US making peace with Kurds – to battle Iraq

Earlier this month, the White House convened a conference of leaders from all the opposition groups in Washington. Talabani came, along with a representative of Barzani.

The purpose of the meeting was to pump new energy into the opposition movement, and possibly turn it into a transitional government to take over when Hussein is gone. Via videoconference from his home in Wyoming, Vice President Dick Cheney told the conference that the Bush administration is committed to this plan.

But unifying these disparate groups is probably about as difficult as solving Fermat's Last Theorem.

Talabani and Barzani, for example, already have basically an autonomous country. They have their own civil administration, military, and stable currency. While they want to be rid of the fear that Saddam's rule might extend to them again someday, they don't necessarily want anyone else meddling with their fiefdoms.

Mr. Chalabi, on the other hand, wants to control a united Iraq. But he has a long history of playing one opposition group against another and doesn't have the broad support among them that he once had. Moreover, he has earned the displeasure of several US officials over the years for his propensity to try to manipulate them.

Ms. Yaphe says she's sure the US got its message through to him that he will not be able to continue that kind of game-playing. "But I don't think he can control himself," she adds.

Although, in an effort to show his displeasure with the US, Barzani himself did not attend the meeting, there were some positive signals.

"Certainly the contacts with the opposition have improved and expanded," Yaphe says. "And now we've met in a unified fashion so these groups can't play one off against the other."

Still, overcoming their fears of meeting Hussein head-on and persuading them that the US will assist them is a daunting task. One Iraqi dissident, for example, reportedly received a video of a female relative being raped by Iraqi security forces after the dissident began working with the US.

But an even greater problem in working with these groups, says Frank Anderson, former Near East division chief for the CIA, is applying the leadership pattern to them that the US used in Afghanistan, in which a new government arose from indigenous guerrilla groups.

"None is a serious candidate to run the country," he says. "None could even win an election in which all the exiles voted."

Planning for that day after any invasion is critical, experts say. And what will happen once Hussein is ousted is high on the agenda for Congress as it reconvenes and holds hearings on the administration's Iraq plans at the end of this month.

Administration officials are closely watching – and hoping – that the six groups that have agreed to an expanded conference in Europe next month can find a way to bring themselves together in one united effort both to oust Hussein and to provide a viable interim government.

Page: 1 | 2