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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elsewhere who wrote (8477)	9/18/2003 3:40:12 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793743

Carrying the Weight By MICHAEL R. GORDON - NEW YORK TIMES CAMP DOHA, Kuwait, Sept. 17 — There is a sobering fact that has been overlooked in the Bush administration's drive to win United Nations support for a new multinational peacekeeping force in Iraq: establishing that force may not ease the main danger for American forces and is unlikely to substantially limit the growing American casualty toll. A Polish-led multinational division is already deployed in southern Iraq. And the Bush administration is now trying to draw additional foreign troops to Iraq by persuading the United Nations Security Council to pass a new resolution calling for a multinational force. The administration's calculation is that such a measure would provide India, Turkey and other nations with the political cover they need at home to send peacekeeping troops to Iraq, where they would serve in a United Nations undertaking that would be under American command. With an army already stretched thin by deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan, South Korea and the Balkans, the United States would clearly benefit from the arrival of additional foreign troops in Iraq. There is also a domestic political component. Some leading Democrats have accused President Bush of pursuing a go-it-alone strategy; so establishing a new multinational force could be a useful bit of political symbolism. But there are also certain strategic facts of life. The anticipated foreign deployments are expected to be very modest, and American forces will continue to have the most hazardous duty. It is American troops who will patrol Baghdad. And it is American soldiers who will conduct raids and fend off attackers armed with rocket-propelled grenades and other explosives in the so-called Sunni Triangle, the region that stretches north from the Iraqi capital to Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown, and west to the restive town of Ramadi. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz recently told Congress that one reason that the Polish-led division had been assigned to south-central Iraq was that it was one of the most stable regions. That is partly the result of the region's ethnic make-up: it is a Shiite-dominated area and has a lot to gain by the American intervention that ended Sunni domination of the country. The stability in the south is also testimony to the nation-building skills of the United States Marines, who formerly controlled the zone. It is not entirely clear where all of the new contingents of foreign troops would be deployed. That will probably depend on the number of troops that are offered, their capabilities and the conditions stipulated by the nations that contribute them. But the assumption of senior Army officials is that most, if not all, would be deployed in another relatively benign region of Iraq. According to United States Army plans, the arrival of a new multinational division would be used to plug the gap in and around Mosul after the 101st Airborne Division left northern Iraq in February or March. This is also an area with an ethnic mix that makes it more hospitable to peacekeeping troops and that has benefited from the 101st's arduous efforts to organize new Iraqi local governments and initiate projects to rebuild the local infrastructure. But that would still leave American forces with the challenging task of stabilizing central Iraq. Consider the Army's deployment plans in detail. According to Army plans, it is not a multinational division that will take the place of the First Armored Division after it completes its deployment in Baghdad early next year. Rather, the division is to be replaced by two brigades from the Army's First Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Tex., along with a brigade of the Army National Guard. And it is not a foreign division that will replace the Fourth Infantry Division from Fort Lewis, Wash., which has been conducting raids and engaging in a counterinsurgency in and around Tikrit. Rather, the division is to be followed by two brigades from the Army's First Infantry Division based in Germany. They will be supplemented by a brigade from the Army National Guard. The pattern continues. The Second Armored Cavalry Regiment, which has been deployed in Baghdad, will be replaced by a brigade of the First Cavalry Division. The Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, which has been conducting military operations in western Iraq, will overlap and eventually hand over its duties to the Army's Styrker Brigade. The possibility that foreign troops might make some contribution in these areas cannot be excluded. But the Army is not planning on it and the United States Army is certain to retain the primary responsibility for the Sunni Triangle region. The Bush administration constantly talks about "coalition forces," but the coalition is overwhelmingly American and likely to stay that way. That is the reason that the administration has been forced to go to Congress for $87 billion in additional funds. And it is the reason that the Pentagon and the United States Central Command have stepped up their efforts to accelerate the establishment of new Iraqi security forces, like the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps. There is, in short, an enormous gap between the symbolism and the reality of the multinational force. That is not to diminish the contributions of the British, who are leading a multinational division in the south, administering Basra and moving to increase their troops in Iraq after having cut back after the end of major combat operations. As of late August, 50 British military personnel have died in Operational Telic, as the British military deployment in Iraq has been dubbed. Still, when it comes to sharing the burden for securing Iraq, the United States Army will continue to carry most of the weight. This is not going to be like the Balkans, where the vast majority of the peacekeeping troops are supplied by allies of the United States. In Iraq, it will be just the reverse. Operations in and around Baghdad will remain the responsibility of combat-hardened American troops and not foreign forces from Poland or Nicaragua who have no experience in the region. Faced with this reality, Bush administration officials have quietly been trying to downplay expectations for what a new United Nations resolution may achieve even as they struggle to build support for the measure. "The expectation is that you would not get a large additional number of forces as a result of an additional U.N. resolution," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld recently told Congress. And Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said in a recent ABC television interview that the United Nations resolution would produce troops in only small numbers and that it could take months before they arrived. There are good and valid reasons to go the United Nations. A new resolution would make it easier to get international financial institutions to provide money for projects in Iraq. A United Nations role could be useful in helping Iraq make the transition from an occupied nation to a sovereign state. And from an American perspective, in a country the size of California, some foreign peacekeepers are better than no foreign troops. There are two political timetables in play — one in Iraq and one in the United States — and they are related. The Bush administration would clearly like to see Iraq adopt a new constitution and hold elections for a new government before American voters go to the polls in the November 2004 presidential and Congressional elections. The White House wants to see Iraq on a path toward stability. And it would like to see the occupation of Iraq blessed by as many nations as possible — as long as that did not mean that the United States would have to cede real control to the United Nations. During the upcoming American political season, however, casualties will be a highly charged issue. So it is significant that the burden-sharing arrangements in Iraq are unlikely to change fundamentally. Like a major American city, Iraq has its good neighborhoods and its bad neighborhoods, and American troops will be in the most dangerous places. nytimes.com