DEBKAfile - Talabani and Jaafari See in Strong Iraqi Army Obstacle to Their Goals

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Talabani and Jaafari See in Strong Iraqi Army Obstacle to Their Goals

From DEBKA-Net-Weekly Updated by DEBKAfile

May 1, 2005

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In the three days since Ibrahim Jaafari’s partial government was confirmed by the Iraqi national assembly, the country has endured an unprecedented surge of brutal shootings, car bombings and ambushes that left 79 dead, including at least 7 American soldiers.

This terror offensive, launched by Iraqi insurgents and al Qaeda’s Iraq commander Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, aim directly at rocking the new administration before it takes office in Baghdad next Tuesday. They are out to demonstrate that George W. Bush’s Iraq strategy is unworkable, that the partial government list representing only Kurds and Shiites is not acceptable and that, if Washington thinks it can starting pulling US troops out in 2006, it had better think again. Not only is the insurgency still going strong, but Zarqawi is very far from “going from brush pile to brush pile like a wet rat,” in the words of Marine commander Lt.-Gen John Sattler.

Iraq’s neighbors are badly worried by the deteriorating situation in Iraq and its Sunni Muslims are ready to fight the US-backed regime more than ever before. They see no recipe for stability in the awards of the presidency to a Kurd, Jalal Talabani, the premiership to the leader of the Shiite Dawa, which was and is linked to Tehran, and a senior deputy presidency to Ahmed Chalabi, who only last year was branded by US intelligence an Iranian spy. Although Sunni factions were promised 6 portfolios and a deputy premiership in Jaafari’s 31-member government, only four posts were on offer – none meaningful. Indeed, the list is regarded as a ragbag of mostly unknown faces - not fresh, young blood, but a Kurdish-Shiite blend for alleviating extreme pressure from Washington three months after Iraq’s election.

Saturday, April 30, a day before his visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Turkish prime minister Tayyip Erdogan hosted in Istanbul a worried group of ministers from Iraq’s neighbors Jordan, Kuwait, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. He spoke out strongly against “any ethnic group holding sway over Iraq” or a carve-up of the country. Erdogan voiced concern lest the violence plaguing Iraq spill across its borders. Separately, top Iraqi Sunni scholar Harith al-Dhari said: “We don’t trust this government.”

According to DEBKAfile’s Middle East experts, it was no secret to the Istanbul gathering that Talabani is governed by a single objective, the creation of an independent Kurdish state. To this end, he needs a compliant if not toothless federal army which is not strong enough to get in the way of this plan. Jaafari entertains a similar ambition for Iraq’s Shiites, basing it on the 10,000–strong Bader force that Iran founded of Iraqi Shiite exiles who wanted to fight Saddam Hussein. It was and is the military arm of the SCIRI party, which ran for election in January under Iraqi Shiite leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. Many Iraqis distrust this party’s continuing links to Tehran.

The Iraqi president and prime minister alike therefore share an interest in preventing the federal Iraqi army from struggling to its feet sufficiently to take on the Badr force or Kurdish militias. Washington is suddenly alive to the danger that its Herculean effort to build an Iraqi security force operationally capable of gradually shouldering the tasks borne by the US army will be crushed by Iraq’s two newly-elected leaders.

Thursday April 28, just hours after the semi-finished cabinet was approved, President Bush issued a little-noticed warning in the middle of his prime-time statement on Social Security. The new government, he said, had better “not tinker” with the structure of the security forces the US military is creating and training. He called this possibility “one of the real dangers” of Iraq’s transition.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly 203 revealed exclusively on April 22 that president Talabani and prime ministerJaafari had already taken steps to promote their plan, before even forming a government. Together, they pegged General Hadi al-Amri, whose rank was conferred by Iran, as future interior minister. This extra-sensitive job carries responsibility for Iraq’s secret services and its internal security forces, including the police and its special units. As security primo, the new interior minister would be in close, daily liaison with US military commanders and intelligence chiefs in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East. Yet Talabani and Jaafari concluded the deal without a word to the Americans. They were not bothered by the fact that al-Amri, a former Iranian general, is Badr Force commander.

Since the US-led invasion of 2003, Badr chiefs, unlike Moqtada Sadr and his extremist Shiite Mehdi army, have been careful not to run up against American or coalition forces. Instead, they have cemented their control of the Shiite regions running south of Baghdad up to Basra. A Badr “civilian” office has opened in every Shiite city and town. These offices are fronts for an active military framework which conducts training courses and boasts a command hierarchy.

The US command in Baghdad is well aware that its thousands of officers and men were trained in Iran and lived there for many years. The Badr Force is most certainly thoroughly penetrated by Iranian secret agents - notwithstanding its commanders’ protestation of their first loyalty to Iraq.

Talabani and Jaafari were not bowled over, therefore, when Rumsfeld turned up unannounced in Baghdad on April 12 and told them point blank that General Amri’s appointment as interior minister was out of the question. They dropped his name from the list, but both are bound to cast about for other means of leashing the new Iraqi Army.

While Iran may be pleased with the Badr Force’s prominence in Iraqi politics, it is equally disturbed by the possible rise of a Kurdish state in Iraq, which may well prove irredentist. Iran’s fears of secessionist trends being stirred up among its nine million Kurds are shared by Turkey and Syria. Furthermore, the Sunni-ruled Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, worry about the effect on their Shiite minorities of a Shiite-Kurdish-ruled Iraq.

All the ministers who met in Istanbul last Saturday perceived the Bush administration’s Iraq policy as leading the country towards partition between Kurds and Shiites and leaving the Sunni Muslim community out in the cold. They agreed to pool their resources for a common stand against these perils – and the rising tide of violence in Iraq - to their stability and territorial integrity.

For four months, American and Iraqi officials maintained they were a step away from capturing the Jordanian terrorist Zarqawi. Last week, Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Meyers described how the arch-terrorist was so close to capture that he was forced to leave in a car behind his personal computer and a wad of $100,000 in his haste to get away.

DEBKAfile’s intelligence and counter-terror sources do not doubt that the noose is tightening around Osama bin Laden’s man in Iraq, but so far neither the Americans nor the Iraqis have been able to curb his operational momentum for sowing death and destruction across Iraq. The computer US forces seized was left for them to find in a decoy vehicle, while he raced off in the opposite direction in another car. This is a typical al Qaeda ploy, used by bin Laden himself when he escaped Tora Bora in November 2001.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s next edition this coming Friday will offer more exclusive updates and insights on the Iraq crisis. Make sure of your subscription.

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