Iraq: Shiite allies the US does not want?

Jaafari to be prime minister candidate for Shiite election winners; Time Magazine says US has had secret meetings with the resistance


Ibrahim al-Jaafari (AP file photo, from CBC)

I guess I was sorta wrong in a posting Sunday before last when I differed ``slightly" with Juan Cole. Turns out that after the once Pentagon-employed weapons liar and war-inciter Ahmed Chalabi pulled out of the PM dealings in Iraq today, the popular, conservative, Islamist, Iran-sympathetic candidate Ibrahim al-Jaafari will go forward -- not Chalabi nor the puppet finance minister Madhi.

Juan Cole said, "Allawi's defeat (he will not be prime minister in the new government) is a huge defeat for the Bush administration, though it will not be reported that way in the corporate media."

Though Allawi is said to still be a candidate for PM, but it would take a massive manipulation to get him in now.

And here is how Cole describes the most recent developments, considering that Jaafari leads Dawa, a conservative party sympathetic with Iran that has allied itself at times with distinctly anti-American offshoot elements:

The Dawa Party was founded in 1958 or so, with the aim of establishing an Islamic state in Iraq (and as an alternative to Communism, with its atheist workers' paradise). That it is now supplying the prime minister of the country under American auspices is among the more startling developments of our time.

I thought that with a sub-majority vote, the US would interfere in the election/selection process to the point of preventing a popular Shiite prime minister from being selected. As it turned out, however, the Shiites did end up with an absolute majority (140) of the 275-seat parliament. Evidently the US has truly failed to significantly manipulate the outcome.

It is said that the US can "live" with Jaafari. A CBC story today mentions, ``He has also said an immediate withdrawal of coalition troops would be a `mistake' given the lack of security in Iraq." (I have just learned through research that the winning United Iraqi Alliance indeed very quietly withdrew its platform plank calling for a timetable for the ``withdrawal of multinational troops.")

But deep in the White House, the Iraq Shiite connection with Iran must be terribly troubling, as President Bush believes that, ``Iran remains the world's primary state sponsor of terror -- pursuing nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek and deserve."

Blockbuster story: US in negotiations with the Iraq resistance
Time Magazine has broken what I think is a major story -- secret back-channel meetings have taken place between US and insurgent negotiators:

An account of [a] secret meeting between the senior insurgent negotiator and the U.S. military officials was provided to TIME by the insurgent negotiator. He says two such meetings have taken place. While U.S. officials would not confirm the details of any specific meetings, sources in Washington told TIME that for the first time the U.S. is in direct contact with members of the Sunni insurgency, including former members of Saddam's Baathist regime. Pentagon officials say the secret contacts with insurgent leaders are being conducted mainly by U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers. A Western observer close to the discussions says that ``there is no authorized dialogue with the insurgents" but that the U.S. has joined ``back-channel" communications with rebels. Says the observer: ``There's a lot bubbling under the surface today"...``I think you've got a pretty flexible [U.S.] government."

Uncomfortable allies, potential destabilization
What does this mean? Is the US quietly having a case of buyer's remorse over popular, conservative, Islamist, Iran-sympathetic Shiite allies that now it is not sure it wants, even as President Bush campaigns for democracy and his ``forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East"?

Surely these developments too are of concern to Arab royalists throughout the region. As Jordan's King Abdullah and other monarchs feared over a month before election in remarks reported in the Washington Post:

Abdullah, a prominent Sunni leader, said the creation of a new Shiite crescent would particularly destabilize Gulf countries with Shiite populations. "Even Saudi Arabia is not immune from this. It would be a major problem. And then that would propel the possibility of a Shiite-Sunni conflict even more, as you're taking it out of the borders of Iraq," the king said.

Now, Abdullah has moderated since the Iraqi election, but the point remains -- there could be some big trouble for Arab royalists if too many people under their thumb decide they want to take Bush seriously in the manner the Iraqi Shiites apparently have.

The computations in Washington about how to control all of this must be in high gear now. They have grabbed a tiger by the tail. It's the old pattern of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988). Washington engaged both sides in order to keep them at each other's throats. The Shiites believe the US military is acting to crush its Sunni rivals, the clearest evidence being the crushing of Fallujah. But perhaps some crazy US accommodation with the chiefly Sunni-based resistance -- the population that boycotted the election -- will emerge in order to keep the Shiites in check. Think the "tilt towards Iraq" from the 1980s, where accommodation with Saddam was required to keep Iran from gaining in the war and destabilizing Saudi Arabia.

The former regime elements that now populate the anti-US resistance may one day shift to the US side in order to discipline the Kurds too, in the manner of the historical double-crosses of Saddam's time -- notably in the period following the first Gulf War in 1991. The US is not going to allow the Kurds quasi-independence, including ownership and control of the oil in the Kirkuk region, is it? That'll have to be discussed in another posting.