U.S. pullout alone won't avert civil war, they say

San Francisco Chronicle
December 11, 2005
By Robert Collier

As the Bush administration and congressional Democrats argue over whether and when to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq, Sunni Arabs with extensive knowledge of the insurgency say that troop withdrawal by itself will not halt the violence consuming the country.

In interviews conducted by telephone from the United States and in Iraq, political and religious leaders and other prominent Sunni Arabs warned that if a unilateral U.S. withdrawal is not accompanied by other steps, including negotiations with insurgent groups, an all-out civil war between the majority Shiites and the Sunnis could result.

These Sunni Arabs, all of whom are strong opponents of the U.S. military presence, expressed concern about a possible anti-Sunni crackdown after Thursday's elections, which surveys suggest will be won by a Shiite coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance. Such fears have been sparked by speculation that the new government may give free rein to the alliance's Badr Corps militia, which has been accused by Sunnis and some U.S. officials of recent death-squad style killings of Sunnis.

Late last month, U.S. troops raided a secret Interior Ministry compound run by the Badr Corps and said that scores of Sunni prisoners had been tortured, a charge the Iraqi interior minister denied. The political leader of the Badr Corps, Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, criticized the U.S. raid as "major interference" and demanded a harsher approach to the counterinsurgency war, including the arrest of Sunni political leaders who are suspected of ties to the insurgency.

"If Iraq is going to be under control of those evil people in the alliance, you will see a lot more bloodshed, there will be total chaos, you will find no moderates left in Iraq," said Dr. Hatem Mukhlis, an Iraqi American medical doctor who leads the Assembly of Patriots, a Sunni-led coalition of secular parties.

Under the Sunnis' worst-case scenario, President Bush would begin a pullout of American ground troops soon after the election, claiming the new government increasingly capable of handling the country's security. This, the Sunnis interviewed say, could lead to Shiite-led scorched-earth counterinsurgency campaigns in Sunni areas, backed by U.S. air raids, intelligence and logistics.

"This is a big danger," said Isam al-Rawi, a leader of the Islamic Clerics Association, a Sunni religious council that is thought to have connections to some insurgent groups. "The only way to stop the resistance is through negotiations and political steps, not more killing."

To avert such a scenario, al-Rawi and other Sunni leaders are pushing for a series of steps that, they say, would lead to a cease-fire by most of the insurgent groups and a peaceful U.S. withdrawal.

First, these Sunnis said, the Iraqi army and security forces under Saddam Hussein, disbanded in a much-criticized move by then-U.S. Administrator Paul Bremer in May 2003, should be broadly called back to duty in Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle area north and west of the city. In recent months, some former army officers have been recalled to duty, with U.S. acquiescence.

"They must bring back the previous Iraqi army, the previous Iraqi police -- or at least those who are not related to terrorism or who are not criminals," said Salah al-Mutlak, coordinator of National Dialogue Council, a Sunni-led group that has tried to broker a compromise between the United States and the Iraqi government, on one side, and the Sunni civilian groups and the insurgency, on the other. "In six months, this army would be able to bring peace to Iraq completely."

Simultaneously, U.S. troops should begin pulling out of Baghdad and Sunni triangle cities, which have seen fierce conflict in the past two years, and a date should be announced for starting an overall troop withdrawal from the country, these Sunnis said.

A general in the prewar Iraqi army, Mohammed Ali, who lives in Tikrit, the hometown of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, said U.S. withdrawal does not need to be immediate or rapid, but it should have a firm starting date.

"It's necessary that the U.S. side announce a schedule for withdrawal, consistent with the circumstances and the developing situation in Iraq," he said. He added that the pullout should be overseen by the United Nations and Arab League. "This should be under international and Arabic guarantees, so the Iraqis can see the light in the end of the tunnel," he said.

Al-Rawi, of the Islamic Clerics Association, said U.S. troops should be replaced by U.N. peacekeeping troops. He emphasized that the U.N. mission would be welcomed by insurgent leaders "only if they come to substitute for the American troops, not to assist them."

