No rescaldo da visita surpresa de Barack Obama a Bagdad, um artigo de Simon Tisdall, no Guardian:
«Obama's unannounced flying visit to Baghdad comes at a time of growing concern that hard-won security gains of the past 18 months are beginning to unravel. While he may wish Iraq a safe and prosperous future, the US leader's top priority is plainly an orderly American military withdrawal. Obama has other fish to fry, notably Iran and Pakistan-Afghanistan. Problem is, Iraq is not over.
A string of car bombings in Shia areas of Baghdad this week gave deathly voice to newly rising tensions between Sunni Arab groups and the Shia-led coalition government of prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. The attacks were variously blamed on a reviving al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, Ba'ath party renegades and hardline Sunni paramilitaries. They may offer a foretaste of what is to come after US troops vacate Iraq's towns and cities this summer under Obama's withdrawal timetable.
The next big test follows in the autumn, in the run-up to December's national elections. Maliki was deemed to have made significant strides in January's provincial polls in encouraging a nationalist, secular mood and focusing on economic and social, rather than ethnic and religious, issues. But questions about political willingness to set sectarianism aside are matched by persistent doubts over the ability of indigenous security forces to protect voters without American (and British) help.
Sunni political leaders complain that Maliki has failed to give jobs to former Saddam loyalists and incorporate Sunni fighters into the national armed forces. By turning their guns on al-Qaida, Sunni militias such as Sons of Iraq – part of the so-called Awakening movement nurtured by former US commander General David Petraeus – helped assure the success of the 2007-08 surge. Now it is feared they may revert to old insurgent ways. Last week's fierce fighting with government forces in east Baghdad was a portent of that dire prospect.
"In this last period there have been no genuine accomplishments regarding national reconciliation, so stability hasn't been achieved and the gap has widened between the government and people," said Selim Abdullah Jabouri, spokesman for the Iraqi Accordance Front, the largest Sunni Arab bloc in parliament, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
Moderate leaders are not alone in worrying about a splintering of Iraq's fragile nationhood. Obama's failure so far to secure the appointment of a new ambassador to replace Ryan Crocker is sending a seriously wrong message to Iraqi factions, according to John Kael Weston, a former US state department political officer in Baghdad.
Obama initially tapped General Anthony Zinni, a former Centcom commander, for the Baghdad job before embarrassingly changing his mind and picking Christopher Hill, the Bush administration's North Korea envoy. Now Hill's nomination is enmeshed in red tape in the Senate and a post that secretary of state Hillary Clinton said should be filled as a matter of urgency lies unattended.
With 12,000 US troops due to leave Anbar and Baghdad provinces in coming months, a key question was whether the Anbar-centred Awakening movement would continue to back the central government and whether the government would pay them and integrate them into the security forces, Weston said in a commentary from Baghdad.
"Iraq's internal politics have always been complicated and they are getting more complicated as we begin efforts to reduce the number of our troops. Now more than ever, our top general needs a state department partner who will fight the political wars raging here," Weston said. "The list of issues is long: Arab-Kurd tensions, the lack of an oil revenue-sharing law, the status of the city of Kirkuk, Iran as next-door neighbour, disputed territories, non-sectarian security forces [and] human rights for detainees. Abu Ghraib hangs heavily here still."
These issues have largely resisted solutions over the past six years; there's little reason to believe they'll be happily resolved in 16 months. But that is the timeframe Obama has created and which his visit to Baghdad effectively confirmed.
With a maximum 50,000 US troops remaining in Iraq beyond August next year (there are currently 140,000), and all the remainder due to leave by the end of 2011, Iraq's security clock and all the other clocks that keep time with it – institution-building, reconciliation, economic development – are ticking loudly. General Ray Odierno, the current US commander in Iraq, warned publicly that the withdrawal should be slower and longer. He was overruled.
Perhaps Obama will be lucky. Perhaps Iraq will hold together and pull through into independent nationhood in the limited time required. But it's a bit of a rush and a bigger gamble. And if it all goes pear-shaped, Obama's higher-priority initiatives – winning the AfPak war, constructive engagement with Iran, improved relations with the Islamic world – will again be held hostage to the Baghdad abyss.»
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário