[NYTr] State of the World 2008

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Nation - Dec 24, 2007/Jan 7, 2008 issue
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20080107&s=crossette


State of the World 2008

by BARBARA CROSSETTE

Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations' top troubleshooter and mediator
for more than a decade in Afghanistan, Iraq, South Africa and Haiti and
the chair of a panel that produced a landmark report on the limits of
UN peacekeeping, has often been an incisive and unrelenting critic of
American foreign policies. But for many around the world, he ranks as a
touchstone wise man in international affairs. He was recently invited
to join The Elders, a small private group of global statesmen and
former government leaders.

Brahimi, now a director's visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study
in Princeton, where he is framing some thoughts into a possible book,
is an Algerian who began his diplomatic career in Southeast Asia,
representing the country's independence movement against the French
from 1956 to 1961. He went on to become ambassador of independent
Algeria in London, Cairo and Khartoum, and undersecretary general of
the Arab League. From 1991 to1993 he was Algeria's foreign minister,
before turning to international service as a leading UN envoy and
administrator in countries in crisis.

Educated in law and politics in Algeria and in France, where he now has
a home, Brahimi was a major player through the late 1990s in
negotiations with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and returned in 2004 as the UN
representative in Baghdad responsible for helping form a transitional
Iraqi government under US occupation. He is also remembered for his
shepherding of Afghan factions through the Bonn agreement that
restructured the country after the 2001 US invasion of Afghanistan.

In a conversation over several hours in Princeton, Brahimi spoke about
what should come next in Iraq and how the regional powers must step up,
in their own self-interests, to unite in helping the Iraqis establish
stability. He assessed the evolution of the Taliban and Al Qaeda,
suggested how the US miscalculated in Afghanistan and Washington's
failure to address effectively the core crisis of the Palestinians.

The Iraqis, capable and educated, really had it in them to make the
country work. What happened?

What happened is that after the invasion took place, I don't think they
[the United States] made one decision that was right. Paul Bremer is
already defending himself, saying it was not I who decided to dissolve
the army and so on. Somebody told me--I don't know if this is true or
not--that Yeltsin, when he took over and was very close to the
Americans, thought of dissolving the Communist Party. And the Americans
told him, You're crazy. Don't do that. That's the state. And yet, they
go to Iraq and they dissolve the army, which was part of the system.
And the Baath party.

Good people were pushed out?

Absolutely. The Iraqis had been through regime change many times. They
know how to do it. You put aside 100 military officers, all the
ministers and the secretary generals of the ministries and so on, and
the country continues. Now the Shia who came with the Americans, they
were the most sectarian elements in the Shia--those who came from Iran.
The Americans handed the country over to them. They would have found it
difficult to dissolve the army, so the Americans did it for them.

When I was there [in 2004] I went to Mosul, and people told me, We have
no teachers. Mosul is the city in Iraq for culture. In the Iraqi
system, just like in the Soviet Union, you could not possibly get hired
for anything if you were not a member of the party. That includes
teachers. I spoke to Bremer and said, This is not possible. Teachers,
engineers, have been kicked out because they were members of the Baath.

Now look at what we have today: the national police is 80 percent
militias. The army is less than 80 percent, but it is very, very
heavily supported by militias. So these forces are not a national
security apparatus. In the army under Saddam, they certainly had more
Sunni officers than Shia. But the troops were mostly Shia.

When [Zalmay] Khalilzad was appointed [US ambassador] to Iraq I told
him, that deck of cards with Saddam and so on, how many Shia were
there? No idea. None? Three? Four? Five? Thirty five! Saddam was not
pro-Shia or pro-Sunni. Saddam was pro-Saddam. If you are with him, you
are all right. If you are not with him, you are not all right, whether
you were Sunni or Shia or whatever.

Is there no way Sunni and Shia can work together now?

I heard some time ago that there are now some Shia who are getting
together with Sunni and saying, To hell with the government, to hell
with the Americans. We are not going to kill one another. I heard on
Arab television just three days ago when I was in Cairo [11/24] that
there is a petition [against violence] signed by 300,000 Sunni and Shia.

Although there is sectarian killing on both sides, the fact is that in
this ethnic cleansing that is taking place, when a Sunni is forced to
leave his house, he gives the key to his neighbor, the Shia, and the
Shia will protect his house. The same thing when a Shia is forced to
leave an area that is Sunni. Marriage in Iraq between Shia and Sunni is
very, very, very common. I'm not sure if it's too late now, but I am
encouraged to hear about this petition.

Are governments in the Middle East focusing more in recent months on
the possibility of a post-American Iraq?

