Morgue Data Show Increase In Sectarian Killings in Iraq
By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 24, 2007; A01

BAGHDAD, May 23 -- More than three months into a U.S.-Iraqi security offensive designed to curtail sectarian violence in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, Health Ministry statistics show that such killings are rising again.

From the beginning of May until Tuesday, 321 unidentified corpses, many dumped and showing signs of torture and execution, have been found across the Iraqi capital, according to morgue data provided by a Health Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information. The data showed that the same number of bodies were found in all of January, the month before the launch of the Baghdad security plan.

Such killings are a signature practice of Shiite militias, although Sunni insurgents are also known to execute victims. The number of found bodies is a key indicator of the level of sectarian violence, but the statistics also include some who died from causes unrelated to the political situation.

Weeks after the security plan was launched in mid-February, Bush administration and U.S. military officials began citing a decline in sectarian violence as evidence of the plan's effectiveness. Although that trend appears to have reversed, the unidentified corpses being collected this year remain far fewer than those found during the peak periods of sectarian strife last year.

Lt. Gen. Aboud Qanbar, the Iraqi commander overseeing the security plan, acknowledged in an interview that the number of unidentified corpses is rising and said there has been a spike in sectarian assaults by Shiite militias, especially elements of the Mahdi Army, the militia of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

"We are aware of this happening, yes," Qanbar said Tuesday, seated in his office inside one of the palaces of the late ousted president Saddam Hussein. "We have noticed that those gangs are again attacking people."

The rise in sectarian violence has followed a recent increase in mass-casualty suicide attacks and car bombings that have targeted mostly Shiite areas in Baghdad and other parts of the country. U.S. officials have acknowledged that they have had little success in curtailing such attacks, which have occurred with greater frequency since the start of the security plan than before.

In the 14 weeks preceding the start of the plan on Feb. 14, at least 821 people died in 11 attacks -- typically suicide car bombings -- that killed more than 20 people at a time, according to a Washington Post analysis. There have been at least 20 such attacks in the 14 weeks since the start of the plan, causing a death toll of at least 1,098, the analysis showed.

Such bombings, apparently orchestrated by Sunni insurgent groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq, have prompted reprisal killings, Qanbar said. "Terrorists of al-Qaeda and the enemies of Iraq, they want to start a crisis," he said. "The objective behind this is to incite sectarian strife."

Like the numbers of unidentified corpses, other indicators of violence, such as kidnappings, remain below levels seen last year at the height of sectarian tensions. The United Nations, citing Health Ministry numbers, reported that 1,471 unidentified bodies were found in Baghdad in September 2006 and 1,782 in October 2006. Bombing victims and many others who die violently in Baghdad are taken to the city's hospitals rather than its morgue.

But the recent increase in unidentified bodies raises questions about whether thousands of U.S. reinforcements can effectively halt sectarian violence.

President Bush and other senior administration officials have cited declines in sectarian killings in justifying U.S. troop increases and additional funding for the war.

"The level of sectarian violence is an important indicator of whether or not the strategy that we have implemented is working," Bush said May 10. "Since our operation began, the number of sectarian murders has dropped substantially."

A U.S. military spokesman on Tuesday acknowledged an upturn, but said it was unclear whether it amounted to a decisive shift in trend. "We've seen a slight rise in sectarian violence," said Lt. Col. Christopher C. Garver. "We're concerned about every one, obviously. We have been working to keep the sectarian violence down."

In April, the morgue data showed, 182 unidentified bodies were discovered in Baghdad. At present rates, May's tally would more than double last month's.

Aggregate figures for Baghdad and eight other provinces also show recent increases: In January, 360 bodies were found; in February, 400; in March, 451; in April, 421; and from May 1 to 22, 443.

Health Ministry officials could not be reached for comment Wednesday but in the past have disputed the accuracy of statistics not released through official channels.

The declines in sectarian violence since the beginning of the plan were largely attributed to Sadr ordering his militia, the largest and most powerful in Iraq, to lie low, even if provoked by U.S. forces or Sunni insurgents.

By March, U.S. officials were promoting the lower levels of sectarian killing as signs of progress, even as car bombings and suicide attacks rose.

On March 8, David Satterfield, the State Department's coordinator for Iraq, said the levels of "sectarian violence -- execution killings that were such a scourge in 2006," were "down over the past 60 days to the lowest level since early spring of last year. And that is a dramatic decrease."

