Examination of Witnesses
(Questions 263-279)
MR YAHIA
SAID AND
MR ZAKI
CHEHAB
29 MARCH 2006
Q263 Chairman: Could I apologise to our
witnesses. Unfortunately we have no control over votes and votes
tend to disrupt us on Wednesday afternoons. May I thank both of
you for coming along. In January some members of the Committee
were in Iraq and we have been closely following the situation
for some time. It was important to get people who were not necessarily
participants in the political process there but also not from
our Government to give us the view from the outside of the situation.
Knowing that both of you are regularly visiting Iraq and know
many of the people there, we thought this was a very good opportunity
to get an update on the situation. When you respond initially,
please could you say who you are and what you do, which will be
helpful for the people making the notes of the meeting. Could
I begin with the security situation. When we were there in January,
the situation in Basra, certainly from my perspective, seemed
to be worse than it had been the last time I was there, in December
2004. Since then, we have noticed the appalling violence that
took place on 22 February. Some Iraqi politicians have talked
about civil war. What is your own assessment? Is Iraq now close
to a civil war or in a civil war, or is it exaggeration to say
that?
Mr Chehab: My name is Zaki Chehab,
I am the Political Editor of an Arab daily newspaper based here
in London called Al Hayat. It is similar to the Herald Tribune.
I work as well for the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation—that
is television. I have been following the situation in Iraq since
1978. My first assignment as a journalist was the Arab summit
which was held after President Sadat visited Jerusalem, and which
took place in Baghdad. Saddam Hussein was then the vice-president.
Since then I have been visiting Iraq regularly. My intensive interest
in Iraq started after the invasion of Kuwait. I may be one of
the few who has very good relationships or personal relationships
with all the leaders of Iraq from different sects—Sunni,
Shi'a, Kurds—in the opposition and even the government,
because of my regular visits. Talking about the security situation
and the sectarian situation, it was really a difficult situation.
It became, for the outside world, very obvious after the bombing
of Samarra as something of importance, but the sectarian killing
started in Iraq straight after the fall of the regime. Many of
us, including myself, felt a bit ashamed to talk about the sectarian
cleansing in Iraq taking place straight away, and it was under
different shapes: people wanted to take the houses of others and
they are saying . . . You know, you are a Sunni living in a Shi'a
area and people want to kick you out, and it was the easiest thing
to say, "You are part of the Ba'ath regime" or "You
are x" because you are scared. It was on this scale.
The kind of killing you are seeing today, there was something
similar happening, also on a larger scale, but nobody mentioned
it because most of the victims were Ba'athist or high ranking
officers, all taking place on a similar scale in Baghdad and in
other places, and around the same figures. We are talking today
about an average of 50 killings per day. Iraq was seeing, straight
after the fall of the regime, similar numbers of killings, but
nobody took notice of that. Knowing Iraq very well and knowing
Sunni/Shi'a/Kurds political leadership and religious leadership,
one importance I felt in Iraq that is different from any other
country is the large percentage of mixed marriages in Iraq. Many
politicians told me it is maybe between 30 and 50% Shi'a married
to Sunnis and Sunnis married to Shi'a. Many believe that this
is really a guarantee that Iraq will never slip into a sectarian
war in spite of the killings which are taking place today. Others
also, and myself, believe that it is only Zarqawi and the al Qaeda
organisation who have an interest in seeing Iraq slipping into
a civil war. I believe the bombing of Samarra, the religious site,
was carried out by Zarqawi after he felt that Sunnis for the first
time in Iraq started having some kind of dialogue with the Americans—especially
the influential Sunni tribes and the ones who are close to the
insurgency. Because my feeling—and I am sure al Qaeda and
others know—if any kind of progress and stability in the
Sunni Triangle, especially in al-Anbar Province and Mosel, started
between the American forces and the main influential Sunni tribes
in the area then I do not think there will be a place for al Qaeda
and its numbers of sympathisers. The only environment where Zarqawi
can benefit is from seeing a Sunni-Shi'a sectarian war taking
place. In terms of the influence Zarqawi has in Iraq, I suspect
that the number of his followers increased more than a few hundred.
