Global Policy Forum

By Jim Lobe

A long-awaited study by the US intelligence community released last week concludes there is little, if any, light at the end of tunnel in Iraq.

The report, which came on the eve of an unprecedented Senate debate on Monday on President George W Bush's plan to add at least 21,500 troops to the 140,000 US forces already in Iraq, described the current conflict there as a "civil war" that could very easily lead to the country's de facto partition.

Moreover, even if the additional US troops succeed in reducing the violence over the next year to 18 months, progress toward reaching a political settlement is doubtful given attitudes among the various Iraqi communities and their leaders, according to the report's "Key Judgments", the only part of the report that was released publicly.

"Even if violence is diminished, given the current winner-take-all attitude and sectarian animosities infecting the political scene, Iraqi leaders will be hard pressed to achieve sustained reconciliation in the time frame of this Estimate," according to the report, called a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE).

The NIE, which has been six months in preparation and represents the consensus views of the vast US intelligence community, also stressed that the violence in Iraq is internally generated and sustained, refuting recent suggestions by senior Bush administration officials that Iran is playing a major role in support of Shi'ite militias.

"Iran's neighbors influence, and are influenced by, events within Iraq, but the involvement of these outside actors is not likely to be a major driver of violence or the prospects for stability because of the self-sustaining character of Iraq's internal sectarian dynamics," it said, adding that Iranian "lethal support" for some Shi'ite groups "clearly intensifies the conflict" and that Syria has taken "less than adequate measures to stop the flow of foreign jihadists into Iraq".

Bush's National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley embraced the NIE's key judgments, insisting as well that the intelligence on which it is based has been fully considered by the president in devising his new strategy, including the increase in US combat strength in Iraq, that he announced on January 10.

"We think it is accurate," he said about the report's grim analysis, even as he demurred over the characterization of the conflict as a civil war. "The intelligence assessment that is reflected in this NIE is not at war with the new approach ... the president has developed, but I would say explains why the president concluded that a new strategy was required," he told reporters.

But critics said deep pessimism reflected in the report raised new questions about whether Bush's deployment of more troops would make much difference. "Rather than convincing me that [Bush's new strategy] is the right approach, the NIE makes it more clear than ever that the president's plan has little chance of success," said Congressman Ike Skelton, chairman of the powerful House Armed Services Committee, who has called for a phased withdrawal of US troops over the next year. Indeed, at this point, it is difficult to predict how the NIE will affect the growing debate - and dissent - in Congress, including among Republicans, over Bush's plan to send in more troops.

The Senate will take up several non-binding resolutions this week, including one authored by the former Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is considered the most likely to gain a strong bipartisan majority. It explicitly disagrees with Bush's plan.

Another report, released last week by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), has already weakened Bush's position by asserting that his plan, which the administration has repeatedly insisted will send only 21,500 troops, will likely result in many more - as many as 48,000 - going to Iraq when support units are counted.

In contrast to administration estimates that its planned troop "surge" will cost less than US$6 billion, the CBO placed the more likely figure at between $20 billion and $27 billion a year, depending on how many support troops are involved. Washington is currently spending about $8 billion a month on Iraq operations.

Aside from its remarkably grim assessment of the current situation and how it is likely to evolve over the next 12-18 months, the new NIE's judgments offers some ammunition to the administration, notably its assertion that "coalition capabilities ... remain an essential stabilizing element in Iraq" and its prediction for what is likely to happen in the event of a rapid withdrawal of US and other "coalition" forces during the same period.

"We judge that this almost certainly would lead to a significant increase in the scale and scope of sectarian conflict in Iraq, intensify Sunni resistance to the Iraqi government, and have adverse consequences for national reconciliation," according to the report. It warned that the Iraqi security forces will be "unlikely to survive as a non-sectarian national institution" and said there is a possibility that neighboring countries "might intervene openly in the conflict". It also said "massive civilian casualties and forced population displacement would be probable" and that al-Qaeda in Iraq will try to establish bases in parts of the country.

While those predictions echo those by Bush and other senior officials, however, the NIE did not define what it means by "rapid withdrawal". Most congressional critics of Bush policy oppose an immediate withdrawal, while the bipartisan Iraq Study Group that was co-chaired by former secretary of state James Baker and former congressman Lee Hamilton called for withdrawing all US combat troops - about 70,000 currently - by April 2008.

At the same time, the report noted several developments that "could [the report's emphasis] help to reverse the negative trends driving Iraq's current trajectory", including "broader Sunni acceptance of the current political structure and federalism; significant concessions by Shi'ites and Kurds; and a bottom-up approach to achieving reconciliation among warring tribes and sects". But the italicized "could" appeared to suggest considerable skepticism.

"These developments are unlikely to emerge, and the authors probably knew that," said Wayne White, an Iraq expert who served as deputy director of the State Department's Office of Middle East and South Asia Analysis until 2005. The office is part of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, one of the 16 agencies that contribute to the NIE process. White said he considered the analysis in the Judgments to be "spot on".

A favorable outcome will depend on "stronger Iraqi leadership", the report stressed, noting at another point in the document: "The absence of unifying leaders among the Arab Sunnis or Shi'ites with the capacity to speak for or exert control over their confessional groups limits prospects for reconciliation."

If some developments could help stabilize the situation, however, there are others, "including sustained mass sectarian killings, assassination of major religious and political leaders and a complete Sunni defection from the government" that have "the potential to convulse severely Iraq's security environment", according to the report.

In that event, one of three outcomes is likely: "Chaos leading to (de facto) partition, a scenario that would generate fierce violence for at least several years; the emergence of a Shi'ite strongman; or an anarchic fragmentation of power that would present the greatest potential for instability, mixing extreme ethno-sectarian violence with debilitating intra-group clashes."

As for the current situation, the NIE concluded that "the term 'civil war' accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict, including the hardening of ethno-sectarian identities, a sea change in the character of the violence, ethno-sectarian mobilization and population displacements". At the same time, the authors said the term "does not adequately capture the complexity" of the various dimensions of the violence.

"They not only accept the term 'civil war' as a description of what's going on, but the way they put it suggests they see it as even worse, because of the other forms of violent conflict that are being pursued in addition to civil war," said Juan Cole, a Middle East expert at the University of Michigan and president of the Middle East Studies Association. "This is a refutation of the administration's stance." He told IPS he was struck by the "extreme pessimism" of the report. "It doesn't appear to envisage an easy or foreseeable end to the conflict absent factors which it says explicitly are not there today."