Word: bremer
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...While there's no clarity yet on what proposals Ambassador Bremer will take back with him to Baghdad, there's a consensus in Washington that the current transition program is not working. The escalating security crisis in Iraq has prompted the Pentagon to pursue a strategy of "Iraqification," deploying more and more Iraqis against the insurgency. But for "Iraqification" to have any impact, it will have to be accompanied by a parallel political transition: Iraqis are a less likely to risk their lives defending an occupation authority than they would be to fight for a new Iraqi government...
...bombing in Nasiriyah that killed 17 Italian policemen and nine of the Iraqis they had been training. A CIA field analysis first reported in the Philadelphia Inquirer suggests that the insurgency is actually growing and attracting new recruits. This assessment, which the Inquirer's sources suggest is confirmed by Bremer, also jibes with a warning to Washington from the British government of Tony Blair. London has reportedly warned Washington that the coalition could face a mass uprising in Iraq if the occupation isn't ended within a year. In other words, the occupation itself has become part of the security...
...fighting intensifies, the focus of Bremer's two-day huddle at the White House has been on how to establish a sovereign political authority - even a provisional one, like President Hamid Karzai's government in Afghanistan. The Bush administration remains plagued by internal division over how to proceed in Iraq, with the result being contending answers that range from handing over sovereign authority to the IGC to nixing the Council in favor of an interim government. Bremer's comments before leaving Washington that the next move is up to the IGC suggest he is taking back some form of challenge...
...person IGC is certainly an unwieldy instrument of power. It was handpicked by Bremer with a view to representing Iraq's ethnic diversity, but its inclusiveness may actually preclude it from taking decisive action. Its presidency, for example, is rotated on a month by month basis among seven different leaders, each with his own distinct agenda. The IGC's problems, however, are not simply rooted in its cumbersome structure. They reflect an absence of consensus among Iraqis over a post-Saddam order. The Kurds favor a federation that would give them maximum autonomy in northern Iraq, but the Sunnis...
...While the IGC won't necessarily be abandoned, it may be expanded, reorganized, or asked to develop plans for some form of election to appoint an interim government next year. Still, moving quickly toward elections carries its own risks. Many of the 24 Iraqis appointed to the IGC by Bremer would not survive an election process - the CIA analysis reportedly notes that the IGC has failed to win popular support. And respected scholars of political transitions, such as the Carnegie Endowment's Marina Ottaway, have warned that elections themselves often serve to polarize post-conflict societies and generate conflict. Still...