He always relied on the anger of the population, mainly the Sunni
population, and on the very small militant Sunni organisation
in Falluja and Ramadi, and some of them as well started in Baghdad
and even up towards Kirkuk. The background of these organisations:
they were in Iraq before or during Saddam Hussein's leadership,
and the first confrontation took place between these groups, I
remember, in 1993, when Saddam tried to introduce some kind of
changes in the way people lived in Falluja, and because of the
background of the population there they confronted him. So this
extremism has got some background. The influence which we hear
about in the media—I mean the attacks where al Qaeda say,
"We have carried this out"—I suspect al Qaeda
have the skills to carry out very sophisticated attacks in Iraq
for one single reason: because most of the followers who join
al Qaeda in Iraq, either they go through Saudi Arabia or Yemen
or Jordan or Lebanon, or Palestinians or from Sudan, and they
are young, ill-trained and they just go to carry some maybe very
limited kind of operation: drive a tank and go through this area.
Either they know about it or they do not know, and somebody will
just explode the vehicle. So many incidents happen and I can mention
one I know about which happened a year and a half ago, the one
in which the target was exploded next to the Jordanian Embassy:
the driver was a Saudi and he was seriously injured because he
was driving a petrol tanker. From the investigation of him which
was carried out by a friend of mine, who is the head of intelligence
at the Ministry of Interior, he questioned him, and he told him
that he did not know that there were explosives in the tank. He
was followed by someone on the promise that they were delivering
this tank from one area to another, but when they passed through
the Jordanian Embassy the tanker exploded. So the majority of
attacks are carried out by either army, ex-army or Ba'athists,
who have the knowledge and experience and the knowledge; let us
say, if you want to talk about the Green Zone, to say where is
the American Embassy or the al-Rasheed Hotel or the conference
centre or specific areas. I suspect a Saudi who just joined al
Qaeda in Iraq doesn't know how to target these specific places
or to target a plane trying to land at Baghdad airport. This only
can be carried by the Iraqi military personnel who knows exactly
what he is after. But many know in Iraq that these Ba'athists—and
I believe still today that the Ba'ath Party is the most organised
party in Iraq—many of them do not like Saddam Hussein, but
they opted, after his arrest, to start to regroup and to work
on their own. But because of their political interest, they do
not want to be involved in fighting for their political ambitions.
They do not want to say, "We are against the Americans"
so they do not mind that Zarqawi is responsible for . . . .
Q264 Chairman: Thank you. We have
a lot of areas to cover. Could I ask Yahia Said to give his take
on the security situation as it is at the moment.
Mr Said: Yahia Said, Research
Fellow of the Centre for the Study of Global Governance here at
the LSE. I have been in exile from Iraq since 1979. My parents
were involved in the opposition to Saddam Hussein's regime. Since
the invasion in 2003, I have been travelling there regularly,
in part thanks to generous funding by the Westminster Foundation
for Democracy. To answer your question about civil war, I think
the answer depends on how one defines civil war. If civil war
is defined in terms of loss of security, in terms of the fact
that there is a myriad of arms factions, militias, armed groups,
and that the threat to Iraqi civilian lives and property can come
from any of these groups—and in a way the groups are becoming
increasingly difficult to distinguish from one another: for example,
terrorists dressed as policemen; Shi'a militias working through
the police units; Sunni insurgents dressed as military units—a
situation like that could be defined as civil war, as a breakdown
of the state's monopoly on legitimate violence and pervasive and
systemic violence. However, if one looks at civil war and thinks
"Bosnia: a sort of all-out sectarian war" then Iraq
is not there yet. However, Iraq is getting very close to that
moment because, increasingly, not only are political elites, who
have started to define themselves in ethnic terms, confronting
each other, but also society is beginning to get polarised along
ethnic and sectarian lines. Iraq did not have a history of ethnic
or sectarian conflict, although the successive regimes in Iraq
tried to emphasise ectarian identities as a way to defining their
power base, however we have seen sectarianism grow in Iraq, especially
over the last three years. There have been many factors that have
played a role in that. The most important among them is of course
al Qaeda terrorism, which was always designed to foment sectarian
war—always that was the intention of al Qaeda—however,
there were other factors. Unfortunately a lot of the actions of
Multinational Forces in Iraq have contributed to increasing sectarian
polarisation; for example, using Iraqi units comprised mainly
of Shi'a and Kurdish militias in Sunni areas or defining Shi'a
parties and Kurdish parties as allies and defining Sunni parties
as enemies. This has contributed to the polarisation. This policy
had been reversed over the last six months as it became evident
how counter-productive it is. However, it may be too late to prevent
an all-out sectarian polarisation in the country.
