The publication of sections of a key United States "national intelligence estimate" (NIE) document in Washington on 26 September 2006 has brought the issue of Iraq and the wider war to centre stage in Washington in the run-up to the mid-term Congressional elections on 7 November. The initially leaked NIE document focuses on the impact of the occupation of Iraq as a recruitment tool for new generations of radical Islamists; it concludes that Iraq has provided an inspiration for the al-Qaida movement in a way that has worsened the position of the United States in its "war on terror".
It accepts that the al-Qaida movement has been damaged and dispersed by the war, but at the cost of the transformation of the movement into a much looser and more extended network of like-minded groups. This lack of hierarchical organisation and concentrated leadership makes al-Qaida increasingly difficult to counter.
Paul Rogers is professor of peace studies at Bradford University, northern England. He has been writing a weekly column on global security on openDemocracy since 26 September 2001
Three crises
The NIE report is saying little that has not been said by independent analysts over the past two years (including in this series of openDemocracy columns, including the SWISH reports). But in the context of current public debate in the United States, it has two significant features.
The first is that US national intelligence estimates tend to be consensus documents, the combined product of the conclusions of the sixteen relevant agencies. Some of these agencies rely on human intelligence, others on remote sensing (especially intercepts); some are domestically orientated, others have a worldwide remit. This composite, variegated aspect tends to result in lowest-common-denominator conclusions, where any sharp analysis is processed into blandness. This particular estimate is notably different, and its release has propelled the question of what advice the Bush administration is receiving on Iraq to the top of the US's political agenda.
The second feature is the report's date: April 2006. The picture portrayed is bleak enough, yet in the five subsequent months the situation in both Iraq and Afghanistan has deteriorated even further.
The security situation in many parts of Iraq is dire. Anbar province, west of Baghdad, is now effectively outside Iraqi government or American control; Diyala province, in the northeast, has been described as a "Taliban republic" (see Patrick Cockburn, "A journey into the 'Taliban republic' where the militias rule unchallenged", Independent, 25 September 2006). Many Iraqi civilians are dying, and at a rate higher than at any time since the war began in March 2003. The US occupying forces are having intense difficulty maintaining any degree of control, and are themselves taking considerable casualties in the process. In one five-day period (15-19 September), for example, 200 members of the US forces were wounded in combat.
In a further sign of overstretch, yet another US army unit has been ordered to extend its deployment in Iraq. One of the 1st armoured division's brigade of 4,000 troops, currently stationed in Anbar province, will remain until early November; it will be replaced by a brigade from the 1st cavalry division which will leave for Iraq in late October, a month earlier than planned (see Ann Scott Tyson, "U.S. Extends Iraq Tour For Another Army Unit", Washington Post, 26 September 2006).
In Afghanistan too, Taliban and other paramilitary groups now control large swathes of the south and southeast. Their military impact probably exceeds their own expectations for 2006 in terms of their longer-term plans; and Nato's recourse to the more extensive use of air power is likely to strengthen their hand further as civilian casualties mount. Newsweek's assessment - "Losing Afghanistan: The Rise of Jihadistan" (the cover story for the international edition of 2 October 2006 but not, strangely, for the US domestic edition) - is one of the many re-evaluations at last filtering into the establishment media.
The understandable focus of media attention on Iraq and Afghanistan means less coverage on perhaps the most remarkable recent development: the Pakistani government's capitulation to paramilitaries in North Waziristan (see Shaun Gregory, "Pakistan on edge", 25 September 2006). Their recent "peace deal", whose terms include the release of thousands of detainees by the government, is far more than an acceptance of Islamabad's defeat in the face of mounting army casualties.
A pertinent analysis of Pakistani events is (unusually) to be found in the house-journal of US neo-conservatives, the Weekly Standard (see Daveed Gartenstein-Ross & Bill Roggio, "Pakistan Surrenders", 2 October 2006). This concludes: "...the gains of the past five years were reversed in mere weeks with the loss of Waziristan and the release of 2,500 fighters. We urgently need solid ideas about how to cope with this problem before it grows worse. Simply overlooking the dangers of the present situation does not a solution make".
Aims and outcomes
The severe problems faced by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in contending with a more diversified al-Qaida movement, suggest that the original aims of President Bush's war on terror are very far from being achieved. A brief reality-check which recalls the principal objectives of US strategy in late 2001 makes the point.
After 9/11, the US rapidly decided to terminate the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. This was achieved within weeks. The intention of the action was threefold - to destroy a regime that harboured the al-Qaida movement; to damage and disperse that movement by expropriating its main area of training, logistics and operations; and to see Afghanistan achieve a political and economic transformation to a western-orientated, market economy state.
This state would be closely allied to the United States to the extent of hosting US military facilities; it was expected that two large bases, at Bagram and Kandahar, would be the key installations, with a combined personnel almost certainly fewer than 10,000. The US certainly did not anticipate the need for large numbers of US combat troops to remain in Afghanistan. But in any case it was confident that its military capabilities (including the potential for emergency resupply) would be enough to guarantee the survival and stability of a post-Taliban client administration in Kabul.
