Condoleezza Rice on Iraq
"They [Iraqis] really do have to follow this national reconciliation plan and get moving on it. They have some very key issues like federalism, like debaathification, like how oil revenues are going to be shared, that are at the political root of the disagreement. And when they come to the bargain, their grand bargain about how the various interests of the various parties are going to be represented on those big issues, I think they’ll have the political framework, then, from which to separate those who are engaged in sectarianism purely for the purpose of sectarianism.
Secondly, I think they do have to continue to increase their security force strength and they are currently looking at enhancing the strength of the army, vis-à-vis the police, because the army is accepted as a national institution. And that’s one of those adjustments that I think is going to actually turn out to be very important.
And third, they do have to do something about the militias and the death squads and by all reports, the interior ministry is a much better and stronger and more integrous interior ministry, but it needs stronger political support from the factions, which goes back to the first point. I think when the factions are satisfied with the political bargain, you’re going to see more support for doing the kinds of things that they need to do.
. . . The Iraqis believe and our people on the ground believe that one of the answers to getting to the place that the Prime Minister can take some of these more difficult decisions is that he can’t be in a position of, on the one hand, having divisions in the Sunni – Shia community and on the other hand, not having figured out what the bargain is going to be with the others. That’s why he’s putting so much time into trying to resolve these big problems.
If you think about it, when you resolve something like the oil question, a lot of the questions about federalism become less salient. And with that becomes less salient the need to be able to 'defend,' by force of arms, certain political positions. And so I recognize that it’s not a panacea, but I think one thing at a time for them and the first thing is to do something about this political bargain.
. . . As long as people have not come to agreement on, kind of, what the central political deal looks like, you’re going to continue to have lots of reasons, some of it just making excuses, some of it real, for the impulse to be to separate into well-guarded, well-defended political corners. And you’ve got to bring people out of those political corners into a center and I think that’s what Maliki has understood and why he’s putting so much effort in that direction."
. . . Now, for us, a Middle East in which Iraq transforms and becomes an example of a national unity government in which Shia are not oppressed but in fact even though they are the majority are able to live in harmony with others in their region is also a very important model for how Sunni and Shia deal with each other in the Middle East.
So it comes to whether or not you think you really have to go at the basic character of the Middle East. And I happen to think that that’s right. And so even if there’s a short-term effect of Iraq as mobilizing, as it did for Zarqawi, people to fight the jihad there, I think there’s a reason that they mobilized to fight it there. They get it. They understand that an Iraq that is transformed is the end of their particular ideology in the Middle East, in the center of the Middle East, and that the Middle East is going to go in a quite different direction.
If I could just say one thing kind of historically because – and please, I don’t mean to try to make an exact analogy here. But Europe fought for more than a hundred years in wars from the Napoleonic wars all the way through to World War I, drew us into their balance of power war. We left. They rearranged the deck chairs in their balance of power war, and 30 years later we were back fighting again.
At the end of World War II though, they didn’t rearrange the deck chairs in a balance of power. What they did was to change the basic structure and you got a democratic Germany, you got NATO, Germany and France never fought again and Europe was at peace, and we haven’t been back to war in Europe – the Balkans notwithstanding – since.
In a sense, I think that’s how you have to think about the Middle East. You’ve got to now change the structure there so that you create an environment in which you’re not going to have these extremist forces, these jihadist forces, the financing of terrorism, the madrasas that are running wild, the authoritarian governments that don’t permit political space for moderate forces so that all of the politics takes place in the radical mosques. Unless you deal with that problem, you’re going to continue to have a very formidable jihadist movement, whether it calls itself al-Qaida or something else. And it will take time to transform that, but you’d better get about doing it. And I think that’s really the debate that we’re seeing.
