Iraq crisis: Q & A with General David Petraeus's former executive officer

Iraq crisis: Q & A with General David Petraeus's former executive officer



06/18/20140 


Peter R. Mansoor, former executive officer to General David Petraeus, calls for creation of a federal region for Sunni areas of Iraq

Iraqis queue to register at a temporary camp set up to shelter people fleeing violence in northern Iraq in Aski kalak Photo: Karim Sahib / Getty

By Peter Foster , Washington

6:00 AM BST 18 Jun 2014  
Is Obama right to resist calls from some in the West and the Maliki government to order air strikes against Isis?

What President Obama said on the South Lawn is exactly right. There is zero chance of Isis taking Baghdad. It is a city that swallows up armies. I was a brigade combat team commander in 2003-2004 and I had more than 3,500 combat soldiers and I had trouble keeping a lid on just two districts, much less the entire city.

This is what Isis would face if they got to Baghdad. They would face the Iraqi army, which would fight much harder if Isis got the capital, but they'd have tens of thousands of Shia militia men facing off against them as well.

There is plenty of time to get the policy and politics right before we do some knee-jerk reaction and engage and then do more harm than good.

The president on Friday had it right. We cannot allow a terrorist state to permanently stand. What he left unsaid was that it's not something we have to deal with in a matter of days or weeks. It's incumbent on Iraqi political elites to form a national government that is more representative of interests of all Iraqi people.

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Isn't that wishful thinking? Aren't Sunni-Shia-Kurd ethnic and geographical dividing lines hardening as we speak?

No. I don't think so. That's misreading the situation. If you listen to the [Sunni] Grand Mufti, he calls on Maliki to step down because he's been a divisive sectarian figure. He calls for a new government of national unity in which all sects and ethnic groups have a stake. And he said the prime minister should be a Shia. That doesn't sound to me like a sectarian call to arms.

It sounds to me like what the Sunnis want is what we offered them after the 'surge', which is a stake in the political future of Iraq. Unfortunately ever since the withdrawal of American forces at the end of 2011 Maliki has appealed to his basest sectarian instincts and alienated the Sunnis by attacking their political leaders, their elites and their protest camps and not including them in the government in any meaningful way.

Isis has hundreds, perhaps low thousands of foreign fighters, but part of Isis is officers from the old Iraqi army and a lot of the Iraqi tribes who are fed up with Maliki. And as in 2007 and 2008 the tribes in northern and western Iraq are really the key to the situation. I believe what we need to do is to encourage the Iraqi political elites to form a government of national unity and then you work with the tribes and moderate elements in Isis to become part of the Iraqi state. And then it becomes like it was during the surge - everyone gangs up against the al-Qaeda types.

I don't think the majority of Sunni residents of Iraq want to live under a Jihadist state. This is a marriage of convenience that will fall apart at the first opportunity.

As Iran and the US prepare to talk, how do we square Western calls for a more broadly representative government with Iran's desire to have a Shia-dominated Iraqi government?

The Iranians clearly want a Shia-dominated government, but they also want a stable, albeit pliable state on their border. I'm not sure that Maliki is Iran's man. Backing Maliki is a recipe for eternal civil war and I think the Iranians might come round to realising that, if they don't realise it already.

I'm hopeful that US and Iran could agree on a way ahead politically for Iraq; one that the Iraqis and Iranians and the US and the Turks can live with as well.

After the events of recent days, is it still possible to build a functioning Iraq?

Part of the solution is the creation of a federal region of the Sunni areas of Iraq and give them a degree of self-government such as the Kurdish region enjoys. As long as the government in Baghdad still controls foreign policy and defence and the interior ministry controls security matters, it would not be the beginning of 'Balkanisation' of Iraq.

What it would do is to give the Sunni's a budget of their own and a way to enjoy some of the oil wealth Iraq generates, rather than waiting for handouts from Baghdad. The alternative is a civil war with no end in sight and we can do better. The diplomatic community can do better, and so can the Iraqi political elites.

Is there a scenario in which armed intervention be helpful in Iraq?

Air strikes would not be helpful in the current situation, because we would simply be seen as supporting Maliki and then it would become a Sunni-Shia war. It would be helpful if you could get a government of national unity that was broadly representative of the Iraqi people, then certainly we could help them roll back Isis gains, but at that point you'd get a lot of buy-in from the Sunni tribes.  TYRL 

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