As recently as a week ago, senior State and Defense department officials back in Washington, in a rare state of agreement, were suggesting privately that the June handover probably would have to slide–possibly until January 2005, when genuine elections could be held. This would almost certainly mean a political migraine for the president. Bush would face Democratic charges this fall that America is still mired in an Iraq quagmire and that he had reversed himself yet again on a critical issue. The problem is that administration officials in Washington fear a disaster, possibly civil war, if sovereignty is granted before the installation of a legitimate government created by proper nationwide elections. The United Nations new special envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, this week called civil war a “very, very serious danger.”
Yet back in Baghdad, Bremer, America’s viceroy in Iraq, is determined to make the June 30 date. Bremer has been organizing town hall meetings and caucuses to create a groundswell of Iraqi support for transferring sovereignty at that time. Brahimi, dispatched by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to help resolve the election dispute, got of a whiff of that sentiment this week. He met with groups of Shias, Sunnis and Kurds and discovered that most were committed to June 30, even if elections or an even less-direct method of choosing a transitional assembly prove to be unworkable. “The closer you are to the ground, the more you understand how important the transfer on June 30 is,” a senior administration official tells NEWSWEEK.
Among those Iraqis who want a June 30 handover, ironically enough, is the Shiite cleric who started the trouble over elections in the first place–Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. And one senior American official who backs Bremer tells NEWSWEEK that the Iraq administrator has received fresh assurances from the White House in the last week that the date is firm. “Our credibility on the ground is so important. Everyone tells us if you move June 30, the Iraqis will just feel like it’s another broken promise.” The only factor that could change that, he said, is if Brahimi advocates moving the date in the report he is supposed to issue in 10 days or so. That is unlikely. While Brahimi stopped short of endorsing June 30 this week, he nonetheless told Bremer he supported a handover of sovereignty soon. “The Bremer-Brahimi-Sistani axis will beat the day,” says the Bush official. “We ain’t changing the date.”
The biggest problem now is who will be on the receiving end of the handoff. It was Sistani, the mullah from Najaf who is probably the most influential politician in the country right now, who effectively scuttled Bremer’s original plan for a June 30 transfer of power. Last Nov. 15, the Iraq administrator signed an agreement with the Governing Council to hold caucuses in order to select delegates for a transitional assembly to be formed by May 30. The assembly was then to have selected an interim government that would receive the reins of power. Now the caucus idea is all but dead, and U.S. officials are not certain they can organize a compromise plan, like partial elections or referendums, that would both satisfy Sistani and meet the June 30 deadline.
The dispute over the deadline depends very much on where the players stand–literally. The issues look very different depending on whether one sees them through the prism of Washington or Baghdad. Coalition officials who are actually fighting the insurgency back in Iraq–as opposed to those, like Rumsfeld and Powell, who strategize over it in Washington–realize that the attacks will never cease until the occupation does. One of those allegedly involved in the insurgency, al Qaeda ally Abu Mus’ab al-Zarqawi, seemed to confirm that theory when, in a 17-page strategy memo intercepted by Coalition forces, he allegedly fretted that his operations will become vastly more difficult after handover. “How can we kill their cousins and sons and under what pretext, after the Americans start withdrawing?” the letter asks. “The Americans will continue to control from their bases, but the sons of this land will be the authority… We will have no pretext.”
Some senior Bush officials back in Washington still say they genuinely don’t know at this point whether the June 30 date will stick. Oddly enough, Bremer’s key ally on this issue may be the White House political team, which desperately wants Iraq out of the headlines by the GOP convention this summer. But administration officials are already preparing the talking points they’ll need if they announce that sovereignty will be delayed. Asked how Bush could escape accusations that he had broken his word, one administration official said that delaying handover would demonstrate he is genuinely committed to getting Iraq right.
While Bremer awaits Brahimi’s report–which may recommend a compromise plan for an interim government–sentiment in the administration is growing in favor of meeting the June 30 deadline by simply handing off sovereignty to an expanded Iraqi Governing Council. That seems to be an acceptable solution to the Shiites, who are the key swing vote.
The danger of a simple handoff to the Governing Council is, once again, civil war. The council is despised by many Iraqis, who see it as an instrument of U.S. interests. Many Iraqis also resent the idea that the returned exiles who dominate the council, like Pentagon favorite Ahmad Chalabi, are trying to gain power and win spoils although they didn’t suffer under Saddam. Any interim government run by the council, even an expanded version of it, will have thin legitimacy at best, even if it’s blessed by Sistani. Zarqawi, if he remains at large, will no doubt try to exploit that in months left to him.
