Iraqis must reform quickly, intelligence report says
By Richard Willing, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Iraq's security situation is dire and likely to continue to worsen unless Iraqis themselves implement reforms quickly, a report by America's leading intelligence agencies made public today concludes.
Withdrawing American forces rapidly, however, would produce a significant increase in sectarian violence and make national reconciliation even more difficult, an unclassified summary of the report says.
The "National Intelligence Estimate," delivered to Congress this morning and to President Bush Thursday night, describes an Iraq riven by religious, ethnic and political rivalries and governed uncertainly by a president, Nouri al-Maliki, whose political skills and will to lead remain unproven.
"Even if violence is diminished, given the current winner-take-all attitude and sectarian animosities infecting the political scene, Iraqi leaders will be hard pressed to achieve sustained political reconciliation in the time frame (the next 12 to 18 months) of this estimate," its summary concludes.
At the White House, national security adviser Stephen Hadley called the report "accurate."
"We would emphasize the 'hard-pressed,' because we will be pressing them hard and the Iraqi people will be pressing the government hard," Hadley said in a briefing for reporters.
The 90-page estimate, prepared by the office of outgoing Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte with input from the CIA, military intelligence and others, is intended to represent the intelligence community's best judgment on the course of future events.
The report describes an Iraq in which the once-dominant Sunni Muslims refuse to concede that their monolithic rule has ended, leading to ongoing attacks on both coalition forces and rival Shiites.
The Shiites, similarly, fail to appreciate that as the largest population group they are likely to have their interests served by a fully functioning democracy.
Both groups, the intelligence concludes, lack "unifying leaders" capable of speaking for or controlling enough group members to make cross-community reconciliation a realistic prospect.
The estimate, or NIE, sidestepped the question of whether Iraq has already descended into "civil war," saying that term fails to "adequately capture the complexity" of a conflict which includes Shia-on-Shia violence, al-Qaeda and Sunni insurgent attacks on coalition forces as well as widespread criminal violence.
The report concluded that Iran and Syria, neighboring states with large Shiite majorities, continue to exacerbate violence against Americans. Iran sends arms, including new armor piercing roadside bombs, to Shiite militias inside Iraq, intelligence suggests. Syria shields Iraqi insurgents and facilitates travel for al-Qaeda members and other non-Iraqi Muslims who seek to enter Iraq to fight Americans.
However, the report also downplays such outside support, saying "the involvement of these outside actors is not likely to be a driver of violence," and even if Iran and Syria were stopped, sectarian violence would continue.
Intelligence officers offered a stark analysis of what could occur if coalition forces left "rapidly:"
The Iraqi police and army would collapse; regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran would arm rival factions; a strengthened al-Qaeda would operate inside and outside Iraq; and Turkey could launch an invasion to secure areas along its border with Iraq.
The estimate is not entirely gloomy. It identifies several possible developments, all in a very preliminary stage, that "could help reverse the negative trends driving Iraq's current trajectory.
Those include broader Sunni acceptance of a multi-community government, and "significant concessions" by Shiites and Kurds to build Sunni confidence.
Maliki, a Shiite, recently has shown signs that he is willing to curb the influence of Shiite militias, authorizing attacks on the extremely violent Jaysh al Mahdi group.
But the report also identifies possible events that could "convulse severely" the already violent environment, including "sustained mass sectarian killings" and assassinations of major political and religious figures.
The administration's plan to commit over 21,500 new troops to the conflict, announced in January, was developed in consultation with the intelligence professionals who produced the estimate, White House adviser Hadley said. The estimate's most optimistic projections assume that greater numbers of Americans will embed with and offer increased fire support to Iraqi units. Those are key elements of the president's troop "surge" strategy.
In Congress, the estimate met with a sober response.
"The NIE makes clear that we cannot continue the same stubborn strategy that has brought us to this point in Iraq," said Michigan Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. "It also makes clear that we cannot just pull our forces out as if that decision can be made in a vacuum and without consequence."
Rep Ike Skelton, a Missouri Democrat and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the estimate makes clear that the "president's infusion of additional troops in Iraq is probably the last roll of the dice.
"But rather than convincing me that this is the right approach, the NIE makes it more clear than ever that the president's plan has little chance of success.," Skelton concluded.
The estimate was requested by Congress last summer. Today, anticipating that portions of its report might leak, the national intelligence office took the unusual step of posting a summary of the classified estimate on its website (dni.gov).
Portions of an October 2002 intelligence estimate that concluded that Iraq was "reconstituting" its nuclear weapons program were leaked after the American invasion of Iraq had proven that conclusion false.
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