"That's a positive thing, but it needs to be sustained," he added.

In addition to car bombs, Qanbar said, roadside bombs, the biggest killer of U.S. troops, posed the greatest challenge to the Baghdad security plan. He said the Iraqi army had acquired a limited number of high-tech devices to detect car bombs and was focusing on finding car-bomb factories.

"This is the last weapon in the hands of the terrorists," Qanbar said.

After a car bomb tore through a crowded outdoor market in Baghdad's mostly Shiite Amil neighborhood on Tuesday, killing 30 people and injuring at least 68, dozens of fighters from the Mahdi Army converged on the scene, helping the wounded and firing guns into the air. Some vowed revenge.

"By God's will, we'll pursue them," said Abu Ali al-Garbawi, a Mahdi Army fighter.

Hours after the attack, some Mahdi Army fighters entered the adjacent neighborhood of Bayaa and kidnapped a few Sunnis, according to Garbawi and two other Mahdi Army fighters. By nightfall, Sunni insurgents were firing mortar rounds and rocket-propelled grenades at Shiite militiamen in Amil.

In interviews in Najaf last month, senior aides to Sadr insisted they have control over the Mahdi Army, but conceded they could not watch over all Mahdi Army fighters who seek vengeance for bombings.

"It's possible that some parties are using the name of Mahdi Army for killing the Sunnis," said Ahmed Shaibani, a senior Sadr aide.

Qanbar said many of the Shiite militias that have resumed violence "are being pushed by outside forces."

"All the countries in the area have their own agenda, and they are interfering in Iraq," he said, declining to name them.

"But we will not allow them to operate freely," said Qanbar, referring to the militias. "We will inhibit their activities. We will be chasing them."

Special correspondents K.I. Ibrahim, Salih Dehema and Waleed Saffar in Baghdad, other Washington Post staff in Iraq and staff researcher Robert E. Thomason in Washington contributed to this report.

Eighty Medical Clinics Near Opening in Iraq
By Fred W. Baker III
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, May 23, 2007 – More than 80 much-needed medical clinics are opening across Iraq in the next several months, part of the almost $376 million the U.S. has spent to jump-start health care initiatives there.

Eight clinics are now open to the public and are seeing more than 250 patients a day, Army Brig. Gen. Michael J. Walsh, commanding general of the Gulf Region Division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said during a briefing today for the Pentagon press corps.
When finished, 138 primary health care clinics will be scattered across the country: 46 in the north, 34 in the central region, and 58 in the south. Ten other clinics are now open, but they are recruiting and training staff. Walsh said 80 of the clinics are 90 percent complete.
Treatment at the clinics is free to Iraqis.
In addition, Walsh said, the engineers are working on renovation projects at 20 hospitals in Iraq. A $14 million Najaf teaching hospital was finished by an Iraqi-owned business. The hospital employs more than 1,200 people -- 200 are doctors -- and trains more than 250 students.
The Basra Children's Hospital will be the first new hospital built in the country since the 1980s, Walsh said. The project is scheduled to be finished in 2008.
Dr. Quraish Alkasir, president of the Society of Iraqi Surgeons and advisor to the deputy prime minister of Iraq, told reporters there is a shortage of hospitals in the country.
"We are having a shortage. We are not fully equipped. We are in a war against terrorism, so we expect to have some shortage, but we are doing the minimum work ... for the people," he said.
But, the doctor said, the country is meeting basic health care needs.
"We haven't left a patient without surgery because of anesthesia. We haven't left a patient having an open wound without suturing," he said.
He acknowledged a lack of top-notch equipment, but said doctors in Iraq do the work with the equipment they have.
Since the start of the Baghdad security plan, Alkasir said, Iraqis feel safer going to the hospitals for care.
The necessary equipment and trained staff will be available when the hospitals and clinics are finished, Walsh said. The facilities then will be turned over to the Ministry of Health, which will operate, staff and supply them.
"The reconstruction efforts are a vital component to Iraq's progress. Ultimately, however, it's up to the Iraqi people to rebuild and secure their country," Walsh said.

Biographies:
Brig. Gen. Michael J. Walsh, USA

Related Sites:
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Gulf Region Division

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2954
After the Surge
The Administration Floats Ideas for a New Approach in Iraq
By David Ignatius
Tuesday, May 22, 2007; A15

President Bush and his senior military and foreign policy advisers are beginning to discuss a "post-surge" strategy for Iraq that they hope could gain bipartisan political support. The new policy would focus on training and advising Iraqi troops rather than the broader goal of achieving a political reconciliation in Iraq, which senior officials recognize may be unachievable within the time available.

