‘Iraq on brink of disintegration’

BAGHDAD—Iraq faces “complete disintegration into failed state chaos” a respected think-tank warned Tuesday, urging the United States to adopt a radical change of strategy to end the crisis.
The stark analysis from the International Crisis Group came as a Pentagon report confirmed that violence in Iraq has hit record levels and two weeks after a bipartisan US panel branded the situation “grave and deteriorating.”
The ICG’s new report endorsed the Iraq Study Group’s criticisms of White House strategy, but warned the recommendations of former secretary of state James Baker’s panel would not be enough to stem the bloodshed. In particular, the Crisis Group criticised the US insistence on supporting Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s coalition government, and called instead for the international community to open talks with all Iraq’s warring parties.
“The Iraqi government and security forces cannot be treated as privileged allies to be bolstered; they are simply one among many parties to the conflict,” the ICG said. “The (Baker) report characterises the government as a ‘government of national unity’ that is ‘broadly representative of the Iraqi people’: it is nothing of the sort,” it said.
The ICG said Baker’s report “calls for expanding forces that are complicit in the current dirty war and for speeding up the transfer of responsibility to a government that has done nothing to stop it.”
Rather than blindly backing Maliki’s beleaguered regime, the ICG said, Washington and other international and regional actors should adopt “a new forceful multilateral approach that puts real pressure on all Iraqi parties.”
The five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Iraq’s six neighbours should become an “international support group” for the country.
“But its purpose cannot be to support the Iraqi government. It must support Iraq, which means pressing the government, along with all other Iraqi constituents, to make the necessary compromises,” the ICG said.
Such advice will not go down well in the White House, where President George W. Bush has held talks with a range of policy experts and Iraqi officials in preparation for announcing a change of strategy next month. But the US leader has ruled out working with Iraq’s neighbours Iran and Syria, whom he accuses of fomenting the violence, and has given his backing to Maliki, describing him as “the right man for the job.”
US President George W. Bush is considering increasing the number of US troops in Iraq, the White House confirmed, denying a rift with top military commanders over such a move. “It’s something that’s being explored,” spokesman Tony Snow said amid media reports that the president might add tens of thousands of US soldiers to help quell what the Pentagon now warns is the worst violence on record.
Snow also denied a news account that the US Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously disagree with a White House plan to send between 15,000 and 30,000 more US troops to Iraq for as many as eight months.
The newspaper, citing unnamed US officials familiar with the “intense” debate, said the military commanders were against the plan because the force’s mission has not been defined. And top Pentagon officials have told Bush that a short-term troop increase could give a boost to virtually all the armed factions in Iraq, without strengthening the position of the US military or Iraq’s security forces in the long term, the Post reported.
US troop levels in Iraq have dipped to 129,000 over the past week but have generally hovered around 140,000. “I think people are trying to create a fight between the president and the joint chiefs where one does not exist,” said Snow. “He has asked military commanders to consider a range of options and they are doing so.”
But Bush, due to unveil a new plan for Iraq next month, “has not made a decision on the way forward,” said Snow. “The president is going to do things in response to military necessity, and he will work with the joint chiefs.”—Agencies