The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: Grim Realities in Iraq

The New York Times > Opinion > Editorial: Grim Realities in Iraq: "December 22, 2004
December 22, 2004
EDITORIAL
Grim Realities in Iraq

This has been a devastating week in Iraq and it's still only Wednesday.

Yesterday, an explosion ripped through a dining tent at lunch hour on an American military base near Mosul, killing at least 24 people and injuring 57. The day before, President Bush finally acknowledged that many of the more than 100,000 Iraqi trainees Washington had been counting on to take over basic security tasks were far from being up to the job. And on Sunday, car-bomb attacks killed more than 60 people in the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, while in Baghdad, unmasked assassins brazenly dragged three election officials out of their cars in full daylight and executed them on the spot.

This is not just pre-election mayhem. It is stark evidence that with a crucial election now less than six weeks away, America's effort to bring into being a new Iraqi government representing all major population groups and capable of defending itself and its citizens still has a very long way to go. Some 21 months after the American invasion, United States military forces remain essentially alone in battling what seems to be a growing insurgency, with no clear prospect of decisive success any time in the foreseeable future.

Washington has no significant international military partners besides Britain, and no Iraqi military support it can count on. The election that once looked as if it might produce a government with nationwide legitimacy increasingly threatens to intensify divisions between the groups that are expected to participate enthusiastically - the Shiites and Kurds - and an estranged and embattled Sunni community, which at this point appears likely to stand aloof.

There may still be time for Washington to try to salvage the election, but that would require paying much more serious attention to legitimate Sunni grievances and showing an openness to postponing the election for several months, if that had a reasonable chance of attracting broader Sunni participation. So far, Mr. Bush has strongly resisted such an approach. As weeks go by without discernible progress, hopes for a decent outcome get progressively harder to sustain.

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Right now, the only progress seems to lie in the willingness of the re-elected President Bush to face some hard truths:

One certainly involves Iraqi security forces, which have always been presented as the key to American withdrawal. For more than a year, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other Pentagon officials had been claiming that many tens of thousands of Iraqis were being trained to take over frontline security duties, allowing American forces first to pull back from major cities and then, at a later phase, come home. Last week, at a meeting with America's two top military commanders responsible for Iraq, Mr. Bush got a candid evaluation of the actual combat readiness of these Iraqi trainees, who now officially number about 114,000. Mr. Bush was admirably blunt about it at his news conference on Monday, noting that while a few good generals and some good foot soldiers had been trained, "the whole command structure necessary to have a viable military is not in place."

We are glad to hear Mr. Bush acknowledge this sobering reality, but we are still waiting for him to explain who will have to fill in for these noncombat-ready Iraqis and for how long. Given the lack of other countries willing to put up their hands as volunteers, the only answer seems to be more American troops, and not just through the spring, as currently planned. Since the first days of the occupation, American troops have been too light on the ground in Iraq, allowing the looting and sabotage that soon turned into insurgency to get a costly head start.

And facing the need for an expanded American military presence means more than a simple reshuffling of deployments. If more troops in Iraq are not going to translate into a dangerously exhausted and overstretched Army, Marine Corps and National Guard, these forces need to be expanded through stepped-up recruitment. That means bigger spending on the least politically attractive part of the military budget, basic personnel salaries, and less for costly new weapons systems.

Another harsh reality that needs to be confronted head-on is the prospect for the Iraqi elections. The Jan. 30 elections were supposed to usher in a legitimate national government and a broadly representative assembly to draw up a constitution acceptable to all elements of Iraq's fragmented population - secular and religious, Shiite and Sunni, Arab and Kurd. But things now appear headed toward a badly skewed result. Enthusiasm and participation seem high among Shiites and Kurds, who suffered greatly under Sunni minority rule and now thirst for self-government. But in predominantly Sunni areas, including Mosul, parts of Baghdad and most of central and western Iraq, there is a deep and growing alienation that threatens to depress electoral turnout and provides a large reservoir of support for the insurgency. Without an acceptable level of participation across Iraq, the elections will not be able to produce a legitimate government capable of standing on its own, mastering the insurgency and surviving without the indefinite presence of large numbers of American troops.

The timing of last month's military assault on Falluja rested, in part, on the argument that Iraq's Sunnis really wanted to participate in the election, but were being held back by intimidation from the insurgents. The causes of Sunni alienation from the current political process actually run far deeper, and affect large numbers of people who cannot be classified as Al Qaeda supporters, Islamic fundamentalists or sworn followers of Saddam Hussein. A broader feeling has begun to take root that Sunnis have no political, professional or personal future in the new Iraq being shaped by Washington and its Shiite and Kurdish allies.

This feeling grew out of such earlier American mistakes as the wholesale dismissal of the old, Sunni-led Iraqi national army and the blanket exclusion of even midlevel former Baathists from government jobs during the early months of the occupation. It has fed off the continuing failure to assure that authentic Sunni nationalist politicians had an adequate voice in the interim government and election preparations. A further level of resentment has been added by the physical destruction of homes, jobs and infrastructure produced by American counterinsurgency campaigns in densely populated Sunni towns like Falluja. A coalition of Sunni political leaders led by Adnan Pachachi, a respected moderate, has repeatedly called for postponing the January election for several months to encourage broader Sunni participation. His pleas need to be taken seriously, not brushed aside as they have been up till now by Baghdad and Washington.

Leaving Iraq's Sunnis in such a sullen, resentful mood would undermine the creation of a new and stable Iraq and poison its relations with the rest of the Arab world, where Sunnis strongly predominate. Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, somehow seems unable to recognize this. Instead of reinforcing him in his folly, the Bush administration should be actively encouraging him to think afresh. If postponing the election date can ensure more adequate Sunni participation, it is in everyone's interest to do so. much "