The revamped policy, as outlined by senior administration officials, would be premised on the idea that, as the current surge of U.S. troops succeeds in reducing sectarian violence, America's role will be increasingly to help prepare the Iraqi military to take greater responsibility for securing the country.

"Sectarian violence is not a problem we can fix," said one senior official. "The Iraqi government needs to show that it can take control of the capital." U.S. officials offer a somber evaluation of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki: His Shiite-dominated government is weak and sectarian, but they have concluded that, going forward, there is no practical alternative.

The new policy would seek to anchor future Iraqi security in a regional structure that would be a continuation of the "neighbors" talks begun this month at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. To make that structure work, the administration is talking with Iran and Syria in what officials hope will become a serious dialogue about how to stabilize Iraq.

The post-surge policy would, in many ways, track the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton report, which senior administration officials say the president now supports. It also reflects the administration's recognition that, given political realities in Washington, some policy adjustments must be made. The goal is an approach that would have sufficient bipartisan support so it could be sustained even after the Bush administration leaves office in early 2009.

Senior officials discussed the outlines of a "post-surge" policy late last week in what they said was an effort to build bipartisan support from Congress and the American public. Their comments appeared to be a trial balloon aimed at testing whether a Baker-Hamilton approach could gain traction in Washington. The description of a post-surge policy focused on elements that Democrats say they would continue to support, such as training the Iraqi military and hunting al-Qaeda, even as they set a timetable for withdrawing combat forces.

Here's a summary of the policy ideas the officials said are under discussion:

· Train Iraqi security forces and support them as they gain sufficient intelligence, logistics and transport capability to operate independently.

· Provide "force protection" for U.S. troops who remain in Iraq.

· Continue Special Forces operations against al-Qaeda, in the hope of gradually reducing suicide bombings and other terrorist attacks on the Iraqi government. "That's the accelerator for sectarian violence," said one official.

· Focus U.S. activities on the two big enemies of stability and democracy in Iraq -- al-Qaeda and Iranian-backed sectarian militias.

· Maintain the territorial integrity and independence of Iraq.

· Ensure the near-term continuation of democracy in Iraq. That means supporting top-down reconciliation through a new oil law, new rules to make it easier for former Baath Party members to play a role in the new Iraq, provincial elections and changes to the Iraqi constitution to meet Sunni demands. It also means support for bottom-up reconciliation, such as the recent push against al-Qaeda by Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province, and recent peace feelers from radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

The administration's exploration of "Plan B" alternatives in Iraq tracks a similar discussion that has been taking place among top military leaders. The U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, recently gathered top counterinsurgency experts, such as Col. H.R. McMaster, in Baghdad for a critical review of the surge strategy. There's a growing recognition in Baghdad, sources said, that the United States lacks a strong local partner because of the weakness and sectarian base of the Maliki government. In addition, the new head of Central Command, Adm. William Fallon, has publicly stated his view that the surge strategy is just "chipping away at the problem" and that "reconciliation isn't likely in the time we have available."

The wild cards in this new effort to craft a bipartisan Iraq policy are the Republican and Democratic leaders, President Bush and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They both say they want a sustainable, effective Iraq policy, but each is deeply entrenched in a partisan version of what that policy should be. America is in a nosedive in Iraq. Can these two leaders share the controls enough that Iraq will become a U.S. project, rather than George Bush's war? There's a bipartisan path out of this impasse, but will America's leaders be wise enough to take it?

The writer co-hosts, with Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria, PostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues athttp://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal. His e-mail address isdavidignatius@washpost.com.

China, U.S.: The Strategic Economic Dialogue as a Tool for Managing Relations
By Rodger Baker
Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi is in Washington to meet with U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson for the second of the planned biannual Strategic Economic Dialogue (SED) sessions between the two countries. The dialogue brings together representatives of numerous ministries on both sides of the Pacific, covering finance, labor, trade, agriculture and the environment, among others. As the talks get under way, business and media attention is focused almost exclusively on two main issues: the Chinese-U.S. trade imbalance and China's undervaluing of the yuan.