. . . You have to look at [it] also from the Iranian point of view. They have a new neighbor in Afghanistan and they have a new neighbor in Iraq with American forces in both. They have a counter model developing in Iraq to the legitimacy of the Iranian revolution and the Iranian regime which, if it succeeds, will be a Shia-majority, non-theocratic with Najaf as its center with a claim to leadership of the Shia world that Iran could only hope for." [1] *
"I think if you had been at the international compact meeting on Iraq you would have seen a quite different story, which is that these states recognized, Iraq's neighborhood recognizes, that a stable Iraq is going to be in their interest and an unstable Iraq is most certainly going to be counter to their interests. **
I think you will see as the Iraqis go to their national compact, support for them among their neighbors. I can tell you that some of their neighbors played very important roles in trying to encourage Sunni involvement and encourage the tribes to be involved. They've already played positive roles, but I think you will see that grow over time as the Iraqis come to their national compact and the international system mobilizes to help them. ***
. . . I want Saudi's involvement in the stabilization of Iraq . . . through resources and political support. Saudi Arabia has a lot of standing with a number of the forces in Iraq and they've actually been very helpful in trying to get Sunnis involved in the elections. I think it would be very helpful if they were supportive of and working toward helping Prime Minister Maliki's national reconciliation plan, for instance." [2]
"QUESTION: Okay. Concerning Iraq, there are two suggestions or two circulated suggestions actually. One is the division of Iraq, a sectarian division. And the other one is to limit American troops in a military zone away from the populated areas. So how do you view those suggestions?
SECRETARY RICE: Well as to the first, the idea that you would somehow divide Iraq, I've heard that from a lot of people but not from any Iraqis. Iraqis see themselves as a single country. They see themselves as Shia and Sunni and Kurds. Very often people are inter-married, tribes have all of the same – have different people within them. So Iraqis want to be a unified country. And so that is what we're supporting.
As to the military strategy to help defeat the terrorists and the insurgents, we work daily with Prime Minister Maliki and with his defense chief and defense forces to apportion correctly American forces with Iraqi forces to take care of the security situation. But there's no doubt that more and more throughout the country Iraqi forces are in the lead. Iraqi forces are in control of numerous provinces now in Iraq.
QUESTION: So then to limit your forces, the U.S. troops in a military zone in a military area?
SECRETARY RICE: I think we have to do what it takes to get the job done, that is to help secure the Iraqi people." [3]
"Well, they are in the midst of a security plan for Baghdad -- I mean a set of security operations in Baghdad -- and I think we need to let those finish. But I'm really here and more on the political side because obviously the political side and the security side are linked. The ability to get a national reconciliation plan, to get everybody to understand precisely how their interests are going to be represented and how their interests are going to be served in this political process, to pull more people into the political process and out of the insurgency, more people into the political process and out of connections with militias, that's why the political process is so central.
So I'm really more focused on the political process. I think George Casey and MNFI and Don have been very focused on the near-term security issue, but the core of getting a security environment, a stable security environment, really does rest on getting some of these political issues resolved." [4]
"We believe that oil has to be a resource for the Iraqi people as a whole and it has to benefit the Iraqi people as a whole. The relationship between the regions, the localities and the center on how exploration is done, how decisions are made, I think that's what the hydrocarbon law has to address.
But our only view, which we've communicated to the Iraqis and which I think most Iraqis agree, is that oil needs to be a unifying factor and not one that will help to make the country less unified." [4]
"The President of the United States has gone out there practically weekly, in some cases almost daily, and said here's what we're trying to do in Iraq, here's why it's important and here's why we believe we must succeed and will succeed. But it is very tough going for all of the following reasons: This is a very young political system that is trying to overcome differences that are decades old; it is coming out of tyranny; it has problems of sectarianism; it doesn't have adequate security forces. This is really hard going. And I would say go back and look at any presidential speech in the last year, and the discussion of the fact that this is very tough going is there.
Now, it's somehow considered contradictory to say that we nonetheless believe the Iraqis are making progress. When there is actually a functioning political system in place after three years, I think you can say they're making progress. When they're actually governing themselves, I think you can say that you're making progress. The reconstruction, which I think we began as frankly too big a national program, although some of that needed to be done, now has a more localized character and it is having an effect in a lot of the provinces. A lot of these provinces are stable. So not only do I think that the President and others have been clear with the American people that this is a struggle, he's been clear with the American people why he thinks it's a struggle that needs to be waged.
