IRAQ - Maliki Orders US Siege Ended.

Maliki on Oct. 31 ordered the removal of US checkpoints around Sadr City, a huge Shi'ite slum of Baghdad, in what appeared to be his boldest gambit and a tense struggle for more independence from his American protectors. Maliki's public declaration seemed at first to catch US commanders off guard. But by nightfall, US troops had abandoned all the around Sadr City which they had set up in the previous week with Iraqi forces as part of a search for a missing American soldier. The checkpoints had been blamed for snarling traffic and disrupting daily life and commerce throughout the eastern part of Baghdad.

The language of the declaration, which implied that Malaki had the power to command US forces, seemed to overstep his authority and to be aimed at placating his Shi'ite constituency. The withdrawal was greeted with jubilation in the streets of Sadr City, the densely populated Shiite slum where the Americans have focused their manhunt and where anti-US sentiment runs high. The initial US reaction to the order, released by Maliki's press office, strongly suggested the statement had not been issued in concert with the American authorities. Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a US military spokesman in Baghdad, said: "Our commanders have his press release and are reviewing how best to address these concerns". After hours of silence, a senior US Embassy official who had been delegated to return reporters' phone calls said the prime minister's order was "the result of a meeting" between Maliki, Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and Gen. Casey. The official said: "It was essentially something that Maliki wanted to do and Casey agreed to it". But Maliki's announcement may have been a foregone conclusion: the meeting was at 1 pm, officials said, and the prime minister's office issued his press release at about 1:20 pm.

Tensions between Maliki and President Bush had been building for months. US officials had grown impatient with the Iraqi government's inability to curb Shi'ite militias accused of sectarian killings and to reduce the insurgent violence. For their part, Maliki and other leading Shi'ites had begun to chafe at US control of the military and what they view as American favouritism towards Sunnis. Those tensions erupted publicly in the previous week, to be followed by shows of reconciliation.

On Oct. 25, Maliki challenged a US assertion that the two governments had agreed on a timetable for stabilising Iraq. On Oct. 26-27, he issued angry comments pointedly voicing his independence from the Americans, including an account circulated by his aide of an acrimonious meeting with Khalilzad, during which Maliki was said to have told the ambassador he was "a friend of the US, but not America's man in Iraq". On Oct. 28 the White House convened a video-conference at which Maliki publicly praised Bush. The abrupt declaration by Maliki followed a visit to Baghdad on Oct. 30 by President Bush's National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley who was there to discuss how to reverse the country's slide towards all-out civil war.

(Violence continued to torment Iraq on Oct. 31, including the mass kidnapping of at least 50 civilians by gunmen on a road north of Baghdad, and the announcement that two more US troops had been killed. The victims of the kidnapping, mostly Shi'ites, were ambushed by gunmen as they travelled in cars along a road from the capital to Balad. The gunmen stopped the cars and scrutinised the occupants' identification before abducting the victims. In the Ur district of northern Baghdad, a car bomb exploded next to a wedding convoy, killing at least 15 people, including the newlyweds. Gunmen stormed an apartment in the southern district of Dora, killing a couple and their daughter. Gunmen in Ba'quba, capital of Diyala Province, killed six civilians, and five bodies were found in a town north of the city. At least 15 bodies, all of which had gunshots to the head and bore signs of torture, were found in Baghdad).

Maliki had been under pressure from Shi'ite backers to push the US to lift an eight-day-old cordon around Sadr City, where US authorities believe the kidnapped American soldier is being held captive. The soldier was abducted in the central Baghdad area of Karada on Oct. 23 after leaving the fortified Green Zone without authorisation. Three people were detained early on Oct. 31 in the latest raid in Sadr City as part of the manhunt. Muqtada al-Sadr, the anti-US Shi'ite mullah who counts Sadr City as his greatest bastion of support and who wields considerable influence in Maliki's ruling Shi'ite coalition, called for a general strike in the slum on Oct. 31 to protest the cordon.