"This is a very important thing to understand," al-Rawi said. "If they are coming as part of a real peace process, and if there are forces from Muslim or other Arab countries and maybe Europe, then it will be a peaceful substitution and there will not be attacks."

Another key step is the release of most of the 14,000 Iraqis -- the vast majority of whom are believed to be Sunnis -- now in U.S.-run prisons in Iraq, the Sunni leaders said.

But the most essential component was described as negotiations between the United States and insurgent leaders -- at least those who represent genuinely nationalist aspirations and attack only military targets.

"You've got to differentiate between terrorism and the patriotic resistance," said Mukhlis. "I met with Condoleezza Rice a couple weeks ago, and I told her that those of us who are here, we can be true ambassadors to the insurgency, we can give peace a chance and get the insurgents to calm down." Mukhlis said that Rice did not reply to his mediation offer.

After long rejecting the idea of such negotiations, the Bush administration has recently warmed to the idea. Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told reporters last week that "there is a reaching out to noncriminal Baathists."

According to a report Nov. 26 in Al-Hayat, a respected pan-Arab newspaper in London, U.S. officials conducted indirect talks with several well-known Iraqi insurgent groups on the sidelines of an Arab League conference in Cairo on Nov. 19-21. The report said that representatives of the Islamic Army, Bloc of Holy Warriors and Revolution of 1920 Brigades offered to capture Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, and turn him over to a "legitimate" Iraqi government after a U.S. troop withdrawal.

Another report in last Thursday's Al-Hayat said that the same three insurgent groups and 47 others -- excluding al Qaeda -- had agreed to unite in a single guerrilla front. The report, which described its sources as "people close to the armed groups," said the front "will not allow operations to hurt innocent civilians' lives" and will try to promote "a political approach and negotiations for the purpose of expelling the occupiers."

The Sunnis interviewed by The Chronicle said they believe most insurgent groups would be willing to abide by a negotiated cease-fire. "We can say that the main resistance groups are willing to stop attacking the American and the Iraqi government troops during the withdrawal because they are disciplined and well organized," said Ali, the former army general. However, he acknowledged that terrorist attacks by groups linked to al-Zarqawi probably would continue.

Thaeer Hazzaa, a political science professor at Tikrit University, agreed that nationalist insurgents would combat al-Zarqawi's fighters once the United States withdraws. "Public sentiment is against the takfiri groups and their acts," he said, referring to the fundamentalist Sunni concept of takfir, or excommunication, which has been used to justify attacks against Shiite and secular civilians.

Most of the Sunnis interviewed said they believed that any negotiations process would be long and complicated.

"We've jumped the gun here, because when we're talking about withdrawal, we can't talk about tomorrow," said Sabah al-Mukhtar, an Iraqi Sunni lawyer in London who was one of 47 Iraqis who co-signed a statement in Beirut in July, expressing support for "the valiant armed resistance to the occupation."

"It will take time to start, it will take time for talks, and it will take time for the whole armada of U.S. troops to exit Iraq," he said.

Al-Mukhtar noted that during the Vietnam War, negotiations between U.S. and North Vietnamese officials started only in late 1968, after 3 1/2 years of full-scale fighting, 35,000 American deaths and opposition to the talks from the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese government. The talks dragged on for four years before the Paris peace accords were signed in January 1973.

The "Vietnamization" policy -- consisting of a gradual U.S. troop drawdown, a turnover of security responsibilities to local forces and increasingly heavy U.S. air raids -- is somewhat similar to the possible Iraq scenario now talked about by Sunnis and some U.S. officials.

"Remember that the Americans called the Viet Cong 'bloody terrorists,' but they finally negotiated," said al-Mukhtar. "And they finally withdrew. But this will take months and years."

An Iraqi correspondent for The Chronicle, unnamed for security reasons, contributed to this report from Salahuddin province in Iraq. E-mail Robert Collier at rcollier@sfchronicle.com.

© 2005 San Francisco Chronicle

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