The idea has probably developed a little bit, but not very much. Now I
say very, very bluntly: The Americans have broken Iraq and destroyed
it. They cannot fix it. Iraq needs to be fixed by the Iraqis with the
support of their neighbors. It's crazy for some of the neighbors to
say, The Americans have broken it; let them fix it. It's crazy. The
Americans--one day they are going to pack up and go. What do they care?
Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have got to get together.

How can that happen?

This is what diplomacy is about. If you find, somewhere, people who are
convinced that this is the way to go, you need to start working on it.
It takes a hell of a long time and all sorts of compromises. There is
no other way. They are going to be forced to understand that they have
to go this way. A civil war cannot be bottled up in Iraq. Even in Iran,
they would be affected. If the Shia are going to win and they are going
to take over the country, then the Shia will not want to be directed
from Iran. They have a long history of tensions and competition between
the Arabs and the Persians. I don't think the Arabs will [say anything]
now. They will keep quiet. As soon as they are all right, they will
say, Get off our backs. Some of them are already saying that. Even some
religious groups have publicly said, This is too much. There are some
organizations that are already criticizing Iran.

I think that Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey--with the other Arab
neighbors--have got to come together and go to the Iraqis and say, We'd
like to help you solve your problems. If they go together, I think the
Iraqis would listen. If Saudi Arabia goes alone, then the Shia will
say, No, No, No. You are coming here to help the Sunnis. If Iran goes
alone, then the Sunnis will tell them, You are here to help the Shia
take over.

And the Americans?

When I say the Americans cannot succeed, I am not saying that this can
be done without the Americans. It has to be done with the Americans.
You cannot ignore a party to this mess which has 150,000 soldiers. They
[the Americans] used to tell me--when I told them to get the neighbors
together and talk--We ask them, we are begging them, but they refuse. I
told them why they are refusing is that you are telling them, Come and
help us implement our policy. They are too polite to say, Your policy
is rotten. So they just say, No, No, No. But if you tell them, Let's
sit down and work out a policy together, because we accept that our
policy has failed, then it's a different proposition.

Work out a policy together. Say we also recognize that you have
interests. We all want to fix Iraq. Then maybe you can get somewhere.

Is there much commentary in the Arab media about the future of the
region? Are there Arab think tanks working on these issues?

Yes, there is commentary but there is no authoritative voice. You don't
have any more somebody like [the Egyptian journalist] Mohammed
Hassanein Heykal. He's still around. He gives a talk on Al Jazeera
television once a week. It's tremendously popular. But he talks about
the past. He is not a decision-maker any more. Now they are talking
about local problems. You have, for example, some very good people in
Lebanon, but even when they speak about the region, it is very, very
colored by the local situation.

There are quite a few think tanks and so on in Egypt in Jordan. But
there is no pan-Arab movement as existed in the 50s and 60s, and a
little bit in the 70s. They are gone now. There is a lot of American
influence. In Egypt, for example, you have a lot of these think tanks
that are financed transparently by the Americans. So although they are
not doing the bidding of the Americans, if you are receiving money from
the Americans you have to take that into consideration.

What would leaders in the Middle East like to see in Iraq? What is
salvageable?

There are certainly those who want to see a Sunni-dominated regime. I
think anybody who has any sense knows that this is over. Even the
Saudis now say that they have no problem with a Shia government in
Iraq. The thing is that Iran has incredible influence now. In one
thousand ways. The Americans handed the country over to them, and when
they realized what they had done they said, Please give it back. And
the Iranians say, Why should we?

Have the Iranians backed off supporting Iraqi militants?

No. This is what a country like Iran does. It has as many irons in the
fire as possible. So whoever is willing to take money and arms from
them, they get them. And the Iranians have plenty of their own people
in Iraq.

Is Ahmadinejad a thorn in the side of other rulers in the Middle East?

He is probably a nuisance in that they are terribly worried if it is
true that he is trying to get a bomb.

In the wider Arab region, how much is Iraq a concern?

Oh, yes. I think their concern with Iraq is like this: you already have
Al Qaeda, which was nonexistent, and has become a very important
organization. There are a lot of Egyptians in touch with it, and one
day Al Qaeda is going to [emerge] in Egypt. This is one. Two, if you
have a civil war in Iraq, and it continues, it is impossible to keep it
within the borders of Iraq. It will definitely spill over. It will
spill over in Lebanon, where there is a big Shia community. We will all
be affected, because our young religiously minded in North Africa, in
Egypt, will want to go and help their Sunni brothers.

Turkey?

Turkey is an important player, but they are on the defensive now. They
were trying to see if they can salvage Kirkuk. They consider that
Kirkuk is the place for Turkmen. But I think that the Kurds are making
a bid for it and they will probably get it.

The Kurds are taking full advantage of the division of the Arabs in
Iraq.

And the regional or pan-Islamic organizations--the Arab League and the
Organization of the Islamic Conference, the OIC?