In its search for the soldier, the US military has targeted Jaysh al-Mahdi militia, which has grown increasingly fractured but still answers in part to Sadr. Joint US-Iraqi roadblocks and checkpoints at the entrances to the slum, and others erected in Karada, have caused major traffic jams, impeded commerce, turned short commutes into ordeals lasting hours and provoked the ire of Iraqis. On Oct. 30 Sadr, who led two uprisings against American troops in 2004, threatened unspecified action if the US "siege" continued. The wording of Maliki's statement on Oct. 31 seemed intended to curry political favour with the residents and power brokers of Sadr City. It said: "Nouri al-Maliki, the general commander of the armed forces, has issued an order to remove all barriers and checkpoints and open all entrances in Sadr City and all other areas in Baghdad and ease traffic jams in these areas no later than 5 pm today".

The language of the declaration, which implied that Malaki had the power to command US forces, seemed to overstep his authority. Under UN resolutions which remain in effect, the US military exercises control over American troops in Iraq, but consults closely with the Iraqi government as a partner. For that reason, the declaration appeared to be as much about Maliki's stagecraft as about practical effects on the ground. Within an hour of the statement, US troops had already begun pulling away from the checkpoints on the edge of Sadr City, though Iraqi security forces remained behind. Lt. Col. Jonathan B. Withington, a military spokesman in Baghdad, said the order would affect only the checkpoints established in the previous week, not all the checkpoints manned by Iraqi security forces. When asked whether the US withdrawal was a response to the MP's statement, Withington chose his words: "We were ordered by our military chain of command not to impede traffic" in Karada and on the eastern access roads to Sadr City.

The country's Sunni leadership condemned Maliki's decision, saying it would upend the Baghdad security plan and expose the population to greater violence. Tareq al-Hashemi, one of Iraq's two vice-presidents and the leader of the largest Sunni Arab bloc, said the PM's decision "will allow the terrorists and the insurgents to move freely". He said civilians' lives should be more important than saving a few hours during a commute. A National Police officer posted at a checkpoint near the Habibiya Bridge entrance to Sadr City said the departure of the Americans, who had left 15 minutes earlier, would make his job more difficult. He said: "They helped us to stop everyone. If we are alone, we can't say a word against certain people". Maliki's order said special security measures, such as the latest roadblocks, "will be carried out only during the curfew period and in emergencies". It added: "Joint efforts to track down the terrorists and outlaws who jeopardise the lives of people by killing and kidnapping will continue".

The Americans had been extremely reluctant, if not opposed, to withdrawing from their roadblocks and checkpoints in Karada and Sadr City. Ali al-Adeeb, a Shi'ite MP and a senior member of Maliki's Islamic Da'wa faction, said the PM had discussed the matter of the roadblocks with US officials during the past several days. In a meeting on Oct. 30, Adeeb said, US officials had asked Maliki to give them 72 hours before issuing his order. Hassan al-Sined, an adviser to the PM and a senior Da'wa figure, said he doubted the order was co-ordinated with the US.

If the declaration was intended to show Maliki as a forceful and decisive leader, as far as Sined was concerned, it had that effect. The order demonstrated that Maliki was "a strong and brave PM. He behaved like a successful PM". The senior American Embassy official said the embassy applauded the boldness of Maliki's declaration, adding: "We're actually encouraging the PM to take responsibility. So trying to sound like he's a leader here in Iraq is a good thing".

If Tehran is indeed the culprit behind the instability in Iraq, the plan to facilitate disintegration of Iraq along ethnic lines could be most harmful to Iran. The partition plan acquired an air of reality when a law allowing regions to form federal entities from existing provinces was passed by the Iraqi parliament on Oct. 11. Though 18 months remain before the law becomes effective, Kurds rejoiced as Sunni MPs and the Sadr bloc of the powerful Shi'ite alliance boycotted the vote in protest. The irony is that withdrawal of US troops was a consistent request from many Arab quarters since the ouster of Saddam's Ba'thist dictatorship. Apart from deliberate external attempts to fuel instability, conduct a proxy war against the US and gain political leverage in a power vacuum, it is certainly relevant to classify insurgency in Iraq as a form of resistance against foreign occupation. Had parts of this option - perhaps a phased withdrawal or at least a timetable - been considered earlier, it may have served the interests of all concerned - Iraq, its neighbours and the US. At a time when more troops are needed to quell the violence, the possibility of the situation in Iraq improving as a result of the US withdrawing its troops and leaving it to Iraqis to settle matters is just as unlikely as terror suffering a severe setback by killing or capturing Osama bin Laden or his deputies.

