Success is dependent on Iraqi commitment

WASHINGTON — President Bush’s new plan to stabilize Iraq relies on these main elements to succeed: the addition of more than 20,000 U.S. troops, plus the commitment of more Iraqi security forces and a newly energized Iraqi government.

Bush and his aides say they are confident that putting more American troops on the streets of Baghdad can help turn Iraq around.

What they don’t know, officials add, is whether the Iraqi government will do its part.

The new plan will be a test of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki -- a Shiite Muslim -- and if he fails, some officials suggest, the United States may look for a different leader as its partner in Iraq.

“There’s a lot of skepticism” about Maliki, a senior official said, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing the White House’s internal deliberations.

“Is this a government that is really a unity government, or is it a government ... [with] a Shiite sectarian agenda?” he asked. “We need to clarify whether this government is really a partner or not.... The president has said we’ve got to know.”

For months, Maliki has told Bush and other U.S. officials what they wanted to hear: that he would share political power with moderate Sunni Arabs as well as with his Shiite supporters; that he would commit more Iraqi government troops to the battle for Baghdad; that he would crack down on sectarian militias, including those loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, whose party is in Maliki’s government.

But Maliki has failed to deliver on most of these fronts, prompting Bush and his aides to debate, in private, whether Maliki was capable of stabilizing his fracturing country -- even as the president has publicly expressed confidence in the prime minister.

As a result, a large part of Bush’s speech was devoted not to explaining why he was sending more than 20,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq, but to publicly warning Maliki that this may be his last chance to succeed with American support.

“I have made it clear to the prime minister and Iraq’s other leaders that America’s commitment is not open-ended,” Bush said in his nationally televised speech Wednesday -- the first time he has used that phrase.

He continued: “If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people -- and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people. Now is the time to act.”

Maliki’s job at stake?

Officials declined to say what the administration will do if Maliki does not deliver on his promises this time, or if Iraqi security forces fall short in their performance in the field.

But one senior official suggested that if Maliki fails to stabilize Baghdad, the pressures of Iraq’s newly democratic political system could cost him his job.

“If ... they disappoint the expectations of the Iraqi people and the American people, I think they’re going to have to deal with the Iraqi people before they have to deal with the American people,” he said.

Other officials have suggested that the United States could use its influence to force Maliki’s government to fall -- by holding up millions of dollars in economic aid until a new leader was named, for example.

But they emphasized that no decision had been made to follow that course.

One option that Bush will not embrace, however, is an early U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, several officials said.

“Simply coming home isn’t an option,” said one, noting Bush’s conviction that withdrawing from Iraq would turn the country into what the president has called “a safe haven for terrorists.”

The first clear test of Maliki’s government, officials said, will come in little more than a month: The Baghdad government has promised to commit three additional army brigades, about 7,500 troops, to Baghdad by Feb. 15. The next question will be how quickly and how well those troops go into battle, a senior official said.

Other benchmarks for the government’s performance include sending troops to quell Shiite militias as well as Sunni forces, enacting a new law to share petroleum revenue fairly among the country’s ethnic groups and other reforms to make the government more even-handed.

“In earlier operations, political and sectarian interference prevented Iraqi and American forces from going into neighborhoods that are home to those fueling the sectarian violence,” Bush said in his speech, referring to the Maliki government’s refusal to allow U.S. troops to enter Sadr City, the stronghold of cleric Sadr. “This time, Iraqi and American forces will have a green light to enter these neighborhoods -- and Prime Minister Maliki has pledged that political or sectarian interference will not be tolerated.”

Skeptical about success

Experts on Iraq outside the government said they were skeptical about the new plan’s chances for success, in part because the Iraqi government’s performance has been so uneven.

“The plan sounds wonderful,” said Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution think tank. “But I’m wary about the extent to which they are going to dump the problems on the Iraqis. The Iraqi government has no capacity. One of the greatest mistakes we’ve made in the past three years has been insisting that the Iraqis have to do the heavy lifting when they weren’t capable of it.”

Phebe Marr, author of “The Modern History of Iraq,” said: “The weakness of Iraq is that it doesn’t have a government such as you and I understand the word.

“The institutional structures that we would expect to underpin an effective government have been badly eroded. Even if Maliki has the intention to carry these things out, what has he got to work with? It’s not a question of personality. He doesn’t have the power base, the institutions, the wherewithal to do it.”

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