The dialogue, however, is designed to integrate a much broader array of issues between Beijing and Washington, moving beyond trade to the larger matter of how the world's only remaining superpower deals with the rapid emergence of China on the international economic and political scene. For Washington, the dialogue is a tool to manage China's international relations as much as China's economic development. And for Beijing, the dialogue represents an attempt to shape relations with the United States in terms of economic cooperation, rather than strategic competition.

The economic framework for discussions seems to appeal to both Washington and Beijing, and the current dialogue, then, serves as a convenient tool for managing relations that sit on a much broader geopolitical framework. Still in its early stages, the SED reflects a changing dynamic in the management of U.S.-Chinese relations. From Beijing's perspective, the SED is a way to focus on the potential positive elements of U.S.-Chinese ties -- business and trade -- and reduce attention on questions of the "China threat" and the emergence of China as a military competitor to the United States.
The SED serves, in Beijing's mind, as one way of using the U.S. administration as a balance to the U.S. Congress. If the administration is looking at the broader strategic issues posed by China's global emergence, then it will be less likely to accede to congressional politicking on the China issue -- or so Beijing hopes. China sees the U.S. Congress as "unsophisticated" on China issues, and Capitol Hill as a place where short-term political interests, based to a large degree on electioneering and campaign contributions, drive periodic spurts of anti-Chinese rhetoric. However, during the past two decades, Beijing itself has grown a little more sophisticated in its understanding of U.S. politics, and has moved past dealing primarily with image management at the presidential and ministerial level to trying to shape U.S. political views from the ground up.

With the rapid rise of the Chinese economy in the aftermath of the Asian economic crisis and Beijing's entry into the World Trade Organization, China looked to both protect its growing economic connections and expand its international influence in the post-Cold War environment. With the Soviet Union gone and Europe failing to rise as a counterbalance to the United States, China set its sights on Washington as the biggest challenge to Chinese power -- and yet the best economic path to Chinese growth. Washington was headed for a presidential change, Beijing was dealing with increasing U.S. warnings of the China threat and the Chinese government was looking at its own upcoming leadership transition and the internal battle over best economic policies and security posture. For each of these issues, managing relations with the United States became the critical common factor.

In the late 1990s, Beijing ramped up a program of perception management in Washington, moving from trying to buy influence through campaign contributions to a more subtle approach of accelerating political and economic dialogue with U.S.-based think tanks, research institutes and academic institutions. Chinese scholars, both in the academic fields and in semi-government research institutes, embarked on numerous exchanges, dialogues and forums, sharing insights into policy debates and internal economic inconsistencies in China. At the same time, the state began releasing economic statistics that, through close examination, painted a picture not of a strong and unbreakable China, but of one that faced many of the same economic challenges and potential pitfalls as its Asian neighbors.

Through a carefully managed spread of information, China began shaping the perception of the key U.S. researchers on Chinese issues. Beijing seemed more open, more willing to admit mistakes and more receptive to suggestions for economic, social and even limited political reform. Discussions of the China threat shifted from a military concern to one of economics to one of potential Chinese collapse -- and the attendant ripples that would affect the international (and U.S.) economic systems. This information began trickling up to congressional aides, members of Congress and into the U.S. government bureaucracy and administration.

And Beijing is seeing a payoff, at least on the surface. When the current administration took power, relations with Washington were contentious to say the least. U.S. President George W. Bush came into office with a Cabinet that viewed China as the next strategic threat now that the Soviet Union was relegated to history. China's economic rise, and its military expansion that focused on new missiles and naval technology, was seen as a challenge to U.S. dominance of the seas, and thus to U.S. core national security. Now, the administration is pursuing strategic dialogue and cooperation with China, even if this is just a stopgap measure until Washington can free itself from Iraq.

In 2001, after the 9/11 attacks, Washington and Beijing came to a working arrangement. The United States would essentially leave China alone, and China would not present any direct challenge to the United States as Washington dealt with what it saw as a new strategic threat: al Qaeda and international Islamist militancy. Beijing welcomed the reprieve from the more contentious relations with Washington, which had declined precipitously following the collision that left a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft on a military runway in southern China.

At the time, Beijing was neither militarily nor politically prepared to square off against the United States. In fact, China was facing a major generational shift in leadership and needed the external buffer to allow Beijing to focus on internal issues. With the political transition completed, Beijing then shifted focus to economic and social stability -- and again used the minimal external pressure from Washington to give it breathing room while these issues took priority.

