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alchaiken@gmail.com (Alison Chaiken)
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Last night (July 1 2005) I was listening to commentators on NPR's Left, Right and Center program discuss the President's recent speech on the Iraqi War. "He said nothing new," complained conservative commentator and Bush supporter Tony Blankley of the Washington Times. "It's time for creative approaches."
The presence of US troops in Iraq has become unhelpful. Rather than forcing peace, their divisive and disruptive presence is fomenting increased violence. The time has come for US troops to go. How can US troops withdraw without creating a power vacuum that will inexorably lead to a civil war?
What Iraq needs is an international Islamic peacekeeping force to replace US troops in a phased withdrawal. In order to be acceptable to all sides in the conflict, the peacekeeping force should be partly Sunni and partly Shia. The only viable Shia military force would have to come from Iran. Or could Hezbollah send battle-hardened troops to do something positive for the world?
Who would provide Sunni troops? Undoubtedly participation by the Turkish military would be unacceptable to the Kurds. Why not Indonesia, whose previous most notable military action was to massively violate human rights in East Timor? Or why not Egypt, the second largest recipient of US aid?
Britain as the former colonial power in Iraq would traditionally be expected to provide a peace-keeping force, but the British have through their cooperation with the Americans become targets rather than peacekeepers.
An insurgent conflict like the one in Iraq may never have a cease-fire. At the moment there is no one for the US to negotiate a cease-fire with. Many years will go by and many thousands of US troops and Iraqi citizens will die before this situation changes. I agree with Tony Blankley that the US should act now to bring about a solution, not wait until the average American voter is demanding an immediate withdrawal.
If the United Nations can't be persuaded to participate, perhaps the The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) or the Arab League would step in. The African Union has shown that African nations can address their own security problems and we should challenge equivalent Muslim and Middle Eastern institutions to do the same. While the current Iraqi mess is not a problem of the Arab League's or OIC's creation, it certainly is in the interest of member countries of the League and of the OIC to resolve the crisis. Statesmanlike participation in international peacekeeping would give a gigantic boost to the stature of these organizations.
Why is no one in the US discussing an international Islamic peacekeeping force for Iraq?
The setback for the United Nations comes as a Saudi Arabian proposal to send a separate Islamic peacekeeping force to Iraq received a cool response from Muslim governments that were approached to participate in it. The Saudis envision the deployment of thousands of Islamic troops, serving under a U.N. mandate, to help stabilize Iraq and potentially replace the U.S.-led force there. Annan said today that the initiative also calls for providing security for U.N. personnel.
But several countries that have been asked to serve in the force -- including Pakistan, Egypt and Malaysia -- said this week it is too dangerous to send troops. "It is better for us to wait for a while and to see how the situation is," Malaysia's Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi told reporters in Kuala Lumpur.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that the Saudi government "may wish to continue exploring this. We'll see how that develops. The United States has certainly been interested, and we'll keep talking to other countries about it."
Amir Taheri said in 2003:
The Pakistanis, meanwhile, wanted the summit to create a pan-Islamic peacekeeping force for Iraq to which individual OIC member states would contribute men and materiel as they saw fit.
Also in 2003, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul "proposed the establishment of an Islamic peacekeeping force under which Turkey's fellow OIC member countries would send troops to Iraq."
Convincing potential contributors of troops to participate in an Islamic peacekeeping force won't be easy, but trying to form such a force is better than the failed strategy our government is pursuing now. Colin Powell can salvage what's left of his reputation by calling for a phased withdrawal from Iraq. John McCain can jumpstart his 2008 campaign by endorsing this bold idea. It's time for the national groupthink on Iraq to end!