These two organizations have disappointed most people in the region.
They are probably the weakest regional organizations, not anywhere near
the EU or ASEAN and really behind the African Union

Has Egypt sunk in influence?

Egypt is still an important country in the Arab world [but] it has less
influence than it did in the 50s, 60s and early 70s. Remember that for
all practical purposes, President Sadat took Egypt out of the Arab
World. Mubarak patiently brought it back into the fold. But it is a
fact that Egypt gets $2 billion a year in various forms of aid from the
US and Washington constantly reminds Cairo that if its Egyptian policy
is hostile to the US, Congress might cancel the aid.

Is there a role for the UN now in Iraq?

What for? This is the question. When Sergio [Vieira de Mello] went in
2003, I told Kofi [Annan], the Americans have invaded the country and
disregarded the UN. And then they came back to the UN and got a
resolution that recognized them as the occupying power. There is no
room for you. So you shouldn't go at all.

One day they are not going to be able to manage. They will come back,
when things become difficult. They will come back and ask for help.
Then you go. But not now. Even that was mistake, because I thought that
in January 2004, the Americans said in so many words, we cannot do the
next phase alone. We need your help. The government I contributed to
form [led by Ayad Allawi] is probably the best government they had--or
the least bad government they had--since Saddam fell. But I shouldn't
have gone.

Does Allawi still have a political future?

He squandered it. I told him he had six months to become a national
leader. But for that, you've got to take your distance from the
Americans. Even if you are grateful to them, you cannot govern Iraq on
behalf of them. What killed him was Fallujah and Najaf. He stupidly
said what the Americans told him to say: that they were bombing
Fallujah at his request.

Is Al Qaeda in Iraq still important?

Oh, yes. It is now having some problems. For example, in Al Anbar and
also, I think, in Baghdad. But it's a fact that this organization that
did not exist in Iraq five years ago was [recently] running some
districts not very far from Baghdad. They do now seem to be losing
ground, but I think we have to wait and see how seriously, and whether
they can solve their problems. I know that in some councils of
coordination of the insurgency, Al Qaeda is a very, very strong
presence. But at the same time I think that the excesses--the killing
of kids and so on--have raised people against them.

Do you see Al Qaeda moving into North Africa?

It already has. The rebellion in Algeria, which was practically
vanquished, is flaring up. And now they call themselves Al Qaeda for
the Islamic Maghreb. They have changed their name.

Are these copycat organizations or do they have direct links to Osama
bin Laden?

There may be some loose links, but it's not a centralized organization
with branches everywhere. I don't think so. In Iraq I think perhaps it
is a little bit different because what one hears is that there are a
lot of couriers between Iraq and Pakistan, and there are a lot of
people who travel back and forth--and I'm not sure how much money. Al
Qaeda in Iraq has no money of their own, so they have some money from
the Gulf and Saudi Arabia. I know for a fact some individuals are
paying money to Al Qaeda. In Algeria there isn't that kind of thing.

Given all the failures of American public diplomacy in the Middle East,
is the US situation hopeless in reaching people in the streets?

It is. Kofi at one stage sent Ahmed Fawzi [a UN media expert] to the
Middle East to see how they can improve the image of the UN. Ahmed
asked me, what is your advice? I told him, Don't go. The UN has a bad
name. It's not a misunderstanding. People know what the UN is, and they
don't like it.

Is this because of Palestine?

Absolutely. So the Americans' public diplomacy--what can you do? Your
policies--what you do in Palestine, what you say, what you don't
do--people know that very well and they don't like it. You are going to
tell them, No, you should like it. It's not bad.

The thing is, is the government willing to at least listen to some of
these grievances? When Mrs. Rice says publicly, Israel must continue to
bombard Lebanon--it never happened since the UN has been created...that
the Security Council says, Go on. Israel planted these fragmentation
bombs after the ceasefire. These fragmentation bombs are from America.
It's allowed by the Americans. So, people don't believe anything the
Americans say, and it's not bias. It's reasonable. When they say human
rights, for example, be careful of human rights, it's not true. Because
the Israelis have uprooted two years ago one million Palestinian
trees--olives, citrus--and you don't say anything. The Americans want
to rid of UNWRA and Peter Hansen was thrown out [as head of UNRWA, the
UN agency assisting Palestinians] at the request of the Americans, not
the Israelis.

What do you think of Mahmoud Abbas--Abu Mazan--as a leader of the
Palestinians?

What I liked about him was that he was the first one who said, Let's go
to the Israelis and make a deal, and he has never deviated from that.
So at least there is consistency there.

Could he lead a truncated Palestine without Gaza? At least at the start?