Internationally, Beijing used the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq and the North Korean nuclear crisis to try to raise the profile of international organizations such as the United Nations to counter the unipolar power of the United States. At the same time, it tried to raise China's profile and importance to Washington -- since, after all, the U.S. government could not face off against al Qaeda, Afghanistan, Iraq and North Korea all at the same time.

By 2005, Washington was looking at longer-term involvement in Iraq than it had planned, and then-U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick made an indirect offer to Beijing for closer potential cooperation -- offering to treat China as a global player if Beijing proved a "responsible stakeholder." The offer appealed to Beijing, and China, cautiously at first but with increasing boldness, launched into a more open dialogue with Washington, making token trades on currency issues and offering its services in "rogue" nations such as North Korea and, more recently, Sudan in order to demonstrate its "responsibility" and keep real pressure from the United states to a minimum.

While the U.S. administration, particularly the Pentagon, was not all that reassured by China's behavioral change (as seen in early 2006 with a series of reports labeling China a strategic threat and culminating in a several-minute-long tirade by a Falun Gong activist at the White House reception for Chinese President Hu Jintao), Washington, with the exception of Congress, has taken a relatively relaxed approach to China. Trade issues dominate the headlines, as does the yuan valuation, but the administration pushes for more cooperative dialogue with Beijing rather than punitive sanctions or tariffs.

On Beijing's side, shortly after the first SED meeting in December 2006, China's Foreign Ministry launched the Center for China-U.S. Relations Studies at its research institute, the China Institute for International Studies. The center is designed to bring together top Chinese scholars on U.S. issues from across a broad spectrum of China (economic, international relations, security and others) and encourage increased exchanges with counterparts in the United States -- thus managing the perception campaign from a unified center. Earlier this year, China also appointed Yang Jiechi as foreign minister, calling on Yang's years of experience in the Chinese Embassy in Washington, his work with both sides of Congress and his long-standing ties with the Bush family.

The SED, then, provides both Washington and Beijing with a more centralized (and less random) point of contact for managing bilateral relations. But management and fundamental alterations are very different things. China's trade and economic policies will not be set with Washington's concerns as the top priority. Beijing's first concern is the maintenance of Communist Party rule, followed closely by the maintenance of social stability (which allows the party to remain in power). Economics are a tool, one that must balance domestic social pressures with international concerns. Furthermore, while dialogue can provide a channel for managing relations with the United States, China is not abandoning other tools for preserving its increasing economic vulnerabilities as its trade and energy requirements are internationalized.

China's anti-satellite weapons (ASAT) test in January was a clear reminder that China still sees the United States as the top challenge to Chinese economic security. China is a land power, not a maritime power. But China's economics have grown increasingly linked to longer and longer supply lines, particularly with energy imports. As such, Beijing sees a major vulnerability in its supply routes, as a large portion of its energy must pass through waters that, for all intents and purposes, are controlled by the United States. The ASAT test was intended to notify Washington that Beijing has ways to deal with the U.S. strategic dominance of the seas by threatening critical U.S. communications and guidance infrastructure.

China's vulnerabilities as a land power increasingly dependent on sea routes makes Beijing always extremely nervous about the United States, regardless of whether Washington intends to interdict Chinese trade and energy supplies. At the same time, China's expanding trade and political links around the globe are starting to rub up against U.S. strategic interests, particularly where China taps into energy resources Washington wants, or where Beijing's relations in places like Africa and Latin America challenge U.S. access to raw materials. But economic competition notwithstanding, Washington is loath to directly confront China, as attacking a land power in Asia is never wise or easy.

There is a standoff, then, between Washington and Beijing. Washington is heavily occupied with Iraq and Iran, and Beijing is taking advantage of this to expand its political and economic ties as broadly as possible. At the same time, China is obsessed with internal economic and social instability, and Washington can use these concerns to needle Beijing and keep China from taking too much advantage of Washington's limited bandwidth. Both see the SED as a useful place to manage this dance. Neither sees the SED as a real forum for a strategic partnership between China and the United States, or a place for drastic changes in the relationship.

There is something beyond the SED, however, that could start bringing Washington and Beijing closer together: the re-emergence of Moscow.

Relations between Washington and Beijing have been rather manic since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. After Beijing's initial flirtations with Washington, China and the United States soon found themselves facing one another on the battlefields of Korea. China's ally at the time, the Soviet Union, largely sat out the conflict, leaving Beijing to ensure the communist revolution in Asia -- and letting China fight the United States while Moscow avoided the potential World War III feared by U.S. strategists at the time. Rather than using the opportunity presented by the Korean War to launch a simultaneous assault on Europe, Moscow let China fight, undermining the potential for any Sino-U.S. relations and tying China closer into the Soviet sphere of influence.