Q265 Sandra Osborne: There is a general
assumption that the centre of violence is around Baghdad and the
so-called Sunni Triangle. Is that the case? What is the security
situation like in the rest of the country?
Mr Said: It is one way to define
the violence as concentrated in the Baghdad and Sunni Triangle
but a better way to define it is that the violence is concentrated
in mixed areas. Everywhere where there is a co-existence of the
various components of the Iraqi society there is violence: Mosul,
Kirkuk, Hella, Baghdad and the areas around it. Indeed, the western
areas, the ethnically homogenous, western areas of Iraq are relatively
quiet, apart from insurgency operations against coalition troops
and counterinsurgency operations by these troops. But, in terms
of the violence we have seen against civilians and of the various
communities against each other and the general breakdown of law
and order that is predominant in the ethnically mixed areas, that
is another warning sign of an impeding civil war.
Mr Chehab: Many of the attacks
or incidents which take place in Iraq go unreported. I would just
highlight one thing: I was an observer for the referendum and
I visited Kirkuk. I was with American diplomats or ex-diplomats,
some Westerners and Arab journalists, and we were advised that
Kirkuk is a very safe area to visit with Westerners. We drove
there, and, a few minutes after we left, a car exploded in the
market. There were about 30 people killed. I decided that day
not to report that story to see if any of these things would appear
in the media. Nothing happened. On so many occasions—I know
of cases in Tikrit and even in Baghdad itself and Mosel—so
many incidents go unreported. Somebody has to be there and to
call and to ask, or someone to be connected with the media or
who knows a journalist to bring this to the outside. Due to the
security risks, coverage is very difficult. To give you an example:
the road from Baghdad airport to the capital is about 20 minutes'
drive, but, believe me, no one feels safe. Even if you drive in
a convoy with five Humphys, no one feels safe. Around the airport,
I think there are just American military bases, and, to the capital,
if 20 minutes' drive is not clear and is not safe for everyone,
what about the main roads? Not a single road which connects the
capital with any of the main cities in Iraq is safe.
Q266 Sandra Osborne: Who do the ordinary
Iraqis blame for the violence?
Mr Said: There are many parties.
This is what I was trying to allude to earlier. The danger to
Iraqi life and limb and property can come from any corner. It
can come as collateral damage from counterinsurgency operations;
it can come from criminal elements—and criminality is a
very important factor in the violence taking place in Iraq today,
criminality, either in its own right or dressed up as ethnic sectarian
violence or as insurgency operations; it can come from rogue elements
in the security forces; it can come from terrorists affiliated
with al Qaeda. So there is a myriad of actors. This is the most
frustrating thing for Iraqi civilians today, that they do not
feel safe. Under Saddam's regime violence was quite significant,
but it was, if you like, uni-directional: it came from a certain
address and it was targeting a certain kind of people, whether
they were ethnically opposed to Saddam or politically, or whether
they were involved in some business dealings that encroached on
his turf. Today, violence for most Iraqi civilians is inexplicable:
they do not understand why they are being targeted and for what
reason.