It's also the case that there is -- that what the American people see on their television screens every night is the struggle. It is harder to show the political process that is going on at local levels, at provincial levels, indeed at the national level, in which the political system is maturing to try to come to terms with their difficulties." [4]
"Because we believe that a democratic, modernizing, moderate Middle East is the best chance for peace in this region, it is the best chance for true stability in this region, and it is the only way -- democratic institutions are the only way that people who have differences resolve those differences peacefully. The only other alternative is to resolve differences by repression and violence, and this region has had too much of both. And so the development of democratic institutions which can facilitate the overcoming of difference is extremely important." [5]
footnotes
* Najaf "is a city in Iraq about 160 km south of Baghdad. . . . It is one of the holiest cities of Shia Islam and the center of Shia political power in Iraq." [6]
** "The International Compact with Iraq . . . is an initiative of the Government of Iraq for a new partnership with the international community. The Compact, jointly chaired by the Government of the Republic of Iraq and the United Nations, with the support of the World Bank, will, over the next five years, bring together the international community and multilateral organizations to help Iraq achieve its national vision. The International Compact had a starting date of July 27, 2006. [7]
*** I have not been able to find a definition of a formal Iraqi "national compact." It may be synonymous with Iraq's "national reconciliation plan" which calls for such things as "preventing human rights violations" and "establishing the armed forces." [8] Secretary Rice seemed to be using the two terms interchangeably in her Briefing En Route Baghdad, Iraq. [4]
sources
[1] U.S. Department of State. Interview With the New York Times Editorial Board. September 25, 2006.
[2] U.S. Department of State. Briefing En Route Shannon, Ireland. October 1, 2006.
[3] U.S. Department of State. Interview With Randa Abu el Azem of Al Arabiya TV. October 3, 2006.
[4] U.S. Department of State. Briefing En Route Baghdad, Iraq. October 5, 2006.
[5] U.S. Department of State. Democracy Discussion With Print Media. October 3, 2006.
[6] Wikipedia. Najaf. Retrieved October 4, 2006.
[7] United Nations. United Nations, Iraq jointly announce launch of five-year international compact aimed at achieving national vision of united, federal, democratic country. July 27, 2006.
[8] Iraqi Government. Iraqi Government Program. (National Reconciliation Project).
posted: wednesday, october 4, 2006, 1:02 AM ET
update: wednesday, october 8, 2006, 5:36 AM ET
Secondly, I think they do have to continue to increase their security force strength and they are currently looking at enhancing the strength of the army, vis-à-vis the police, because the army is accepted as a national institution. And that’s one of those adjustments that I think is going to actually turn out to be very important.
And third, they do have to do something about the militias and the death squads and by all reports, the interior ministry is a much better and stronger and more integrous interior ministry, but it needs stronger political support from the factions, which goes back to the first point. I think when the factions are satisfied with the political bargain, you’re going to see more support for doing the kinds of things that they need to do.
. . . The Iraqis believe and our people on the ground believe that one of the answers to getting to the place that the Prime Minister can take some of these more difficult decisions is that he can’t be in a position of, on the one hand, having divisions in the Sunni – Shia community and on the other hand, not having figured out what the bargain is going to be with the others. That’s why he’s putting so much time into trying to resolve these big problems.
If you think about it, when you resolve something like the oil question, a lot of the questions about federalism become less salient. And with that becomes less salient the need to be able to 'defend,' by force of arms, certain political positions. And so I recognize that it’s not a panacea, but I think one thing at a time for them and the first thing is to do something about this political bargain.
. . . As long as people have not come to agreement on, kind of, what the central political deal looks like, you’re going to continue to have lots of reasons, some of it just making excuses, some of it real, for the impulse to be to separate into well-guarded, well-defended political corners. And you’ve got to bring people out of those political corners into a center and I think that’s what Maliki has understood and why he’s putting so much effort in that direction."
. . . Now, for us, a Middle East in which Iraq transforms and becomes an example of a national unity government in which Shia are not oppressed but in fact even though they are the majority are able to live in harmony with others in their region is also a very important model for how Sunni and Shia deal with each other in the Middle East.