But by the late 1960s, tensions between Beijing and Moscow had risen to a fevered level, and significant border clashes broke out in 1969. Three years later, the mutually perceived threat from the Soviet Union brought U.S. President Richard Nixon to China to meet with Mao Zedong. The United States and China embarked on a new strategic relationship based on balancing the Soviet threat. This lasted until shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when China began seeking to expand its influence in East Asia and looked as though it were getting much more serious about war with Taiwan. In the late 1990s, China even flirted with the idea of establishing a strategic partnership with Russia to block the unipolar power of the United States, but never quite trusted its northern neighbor (and, for a while, Moscow had little to offer anyway aside from arms sales, which were already taking place). When 2001 rolled around, Beijing found new opportunities to deal directly with Washington.

But Russia has begun reasserting its influence around its periphery, and Cold War rhetoric is flowing from Moscow. On the surface, that would seem ideal for China, except that Beijing has been looking at Central Asia as a critical piece of its energy security puzzle, since Central Asian energy supplies never need to move by sea to China. As Moscow seeks to reclaim influence and control in its near abroad, China sees its potential role in Central Asia diminishing and its energy supplies challenged by the resurgent Russia. Add in Russian talk of reinvigorating the Russian presence in the Pacific, and China sees its energy and economic security once again challenged by its neighbor.

This could provide the impetus for a Beijing move closer to Washington -- to keep the United States focused on Russian threats rather than Chinese concerns. Beijing already has experience working with the United States to counter Russian influence, and keeping the current and former superpowers eyeing each other leaves China a less visible threat, and thus capable of continuing to deal with its own internal issues while facing minimal pressure from outside. As Beijing sees it, if a true multipolar world cannot be established any time soon, the hints of a return to a bipolar world order -- with Russia facing off against the United States -- could keep China out of the crosshairs and constrain U.S. actions. With the SED already in place, China has another pathway through which to shape its own image as cooperative, and perhaps drop a few hints of its concerns about Russia.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IE22Ak01.html

Those pesky puppies of war
By Spengler

Thanks in part to reporting by Sami Moubayed (The two 'kings' of Iran, May 19) and Kaveh L Afrasiabi (Iran courts the US at Russia's expense, May 16), we know that Iran is steering away from confrontation with the United States.

With a newly elected pro-American president in Paris and an Atlanticist chancellor in Berlin, the Iranian leadership cannot count on discord in the West. Russia also seems less willing to play the spoiler where Iran's nuclear ambitions are concerned, not



surprising given the fact that Russia and its Muslim minority are in the first line of any potential conflict. Moubayed reported on May 18 that Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wants to "rein in" the country's bumptious President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, especially after the ill-fated seizure of British sailors and marines turned against Iran's advantage.

Tehran signaled its shift in a number of ways; one is the fact that Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Ahmadinejad's rival in the 2005 presidential elections, gave the important Friday sermon two weeks in a row. Rafsanjani has close links to the Europeans, particularly the Germans, and German diplomats have been working hard behind the scenes to promote Rafsanjani as the prospective arbiter of a compromise solution to the nuclear issue. Another signal was an Iranian gesture toward Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, on whom Washington has placed much of its hope for stabilizing Iraq. That is the background to Washington's new willingness to speak officially with Iran about Iraqi stability; high-level talks are scheduled for June 28.

So much for the silly thesis that messianic visions of the imminent return of the Twelfth Imam motivated Iran's aggressive stance of the past year. Whether Ahmadinejad actually believes that the Mahdi will arrive shortly is a moot point; if he is mad, there are others in Tehran who are not. Iran seeks regional hegemony because its domestic position gradually is becoming desperate. Within a few years it will become a net importer of oil, and the oil subsidy to its underemployed population will disappear. The Persians are chess players, and if the constellation of forces (to use the old Soviet term) is against them, they will pull back and wait for another opportunity. That does not imply, however, that they have abandoned the game.

Real conflict, though, is not a chessboard. The pawns have an unpleasant tendency to move on their own and spoil the game. We know from the admissions of both sides in last summer's Lebanon war that blunders on both sides provoked the conflict, which nearly spilled over into a regional war. Hezbollah did not anticipate the massive Israeli response to its kidnapping of Israeli soldiers, and Israel did not anticipate Hezbollah's tenacity in response to its bombing campaign, as we know from the Winograd Report. [1] Israel was not prepared to commit the resources and sacrifice the soldiers' lives required to put down a dug-in force officered by Iranian regulars.