Q267 Mr Pope: Is the presence of
the British forces and American forces part of the problem or
is it part of the solution? Are we a focus for the insurgency
or all that stands between Iraq and a bloody civil war? Do you
think it would help if we set a timetable for withdrawing, or
would that in itself be a focus for the insurgency?
Mr Said: If you had asked me this
question about a month of two months ago, I would have definitely
answered that it is necessary to get into an accelerated timetable
for withdrawal and that a lot of the multinational forces' actions
are causing more harm than good. However, the situation is very
dynamic now in Iraq. There have been significant changes over
the last few months and especially since the attack on Samarra,
and, with an impeding threat of sectarian civil war, there is
a clear case for a multinational force to protect civilians and
to prevent a slide into civil war. However, the modus of operation,
the way the multinational forces have been working in Iraq over
the last three years, has to change significantly. There has to
be a focus on protecting civilians. The attitude expressed by
Donald Rumsfeld in the aftermath of the Sumarra attack, of sitting
back and letting Iraqi forces deal with the situation, is not
acceptable in this case and it is very similar to the sit and
wait attitude that was adopted when the looting started immediately
after the invasion. Should the forces stay at the moment? I think
there is a clear answer in favour of that. However, the forces
will have to carry their mandate as stipulated by the UN Security
Council Resolution, which is to provide law and order. It is a
luxury now to try to think that the forces can sit back and allow
Iraqi forces to take care of it. Finally, I still think there
is a benefit from having a timetable for withdrawal, albeit an
extended one. That is because a big part of the violence in Iraq
and a big irritant in Iraq is a suspicion that the forces are
there to stay, that Iraq will never be free. So the timetable
will offer a signal to Iraqis that these forces will leave as
soon as the situation stabilises.
Mr Chehab: I think the issue of
withdrawal and timetable usually raised in Iraq depends on the
situation. When there is some kind of dialogue between the Sunni
tribes or Sunni influential figures and the American forces or
commanders, nobody mentions it. I think the more there is involvement
in dialogue, the issue of the timetable is not of relevance. When
you want to talk about the timetable, we always make a connection
between: We will withdraw when we feel that the Iraqi forces are
capable of looking after the security. The Defence Secretary is
a very close friend of mine. I saw him some time ago and he invited
me and he said, "When is the last time you were in Iraq?"
I said that it was only in January, and he said, "Now it
is worse" and when I tried to interview him he had to say
something different on the record. But the fact is that no one
would have an idea about how far we have succeeded in rebuilding
Iraqi Security Forces. The kind of forces the Interior Minister
have, even the Americans themselves, three years after the fall
of the regime, are complaining about how sectarian the system
is there. So it means we have to start from scratch. If the Shi'a
militia or Kurdish militia are part of the security situation,
still we are far from the interest. Whoever is in the police force
deals with all Iraqis on the same foot, but still they are thinking
that we are Shi'a militia so we have to look after Shi'a interests,
not as Iraq united, Iraq for all. So we are still far away. Sometimes
one of the units in the army is 1,000 soldiers, and maybe, after
they get their salaries, the unit the next day is at 300 soldiers.
Q268 Mr Pope: Maybe part of the solution
here is to set a timetable based on events rather than dates.
Rather than saying that coalition forces will withdraw by the
summer or the turn of the year, we might say that we will consider
withdrawal based on the competence of the Iraqi forces to create
law and order. In that context, I would be interested in your
assessment as to how capable Iraqi forces are of policing the
streets, maintaining law and order, without British and American
forces side by side. We know there has been a rapid expansion
in the training of the Iraqi forces, but it seems to me that there
is a Catch-22, in that the insurgency focuses on attacking the
training of Iraqi forces, knowing that the better trained they
are the more likely it is that the Americans and the British can
withdraw.
