With Rice in Baghdad, U.S. pushes Iraq to clear more 'benchmarks'

The Secretary of State paid a surprise visit Tuesday amid signs that political reconciliation is gaining some traction in Iraq.

posted January 15, 2008 at 11:41 am EST

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On the heels of passage of the de-Baathification measure, several Shiite, Sunni, and secular political groups announced formation of a common front to press for action on oil revenue-sharing legislation and on the prickly issue of control over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. The new political alliance may be a sign that determination is growing among nationalist forces to blunt the regionalist tendencies of some Kurdish and Shiite blocs.

But others predict the new alliance could serve to boost Mr. Maliki by giving him a bargaining chip with those dragging out passage of national-reconciliation measures. If the alliance – which includes the parties of former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and of firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr – sticks together, it could potentially include the votes of about half the Parliament.

Even before Rice's trip, Bush had hailed passage of the de-Baathification law as "an important step toward reconciliation." At the White House, officials hope more of the "benchmarks" for Iraqi political action will be approved by March, when Gen. David Petraeus is scheduled to deliver a progress report on Iraq to Congress.

Even as they note progress in Iraq as a result of the surge, some experts say long-term prospects for national reconciliation remain cloudy. One reason is that the surge succeeded in part by cooperating with and arming Sunni groups formerly opposed to the US, resulting in Sunni militias that may now feel less inclined to compromise with the dominant Shiite forces, they say.

"We have scattered the forces of Al Qaeda in Iraq, no question," says Wayne White, who headed the State Department's Iraq analysis until 2005 and is now at the Middle East Institute in Washington. "But we've made civil war far more likely down the road by making Sunni Arabs far more able to fight it."

Maliki is unhappy with how the US has empowered Sunni groups – ostensibly to fight Islamic extremists but potentially to stand up to Shiite-dominated security forces. The US, says Mr. White, needs to use the new reality on the ground to "scare" all of Iraq's political forces into making the hard compromises that can stave off a return to violence in the future.

White House claims that reconciliation is taking place in the grass roots even if progress stalls at the national level, he adds, won't be enough. "The Sunni Arabs will never believe you until it is enacted into national legislation," he says. "Until then, they are going to believe that, as the US loses more of its influence, everything gained informally will be lost."

The Heritage Foundation's Mr. Phillips says it would be misleading to claim that no progress has been made in the past year just because US-sought benchmarks aren't met. For example, he says, some revenues from Iraq's oil production have been distributed to regions despite no national legislation.

But he agrees that the US should pressure the Iraqis to pass the oil legislation for at least two reasons. One, he says, is that "brokering a durable power-sharing deal" would be a signal to Iraq's Shiites, Kurds, and Sunnis "that could take the steam out of a big part of the insurgency."

The other reason, he says, has to do with US politics. The Iraqis need to act now, he says, because they may not be able to count on the same level of support from the next US president.

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