In the current round of negotiations between the United States and Iran, Hamas rather than Hezbollah is the odd man out. Iran attempted to insert itself into Palestinian politics by taking over subsidies to the irredentist wing of the Palestinian movement, to the chagrin of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Hamas appears able to make a nuisance of itself great enough to force the Israelis to take action, which in turn will make it extremely difficult for its sponsors to abandon it. In response to Hamas' shelling of the town of Sderot from Gaza, the Israeli Air Force on Sunday destroyed the home of Sheikh Halil al-Haya, a Hamas parliamentarian, killing several members of his family.

As I wrote last July, "Dogs of war incline toward caution, which after all is how they grew up to be dogs. More worrisome are puppies, who do not know what danger is. Gavrilo Princeps, the Serbian gunman who shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand dead in June 1914, was a puppy ... Wars start because no one wants to disown his dog. If your dog bites a neighbor, your neighbor well might come after you with a shotgun." [2]

It is even possible that the fighting in Gaza was provoked by Egypt, the United States, Israel or others who wanted to draw Hamas out and crush it. Writing in the Jerusalem Post on May 17, Khaled Abu Toamed reported, "Some Hamas and Fatah operatives in the Gaza Strip have accused followers of PA [Palestinian Authority] National Security Adviser Muhammad Dahlan of instigating the latest cycle of violence.

"They claimed that Dahlan's supporters in Fatah and some of the PA security forces were trying to drag Hamas into an all-out confrontation with the help of the US and Israel."

If the Palestine Liberation Organization crushes Hamas with arms supplied by the US and Israel, Iran's bid for leverage in the Israel-Palestine dispute will come to nothing. That will leave the supposed moderates in Tehran in a dilemma. It is one thing for Iran to offer transient cooperation to the United States in Iraq, in the expectation that the Shi'ite majority ultimately will prevail and become a regional ally. It is quite another for Iran first to proclaim itself the champion of Palestinian irredentism, and then hang its clients out to dry.

By the same token, Iran's position in Lebanon is unstable. Although Iran and Syria have rearmed Hezbollah, it seems clear that Hezbollah is under orders to keep its head down. Hezbollah has the support of Lebanon's Shi'ites, but not of the 400,000 or so Palestinians living in United Nations refugee camps in that country. Fighting over the weekend at the Nahr al-Bared camp near Tripoli, which left 22 Lebanese soldiers and 17 Palestinians dead, refreshed the world's attention to the volatile Palestinian element in the mix.

With only a few dozen deaths in Gaza and Lebanon during the past week, the latest fighting barely merits the term "crisis". Palestinians can shoot one another in Gaza indefinitely without consequences - or could, that is, if it were not for the fact that the region's powers have dogs in the fight. Iran's hope for a way out of its terminal case of domestic sclerosis lies in becoming the champion of the region's underclass against the more conservative powers in the region, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. It cannot easily abandon them.

The parallels to 1914 are noteworthy. It was not the Imperial Court in St Petersburg that drove the Balkans toward war, but rather the Serbs, who so thoroughly crushed the Turks during the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 as to force Turkey's German ally to insert itself into the Bosporus. Serbian refusal to accept Austria's control of Bosnia produced the assassination at Sarajevo. The Serbian puppy dragged the Russian dog into war. I reviewed these improbable events a year ago, in an essay called Why war comes when no one wants it. [3]

It is very difficult to tell when the puppy-fights might become a broader conflict. From the Russo-Japanese War to July 1914, European diplomats extinguished a half-dozen sparks that might have provoked a general war, until one spark forced them into open hostilities, against the intent and expectations of almost all the participants. It is hard to believe that a few dozen deaths in Gaza will upset the diplomatic maneuverings of Washington and Tehran. Whatever the spark turns out to be that ultimately lands in the gunpowder, it will seem no less trivial.

Note
1. The Israeli government's Winograd Commission, chaired by retired judge Eliyahu Winograd, investigated last summer's war and issued a report on April 30 that harshly criticized key decision-makers.
2. Cry havoc, and let slip the puppies of war, Asia Times Online, July 11, 2006. 3. Why war comes when no one wants it, ATol, May 2, 2006.