Mr Chehab: A policeman who should
give the population a sense of security is standing in the streets
of Baghdad and he is covering his face because he is worried that
when he goes home or to his neighbourhood somebody might recognise
him and kill him. This is the kind of police force we are seeing
in Baghdad. 80% of the Iraqi police force fears being recognised.
Even I was wondering why we hear about 10 policemen killed and
50 policemen killed. You do not have to think too much about it:
when you drive in the streets of Baghdad you can find out easily
why they are killed in large numbers, because when they are patrolling
somewhere they do not take fighting positions and are not ready,
they just huddle together, five or 10 or 15, and it is easy for
somebody to pass by and shoot them because they are scared to
be far away from each other. And this is really to justify that
they were ill-trained. When they started to be sent to Jordan,
the cost of training a policeman for two weeks or four weeks in
Jordan was more expensive than sending someone to study in the
Massachusetts Institute.
Mr Said: There is no simple answer
to the issue of the Iraqi Security Forces. There is a dilemma
here. Security Forces are a matter of nationalism. Security Forces
ride not necessarily on equipment and efficiency but on legitimacy,
and it is very difficult to built legitimate armed forces and
Security Forces under foreign tutelage—especially if the
issue of the foreign presence is so contentious in society. The
problems we see with the training of Iraqi armed forces are a
product of that. As long as the Americans were trying to build
the Iraqi Armed Forces in a rigorous way, trying to avoid the
incorporation of militias, trying to build an ethnically mixed
armed force with loyalty to the state, the process was going very
slowly, because very few of Iraqi nationalists or patriots were
willing to join the Armed Forces and people were joining them
for material gain more than anything else. As soon as the Americans
started to accelerate that timetable by trying to incorporate
the militias, that process went faster, but these people had an
entirely different motivation than that one would expect from
the Armed Forces. They were joining it to pursue their own agenda,
their own sectarian and ethnic agenda. As we see today, especially
in the recent events in recent days, these Armed Forces are very
happy to break ranks with the Americans and the British who have
trained them, as long as they perceive any conflict of interest
there. In terms of putting milestones for the withdrawal, which
I believe is very important, I do not think these milestones should
be associated with the building of Iraqi Armed Forces, because
in many ways this process is almost impossible under foreign tutelage.
The multinational forces in Iraq should create the conditions
for Iraqis to take control of the situation and build their own
Armed Forces. The multinational forces are in Iraq primarily to
protect Iraqi people. It is to protect civilians from sectarian
attacks, from terrorist attacks, from crime and violence. This
is a huge undertaking, and it may sound easier to train x
number of soldiers and officers, but, as we have seen over the
last three years, this process is impossible without the involvement
of legitimate public authority in Iraq.
Mr Chehab: Can I give three facts?
Q269 Chairman: Briefly, as we have
to move on.
Mr Chehab: Yesterday the American
forces have announced that they have arrested more than 40 Iraqi
policemen who were involved in death squads. Two weeks ago, the
Ministry of the Interior came out to say, "We managed to
arrest 450 people who have joined the police force and they were
part of al Qaeda or something, and they were trying to plan to
attack the Green Zone." A few weeks before that, the Minister
of the Interior himself Bayan Jabr's sister was kidnapped. A few
weeks before that, his brother was kidnapped and he had to negotiate
with militias. So if the Minister of the Interior is in this kind
of trouble and could not secure his family—and that is a
simple example—what about the normal Iraqis?
Q270 Sir John Stanley: To what extent
do you consider that Iran is or is not fomenting the insurgency
in Iraq?
Mr Said: Iran has a very big footprint
in Iraq, a big influence. It goes through a variety of channels.
It has channels to a variety of the actors in Iraq. Certain groups
that enjoy Iranian support have been instrumental in fomenting
sectarian violence in Iraq. Specifically I would mention the Supreme
Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the associated Badr
Brigade. These are two organisations that have been established
in Iran and have benefited from direct Iranian material and moral
support for many years. However, the Iranian involvement in Iraq
is more complex than that. They have been supporting nationalist
group, insurgents group and so on. Iran, I believe, views Iraq
as an insurance policy, as a card that it could use should it
be subjected to a form of perceived or expected aggression from
the United States, and therefore, what Iranian influence in Iraq
has been over the three years is to try to keep the situation
at a certain level of instability, so that it could use it as
leverage in relation with the United States.