So it comes to whether or not you think you really have to go at the basic character of the Middle East. And I happen to think that that’s right. And so even if there’s a short-term effect of Iraq as mobilizing, as it did for Zarqawi, people to fight the jihad there, I think there’s a reason that they mobilized to fight it there. They get it. They understand that an Iraq that is transformed is the end of their particular ideology in the Middle East, in the center of the Middle East, and that the Middle East is going to go in a quite different direction.
If I could just say one thing kind of historically because – and please, I don’t mean to try to make an exact analogy here. But Europe fought for more than a hundred years in wars from the Napoleonic wars all the way through to World War I, drew us into their balance of power war. We left. They rearranged the deck chairs in their balance of power war, and 30 years later we were back fighting again.
At the end of World War II though, they didn’t rearrange the deck chairs in a balance of power. What they did was to change the basic structure and you got a democratic Germany, you got NATO, Germany and France never fought again and Europe was at peace, and we haven’t been back to war in Europe – the Balkans notwithstanding – since.
In a sense, I think that’s how you have to think about the Middle East. You’ve got to now change the structure there so that you create an environment in which you’re not going to have these extremist forces, these jihadist forces, the financing of terrorism, the madrasas that are running wild, the authoritarian governments that don’t permit political space for moderate forces so that all of the politics takes place in the radical mosques. Unless you deal with that problem, you’re going to continue to have a very formidable jihadist movement, whether it calls itself al-Qaida or something else. And it will take time to transform that, but you’d better get about doing it. And I think that’s really the debate that we’re seeing.
. . . You have to look at [it] also from the Iranian point of view. They have a new neighbor in Afghanistan and they have a new neighbor in Iraq with American forces in both. They have a counter model developing in Iraq to the legitimacy of the Iranian revolution and the Iranian regime which, if it succeeds, will be a Shia-majority, non-theocratic with Najaf as its center with a claim to leadership of the Shia world that Iran could only hope for." [1] *
"I think if you had been at the international compact meeting on Iraq you would have seen a quite different story, which is that these states recognized, Iraq's neighborhood recognizes, that a stable Iraq is going to be in their interest and an unstable Iraq is most certainly going to be counter to their interests. **
I think you will see as the Iraqis go to their national compact, support for them among their neighbors. I can tell you that some of their neighbors played very important roles in trying to encourage Sunni involvement and encourage the tribes to be involved. They've already played positive roles, but I think you will see that grow over time as the Iraqis come to their national compact and the international system mobilizes to help them. ***
. . . I want Saudi's involvement in the stabilization of Iraq . . . through resources and political support. Saudi Arabia has a lot of standing with a number of the forces in Iraq and they've actually been very helpful in trying to get Sunnis involved in the elections. I think it would be very helpful if they were supportive of and working toward helping Prime Minister Maliki's national reconciliation plan, for instance." [2]
"QUESTION: Okay. Concerning Iraq, there are two suggestions or two circulated suggestions actually. One is the division of Iraq, a sectarian division. And the other one is to limit American troops in a military zone away from the populated areas. So how do you view those suggestions?
SECRETARY RICE: Well as to the first, the idea that you would somehow divide Iraq, I've heard that from a lot of people but not from any Iraqis. Iraqis see themselves as a single country. They see themselves as Shia and Sunni and Kurds. Very often people are inter-married, tribes have all of the same – have different people within them. So Iraqis want to be a unified country. And so that is what we're supporting.
As to the military strategy to help defeat the terrorists and the insurgents, we work daily with Prime Minister Maliki and with his defense chief and defense forces to apportion correctly American forces with Iraqi forces to take care of the security situation. But there's no doubt that more and more throughout the country Iraqi forces are in the lead. Iraqi forces are in control of numerous provinces now in Iraq.
QUESTION: So then to limit your forces, the U.S. troops in a military zone in a military area?
SECRETARY RICE: I think we have to do what it takes to get the job done, that is to help secure the Iraqi people." [3]
"Well, they are in the midst of a security plan for Baghdad -- I mean a set of security operations in Baghdad -- and I think we need to let those finish. But I'm really here and more on the political side because obviously the political side and the security side are linked. The ability to get a national reconciliation plan, to get everybody to understand precisely how their interests are going to be represented and how their interests are going to be served in this political process, to pull more people into the political process and out of the insurgency, more people into the political process and out of connections with militias, that's why the political process is so central.