No. It's more serious than that. Fatah, his organization, has aged. It
has lost its leader, Arafat, and a lot of other leaders who were well
above Abu Mazan. With the Israelis destroying day after day, week after
week, all their institutions, they have become corrupt and they have
lost touch with their people. Sadly, I have to say that those who
represent now the soul of the Palestinians are Hamas, not Fatah. They
are now the militant organization that is clean, that is sincere, that
is trying to do something no matter how ill advised some of their
activities are.

[The election of Hamas] was a wonderful opportunity for the Americans,
and definitely for the United Nations or the Europeans, to go to Hamas
and say, You've won the election. Congratulations. I think you would
have started something that would definitely have led somewhere.
Definitely. I'm 100 percent sure. Instead of that, you say, with the
Israelis, Give us everything that we want at the end of any negotiation
and then we'll talk with you. Your reward is that I talk to you. Who is
going to accept that?

Let's turn to Afghanistan, which seems to be sliding backwards. Car
bombs were not the Taliban's style. Who is doing that?

It's Al Qaeda. I have a theory, and it's only a theory. That is, that
the Americans went into Afghanistan very reluctantly. They pleaded with
the Taliban to hand over these people who came and attacked them. And
they told the Taliban in no uncertain words that you run your country
the way you like it. We just want these people. You don't even have to
give them to us. Give them to anybody. The Taliban refused, so they
attacked them. My theory now is that they attacked with the intention
of staying there a few days or a few weeks, no more--that it would not
take that long to get these bastards, capture them or kill them, and
then move on to Iraq. I know for a fact that on the seventeenth of
September 2001, there was a very big meeting in the Pentagon, not about
Afghanistan but about Iraq. I have it from somebody who was there.

Mr. Rumsfeld said [of Afghanistan], We don't do nation-building. We
were telling him, Don't arm the warlords. [The Northern Alliance of
former mujahideen driven out of power by the Taliban.] He said, anybody
who will help us, we will work with them, because we don't care what is
happening in Afghanistan.

It took two years for them to realize they cannot get out of
Afghanistan that easily. It took us a few days to realize that the
Afghans were dying to have foreign troops against their warlords. So in
January 2002, one month after we arrived, Kofi and I started saying,
Please let's expand ISAF out of Kabul. They [the Americans] refused. We
kept asking and asking. I'm certain if we had 10,000 additional troops
around the country in those days then Afghanistan could have avoided
the difficulties.

Ideally, we should have had the Taliban in Bonn, but it was not
possible. The Americans would not have allowed it. The second best
would have been to try and get in touch with the Taliban immediately
when we went into Kabul. And I timidly suggested that. But the
Americans, the Russians, the Iranians and the Indians, they all said
no. I now blame myself. I should have raised my voice much, much more,
because then the Taliban were routed, demoralized, split. If you had
gone to them, you would have attracted quite a few of them. Wakil Ahmed
Muttawakil [the Taliban foreign minister] negotiated his surrender in
Kandahar, but the Americans did not keep their promise they would let
him go, and they kept him in jail almost two years.

And in Pakistan President Musharraf says he does not know where bin
Laden is. Does anyone believe that?

That the Pakistanis knew bin Laden fairly well is very likely. He was
close to them--and to the CIA--during the struggle against Russian
occupation of Afghanistan. When he returned--I think it was in 1995--he
must have gone through Pakistan. Until 9/11, a lot of people were in
touch with bin Laden and I don't see how or why the Pakistanis would
have no contact with him.

After 9/11, I am certain that President Musharraf had decided that the
interest of his country demanded that he side with the US, not the
Taliban. That decisions must have been difficult to accept for many in
Pakistan--especially in the Security services--who had worked for years
with the Taliban. Indeed many people said then and say today that
Pakistan never had better support and understanding in Kabul than
during the Taliban years. Pakistanis knew better than anyone else that
by 9/11 the ties between the Taliban and bin Laden had become extremely
close. One is allowed therefore to speculate that, even after
Musharraf's strategic option in favor of the Americans and against the
Taliban, some, (probably many, in fact), would try to keep other
options open, including contacts with bin Laden.

Later, the clearly anti-Pakistani posture of many very influential
members of the Karzai Government and the growing influence of India in
Afghanistan must have reinforced the position of those who felt that
Musharraf''s all-out support of the Americans was perhaps premature.

How important has the India factor been in Pakistan's Afghan policy?

Remember the visit of Clinton to India? That was the signal that
Pakistan is not important anymore for the United States. America was
going to lose interest. India was much more interesting. So how is
Pakistan going to be important again?

How is it that Americans, with all their collective expertise, make so
many mistakes?

You have in universities probably the best expertise, on all sorts of
subjects, including the Middle East, and in the think tanks in
Washington, all these people have access to the government. But the
government, especially this one, doesn't seem to listen. And on Iraq,
for example, the media, even the quality papers like the New York
Times, the Washington Post had really let themselves be dragged along
in the wrong direction.