Fulfilling his role

Once again, Colin Powerless has been trotted out to give the bad news. From the International Herald Tribune for June 14:

After a weekend of violence in both Iraq and Saudi Arabia, Secretary of State Colin Powell warned Sunday that Iraqis could face a long, bloody summer and that for Saudi Arabia, "clearly this is a dangerous time"....

But Powell added that failure, in the form of a precipitous U.S. withdrawal under pressure, "is not an option for us."

Okay, how about a non-precipitous withdrawal? As in, to quote myself, "set the damn date and get the hell out?" And shouldn't it be the Iraqis' options, not ours, that decide? That may, in fact, develop, as interim president Ghazi al-Yawar "indicated that he planned to mark respectful differences from the U.S.-led occupying forces" including that

he expected the bulk of U.S. forces to leave his country within six to 12 months — sooner than the 18 months for which the UN resolution provides a mandate.

That would be more impressive if the office of president were not mostly ceremonial - that is, a figurehead - but still it means there is a clear desire even in the US-approved government for at least a relatively rapid withdrawal of foreign forces. Our military presence there is not popular (I never did see any pictures of those rose petals that were supposed to be lining the streets upon our arrival.) and even those who accept it for the time being regard it as a necessary evil to be dispensed with as soon as possible.

The question is, as it has always been, what then?

Continuing and intensifying violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Pakistan show that ancient rifts have not healed and frankly I find no reason to think they are any more healed in Iraq, especially since, as I've noted often enough before, there seems to be an equation among Shiites there between democracy and majority control - not just rule, control. That's a prospect that can hardly sit lightly on the shoulders of the Sunnis or the Kurds.

Speaking of that, the issue of the Kurds remains on the stove, perhaps not boiling but certainly simmering. As negotiations on the UN Security Council resolution continued, Kurdish leaders threatened to quit the government if some reference to Kurdish autonomy was not part of the final text.

Masoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party and Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan made the threat in a publicly-released letter to President Bush,

said VOA news on June 7. An article from the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, which first revealed the letter on June 6, says

"We were ... bitterly disappointed when your special representative advised us that a Kurd could be neither Prime Minister nor President of Iraq," Barzani and Talabani told the US president. "We were told that these positions must go to a Shiite Arab and Sunni Arab respectively."

To the Kurds, there is not a three-way division in Iraq, but a two-way: Sunnis and Shiites (i.e., Arabs) on the one hand, and Kurds on the other. To be shut out of both top posts seemed to them a denigration of their role in a future Iraq.

Eight deputy and cabinet posts in the new government did go to Kurds - including the post of foreign minister - but they are of little importance, many say, since the positions will be under the direct authority of the president and prime minister.

"The Kurds have been turned into second class citizens or even less," said Aram Omer, 38, a professor in the College of Law at the University of Sulaimaniyah.

(That again from IWPR, for June 8.) The sentiment was echoed in Barzani's and Talabani's letter, in which they complained that

"it is rare for the US government or the CPA even to refer to Kurdistan or the Kurdish people" in official statements.

This was happening even as Kurdish nationalism is growing with moves in places like Kirkuk to teach classes using Kurdish instead of Arabic and indeed, to teach people to read and write Kurdish, an opportunity many never had because of suppression of Kurdish culture under Saddam.

And it was happening even as, contrary to what was reported earlier,

[t]he Kurdish armed militia, the peshmerga, has denied any agreement with Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to disband its formations and join them with the Iraqi army. An official source in the general leadership of the peshmerga said they have had no negotiations on this issue with the new government.

That according to the daily paper of the Al-Mashriq Institution for Media and Cultural Investments in Baghdad, as reported by the Iraqi Press Monitor for June 10.

Ultimately, no specific reference to Kurds or Kurdish rights was in the resolution, leading Kurdish members of the government to say they would quit if their leaders told them to. Fortunately, it didn't come to that, as Allawi declared on Friday that he had "sorted out" the dispute. He gave no details, but my suspicion is that he convinced Kurdish leaders to give things a chance based on the resolution's reference to "federalism" and the injunction to the interim government not to undertake any actions that would affect Iraq's future beyond it's term - which undoing the provisional law that allows for Kurdish autonomy would certainly seem to do.

Still, what that means, if I'm right, is that the issue has been postponed, not resolved. Old enmities between Sunnis and Shiites, old suspicions of Arabs by Kurds, have not disappeared, they have only been pushed aside in the face of a common enemy. John Morley said "You have not converted a man because you have silenced him." It can equally be said that you have not resolved a conflict by suppressing it.

A long, hot, summer indeed. And a long winter to follow.

Footnote One: It was also reported by the Tribune that

[t]he Bush administration now gives the Saudi government higher marks than before for working hard to fight terrorism. Powell said that the Saudis were treating the threat "with utmost seriousness."

Higher marks? The amount of support for terrorism, both financial and ideological, that could be traced to the Saudis was astonishing. But instead of treating them the way we treated poor, unimportant countries such as Afghanistan, we (i.e., White House officials) coddled them, made excuses for them, covered for them, even offered them special protection in the wake of 9/11 (such as that flight to pick up members of the royal family in the US at a time the skies were supposedly locked down, a flight that until now the government denied took place). In fact, it appears the Saudi ambassador knew of the decision to attack Iraq even before Secretary of State Powerless did.

Higher marks? Damn straight; it's not hard to get higher than zero.

Footnote Two: Speaking of good old Colin, have you noticed how every time there's a dirty deed to be done or a blunder to be admitted, he's the one sent out to do it? He's the one who has to admit to a "long, hot, summer" coming. He's the one who had to announce that the report on terrorist incidents was seriously screwed up, even though most of the info came from the CIA. (Yes, I know Tenet is out but there is still an acting director. Why didn't he make the announcement?) When the US wanted to convince Arabs that Bushleague's agreement with Ariel Sharon didn't mean what it obviously did, he got the job. He's the one who had to admit that claims about Iraqi "chemical weapons trailers" were bogus.

And he's the one that got to make the claims in the first place. Recall the story of him getting the draft of his presentation to the Security Council in the spring of 2003 and throwing it across the room, saying "This is bullshit. I'm not going to read this." First, it means that the intended speech, amazingly, was even worse than what we got and was, uh, "improved" only because Powell raised a stink. Note too, however, that it means that Powell did not draft the speech - he was handed a text with the message "this is what you're going to read." That doesn't speak well for his role in developing policy.

This is a man whose expertise has been ignored, whose role has been minimized, whose counsel has been rebuffed. But he hangs on, apparently determined to be the team player, the loyal soldier. That's why I call him Colin Powerless. Unlike terms like Bushleague, The Big Dick, and Cigarettebuttfarm, which are meant to be snarky, Powell's moniker is meant to be descriptive.

Updated to source the Morley quote.