The most important immediate step, President Bush and other officials said, is for Iraqi politicians from all three major communities to form a unity government. "I urge them ... to form a government that can confront the terrorist threat and earn the trust and confidence of all Iraqis," Bush said Saturday.
But that is proving difficult. Sunni and Kurdish leaders are unhappy with the decision by the Shiite bloc, the largest in the new parliament, to reelect Ibrahim Jafari for the post of prime minister. U.S. officials are unhappy with the choice, too; many of them consider Jafari incompetent and divisive. The result, at least in the short run, has been a political deadlock.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday April 02, 2006 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 40 words Type of Material: Correction
Iraq war anniversary: A March 19 article in Section A misspelled the first name of a former professor at the U.S. Army War College who is now at the private Council on Foreign Relations. He is Stephen Biddle, not Steven.
"They have to step up to the plate," the senior official said, reflecting the administration's frustration with the Iraqi leaders. "They cannot just sit aside and press their short-term interests."
Unless a unity government succeeds, said a civilian advisor to the Pentagon, "you are heading for a de facto independent Kurdistan, a Shia Iraq that is very close to the Iranians and a Sunni Iraq which is rebellious in perpetuity."
One of the major goals of U.S. policy in Iraq has been to avoid choosing sides. But that goal may be slipping away, outside analysts said.
"In a sense, as your own forces diminish, you have to choose sides," Dobbins said. "We may be forced to do that. We already have to some degree."
"The Sunnis already see us as having chosen sides," said Steven Biddle, a former professor at the U.S. Army War College who is at the private Council on Foreign Relations.
Biddle has argued that by building new Iraqi security forces dominated by Shiites and Kurds, the United States in effect has armed and trained two of the sides in the Iraqi conflict. The Sunnis, he wrote in a recent article, "perceive the 'national' army and police force as a Shiite-Kurdish militia on steroids."
"I think we're in a civil war now. We've been in a civil war for more than a year. It's just a civil war that's being fought at low intensity," he said in an interview.
Instead of trying to build Iraqi security forces quickly, Biddle argues, the United States should slow down its training program, slow its own military withdrawal, and concentrate on strengthening political leaders -- especially among the Sunnis -- who can make compromises.
But Biddle acknowledges that there is no political support in the United States for a longer or larger troop deployment.
