[Mb-civic] How to Stop a Civil War - Michael O'Hanlon - Washigton Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

How to Stop a Civil War
<>
By Michael O'Hanlon
The Washigton Post
Monday, March 27, 2006; A15

Administration officials have been right in recent weeks to argue that 
there is no large-scale civil war underway in Iraq. As long as the Iraqi 
political leadership remains generally united in trying to calm the 
situation, and as long as sectarian violence remains more sporadic than 
strategic (with no systematic ethnic cleansing, for example), true civil 
war remains a threat rather than a reality. But as President Bush 
himself recognized in his March 13 speech on Iraq, whoever attacked the 
Golden Mosque in Samarra on Feb. 22 was trying to spark a civil war. 
Yesterday's gruesome events, including the discovery of 30 beheaded 
bodies near Baqubah, heavy fighting in parts of Baghdad and the firing 
of fatal mortar rounds at Moqtada al-Sadr's compound in Najaf, suggest 
that such attempts will likely continue.

Of course, preventing a civil war is primarily a political task. In this 
light, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has been right to push Iraqis to 
form a coalition government. He might also encourage them to start 
thinking about what policies such a government would pursue. For 
example, in debating whether Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari should 
retain his post, Iraqis might think a bit less about the past year and 
instead ask Jafari about his plans for the future: for sharing oil 
revenue among provinces, rehabilitating lower-level Baathists to reenter 
the society, integrating security forces and creating jobs.

But if the political process continues to falter and the risk of civil 
war looms larger, we will also need a military plan for quelling it. 
Much of the American debate has been asking how to handle an all-out 
conflict in which Iraq has already fractured and violence is rampant. 
But the more important question is how to quell violence in the early 
stages, before such a scenario develops fully. And this is not the 
typical debate over how fast and soon we can draw down U.S. troops in 
Iraq; rather, it is a debate about what they do while they are there.

On this point, initial indications are that American thinking is on the 
wrong track. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has stated that U.S. 
forces would not become heavily involved in any civil strife, leaving it 
instead to Iraqis to sort out the problem. This approach, which mirrors 
the relatively passive approach U.S. troops took to the reprisal 
violence after the Feb. 22 bombing, has an understandable appeal. But it 
is akin to our decision to stand aside and allow wanton looting after 
Saddam Hussein fell in April 2003, and it could have comparably 
disastrous consequences.

If civil war begins in Iraq, it will probably consist of increasingly 
active vigilante justice -- as well as random, pointless acts of violent 
rage -- by Iraq's powerful militias. They will attack defenseless 
mosques, homes of important figures from other ethnic and religious 
groups, and defenseless citizens. They will begin to perpetrate ethnic 
cleansing with cold, premeditated purpose. As time goes on, hearing 
about similar behavior by other militias from other sectarian groups, 
they will also be motivated by a desire for vengeance -- not just for 
Hussein's atrocities of yesteryear but for what happened last week and 
last night. And they will seek to protect their own unarmed families and 
friends by stepping up ethnic cleansing in neighborhoods where they 
live, to preclude the possibility of further attacks against their own kin.

These are the typical dynamics of civil conflicts, as analyzed by 
scholars such as John Mueller, Barry Posen, Steve Stedman and Chaim 
Kaufmann. Civil wars with a heavy ethnic dimension do not typically 
begin as full-blown conflicts but rather develop an internal dynamic in 
which hate, rage and fear increasingly influence the actions of a 
growing number of people.

In such a situation, stemming violence early is critical. Checkpoints 
need to be manned, curfews enforced, vigilantes arrested or shot, 
mosques and schools and hospitals protected.

Yes, Iraqi forces can do many of these things and should. And, yes, many 
of them will. But Iraqi security forces are at present politically 
untested. Most units are dominated by one group or another. If the 
country begins to descend toward civil war, the temptation of many will 
be to take sides in the sectarian strife rather than stop it.

The foreign coalition can do a great deal to discourage this. By 
deploying with Iraqi police and army troops on the streets, it can 
provide enough manpower to do the labor-intensive work required to 
restore order as anarchy begins to spread. It can help give Iraqi 
security forces the backbone they need to hang together and do their job 
for the country rather than fight for their Kurdish or Shiite or Sunni 
Arab interests. It can act as a glue, helping to hold them together by 
working with them and providing an example worthy of emulation.

In his statements about letting Iraqis handle their own civil strife, 
perhaps Rumsfeld was trying to drive home to Iraqis the message that 
they should not count on the distant American superpower to bail them 
out if civil war begins. This message is grounded in a sound logic; 
Iraqis do need to step up to the plate and solve more of their own 
problems. But as a full indication of what our military plans would be 
for any incipient civil war, it is not the right strategy. Now is the 
time to reassess.

The writer is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/26/AR2006032600875.html?nav=hcmodule
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20060327/d297c973/attachment.htm