Three years after the US stood firm in its conviction that it was possible to invade Iraq, oust the Ba'th Party and implant democracy without anticipating a crisis of the kind that currently prevails, there is little doubt that it stands defeated. It took Washington three years to admit that Iraq was a possible parallel to the 1968 Tet offensive which prompted loss of support for the Vietnam War among Americans. Though Alberto Fernandez, director of public diplomacy in the State Department's bureau of Near Eastern affairs, withdrew his statement in 24 hours, it took someone in the administration three years to admit that the US had shown "arrogance" and "stupidity" in Iraq. And, it took three years for the US to seriously consider alternate plans when their main plank fell apart. Thus, in planning an alternate approach now, can the US be sure that it has a workable plan or will it wait for another three years to decide if there is yet another way out of the likely mess?

As the carnage in Iraq reaches new heights of barbarism, what is clear is the utter uselessness of Maliki's government. It is simply incapable of staunching the bloodletting. Despite weeks of blunt warnings from US officials that time was running out for him, on Oct. 29 Maliki announced yet again that efforts to disarm Iraq's militias would be postponed, saying: "The initial date we've set for disbanding the militias is the end of this year or the beginning of next year".

Still, whatever form it might take, US experts warn that a coup stands an excellent chance of making a horrible situation worse. Rather than toy with yet another misstep, the capstone in a seemingly endless series of errors in Iraq, the Bush administration - including the increasingly powerful "realist" anti-neo-con policy types now emerging in Washington - would do far better to start planning for a quick exit. Despite the bloodbath fears that are constantly raised about an Iraq without American troops, a US exit need not consign the country to years of Rwanda-style ethnic slaughter or a Congo-style civil war. Even as it leaves, there are plenty of things the US could do to improve the state of post-occupation Iraq, including beginning real negotiations with the Iraqi insurgents - excluding the Neo-Salafis and Ba'thists who have killed US troops and Iraqis- and launching diplomatic efforts to get neighbouring countries, especially Iran and Syria, to stay out of the conflict.

In a paper just written for the Middle East Institute, Wayne White - who headed the State Department's intelligence effort on Iraq until last year - specifically warns that it is time for the US to "back off" in Iraq: A series of apparent US ultimatums and veiled political threats aimed at Maliki - is but the latest example of excessive US involvement in the Iraqi political process. But it is time that setting the overall direction of Iraqi politics must be left to Iraqis, for better or worse. Washington must recognise that it cannot orchestrate political success in a tortured land through still more heavy-handed political tampering. And stepping back from the Iraqi political fray is a prerequisite for any overall exit strategy.

Talk of the coup option followed a drumbeat of comments and statements from Bush administration officials, US military officers, Ambassador Khalilzad, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner and former representative Lee Hamilton - co-chairman with James A Baker of the ISG - all of whom warned Maliki ominously that he had only a matter or weeks or months to get a handle on Iraq's sectarian militias and their death squads. The consequences for Maliki of failing to do so were left unsaid, but the warnings were so explicit that Maliki spoke to Bush about how he should interpret the barrage of deadline-like statements, and the president replied: "Don't worry...".

Whatever consoling words Bush might have had for him, Maliki has almost no reservoir of support left either in Washington or among US military commanders in Iraq. In a piece headlined "Iraqis Call for Five-Man Junta to End the Anarchy", Marie Colvin on Oct. 29 wrote in the Sunday Times of London: "Iraq's fragile democracy, weakened by mounting chaos and a rapidly rising death toll, is being challenged by calls for the formation of a hardline 'government of national salvation'. The proposal, which is being widely discussed in political and intelligence circles in Baghdad, is to replace the Shi'ite-led government of...Maliki...with a regime capable of imposing order and confronting the sectarian militias leading the country to the brink of civil war".

Dr Saleh al-Mutlaq, a top Sunni politician, visited Arab capitals recently seeking support for the replacement of Maliki's government with a group of five strongmen who would impose martial law and either dissolve parliament or halt its participation in day-to-day government. Mutlaq, who is sympathetic to, if not affiliated with, the Iraqi insurgency and its former Ba'thist leaders, explicitly called for Maliki to step down. Colvin quoted Anthony Cordesman, a conservative US military analyst, claiming there was a "very real possibility" Maliki will be toppled. He said: "There could be a change in government, done in a backroom, which could see a general brought in to run the Ministry of Defense or the Interior".