The US saw Afghanistan as important for its strategic location, especially its proximity to central Asia's energy resources. The very act of terminating the Taliban regime and consolidating control in its aftermath made the acquisition of military facilities in neighbouring countries desirable. Washington thus anticipated that the result of its operation would be substantially increased US influence across much of the region.
In Iraq, the stated aim of the destruction of Saddam Hussein's regime was to remove a purported double threat - weapons of mass destruction, and Iraqi links with al-Qaida. The US expected that the aim would be achieved with ease after a brief "shock and awe" air-assault; this would be followed by a gratified population's welcome for their liberation from oppression by the old regime. This, in turn, would enable a pro-American Iraqi administration to pursue strongly free-market economic policies.
Soon after the Baghdad regime's fall in April 2003, US military planners were said to be anticipating a reduction in its forces in Iraq from 140,000 to no more than 70,000 troops by September. At the same time, there were clear indications of Bush administration intentions to build four large military bases at key strategic locations around the country.
These bases would be close to Baghdad; adjacent to the major oilfields towards Basra; close to the northern oilfields on the Kirkuk-Mosul axis; and in western Iraq. A base in the sparsely populated and potentially insecure west would help secure the border with Syria and create control over territory where (it was believed) oil reserves might be found. The no more than 20,000 troops eventually needed at these four bases would be enough to ensure the security of a future Iraqi administration that retained close links to Washington.
The transformation of Iraq into a free-market economy and a client regime dependent on US forces for its security would have long-term advantages for the United States. The most important is to establish control over the Persian Gulf's oil supplies, a key resource for the entire world economy and particularly for a United States increasingly dependent (like its potential rival, China) on oil imports.
The United States's continuing antipathy to the Islamic Republic of Iran, and uncertainty over its relationship with Saudi Arabia, were high on its agenda in late 2001. Put bluntly, it was quite unacceptable for Washington to have the three countries with the world's largest oil reserves - Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia - not sufficiently amenable to its influence. If Iraq could be transformed into a client state, Saudi Arabia's significance could be diminished and Iran's regional ambitions constrained. Moreover, a successful military campaign would hedge Iran with client regimes to east (Afghanistan) and west (Iraq).
Victory in Afghanistan and Iraq might not be the end of al-Qaida, but it would bring that aim closer and carry huge collateral benefits. A regime-change strategy, liberally garnished by the language of democracy, would ensure that the "new American century" would become reality.
In addition to his weekly openDemocracy column, Paul Rogers writes an international security monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group; for details, click here.
A collection of Paul Rogers's Oxford Research Group briefings, Iraq and the War on Terror: Twelve Months of Insurgency, 2004-05 is published by IB Tauris
( October 2005)
They haven't gone away, you know
The contrast between expectations and outcomes is extreme. It is also increasingly affecting US domestic politics. The intelligence revelations, and a Democratic remobilisation heralded by Bill Clinton's aggressive television interview on 22 September lambasting the Bush administration's indifference to the pre-9/11 threat, has helped catapult Iraq onto the election agenda. A Republican loss of control of the House of Representatives would be greatly damaging to the Bush agenda and alter political calculations for the 2008 presidential election.
In such circumstances, the opportunity for a diversion may become more attractive to hardline elements within the administration and among its key supporters (see John Hulsman, ). It is not impossible that Iran might be its focus. The Tehran regime, already an ideological adversary of the United States, has been strengthened by Hizbollah's achievements in southern Lebanon and is becoming more sophisticated in its nuclear diplomacy.
Iran's rising confidence is a source of frustration in Washington, but also makes it more difficult for the US to entertain a cost-free, open military confrontation. An artificially induced sense of crisis, especially one organised for late October, is a more feasible proposition. Recent naval deployments suggest one way it might be engineered.
The aircraft carrier battle-group centred on the USS Eisenhower has reportedly been ordered to deploy to the Arabian Sea in the week beginning 2 October; it is due to arrive around 21 October, a month earlier than originally planned (see Dave Lindorff, "War Signals?" The Nation, 21 September 2006). There, it will join a second such group centred on the USS Enterprise. If that group is held on station after the Eisenhower arrives - and especially if a third carrier battle-group from the Pacific fleet is also forward-deployed - the signals would begin to look ominous.
It is worth emphasising that even a gathering of all three battle-groups would not of itself be evidence of impending attack on Iran. Many within the US military's senior ranks are opposed to any pre-emptive strike, so much so that even Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld may be unable to override them in the short term.
Yet it is not unthinkable that an enormous concentration of military power near Iran, accompanied by numerous embedded journalists, might combine with new "reports" of Iranian nuclear developments to induce a sense of crisis in the immediate pre-election period. After the votes are in, tensions could be allowed to ease.
A scenario is different from reality on the ground. But it is dangerously easy for those who might try to turn one into the other to forget that the United States is not the only player in the game, and would not be able to control how an "artificial" crisis develops. Iran has a stake in any contest; and within Iran there are groups (especially in the Revolutionary Guard) that would find some low-level confrontation with US naval units in the Gulf rather attractive.
The risk is that a "crisis" orchestrated for American domestic political needs could turn into the real thing. This is only one of several reasons to choose another path - but the political pressures on the Bush administration may just make this one too tempting to resist.
