Command Performance

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Nov. 25 — Vice President Dick Cheney traveled to Riyadh, the Saudi capital, on Saturday to discuss regional security issues with King Abdullah.

Mr. Cheney was met in Riyadh by the king’s brother, Crown Prince Sultan, and government ministers and leaders of the Saudi armed forces, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.

The meeting at the king’s palace, which lasted for a few hours, ended at about 8:30 p.m. Saturday, a spokeswoman with the United States Embassy in Riyadh said.

The meeting touched on “the whole range of events and developments on the regional and international scenes,” according to the Saudi Press Agency, particularly “the Palestinian issue and the situation in Iraq...”

This seems to have been a Royal command performance.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 27 — As President Bush and his top diplomats try to halt the downward spiral in Iraq and Lebanon, they seem intent on their strategy of talking only to Arab friends, despite increasing calls inside and outside the administration for them to reach out to Iran and Syria as well...

Specifically, the United States wants Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt to work to drive a wedge between the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, and the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army has been behind many of the Shiite reprisal attacks in Iraq, a senior administration official said. That would require getting the predominantly Sunni Arab nations to work to get moderate Sunni Iraqis to support Mr. Maliki, a Shiite. That would theoretically give Mr. Maliki the political strength necessary to take on Mr. Sadr’s Shiite militias.

“There’s been some discussion about whether you just try to deal first with the Sunni insurgency, but that would mean being seen to be taking just one side of the fight, which would not be acceptable,” the administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity under normal diplomatic practice.

But getting Sunni Arab nations to urge Iraqi Sunnis to back Mr. Maliki in the hopes of peeling him away from Mr. Sadr is a tall order under any circumstances...

RIGA, Latvia, Nov. 28 — On the eve of a high-profile trip to Jordan to meet Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of Iraq, President Bush on Tuesday dismissed suggestions that Iraq has descended into civil war, blamed Al Qaeda for the latest wave of sectarian violence and vowed not to withdraw troops “until the mission is complete...”

Let's get this straight: Dear Leader will not deign to talk to Shiites... except for his puppet Maliki. Or Cheneyburton's toad Chalabi, who also works for Iran. He wants to talk only to his Arab lienholders. But, he's also convinced Iraq's problems are Al Qaeda's fault. Al Qaeda being owned by his Arab creditors, of course.

Juan Cole thinks Bu$hCo is out to discard Chalabi's old advice and rehabilitate the Ba'athists into the government, which he regards as highly unlikely:

...Al-Dhari, a wanted man, is calling on the Arab League to turn against the al-Maliki government. Though Jordanian King Abdullah II is said by al-Hayat to be conducting a furious round of meetings with expatriate Iraqis in Jordan, including al-Dhari, in preparation for Bush's summit on Wednesday. [Link below in Arabic].

And Nuri al-Maliki, head of the al-Da`wa al-Islamiyah Party (Islamic Call [Shiite]) will make all those concessions to the Baathists over his own dead body. (Remember he is already being stoned when he goes to Sadr City; what do you think the Shiite masses will do to him if he kisses and makes up with the remnants of the Baath officer corps?)

Bernhard finds this Divide and Conquer (v.2) strategery unlikely, too:

Divide and conquer is the method tried so far by the U.S. administration to get a permanent grip on Iraq. To this means the Coalition Provisional Authority did distribute seats to the Iraqi Interim Government differentiated by religious and ethnic lines. It enforced a tripartition into Kurd, Sunni and Shia groups.

This strategy did allow for exessive U.S. influence until the Shia did win the election Sistani had demanded. The government under Maliki turned out to be depending on al-Sadr's vote and therefore a bit too independent from U.S. influence and at the same time too powerless to control the country. But to replace it through a strongman coup would have ripped apart the Bush propaganda tale of democracy, so a democratic way had to be found.

Now, a new variant of divide and conquer is in the making. According to the NYT's Helen Cooper the kernel of the current diplomatic rush is this:

* Achieve a split within the Shia part of the Iraqi society, specifically between al-Sadr and the SCIRI/Dawa parts of the government.
* Through regional friends press the Sunni (Baathist) parties to ally with the SCIRI/Dawa block and to give Maliki a more tame parlimentary majority...

For the following reasons I find it very unlikely that this desired realignment is achievable.

* The practical leverage Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt have over the Iraqi Sunnis is overrated.
* As condition to use that little leverage these countries demanded a new initiative in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. This condition has been met in recent days, when the Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, pressed by his hero, made a sudden 180 degree turn from hawk to dove versus the Palestinians. But it is obvious that this is not a genuine Israeli move but one that will be reversed as soon as pressure from Washington decreases again or some forces in Israel or the U.S. want to spoil any real steps to peace.
* The Sunnis as well as al-Sadr's movement have been the ones upholding the national stance against partitioning Iraq. The SCIRI/Dawa fractions voted for partitioning the country. Can there ever be a compromise in such opposite positions?
* SCIRI/Dawa are much more under Iranian influence than al-Sadr is. Any U.S. success in Iraq is not in Teheran's interest. The Iranians can easily be a spoiler in this scheme and Bush has no intention to talk with them or the Syrians.
* The Sunni political forces are Baathist - SCIRI/Dawa hate Baathists.
* The Baathist think they are winning - why should they change their strategy?

Rice advisor Zelikow has resigned yesterday and it may well be that envisioning the inevitable failure of this new devide and conquer variant that made him take this step.

Also the Saudis being Waahabist Muslim hate the more secular Sunni Ba'athists. Al Qaeda may be a player- but they want Saddam's balls, too. They always did, which made Dear Leader's assertion of their alliance a transparent lie- or a fatal blunder- from the beginning.

Is it possible? Dear Leader and his Mayberry Machiavellis act like they still don't know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite. I'm sure Osama says "Mission Accomplished" from his family palace in Riyadh.