Mr Chehab: I think Iran is in
a unique situation. They have the biggest influence in Iraq, even
without sending their own army or militias, because they have
Iraqis there who are fully pro-Iran in terms of politics, from
Al-Sadur, who has militia, taking salaries for each who joined
the army and everyone knows that it is Iranian money. You mentioned
as well al-Hakim, and everyone knows his background and how the
Badr Brigade was first established on Iranian soil and the kind
of relationship which Abdul Aziz al-Hakim has with the Iran leadership.
And the same thing with the present Prime Minister al-Jaafari.
Knowing and hearing American briefings, they were definitely shocked
at the way things were going. They were hoping at some stage after
this last election to see some change in Iraq. They were hoping
that Allawi with Chalabi and others can make a bloc which will
take power away from these pro-Iran groups, but unfortunately
it was not like this. That is why it was a shock in the Green
Zone, when this religious Shi'a secured the majority. That is
why the Americans are saying now that they are not going to finance
or train or spend the taxpayer's money on supporting what they
call security ministers, like the Minister of the Interior, who
are definitely known to be pro-Iranian. One of the important things
that happened in Iraq straight after the fall of the regime is
the attacks and burning of offices and the documents about things
like the land registry, and this left matters especially the areas
in the South, open for heavy Iranian influence, because at some
stage Saddam had expelled tens of thousands of people who were
of Iranian origin to Iran. Straight after the fall of the regime,
people say even more Iranians, those that had been expelled and
others, started moving back to Iraq where nobody can question
their backgrounds to see if they are really Iraqis or not as the
records were destroyed. Many of them, they talk about their involvement
in voting and the election and the influence they would have.
There is no document to say this, because everything was burned
in Iraq.
Q271 Richard Younger-Ross: Do you
think it is possible that there are some provinces where we could
effectively withdraw coalition forces now? Are there particular
provinces, perhaps outside of Basra, where that might be feasible—that
is, where there is enough self-governance?
Mr Said: That was the situation
for some time now, that there are provinces like the Muthanna
province, and, to a lesser degree, Thi Qar, Nasiriya province,
which were pretty peaceful. The situation now has changed because
there is a real threat of a complete breakdown or paralysis in
the Government in Baghdad and this may reverberate in terms of
instability, even into areas which have been stable until now.
I honestly cannot recommend—and it pains me greatly, because
I have been a great opponent of a speedy withdrawal of foreign
forces from Iraq—the withdrawal of forces anywhere in Iraq
at this moment. I believe it is possible, in these provinces which
are quiet, for the forces to take a lower profile, to hand more
competences to Iraqi forces and to attend to other matters. One
problem, for example, that was perceived acutely in the relatively
stable provinces, is that, despite the stability in these provinces,
there was very little in terms of economic reconstruction, so
there are other tasks there that could be carried out with the
help of the multinational forces.
Q272 Richard Younger-Ross: In January,
we were advised that there were some Sunni insurgent groups which
were thinking of coming on the inside, laying down their arms
and becoming part of the democratic process. Are you aware of
that? Had that come through to you? If that was the case, are
you aware whether that has changed now, post the Sumarra bombing?
Mr Chehab: I suspect that at some
stage some groups are willing to surrender. It was reported in
the media here, it was even in some Arabic media and the American
media, but, knowing people there—and I sent people who work
for me to al-Ramadi and others—they denied that there is
any change. There was some hope. The kind of approach that the
Americans started in the last few months was of importance. They
managed at least to start getting through to the influential Sunni
tribes, but there are no concrete agreements yet. They are still
testing the water. And the best test on this front was the election.
