This lady on the aisle?
RJ: Rolata Janni from Al Jazeera TV. I would like to raise the issue of the media war. One of the comments that was suggested by your distinguished speakers is that he was suggesting to invite more Arab speakers to justify the war and the killing of the civilians on Arab TVs. I would like to ask what would you say to the U.S. media, who has been very passionate and negatively vocal regarding this war? I mean, Tom Friedman, in one of his articles, says it’s…described the current status being the status of the world of order versus the world of disorder. I mean, the implications and the ramifications of what is greatly being negatively justified, what would you say to the U.S. media? To Professor Doran, he discussed this point.
MD: When I said that there needed to be Arab voices, what I meant is I would have liked to have seen the United States set up, say, a government in exile or something like a government in exile, that spoke with an Iraqi voice about what was going on. Because there are plenty of Iraqis who do support this. And I think that that would have made the moral complexity of this issue a bit more apparent. The American media, I haven’t thought much about it. I think that…are you asking me to give it a grade in terms of ...?
RJ: No, for example—very negatively vocal about the war. It’s a shift, I mean, I think it’s a shift in its…in the line. It reflects that inside the U.S., people are not happy about this war. So I mean, how could you justify it to the population of the United States?
MD: Well, in the same way. There’s opposition around the world, and there’s stronger opposition in Europe, and so on. But I think I wish that our government had been as articulate, say, as Tony Blair was, about the moral complexities facing the United States before the war. A sanctions regime that was killing Iraqis, and for which the United States was being blamed in the Arab world for all of those civilian deaths. The policies that were strengthening the rule of Saddam Hussein. And what that actually meant for the Iraqi public. I would have liked to have seen it discussed to a greater extent than our oil policies and what they mean for the region and for the world and so on. But basically, I personally think this is a just war, when you look at it. And I think that Saddam Hussein is everything that President Bush says he is. And all I can say is that I would like that message to be articulated in as cogent a method as possible to everybody.
Unknown: That’s one thing I want to comment is it doesn’t matter how well speaking Rumsfeld is, or George Bush. Don’t try to forget the message because you hate the messenger.
ES: Let me invite you to buttonhole any of these panelists at the end of the…but we’re at 10 o’clock, and so I think we’re going to have to close. But I want to thank you all for coming. And please encourage you to come to more of these America at War series. Thank you very much.
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