[A-List] US imperialism: clueless

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Having set out to "decapitate" the regime from the off, why should it be a
surprise that its removal should precipitate a power vacuum? Dumbya and
Dumbsfeld, indeed.

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Power vacuum that has taken US by surprise

Washington row over who will take reins of government

Ewen MacAskill in Kuwait City and Oliver Burkeman in Washington
Friday April 11, 2003
The Guardian

The US won the war with relative ease: the peace is proving to be a lot
harder. The collapse of Saddam's regime has left a power vacuum that has
taken America by surprise.

The Iraqi opposition parties, long-time bitter rivals, resumed their
squabbling yesterday within 24 hours of statues of Saddam being toppled in
Baghdad. A putative bid to establish an early interim government at a
special meeting of the exile groups billed for Nassiriya, in southern Iraq,
has already created chaos.

The US state department and the Pentagon were at odds yesterday concerning
the Nassiriya meeting - for which a date has not been fixed - and over who
should be in the new government.

Adding to the problems is a lawlessness that has engulfed Iraq, a
consequence of thinly stretched coalition forces. The US officials and
ex-military responsible for overseeing the transition to a new government
remain in the villas and hotels stretching along Kuwait City's seafront,
awaiting news whether it is safe to enter Iraq.

It is the Nassiriya meeting that highlights the difficulties ahead. The
opposition groups are meant to gather at an airbase near the town to discuss
an interim government.

The Pentagon tried to give its champion, Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the
US-backed Iraqi National Congress (INC), a head start by taking him from
exile into Nassiriya this week escorted by US soldiers. In an attempt by the
Pentagon and the INC to turn his arrival into the equivalent of De Gaulle's
return to Paris, an INC press release stressed that he was accompanied by
"free Iraqi forces", some 700 Iraqi troops.

Mr Chalabi grandly announced: "The war of national liberation which Iraqis
have waged for 30 years is now nearing its end."

But the US state department fails to see any resemblance to De Gaulle and is
opposed to Mr Chalabi as Iraqi leader. It regards him as wildly unsuit able,
a view shared by the CIA. The state department moved swiftly to counter
suspicions that the Nassiriya meeting, announced on Wednesday by the US
vice-president, Dick Cheney, might end up as a "coronation" of Mr Chalabi.

Pentagon sympathisers accuse the state department, and the CIA, of wanting
to install a government friendly to Saudi Arabia, whose close links to
Washington are criticised by many hawks.

However, Mr Chalabi last night warned that there was no room for the US in a
post-war interim authority in Baghdad. He told BBC's Newsnight that he hoped
there would be full elections held in Iraq within two years.

Until then the interim authority must be formed by the Iraqi people, he
said.

"We hope elections would be held within two years in Iraq after a
constitution is drafted by Iraqis, approved by a con stituent assembly and
put to a free public referendum."

Asked whether that meant Iraq would have a US administration until that
vote, he said: "We see no room for US administration and indeed the United
States has said they hope to assist Iraqis in forming an interim Iraqi
authority."

The row in Washington over Mr Chalabi's suitability for power is symptomatic
of a lack of preparedness by the US. The meticulous planning that went into
the military campaign has not been matched by post-Saddam preparations. This
follows a predictable US pattern, in which its military prowess has not been
matched by peacekeeping or nation-building.

A retired US general told CNN last night that part of the problem could be
traced back to Turkey's decision not to allow US troops to attack from
northern Kurdistan; as a result, Anglo-US forces attacking from the south
were overstretched to cope with the looting and breakdown in law and order.

The divisions in Iraq's opposition were equally predictable. A meeting of
exile groups in London recently, financed by the state department, failed to
resolve differences over how Iraq should be run.

There are strains between the majority Shia Muslims and the Sunnis, to which
Saddam belonged. Also to be taken into account are the Kurds and the
Turkomens.

One of the biggest divisions is between Mr Chalabi's INC and the powerful
Iranian-backed Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri),
which played a big part in earlier anti-Saddam revolts and which has a big
following among Shias. Sciri has thrown into doubt whether the Nassiriya
meeting will go ahead.

Sciri said yesterday it had yet to decide whether to participate. A
spokesman said a boycott was unlikely, contradicting a spokesman who said 24
hours earlier the group would not attend in protest at the US military
presence in Iraq.

"We are discussing this because we must know who the participants are, what
the aims and plans for this meeting are, then we'll decide," said Mohsen
Hakim, an aide to the Sciri leader, Ayatollah Mohammad Bakir Hakim. "I doubt
that Sciri will boycott the meeting."

The ayatollah has spent the past 20 years in the Iranian capital, Tehran,
which makes him suspect to US officials. The ayatollah, who has a
10,000-strong militia under his sway, said he will soon return to Iraq.

An INC spokesman in London said the meeting may have to be delayed because
of the assassination yesterday in Najaf of a prominent Shia Muslim, Majid
al-Khoie. Britain, along with the rest of Europe and the US state
department, opposes Mr Chal abi, an exile who has not lived in Iraq proper
since 1958, and argues that the new leadership should come from within Iraq.

State department officials, including the secretary of state, Colin Powell,
doubt whether Mr Chalabi has any serious internal support in Iraq - and are
desperate for Washington to avoid exacerbating strained relations in the
region by installing a US-groomed outsider.

Mr Cheney, speaking at a gathering of editors in New Orleans, had said the
meeting would take place on Saturday, an assertion that his aides rushed to
correct, saying no date had been scheduled. The meeting itself appeared to
have been arranged at the instigation of the White House to supersede a
meeting that Mr Chalabi had been organising independently

"It's not a coronation, it's not a choice of some kind of Iraqi government,"
a state department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said of the US-backed
meeting. "It's an opportunity for the US, for coalition officials, to meet
with free Iraqis from inside and outside Iraq, to discuss their vision of
the future, to start working with local administrations and talk about the
vision of the future."

In a further snub to the Pentagon's plans, the state department was putting
the word out yesterday that the meeting would only be at the level of
deputies, according to a source in contact with senior officials there. It
remained unclear whether even Mr Chalabi planned to attend.