Reposted from the NY Times, click here for original link
Where’s Our Man in Iraq?
A PROMINENT tribal sheik — the top vote-getter in January’s Provincial Council election in Anbar Province — recently told me and Marine leaders in Falluja that Iraqis were concerned that no one had heard from or seen the new American ambassador. This influential man wondered aloud if Washington policymakers were purposely and deviously pursuing a strategy of silence.
Of course, the sheik logically assumed that the United States would not leave its largest embassy diplomatically rudderless at such a crucial juncture. To our embarrassment, he assumed wrong: The United States has not had an ambassador in Iraq since Ryan Crocker left Baghdad on Feb. 13. The nomination of Christopher R. Hill, President Obama’s designated representative, remains tied up in the Senate. And the longer we go without an ambassador, the more a disservice — and a dangerous one at that — we do to our 140,000-plus troops and diplomats and to the Iraqi people.
When the Marine commanders and I visited the charismatic sheik’s dusty, gaudy compound near the Euphrates River to share a dinner of lamb, rice and kebabs, we discussed just one of many pressing political issues — the future of the Anbar-based tribal Awakening movement that he helped lead, and which had beat back Sunni extremists and Qaeda terrorists in the once-volatile region. Whether the sheik’s followers would support the central government and whether national leaders will pay them and integrate them into the country’s security forces are crucial questions.
Anbar Province has come a long way since our invasion in 2003 and the two bloody battles of Falluja in 2004. So has Iraq. But Iraq’s internal politics have always been complicated — and they are getting even more complicated as we begin efforts to reduce the number of our troops here. Now more than ever, our top general in four-star uniform needs a pinstriped State Department partner who will fight the political wars raging here. (These are my own views, not those of the State Department.)
The list of issues that will confront our new ambassador is long: Arab-Kurd tensions. The lack of an oil revenue-sharing law. The status of the city of Kirkuk. Iran as next-door neighbor. Disputed territories. Nonsectarian security forces. New governing coalitions. Human rights for detainees. (Abu Ghraib hangs heavily here still.) To make progress on each front, an ambassador’s last-word voice — sometimes soft and sometimes loud — is required in delicate, closed-door discussions with Iraqi leaders.
Among the most urgent of these issues, indeed the most pressing, is a recent outbreak of fighting in Baghdad between the Sons of Iraq (a Sunni group that likely includes at least some former insurgents) and the Iraqi Army — with American units in the combustible mix. This situation, brought on by the detention of a prominent though controversial local leader, has called into question larger Iraqi government-led national reconciliation initiatives.
Convincing the fractious spectrum of Iraqi religious and ethnic communities that the United States remains committed to fostering an enduring nonsectarian Iraq cannot be a part-time job; it requires full-time and top-level effort. Nor should the task rest primarily on the shoulders of our able military leadership and the highly regarded current No. 2, Robert Ford, who is fluent in Arabic and has served several tours in Iraq already.
Only an American ambassador can bring sufficient swagger to the Green Zone’s local politico circuit. Zalmay Khalilzad, the envoy who preceded Mr. Crocker, is making the rounds here in Baghdad; he is a savvy political operator, to be sure, but no longer acting in any official capacity — and that lack of official credentials matters.
I trust that our distinguished and deliberative senators will understand the current, and urgent, Iraqi dynamic and visualize the deep and overflowing diplomatic in-box on the ambassador’s vacant desk. Further delays and Capitol Hill maneuverings are lost in translation over here, among both the Iraqis and the Americans serving our country in these dangerous deserts.
A key Anbar tribal leader’s dinner invitation awaits the new American ambassador. Expect the sheik to show off the three pictures that are prominently displayed in his spacious marble-floored gathering room: one taken with George W. Bush; a second with Mr. Obama, then a senator; and, my favorite, a large glossy photo of the elaborately robed sheik in white tribal dress with gold trim standing alongside Katie Couric clad in full body armor. Expect lively — and essential — political conversation over tea and kebabs as well.
Our country can ill afford for the ambassador not to answer this invitation, and soon.
John Kael Weston has spent four years as a State Department political officer in Iraq.
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