In spite of the threats made by Zarqawi a few days before the
last election, nothing happened, because he realised that Sunnis
for the first time were willing to participate in the political
process. What really happened in the last few weeks is this kind
of progress in the dialogue between the Americans and the Sunnis.
Shi'a have looked at it from a different way because they thought
now the Americans are trying to improve the relation with the
Sunni at the expense of the Shi'a. I think that is where we need
a much better balanced approach, so you can convince the Shi's
that it is in the interests of the country and their interests
that we are doing such a thing, not to do this because we felt
or the Americans felt at some stage that we have to forget about
the Shi'a because we found out they are pro-Iranians, there is
no hope for them, they will not support our policies in Iraq.
That is why it is a very delicate situation. The call for withdrawal
at some stage was at its best maybe before the election, but,
after the election, because of the kind of communications going
and because of the regular meetings between the American ambassadors
and influential Sunni leaders in Iraq, I have not heard any calls
to see American withdrawal. I think the more there is engagement
for both parties in the political process, the more people will
say, "Okay, let's put it aside, let's prepare the ground."
That is what we have started to say: Why do you not think of policies
to see what we are going to do with the militias, either Shi'as
or Kurds or the insurgency? because until today there is no solution
for the Sunni insurgency. The majority of them are ex-Army officers,
soldiers, and these ones have no jobs, no income, so we have to
find a way of solving their problems. The de-Ba'athification policy
is when you ban more than one million members of the Ba'ath party
from taking any job in the government. So why should we do that?
Especially since a large number of them have nothing to do with
Saddam Hussein's policies: they just joined the Ba'ath Party for
them to get a job in the government and to manage to get scholarships
for their kids. So we have to find solutions. If Sunni in the
Sunni Triangle find that there is some hope for them to get involved
in daily life and to feel that they have a say in the political
future of their country I think then we can make progress. Still
today we have seen nothing of this.
Q273 Ms Stuart: Let us try to move
on from a greater understanding of the problem and see whether
there are some solutions, following on from what Mr Pope said
of the withdrawal of troops and events. One of the big problems
Iraq faces is that, where you have Security Forces which have
a personal loyalty, once you remove that personal loyalty people
will look for other units to identify with. The western idea of
functioning democracies is that our loyalty is to the institutions
and to the rule of law. Is there at the moment anything within
Iraq where you could have that transfer of loyalty in the absence
of a functioning government? What would be your advice to any
of the Security Forces? What do you owe your loyalty to, given
that you cannot identify with government? Secondly, I am very
struck that we talk about Sunnis and Shia's and I have not heard
anything about the Kurds so far. Does that mean there is no problem
or is it a different kind of problem? The third observation is
that we heard from the United States of a document which they
produced in terms of media and development of the media It seemed
to me there are masses of newspapers, masses of radio stations,
masses of television stations there, yet, Mr Chehab, you say we
do not know what is going on. That does not quite add up in my
mind. I wonder whether Mr Said would like to answer first.
Mr Said: There are two problems
here with the situation. There is a need to transition thinking
about Iraq from the insurgency/counterinsurgency situation to
a civil war situation. Even if civil war is not taking place now,
this is the major threat in Iraq today and this is where the situation
is shifting. Even when we talk about engaging the Sunnis politically
and also security-wise, bringing Sunni insurgents into the Armed
Forces, this is happening under the wrong set of premises. This
is happening as providing the third leg of the pot, if you like,
of allowing the Sunnis to have their own militia, their own security
structure, to defend their own corner, but this is exacerbating
sectarian tensions. This is further deepening polarisation. You
have rightly suggested that it is important to build institutions
that everyone in Iraq believes belong to them. This does not really
begin with the Armed Forces and Security Forces but with the government
itself. Unfortunately, the two successive elections which took
place in Iraq and the adoption of the constitution, as positive
as they were in their own right, have produced a Parliament and
government that is defined in sectarian terms, defined in sectarian
corners.
