Promoting the level of the supervision for sectarian reconciliation from a Secretary-of-State or a Defense Secretary to Vice President Joe Biden will not make it a success. Biden made three visits to Iraq this year, but the outcome has been more insecurity and instability. Inside Iraq, Biden is best known as a co-author of the 2006 "Biden-Gelb Plan, which urged "as much real power as possible be devolved from Iraq's central government in Baghdad to three mini-states that would divide the country along ethnic and religious lines. Helena Cobban, a McClatchy News reporter, on July 6, quoted an Iraqi demonstrator against Biden's second visit, "Biden's visit sent the signal to us that Iraq will be divided. Biden's background doesn't allow him to play any role in reconciliation. Norwegian analyst of Iraqi affairs, Reidar Visser, concluded that Biden's "solution boils down to merely a power quota distribution among the three ethno-religious groups of "Kurds, Sunnis and Shia. The persisting failure proves that Biden was the wrong man for a mission of an Iraqi "national reconciliation.
Al-Malki is not the right man for the mission either. Bolstering him only gives him a veto power on reconciliation. His life long anti "Baath and deep "rooted bias as well as his life long engagement with Iran and his sectarian and political loyalty thereto are trapping him into an anti "Baath obsession that unwisely made him challenge Biden during his second visit to conclude that reconciliation was, and is, an Iraqi "internal affair that Biden has nothing to do with. Al-Maliki's version of reconciliation is based on abruptly cutting Iraq off from its Arab geopolitical affiliation, conceding to the Iranian and Kurdish view that only the Arabs of Iraq, a founding member of the Arab League, are part of the Pan " Arab bondage, although they are the overwhelming majority of Iraqis, and consequently giving priority to ties with Iran and the United States. Hence the latest deterioration of Al-Maliki's ties with Syria and the reluctance of Saudi Arabia to send an ambassador to Baghdad. Internally, al-Maliki's sole hope to form a semblance of a non "sectarian electoral constituency ahead of the upcoming elections on January 16 -- pending "sectarian reconciliation in the "parliament to pass an election law " was pinned on winning the support of the Sunni al-Sahwa (awakening) militia, which the U.S. was successful in recruiting to fight al-Qaeda, despite its Sunni power base. However, the tribal leader of al-Sahwa, Sheikh Ahmad Abu Risha, recently announced he would not join al-Maliki's electoral coalition. (Iraqi daily al-Zaman on October 13, 2009).
Meanwhile, Iran's version for reconciliation is on record as sectarian, and accordingly a non-starter, either for national accord or for security. Tehran succeeded in grouping together almost all the pro-Iran Shiite militias in one electoral bloc, a recipe for more bloody sectarian strife and further disintegration of the country on a sectarian basis. The Baghdad's bombings of August 19 of the sovereign ministerial symbols of al-Maliki's "state was the bloody manifestation of "to-the "death power struggles between the two sectarian blocs. Both blocs found accusing Syria of harboring the alleged culprits in the bombings and in threatening to take Syria to the UN Security council, their best way to divert both internal and external attention away from their own responsibilities, and indirectly, Iran's.
Former British Army Chief of Staff, General Richard Dannatt, who stepped down at the end of August, speaking at the Royal United Services Institute in London, attributed "our failure in Iraq first to the "early switch to an economy of force operation in favor of Afghanistan, which has become now Obama's "strategic priority, and second to missing "a window of consent early after the invasion to address Iraq's security and basic needs by the U.S. " led coalition forces, which allowed "the rise of the militias supported so cynically by the Iranians. Dannatt was short of saying that the security and reconciliation in Iraq have become irreversibly irreconcilable.
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