David Ignatius - a well-connected reporter at the Washington Post - wrote a column on Oct. 13 citing Mutlaq as well, and suggesting that Iraq's own intelligence service (created, funded, and run by the CIA) was involved: The coup rumours came from several directions. Mutlaq did visit Arab capitals over the summer and promoted the idea of a national salvation government, suggesting it would have American support.

Top officials of the Iraqi intelligence service are said to have discussed a plan in which Maliki would step aside in favour of a five-man commission that would suspend parliament, declare martial law and call back some officers of the old Iraqi army. (Frustration with Maliki's Shi'ite-led government is strongest among Iraq's Sunni minority, which dominated the old regime of Saddam. But as sectarian violence has increased, the disillusionment has spread to some prominent Shi'ite and Kurdish politicians as well). Some are said to support the junta-like commission, which would represent the country's main factions and include former interim PM Iyad Allawi - still seen by some Iraqis as a potential "strongman" who could pull the country back from the brink. To be sure, Allawi - in London - denied any reports in an interview with Newsweek that he was involved in plotting a coup. "Total nonsense. To plot a coup, I don't sit in London", said Allawi, a long-time asset of the CIA and British intelligence, adding: "I would be sitting in Baghdad trying to make a coup".

The US could do it itself. It could find some general up in Ramadi or somewhere, and help him take over. He would declare a state of emergency and crack down. One US expert was this week quoted as saying: Such a general would "ask us to leave - that would be our exit strategy. It's a distinct possibility. I've raised this with a number of foreign service and intelligence people, and most of them - remembering the days of the coups d'etat in the Middle East - say, 'Hear, hear!' And you know what? I think Rumsfeld would jump on this idea in five minutes. Of course, no coup will happen at all - no general or colonel would dare try - without, at the very least, a wink and a nod from the CIA, the US military, or Khalilzad. And most likely, it would take significantly more than a wink, something like explicit support and promises of assistance".

Salah Mukhtar, a former top Iraqi official who served as Iraq's ambassador to India and then Vietnam in the period just before the US invasion of Iraq, is not a spokesman for the Iraqi insurgency. But he is very well plugged in to the thinking of the country's insurgent leaders. Mukhtar believes elements in the Bush administration might be planning a coup. According to him, the main focus of such a coup - even one fostered by the US - would be to mobilise the Iraqi Army against the Shi'ite militias: The increase in the volume of mass killing in Iraq is creating a willingness among the people to accept a military coup.

The US expert was quoted as adding of the proposed coup: "I would say that 80% of Iraqis are willing to accept it, to accept anything that would help to crush the Iranian gangs [i.e, the militias of the Shi'ite religious parties, such as the Badr Brigade and Jaysh al-Mahdi]. The US is making contacts with some old Iraqi generals in Jordan. They are former Ba'thists. The US is looking for people to topple the government of Maliki. Some of them are in Iraq, and some of them are based in Jordan. Some of them turned down the US offers, but some of them accepted. If there is a military coup in Iraq, that coup will be [sympathetic to] the Ba'thists. If its leader is not pro-Ba'thist, there will be a second coup against that leader. So either way, it will result in a pro-Ba'thist government...It would be a crazy move by the US. It shows that they don't understand Iraq".

Some top US officials are eyeing the possibility of a last-ditch effort to establish a government that would stabilise the country, put down the insurgency, and create a secure environment for Bush's "victory" strategy in Iraq - even though that victory would have nothing to do with democracy. Others in or around the administration are undoubtedly drawn to the idea of a coup, or at least of the forced removal of Maliki in some fashion because it would present a fig leaf for an American "redeployment". Under this scenario, the US could exit as gracefully as circumstances allow, leaving behind a strong Iraqi central government that might still be an ally of some sort.

In mid-August a New York Times piece suggested at least some White House officials had given up on the idea of democracy in Iraq and were ready to look at "alternatives": Some experts who recently visited the White House said Bush administration officials were beginning to plan for the possibility that Iraq's democratically elected government might not survive.

If a coup happens, the centre of gravity inside Baghdad's Green Zone will have shifted from the Shi'ite majority to a more centrist, more pro-Sunni, less sectarian, less religious and less ideological bloc.