Stop Fighting the Iraqis

U.S. military forces in Iraq this week sadly became what they have been trying for a year to avoid becoming -- an army of occupation fighting a bitter urban war against a broad Iraqi insurgency.

What American troops managed to escape in the largely bloodless battle of Baghdad a year ago they are facing now: fighting in city streets across Iraq. In effect, the United States is embarking on a second Iraq war -- a campaign of pacification that could be protracted, as the insurgency moves underground, and could undo much of the good America accomplished over the past year.

Like the assault on Saddam Hussein, the decision to attack the hotheaded Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr was a war of choice. U.S. policymakers had been debating how to contain him since September, and I wrote here six weeks ago about a dormant plan to arrest him for the murder a year ago of fellow Shiite cleric Abdel Majid Khoei. The Bush administration had delayed, fearing the move might trigger Shiite resistance.

The Americans eventually decided to break Sadr's power now, rather than wait for the scheduled transfer of sovereignty June 30. Policymakers believed that they would have the quiet support of Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and that most Iraqis would welcome a crackdown. Those assumptions were risky -- hopeful guesses at best. But even if they had been right, it was unwise to attack Sadr's militia the same week U.S. forces were rightly pounding the Sunni resistance in Fallujah after the grisly murder of four Americans there. Rather than enhancing the rule of law, the Sadr crackdown added to Iraq's chaos.

The unintended result was that America finally brought Shiites and Sunnis together -- in opposing occupation.

The U.S. mission in Iraq has been unraveling for months, and its problems result from mistakes and misunderstandings that predate the war. Fundamentally, they reflect the contradiction between America's proclaimed desire to create a sovereign Iraq and its failure to tap the indigenous political roots on which a strong Iraqi government must be built.

America wanted Iraqi democracy, but it also wanted control; it wanted a stable country, but it undermined the secular state that had been emerging since the 1920s -- and in the process ceded power to the very mullahs, sheiks and street gangs U.S. officials now decry.

"If the U.S. cannot control Iraq now, when it has its hands directly on all the levers of power, how will it do so in the coming year, as it loses its grip on those levers?" writes Juan R. Cole, a University of Michigan professor whose Web log is essential reading for anyone trying to follow events in Iraq.

America's primary goal, as so many have said this week, must be to "stay the course." But that doesn't mean blindly following a military track that will lead to protracted guerrilla warfare. It means keeping faith with the majority of Iraqis who want a better life and believed a year ago that the United States could deliver it. Some specifics:

• Maintain the scheduled June 30 transfer of sovereignty. At this point the handover is largely a fiction: Iraq doesn't yet have clear plans for a transitional authority, let alone maintaining security. But it's a useful fiction. The deadline will force Iraqis to make decisions and compromises -- even as they depend on U.S. troops to keep order.

• Broaden the United Nations' symbolic role as a guarantor of Iraqi independence and security. One path might be formal U.N. trusteeship status for Iraq.

• Let Iraqis take the lead in restabilizing urban areas, even if the political balance has an anti-American tone. If the United States tries to impose order at gunpoint on a recalcitrant population, it will be wasting American lives and sowing hatred.

• Recognize that Iraq's borders will be open corridors for terrorists unless the regional powers, Syria and Iran, have an interest in stabilizing the situation. There are reports that the White House recently decided to delay imposition of sanctions against Syria after a secret visit to Damascus by CIA Director George Tenet, during which the Syrians promised greater cooperation. If true, that's welcome news.

To stay the course, America must hold tight to its original mission, which was to liberate Iraq -- and then let the Iraqis govern themselves. This story is not likely to have a happy ending if present trends continue. But this week provides some essential base lines for policymakers: There is an Iraqi nation, and Sunnis and Shiites are united in wanting their own country, free from foreign occupation. America's challenge in the dwindling days before June 30 is to align its strategy with what most Iraqis want, rather than fight it.

davidignatius@washpost.com