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

To: KLP who wrote (40149)	4/19/2004 11:55:27 PM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793559

Last month, Spain's new Socialist prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, "indicated the troops would be staying through the end of June, which is when they are supposed to come out," Powell said in an interview with The Associated Press. ... "And suddenly, troops are being withdrawn," Powell said with obvious disappointment with Zapatero's announcement Sunday he was ordering their departure "as soon as possible." Why Zapatero didn't wait until June to pull out, as he had said earlier Najaf: Muqtada, Myers, and Zapatero, from Juan Cole And, by the way, the uncertainty of this Najaf situation almost certainly goes a long way toward explaining why Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero suddenly announced the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq. He had earlier suggested they would be withdrawn July 1 if there were not a new UN resolution authorizing the military occupation of Iraq by then, and substantial UN military involvement in the Coalition. But he has now declined to wait to see if any of those developments will take place. ' The officials said the new government made its announcement on its first day to avoid being drawn into a debate and to avoid possible complications in the field. They did not want any future event, like taking of hostages or the deaths of any soldiers, to be used to misinterpret Spain's motives. It should be remembered that the Spanish troops aren't just anywhere in Iraq. They are around Najaf. And Najaf at the moment has a Coalition bull's eye painted on it in all the satellite photos. This could be the epicenter of a vast earthquake if fighting should escalate between the Coalition and the Army of the Mahdi, because of the city's central religious importance. Zapatero knows all this and will have been getting briefings from Spanish officers in the field who know they are perched on the lip of an active volcano. Thus, the key element in the Spanish withdrawal is no longer the Madrid bombings. Zapatero might have kept the troops in Iraq nevertheless, since it does seem that Bush is being forced by circumstances to go back to the UN Security Council. The key issue now is Muqtada al-Sadr's Shiite movement, and whether Spanish troops would stick around to help put it down, and risk getting mired in a colonial anti-insurgency effort. The answer: No. A problem for the US: A lot of other countries may well decide to follow suit. Most "Coalition partners" signed up for peacekeeping or reconstruction, not to fight against guerrillas (there is a difference between peacekeeping and peace-enforcing). The US could well lose half a division this way, and it doesn't have half a division to spare. If the US were to provoke a struggle with the Shiites, the British in Basra might well leave, as well, rather than risk being overwhelmed. In the midst of such a Shiite revolt, with British commanders frantically signalling they didn't have the manpower to handle it in the South, if Tony Blair wouldn't finally come to grips with reality, he might well be unceremoniously dumped by his own party, the way Maggie Thatcher was. That is, the Spanish model, of a Bush/Cheney induced move to the left might not stop, among US allies, with Madrid. Which also doesn't make it very likely that Muqtada will get his blue helmets in Najaf. posted by Juan Cole at 4/19/2004 09:07:51 AM juancole.com