Q274 Ms Stuart: Sectarian rather
than federal?
Mr Said: Yes.
Q275 Ms Stuart: They use the word
"federal" but you do not think it is a federal structure.
Mr Said: I do not think Iraq is
yet in a federal mode. Federalism is about sharing resources,
about sharing power. Iraqi politicians, and the elites that have
been produced through the political process and are now legitimately
elected representatives, are thinking about dividing resources,
about dividing power. The contentious negotiations on the formation
of government are a case in point: it is all about who gets what—who
gets which part of the security structures, who gets which part
of the resources; who gets which part of the media. You mentioned
the media: in Iraq there are very few national media outlets.
There are regional and even the ones which have federal coverage
or national coverage are biased in sectarian ways, including the
national Iraqi television. The political process is currently
producing a picture that will further deepen division within society.
It is quite a dilemma how you reverse that in the absence of political
leaders who are willing to look at Iraq as a nation and try to
build institutions that are common to all Iraqis. But, just to
go back to your question, you cannot start this process through
the Armed Forces and the Security Forces. You need political legitimacy
that is based on a different understanding of Iraq from the one
that is prevailing today in terms of Kurdis-Shia-Sunni.
Q276 Mr Horam: Mr Said, you talked
earlier about the paralysis in Baghdad and you paint rather a
bleak picture of the increasing sectarian grab of bits of government.
Is it as hopeless as that? For example, they formed a National
Security Council, which you could argue is some recognition of
the need to keep the country together and to bring in people of
whatever background and ethnic origin. Is it hopeless?
Mr Said: It is not entirely hopeless,
obviously, and the move to set up a Security Council is in some
respects a positive step. It is a step in the right direction
but it is a very technical step. First of all, the Security Council
enshrines the power that the party leaders have over the political
process. All the major decisions in Iraq were taking place in
meetings between Jalal Talabani, Barazani, Jaafari—
Q277 Mr Horam: So it formalises—
Mr Said: It formalises that process.
The hope from that is that once that process is formalised it
is possible to build a government that looks more like a team
than like a power division deal. The paralysis in Baghdad over
the last year was because the Minister of the Interior does not
owe any allegiance to the Prime Minister. The Minister of the
Interior is a representative of al-Hakim; he does what al-Hakim
tells him to do. The Minister of Foreign Affairs is the representative
of Barazani; he does what Barazani tells him to do. The Prime
Minister has his own agenda.
Q278 Mr Horam: How do they get out
of the trap?
Mr Said: The move to the Security
Council may open the door to that because it moves the political
bargaining, horse trading, into the Security Council, and hopefully
will allow the creation of a national government of technocrats.
One issue is where hope is in Iraq. Hope in Iraq is if you remove
the top of the political establishment. There is a lot of hope
below in Iraq: Iraqi professionals, Iraqi civil servants, Iraqi
intellectuals, academics and so on, who are abhorred by what they
see being done to their country today, people who stayed in Iraq
over the decades and kept their country ticking, despite the madness
at the top from Saddam and his cronies. But these people are disempowered
by a system that has propelled these politicians to the top who
are seeking to define themselves, who are choosing to define themselves
in ethnic and sectarian terms.
Q279 Mr Horam: You want government
by civil servants and technocrats?
Mr Said: This is what happened
and why Japan and Germany were a success after World War Two,
because they were run not necessarily by politicians but by technocrats,
by people who decided to move on and rebuild their country. The
tragedy of Iraq today is it is run largely by exiled politicians
who increasingly define themselves in ethnic and sectarian terms
and find it convenient. One of the problems with Iraq is that
you have these politicians who have very little grass roots support,
apart from Al Sadr. Nobody has a political party that works all
the way to the bottom. These are people who live in the stratosphere
and the only way they mobilise is through fomenting sectarian
and ethnic passions. One solution may be in the Security Council,
although I do not have much confidence in that, in that you move
those people into that little club of theirs and maybe that will
open the way to a government of technocrats.
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