So I'm really more focused on the political process. I think George Casey and MNFI and Don have been very focused on the near-term security issue, but the core of getting a security environment, a stable security environment, really does rest on getting some of these political issues resolved." [4]
"We believe that oil has to be a resource for the Iraqi people as a whole and it has to benefit the Iraqi people as a whole. The relationship between the regions, the localities and the center on how exploration is done, how decisions are made, I think that's what the hydrocarbon law has to address.
But our only view, which we've communicated to the Iraqis and which I think most Iraqis agree, is that oil needs to be a unifying factor and not one that will help to make the country less unified." [4]
"The President of the United States has gone out there practically weekly, in some cases almost daily, and said here's what we're trying to do in Iraq, here's why it's important and here's why we believe we must succeed and will succeed. But it is very tough going for all of the following reasons: This is a very young political system that is trying to overcome differences that are decades old; it is coming out of tyranny; it has problems of sectarianism; it doesn't have adequate security forces. This is really hard going. And I would say go back and look at any presidential speech in the last year, and the discussion of the fact that this is very tough going is there.
Now, it's somehow considered contradictory to say that we nonetheless believe the Iraqis are making progress. When there is actually a functioning political system in place after three years, I think you can say they're making progress. When they're actually governing themselves, I think you can say that you're making progress. The reconstruction, which I think we began as frankly too big a national program, although some of that needed to be done, now has a more localized character and it is having an effect in a lot of the provinces. A lot of these provinces are stable. So not only do I think that the President and others have been clear with the American people that this is a struggle, he's been clear with the American people why he thinks it's a struggle that needs to be waged.
It's also the case that there is -- that what the American people see on their television screens every night is the struggle. It is harder to show the political process that is going on at local levels, at provincial levels, indeed at the national level, in which the political system is maturing to try to come to terms with their difficulties." [4]
"Because we believe that a democratic, modernizing, moderate Middle East is the best chance for peace in this region, it is the best chance for true stability in this region, and it is the only way -- democratic institutions are the only way that people who have differences resolve those differences peacefully. The only other alternative is to resolve differences by repression and violence, and this region has had too much of both. And so the development of democratic institutions which can facilitate the overcoming of difference is extremely important." [5]
footnotes
* Najaf "is a city in Iraq about 160 km south of Baghdad. . . . It is one of the holiest cities of Shia Islam and the center of Shia political power in Iraq." [6]
** "The International Compact with Iraq . . . is an initiative of the Government of Iraq for a new partnership with the international community. The Compact, jointly chaired by the Government of the Republic of Iraq and the United Nations, with the support of the World Bank, will, over the next five years, bring together the international community and multilateral organizations to help Iraq achieve its national vision. The International Compact had a starting date of July 27, 2006. [7]
*** I have not been able to find a definition of a formal Iraqi "national compact." It may be synonymous with Iraq's "national reconciliation plan" which calls for such things as "preventing human rights violations" and "establishing the armed forces." [8] Secretary Rice seemed to be using the two terms interchangeably in her Briefing En Route Baghdad, Iraq. [4]
sources
[1] U.S. Department of State. Interview With the New York Times Editorial Board. September 25, 2006.
[2] U.S. Department of State. Briefing En Route Shannon, Ireland. October 1, 2006.
[3] U.S. Department of State. Interview With Randa Abu el Azem of Al Arabiya TV. October 3, 2006.
[4] U.S. Department of State. Briefing En Route Baghdad, Iraq. October 5, 2006.
[5] U.S. Department of State. Democracy Discussion With Print Media. October 3, 2006.
[6] Wikipedia. Najaf. Retrieved October 4, 2006.
[7] United Nations. United Nations, Iraq jointly announce launch of five-year international compact aimed at achieving national vision of united, federal, democratic country. July 27, 2006.
[8] Iraqi Government. Iraqi Government Program. (National Reconciliation Project).
posted: wednesday, october 4, 2006, 1:02 AM ET
update: wednesday, october 8, 2006, 5:36 AM ET
posted by eric at 10:44 PM
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