Iraq: Reluctant to Set Benchmarks?
Even as President Bush asked Americans to brace themselves for sacrifices yet to come in Iraq, U.S. commanders on the ground are questioning the commitment of the Iraqi government itself–and the apparent disconnect between the wishes of the White House and the will of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.
That disconnect was brought into sharp relief this week as U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad issued assurances that, at Washington's urging, Maliki had agreed to set goals for confronting militias and reforming the militia-infiltrated Ministry of Interior.
Maliki promptly responded that he had done no such thing.
"This government represents the will of the people," he said, "and no one has a right to impose a timetable on it."
The White House fired back with a statement refuting the notion of any reluctance to set benchmarks, saying Maliki's comments had been taken out of context. It was clearly a sensitive subject. At a press conference Thursday Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld snapped that people should "just back off" calls for specific goals from a government still getting its bearings.
But in a month during which America has so far lost 96 troops–the most in a year–U.S. military officials on the ground in Iraq are beginning to think otherwise. What's more, they express growing frustration at the willingness of the Iraqi prime minister to talk tough–but only to Washington.
"We have every right to put a damn timeline on some stuff," says one senior military official in Baghdad. "If nothing else, it should create a sense of urgency–that's what I would hope."
All the discussion in Washington over "benchmarks," "timelines," and "timetables"–the political-linguistic battlefield–has only a distant relationship to what is going on in Iraq, where Maliki has yet to show he has the ability or the will to rein in even his ostensible allies.
One major issue is the reluctance of Maliki to confront Moqtada al-Sadr, the powerful anti-American Shiite cleric who has pledged to support the fledgling Iraqi government yet maintains his Mahdi Army, a militia that recently took over a town south of Baghdad and de facto controls Baghdad's Sadr City slums in the northeastern part of the city.
"Those kinds of contradictions need to be resolved," says Lt. Col. James Gavrilis, an Iraq planner who commanded a Special Forces unit there. "You cannot have someone say, 'Yes, I support your government,' then subverting it–or forcefully taking control."
Yet Maliki's leverage against Sadr is limited, to say the least. Sadr was instrumental in making Maliki prime minister, and the young firebrand cleric now controls five ministries and the largest voting bloc in the parliament. Expecting Maliki to crack down on Sadr may represent a misunderstanding of the power relationship. Officials point to a recent incident in which members of the Mahdi Army assassinated 13 Iraqi Army soldiers in Sadr City. Shortly afterward, a spokesman in the Ministry of Defense praised Sadr for his patriotism and the settling effect he has on Sadr City.
"I'm thinking, holy crap," says the U.S. military official in Baghdad. "I'd rather see Maliki make a choice and fail because it was a bad choice," he says. "It's just such a political minefield–it's really aggravating."
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