Ottoman umpire
Owen Matthews on Washington's embarrassment over Iraqi hostility to Turkish peacekeepers T. he United States is suffering from a reverse Midas touch in Iraq. Just as things start to go right, fate intervenes to screw it up. So it was with Turkey's agreement in principle earlier this month to share the burden of occupation, an event billed by the White House as a major turning point. Turkey, as a serious military power willing to contribute a 10,000-strong division (roughly equal to the current British presence), would dramatically alleviate the US's acute manpower shortage. Better still, as one US diplomat enthusiastically explained to me, the Turks, as 'Sunni Muslims from the same neighbourhood' would be 'welcomed' by the Iraqis because they were 'on the same cultural wavelength'.
It was in this belief — that Turkey was somehow the vital missing link which would make the occupation suddenly start to go right — that the US expended months of diplomatic effort, plus an $8.5 billion loan, persuading Ankara to come on board. Throughout this process, members of the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC), particularly but not exclusively the Kurds, were telling anyone who would listen that they opposed the presence of troops from any of Iraq's neighbours in their country. So it should have come as no surprise that when the Turks finally came through with a qualified yes to deploying troops, the IGC came out unanimously against: 24 to 0. Nor were the Kurds the most strident opponents — Adel Abdul Mehti, a Shi'ite IGC member representing the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, complained that 'the Americans are trying to act as the authority, not only de facto but the legitimate authority and they're dictating things, trying to intervene. This is not acceptable to Iraqis.' Even the three Turkoman representatives on the Council, though personally in favour, decided to vote against because they realised, as one of them put it, 'opposition [to Turkish troops] in Iraq is too strong, there could be clashes and that is in no one's interest.'
Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Instead of welcoming a major new partner in the Coalition of the Willing, the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority, headed by L. Paul Bremer III, faces a breakdown in its relations with the only political institution in Iraq — the IGC — created by the US.
'We take the governing council seriously,' insisted Bremer last week as he gadded from Black Hawk to Land Cruiser in his trademark combination of dark blue suit and yellow suede Timberland boots. 'We are in a partnership. We don't see eye to eye on everything why should we?' Yet Washington must now either make arrangements for the deployment of Turkish troops against the wishes of the IGC, or abandon the idea of Turkish help altogether.
Neither is an attractive option. Despite the US's widely advertised military superiority, the strain of keeping such a massive military presence in Iraq is beginning to show. Already reservists are facing the prospect of a full year 'in country, twice as long as a normal tour. The uncomfortable truth is that the US cannot easily sustain the current occupation on its own. It needs more bodies on the ground, and effective fighting troops too, not just the politically useful but practically useless handfuls of Mongolians, Latvians and Hondurans who are usually posted to supply depots and the like while GIs get on with the serious business of security and reconstruction. And apart from Turkey, there have been few takers for participation in Iraq. India has cried off, citing trouble in Kashmir, and Pakistan is still dragging its heels. Even after last week's UN resolution, major military powers like Russia and France have yet to step up to the plate.
In the wake of the IGC's very public rejection of the Turks' offer of peacekeepers. Ankara's government, sensing a brewing military and PR disaster, is backing off the idea of sending troops at all. The feeling seems to be mutual — Washington has, in the opinion of Turkish diplomats, been 'dragging its feet' about arranging the practicalities of Turkish deployment, while at the same time leaking to the press plans for scaled-down versions of Turkish participation, Turkey's politically powerful military are putting down stiff conditions of their own before they finally commit to sending troops. Particularly thorny is a demand by the Turkish military that all its troops must travel and be supplied overland, and that Turkish forces will be responsible for the security of the route. That's a major problem for the Kurds, because the main road from Turkey into Iraq runs through their territory, and is one of the Kurds' most strategic assets. Also, the Turkish military has often cited protecting the interests of Iraq's Turkomans as one of the reasons for deploying in Iraq. That also worries the Kurds. What if there's a repeat of the kind of Turkoman–Kurd clashes that took place in Kirkuk in August, leaving 11 dead, wondered one senior Kurdish official. 'I fear the Turks would feel justified in rushing a few tens of kilometres north to intervene. That would be disaster.' A third problem is Turkey's demand that a refugee camp for Kurds who fled Turkey in the 1990s during a separatist conflict that claimed 30,000 lives be shut down, supposedly because it harbours militants wanted by Ankara. It's 'deeply worrying', says the Kurdish official, that Turkey is beginning to 'tell us how to run our own affairs even at this early stage.'
Now Ankara's politicians, if not the military, also seem to be waking up to the fact that Washington's plan may not be a great idea. Turkey's army is a conscript one, which makes sending Mehmetchik Mehmet', the generic Turkish trooper) to war an emotive national issue fraught with electoral disaster if it goes wrong.
'We will not go where we are not wanted,' said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the weekend, reversing his earlier, highhanded position that 'the US is our interlocutor', not Iraq. As of this week, says a senior foreign ministry source, Ankara is likely to insist on a formal invitation from the IGC before sending troops. So for the time being, unless Mr Bremer can pull off a miracle of diplomacy and get the IGC to change their minds, the burden of occupation will remain on the shoulders of the US, with significant help from only Britain and Poland.
The debacle could have been avoided. The clash with the IGC was entirely predictable. The fact that Washington seems to have been taken by surprise by the vehemence of the Iraqis' opposition suggests that the US should spend more time evaluating the realities on the ground, instead of trying to bend them to fit a view of reality that exists only in the optimistic imaginations of Beltway policymakers.
But there may yet be an up side to the affair, a rare instance of a positive manifestation of the law of unintended consequences. The IGC, as a result of its opposition to the US over Turkish troops, has never enjoyed more credibility or popularity among ordinary Iraqis. who were previously inclined to see it simply as US stooges. Since whatever government eventually grows up in Iraq to replace the coalition occupiers will grow out of the IGC in some shape or form, growing public trust in the Council, rather than some more radical alternative, must be a good thing. In the long term, the confidence the IGC has won by standing up to America may do Iraq more good than Turkish peacekeepers ever could.
Previous page
